Marie Antoinette may not have been the one to say "Let them eat cake!" -- we'll never know for sure -- but one thing is certain: whoever said it first wasn't talking about the sugary stuff, but about bread. The phrase is translated from the French qu'ils mangent de la brioche. If said brioche is baked to a perfect golden brown and topped with sesame seeds, we say, "Oui!"
Just in time for Bastille Day, here is an ideal-looking hamburger bun from across the pond. The American treat was given a French twist by Deb at the Smitten Kitchen, who consulted nearly 100 recipes in search of the ultimate bun. In the end, she went with a technique that ran in the New York Times; the buns turned out "plush and mildly sweet and slightly buttery."
Suffice it to say we're feeling fully fired up for Bastille Day. Bon appetit!
I'm loving Chocolate & Zucchini's series on French food idioms. So far blogstress Clotilde has covered "not knowing whether it's lard or pork" (not knowing what to believe), "having bread on the board" (having a lot of tedious work to do), "falling like a hair on soup" (something or someone appearing at a completely incongruous moment), "rolling someone in flour," (duping or tricking someone naive), "pedaling in semolina" (being entangled in a thorny situation - my favorite!), "drinking whey" (basking in flattery), "breaking sugar on someones back" (engaging in backbiting gossip), "cutting the pear in two" (compromising).
What good English-language food idioms call you think of?
Pàte sucrée is the definitive French tart dough for sweet desserts. It translates as "sugar dough" because if its higher sugar content. It is generally made with the creaming method and bakes up nice and crisp. Blind baking is advised.
16 oz bread flour 5.5 oz powdered sugar .5 tsp baking powder 7 oz butter 3.5 oz eggs (about 2) .5 tsp vanilla extract
Sift the flour, sugar, and baking powder. Place in the bowl of a stand mixer, and blend in the butter to a mealy consistency (looks like course cornmeal). Add the eggs and vanilla extract and mix just until everything is gathered into the dough. Refigerate for at least 4 hours.
Pâte À Foncer is considered the French version of a basic pie dough, but with an extra fine texture. It translates as "lining dough", and can be used for sweet or savory pies or tarts. Another characteristic is that is made with room temperature butter for a finer and crisper crumb.
12 oz room softened butter 1.5 tsp salt 1 tsp sugar 1 egg yolk 3.25 oz milk 15.75 pastry flour (or all purpose)
Soften the butter with the paddle attachment (mix even if it's already room temp). Mix in the salt, sugar, yolk,and milk, then add the flour just until incorporated. Try to get everything mixed in, but stop as soon as everything is gathered into the dough. Refigerate for at least 4 hours.
Piment d'Espelette grown in just a handful of villages in the Basque country of southern France, is as beloved in their region as paprika is in Hungary. The small red peppers can be used fresh, or hung up in bouquets to dry then ground into powder similar to hot paprika. First introduced to France by returning New World missionaries in the 1500s, the Espelette is now an essential feature of Basque cuisine. The village of Espelette holds a Celebration of Peppers each October, with Espelette-infused dishes, banners made from hundreds of red and green peppers, and street performers painted red to resemble the pepper itself.
Espelette goes especially well with seafood, mild cheeses, and hearty vegetable dishes. In Paris, I ate monkfish over white beans in an Espelette cream sauce. It was divine, silky and smoky with just a teeny-tiny kick. You could substitute hot paprika, but it wouldn't be quite the same. You can find ground Espelette in some gourmet markets or online at Amazon.com. There's a trove of Espelette recipes at Epicurien, which is in French but can be translated by Google to decidedly mixed results. I'm especially keen to try the sauteed shrimp with Espelette and Bayonne ham.
One of my favorite things in the world is a thick wedge of pâté de campagne - rustic French pork pâté - served with crusty bread, coarse mustard, and a little jar of pickles. The buttery pâté is cut by a bracing smear of mustard, given body and crunch by the bread. And digging cornichons and pickled pearl onions out of the jar with a tiny fork and popping them, whole, in your mouth, is just plain fun. This combo makes a great dinner party appetizer because, like roll-your-own sushi, it gives guests something to do with their hands while they get to know each other (and you put the finishing touches on the lamb chops). But I admit I always thought pâté was something you bought, at exorbitant cost, at your local chichi market, not something you made yourself.
But a New York Times story about a new book, Terrine, by Stéphane Reynaud, has me ready to bust out the pork belly and a rectangular pan. The book includes recipes for terrines of all types, from pork head to chicken and lemon, to vegetarian zucchini with cream. Check out the article for two free recipes.
