bleudauvergne

There are lots of different kinds of cookbooks on my shelf, and I'm certainly willing to add a few more. There are: Cookbooks that teach technique and basics Compendiums of recipes for the experienced cook Regional tomes Cookbooks that inspire with photos Ones that sell a lifesyle The "chef books" (like Spoon) which I am learning are not as useful as they seem at the start but give ideas from time to time Historic cookbooks Coffee table cookbooks with lots of yummy photos that cover one dish only (soups, tarts, cakes, etc.) oh and my favorite - Cookbooks that include stories and lore in between recipes. I can't get enough of those. Yes, I think we need some more.

I prepared a Poulet de Bresse sous la croute de sel last night and hadn't read the thread here beforehand. My recipe called for flour. Otherwise I would have put in some research into the egg whites idea. Working the dough for the croute nice hands on time. My main advice for anyone trying the flour dough method is to make sure not to add too much liquid. I had to remove it after the first attempt and work in more flour to make it sturdy enough to seal.

Looks lovely, bleudauvergne. re bubbling liquid: no, that shouldnt happen. I think. my guess is that you are losing the juices/moisture. Maybe the bird got a little steamed inside. When I did it, I made a tight envelope so that the bird is completely covered with the salt crust. I am guessing your chicken is touching the bowl and the salt crust was more of a tight sheath draped over the bird instead of a tight envelope. Regardless, your results show that these things dont matter and are purely theoritical. p.s. what is 'poivre long'? ← I initially wanted to completely envelope it. However even with the amount of salt and flour, I still did not have enough to wrap the complete bird, so I felt well enough following this lady's advice. Thank goodness I happened into the discussion with her. The bird measured 1.8 kilos, about. The poivre long came from an expensive traiteur. I could not help myself even though I knew I was probably getting ripped off because everything was ridiculously overpriced. I think it smells great and throw them whole into stocks and have been using it more and more. The greatest and mysterious thing about it is that since I've been using it I have lost 10 kilos. Just kidding.

That's really the big question. Would it be more appropriate to call the dish Alsacean instead? Is the dish a specialty of only that specific city, therefore should be be calling it something else altogether? I guess it would boil down to the history, if this dish developed along side choucroute and was not invented in the recent past, as one of those dishes that plays on a name, can we rightfully still call it a choucroute? Hmmm.

The bird received it's kiss of gold last night. Even if I might not have done it just right.. At the market, the producer also brought his daughter. It's the Lyon producers market on the square at Perrache station. This is an interesting market because it takes place in the middle of the week, at the end of the day. And people are only allowed to sell their own product here. There have been vendors at this market that I see on the Quai St. Antoine, so in that way I know they are direct producers. You can usually tell who's a local producer and who isn't. The producers tend to be less showy and only have what's in season, of course. But the products are the freshest. The birds are tagged with a bracelet, a special metal thing that identifies them as part of the federation, a hand written number, PLUS the stickers and tags.. The guy offered me all his extra feet without me even asking this time. Wasn't that nice of him? Poulet de Bresse sous la croute de sel This is all you need for this dish: 1 Poulet de Bresse Salt about 600 grams flour about a 800-900 grams pepper (I chose three kernels of poivre long) 2 bay leaves 2 sprigs fresh rosemary (which I clipped from a plant I have) 2-3 poultry livers. I had the liver from the bird I bought, and also a pintade liver that the vendor had for sale. Heat the oven to 150 C or about 300F (?). What you do is mix the salt and flour and some water to make a thick homogenous dough. You don't want it too gooey or soft. I made the mistake of a too gooey dough and it sagged down and began to get holes, so had to peel it off the bird and add flour to it. It's got to be really nice and thick. This was too gooey and I ended up adding flour to it. Put the rosemary, bay leaves, peppercorns, and livers inside the bird's cavity. You then push the dough all down flat and layer it on the bird and seal it up in areas that look like they might break and around the edges. I used a pastry brush to poisten certain parts and pinched it and prodded it a bit. I also put on two layers to make sure there weren't any holes. This is the bird with the good dough on it. It's not very pretty... Then you put it in the oven. The recipe I used said to do it for 1.5 hours. This was where a mishap occured. While I was kneading the dough on the table, my husband went poking around and thought I'd left the oven on by accident. He fiddled with the knob and then turned it back when he realized I'd had it on for a reason. However with my new fangled German oven, the oven automatically sets at certain temperature depending on the type of air circulation you choose. SO, instead of 150, it was automatically reset to 220. At about an hour, things started smelling quite delicious and I could swear it was done by the lovely aromas coming out of the kitchen. I was suprised, and checked and realized just then that it was on the high temp. I have rotied birds at this temp so I wasn't too concerned, but the croute was not as golden and uniform as it could have been. In fact it was slightly burned. There has got to be some way for a little air to escape otherwise the thing will explode, right? On the right side you see there was just a little place where some liquids bubbled up to the top. But I think that's normal. Is that normal? Oh well. We cracked the croute off the bird and saw it was just fine. Very steamy and juicy! Thank goodness I stuck my nose in the oven and checked it. We know the French usually eat with silverware but last night we ate with our fingers. The meat was infused with a hint of rosemary, was soft, juicy and quite frankly, delicious. The juices were out of this world. I dressed the salad with a vinaigrette of some of the cooking juices and a hint of common red wine vinegar, plus the fois, with a little white pepper ground on top. The recipe was inspired by Joel Robuchon's recipe but I added the poivre long, an extra bay leaf, and instead of completely wrapping the chicken as he instructs, I sealed it into the pan. This idea came from a conversation with a lady on the bus on the way to the market from work. She said that to seal it in made it easier to open afterwards. I can see that since it was hard as a rock and took a bit of effort to pry off. Anyway. Delicious and easy and I encourage anyone to try this. I think the fricasee with the fois gras sauce was the best so far but this comes a close second, and due to it's ease of preparation, I would actually rate it higher than the fricasee in terms of taste payoff and good use of the bird.

