Pete's Pans

An appreciation

Do you ever dig out an old cookbook and suddenly remember why you were so excited by it back in the day? There are a few for me. Deighton’s Ou Est Le Garlic? (obvs), but also Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Louisiana Kitchen; John Thorne’s Pot on the Fire. Mastering the Art of French Cooking; Bourdain’s ‘Les Halles’, The Harry’s Bar Cookbook and some of the odd, less well-known ones; The American Diner Cookbook (McKeon and Everett), Michael Roberts’ Parisian Home Cooking, The Brown Derby Cookbook. As you leaf through each one, the recipes somehow transmit directly from the page to the pleasure centres of the lizard brain. With quiet efficiency, they transmit the desire to cook. To eat and to share. You remember why you fell in love with cookbooks in the first place.

Partly, it makes you wonder what made these often unassumingly direct cookbooks so timeless. Partly it reminds me of something restaurant critic Andy Hayler said in a recent Vittles interview - “... everyone’s frantically trying to be innovative, but most of the really good combinations were discovered 100 or 500 years ago.” Partly it makes me wonder what 90% of the books on my shelves are ultimately for. Endless pointless twists and takes.

I realise that all the books that have really stuck for me are not invention but respectful retelling. Not creating art, but transmitting folklore. All of which brings me to Pete’s Pans... and why I can’t resist it.

‘Pete’ is Peter Hanley, who makes brilliant online videos about cooking. He runs the Culinary Academy of the Pyrenees. I haven’t been able to find out much more about him except what can be gleaned from his output. He seems to own an RV in which he drives all around southwest France, over to Spain, up into the Pyrenees, and he cooks local traditional dishes on a gas ring. There must be a camera operator. Either that, or Hanley is more than just talented. He’s also a contortionist with a very steady hand and a three metre long arm. But both clearly know what they’re doing. This stuff is better shot than 90% of current food TV.

We need to talk about Hanley’s voice. It is frankly gorgeous. Unreconstructed RADA. Not a dropped H or a regional vowel, and he presents brilliantly in the passive voice. The effect is genuinely superb. Under normal circumstances, ‘Recipe Passive’ drives me batshit crazy. “The meat is browned and set aside” is not how real people speak. But Hanley, a polyglot and language teacher, understands language. The way he wields it, it’s the erasure of self in passing on. They used to train presenters to talk like that. Think of Raymond Baxter evangelising the eye-popping wonder of supersonic flight - without having to tell you his ‘emotional’ lived experience as a Spitfire ace. It’s like Pete and the cameraman (who I imagine is ex-BBC and called ‘Geoff’ or ‘Brian’) got in that van around the time Floyd was still a going concern and set off to parts of the world where the BBC doesn’t reach.

Today, I’m doing a Gascon beef-cheek daube. It’s interesting because the beef cheeks are left whole, a little more like a pot roast or a gedempte fleisch. It’s not ‘Pete’s Twist on a Gascon Daube’. He doesn’t slide it toward the camera and smugly intone, “So! That’s my Gascon Beef Cheek Daube with Morels.” He lifts the lid off the pot, as if he’s sharing a discovery and celebrates that he’s done something so old, so perfect, so traditional. He shows heartfelt enthusiasm for sharing knowledge. He presents, delivers with the professionalism that officially went extinct two decades ago.

I’ve cooked a run of Pete’s recipes recently. I have a couple of people I cook for regularly who really appreciate that kind of food. Every one of the dishes has been a revelation. It’s almost as if I’ve accidentally stumbled on why I first loved Food TV, back when it was a professional enthusiasts’ game, not a subset of ‘celebrity’ or ‘reality’. Pete’s Pans always teaches me something and, more importantly, fires enthusiasm and joy in me. And I am completely seduced.

I’d thank him in person, but he’s probably halfway up a mountain somewhere, deglazing with a splash of armagnac. Track him down yourself.

(Pete’s Pans is splendidly ubiquitous online. He ‘broadcasts’ regularly on Tiktok and YouTube. I follow him on Instagram. The Culinary Academy of the Pyrenees is here and can be regarded as ‘Pete Central. For true Pete Aficionados, I found this incredible old Wordpress Food Blog, called Menu Classique floating in a back end of the web)

(Pete himself has contacted me to gently point out that he is much more organised than I’d first realised - I’d just not looked hard enough. The above has been slightly edited to reflect this)