Ptipois

I find this a bit surprising. What exactly was the Ducasse-Pourcel connection as you found out? To my knowledge there isn't any particular connection of this type, of any significance anyway. The Pourcels' "connections" were originally Bras, Trama and Gagnaire. Then they developed, very early, their own personal style. Ducasse and the Pourcels are "both" three-star chefs, but their ways and their attitude towards cooking are very different. Well, you probably read what I wrote about this in the thread. I wouldn't define the recipe as French. It doesn't reflect our ancestral search for harmony, and the fact that it does emanate from a French chef in this case that doesn't mean anything special. It is, in my personal opinion, international cuisine, with the slight show-offiness and opportunism that the idea implies. Your message is interesting. But Frenchness is not that easily defined; do not yield to the temptation to believe that Descartes and Cartesianism are convenient tools to define and describe it. They were rather convenient means to cover up our inner chaos and help us build up a certain type of "classical", structured and logical culture that is still with us today but is by no means the only facet of our national character. France was always, and still is, a country of conflicting values (rational, irrational, lighter, darker, stiff, hedonistic, humanistic, tyrannical, cold, warm, Southern, Northern, Celtic, Latin, Germanic, etc.) that keep fighting each other. This complexity is a difficult thing to swallow: throughout its history, France more or less managed to present it in a deceptively unified shape, and to achieve this we were more helped, I believe, by our worship of the "juste milieu", of finding a measure in all things, than by any natural gift for rationality (which we have no more and no less than any other nation). And this rationality was more a heritage of Greek and Roman Antiquity than an innate character, for the deeper soil of French culture is definitely Celtic. Given the great diversity of French regions, climates, landscapes and philosophies, it was necessary (and long before Descartes too) to develop some sense of harmony in order to bring out the best in all this. This is exactly what made our national cuisines great — the secret of French cuisine is the exact and precise dosage of ingredients, a sense of moderation that led us to prefer the natural taste of foods, brought forward by a minimal use of spices and seasonings, and the application of a sense of proportion brought to a great refinement. This is what I find in every style of French cuisine — ancient, regional, modern, bourgeoise, gastronomique, even nouvelle — and I do not find it at all in the Ducasse recipe that we are dealing with. Also, I don't know how well you know the French language, but it does have its irrationalities, like defective verbs, different pronunciations for words with identical spelling, some pretty mysterious grammar items, pretty irrational spelling rules and as many awful irregular verbs as any language may boast to have. There is also a great difference between spoken language, which is fairly intuitive, and a more rational written language.

I make decent galettes de sarrasin using a ratio of 70 % buckwheat flour-30 % wheat flour. Eggs help the consistency, but don't put in too many. The more you let the batter sit at room temperature, the better it will be. The addition of a little beer (why not buckwheat beer?) works wonders. I recommended health food stores for buckwheat flour because you'll often find that their flour is darker and more flavorful than the more common commercial brands. Another secret for galettes de blé noir (or de sarrasin) is butter : lots of it at cooking, lots of it at reheating (if that should happen). The final result should be what Bretons call kraz, i.e. very crisp. This seems to bring out the natural taste of buckwheat beautifully. Of course, in Brittany, it is always lightly salted butter (beurre demi-sel). A properly kraz galette served with some slow-roasted country sausage is indeed food for the gods. While you're at it with your one-kilo bag of buckwheat flour, you might want to try another Breton buckwheat specialty, the farz sac'h. It is a batter very much like the one you use for galettes, sometimes with raisins added and poured into a special cloth bag that you tie at the opening before plunging the whole thing into a simmering stock of slab bacon, sausages and whole vegetables. The resulting pudding is taken out of the bag and crumbled or sliced, then eaten with the meats and vegetables plus a sauce of minced shallots stewed in butter. This is called kig ha farz and it is the national dish of Léon (the Northwestern part of Brittany).

You don't need to go that far, you'll find farine de sarrasin at every supermarket, big or small. Look for the Treblec brand. And yes, it's standard Monoprix fare. Monoprix actually has a lot of stuff. Some places will even offer more than one brand. You'll get the best quality in health food stores though.

Oh, well... maybe a constant exposure to a chocolate-laden environment (too much theobromine) could explain some drastic ups and downs in social behavior?

