Simply, good

The French cuisine can be terribly complex, it’s part of its charm, but it also embraces a simple, fundamental food: soup.  Soups of all types are popular in France, from bisques and bouillabaisses to creams and vichyssoises, most of which have humble beginnings.

We made pumpkin or potiron soup this weekend from the garden.  It contained two ingredients: potiron and milk, nothing more.  This velouté is all what a soup needs to be: simple good can be and good does not need to be complicated.

Ham and Pickle roll ups....in France

I made these special for the photo and then ate them.

I feed ham and pickle roll ups to the French… and they liked it.

Yes, yes, those ham and pickle rolls that you either love or hate; the things that appear at almost every family party and disappear faster than the 7 layer dip.  Many consider these simple snacks a lowbrow culinary disaster and a guilty pleasure.  I served them at the annual village party and I didn’t even get to fill up my beer before they were gone, and I put them down right next to me. Who says the French are snobs when it comes to food?

French food will always have its impeccable reputation, but there is a trend I’ve been observing: the appearance of American finger food.  Pigs in a Blanket are now listed on caterers’ menus and dips have been spotted at weddings.  Not that they are called Pigs in a Blanket or the French know and practice the “double dipping rule”, but these items are replacing the traditional dried sausage and olives.  There is something to be said about that, but for the American counterpart, I’ve also seen a change: Brie with fruit compote is replacing cheese balls and sliced baguettes are in place of Chicken in a Biscuit crackers (and oh, how I loved those crackers).  Do I think the American palette is destroying the French cuisine?  Absolutely not.  The French staples will always stay even though there might be an ebb and flow in food trends.  Philadelphia Cream Cheese has been available for years, but placed in the “English Section” of the supermarket it was ridiculously priced at over six dollars a packet.  No one was going to touch it.  (I’ve tried explaining it’s not English, but even with the “Philadelphia” in its name, my cries fell on deaf ears.)  Recently, reasonably priced store brand cream cheeses have appeared that have conveniently piggy-backed upon the appearance of the real McCoy on Top Chef.  Cream Cheese’s popularity is growing which has tempted me to venture into my culinary dare. It’s worth saying again: I feed ham and pickle roll ups to the French… and they liked it, no they loved it. 

Will I try to pull out something even more profoundly American at next year’s festivities?  Absolutely.  I’ve got a catalog of dip recipes that need to be dusted off and broken out.  Will I partake?  No, not yet.  The French are devouring our finger foods, but until they get the “double dipping rule” down, I’ll search out something else.  Maybe I'll make a cheese ball.... with crackers, Chicken in a Biscuit crackers.  That should do the trick.

Vegetable Tarts

I love tarts, more specifically, vegetable tarts. I prefer their heartier flavors to their fruit counterparts that tend to get watery as they extrude all their juices while cooking. I ate vegetable tarts from time to time before I moved to France, but they have now become a staple in my kitchen. Tarts just seem to be a terribly French thing; they can be seasonal and add flare to an ordinary vegetable. I can’t point to just one thing about them, but there is really something about vegetable tarts that I can’t seem to get enough of.

In summer, there are zucchini tarts, followed by tomato and onion tarts. In the fall, there is a potiron tart, which is like a pumpkin and the only tart that slides into my annual lineup that is more sweet than savory. By winter, potatoes are sliced and stuffed between pastry dough and topped off with a quick spoon of crème fraîche. Spring rolls around and leeks and asparagus are given my full attention. What’s not to like about them? Nature has given me an endless array of things to put into pastry crust – and they’re all good.

Tarts are not a pie, and it is more than just the shallower pan that defines that. It appears the delicateness of them, along with the balance of pastry and filling, that does. In a pie, the filling takes center stage, but a tart seems to strike a balance between the two. Maybe that’s the French thing about it, “tart for dinner” sounds a bit more sophisticated than “pie for dinner”. There is a duality of indulgence with sensibility, which seems to work. So when asked, ‘Do you want a leek tart for dinner?” My only response could be, ‘Don’t mind if I do!”

The Egg

The egg.  The French are known for being wizards of uplifting this humble item to culinary heights.  After all, pages and pages have written about the French Omelet and how to achieve it in all its perfection.  But there is so much more than that.  There’s l’oeuf frit, l’oeuf mollet, sabayons, quiches, custards, soufflés, and the list goes on and on.  It’s not just a breakfast item in France; it’s more of… well, it’s just more.  The cookbook La Bonne Cuisine D’Aujoud’hui, which has dedicated 22 pages to eggs very simply states it, “There is not good cooking without eggs: get to know them well.”

L’oeuf frit, or fried egg, was even part of the most prestigious cooking competition in France: Meilleurs Ouvriers de France 2010.  Considered part of a lost cuisine that is being re-found, l’oeuf frit is a 3-dimensional piece of art that resembles more of a fluffy meringue than the slightly burned and runny disc cooked in the leftover bacon fat.  Then there is l’oeuf mollet, a type of pouched egg.  The cracked egg is swirled into boiling water so the white totally encompasses the yolk so it remains only partially cooked.  When executed correctly, the egg looks like a piece of fresh mozzarella.

I’ve tried reproducing both of these, and while most of the results were eatable, they did not resemble the true end product.  I’ve been through dozens of eggs just trying to do what I’ve seen chefs effortlessly achieve in less than a minute.  Of course, I haven’t seen the decades of practice behind that simple act, but it’s an egg for Pete’s sake, it should be simple.  However, I have learned the egg is complicated in its simplicity.

France’s cuisine will always be synonymous with the egg; it continues to grace the menus of starred chefs who very proudly elevate it into the spotlight.  That said, I think it’s only fitting to end with what Thomas Moore once stated, “Yet, who can help loving the land that has taught us Six hundred and eighty-five ways to dress eggs?”