The Reluctant Parisian has failed in many French things, including cooking. However, these recipes do look amazing.
One thing that French cooking and Northern California cuisine share is a love of fresh local ingredients. That’s about the extent of it. In California, it’s all about whatever just came out of the ground that morning, and you can usually find it at Safeway for a decent price. The “locally grown” section at the Burlingame Safeway is bigger than many of the Paris farmers’ markets. In France, finding decent produce is an all-day affair requiring ambassadorship-worthy diplomatic skills, and you definitely won’t find good produce the easy way, at the supermarket. When you do find good produce, it may be pretty, but it will make Whole Paycheck look like a bargain.
Here I am at the Batignolles farmers market, pretending not to be shocked by the 7.50 euros (about 8 USD) I just paid for a head of broccoli.
As for protein, in Northern California it’s all about where it came from (a 25-mile-range is ideal), what it ate (grass-fed would be nice), and how it’s prepared–the preparation should bring out the flavors and never overwhelm them. Rule number one: don’t drown the protein. In France it seems to be all about the sauce. Maybe I’m weird, but I like to see the poulet or poisson or viande before I eat it. Every time I say sans when placing an order in Paris, I get the evil eye. So I’ve given up, and now I just scrape the sauce off when the food arrives.
J’adore French bread and French pastries. (Do you? You can learn to bake French croissants in this online course). J’adore even more French cheese and French wine. The crepes are pretty awesome. I can get behind a good plate of steak frites (known in local parlance as entrecôte). Moules a la creme in Normandy are worth the drive. Sometimes they put un oeuf on top of something, and my heart melts. As for the rest of it, that whole “French food is amazing” thing is sort of lost on me. Northern California cuisine is really hard to beat. (Can someone please tell me where to find a burrito in this city? A real burrito?)
Cooking in France is one of those experiences that looks better on TV than it is in reality. Obviously, I didn’t expect to arrive in France and suddenly start cooking like Julia Child, but nor did I expect my already-limited culinary prowess to take a nosedive. I had no idea how difficult (and expensive) it would be to put a decent meal on the table in Paris. Maybe you’re imagining a farmhouse table and something simmering on a charming stove. Maybe you’re imagining peaches so perfectly ripe they make the angels sing. Maybe you’re imagining something that rises just right and smells like heaven. This is not that movie.
Here’s how dinner really goes down at chez Reluctant P.
black baguette from the cultishly popular Boulangerie Utopie at Republique. (I left the street garbage in the shot because this blog is, if nothing else, honest about Paris).
I stop by the lovely outdoor market dirty Franprix on the way home from a day spent visiting museums and walking along the Seine trying to pay the cable bill and getting hopelessly lost, spend 15-20 minutes chopping fragrant vegetables crying, and pop something in the oven fight with the oven, whereupon the house fills with wonderful aromas smoke, and I call it a day my sister to cry some more. By the time Mr. Reluctant P saunters trudges home from work ready for romance covered in Paris dust, I’m putting the coq au vin cheese and crackers on the table, already into my second third glass of wine.
So there you have it, the art despair of French cooking.
At least the wine is good, the cheese is interesting, the salted butter they sell in the lowliest markets is mouthwatering, and Mr. Reluctant P never comes home without a fresh baguette under his arm.
Now, for the recipes:
11 basic French cooking techniques every home chef should know.
Perfect mashed potatoes, from iconic French chef Joel Robuchon
Quiche lorraine, classic French recipe from Le Cordon Bleu, courtesy of Chef Fran Flint of G’Day Souffle
Steak frites (okay, this isn’t a recipe, it’s so much better than that)