Yes, what is the matter with Paris chocolate shop people? Some of them are really rude. The lady at Debauve & Gallais the other day was very snotty and unwelcoming. She acted like she was selling diamond-studded chocolates. "Come on, I thought, you're only selling (overpriced) chocolate." I asked about it later and it seems that D&G does have that reputation. This is exactly the kind of shop that I'll enter once in my life but not twice. However, I've always met with very pleasant, though a little fussy, service at La Maison du Chocolat. And they're really nice at Michel Chaudun (rue de l'Université). Which is lucky because I believe their chocolate is the very best in Paris. They're OK at Cacao et Chocolat too (a chain, several locations in Paris).

I'd be surprised if it were that deliberate ("Hey, we're not modern enough! Let's get rid of the horse butchers.). Boucheries chevalines are disappearing like other old-fashioned things, mostly for two reasons: 1. Horsemeat is no longer put forward as a "healthy" food, modern dietetics are focused on different things now; and 2. Not many people actually like horsemeat.

Of course there still are boucheries chevalines (though having two of them left in your quartier seems a bit unusual to me. Do you live in a very "commerçant" quartier ?). I only meant to point out that horse meat served at a restaurant, even a "routier", is a very rare thing. I believe our friends should not be prepared to find it at every "routier". A little searching will be necessary. They can always rely on a boucherie chevaline, since there are more of them left in the provinces than in Paris.

You will still find a perfectly good truffle omelette in Périgord. Just look at menus outside of restaurants. There may be more than one place in Sorges that serves it. If you have a chance, push towards the region of Quercy (Cahors, Souillac) which is truly a truffle region (more than Périgord at this point, actually). You'll find everything you're looking for. As for the "routier", my only advice is: if it's on a busy road, doesn't look too fancy and has plenty of parked cars and trucks outside, this is one. However it's unlikely that you'll be served any horse meat there. Did you read anything about this?

What, no mint leaf on top? Forget it!

Yes, indeed, but it is a borrowed practice. Monovarietal bottles are not a feature of traditional winemaking in France (except for certain local wines like clairette de Die or gamay de Touraine, always characterized by their region anyway). They are quite recent and the trend caught on in the South principally, under New-World influence.

Your question is so complex that it seems impossible to answer simply. I will give it a try, not hoping to grasp even a small portion of the matter. If, as you recall in your first post, you discovered that in France everything is "nem this" and "nem that", I wouldn't call this an Asian influence properly speaking. Because knowing about nems and eating them is one thing, making them by rolling up various wrappers around even more various fillings is quite another. That's exactly where we find the separation between chef cooking and home cooking: French people have known nems for decades, without necessarily wishing to make them at home, and the "nem" trend in contemporary cooking is very recent. It is, essentially, a chef trend and Vietnam has little to do with it. It is a small part of the international cross-pollination of gastronomic cuisine, which is no longer national but transnational, hovering above the ground, liberated from its roots (though it may still play with them from time to time). Which includes, I believe, Ducasse and most certainly his Spoon subsection — the seaweed chutney being a most perfect example of this uprooted, transnational style, which in my mind can no longer be considered "French" cuisine. The fact that it was devised by a Frenchman has become irrelevant. Such a recipe might have sprouted just about anywhere. Besides, if a famous French chef decided to serve nothing but phat thai for awhile, it would mean there's been an Asian influence on the chef but not on French cooking in general. So, that's why I believe trying to trace down the possible "Asian" influences on French cooking using such recipes is going on a wrong track. Because the context of this cuisine is not French at all, and its basic influences are too messed-up to help us discern any definite inspiration process. I do not mean that it has been "defrenchized", but that it cannot be claimed as being French more than it may be claimed as being North American, Australian or even Asian. The same recipe may have been created by a Singaporean chef. I do not think the presence of Western ingredients in it would be more significant than the presence of Asian ingredients in a French context. Let's go back to the nems. The Pourcel brothers were among the first "nem-making" chefs I heard of (there may be previous examples but I do not know of them). But I can tell when they began to make nems (raspberry nems in a chocolate sauce): that was when they opened their first Asian restaurant, the one in Tokyo. Now nems are Southeast Asian and not Japanese, but this may still have a meaning. However, Nouvelle Cuisine, in the 70's, was certainly strongly inspired by Japan. It was a tremendous change and it is still with us today. It has not only modified the way chefs cook and revolutionized haute cuisine, it also has changed the way many French people look at food and gastronomy. If I look for any Asian influence on French cooking, this is what I find.

