Ptipois

Bux, I absolutely agree with you in every detail. And your post confirms what my experience has taught me. I lived in the US for a couple of years and I am well aware of the special level of culinary consciousness that one can find there. Now this makes my French countrymen gag and choke when I say so, but indeed I got the determination to devote my life to cooking more from my living in the US than from being French. I often notice that French people around me sometimes express utter amazement and excessive admiration about my culinary skills, which they wouldn't express if cooking at home were more widespread in France nowadays (I consider my technical cooking skills just a little above average; my food writing and editing skills are a different subject), while they raise no special admiration from American people, only sympathy. Culinary curiosity, which is the basis of culinary talent and culture, seems lower in France than it is in other countries — the US, Britain, Japan, etc. I definitely fear that many urban French people (the country has been mostly spared so far) have regressed as a gourmet people; I mean as individually responsible for the quality of their food. When culinary knowledge in France is supposed to be held only by chefs, the mere mortals stand stiff, intimidated, unable to cook because they have been persuaded that cooking is highly technical, precise and difficult. I hear that all the time. People who claim they can't cook an egg have become alarmingly numerous. There may be other reasons: shifts in society and the role of women, work hours, the devaluation of the general image of the housewife, the size of kitchens, but there you have it, the simple art of cooking is gradually abandoned in France, left to those-in-the-know. I confirm. Confronted to a particularly abstract or complex, or even wrong recipe, I have often heard the comment: "Who cares? Nobody will try this anyway." It is only partly true, though. Some chefs (i.e. Georges Blanc, Bocuse) take pride in delivering recipes that are genuine, detailed, clear and "executable", while remaining rich and sometimes complex. I find this admirable because it's quite rare. But these men have learned their skill from "Mères", women, and perhaps for this reason their work always keeps its feet on the ground and never forgets the human dimension (I am not uttering sexist considerations here, only taking into account the indiscutably macho nature of French professional cuisine). By comparison, I see these examples as another reminder that French gastronomie has, in recent years, gone astray in trying to shut itself hermetically into its hyper-professional, hypersophisticated, hyperelitist bubble. Chefs have become living gods, but people cook less and less. I do believe it's due not precisely to chefs, but to an excess of sophistication for sure. The disconnect is very deep and severe. Haute Cuisine seems to try always harder to differentiate itself from home or bourgeois cooking. It strikes me, when I see dishes by modern Spanish or US chefs, how they get their inspiration from various sources without making a big fuss of it. I wonder at Adria's ability to interpret classics and regional preparations in a playful, admiring way. I have a book by him, in Spanish, where he teaches how to make great little dishes in a few minutes from very banal produce bought in any supermarket. I have been writing a lot here. But I can sum up everything I've written so far with this simple sentence: French Haute Cuisine takes itself much too seriously (and many chefs take themselves far too seriously too). Agreed. The abandonment of home cooking and gradual disappearance of individual culinary responsibility in France is a much worse problem than the introduction of MacDonald's.

