Rodolphe Paquin

Posted on February 22, 2013 by Meg

PaquinBWhen Rodolphe Paquin took over 16 years ago as chef at the Paris restaurant Le Repaire de Cartouche, the place was in a shambles. Which is a shame, if only because of the restaurant’s unique frescos depicting the life of Cartouche, an 18th century brigand and ladies’ man who hid out locally — yes, repaired — while seeking to evade the police (who eventually caught up with him and executed him on the rack when he was just 28). Paquin’s genius was not just to save the place, but to tap into his Normandy roots to introduce a creative culinary style based on ultrafresh products from the sea and the forest.

Rodolphe Paquin / A chef in Paris

This was a very good thing for me because Le Repaire de Cartouche is in my neighborhood, in the 11th arrondissement just down the boulevard from the Bastille. I love the place, which — despite earning the occasional testy online review — has never disappointed me. The seafood is sublime, game of all sorts is on the menu throughout the fall/winter season, natural wines are featured and the desserts are heavenly. Reason enough to choose Paquin as the second to be featured in this site’s series of interviews with our favorite Paris chefs. The Everyday French Chef will be back on Tuesday with a new recipe. In the meantime, happy reading.

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Huîtres gratinées aux épinards

Posted on February 19, 2013 by Meg

huitres gratinees3I’ll never forget my first taste of an oyster. My French boyfriend showed me how it was done. He took an open oyster on the halfshell, detached it with a sharp knife and, in one swift gesture, let the glistening gray morsel slip into his mouth with its tranparent liquid. My turn. I copied what he’d done, closed my eyes and tipped the shell to my mouth. It was like swallowing a nutty salty mouthful of pure sea. This experience ruined me for life, oyster-wise. I prefer them raw, live actually, and straight from the sea. But every now and then I get the urge to experiment — as I did the other day with this recipe.

Huîtres gratinées aux épinards / Oysters gratineed with spinach

These oysters, baked in the oven with a creamy sauce and a sprinkling of fresh baby spinach, fall into the French dining category of amuse-bouche — i.e. palate pleasers. They make a spectacular start to a meal, and you need serve no more than one per person, at the table or before you get there, during cocktail hour. They can, of course, also make a proper sit-down hors d’oeuvre, in which case one apiece would not be enough. But beware — these oysters are devilishly rich. And by the way, they bear only a fleeting resemblance to Oysters Rockefeller, a dish invented more than a century ago in New Orleans that a) does not use spinach, and b) does use breadcrumbs, which my recipe doesn’t. In France, they say the oyster season is limited to months with the letter ‘r’ — from September to April. That leaves two months or so to try this dish. Happy cooking!

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Velouté de cresson

Posted on February 15, 2013 by Meg

watercress soup2Watercress was considered by the ancients to have medicinal and even magical properties. The Romans thought it could cure baldness, the Greeks that it could cure madness and moderate the effects of overindulgence in wine. Dioscorides, a Greek doctor who lived in the first century AD, considered watercress an aphrodisiac. Well, I won’t claim those powers for this soup — although it will, if not heat your body, warm your soul.

Velouté de cresson / Watercress soup

Speaking of aphrodisiacs, if you haven’t yet read Table for One, the story I published this week on Leite’s Culinaria, please take a look. You might find it, ah, stimulating. Also on the literary front, I’d like to mention two recent books worth checking out. The first is The Tin Horse, a novel that veers toward noir by Janice Steinberg (my cousin, who amusingly named some characters after women of our family). Here’s a collection of reviews. The second is The Idiot and the Odyssey II by Joel Stratte-McClure, who as publisher of the 1970s newspaper Paris Metro gave me my first job in journalism. Joel was kind of off-beat then, and now he has taken upon himself to walk clear around the Mediterranean. Here’s a link to an interview he gave about the book. Finally, for all local foodies, the Paris Cookbook Fair is taking place next week at the Caroussel du Louvre. I plan to stop by, and hope to see you there. In the meantime, happy cooking!

Posted in 2. Soups | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Omelette bonne femme

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Meg

omelet3I wanted to give you a great recipe for Valentine’s Day, and this is what I came up with. It’s a delightful brunch dish when preceded by a glass of champagne — and can also make a light supper with a minimum of fuss in the kitchen, leaving time for other pleasures. I’ve taken some liberties with the traditional recipe, adding arugula to the basic bonne femme combination of bacon and potatoes in order to create a more modern flavor.

Omelette bonne femme / Omelet with bacon, potatoes and arugula

The omelet isn’t the only thing that’s new today. I’m happy to report that a short story I wrote has been published on the site Leite’s Culinaria as a pre-Valentine’s Day special. Don’t be misled by the title they used. It’s a surprising cross-cultural tale of seduction originally titled Spicy. I hope you enjoy it.

