What to Eat in France | Page 2 of 4

What to Eat in France: Gratin Dauphinois

Published by Jonell Galloway + Thursday, November 19, 2015 Permalink 0

What to Eat in France: Authentic Gratin Dauphinois, or Real Gratin Potatoes with Cream and Garlic

Gratin dauphinois, which consists of thinly sliced potatoes cooked slowly with cream and garlic, seems a simple enough dish. Purists and traditionalists say there’s no cheese and no egg, despite the fact that Escoffier himself used them, and that’s what makes it difficult to achieve.

Michelin star chef Michel Rostang, who was born and raised in the region, doesn’t use them and claims that’s the only authentic way to make it. In fact, if you add cheese and nutmeg, it becomes a gratin savoyard. The real secret is in the choice of ingredients and the patience it takes to make it. A good gratin should melt in the mouth, yet the top should be crunchy.

The Dauphiné was an ancient province of France, located in the southeast, corresponding roughly to the départements of Isère, Drôme, and Hautes-Alpes plus a bit of the Rhône and the Italian Alps.

What to Eat in France: Crêpes Vonnassiennes

Published by Jonell Galloway + Wednesday, November 18, 2015 Permalink 0

What to Eat in France: Crêpes Vonnassiennes, Vonnas-style Potato Pancakes

by Jonell Galloway

Vonnas in the east of France is the home of the legendary Michelin-star chef Georges Blanc. He is best known for his Bresse chicken with cream and mushrooms. Traditionally, this chicken is eaten with potato pancakes. This recipe is inspired by Blanc’s mother, La Mère Blanc, who ran his restaurant before him. He learned to cook at her apron strings.

Vonnas is in the Rhône-Alpes region of France, known for poulet de Bresse chickens and poultry, frogs, Reblochon and Beaufort cheese, as well as gratin dauphinois, made with raw potatoes, thick cream and garlic, and pork products, plentiful in the bouchons, small restaurants found in Lyon.

What’s the Difference in Haute Cuisine and French Cuisine?

Published by Jonell Galloway + Sunday, November 15, 2015 Permalink 0

There are many kinds of French cuisine. It is not limited to the haute cuisine accessible only to the rich.

by Jonell Galloway

What many of us think of as “French cuisine” is actually haute cuisine, the cuisine that evolved from the aristocratic cuisine of the royalty. This cuisine was centered mainly in Paris and Versailles. Regional cuisine as we know it today did not even exist at the time, since regions didn’t exist until after the Revolution. Until the Revolution, there were provinces and feudal “kingdoms,” abolished afterward. Cuisine bourgeoise, the cooking of the upper middle classes and later middle classes, developed after the Revolution, and gradually filtered down to the broader population.

Regions didn’t formally exist by name until 1890, so there was little meaning attached to the word “region”. One cooked and ate what was available, what one grew and raised and that varied widely. Even the gruel was made with different grains in different regions. Regions only formed an identity after this. Knowledge of regional cuisines increased as travel became easier and accessible to all, especially after the generalization of cars.

French cuisine has always consisted of two tiers: haute cuisine and regional cuisine. Elements of haute cuisine — the cuisine that we inherited from the courts and later the affluent bourgeoisie, the cuisine that elevated sauce-making to an art form — have over the centuries infiltrated the cuisine of the regions, and regional cuisine is the lifeline and wherein lies the future.

What to Eat in France: Poulet de Bresse

Published by Jonell Galloway + Saturday, November 14, 2015 Permalink 0

What to Eat in France: Poulet de Bresse, or Chicken from Bresse with Cream and Mushrooms

by Jonell Galloway

J’ai la chair de poule. / I have goose bumps.

Quand les poules auront des dents. / Literally, “when chickens have teeth,” meaning that will never happen.

Bresse chicken or poulet de Bresse has had an A.O.C. since 1957, which defines the way in which they are raised as well as the geographic zone in which they can be raised.

It is a French breed known as Bresse-Gauloise. The feathers are generally white, and they have a red, crenelated comb. They have blue feet and a white beard. About a million chickens are sent to market every year.

Poulet de Bresse and other poultry from Bresse — including guinea fowl, capon, hen and even turkey — is raised under strictly defined conditions, but it is not organic. They are free range and have a grass-based diet, but also eat worms and mollusks. Final fattening is with cereals and milk products in wooden cages. Bresse poultry cannot be slaughtered under 5 months of age if they are to bear the A.O.C.

Is French Cuisine Dead?

Published by Jonell Galloway + Friday, November 13, 2015 Permalink 0

We sponsored a Twitter chat “Is French Cuisine Dead?” a couple of months ago. You can view the discussions here or by searching the hashtag #FutureFrenchCuisine.

Haute cuisine may well be unaffordable for ordinary people — it always has been — but regional cuisine is what the people eat and remains affordable. It is eaten in local bistros, which are reasonably priced and nowhere near disappearing; it is eaten in homes. French regional cuisine is a reflection of the soil, people and language, a reflection of the seasons and family; it is what memories are made of. It is the product of a place and of a people and the French people are very much alive.