Adam brought up a great question in the French Cuisine Questions thread. Before it get's buried in a tomato fight, I'd like to introduce it as a new topic. That's a great question, Adam. When I think of French cooking, and what it represents in my mind, it's changed completely over the years. When I first started cooking French, it was to get some classics down, and I had some idea of what various regions were known for, but no real nitty gritty details. I continue my discovery process by discovering the incredible variations found in the regional dishes. Take sausage, for instance. Here in Lyon, I've learned the subtle nuances between different kinds of sausages that not only are prevalent throughout the city, but also what Lyonnais versions of other regional sausages are. Then there the way things are done from neighborhood to neighborhood. It's fascinating, I could write a book about it. Discovering the regional specialties is always really interesting to me, and I think that everyone has a certain level of sensitivity to different regions, depending on where you're coming from. The first thing to hit me when I'm discovering a new region are the blatant specialties, sometimes marketed to death, and then house specialties with their various influences, and the picture fills out slowly in my mind. You think you've tasted a crepe and then you go to Brittany. You think you've had a pistou, then Mamie D brings one out one Sunday. I thought I had tasted French cheese, the rest is history... Has anyone else's focus shifted from French cuisine in general to exploring the regions, how, and when? Stories?

A few months ago I had some questions about capons, and AOC chickens. I asked about them on the French forum, and got no replies. Haven't been back since... ← Sorry you were so discouraged, Jay. Sometimes if no one has an answer to one very specific question it will go unanswered. It's happened to me as well. But I come back anyway. Nice to see you're back participating. I hope to see more of you. From what I recall, in one post, you asked some very specific industry standard questions about capons in one post and then never came back to share any info you did obtain. This is the post, right? If you aren't getting your answers on the France forum, it's a great idea to ask the vendor of the product and then come back and follow up with it. I can't count the number of times I have asked a question, got no response, did my own research, and then come back and posted it as a followup. After putting a little effort into it, people's interest can be piqued and conversation can develop from there.

Yes, Theres Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking Volume I and Volume II which are useful for step by step walkthoughs, and then once you've done that, you can get a lot of ideas from a volume which was subsequently written by one of the co-authors of Julia's Volume I, Louisette Bertholle, called French Cooking for All. This does not have the step by steps but once you have Julia's Technique it's got a lot of good recipe ideas. Paula Wolfort's The Cooking of Southwest France covers many of the more well known plus some nostalic gems direct from the source from that region. There are several nice little tomes - Wolfgang Puck did a good one called Modern French Cooking with some tutorials on various carving techniques also with some expansion on what to do with pate feuilleté which I appreciated, and lighter sauces (not using flour but lots of butter).

Thanks for the link to those recipes! Tonight I think I'll prepare the Poulet de Bresse Sous le Croute de Sel from that website. I've never prepared anything sous le croute de sel, so if anyone has any advice about how to do it or how this is supposed to come out, please let me know. Hmmm

Today is Wednesday, the day I can get Poulet de Bresse from the producer. I think I'll pay a visit to him today to see what he's offering. All this talk about French cooking has got me in the mood for a nice poulet de B. And I'll try a new recipe tonight.

OK, suppose that I have a specific question about French cuisines, for example, "How do I make rice stand out in a French meal?" and start a thread asking for replies, do you think I will get immediate response from members active in the France Forum? ← I think you will.

