The perfect French salad: or, ode to vinaigrette
I needed to know the secret to a decent dressing! The kind that my high-school sweetheart had once made for me and that I had tried to duplicate in vain ever since.
I needed to know the secret to a decent dressing! The kind that my high-school sweetheart had once made for me and that I had tried to duplicate in vain ever since.
I have to give credit to Kerrin Rousset. While reading her blog, my eyes feasted on the most heavenly piece of dessert I had ever seen! Surely, this was the crème de la crème of desserts?
Any dish which is À la Normande or Vallée d’Auge generally includes cream and butter, and sometimes mushrooms too. Poulet Vallée d'Auge is chicken with cream, calvados and apples and it’s a rich dish with nothing nouvelle cuisine about it.
I like very well done steak. I’m sure you know that is frowned upon and you may as well write ‘STOOPID TOURIST’ across your forehead... The waiter will give you an argument about how tough the steak will be, so I learnt the French for “I prefer it tough – the tougher the better”!
But after settling permanently in the French countryside, I found myself willing to prove myself worthy of having a French kitchen of my own. And what could have been more helpful to a blundering novice of a Finn that I was than the Frenchman's culinary bible: Je Sais Cuisiner.
I come from a family of amazing French and European cooks and bakers; my Ancestors are from Normandy, France and date back to the 1500s. Most of my life was spent in the kitchen with family and those great times with my Grandpa 'Chevy' Chevalier.
Rachel Khoo is one of Paris's most exciting 'food creatives'. Since moving to Paris to pursue her love of French pastries at the Le Cordon Bleu school, she has combined her technical culinary training with her design flair in a plethora of cooking projects.
Sophie Minetti is a remarkably talented, strong and inspirational French woman and the owner-creator of Sophie M’Chez Vous, which showcases her knack for home management.
Sebastien’s unique school, located in an extraordinary design studio, Atelier, was worthy of a revisit, in order to learn something of his journey from a farm in Normandy to a secluded laneway in Prahran.
Reading a review of an American book on the decline of French food, I was struck by an almost irresistible impulse to argue back. The fall of the greatness of Gallic gastronomy? I scoffed at the notion; how absurd!