What to Eat in France: Soupe de Légumes

Published by Jonell Galloway + Thursday, September 24, 2015 Permalink 0

What to Eat in France: Soupe de Légumes, or French Vegetable Soup

French children hate soup because most of the soup they get looks like the one below. You’ll not find any tiny pasta alphabets swimming around in French soup. It looks like mush or worse, children say. And it does. It’s anything but the bright, primary colors that would attract a child.

soupe de légumes lyonnaise

Adults see it differently. In fall and winter, soup often replaces salad as a starter. It has a high vegetable content, therefore providing all the vegetables one needs for a day, and it always uses seasonal, mainly root, vegetables. Every region has their own version, as does every cook, and any day’s version depends on what is available at the market and in the larder.

Most French soup uses a classic potato and leek purée as a base, the same one used to make vichyssoise, no matter what the region.

In the country, there is a longstanding tradition of pouring a little red wine into the last few spoonfuls of soup, and drinking it straight from the bowl. This is referred to as “faire chabrot” (or “faire chabrol” or “fà chabroù” in other regions). All these variations come from the Latin capreolus. It means literally “to drink like a goat.” The tradition exists mainly south of the Loire. Today, it is mainly older people in the country who still practice it.

faire chabrot

This recipe is from the Lyon region, where they add a bit of cabbage to the otherwise classic base.

Recipe

Ingredients

1 leek
1 carrot
1 turnip
1 stick of celery
2 onions
2 potatoes
Chunk of cabbage
4 1/2 cups veal or chicken broth, hot
1 T. butter
Salt and pepper to taste
Slices of country bread
Parsley, chopped
Glass of red wine for each diner

Directions

Chop vegetables into small cubes and place in saucepan or soup pot. (I leave on the skin for added fibre.)
Cover with hot broth.
Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, then cook over medium-low heat for about 1 1/2 hours.
Toast bread.
Purée in a food processor or with a potato masher.
Add butter and mix well. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Lay slices of toast in soup bowls.
Pour soup over toast.
Sprinkle with parsley.
Serve immediately.
When there are just a few spoonfuls of soup left in the bowl, add a little red wine and drink the rest of your soup straight from the bowl (if you dare).

What to Eat in France: Mentchikoffs

Published by Jonell Galloway + Tuesday, September 22, 2015 Permalink 0

What to Eat in France: Mentchikoffs, Chocolate Specialty of Chartres

by Jonell Galloway

Despite the Russian name, Mentchikoffs are a specialty of Chartres. There are only four or five chocolatiers who still make them because the process is time-consuming. You won’t find them in restaurants, only in chocolate shops.

Mentchikoffs have a praline and chocolate center and a crunchy dried Swiss-style meringue coating. They are almond-shaped and usually weigh from 10 to 12 grams.

This candy is said to have been invented by a famous confectioner named Dausmenil in 1893 in the rue de la Pie in Chartres. This was a period when everything Russian was the rage, from Russian salad to Russian jewels, after the signing of the Franco-Russian military alliance of 1894. Mentchikov, the son of a pastry chef and an apprentice bread baker, had been the aide-de-camp of Czar Peter the Great in the early eighteenth century. Dausmenil almost certainly named his chocolates in honor of the Russian of the same name.

mentchikoffs from Loos pastry shop

In 1900, Dausmenil sold his shop, along with the recipe, to a confectioner called Genet. There are records mentioning his mentchikoffs in 1930, along with the mintchikoffs of Mme Nessler in the rue Marceau.

It takes several days to make a mentchikoff — anywhere from 3 to 7 — because each step is followed by a period of drying. The almonds and hazelnuts are crushed and oven-dried. The water and sugar is then heated to 121°C. Off the burner, the nuts are added to the sugar mixture and then put back on the burner to caramelize. This mixture is then crushed into a fine powder to make the praline.

The praline is then mixed with melted butter and the chocolate added. This mixture is left to dry in a special drying frame and later cut into 7- to 8-gram candies which are shaped by hand.

One side of the chocolates is then soaked in the meringue, then removed and dried. This procedure is repeated for the other side. The finished mentchikoffs are then dried one last time and packaged in cardboard boxes.

Mentchikoffs are eaten after a meal with coffee.

What to Eat in France: Crème

Published by Jonell Galloway + Tuesday, September 1, 2015 Permalink 0

What to Eat in France: Cream: crème fraîche, crème brûlée, crème caramel, crème chantilly…

The Normans put cream in almost all their sauces: for example, with salt cod and prunes.–La Varenne, Le Cuisinier François, 1651

C’est de la crème. / It’s easy.–French saying

Ce n’est pas de la crème. / It’s difficult.–French saying

by Jonell Galloway

No one loves cream or creaminess more than the French. They love it so much that they call all sorts of things other than cream “crème“: cream soups, pudding, sauces, custard filling, pastry cream, coffee with hot milk, puréed chestnuts, almond cream, cream horns, and even certain liqueurs. Just about anything creamy is likely to be called cream in French.

Cream has existed ever since milk existed. Despite our association with French cuisine, in general, cream is more a specialty of the north of France where it’s cooler, of the land of butter, than of the south, the land of olive oil and duck fat.

Normandy might well be called the cream capital of the world, or at least of France. The Vikings brought what we now call Normande cows to Normandy a thousand years ago. They, along with Jersey cows, are known for the quality of their fatty, high-protein milk, which makes excellent cream, butter and cheese. Half of all French milk and cream now comes from Normandy.