The World on a Plate: 40 Cuisines, 100 Recipes, and the Stories Behind Them
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The World on a Plate: 40 Cuisines, 100 Recipes, and the Stories Behind Them
384eBook
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Overview
Best Culinary Travel Book (U.K.), Gourmand World Cookbook Awards
Finalist for the Fortnum & Mason Food Book Award
“When we eat, we travel.” So begins this irresistible tour of the cuisines of the world, revealing what people eat and why in forty cultures. What’s the origin of kimchi in Korea? Why do we associate Argentina with steak? Why do people in Marseille eat bouillabaisse? What spices make a dish taste North African versus North Indian? What is the story behind the curries of India? And how do you know whether to drink a wine from Bourdeaux or one from Burgundy?
Bubbling over with anecdotes, trivia, and lore—from the role of a priest in the genesis of Camembert to the Mayan origins of the word chocolate—The World on a Plate serves up a delicious mélange of recipes, history, and culinary wisdom to be savored by food lovers and armchair travelers alike.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780698194069 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Penguin Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 05/26/2015 |
| Sold by: | Penguin Group |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 384 |
| File size: | 8 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
INTRODUCTION
It is not just the great works of mankind that make a culture. It is the daily things, like what people eat and how they serve it.
• LAURIE COLWIN, Home Cooking •
WHEN WE EAT, we travel.
Think back to your last trip. Which are the memories that stand out? If you’re anything like me, meals will be in the forefront of your mind when you reminisce about travels past. Tortilla, golden and oozing, on a lazy Sunday in Madrid; piping hot shakshuka for breakfast in Tel Aviv; oysters shucked and sucked from their shells on Whitstable shingle. My memories of the things I saw in each of those places have acquired a hazy, sepia quality with the passing of time. But those dishes I remember in Technicolor.
As Proust noted on eating a petit madeleine* with his tea, food escorts us back in time and shapes our memory. The distinct flavors, ingredients and cooking techniques that we experience in other spaces and times are also a gateway to the culture in question. What we ate in a certain place is as important, if not more so, than the other things we did there—visits to galleries and museums, walks, tours—because food quite literally gives us a taste of everyday life.
Whenever I go abroad my focus is on finding the food most typical of wherever I am, and the best examples of it. Food typifies everything that is different about another culture and gives the most authentic insight into how people live. Everyone has to eat, and food is a common language.
The late, great American novelist and home cook Laurie Colwin put everyday food alongside “the great works of mankind” in making a culture. I have to agree. A baguette, the beloved French bread stick, is the canvas for infinite combinations of quintessential Gallic flavors (from cheese to charcuterie and more). It is steeped in history* and can arguably tell you more about French culture than Monet’s lilies. Moroccan food expert Paula Wolfert, a beatnik of the 1960s who flitted from Paris to Tangier with the likes of Paul Bowles and Jack Kerouac, also relates to Colwin’s words. “Food is a way of seeing people,” she once said to me—such a simple statement, but so true. Unlike guidebooks and bus tours, food provides a grassroots view of populations as they live and breathe. When we eat from the plate of another culture, we grow to understand—mouthful by mouthful—what it is about.
Eating from different cultures is not just a way of seeing people: it can train a different lens on the food itself, too. I started eating meat again a few years ago after twelve years of being a (fish-eating) vegetarian. But while I was happy to try all sorts of cuts and organs, lamb still troubled me. I’ve loathed the fatty, cloying scent of roasting lamb since I was a child, an aversion that had become almost pathological. When I met Lebanese cook Anissa Helou for the first time, I casually slipped my antipathy for lamb into the conversation. Her jaw dropped. She told me this was impossible, that I couldn’t write a book about the world’s food without a taste for lamb. A few months later I was at her Shoreditch apartment eating raw lamb kibbeh (see page 170) and devouring it. Her delicately balanced homemade sabe’ bharat (seven spice mix) didn’t so much mask as complement the strong flavor of raw meat, which we ate with white tabbouleh. I might not like British roast lamb, the smell of which wafted around my grandparents’ kitchen on many a Sunday, but it turns out I love raw lamb prepared in a Levantine kitchen. Persian ghormeh sabzi (lamb stew with herbs and kidney beans, see page 187) was also a revelation. Ingredients take on different guises in other cuisines, and this can transform our perception of them.
In recent years food has assumed a status analogous to film, literature and music in popular culture, expressing the tastes of society in the moment. Food manifests the zeitgeist. There are now global trends in food. In cosmopolitan cities from London to New York, Tokyo to Melbourne, crowds flock to no-reservations restaurants that serve sharing plates against a backdrop of distressed décor, or to street-food hawkers selling gourmet junk food and twee baked goods. Today’s most famous food professionals—from the multi-Michelin-starred René Redzepi to neo-Middle Eastern pastry chef Yotam Ottolenghi and TV cook Nigella Lawson—are another facet to celebrity culture. They prize creativity in the kitchen, drawing on many different culinary and cultural influences to make dishes that are unique to them, for which society’s food lovers have a serious appetite.