Isn't that how they were right from the start? I bought an assortment of them soon after the opening of the first Paris shop. We weren't able to finish them: overgreasy, cloyingly sugary and the flavor combinations not always pleasant.

I believe that as soon as you have cuisine, you have fusion. The term "fusion" associated to cooking is a recent, faddy thing. But the constant exchange of culinary influences has taken place throughout the world since the beginning of cooking without being called "fusion", indeed without having so much as a name. I fail to see the difference. And that is true for France too, in spite of our classical fear of spices that has shaped much or our classical cooking since the end of the Middle Ages. The Asian influences on French cooking are not obvious because of the strong dichotomy between chef cuisine and home cuisine (the latter seriously on the way out). Chef cuisine is an extremely absorbent medium and catches just about everything within its reach whenever it may fit the pattern. Home cuisine is less absorbent, but also more nebulous nowadays (everybody knows what chefs cook, but who knows what people cook? I know I cook African food at home, as well as Indian, Chinese, Thai, etc. I very seldom prepare French dishes. Some of my Parisian friends do pretty much the same. But we're exceptions and indeed many people I know don't cook at all. However, if it is difficult to measure the Asian influence on French cooking, it is much less difficult to delineate the French influences in Vietnamese cooking. Thus Vietnamese cooking appears more obviously as a fusion food - many dishes bearing the mark of colonial France - than other Asian cuisines, i.e. that of Thailand, that has never been colonized. However, influence may also be exerted through commerce: there are some amazing similarities between some aspects of Portuguese confectionery and Thai sweets. I don't think there is such a thing as a "pure" cuisine. Finally, Vietnamese food is a great favorite in France and in some places may be had in excellent condition, as close to the original as can be. It gets a little searching off the posh areas. And the shopping situation is wonderful: in Paris and the suburbs, you can find any imported produce from Thailand and Vietnam. I am particularly surprised at the vitality and abundance of Thai imports since Thai immigration in France is not supposed to be substantial. So far the only item of mainstream Thai food I haven't been able to find in Paris is the coriander roots.

For a while I have been contemplating this long and fascinating exchange wondering if it was not a bit off-topic. Until I read this post, and realized it was not. It is the perfect example of how cold, desincarnated and sometimes boring French Haute Cuisine has become. This and the 44 euros for herb tea: that does it. This style of cooking is not dying; it is already dead, though it may still last a long time.

http://www.lileks.com/institute/gallery/meat/4.html (So terribly sorry.)

I don't believe Apéricubes are to be compared with the offensive cheese products that you're mentioning. La Vache Qui Rit has been around for a long time and Apéricubes date back to the mid-70's. They never were pointed at as particularly unnatural or offensive by French gourmets. I'm even a bit surprised that such a fuss is made about them. La Vache Qui Rit was created in 1921, in a small factory in Jura (the very region of cancoillotte, by the way) and was the first in the category of melted cheeses. It is not made of scraps but of decent cheeses, some produced by the Bel company itself, the rest bought. The recipe includes comté, edam and mimolette amongst other cheeses, plus butter and cream, melted at slightly more than 100 °C and shaped into portions. The recipe has changed several times during the cheese's history, I admit that today's Vache Qui rit has gone down compared to that of decades ago, but all the same, there are worse junk foods around. As I wrote before, La Vache Qui Rit à la crème tastes rather like the Vache Qui Rit of long ago. There used to be other brands of melted cheeses, including Six de Savoie and La Vache Grosjean which tasted much better than La Vache Qui Rit, but it seems that only La Vache has survived. As for the Cancoillotte, that was just a tip I was giving you. I've had cancoillotte in Franche-Comté, where it is made artisanally, and according to the people who made me discover it, that was the right way to try it. It is such a delicate product, really, that I'm not surprised that any preservatives, stabilizers or any such crap do show through. The generic brand "Reflets de France" that you find in Champion supermarkets may have some better cancoillotte than the ones you tried.