Meantime, if you’re looking for the ultimate Valentine’s Day dessert, I’d like to direct you to another site, Joy of Baking, where the red velvet cake — a Georgia specialty I discovered last summer in Atlanta — is just out of this world. I learned about this site at the recent cooking conference in New York, and will return to that subject one of these days soon. Happy cooking!

Posted in 4. Omelets, Soufflés, Quiche | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Are cookbooks finished?

Posted on February 10, 2013 by Meg

cookconfThis is the question nobody wanted to ask out loud at the Roger Smith Cookbook Conference, a gathering of cookbook writers, editors, publishers, agents, food bloggers and food historians that has just concluded in New York. But it was lurking during two days of panel discussions as the people in attendance tried to figure out whether cookbooks have a future – or whether other (digital) means of obtaining recipes, from blogs and ebooks to mobile apps and online video, are making cookbooks into a relic of the past.

Here are a few key points:

* Everyone’s getting recipes online, even people who still use cookbooks. Okay, we already knew that. But now it appears that the younger generation is bypassing ‘old’ new media like blogs and going directly to You Tube for recipes. In other words, video is the next big thing.

* You want to write a cookbook? Don’t expect to make money. The size of advances has plummeted as the book publishing industry suffers from online competition. And despite the fact that cookbooks have resisted better than other categories of books, fewer are selling than in the past. So profits decline right down the line – for publishers, agents, authors and booksellers.

* 24 percent of all cookbooks published today are ebooks, and that figure stands to increase as time goes on. This was from a study by Bowker Market Research that also found that cookbooks in the form of apps for phones and tablets were doing slightly better than ebook cookbooks in 2012.

Of course, this being a cookbook conference, the bottom line here was that we still love cookbooks. You can do with them what you cannot easily do with digital media – write in them, dog-ear them, read them from cover to cover, enjoy them as literary works, etc.

There is much, much more to report from the conference – information of interest to foodies everywhere! – and I plan to blog about it once I get back to Paris. In the meantime, I welcome your thoughts on the matter. Please use the Comment form below.

And watch this space…

— Meg Bortin (aka The Everyday French Chef)

 

Posted in Et cetera | 7 Comments

Suprêmes de poulet aux morilles

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Meg

poulet morilles1Tender chicken breasts poached in white wine with a little cream and the woodsy succulence of morel mushrooms – sounds great, right? Wish I could remember. I’m having a little trouble conjuring up this dish right now because I’m on an airplane on my way to New York for a cookbook conference. But as you can see from the photo, I did actually make and serve chicken with morels back in Paris the other day. Once I’d soaked the dried mushrooms it took not even 15 minutes. And was thoroughly enjoyed by all…

Suprêmes de poulet aux morilles / Chicken breasts with morel mushrooms

Dried morels are essential at this time of year because the fresh ones won’t appear in the woods until spring. You won’t get exactly the same flavor, but it’s close enough. In fact, any kind of mushrooms will work – from wild chanterelles to the less exciting white cultivated variety. But in France this is a dish typically served with morels, the black wrinkly mushrooms that look rather frightening when you first encounter them. As for my trip, I’ll tell you more about it in my next post. It’s the Roger Smith Cookbook Conference, and I think it’s going to be a blast.

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Salade d’hiver aux poires et aux noix

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Meg

mesclun poire4Take a couple handfuls of mixed winter greens, add bits of pear and walnut, spritz on some lemon juice, add olive oil, salt and pepper, et voilà — a zesty winter salad that takes no more than five minutes to prepare. I owe this recipe to my Sicilian friend Gisella, who made a version of this salad for a sumptuous feast held under the volcano last Christmas. Mount Etna, of course.

Salade d’hiver aux poires et aux noix / Winter salad with walnuts and pear

I’ve made this salad three times in the last three days — once as a first course (preceding an earthy dish of chicken with morel mushrooms, which I’ll be posting here on Friday), once as a main dish (at lunch), and once as a side dish (with grilled steak). Just to say that it’s a salad as versatile as it is simple to prepare.

And now for more site news: I’ve just posted my first two how-to videos: how to make mustard vinaigrette, and how to make mayonnaise. Take a look — and send me your feedback! In the meantime, happy cooking.