In years of food writing and recipe editing, I have yet to see a grand chef's recipe that gets "dumbed down" in a book. This simply, in my experience, doesn't exist. A professional kitchen is not an individual or family kitchen. Much less so is the kitchen of a grand restaurant like the Lutetia's or Ducasse's. The alternative is simple: there are books for professionals and books for non-professionals, however skilled. If one wants to publish a book of luxurious chef's recipes for non-professionals, then a great deal of adaptation is required so that it is just possible to make the recipes. If it is not provided, the book is useless. It may be considered some sort of monument, a museum, which to me is the category that Ducasse's books fall into (his first ambition was to become the Escoffier of our times), but then it has no use as a cookbook. To every purpose its means. There is a choice to be made. It is not a judgement in value or quality, it is a distinction in purpose. The problem with Ducasse books is that, originally, they weren't meant to be sold to the general public, they were meant to be sold to professionals. At some point it was decided, for financial reasons, that they would enter the public market as well. But no special effort was made to make the contents accessible (which doesn't mean "dumbed down" at all). I believe the books are much dumber as they are, neither here nor there, than if there had been a true effort to edit them according to their purpose. As for what chefs perceive to be "the lack of sophistication of the grand public", I believe that they don't perceive it at all. Indeed, most of the time, they have little or no perception of the "public". Many chefs I've met have a very unclear idea of what it is to cook alone in one's small kitchen, or to cook for one's family. Most of the need for recipe editing comes from this. Example: I mentioned the use of "préalablement", which should be avoided in a recipe. "Préalablement" only means one thing: that you are taking hold of a preparation that one of your assistant cooks has made and stored somewhere for you or another cook. Thus, the chronological order of a recipe is different for professional cooks and for cookbook readers. When "préalablement" appears, it describes something that should have been done before, and therefore its preparation should be placed previously in the recipe. This sounds simple, but you'd be surprised at how few professional cooks are aware of this. You are perfectly right. But I never wrote that there should be oversimplification and shortcuts. Only that the recipe should contain exactly the sort of precision that nonprofessionals can understand. And this recipe does have elements that need extra explanation. This, by all means, wasn't written by a chef. Very probably, it was based on some computer recipe file typed for the cooking school, dug out, printed or given out on a floppy, and then re-written and edited by someone hired by the publisher for this particular job. It may have been lightly edited or heavily edited, I don't know. Chances are that the editor had to communicate many times with some of the chefs and cooks to gather missing information, unmatching elements, etc., and maybe the editor got them — maybe didn't. At any rate the person who edited this has very little experience of recipe editing. The overflowery language doesn't disturb me as long as the recipe is understandable, clear and coherent. As it is, it is OK (I've seen much worse) but it sure could be improved. Serious home cooks would be delighted to get the original recipe, as long as all the necessary explanations meant for them are there. If these are not there, I believe they could feel baffled by what amounts to a lack of respect... I think it is very important to deliver the original recipe in its complexity. And that it is just as important to help the reader, let's say a serious home cook, benefit from the whole experience by grasping this complexity with the right kind of recipe writing. Please understand that I am not asking for a roughing up. Quite the contrary: I am asking for more complexity, but the right one. My message to big chefs should be: you want to make and publish books on your own? Fine, do it. But don't stop halfway. Do the whole thing. The problem with self-published chefs is that they never have anybody in their surroundings to remind them that publishing for unprofessional people is a special job and that they weren't necessarily born knowing its rules. I think you're seeing my point there. Now I do believe it's possible to execute these recipes at home (I'm not saying it's easy, or quick, or even reasonable) provided that the printed recipe allows the reader to do it. But one should remember that this is primarily restaurant cuisine meant to be executed by a brigade of several cooks with the special organization that this involves and that it was in no way adapted to an individual kitchen. What is the intention? What is the point? Why are these chefs coming out with "cookbooks" (that aren't really cookbooks)? Answer: I don't know. I've wondered, but I have never found the answer. Actually, I have a few ideas but I find they very unsatisfactory. After all, the reason may be that they just like to make books. Sometimes in the recent past I have wondered whether there was a secret wish by some top professional chefs to eradicate simple home cooking from every home in France. The less practical knowledge in the homes, the more power and influence for the chefs. But I know this is only my own, desperate brand of paranoia created by too many attempts to convice some "grands toqués" that there actually was a life and real people outside of their kitchens. I am ready to confess that my perceptions are quite exaggerated. However, I cannot deny that the psychology of some grands chefs includes a hint of contempt towards the aspects of cooking that are related to the home, the family, women, even if they love to recall their own family/grandmother mythology.

