Le Foodist (French Cooking Class)
I’ve always been curious about French cooking, how they prepare and utilize ingredients, so this cooking class was the perfect way to spend one of my 4 days in Paris. Honestly, I had been looking forward to this since the moment that I booked it the week prior.
Fred, the chef and founder of Le Foodist, led the class. His knowledge and passion for French cuisine was evident as he took us on a Market tour, guiding us through the Latin Quarter of Paris, to an open air market, sharing historical stories along the way, that somehow all tied back to French cuisine.
As we arrived at the open air market, we learned a lot about the goings on there. In fact, all markets in Paris are trader’s markets (not farmer’s markets, like we are so accustomed to back home in California). The original market Les Halles, is no longer in the heart of Paris, so now there are scattered open air markets where imported ingredients from all around France and beyond, are sold to traders who bring them to these smaller open air markets all around Paris. They do have programs where they can get produce from real farmers directly, via “Beehive” which is similar to what we know as CSA.
We found a trader who had a table of “Biologique” (organic) produce, and Fred preferred to find as much Bio produce as possible for our meal that day – my kind of chef! He selected a handful of items from there, and then moved onto the fishmonger for mussels. From there, he took us into Paris’ best cheese shop, Fromages Laurent Dubois. We all gathered together and passed around a fresh baguette, tearing off a healthy portion and passing it on. He insisted we pause to break bread together, as he passed the most delicious triple cream Camembert cheese for us to enjoy while he told us a story about French cheeses. Cheese heaven!
A few of the take away points were:
1. Co-ops were birthed out of brining the fruits of labor together to create something with greater numbers (i.e. – can’t make cheese with one cow, but you can with 100).
2. The term “Terre” – infers that what we do depends on where we are. Many varieties of cheese were born out of the necessity to adapt to local conditions. Same goes for wine!
3. “Everything is French”. Somehow every story was brought back to how the French created something we use or enjoy today (kind of like My Big Fat Greek Wedding).
Back at the beautiful kitchen, we put on aprons and started getting to work on this delicious menu:
Course 1: Moules Marinere
Course 2: Coq Au Vin & Potato Gratin Dauphinois
Course 3: Peach Melba with Raspberry Coulis & Fresh Ice Cream
Course 1: Moules Marinere
(French Mussels – steamed in onion, butter, parsley, garlic and white wine)
We cleaned the mussels, by pulling off any “beards”. We learned that the key to sorting good/bad mussels is to sort the closed and open mussels – closed are good and open ones are the ones to test. He urged us not to toss them right away if we saw that they were open, but instead to test them by pinching them closed again. If it stays open, it’s dead and should be tossed, but if it re-closes and stays closed it’s still alive and it is good to use.
Mussels steamed in some water, white wine, onion, butter, for about 5-7 minutes, and when they are open, remove from heat and toss with fresh chopped parsley and minced garlic. Serve mussels with some of the white wine sauce and a good baguette.
Course 2: Coq Au Vin & Potato Gratin Dauphinois
Chicken in 5 minutes (sous vide type method), red wine sauce by reduction, & the best potato gratin ever.
For the Chicken:
We started with the best French equivalent of organic/free-ranch chicken breasts, and with the flat side of the knife and our fist, we pounded any thicker parts to make the whole breast equal thickness. Then the chicken is seasoned on one side with salt and pepper and then transferred to a piece of plastic wrap, flipped seasoned side down. The top is also seasoned with salt, pepper, and minced fresh rosemary (just a few needles picked off the stem and minced small). With the plastic wrap, we pull it over the top, to roll the chicken on top of itself, in half long-ways. Then, tightening things up, rolled up to the end of the plastic wrap. From here, we removed any air inside the rolled breast, making sure the plastic wrap is tight, we grabbed each end of the plastic wrap and in the air whipped it around several times. This created sort of a chicken sausage. We tied off the ends, and then they were cooked like this in boiling water, for about 5 minutes. Once removed from water, let sit, covered for another 5 minutes, and then remove the plastic casing. Slice chicken rounds on the bias at 45 degrees – so it looks pretty on the plate and holds the sauce well!
For the Sauce:
This was made with love and patience. We started by melting butter – a good amount – and sweating the chopped shallot. Then we added sliced mushrooms and sprigs of fresh herbs – bay leaf thyme and rosemary. In French cooking, it is called a “bouquet garrni” when bay leaf and thyme are added with one other herb – it can be anything, but we used rosemary. These can be put into a sachet or cheesecloth to keep together and easy for fishing out at the end, but we just threw them in whole.
On butter – Fred reminded us that we need fat because it draws out flavor by the chemistry of the molecules. Flavor is dissolved and/or extracted by the fat and carried to your palate to coat your tongue and tastebuds. He used the example of a vinaigrette – while the vinegar is the main ingredient, if you dressed a salad with just vinegar, it would wilt and get soggy really fast, so adding a fat like olive oil to emulsify with the vinegar, helps coat the lettuce in an even distribution. There is a really good new Netflix documentary that does a whole episode on the important of fat, it’s called Salt Fat Acid Heat.
Food science is fascinating I tell you!
