vivelafrance
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Posts posted by vivelafrance
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What's the link to that commentary? I'd love to read it.
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Thanks busboy...you've restored my faith....
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I get it, without any surprise at all. Tony Bourdain is in the business of selling himself (as are many other foodie celebs), so having exposure through Oprah only makes sense. I don't think it is a bad idea, regardless of how I feel about him. It is simply typical for people on the rising side of the escalator to do. I hardly ever watch him any more because he seems to crave attention through doing sensational things.
Maybe you're right. I am hooked on the old Tony, the one from the beginning, when he wasn't as famous...But could he really have changed that much?
As you can guess, I am not a big fan of Oprah. She is all about self promotion and has a great sense of self importance. He could have picked a different media. That's all.
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It's no secret that Tony Bourdain is my hero. I have the biggest crush on him and even my BF knows that and I think accepts it with grace. I think Tony
has class, defies conventions and follows his own rules. In my book, those are qualities rare to find these days. I still want to hold out hope that Tony wouldn't sell out in the name of money or fame. So, I ask you, WHY,WHY is he featured in Oprah's Magazine O?
the link: http://www.oprah.com/omagazine/200702/omag..._firsts_b.jhtml
Tony, if you read this, I beg you to reassure me and tell me that there is good explanation for this....
Bourdain and Oprah. That does not make sense.....Does anybody get it?
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All the Vietnamese sandwich shops around here sell flan in clear plastic drink cups.
How do they do it? Wouldn't the plastic melt if the flan were baked or steamed in the cups? If the flan is prepared beforehand and poured into the cups cooled, how do they prevent the custard from mixing with the caramel syrup at the bottom? (Or is it all just an optical illusion?
)I don't know how they do it but you can find flan in a clear plastic cup in France. I grew up on them, and still love them whenever I go home. Have you tried them?
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Here is a nice video of André Soltner making a Tarte Flambée: http://www.pbs.org/juliachild/meet/soltner.html#
Hey Menon, that was a great video of Soltner making a tarte flambee. I think I might have to try to make his version of the traditional dish.
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Thanks...I guess that answers my question
Pepin is only one source on freezing pates ...
there are other opinions as well ...if you do decide to freeze it however, don't add hard boiled eggs .. they get rubbery ... and if you do freeze, the fat in it may help keep it in good shape upon thawing .. wrap tightly so that the pate doesn't pick up other smells ... and remember to scrape the gray from the top layer when serving it ...
I found a recipe that suggested canning the pates. I think that might be the way to go. Thanks for the suggestions.
Is the Pepin quote from the complete technique?
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Thanks...I guess that answers my question
Pepin is only one source on freezing pates ...
there are other opinions as well ...if you do decide to freeze it however, don't add hard boiled eggs .. they get rubbery ... and if you do freeze, the fat in it may help keep it in good shape upon thawing .. wrap tightly so that the pate doesn't pick up other smells ... and remember to scrape the gray from the top layer when serving it ...
I found a recipe that suggested canning the pates. I think that might be the way to go. Thanks for the suggestions.
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Jacques Pepin on freezing pate ...
..Pâtés usually do not freeze well, especially coarse country pates. The inside becomes watery and grainy. Because of its extra-smooth and compact texture, however, this chicken liver pate freezes perfectly. Do not freeze with the aspic or decoration. To freeze, cover tightly with plastic wrap, then aluminum foil. Defrost it slowly under refrigeration for 24 to 48 hours before decorating and glazing. Small soufflé molds are ideal for freezing because they can be defrosted in only a couple of hours.I personally prefer not to freeze pate lest it become grainy upon thawing ...
Thanks...I guess that answers my question
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We're thinking about making our own pates, but we are not sure if we can or should freeze them. If freezing is an option, should we freeze before cooking or after. What's the result once it's thawed out?
If anybody has any experience in that, we are very curious about it.
Thanks.
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My sweetie surprised me one day (he had is shipped to my house) with a set of Sitram cookware. Admittingly I had been cooking with really subpar equipment, but I had no idea what a difference good cookware could make. Let me tell you, I love my sitram pans...they cook quickly and evenly. I would completely endorse the stuff. Best of luck!
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A friend of mine just returned from Brittany and had some homemade bread that had been made with a french flour that already has leavening in it. He said it was like the french version of bisquick, but that bisquick can not be used as a substitute for this type of flour. He thinks the flour already has yeast in it, rather than baking powder.
Any idea how to make this, or buy an equivalent item here in the US?
What s the name of this french flour?
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My SO is baffled by the amount of water I can get on the floor and counters when cooking and cleaning. My excuse is that I work quickly and efficiently, and let the mayhem be damned.
