Fun With a French Cook by Pauline Simone

Thanks to La Forêt French Class

Title: Fun With a French Cook

Author: Pauline Simone 

Publisher: not known 

Source: TV series Hart to Hart S1 E21 Too Many Cooks Are Murder

This is a super complicated Hart to Hart plot involving a celebrity chef, Pauline Simone, who Max watches on TV because he fancies her. He doesn’t seem that interested in her recipes, but is thrilled when she signs a copy of her new book for him. Pauline says Fun With a French Cook tells you how to cook her recipes - but quicker, more easily than before. It features recipes for chicken fricassee and apple dumplings.

Max is supposed to be a chauffeur or cook or executive assistant to the Harts, or all three and more, but he acts more like a beloved uncle. And he invites Pauline to dinner with him, and Jennifer and Jonathan Hart. Which they eat in the kitchen.

Anyway, another part of the plot features a fabulous (in the sense of mythical) recipe which could change the world, but the creator, Pauline’s brother Maurice, was murdered before he could pass on the formula to Jonathan Hart. There’s a set of comedy villains who will stop at nothing to steal the formula. And a monster cooking scene where the Harts cook every recipe they can find and never stop to do any washing up. Jennifer cooks the important recipe without realising what she is doing, but [spoiler alert] the recipe turns out not to be as fabulous as all that.

At the end of S1 E17 we see Jennifer happily walking off with a South American revolutionary leader, both of them chattering away enthusiastically in Spanish. Max brandishes a book which he claims is called Two Hours to Improve Your Spanish Vocabulary so you’ll know what he says to her. Although that last bit could just be advice for Jonathan and not in the book title at all.

Thanks to The Working Line