It really depends on what it is you're cooking, Margaret. If I decide to prepare quenelles at home, and want to hear some quenelle stories from the members here, ideas about what's classic, and what kind of interesting takes on this dish have been coming up here and there, I'm going to share my experience here on the France forum. I would probably post my notes on the actual cooking of the dish. In the general cooking forum I may get some technical feedback or response, but that's not always what I'm looking for. In the France forum I will get a plethora of responses from people who have had interesting experiences with regards to that dish. For me the cooking process involves a certain element of story, and this forum is where that story is. There are people here who can and have contributed so much by the simple virtue of a common intensity of experience with regards to things culinary in this country. Discussing how a dish is prepared is not forbidden in the France forum, far from it.

Let's see. It would be worthwhile to take chefzadi's question into consideration and examine precisely why people aren't posting a lot about French cooking here in the France forum. We would be simply delighted to have more threads on technique or specific dishes or recipe notes on the France forum. Reasons why the forum has not developed in that direction could be about the makeup of the group. There are lots and lots of threads about eating in restaurants here in France rather than cooking because, quite frankly, we have a lot of restaurant enthusiasts regularly posting on the forum. We have a few French members who speak excellent English, and who are also experts in French cooking or recipe development as a vocation. It would be simply wonderful to see these members participate in that capacity. The idea of a cooking sejour has become more and more popular as a vacation possibility, and we'll most likely see more diaries like that of Adam Balic's Tuscan Diary or Ore's Slow Food Diary here in the France forum. About cooking and living the French way - and why this seems complex. Obtaining any level of proficiency in a technique foreign to your own can of course represent certain complexities. Some people don't feel that it's worth the effort. That's not to say the very same people wouldn't read a thread about technique or cooking with a certain French ingredient and be inspired by it. I encourage anyone who has an interest and wants to discuss cooking the French way to dive in, and anyone with an interest in learning or reading about the experiences of others should positively foster these types of threads as an asset to the forum. If you see something you like, your encouragement and expression of interest is helpful. About "complexity". The complexity for many Americans is not in technique but in the challenge of sourcing the right ingredients. Another challenge can be found in the learning curve - but please note - the curve only has to be battled once! This learning process can only be successful by actually working through the techniques. We all know the complexities of describing a simple process. Try explaining how to ride a bike to someone if you would like an example. But the reality remains that a minimal amount of effort to source ingredients with the right qualities and some time in the kitchen to execute a few dishes pays off very quickly. Try it. You might suprise yourself.

Alas, I didn't have anything much to say about our dining experiences in Megeve from last year. We were off season (mid-April), and even then we could not get in to Flocons de Sel. With many other places closed or deserted, and I suspect our experience at Gaudin's restaurant was affected by the fact that we were one of three tables they had that night. We did not feel that it was remarkable enough to recommend it to anyone else. We had a picnic while skiing and another meal in a pleasant creperie. Lovely teahouse with yummy specialties one afternoon. Nothing much to report.

I have a question about the mushroom soup, was the egg below with the pesto or on top of the soup? Thanks.

Thank you ever so much for the recommendations, and thank you Lilli, for your cafe recommendation. That sounds like just the place to go. I'll be sure to try it.

No, first comes the chocolate. Then come the other cravings.

Zoe, How many guests do you plan to invite? That can give an idea of the kind of place you need to go. I was also married in Provence, and was exactly in your position in the year 2000. You won't be looking for a general run of the mill traiteur to do your wedding. What you want is someone who specializes in wedding meals. One good thing to say about French weddings is that the food can be taken very seriously. Especially at weddings. I like what you're describing in your post, about just having the best ingredients and good choices. Most traiteurs are going for look and not for content, unfortunately. You might search out some of the places off the beaten track for the reception, in the country. It's there that you'll most likely find someone who will listen to your needs. Take photos. I know it sounds corny, but what you need to do especially if you are going to be traveling back and forth and in France for limited amounts of time is make a scrap book of ideas, of table settings, atmosphere, flowers, etc. ideas for dishes you find in magazines, Even if it's just clippings from magazines, take photos to all of your vendors and tell them you want something like it. It's really the best way to get what you have in mind. Things have a way of being misinterpreted or misunderstood even if you have someone there helping and even if you are fluent in French. With what you're describing, you might even ask some close friends to take care of the food, ones you trust to do it justice. In that way you can most likely get the best bang for your buck.

Yes we were served this on a sheep farm a few years ago. It was delicious. It was basically the meal. You can use goat or sheeps cheese to make it really good.