True, this is a festive recipe, still I find it much too complicated, too long and too fussy for a "normal" kitchen. Not impossible to do, and as you say, the fact that it's a Christmas recipe is a good excuse, but to me it is still a good example of how out-of-reach and show-offy chef cooking has become. This is just a recipe for professionals that has entered a book for commercial and publicity reasons, with no special effort to adapt it to the skill and capacity of an average reader in an average kitchen. If someone wants to make it at home, why not? Personally I'm not going to try, but I could. I can understand all the culinary terms and can (these days) devote a whole day and a half to preparing one dish. There is nothing wrong with that. But if someone less knowledgeable than us reads it, I doubt he or she will feel at ease with the terms "fourchette", "bateau", "salpicon" (how small, by the way?). How many of us use a poche a douille? (I do, but I know very few people do). Why a "poêle noire" in the last part? Any small frying-pan will do, because not everybody has a "poêle noire". Finally, what is a Bamix and who has one at home? The recipe, though detailed, is regrettably unwritten and unedited, though it is perfectly acceptable as a professional recipe. It doesn't make it as a recipe for the "grand public", which its presence on a website is supposed to make it. For instance, the word "préalablement" is repeated three times in the recipe, which is three times too much. As long as this remains restaurant cooking, it is perfectly fine. Delivered to the readers/web surfers in this way, I cannot help but feeling that it is, somewhat, thrown in their face without much consideration. I am opinionated, I know. I think I have seen and tasted too much of that stuff and have realized that, after all, it doesn't taste better that dishes made with less protocol. I confess: I am getting tired of that kind of French "cuisine gastronomique" and how "high" it has become. It doesn't always unnerve me in a restaurant, but it always does in a book. I am tired of all those stages, protocol, cryptic language, snotty styling and crystal chandeliers. I admire creativity in cooking (which is why I have so much admiration for Adria, who combines invention and simplicity, forcing us to go back to the root of the act of eating and tasting without the help of a crystal chandelier), I also admire just as well non-creativity with a humble, careful execution of the classics. But see what happens when someone launches the subject of defining "haute cuisine": automatically, people propose lists based on setting, service, number of courses, colors of the waiters' suits, wine lists and sommeliers, etc., with cooking and produce not being listed as the only determining elements, which they truly are. This is not an isolated phenomenon, it is a type of answer I regularly get to the same question. There is a problem there. Do you see what I mean? Now maybe Ducasse's innocent chapon and its cute boudin blanc thighs got more blame than they deserved from me, but they did manage to trigger my lowest instincts

I hear you. But I'm still surprised. I think it may depend on what you consider "fancy" cuisine. Pork is a rather rare ingredient in French cuisine gastronomique, and when there is some, it is clearly mentioned as part of the dish (i.e. Alexandre Blanc's sautéed abalone with pork stock, "Ormeau sauté au jus de cochon"). I rewrite and adapt many, many recipes from several Michelin-starred chefs, and I hardly ever meet any pork products in them. However, when I do work on their bistrot and brasserie cooking, there is quite a lot of pork and bacon. What characterizes French top-class cuisine is the use of stocks and glazes based on veal, beef and poultry, very rarely pork. Pork is more frequently found in regional cooking styles, but this is not considered haute cuisine. There is pork in lyonnaise fancy cuisine, but fancy as it may be, it remains a regional style. Even there, the stocks are still based on veal or chicken.

There are a few things to correct in the Wikipedia definition, but I haven't much time, suffice it to say that Haute Cuisine didn't rise from scratch like Athena fully armed in the martial days of Napoleon. It probably got codified and its hierarchy stiffened, but as a French tradition Haute Cuisine (even if the term wasn't used) digs its roots several centuries before. It is related to courtly culture and can be traced to the Valois and the Medici, very probably much earlier. Some of our dishes bear the names of du Barry, Pompadour, Richelieu, Colbert. Also, Haute Cuisine today, if it is possible to define such a thing, is by no means what it used to be in the days of Escoffier, let alone of Carême. Its "three secrets" are no longer Escoffier's secrets (du beurre, du beurre et du beurre), much less a river of cream. It no longer relies on overcooked fish and thick mayonnaise maskings, fried rissoles, cromesquis and pâtés, long-simmered sauces and the heavy use of flour. It has abandoned elaborate puddings of candied fruit and sweet liquors. It no longer cooks vegetables to death. In one word, today's haute cuisine is very far away from 19th-century haute cuisine. One thing that puzzles me in Pan's description is the mention of "something derived from pig". This is by no means constitutive of elegant French cooking, even if pig things may sometimes be used. But they're more at ease in country and bourgeois cookery. With a few exceptions, the most refined versions of "cuisine gastronomique" tend to avoid anything porky. Briefly, Pan's definition of "haute cuisine" strikes me as not being the definition of any kind of cuisine at all but the description of a meal in an expensive "restaurant gastronomique" (perhaps a bit old-fashioned too). Which is a very different thing. Now such places generally justify their high prices, but they may also very well deliver most of the items on Pan's list without delivering anything deserving the name "haute cuisine". Now if I were to try a short definition of haute cuisine *in a French context*, it would be: a style of professional cuisine commonly admitted to be the highest in a particular period, in terms of skill, craftsmanship, cost, and social level. It can be described even more simply as "Top-class restaurant cooking". Of course, the culinary criteria fitting the definition may vary with time.