In the end I just love cooking with my SO. I think we make a great team. Does that make me weak and pathetic?
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I've noticed mention on some of the other boards, Japan and finding a decent pizza comes to mind, that American food culture seems to be rather diverse on the whole.
I wouldn't expect to find especially appealing Jamaican meat pies or a good jerk chicken in France, unless someone makes it at home. I don't think Mexico is particularly well known for its fine Chinese food either. I think this reflects market demand rather than Xenophobia.
However, in most parts of the United States I have traveled in - there is almost always reasonably good hispanic, mediterranean, asian and more recently middle eastern options readily available - if that's what you are hungry for and are looking.
Sure, the bagels are best in NY (I've always heard it was the water) - enchiladas are outstanding in the Southwest - Cuban in Miami, etc.
The hispanic market within walking distance of my house here was doing Peking Duck for the holidays. I kid you not. About a third of the market includes Asian specility items and ingredients, but the staff is entirely Spanish speaking. Plenty of people shopping across the spectrum there as well, mostly because they offer a pretty good deal and interesting ingredients.
I would tend to agree that American food culture is diverse, but that not everyone participates in this diversity. In reference to Mr Hayward's piece British food is diverse as well, due to the influence of the colonial period, with many Brits seeking refuge in Indian, West Indian, and Chinese fare.
True, but the market is driven by people's experiences and dispositions concerning novelty.
The Cuban food in Miami is excellent, but I was a minority the cafeterias I visited.
I still contend that the consciousness and perception of eGulleteers is not that of many who walk among us. Perhaps a survey is in order.
Am I being to judgmental here?
The best food you'll get in England is Indian...That leaves me wondering aobut british food....
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<img src="http://forums.egullet.org/uploads/1167783622/gallery_29805_1195_16164.jpg" hspace="8" align="left">by Tim Hayward
I was recently shown a cutting from an Arizona newspaper by a food writer who, having returned from a trip to France, waxed poetic about the experience. Like many of us, he'd been blown away by the quality of food he'd encountered and told us so, in florid prose, for the first 800 words. He then wrapped up by explaining that hopeless, incurably crap food would always remain in his part of the world. It saddened me to see that sort of weak-minded, unthinking dreck coming from an American -- because I'm so used to reading it from English writers.
There are a lot of historical reasons why the English have problems with food. Some blame the industrial revolution, some blame a class system that puts the responsibility for cooking solely into the hands of servants -- these theories are well documented -- but there's something else. There's a powerful strand of middle- and upper-class worship of French cuisine at the expense of English, and it goes back a long way.
The French Cook, a translation of La Varenne's Le Cuisinier François. was a bit of a bestseller in the UK (insofar as a book which could be read by few and afforded by fewer could be considered a bestseller) back in 1653.
In 1747 Hannah Glasse averred that: "If Gentlemen will have French Cooks, they must pay for French Tricks. So much is the blind Folly of this Age, that they would rather be impos'd on by a French Booby, than give Encouragement to a good English Cook!”
Half a century later, Tallyrand was losing his chef -- Careme -- to the Prince Regent, and the British aristocracy were falling over themselves to worship at the feet of any Frenchman in a toque -- and they've never stopped. Things probably reached their most egregious after the war in Elizabeth David's early books, where her breathless worship of everything Mediterranean bordered on the lubricious.
Though St. David is often credited with the regeneration of food appreciation in the UK, the way that she redirected the moneyed classes towards France at the moment the privations of war were over means she could equally well be blamed for keeping English cookery in the dark ages for a further three decades. This is a shame, because by all accounts, by the time she was into her later books, Spices, Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen and English Bread and Yeast Cookery, she had matured enough to realize that perhaps all the sun, sea and shagging had turned her head in her early years. She acquired a little historical rigor and began to get really interested in English food. Much to her disgust, of course, it was too late to redirect her myrmidons, who were rushing off, lemming-like, to clog up Provence with their Volvos.
The French, obviously, think their food is the best in the world. It's a fair opinion, but I wonder if, at the peak of their international influence, had the English not agreed with them so very much, that the whole of the English-speaking world might not consider other cuisines just as worthy of attention.
But the idea that French is the ur-cuisine and the only one which matters is just one of the many tired tropes that food writers slide so easily into. It offends me that the French are so unquestioningly worshipped as the best, because the Brits are equally thoughtlessly singled out as the world's worst. Our national attitude towards food has been questionable, but -- for example -- the Dutch, who with a religious predisposition to regard enjoyment of food as actual sin and with almost no culture of dining out or entertaining, are benignly ignored by those who pontificate on culinary matters.