Carrot cake. 2 cups cake flour 1 teaspoon soda 1/2 t. powder 2t. cinnamon 1/2t. salt 1/2 t. grated dried nutmeg 4 large eggs 180ml veg. oil or walnut oil 185 g. granulated sugar 1 cup brown sugar 1/2 c. butter milk 3 cups shredded carrots Sift dry ingredients and set aside. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, oil, sugars, and buttermilk until well blended. Stir in the dry ingredients until just combined. Fold in the carrots. This will do two round layers. Bake at 180 C or about 350 F. 40 minutes until the toothpick comes out clean. Cool completely. Frosting. 1 string farmer's white cheese (300g) or the equivalent in philadelphia cream cheese 6T. high quality butter, softened 1 cup confectioners sugar 1 1/2 t. vanilla work together the butter and the cheese. add the vanilla and mix until smooth. work the sugar in until it's the consistency you want. Chocolate Cream Frosting. 1/4 cup high quality butter 1/4 cup cream 315 g. bittersweet chocolate at least 65% cocoa 3/4 cups sour cream 1 c. confectioners sugar medium saucepan, melt the butter in the cream. add the chocolate and stir until melted. whicsk until smooth. remove from heat and let cool about 10 minutes. whisk in the confectioners sugar let sit 10 minutes or until thick enough to spread.

Nick, what I love to do with a really fresh carrot is to shred it and serve it at the dinner table with a bit of vinaigrette. Sometimes I will add a splash of basalmic but if they're fresh and sweet you won't need much more than a drop. They won't need much more than a sprinkling of oil and some salt. Ahh. Pulling one up and eating it as you water the garden at dusk sounds like heaven. You should probably do a carrot cake. I have a very good recipe which I will dig up.

I am thinking about meeting up with my husband in Torino for a weekend in a few weeks. He'll be there giving a paper and I'll have tme on my hands to explore for a couple of days before we spend the weekend there. What should I see and get? Where should I stay and eat? I'll be traveling from France - So any advice on how to best appreciate what Turin has to offer is greatly appreciated, including what food items, coffees, meats, cheeses, local specialities etc. to look out for and buy to take home with me!!!

All right Glen! I was rooting for you back when you were researching soda. Do you have a website? edited to add the website: http://meltjc.com/ for those who might have missed it in the thread.

The moment of deglazing. It's somehow reassuring to me. All the little burned and stuck bits still count and will count. I also love to make dough, pasta, jiaozi, or tortilla dough, any kind of dough, really. Once it's really done, once it finally surrenders, compliments me with its resilience, sooths me, bows to me, and then smooths around or in between to make whatever it does, it's very fulfilling. In the way it finally holds things in. High quality for the effort. Results of work. I love plating. I love saving out two teaspoons of a little something and putting it in a little box, envisioning it as an accent later, and having choices. I love delicately picking up things with chopsticks and placing things just so just before it goes out to the table. I love funneling things into bottles. Stocks, reductions, sauce, oils going into dispensers, my spice mixes into the jars that fit my racks, etc. The funnel is my friend. I have them in various shapes and sizes. Actual stock making is a mere task set in an evening or an afternoon of cooking, it's simmering does not involve me to any large degree. When it has been degreased and is a flawless product ready to funnel into a bottle is when I mentally engage with it. Degreasing used to be a chore but now I don't mind, it means the stock is ready in my mind. I don't feel equipped without good stock ready to use. It's a necessity. I have always liked to use the knife, and dicing a mirepoix was a favorite speaking of theraputic tasks, for a long time. My husband's friends all thought I was a bit odd when we came to visit the first time, me with my own knife. My Japanese cleaver is the multitasker, it's what I usually travel with. You can split a crab's hard shell in two with it just as well as delicate matchstick slicing. I have always thought it perfectly normal; you carry your knife, just in case someone is not equipped, like you'd carry toothpaste, hairbrush, etc. I didn't know these people. How am I supposed to know whether they have sharp knives in the house? I guess it can seem a bit odd. Anyway they know me now and are not afraid. A couple of weeks ago I deboned a rabbit and made rouleaux. It was a task that gave me great joy. Half of the pleasure is having a good knife to do it with. The different parts of the rabbit are all slightly different colors when you roll them around a stuffing and then slice it across. What a revelation.

I wish I could add more to this discussion. I never got used to steak restaurants in the U.S. so I can't be sure what people coming here as visitors expect out of a steak when they order one here. I do know that the cuts are different, and not all steaks served in France are pan fried. There are a lot of restaurants that grill them. The French go for flavor over quantity, generally, so the steaks here are not big thick slabs of ultra lean meat, but will be the more flavorful cuts and generally have some marbling and won't be trimmed of all of their fat. We recently had a post-ski steak experience just outside of Grenoble where the restaurant has a huge wood burning fireplace in the center with a grill built over the flames where they cooked all the meats. The tables all radiate from the fireplace, and one wall of the restaurant basically makes up the chimney. I felt it was very good, it seemed a better than average steak experience in France for me. Most of the little places serving meals in the city centers where you may order a steak are not equipped with grills, and you will get a fried steak in that case. Nothing beats a good steak frites from time to time.