One recent Sunday during a visit to England, I was lucky enough to be invited to lunch in the picturesque town of Sevenoaks, in Kent south of London. My friends served me a spectacular meal, beginning with a salad of ruby-streaked blood oranges piled on thinly sliced finocchio and red onion, and scattered with Kalamata olives and watercress. Blood oranges would still be in season when I got home to France. I had to have the recipe.
Salade d’hiver aux oranges sanguines / Winter salad with blood oranges
For most of recent history, it was believed in France that the words ‘British’ and ‘cuisine’ were a contradiction in terms. Not true! At least, not anymore. My friend Penny, a remarkable cook, got the lunch off to a flying start with homemade tarama, light and tangy and bearing no relation to the store-bought variety, served with a crisp white wine.
We repaired to the table for the salad, which was followed by a piquant Georgian beef stew, pumpkin roasted with red pepper flakes and fresh sage, and cabbage steamed to delicate tenderness. The menu reflects Penny’s many travels abroad, including long stays in Russia and various forays to the Middle East. I have made the stew myself — using the same recipe, from Anya von Bremzen’s Please to the Table, a compendium of the cuisine of the former Soviet Union — but never managed the same meltingly rich results.
The main course was followed by an assortment of English cheeses, including tangy Lord of the Hundreds, made of unpasteurized ewe’s milk and a serious rival to France’s brebis Basque. (The cheese apparently got its name from a Saxon lord who held 100 parcels of land.) We took a break to watch Philadelphia Story, but the meal wasn’t over. After the movie we returned to the table for upside-down rhubarb cake with fresh ginger. Fabulous!
With spring just around the corner, I will not try to replicate the pumpkin dish just now — but when autumn comes, watch this space. I may have a go at the rhubarb cake, however. The bottom line is that English cuisine, like French, has lapped up influences from around the world for the palate’s delight. And after all, it’s faster to get from Paris to London now — just over two hours on the Eurostar — than to reach Marseille. So I, for one, plan to integrate the English style into my everyday French repertoire. You too?
Happy cooking!
Can you imagine that tiramisu, the ubiquitous feather-light confection, did not exist half a century ago? It certainly was nowhere to be found in Paris when I arrived in the 1970s, having only just been invented (apparently), although its origins are in dispute. What cannot be contested is that this wonderful dessert of sweetened cheese layered with ladyfingers dipped in coffee is not only a crowd pleaser, but easy and fun to prepare.
Sea scallops, Brittany style — dusted with flour, tenderly sauteed in butter and drizzled with a creamy sauce — make a fine winter’s dish. But what does this recipe have to do with the Way of Saint James, the historic pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain? Quite a lot, as it turns out, for the saint known as ‘Santiago’ in Spanish is ‘Saint Jacques’ in French, and along the route he gave his name to the humble scallop.
And why Brittany style? That’s a question I failed to answer, although my best guess is that scallops and butter are popular in the region. Brittany, of course, is surrounded by sea, and shellfish may be found there in abundance. The potato also has an important history in Brittany, where it came into wide use during a famine in the mid-18th century. In this recipe, the scallops may be paired with sliced potatoes, as shown in the photo above, or with potatoes boiled in their jackets. Another nice touch is to serve them in their shells.
It is always a comfort, on a cold, damp Paris day, to walk into a bistro at lunchtime and encounter a plate of céléri rémoulade, the classic French starter of grated celeriac bathed in a tangy mustard mayonnaise. This earthy salad is one of the dishes I longed for when far from France for long periods on journalistic assignments. You won’t find it in Moscow or Manila, nor for that matter in many of the trendy new cafés sprouting up in Paris. But what it may lack in chic it makes up for in flavor. A good reason to make it at home.
Celeriac remoulade can be served on its own as a starter, set on a bed of tender leaves or garnished with fresh herbs. But here in France it is most commonly seen as part of the mixed veggie starter known as 
And speaking of eggs, while preparing this week’s post I took time to revisit another of my favorite classic French starters — 
The French colonial empire once stretched across the globe, with the happy result — once independence was restored to the colonized — that the cuisine of many cultures is now available in France. Poulet yassa, or chicken marinated in a sauce of onions, lemon juice and mustard, is one such happy dish. Originally from the Casamance region of southern Senegal, it is now highly popular throughout former French West Africa, and also in Paris.
Back to Paris… Cold weather has finally set in, prompting me to revisit some of the winter dishes already posted here, with new photos. The first, 
The second is a 
When winter comes to France, it’s time for raclette. This immensely popular dish of potatoes smothered in melted cheese, accompanied by cured meat and pickles, has come down from the Alps to become a favorite nationwide. It evokes memories of ski slopes, where of a snowy evening you could gather with friends to enjoy a restaurant meal of raclette, with a half-wheel of cheese brought to your table and melted under an electric grill.
On the eve of the end-of-year holidays, here is a recipe that is renowned in France for its excess-fighting qualities. Ah oui, mes amis — once the festivities are over, it’s time to take action to counteract the effects of all the wonderful holiday dishes, sweets and drinks we may have indulged in. Rustic cabbage soup is the antidote. In fact, it is an open secret among French women and men who want to start the new year in their best form.
Walnuts and roquefort marry well, as they say. The combination turns up often in salads and as an after-dinner treat, perhaps with some pear slices alongside. In this savory cake, traditionally served in France at cocktail hour, the sharpness of the roquefort is offset every so slightly by the sweetness of the walnuts and the mild flavor of olive oil. It makes a festive offering for guests as we enter both the holiday season and the darkest days of the year.
