bleudauvergne

Big wide open memories from when as a child when my mother would pack up the children and we'd drive down to vacation on the Alabama Gulf coast come to mind. Also our crawfish hunting days. It's so beautiful down there. I'm all ears Fifi!

Another recipe for the meurette (which is served over cervelle de veau and also eggs) does include non-smoked ham, mushrooms sauteed in butter, and caramelized onions. The lot is added to the sauce just before serving.

Chufi, this is really wonderful. What beautiful photos! Happy 10th! The oeufs en meurette look amazing. That is definitely a Burgundian dish. This recipe will go into the gullet, but I will post it here for discussion first. It is a recipe translated from one submitted by Bernard Loiseau for the book Les Six Grands Cuisiniers de Bourgogne, published in 1982 by JC Lattes editions. Oeufs en Meurette For 4 people 8 eggs 2 dl of red wine vinegar Sauce: 2 Tablespoons of cooked carrot puree 1 minced shallot 100 g butter 3dl of red wine 1 Tb of chopped chives salt and freshly ground pepper Bring 2 litres of water with the red wine vinegar to a simmer. Break the eggs each into a bowl and add gently to simmering water, and bring them out after 4 minutes. reserve. Reduce the wine and the minced shallot for a few minutes. Flamber the wine - i.e bring to a boil and set it aflame just off heat. When the reduction is down to about half of the original volume, add the 2 tablespoons of carrot puree. Incorperate the butter little by little while briskly whisking the sauce. Season, pass the sauce through the chinois, and serve: Eggs on the plate, covered with the sauce, and garnished with minced chives. Chufi, thank you so much for sharing your week in photos with us!

Now this looks like good advice for Breakfast in Paris. Thank you. I enjoy eating breakfast even if there is a contingency of Parisians who cannot bear the idea. The places that serve the best quality in a nice atmosphere is what I'd like to add to my list of places to try next time I'm in Paris. That is, unless someone who lives there wants to invite me to their house for a taste of the famous home breakfasting of Paris.

A wonderful wonderful Food Blog. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Lets face it, Paris is huge. If time is limited, priorities must be set. One way to do it is to set a goal, a mission, and discover Paris as the mission is accomplished. I once took part in a treasure hunt with a group of friends in Paris. The organizers spent months coming up with a series of clue leading to clue, and hid them all over the city. We had to locate a certain bakery to pick up a special cake which contained a clue, we found a clue tucked between some exotic fruit at Tang Freres, etc. The treasure hunt was a whole lot of fun and I learned more about Paris in one day than I had in the last three months I'd been there! Here are some of the missions that people have set on recent threads. Melange is going on a recon mission for chocolate.. Owen did an investigation of the Coffee in Paris. lamington went to Paris and set a goal to sample French cheese. Jan Keenan did her research and went to Paris with the simple goal to eat. Freckles (who lives in Paris) is slowly winding her way through the Parisian wine bars by arrondissement, in numerical order. The mission for the pans of Paris. Some are on pilgrammages to very special restaurants. Does anyone have any other ideas for interesting missions in Paris?

It's only a matter of knowing what a gâteau breton is or is not. A gâteau breton remains a gâteau breton wherever it is made, Paris or Hong Kong. Including it in a book as "Parisian home cooking" seems a bit weird. I make a pretty good pho soup at home and I've been making it for years, but I wouldn't describe it as "Parisian home cooking" if I were to write down the recipe for a book. ← This is a good topic for further discussion. I have started a new thread Here. Linda, By all means do try the recipe and report back! I want to know what you think of the results!

In a discussion of a mystery gateau which we strongly suspected to be Breton, but the origin of which has been happily muddled even further, ptipois brings up an interesting point. A recipe for Gateau Breton appears in a cookbook entitled 'Parisian Home Cooking'. Does it belong there? It's hard to say... Calling all Parisians, native or otherwise! What is Parisian cooking? Next question, what can we call Parisian Home Cooking, and how does it differ from the home cooking in other regions of France?

Oh please Oh please give me the recipe for this! I'm off to the butcher for some pork belly!

Amazing, Brooks. The area where you live is simply gorgeous. That house where you had the party was incredible too. I know it can be difficult to make sure that you get final pictures of everything because everything builds up and then it's all set out at once. I often miss presentation shots because of that. Did you make the ice cream or did the person who made the cakes make it?

I have never even thought of using the blender to make a sauce vinaigrette. For me it's a fork or a whisk if I'm making a large salad, and its prepared just before the salad comes to the table. I don't measure, and don't use a recipe, but it normally has oil, vinegar or lemon juice, dried mustard, salt and pepper plus whatever else according to the makeup of the dish I'm serving it with. A knife point or two of dried ground mustard instead of a prepared mustard sauce that comes in a jar works best for me, it does its job without the strong flavor of the prepared mustard interfering with the balance of the sauce. I often mix in some of the cooking juice from a meat dish when I'm preparing a vinaigrette, it adds some depth to the flavor. As for vinegar, I often choose to use plain simple red, or sherry vinegar to keep the zing in my vinaigrette if its just a simple salad. Basalmic has its uses but can also be too sweet sometimes. For me when making a vinaigrette sauce, I like to consider what it is being served with and adjust accordingly. I prepare my vinaigrette just before we bring out the salad. Carrots like a higher basalmic ratio or some orange juice added. Endives like finely chopped walnuts added to the mix and a neutral oil. Cold fish goes well with a lemon juice vinaigrette. I used to add garlic but now only do from time to time. When I have some, I will not hesitate to add mashed roasted garlic to my vinaigrette to add a nice subtle mellow garlic flavor. I normally use very fruity olive oil but will mix with other oils depending what I'm serving. Salt is important. Sometimes I'll mash an anchovy and add it to the sauce to give it some kick.