Similarly, though our nation could be characterized as half a dozen foodie hotspots interspersed with a moaning, crud-chewing herd of junk-fuelled semi-morons, one could argue the same for the US and Australia, both regularly praised for their exciting, cutting-edge attitude towards food. Ask any honest Frenchman and he'll tell you how French supermarkets are filling up with packaged rubbish, French farming is going to the dogs and burger bars are despoiling his city. In fact, he'll tell you, it's every bit as easy to eat crap in Paris as in London.
The authentic cuisine of the British Isles has solid, unbroken and documented history as old as the nation itself, and every bit as dignified as the French. If the middle classes hadn't been quite so distracted by the worship of French food, they might well have written about it, instead of allowing recipes to drop off the cultural radar. Now we're starting to rediscover the stews, pies, pasties, cawls, hotpots; the game, the smoked goods, the amazing fish recipes; the superb lamb dishes -- any of which would, in France, have a 'confrerie' founded in its honor, be declared a national treasure and get written up by panting international gourmands. With a bit of luck, our food culture might be extricating itself from generations of neglect and perceived inferiority -- but not unless we can wrestle our concentration back across the Channel and give it a fighting chance.
Now, lest you think I'm just indulging in the olde English sport of baiting the French, let’s drag ourselves back to Arizona. There are several reasons the article pressed my buttons.
First: I’d always assumed that blinkered, romanticized Francophilia was a disease of the English middle class (and, of course, the French), which is why it's shocking to see it trotted out in a country that has no reason, cultural or historical, to bother with it. Second: it's ill-mannered that anyone with a public platform and a desire to communicate about food should attack his own food culture for failing to be French.
But these are minor gripes -- the real problem is much wider. I believe that unthinking reiteration of these tragic old prejudices damages the interests of anyone who loves food.
When I was at art college, I was probably over-influenced by critics like John Berger and Peter Fuller. They argued that what was regarded as "art" in the West fitted into a tradition shaped by imperialist expansion and that the acquisition and collecting habits of the wealthy -- basically, western art starts with the Greeks, and passes through the Italian renaissance and the Dutch masters because Victorian gentlemen nicked or looted so much of it to populate their museums and stately homes. This didn't mean, as some people have interpreted it, that everything from Fra Lippo Lippi to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was unmitigated crap, but it did mean that in order to understand art, it was important to understand its historical and cultural context. Articles that parrot the same old nonsense about French cooking without context show that appreciation of food and cooking today is as developed as art history was in about 1890 -- ill-informed and elitist, and a poor reflection of the intellect of its perpetrators.
Writing that French food is great, that English food is unremittingly awful -- or even that Phoenix lacks decent chefs -- is easy, but without an understanding of the web of national, cultural and class preconceptions behind it, the statement is pointless. Food -- to me -- is one of the most important creative outlets available to human beings. It will never be taken as seriously as it deserves -- as seriously as art, literature or music -- as long as our appreciation of it remains intellectually naive. Maybe the ability to write a pleasant thousand-word, adjective-laden piece on why French food is simply lovely is the very definition of a food writer. I believe firmly to the contrary. In 2006, it displays a complete lack of objective taste, zero knowledge of food history and an almost criminal ignorance of a wider world of food appreciation.
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Tim Hayward is a freelance writer living in London, and former host of the UK forum. He publishes the newsletter Fire & Knives. Photo by the author.
So much hatred, so much spite...or is it envy...I find that these feelings are often interconnected. You may not think that French cuisine deserves all the glory it has gotten, but you fail to, at least, recognize its historical and culinary influence.
The brits glorified french gastronomy not because it was the fashion of the day but because it was inventive and flavorful. British food has its merits -I can enjoy a good meat pie, sheperd's pie, even bangles and mash- but historically it is not the most flavorful of cuisine and even you can not deny that.
I am angered that you call yourself a lover of food but can not find anything better to do that bash french food. Our influence and our heritage is undeniable and I am sorry that you can not appreciate your "sweet enemy" and as a gentleman recognize a worthy opponent when you see one...
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Peanuts are Pea Nuts, or at least that's the way I've always understood it. In culinary terms, peanuts are nuts, in horticultural terms, peanuts are legumes. In Jamaica all beans are called peas, or in some Caribbean country.
Vanilla beans are not legumes either and are no more beans than coffee beans are.
One person suggested that only peas are eaten green with their hulls, but green beans are eaten just the same. Are chickpeas peas or are they garbanzo beans? I guess the tendril definition is the most accurate one, at least horticulturally, but that makes little difference in culinary terms, which are less scientific.
All in all I think Lars had one of the most thorough, yet simple version of us all...
Truth is it seems that there is just not one answer and different countries have their own idea of what a pea and what a bean is. I am happy about everyones take on it. Thanks, Ya'll, as Paula Deen would say.