Then we added the red wine. We used dry wine, such as a cabernet sauvignon, because of the high tannins, which is what you want left at the end of the reduction – all the flavor will be left without the liquid. I’ll be honest, after doing this, I’ve never truly made a real red wine reduction sauce… I’ve never actually reduced it all, but I can see why this is an important step for flavor! The trick is to use the guideline of 1:1 ratio of wine to stock when making a reduction sauce. For example, one bottle of wine, plus the aromatics – reduced all the way down, plus 1 bottle stock, reduced a bit to capture all of the flavor from the reduction. We strained the aromatics out of the sauce and then added the liquid back into the sauce pan. We picked the mushrooms out of the strainer and set aside for plating.
Then the sauce is thickened with either the classic French roux (butter & flour), or we used cornstarch – which kept the red wine reduction a beautiful deep red color and not a milky white like a roux would have created.
For the Gratin:
Using mandolin to slice peeled potatoes, we arranged them in a glass baking dish (garlic and butter rubbed on the bottom and sides), topping each layer with sea salt, pepper, and nutmeg, then adding another layer – about 4 in total. We finished off the layered potatoes with cream. Just straight cream, nothing else. No cheese, no sauce, just simple and delicious cream. Potatoes were baked for about an hour and cooled slightly before serving, garnished with parsley.
Course 3: Peach Melba with Raspberry Coulis & Fresh Ice Cream
(Ice cream from crème anglaise)
To get started, poach the peaches in a mixture of white wine, water and sugar. Fred taught us a trick to cut a piece of parchment in a circle, with a little circle hole in the middle – to fit inside the pot of poaching liquid. This keeps the peached immersed while the pot is boiling.
We let the peaches cool before peeling them, and cutting into slices for later.
We then started the ice cream, by making a crème anglaise, with egg yolks, sugar and milk/cream. There are a few ways to make crème anglaise, but we did the quicker way, by bringing cream and vanilla bean to a simmer, then whisking the egg yolk and sugar separately before adding to the hot vanilla cream. This way ensures that the egg yolk doesn’t cook and curdle.
We were taught a trick for when to know when the crème anglaise is tempered just right. Fred called this, “French Magic”. When whisking the mixture, whisk one way and then remove whisk. When the liquid continues to swirl the same direction, if it is done right, it will spin backward, about a half a spin just before it comes to a stop. Pretty cool, and no thermometers needed!
We added this sauce to an ice cream maker and let it do it’s thing!
For the Raspberry Coulis, we pulse pureed fresh raspberries with powdered sugar (we used powdered so we didn’t have to cook the sauce to incorporate granulated sugar). Then we squeeze a lemon, pulsed again and pressed through a fine mesh strainer. So simple!
Bon Apetit!
We did all the prep in the beginning, and took a few breaks to enjoy the fruits of our labor! Once the mussels were ready, we plated those and sat down to enjoy them with a paired sauvignon blanc. They were the best mussels I’ve ever had. I sopped up every last bit of white wine sauce with my bread.
We then plated the main course Coq au Vin & gratin, garnishing the chicken with the red wine reduction sauce and delicious mushrooms, served with a hearty side of gratin, garnished with parsley. We sat down in the most cozy and charming dining room. We lifted our paired Cab Franc wine glass and clanged glasses, exchanging “à votre santé” and locking eyes with one another before digging into our meal.
We had conversation, while we enjoyed every bite. Asking Fred questions about French cuisine, culture and everything in between. I’m a curious one, so I had a handful of things to ask our teacher.
Q.What’s the deal with breakfast – does it exist?
A. Not really. We have a hot drink, and maybe have some bread and butter with jam, potentially a slice of ham.
Fearing that this was the answer – we still had a morning left – and we couldn’t understand where to find breakfast and by the time we did it was already too late for lunch.
Q. So what about lunch, then. Is that a bigger meal?
A. I’ll tell you something that I read in an article – when a lady was asked if she had lunch, she replied “no, I didn’t have time for lunch today, I just had a sandwich.” Real “food”, what is considered eating lunch, is sitting down with people, that is a meal. Sandwich is food on the go, not lunch.
In France, I learned that lunch is about 12:30 to 2ish and Dinner is at about 8 or 8:30.
Fred went on to share something that I believe is so on point. When we sit down to a meal, the time it takes to eat an appetizer, a main plate and a dessert (which is totally unrushed), allows for our body to understand that it is satiated. The portions are smaller and served in stages, versus the USA, where most times, we just expect a huge plate of food to be thrown down right in front of us, so we can inhale it as fast as we can, ask for the bill, pay, quickly give our side-hugs to our dinner mates and then scurry off to our car to rush off to the next thing.
Fred also said he believed that the variety of flavor when having a 3-course meal helps the mind and body feel satiated. I really liked this response as well. It makes me think that if we did things a little differently in this area, if we would not only feel satiated and not overfull, but also less stressed and more energized.
Even fast food is done differently – France is McDonald’s 2nd biggest market, of course, after USA. People here use it at a gathering place to connect, grab a bite, but WITH people, and hang out like someone would at Starbucks. I find this fascinating.
I’ll leave you with this last one:
Q. Do people eat a croissant every day for breakfast?
A. (laughing) No, but the French do eat an average of half a baguette per person everyday.
Feed your sense of wonder,
Chrissy Weir
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