My husband's grandmother was raised in Brittany, and having moved to follow Parisian husband when she was married 65 years ago, lives in Paris. I can certainly imagine that the dishes she prepared as she raised her 11 children in Paris could fall into the category of Parisian home cooking, although the recipes come from her Breton mother and are typical in many cases of the food made at home in Brittany. The butter was delicious in Brittany to be sure. It was highly salted and most likely was beurre cru. Madame Le Boulch called it farm butter, and it came from a local farmer. She left it out on the counter overnight before preparing this cake. Although the butter is special in Brittany, the cake can be made with whatever butter is local and the results can still be excellent. When we prepared the recipe in Lyon it was just as good, in my opinion, as the one we ate in Brittany. Partly because we prepared it ourselves and partly because it reminded us of our trip to Brittany. Linda, we would love to see the ingredient list for your recipe, with some of your personal comments on how you put it together. A rundown on the copyright rules for recipes can be found Here (click). Lets get to the bottom of this cake with the nuts issue once and for all!

I have seen this anatomically corect pasta here from a store that sells Italian products. There's a big bin of it right there in line with the rest of the pastas along one wall. I was considering serving it without comment to colleagues of my husband, which we receive by obligation from time to time, pretending I don't realize the shape, chatting about how great the pasta is from this Italian shop, to see if they can keep a straight face.

It has been a while since this thread was last active, but it asks a very important question. Why Cook?

We have a lot of interesting neighbors. I should really have a party. I'm always preparing the family dinners. The gifts overflow. I get pots of this and tins of that and lots of fresh lovely things for my labor. We always give gifts when we are guests. When people don't bring things (which is rare), we still don't mind. I love to receive wines but we normally have the wines already prepared to match the dishes we're going to serve, so we don't usually serve what we receive. There are a couple of people on my list to invite. We normally invite people we enjoy spending time with again even if they don't invite back. We don't mind. There are always reasons and for each it's different. We order an extra set of chamber music concert tickets a couple of times a year to treat friends and sometimes return home with them for an after concert meal.

A big tub of anchoïade.

Another Halva fan. That stuff is really addictive.

That must have been pretty darn good. Excellent photo too. Can you explain the name of the pork? The area where the pig was raised, or a special breed of pork? Thank you so much for sharing your photos with us, Jason!

Guess we won't even talk about ounces and grams.

That sounds like what might be in the middle - From the looks of it, that is a cake made with flour. Oh but it looks delicious. Miam miam.

It looks like Ian and mrbigjas are going to be doing some terrines in the near future with great pans! Please tell us how you like this mould, does it have a mechanism for pressing the contents? Ian, Why are the sides ridged?

I now realize that when I was about 10 my mother tricked us into eating all of the fresh fruit on board before we arrived by boat to the municipal port in Toronto. I remember it clearly. The customs agent was invited aboard, and he said - do you have any fruit? - and all of the children cried out NO! WE ATE IT ALL! From what I remember it was the citrus fruit that was the issue, but this could have been one of my mother's tricks as well.

Thank you, Carsten, I'll definitely keep an eye out for Thuries. What is the price at the newsstand in France? Do you know?

Saveurs has excellent photo spreads so even if you're struggling with French there is plenty to feast your eyes on while you're getting acclimated. The way it's organized as a magazine is easy to follow in general even if you're missing the language skills. Many magazines have tried to imitate Saveurs and each has their target market. There are some cheap magazines that also have some really good recipes in every issue. The best thing to do is to give an issue a whirl and you can pretty much tell for yourself pretty quickly if the recipes are any good. I've been dissapointed with Saveurs restaurant recommendation section because it seems they are not choosing based on quality as much as how pretty the places are. Then again the tourist spoilage factor could be in effect (getting a mention in Saveurs in their carnet could innundate small gems in certain seasons and spoil them...) Their regional pieces always give a nice feel of the place they are covering.

My office fridge contains a lot of beer. I don't know who drinks it although I do have an idea of who might be the culprit. It's full of bottles and cans of various different kinds of beer and the stock rotates, its clear that someone is drinking it at the office and restocking the fridge. No one cares. Just about every office fridge on the entire campus of the school where I work has at least one bottle of champagne and a bottle of wine in the bottom drawer. Not once in the years I have been there have I ever seen anyone have anything so great to celebrate that they break out the champagne. I think we're all waiting for something big to happen.