10 minute read

I made French food my culinary focus of last year. Each time I wanted a “project” to cook at the weekend, I made it my mission to recreate French classics I saw on YouTube. While I didn’t quite make it to recreating Pierre Koffman’s pig trotters, which two of my favourite cooking channels did within a week of each other (Fallow and Adam Byatt), I am pretty proud of the things I managed to make.

An essential quote for exploring French food

Mains

Sautéed chicken with Tarragon

This was the first dish that showed me the power of classical technique and I just love how a whole chicken can be transformed into this elegant final product. After scoring Larousse Gastronomique for £4 in a car boot sale, I followed its terse instructions to sauté chicken “à brun” then add shallots and deglaze with white wine. In the meantime, create a browned chicken stock from the leftover carcass and use this thickened sauce to finish off the sauce and get that shine. It’s such a good dish I created it four times within the year.

Coq au vin

This coq au vin was what finally convinced me there was no such thing as cooking wine. I sacrificed two glasses of a nice Bordeaux as an experiment to marinate some old tough chicken legs. The result had that same zing I tasted in Paris and was much thinner than a classic British/Irish stew I was used to.

While I managed to make an excellent coq au vin, I was not so lucky with its cousin the beef Bourguignon. I was plagued by poor choice of beef cut, a reduced-price rib of beef disintegrated into flakes and another cheap cut from the local butchers was so chalky Dom Pérignon asked for their soil back.

Pommes Sardalaise

Being half Irish, I already had a pretty decent grasp on potatoes with mashed potato genuinely being my favourite food. So I was on the look out for other potato dishes to satiate my starchy appetite, and what’s the only way to beat butter? Duck fat.

Fair warning, this is an insane amount of duck fat so be prepared for the consequences the next day 💨.

Pan Bagnat

It’s all been a bit high brow up till now, so I’ll bring it down a level. One of my favourite guilty pleasure lunches is the Gregg’s tuna baguette. I can only assume they were inspired by this French picnic classic. This video is the over-the-top version of this dish but has a really infectious energy.

Blanquette de poulet (couldn’t find veau)

Another dish that we tried in Paris and reminded me of one of my favourite dishes growing up, Mum’s creamy chicken with rice. Instead of cream, this recipe is thickened with a roux to make a velouté. Using the stock from poaching the chicken and vegetables is such a genius technique and gives the sauce an amazing flavour. Its also mind blowing how much each element retains its own flavour, making every mouthful different.

French Onion soup

More of a recipe to prove I’ve done it than something I would make regularly. Needs even more cheese than you think. Slices worked much better than grating it on.

Consommé

The technique was like magic. I think I got the ratios of vegetables slightly off so the taste was a bit too carroty but it was still a cool thing to create.

Onion tart tatin

We definitely managed to capture the taste but our onions fell apart a bit compared to immaculate YouTube videos, but I am not willing to spend over £10 on Roscoff onions.

Ratatouille

I tried the fancy movie version of this dish a few years ago and it all just turned into mush… So I was happier with this fine dining version, but I still think the dicing is slightly overkill.

Dessert

I never thought I would be that guy, but a stand mixer purchase really improved my pâtisserie game towards the end of the year. Yes it did cost several hundreds of pounds, but I can now spend all day creating Lemon meringue tarts instead of spending £5.50 per tart at Choux so who’s laughing now… In my defense, it is the most fun I’ve ever had making a dessert.

Lemon meringue tart

Just look how cute these are! This dessert also unlocks lemon curd, sweet pastry and Italian meringue from the bucket list.

Madeleines

I bought the madeleine tray in Paris so I kind of had to learn how to make these. My humps can’t rival Aya’s, but at least I could tut at The Great British Bake Off for giving the contestants silicon madeleine moulds in the final. Don’t they know its the contrast of hot oven and cold tray that creates the bump?!

Profiteroles

Éclairs are another one of my favourite desserts that costs £5.50 a pop at Le Choux, which obviously justifies making too many to eat myself. I went for profiteroles instead after trying them at Paulette (below). Much like doing a physics degree is now only useful for answering University Challenge questions, I probably won’t make these more than once a year but at least I know what crème diplomat is.

Start with making the pastry cream, used this video for the choux pastry and crème diplomat but swapped to this video for the chocolate topping.

Somehow I forgot to take a picture!

Crème Brûlée

Actually much easier than it seems, I already had a blow torch in my endless quest to perfect egg fried rice. Be careful not to burn the sugar as it gets very bitter.

Chocolate Mousse

We tried so many recipes but we couldn’t get it quite right before the sight of mousse became sickening. I think the “French classics” (below) version is probably the best, but I just hate the idea of using an uneven number of egg whites and yolks.