Hello Tarka, I'm sorry my answer will be something of a no-answer, for several reasons. — The more I learn about cooking, the less I understand the motives that lead people to classify cuisines at all costs. Now there may be some guidelines and there are, definitely, styles, but I believe those styles are meant to be played with and not to be taken seriously. Least of all do I wish - and that should be obvious from my recent posts - that cuisines should be classified on a vertical scale, with "high" and "low", mostly related with social and financial values. This may have had a "raison d'être" at some point but I think it is no longer valid. The only classification I admit for cuisine — and this is nothing but my personal view but I hold strongly to it — is based on its being good, mediocre or bad. This transcends all styles and all social levels. And I don't agree with the opinion that dining on High Cuisine is dining on History, for the presence of History is just as obvious in ethnic, country, family cuisines, cuisine bourgeoise and bistrot foods. — I've taken a look at the thread that you're mentioning. I nearly drooled at the pictures and at the descriptions of the dishes. This looks incredibly yummy and I'm pretty sure it was. The fact that it may be or not worthy of being written in the books as "haute cuisine" seems pretty irrelevant to me compared to the evidence that it is superior cooking. One may eat very badly indeed in a certified Haute Cuisine restaurant. — Also, I don't really know, after all, what "haute cuisine" means. There is the French context and the international context. I don't know what criteria rule the use of the term in an international context, so I cannot really help there. About the French context: in everyday French language, one hardly ever hears the words "haute cuisine", it is much more frequently read and heard in English; the usual expression is "cuisine gastronomique". However, something called "haute cuisine" does exist in France, as in the corporate organization "Chambre syndicale de la haute cuisine française"; it seems to be defined by a level of learning, skill and craftsmanship, a general agreement on a certain style of cooking and general views on the trade. As a French phenomenon, that's what it is now. Sometimes it does remind me of our ENA (Ecole national d'administration) in the way it implies some sort of formatting. I don't really see the relationship between this phenomenon and the luscious Californian meal that is described in the other thread.

My absolute favorite is Michel Chaudun for his clever, delicate, delightful, wonderfully tasty products. By the way he is the only one (in my experience, if you prove me wrong it will be good news) who sells plain roasted cocoa beans, one of my favorite treats.

I may be totally wrong. Actually I'm hoping to be. But in my experience — and that's what seems to be happening in France — the development of a "haute cuisine" and, moreover, its development through the media as the culinary norm (food articles relying on chefs in popular women's press, food TV chock full of chefs, chefs being asked their version of scrambled eggs or tomato salad all over the place, in one word: chef dictatorship), means the gradual disappearance of any comida del pueblo sooner or later. Here in France, now that the word "cuisine" immediately summons the image of a standing male with crossed arms and a white toque, "la cuisine populaire", whether family cooking or cheap bistrot cooking, is a thing of the past. So I wouldn't be in such a hurry to see anything "high" becoming the norm in any place that has still an everyday practice of cooking amongst the people. But that probably can't be avoided. Don't get me wrong, there always has been a haute cuisine in France and it hasn't always been endangering the French people's ordinary notion of cooking. There even used to be a friendly, subtle network of interaction between the two. But now this interaction has died to the detriment of popular cuisine, because for decades the media have been presenting "le chef" as the only culinary reference worthy of respect, and enlightenment is supposed to come from the top, only from the top.

All culinary techniques in the world were devised to do just that.

One of the most sensuous, miraculous, orgasmic dishes I've ever tasted was the "ventrèche de thon" (tuna belly) cured like ibérico ham, served at El Bulli a couple of years ago. Like many Adria preparations, this really blew your mind, your tastebuds, your erotic system, your nervous system, everything. And yet so simple. To me, that's not the absolute pattern of what chefs should all do nowadays, but it is definitely a good lesson. That's how I consider Adria in the context of modern cuisine: not someone who teaches, not someone who should be imitated, but someone who gives hints, who speaks in parables like Christ.