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Vacherin aux fruits de la passion

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Meg

vacherin1Ethereal, sweet, light as air, meringues make a lovely dessert in various guises. In France, when meringues are combined with whipped cream, ice cream or both, the dessert is called vacherin. Julia Child explains how to make a large ice cream vacherin using three large concentric rings of meringue. In this simpler version, individual meringues filled with vanilla ice cream and whipped cream are set on a coulis, or sauce, of lightly sweetened passion fruit. I first tasted this dessert at Spring, the Paris restaurant of Daniel Rose. His creation was so heavenly that I had to try to replicate it at home.

Vacherin aux fruits de la passion / Meringues with passion fruit and vanilla ice cream

Meringues have been served as a gourmet dessert in France for about 300 years and came into their own in the early 1800s, popularized by Antonin Carême, chef to kings, nobility, diplomats, bankers and even a tsar. Carême used meringues to garnish  fabulous almond-paste constructions of Greek temples and other monuments. Early in his career, possibly with Talleyrand as his sponsor, he sold large meringues out of a pastry shop on Rue de la Paix. I know this because I’ve just finished reading Carême’s rags-to-riches story, as told by Ian Kelly in a biography called Cooking for Kings (Walker, 2003). It’s a book I would recommend highly, not just for the engaging narrative but also for the many recipes it includes. They amusingly demonstrate how much French cooking and tastes have evolved in the last two centuries — and how much simpler our recipes have become. Carême’s recipe for ‘Apple Meringue as a Hedgehog,’ for example, calls for 40 apples that must be cored, peeled, boiled in syrup, and rubbed through a sieve or stuffed. The meringue, used as a topping, is a mere afterthought.

Site news: The ‘Menus’ section of this web site has been updated, with new winter menu suggestions for every day and special occasions, and new menu pages for vegetarians and vegans. I have also expanded the ‘Your Kitchen’ section with a photo catalogue of useful cooking equipment as exemplified by the equipment in my Paris kitchen. Coming soon: The site’s first 2 how-to videos.

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Purée d’amandes

Posted on January 29, 2013 by Meg

puree amandes4When I was lunching at the Paris restaurant Spring last week, the main course — roast guinea fowl — was served with something hard to identify. It was satiny and pure white, and tasted ambrosial in a creamy, melt-in-your-mouth sort of way. But what was it? The waitress was summoned. ‘A purée of almonds with a cauliflower base,’ is how she described it. Almonds? I needed to know more, so I spoke with Daniel Rose, Spring’s genial owner, chef and culinary creator, who kindly gave me the recipe.

Purée d’amandes / Almond purée

Daniel Rose traces the genealogy of this dish to one of his mentors, Jean-Luc L’Hourre, chef until very recently at a one-star restaurant in Brittany — known as France’s cauliflower-growing region. ‘It’s perfect for him,’ Rose said, because Jean-Luc L’Hourre also has a connection to southern France, where almonds are grown. Rose says he likes making almond purée because it is so versatile. ‘I have served it with all kinds of meats,’ he said. ‘And with grilled calamari. Or as a parmentier’ — a layer of the purée over a layer of ground meat or duck, browned in the oven. ‘You can also serve it by itself, or add some chicken broth to turn it into a soup.’ When I brought the recipe home and made it myself, I found it remarkably easy. And when I served it to friends on Saturday night, it won a round of applause. Happy cooking!

Also served for lunch at Spring (left to right): a salad of apples, red cabbage and smoked eel served on a horseradish sauce; red mullet with fresh herbs and a sweet-and-sour sauce; baby leeks with lobster in a gentle vinaigrette.

spring1 spring2 spring3

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Sauté de veau

Posted on January 25, 2013 by Meg

Veal stewed gently in wine, infused with garlic, tomato and herbs, and served with a touch of cream — this supremely French invention is far from the stews of my childhood. I first tasted it in the 1970s at the home of my friend Nicole, a superior cook. She liked to have people over for dinner on short notice, and one day as we chatted in the kitchen she prepared this succulent dish in what seemed like no time. I of course demanded the recipe.

Sauté de veau / Veal stewed in white wine

Nicole and I worked together as chefs around that time at an improvised bistro that took shape every Saturday night in a place that functioned as a day care center during the week. For 30 francs, or about $4.50, our merry customers were served a three-course meal with wine — a great deal, even back then. We cooked all afternoon and, as evening approached, various shaggy-haired friends of Nicole’s turned up to help convert what looked like a house for garden elves into a dining establishment. When the place filled up, it felt like a microcosm of hip post-May-’68 Paris. The people who came to dine at our bistro très parallèle were still riding high on the wave of revolt that had swept France ten years earlier — contesting the ordinary, seeking the extraordinary, engaged politically, hungry for life. It was the best crowd I’d encountered since arriving in France. And thanks to Nicole, I was soon becoming part of that scene.

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