In French 101 in college, we all had to do individual spoken exams at the end of the term. The idea was to demonstrate that we could converse simply in the language.
We had been learning kitchen and food terms, and my professor asked me (in French) to describe my mealtimes.
"Mes amis et moi," I began, "Nous nous asseyons sur la table."
My professor looked confused. "Ellen, sur la table? Vous vous asseyez sur la table?"
I nodded happily. "Oui."
I'd told him that my friends and I sat atop the table at mealtimes.
Luckily, you don't have to speak a Français to appreciate Sur la Table's new cookbook, "Things Cooks Love". It's the company's first of several - "The Art & Soul of Baking" and "A Cook's Guide to Knives" will be available this fall).
The book covers kitchen tools and basics, as well as simple recipes to practice on tools and cookware. (What's a cookbook from a gourmet cookware store without a little self-promotion?)
(Pssst - the book is only $25 at the company's website until May 31, when it'll be $35. Get it while it's chaud.)
There's a new magazine out of France, and it's kinda cool in that weird, hipster-y PoMo sort of way. It's called Yummy, and its calling itself a "JunkFoodDesignMagazine" (because spaces between words are so passé).
The magazine - and web site - are mostly en Français, but obviously, art transcends language, and all that jazz, so your lack of French-speaking skills will not hinder your appreciation - or revulsion - from the site.
The featured art runs the gambit from Whodonut?, Virginia Barre's slightly disturbing illustrations of people living in a fast food nation, to Show Her, which seems to be a big excuse for the artist to show photos of a half-naked woman in a rainstorm, occasionally holding a soda bottle (hence, the food connection, I suppose).
Go check it out - you might just be inspired to make some food art of your own. Or just be really grossed out.
The beet has always been my bête noire, the last food I genuinely hated in all forms. I wanted to like beets, I really did. They're so pretty. The stunning magenta of borscht, baby red and yellow beets laying like rare gemstones on a salad plate.
But I always thought they tasted like sweet dirt, with an undertone of something rotten, a whiff of burps and garbage pail. After college I lived with a girl who ate beets out of the can, enjoyed beet-and-goat cheese sandwiches piled as high as corned beef on a Katz's Deli rueben. I had to turn my head.
But it wasn't until I had a grated beet and carrot salad in vinaigrette at a bistro in Paris's Belleville neighborhood last fall that I began to understand the magic. Something about the strong vinaigrette modified the beet's rotten-ish sweetness, brought out the earthy flavors. I'm about to try this recipe, for Clotilde's Grated Carrots and Beets from the venerable Chocolate and Zucchini. Damned if that girl couldn't make a decaying sardine look like a delicacy.
Several days ago, I asked you, my beloved Slashfood readers, for help on what to do with about a bazillion cherries I had picked up. One of the overwhelming responses was for a cherry clafouti - the French dessert-t thing that's made with a pancake batter and fruit. I am not yet telling you what I am doing with the cherries -- it may or may not be a cherry clafouti -- but until I post that, here are eight cherry clafoutis from around the food web for your viewing, reading, and perhaps eating, pleasure:
Imperial Exclusive Vodka from Emperor Brands L.L.C., made in France, is 40% abv. / 80 proof. This super premium vodka is made from a secret recipe that has been handed down for generations. This is a very clean and clear vodka made from the finest French grains and ultra pure and smooth Normandy water, then distilled five times. Many vodkas have as much taste as a glass of pure medicinal grade alcohol. In other words, none. They have had every trace of taste filtered out until there is no character left. That is not the case with Imperial Exclusive Vodka.
When I first tried this spirit I immediately noticed the aroma. Faint but very evident hints of butter, sweet caramel or toffee, the slightest trace of vanilla. I was trying to place the exact scent when it struck me. It was like the faintest touch of the best part of the aromas from the gorgeous movie theaters I vaguely remember from my childhood. Not the cookie cutter places that have two dozen tiny theaters crowded under one roof that you find today. Perpetually grimy and lacking soul. No, I mean the grand old places that only played one movie for a week or two before the next came along. The ones that were spotlessly clean, had comfy, red velvet chairs to sink deep into; and ushers to help you to your seats. Walls decorated with hand-painted murals and thick velvet curtains thirty feet high that spread across the walls right before the lights dimmed to soften the acoustics of the room.
