PEUGEOT PEPPER MILL: A LION AT YOUR TABLE
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Peugeot & Moi
December 23, 2022
6 minute read
To begin with, tell us a little about yourself…
I am Christophe Marguin and I am the president of the chef's association Les Toques Blanches Lyonnaises. I am the 4th generation of chefs in my family. We have been restaurant owners since 1906. So, I was born into this profession. I did a classic training course with a degree and for about ten years I worked for other chefs. Before taking over the family business which was in a small village in the Ain (middle east of France) called Les Échets. Today, we are in Lyon, and our restaurant, bought 5 years ago, is called Le Président.
The first thing is to adjust the grinder with the knob above the mill: the tighter the knob, the finer the grind, and vice versa. To do this, you need to know how you like your pepper. Some people like it fine, others coarser. Indeed, our palate reacts according to the way the pepper is ground: if it is fine or if it is coarse, the taste will be different. We, the cooks, when we take a pepper mill, even if it is the one we use regularly, we always give a quarter turn of the mill in our hand to see how the pepper comes out. Because if someone else has used it in the meantime, it may not be to our taste.
The second thing you have to pay attention to is the origin of the pepper. You should not hesitate to invest in pepper. If it's expensive, it doesn't matter how much you use each time. We, the restaurant owners, adopt the same philosophy with coffee. We buy coffee beans. Low quality coffee costs 15 euros, good quality coffee costs 30 euros. We only put 7 grams in a dose of coffee, so we prefer to buy good quality coffee, because the price difference is minimal. It's the same for pepper: for one or two turns of the grinder per person, you have to buy good pepper... and a good pepper pot!
For us cooks, the main use of pepper is really seasoning. We don't mix much with pepper.