Restaurants

Bouillon Chartier

Bouillon Chartier was just so perfectly French. A terse conversation with the waiter yielded all the classics we could fit into one sitting. I’m sure you can tell from the scribbles on our table, but we ordered 1/2 a Bordeaux, 12 escargot, pork terrine, leeks vinaigrette, beef Bourguignon, boudin noir and even tête de veau. Judging from their wandering eyes and tutting heads, this was far too much food according to the elderly French couple sharing our table. Thankfully the quality of the food meant I didn’t need any more encouragment from our geriatric neighbours to clean the plates.

The Bourguignon had huge chunks of tender beef and serving it with Macaroni rather than mashed potato was something new to me.

Thankfully, I still got my mash fix with the boudin noir, essentially a black pudding sausage. The taste was excellent, but the lack of oats in the sausage meant its texture was too similar to the mash.

While the picture doesn’t make the tête de veau look particularly appetising, the meat was exceptionally tender and the fat/gelatin had an amazingly chewy texture reminiscent of a beef tendon we had in another fancier restaurant.

We absolutely loved this place, it was just so grand yet down to earth at the same time. Like the horrible tourists we were, we ended up buying 4 wine glasses and two side plates with the Bouillon Chartier logo on (I’m sure you’ve noticed from some of the other pictures in this page).

Brasserie Zédel

Still can’t believe this place exists in London. The online menu makes it look like any other French bistro with inexplicably higher prices, but once you step into the dining room it all makes sense. The food was so good I didn’t even mind the live Jazz.

This special of Asparagus with Bearnaise and a poached duck egg was just perfectly creamy and fresh. It was gone before we knew it.

I had the Choucroute Zédel, the biggest of three choucroute options, as I wanted to try as many assorted meats as possible. It turns out to be a mountain of food which would normally be impossible to get through without the choucroute (sauerkraut) providing a fresh, tangy offset to the meat. My favourite was the smoked ham hock, which was reminiscent of those thick cut BBQ ribs. My only criticism is that the potatoes were surplus to requirement and were just a bit bland.

We also had the dressed crab, which was easily the best I’ve ever had.

Paulette

We went to this small French bistro for our 1st wedding anniversary after hearing about through work colleagues. If it wasn’t such a special event I would have paid more attention to the prices, but leaving that aside the food was really very good indeed.

For starters we tried three classics.

We wanted to see a real onion tarte tatin in the wild after trying our own version (above). This had a great taste but was served cold and therefore became a bit soggy. Obviously, we ordered Escargot Bourgogne but these were very different to normal garlic-y ones. Much more herby taste which wasn’t as good as normal in my opinion. The real star was the moules à la crème au piment d’Espelette - the best mussel sauce I’ve ever had. It tasted great, the little hint of heat in the background and strong mussel flavour. The thickness, as well as taste, of the sauce practically forced you to order another round of bread in spite of the £6 fee.

Confit duck leg with tarbais beans (the ones used in Cassoulet) was also very good. Simple but perfectly balanced, again a background spice to keep it lingering between mouthfuls and herby punch on top. Went really well with the garlic creamy spinach.

Just look at it. Beautiful.

I’ve tried making beurre blanc at home but I keep thinking “it can’t possibly be that much butter”. I think I was proved wrong with this Cod in buerre blanc sauce. The sauce was really mild and smooth, mainly tasted the chives with just a subtle butter in the background. Again, a beautiful presentation that’s not out of reach at home.

The Tart Bordaloue was a pleasant surprise, the chocolate layer must have used the exact same chocolate as a Pain au Chocolat.

The finale was profiteroles. The chocolate sauce was so fun, but the ice cream was actually a bit too cold. I would have preferred whipped cream or crème diplomat (above).

Summary

So what have I gained from eating like a Frenchman for a year? Well, from a technique perspective I think I’ve come a long way. The other day I made the blanquette the poulet almost a year after the first attempt. It tasted so much fuller than the first try, probably because of little things like salting in each step and not letting it boil too ferociously. Another example of the learning the “little things” is with the sautéed chicken and tarragon. Having made it so many times I can now instinctively judge when the shallots have been sweated down enough, and I know how to evaporate the wine until the reduction looks a bit jammy. These skills are applicable in so much other cooking, like a risotto or gravy, which is why I chose French as the cuisine to focus on first. The downside is that I do now use double the amount of pans for the same recipe, which is a real killer when we don’t have a dishwasher.

I have also learnt that you can find much better recipes when you search in the native language, something I plan on continuing when I take on Italian cuisine in the coming year. I already have a much better foundation in Italian than I did in French, but I am determined to learn how to make good fresh pasta. Although, the only Italian dessert I really enjoy is Tiramisu, so I think I will continue with French patisserie and even take on the dreaded Macaron.

So I’ll bid French cuisine adieu for now and start practicing my 🤌.

Sources

Youtube

Books

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