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I disagree with Petitpois...Pain de mie is wonderful with Foie Gra. Not the grocery store kind but the one you buy fresh from your boulanger....Toasted with foie gras is in my opinion heaven.....
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Well I never thought the pea thing would take on, yet here we are my friends discussing peas and beans.
How about split peas?
What's up with them?
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Accordind to Wikipedia a pea is a bean:
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What is a droop?
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I am now deeply confused....Nuts aren't beans. Are they???
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Thanks. That does help a bit...I was just curious really. It seems people don't have any ideas or the topic is just not interesting....
I guess a site on horticulture might help...
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CASSOULET
Serves 8 as Main Dish.
Growing up in France, I remember the taste of cassoulet from my childhood. Not easy to find cassoulet in small town Virginia....so we took some local products and made our own cassoulet and the result was fabulous. I encourage everyone to use local ingredients, just like the people of the south west of France did, and as such follow the spirit of traditional cassoulet as opposed to reproducing a dish from far away France.
For all of you out there...Menon1971 was my partner in crime...
cassoulet
- lb navy beans
- confit of duck legs
- lb smoked surry sausage (or anything local)
- lb pork ribs
- strips of bacon chopped (surry bacon in our case)
- c dry white wine
- fl oz 1 can of roma tomatoes chopped with liquid reserved
- yellow onion chopped
- red onion chopped
- shallots chopped
- cloves of garlic chopped
- bay leaves
- 4 sprigs of thyme
- T italian parsley chopped
- T duck fat
- tsp salt (add to taste)
- tsp black pepper (add to taste)
Confit
- T fresh thyme leaves
- T Kosher salt
- T freshly ground pepper
- c duck fat
Stock
- duck carcass cut into pieces
- carrots chopped
- stalks of celery chopped
- yellow onion quartered
- sprigs thyme
- sprigs parsley
- tsp salt
- whole peppercorns
Making the confit:
You can either bone out the duck yourself or you can have you butcher do it for you. If you do it yourself, remove the legs and the breasts from the duck. Set them aside. Remove the skin and the fat from the remaining duck. That's what you are going to render to make the duck fat. You can then trim the breast and leg fat (keep the skin on though).
Salt the duck legs with coarse salt. Approx. 1Tbsp per duck. Sprinkle the pepper and thyme. Set in covered dish and refrigerate for 6-12 hours.
Chop coarsely the fat and the skin and add them to a sauce pan. Add half a cup of water to the pan. Simmer over low heat until water has evaporated and fat has melted. The skin should turn a light brown. Strain through a fine mesh strainer and set aside.
Preheat oven to 375F. Brush off excess salt, pepper and thyme from the confit. Place legs in oven proof dish, and cover with duck fat. Place in oven for 45 min. to 1 hour until skin is lightly brown. Remove the legs, set them aside. Strain the fat again and save for future use.
Duck Stock:
Roast the duck carcass pieces for 20 minutes at 375F. Place roasted bones in stock pot with all the ingredients. Add water to cover. Bring to a boil and simmer for 2 to 3 hours, skimming occasionally. Strain the liquid and let cool in order to remove the excess fat. Set aside 4 cups for cassoulet. You can freeze the rest for future use.
Cassoulet:
Add 1 Tbsp of duck fat in a cast iron dutch oven, bring to medium heat and add chopped bacon. When bacon is lightly brown, remove and set aside. Add the sausages to fat, and brown lightly. Set aside. Brown pork on the bone. Set aside. Saute onions, garlic and shallots until transluscent. Deglaze with a cup of white wine. Add rinsed beans, herbs, roma tomatoes (chopped)and liquid from the can, duck stock, salt, pepper, layer your meat on top of beans. Add water in order to cover the beans and meat. Set in a 300F oven for 3-4 hours. Check periodically to insure that the liquids are appropriate. Add water along the way if needed.
Voila....You can refrigerate overnight if you want. It tastes even better the next day!
The duck confit and the duck stock can be made ahead of time and frozen.
As for wine, we recommend a nice Rose D'anjou or a light red like a Beaujolais (Not nouveau!)
Bon Appetit!
Keywords: Beans, Duck, Main Dish, French, Pork
( RG1911 )
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Bofinger is a classic brasseric I would recommend.
Tony on Oprah
in Food Media & Arts
Posted
WOW, we have a real Bourdain fan club going here. I hope he appreciates your dedication, because obviously there is nothing Mr Bourdain can do wrong in some people's book. I still like him, his books and his shows, but I am not going to defend everything he does, no matter what. A little criticism has never hurt anyone....And a little distance on some people's part wouldn't hurt either....