The French saying was meant to be somewhat ambiguous. It may be translated your way, or my way. "Les choses" may mean "ingredients", it may refer to more elaborate preparations. That fish should taste like fish, etc., is the fundamental truism of cuisine, though it has to be reminded many times. It is not a negation of artifice, it is an affirmation of honesty. The chefs who make things taste of what they are most are, paradoxically, the most innovative, but not those who believe they're bound to innovate for marketing reasons. In the hands of true cooking artists like Adria or Bras, things taste more of what they are than in the hands of anyone else. They sublimate the natural state of things, focus our attention on simple sensations that are only a hint in other circumstances, they turn a tiny tinge on the tongue into a long orgasm. I believe they do honor the old French saying, also because they bring playful happiness to a meal and not pompous, intimidating, overcomplicated virtuosity. To answer briefly, "cuisine is when things taste as they should" is one possible translation of the saying. Not the only possible one, but the one I chose to adopt at this very moment. The history of French haute cuisine has some very definite roots, and to understand its main features one has to understand the value of spices and seasonings in the French tradition. The French tradition was born when the French, in the 16th century, discovered that they no longer needed loads of spices, salts and natural preservatives to enjoy food. Medieval food, like Roman food, was heavily flavoured, briny, vinegary and spicy. And yes, this revolution took place under Italian influence, when Italian cooks brought by Catherine de Medicis put an emphasis on fresh produce, fresh vegetables and simple tastes without the help of a heavy dose of spice. The spiciness and vinegariness never really disappeared, though it constantly waned until the second half of the 20th century, but French gastronomie was born from the rejection of spices, only keeping the strict minimum: salt, pepper, and to a lesser extent nutmeg, cloves and allspice. What was aimed at was the natural taste of things, discreetly enhanced by fines herbes: parsley, chives, pimpernel and chervil. All very mild-tasted and unlikely to compete with the taste of the food. Stronger bay, thyme and tarragon were there as a support but in no way should they be allowed to overpower other tastes. Roughly, these are the basic principles of French gastronomy as it evolved from the 17th century to Nouvelle Cuisine. And this relative blandness, allowing the natural flavors of all ingredients to come through, is the backbone of French refined gastronomy. One important point in this flavor-switching phenomenon is the rising importance of truffles, from the 17th century on: they were known before, but not much esteemed. In national cuisines, all tastes must be present in varying proportions, but there always has to be an element of spiciness and an element of stinkiness. It is true all over the world; many tastes have to be balanced by a stinking element, like musk in a perfume. In India they have asafetida, in Asia there is fish sauce and salted fish or shrimp pastes, in various places there is smoked fish, in Antique cuisine they had silphium (close to asafetida), fish sauce and rue. In Medieval Europe, they used spices and cured food extensively, fish sauce (garum) did not entirely disappear, but truffles were underused. After the Renaissance and the quasi-total disappearance of strong flavoring elements in French cuisine, truffles rose to an incredible height, providing some of the strong flavor and even stinkiness that spices and cured fish (herring, anchovy) had been providing. This long description is only there to help define what really makes up French gastronomie. It is not a cuisine of bland tastes, really, it is a cuisine that makes clever use of blandness in order to enhance the true taste of ingredients. A cassoulet is a tasty dish, but what is put forward is the natural taste of each ingredient: confit de canard is an enhancement of the taste of canard, slow-roasted bacon is like concentrated bacon taste, beans gloriously taste like beans, and the sauce contains the best of all elements. "La cuisine, c'est quand les choses ont le goût de ce qu'elles sont" is easy to understand once you've understood these principles. However, I wouldn't consider Italy the absolute origin of this tendency, for French gastronomy has evolved in a totally original way and I suspect that its main lines must have been present in the country long before Italian cooks came over to pull the trigger.