A good cannelé is one of the things that foodies will spend years seeking. Typically, it is a small pastry with a custardy center and slightly crisp/chewy, intensely caramelized crust. There are special molds available to achieve the proper, traditional shape, but having the molds alone doesn't give you the ability to produce a good cannelé, and so there are few bakeries (especially in the US) that carry the French delicacies. Once you know how to make them, however, it seems like it is possible to do so in a good metal pan of any shape. Melissa, from The Traveler's Lunchbox, has clearly take a page from the Pimp That Snack book with her utterly amazing Cannelé Colossus, which she made in a full-sized bundt pan. Her spectacular pastry took three hours to bake, in addition to a fairly long prep time, but it was worth every second.
It's not often that you hear a food blogger, though they are quite generous with praise, describe a dish in just one word: fantastic.
Anyone who loves sugar, loves caramel. This is primarily due to the fact that caramel is cooked sugar, often with butter, cream or other flavorings added to it to alter the texture and taste. Regardless of the specifics, however, a good caramel is a wonderful thing and Trish Deseine's Caramel has plenty of wonderful things to offer a reader with a sweet tooth.
The book was originally published in French under the title Du caramel plein la bouche and made it to translation for an English-speaking audience due to the popularity of some of the author's previous works, as well as her fine writing style. The book goes into great detail about the process of making caramel and well over 100 recipes that it can be incorporated into. Desserts and other inherently sweet dishes are obvious inclusions, but Deseine includes recipes that feature meats and vegetables, as well. The idea of a primarily savory caramel dish might sound slightly odd, but only until you consider that there are many dishes that involve natural sugars from fruits and vegetables, including caramelized onions and caramelized pineapple, which is included in Pizza with smoked chicken, caramelized pineapple and mozzarella. Some of the sweet dishes include Caramel Fondue and Caramel Fudge.
Champagne is a term that applies to sparkling wines that are from the Champagne region of France. This name is protected, in Europe, by Protected Designation of Origin status and in France by Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée, both of which state that to use the name "champagne," the wine must be produced in France, in the Champagne region and in a traditional manner to produce a specific product. Everything else is just a sparkling wine, not champagne.
This standard is followed throughout Europe and many other countries, although the US, for example, does not follow it and any sparkling wine can use the word champagne, which is considered to be a generic term. In France, the word carries a premium image and a premium price, so there is an incentive for sellers to use it instead of other descriptors. Just last week, the police arrested a number of people for passing off "tens of thousands of bottles of low-priced bubbly wine" as champagne, selling it for 5 to 10 times the original price after replacing the bottles' labels with false champagne labels. Most of these wines were sold "via associations or in door-to-door sales," which goes to show that if you want a premium product, you are better off going to a reputable source.
Mendiants are small disks of chocolate that are studded with dried or candied fruits and nuts. Traditionally, they are part of the Christmas celebration in France, where the fruits and nuts on top of the chocolates were chosen to represent "the four mendicant monastic orders and the color of their robes." The original toppings were raisins for the Dominicans, hazelnuts for the Augustins, dried figs for the Franciscans and almonds for the Carmelites. Now, chocolatiers are just as likely to get creative with the toppings for these bite-sized treats as they are with any other confection.
You can always buy a batch that is already made, but making mendiants is a simple process. Start by assembling a selection of toppings, such as cacao nibs, nuts (pistachios, walnuts, pecans, almonds, hazelnuts), dried fruits (cranberries, raisins, cherries, candied orange peel) and anything else that pairs well with chocolate, like small chunks of butter cookies or fleur de sel , as recommended by Clotilde. Melt some good quality chocolate and drop spoonfuls of it onto a sheet of wax or parchment paper to make circles. Place a small assortment of toppings on each disc and set aside to harden. Peel off when ready to serve.
I'm loving 
Piment d'Espelette grown in just a handful of villages in the Basque country of southern France, is as beloved in their region as paprika is in Hungary. The small red peppers can be used fresh, or hung up in bouquets to dry then ground into powder similar to hot paprika. First introduced to France by returning New World missionaries in the 1500s, the Espelette is now an essential feature of Basque cuisine. The village of Espelette holds a Celebration of Peppers each October, with Espelette-infused dishes, banners made from hundreds of red and green peppers, and street performers painted red to resemble the pepper itself. 
The beet has always been my bête noire, the last food I genuinely hated in all forms. I wanted to like beets, I really did. They're so pretty. The stunning magenta of borscht, baby red and yellow beets laying like rare gemstones on a salad plate. 
Champagne is a term that applies to sparkling wines that are from the Champagne region of France. This name is protected, in Europe, by Protected Designation of Origin status and in France by 
Mendiants are small disks of chocolate that are studded with dried or candied fruits and nuts. 
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