God forbid that you should buy it! Besides, if you have a friend who actually forces you to ingest apéricubes, I suggest that you dump the friend together with the apéricube, that's a very weird friend indeed. About the cancoillotte: that was not the right way to try it. First of all you should avoid anything labeled Président (I do, that's my own personal advice). Second: get the garlic-flavored cancoillotte. Poach a Morteau sausage or, better, a Morteau jésu (a very large boiling sausage), boil some potatoes, toss a green salad in a nicely vinegary, shalloty vinaigrette and pour the cancoillotte on slices of hot boiled potato. Eat with the warm sliced sausage and the salad. Then you may understand what cancoillotte is about. I've never seen it on a cheese platter anyway.

Let's not be too pessimistic in calling croissants "passé". Those who were in France in the 70's may remember how terrible ordinary bread was in boulangeries. That was when many of those places had become nothing more than "terminaux de cuisson", shaping and baking industrially-made bread dough. The corporation of "artisans boulangers" have fought for the quality of bread, resulting in the Balladur law (sometime in the 90's I believe) strictly redefining the quality of bread. Now things have improved greatly and it is again possible to find good baguettes in Paris. However, the same problem that plagued baguettes some thirty years ago is now cursing our croissants, whose dough is often industrially-made and sent to bakeries to be baked. That is why the quality has plummeted in recent years and croissants taste very much the same almost everywhere. I think there is going to be another fight for this cause, and good croissants may be available again sometime. But there we are now, some bakers still make their own croissants and you can still find great croissants in Paris. But you have to do a bit of searching. It is a pity, generally speaking, that good pâtisseries are disappearing gradually from the streets. It has become pretty difficult to find good pâtisserie and viennoiserie in shops, except for hyped and expensive places. It now seems that the best pâtissiers in France are now employed in the kitchens of two-star or three-star chefs. Those who have and tasted one of Gilles Marchal's croissants at le Bristol for breakfast will know what I am talking about. Maybe it is not only up to the boulangers-pâtissiers. Maybe it is also up to us, the public, to insist on having the good croissants back to our neighborhood shops.

That's okay with me. That was not a confession. I tend to react this way whenever I'm confronted to culinary "a-prioris". As was said before, it's all context. In terms of foods and ingredients, I think there's nothing sacred or vile per se. And I've heard that, somewhere near the Pays basque, some chef does some pretty interesting things with Vache Qui Rit. By the way, Vache Qui Rit à la crème is even nicer...

I actually like Vache Qui Rit. And it's very nice in a Vietnamese roadside sandwich. (Context!) To horrify the audience a little further: I love Apéricubes too, they're my favorite kind of French decadent gastronomy. The tomato Apéricube is tops.

Gee, that would be a vicious instructor!

You bet. I'm still short on time today, but believe me, I couldn't wait to get out of the place.

Cancoillotte is a regional product, but it is readily available at most supermarkets in the Paris region and in many other parts of France. So one may assume that is has become fairly common as a national (sort-of) cheese. It is available as plain or garlic cancoillotte. It is not really used like cheese but as an accompaniment to warm foods like poached Morteau sausage (+ a salad), boiled vegetables, pot-au-feu, etc. It is more a condiment than a cheese. I wouldn't compare it to Velveeta, Velveeta is more like Vache Qui Rit. Cancoillotte is quite unique, unlike anything else. The best analogy I could find would be the runny part of a ripe camembert, shiny and almost translucent, with a mild taste and a slightly rubbery texture. It is neither for "ordinary tastes" (if there is such a thing) nor for sophisticated tastes, it is only, and simply, quite delicious.

Hm, perhaps, but what for?

I've been to "Dans le noir", and I haven't got the time to review it here tonight, but it was a real nightmare. Painfully noisy, terribly slow service. And the food was dreadful, clearly not designed for the purpose. I know it is some sort of humanitarian experience, but there are limits to what one is supposed to endure for charity's sake. I'll give a more precise account in the next few days. But if someone comes to Paris and wants to experience good restaurants, by all means, let them pick places where then can actually SEE THINGS.