Who needs "haute cuisine", anyway? Sorry if this sounds provocative but what used to be one of the most likable, genuine and cheerful aspects of French culture has become a schizophrenic, soulless, and, finally, boring rat race. It's all about money and competition, the negation of art. Innovation, originality for originality's sake (art is no longer art when it becomes a strategy; that's easy to understand but obviously it is still very hard to understand for many chefs who try to imitate Ferran Adria or Michel Bras), a good dose of elitism and snottiness, and food that, at high level, ends up looking and tasting the same all over the world, and — yes — the plague of assembly-line cuisine which is not really cuisine at all. Once or twice, I've been referring to this as "cuisine d'assemblage", which is exactly the same idea. The first post of this thread sure hits the nail. "La cuisine, c'est quand les choses ont le goût de ce qu'elles sont." "Cuisine is when food tastes as it should." This sentence is the basis of the French art of cooking. You may wonder whatever happened to this basis in a recipe like this one (second recipe, scroll down) from Ducasse's latest book. Who really needs such sophistication? More important: who will make it at home? (because if a recipe in a book is not intended to be made at home, then it's only show-off). Who is chronically bored to the point of needing so much complication in their food? Where do you draw the line between the refinement inherited from an age-old civilization and nouveau riche show-off? Personally, I'm very bored with many aspects of today's French cuisine gastronomique (what you call "haute cuisine" in English). Sometimes there's an artist, a true craftsman who cares about the freshness and quality of ingredients and then Haute Cuisine deserves to survive. But elsewhere, increasingly, I smell a stench of Roman decadency in some of the highest layers of French haute cuisine. One meal I had at the Plaza Athénée, in the aquarium, a couple of years ago was perfectly refined, minutely crafted like a Swiss watch, very luxurious, and totally boring. Good food is good food, I believe there is a top level in the experience of the senses above which there is no possibility to rise higher, and personally I place this top level lower than Haute Cuisine, especially when I know that simple dishes like Korean chopped raw beef, fresh lobster a la plancha or a perfect winter squash soup make you reach this level naturally. I'd give a whole dinner at Le Crillon for a dinner on perfect Ibérico ham, fresh ripe tomatoes with garlic, olive oil and jerez fino. I mean, if this kind of decadent French cooking were to die, I don't think I'd shed a tear. It can only die from its excesses and errors. Let it die.

The equivalent of buttermilk is called "lait ribot" and it is a traditional produce from Brittany. It can be found in many supermarkets. It has all the uses of buttermilk, and it can be used as a starter for sourdough. Laben is very much like "lait ribot", btw.

For decent Auvergne fare, though sometimes a bit chi-chi, Chant'Airelle, rue Laplace, near the Panthéon.

You were there on a good day. On a bad day I got some undercooked sausage (I mean, raw at the core) and a dreadful dessert.

You must take into account the trigger-happiness of French chasseurs to understand this strange piece of ethnography: the shooting of numerous pheasants in Sologne woods soon after they are released from their cage. It has nothing to do with gastronomy.

Most game is wild. Or more precisely: wild but kept in a reservation (venison); fake wild, i.e. raised in cages, set free before the gaming season, and then shot (pheasant); genuinely wild (wild boar, partridge, palombe, grouse, woodcock, etc.). There is probably some farmed game but I don't know about it.

Funny, from what I'm reading here, Paris sounds like Saint-Petersburg of the North Pole. It is not. Our winters have been pretty mild these last years. Actually, it is getting slightly warmer every winter. There are even days in January when the air is strangely tepid and you feel like Springtime is close. Don't be fooled, the worse is still to come (February). Paris is usually medium-cold and wet in November, moderately cold in December, irregularly cold in January, and the coldest month (with the odd snowstorm, which sticks to the ground roughly once in every ten years) is February. March can be infuriating because it is, most of the time, an extension of Winter. But that's also when the Seine overflows (and it's beautiful!) and the warmer winds come in. In April, it does get nicer. I'd suggest dressing on the light side but having a warm coat handy. Scarfs are a must. However I suppose that, if Parisian men usually wore long silk underwear, I'd know it by now.

Reading this, I am not really surprised that you've had bad experiences with "locals" when asking about restaurants. You may have been getting the exact reflection of whatever you have sent out. You pick your "locals" according to criteria of your own, but you should keep in mind that you're being picked too, or not picked, whatever the size of the beret . They're not machines, and they think. They may be giving you the part of their knowledge that they feel appropriate to give, and I can't blame them for that. I am a bit surprised to find ethnic typology (width of beret, intensity of Gauloise cough) being used as a means to find the best "local" for food information. I use other means, not always based on locals (careful reading of the menu, using sense of smell and sight, "sixth-sense" deduction) but sometimes I do ask people. I get good results most of the time. Frankly, I suppose this has to do with the way I ask them. As for hypermarchés, it is true that our technical world has changed but people in rural areas have less changed than you seem to think, even if they lack the pittoresque aspects of times past. And "locals" and "artisans" have remained country people, i.e. smarter than you think. And they know that hypermarchés all over France do carry local and artisanal produce of great quality, in a much fresher state and for a cheaper price than the quaint local shop aiming at tourists — apart from the fact that they do need bottled water, packs of beer, tinned tomatoes and toilet paper like everyone else. Ptipois (a local)

Légumes means "vegetables". What you call "legumes" in English are "légumes secs" here (lentils, dried beans, dried peas). When you see crosnes described as "légumes" it only means that the vendor wants the customers to be sure they're buying vegetables and not caterpillars.

