"The book was first published in 1977 and reissued last year. It's the heart of great, three-starred Lyonnaise cooking. The recipe I like has three main ingredients: artichokes, foie gras and a poulet de Bresse. You bone the chicken, remove the artichoke hearts, then you fill the chicken with the artichoke hearts and foie gras, then cook it very slowly and serve it with a cherry vinaigrette.

Mère Brazier got her three Michelin stars at the same time as the restaurateur Ferdinand Point got his, and they are regarded as the two great chefs of the region. I'm writing a book about learning to be a French cook, so I worked at the Mère Brazier restaurant for six months. Her work is the foundation and the inspiration, but it's now owned by a younger chef, Mathieu Viannay.

It represents good hearty cooking of the early 20th century – Paul Bocuse worked there, and a whole generation of great chefs went through there, too. So there's a legacy that Mathieu Viannay is trying to revive. It had three stars, Mère Brazier died, then it went to her granddaughter, then her great-granddaughter was in charge for a while. It closed, then Viannay bought it in 2008 and it got two Michelin stars in 2009.

Viannay describes his cooking as 'neo-classic'. He works with the classic food preparations of Mère Brazier but makes them modern. It's one of the best restaurants in Lyon and he's now more important than Mère Brazier.

She was a great character and, I think, pretty rough. Mère Brazier's son, who eventually took over the restaurant, was illegitimate. She herself never married and I think she fought ferociously with her son. Eventually she opened another restaurant out in the country, which also got three stars, but it was partly because she couldn't stand to be in the same kitchen as her son any more."

Bill Buford is the author of Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany