Yours, The Anxious Foodie <3
The Art of French Cooking
I suppose I have, for most of my life
without even realising it, always had a fascination with French food. Ever
since I was small and would go on holiday to Brittany with my parents, I have
known in the back of my mind that it was something special, even though at
first I could not understand it. As a small child on the coast of Brittany, it
is sometimes difficult to come across the real gems of French food. As I went
through a phase of having a large aversion to seafood, although I had once
loved it, I therefore used to think people were mad when the raved about the
quality of French food. What was so special about the ham, chips and mayonnaise
that I was always presented with, or that chicken in a creamy sauce?
I regret that it wasn’t until years later
that I discovered what French food really is about, and really started to
understand it in all of its detail.
French food is sociable food, food for
friends. What is better than digging into a large pot of moules with
your bare hands, using shells to scoop the fleshy seafood from its black bed,
and then mopping up the delicious broth with a hunk of freshly baked French baguette?
Or who can forget the huge fresh platters
of fruits de mer offered in French seaside resorts, which just
call out to diners to dig in.
In England, everyone is too prim and proper,
laying their cutlery down in a precise fashion after every meal, to be able to
adhere to such culinary traditions as the French. The truth is that food is
more fun when eaten as it is in France. French breakfast is traditionally taken
in the hands also, for example fresh croissants qui sont juse sortis du four
et pain avec confiture fait à la maison et jus d'orange pressée, and perhaps a steaming bowl of hot chocolate
with which to warm cold fingers. Is this not somewhat more special than a soggy
bowl of cereal and a mug of tepid tea?
French crêpes oozing with cheese and
cream, boef bourgignon emitting a
pungent aroma of red wine and herbs, snails (who else other than the resilient French
would cook a common garden mollusc and turn it into a culinary delight)
drenched in garlic butter having to be gripped in tongs and the grappled out
with small snail forks and the pastry encasing such delights as tarte au
citron, tarte aux épinards and a multitude of other delicious desserts and
savoury wonders will all always be a
part of the grand culinary institution of the French.
My Experience of the Art of French
Cooking
One thing I have learnt about French
cooking is how unpredictable it can be.
Sometimes a dish may have involved a large amount of preparation and
been extremely easy, and other times a meal can look like the simplest thing
but have turned out to be a nightmare of precision.
Carrelet meunière is one of these latter dishes. A
simple sounding dish of pan-fried seasoned fish with thin strips of carrots and
runner beans may look extremely simple, but instead my experience of it was
less than easy.
First of all, I should mention that
plaice fillets, or carrelet in
French, are extremely delicate, and if it wasn’t for this, carrelet meunière could have been a simple dish after all, but once
I had clarified the butter and added the fish to the pan, it became a nightmare
of sticking fish and sizzling butter. This may have been due to my use of an
age old frying pan with a diminishing non stick coating, but all the same it
was not what I had expected.
Once I had managed to remove the
fish from the pan, the vegetables proved relatively easy. I added the rest of
the butter to the pan and slipped in the vegetables once it started to foam,
cooked them for two minutes, and then added the white wine and lemon juice for
them to simmer in for a further four minutes. This is evidence of another
famous French culinary practice – butter and wine. Both seem to be used in
varying amounts in many French dishes, and although this may not be good news
for the waistline, it certainly is good news for the taste buds, for the end
result of my dish was a simply presented (if not entirely simply prepared) and beautiful
mix of delicate seasoned fish fillet, crunchy vegetables and a sublimely
smooth, fruity and rich sauce in which to soak large hunks of bread. Worth the
effort and aggravation of the fish sticking to the pan, I’m sure.
Above:
Cooking the vegetables that I had spent a very long time painstakingly cutting
into the tiny strips required for carrelet
meunière.
Below: The fish
must be returned to the pan once the vegetables are done to be coated it in the
sauce of butter, wine and lemon juice.
The
Story of tarte tatin ( or tarte des desmoiselles tatin)
Ever since I first discovered Tarte Tatin,
I have loved its story of how such a delicious tradition came about completely unintentionally. I have heard it with many slight variations,
but the following is the version that I believe to be closest to the truth.
Prétendument, la tarte
était créer environ 1890, par deux soeurs qui avait un hôtel, l'hôtel Tatin, dans le Vallée de la Loire. Un jour, c'était
particulièrement chargé dans la cuisine, donc Stephanie Tatin a mis ses pommes
dans un moule et a mis le moule dans le four sans un doublure de pâte. Quand
elle s'est rendrée compt de l'erreur, Stephanie as l'ajouté dessus les fruits
et le sucre, et elle a servi le résultat dessert - qui était somptueux et a eu
le goût de caramel - chaud, peut-être avec un petit peu du crème fraîche.
All in all, that's what French food is for me. It is magic to be shared with friends, even if it can be unpredictably difficult, as with carrelet meunière, or extremely simply yet exciting, such as any dish involving moules.
Above: The moules begin to yield their treasures.
Above: A table set for sharing, with moules, side salads and baguette.
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