The traditional French way of cooking beets is by boiling. Now that is messy, it's also lengthy, and that probably accounts for the ready-cooked thing. Some people use the foil-and-baking method which gives tastier beets and many market grocers do use that method because their beets are drier and not too messy. There are indeed raw beets, with leaves on, at markets from Springtime to Fall. Nearly every "maraîcher" (a greengrocer who grows his own stuff) has them, and some regular greengrocers too. And of course the organic food stores carry them frequently.

1) Probably because we think beets take ages to cook (and they do too) and we like them very tender. 2) We like them very tender because we we hardly ever use beets any other way than as a salad, finely diced. So no peeling, grating, slicing, etc., before cooking, just wipe the skin off with absorbent paper and there you are. 3) You are right, beets are very messy to cook whole as we like them. We like someone else to do the messy part for us. 4) We just do. It's a tradition and traditions are sometimes difficult to explain. As far as one remembers, beets have always been sold that way in France. Greengrocers at markets tend to sell them ready-baked, and you find them vacuum-packed in supermarkets. 5) Note that beets sold in France for salads are rather large beets, even messier to cook than small ones. But in Summer you can find bunches of small raw beets with leaves on at markets. Some people (including I) buy them but I'd never choose to make a classical French beet salad out of them. I'd make panzaria the Greek way, with the leaves and roots in a vinegary broth, or borshtch, or cold beet broth. The fact that most beets here are ready-cooked narrows the recipe scape for the French, who very seldom experiment with raw beets at home. (I just adore beets.)

Oh, yes. I hadn't been through rue Montorgueil for years when I saw it again last night. I was so sorry to see what had become of it. But not surprised. Some traditional foodie streets have been dreadfully cutified, some have not. Rue Montmartre at its root (near the Saint-Eustache church) is not exactly a foodie street but it still has good shops. Rue Mouffetard, still as crowded and pretty as ever, but by no means what it used to be in terms of quality. A few good wine shops, a couple good fromagers, two decent butchers, and that's about it. Now let's make the best of the remaning foodie areas before they get bobo-ized. Rue de Lévis-rue Poncelet in the 17e, rue Daguerre in the 14e, quite a few streets in the 15e in the rue du Théâtre - rue du Commerce zone, and of course the rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis which I've been keeping under my hat too. Fascinating and complete with Turkish, North African, Indian, Pakistani, Eastern-European groceries and butchers. Delicious rasgullas at the Pakistani caterer on the lower part of the street, right side. Rumanian Cotnari wines, etc. But it does pay to walk up the street past the gare du Nord to discover, at the other end of Faubourg-Saint-Denis, the Tamil and Srilankan stores. Walking further up towards the butte Montmartre is my favorite foodie area: the African market streets of Château-Rouge (rues Polonceau, Doudeauville, Dejean, des Poissonniers, etc.). It is a bit too far from my quartier to allow frequent shopping visits but where else can you find the freshest okra, over-the-counter sodabi in plastic water bottles, white cornmeal cakes, red palmnut oil from Togo, frozen ndolé and smoked capitaine fish? I sure would hate it if this place got seriously gentrified.

When you choose chanterelles at the market, pick up a large one. If it feels heavy and damp, just don't buy. It probably means that the mushrooms have been soaked before selling to give them more weight. They will have very little taste if any. Chanterelles, like any mushroom, should see as little water as possible. Water is the enemy of mushrooms. The best way to clean them is rubbing them gently with damp absorbent paper. If they're a little unclean from the forest and are speckled with black humus bits, that's no big deal. The main thing is avoiding sand and mineral grit, and if they have this, then it's better to wash them briefly (and drain them well).

That's very probably crosnes du Japon. An old-fashioned vegetable like cardoon and chou-rave. They taste faintly of artichoke. They have to be wrapped in a cloth with coarse salt and rubbed clean, then washed and braised with a little stock. Very nice but not very digestible. I've never heard them described as "Japanese baby artichokes" here. They may be called "artichaut chinois" or "artichaut japonais", or "stachys" which is the botanical name. "Crosnes" is the name of the village they were first grown at in France. The grower believed that housewives would never be willing to use their real name so he chose that one instead.