Amidst this enthusiasm for food and the growing fascination with culinary trends (which seem to change as frequently as the biannual fashion calendar), there are gaps in our knowledge about “pedigree” cuisines. Self-proclaimed “foodies” may know who David Chang* is, proudly order offal dishes in restaurants or champion raw milk over pasteurized alternatives, but can they pinpoint what actually makes a national or regional cuisine? How do you define the food of, say, Lebanon or Iran? What distinguishes these cuisines from one another? What are the principle tastes, techniques of cooking and signature dishes from each? In short, what and why do people eat as they do in different parts of the world?
Taking you on a journey around forty world cuisines, my aim is to demystify their essential features and enable you to bring dishes from each of them to life. Remember: when we eat, we travel. Treat this book as your passport to visit any of these places and sample their delicacies—all from your very own kitchen.
• WHAT IS A CUISINE? •
AMERICAN ACADEMIC-CUM-FARMER Wendell Berry once said that “eating is an agricultural act,” drawing attention to the fact that what we eat in a given place reflects the terrain and climate where local produce lives and grows. But this is an oversimplification, taking only geography into consideration.
In fact, a cuisine is the edible lovechild of both geography and history. Invasions, imperialism and immigration solder the influence of people’s movement onto the landscape, creating cuisines that are unique to the place but, by definition, hybrid—like that of Sicily, where the Greeks, Romans, Normans, Arabs, Spanish, French and, most recently, Italians have all had their moment of governance. Today, Sicilian dishes express both the peoples that have inhabited the island and the rich Mediterranean produce available there.
I have learned that no cuisine is “pedigree”; they are all mongrels, as hybrid as your average hound in the pound. Even those with the most distinctive national and regional character are the result of different human traditions being fused with physical geography and its produce.* Some cuisines are much younger than others—those of the New World, for example—but our knowledge of the more recent history in which they were formed proves a fascinating lesson in how a cuisine develops.
For example, we’re going to travel to California (see page 297) not only because I have what might fairly be described as an overtly sentimental attachment to the place, but also because I believe that it has changed the way we look at food. Much of the food revolution that has taken place in recent years can be traced back to the Golden State and its distinctive approach to fusing its various inherited cooking traditions. They are the building blocks of something wholly new—derivative yet authentic.
I like to think of cuisines as stews—they often have the same or similar components as one another, but produce wildly different results. Consider how different Indian and Moroccan foods are, despite many fundamental similarities: clay-pot cooking, stewing and, most significantly, the specific spices they have in common: cumin, turmeric, cinnamon and infinite blends of these and others. As you’ll see on the Spice Route map on pages 154–55, the interplay between terrain and people—geography and history—gives each cuisine I explore in this book a unique chemistry and individual magic.
• HOW THIS BOOK WORKS •
ESTABLISHING AN EXHAUSTIVE DNA of forty world cuisines would be no mean feat. This book is intended to be an entry point only, a go-to guide for anyone with a fledgling curiosity about the building blocks that make up some of the world’s key cuisines. It covers flavors and ingredients—which spices are used, whether oil or butter (or no fat at all) is favored—as well as how things are cooked and served. I’ve highlighted key features of each cuisine in the Pantry Lists, your essential shopping list for each cuisine we visit on our journey. I’ve also given you a few really typical recipes from each place. If you’re keen to know more, turn to the Further Reading section on page 349 for suggested books on individual cuisines, by experts.
The Pantry Lists are not intended to be definitive catalogues, more an indication of the kinds of things you might want to have in stock (in addition to the Kitchen Essentials—see page 7) when you cook from a particular tradition. They include ingredients that struck me as unique or localized to certain places—such as Sichuan peppers from the Sichuan province of China, dried limes in Iran or pimentón in Spain—and, I hope, will inspire you to read the chapter in question before embarking on your culinary voyage. Assume that, most of the time, the Pantry Lists won’t include the ingredients I’ve put on the Kitchen Essentials list unless I want to stress the prevalence of one in a certain place—chickpeas in the Mediterranean, for example, or tahini paste in the Levant and Israel. No matter how important they are to a cuisine, the likes of extra virgin olive oil and garlic don’t feature on Pantry Lists: they are staples to be found in every well-stocked kitchen, no matter which cuisine you are tackling.
I’ve always taken a pretty relaxed approach to following recipes. They can be enormously useful in helping us to bring a dish to life, but too many of us are shackled by the idea that a recipe is a set of rules, which is a recipe for disaster. My advice would be to do what feels right. Put in more salt or avoid the fresh coriander if that’s what appeals to your tastes, sear the steak or fry the omelette for a couple of minutes more or less if you’re so inclined. No one knows your palate and cooking equipment like you do, so exercise some creative license.
Following the same logic, if you really want to make one of these recipes but can’t find a certain ingredient or don’t have a piece of equipment, don’t let that put you off. Just try substituting the closest possible thing. Not everyone has access to a metropolitan array of ethnic shops selling niche ingredients or owns a tagine pot, and I firmly believe that you can embody authentic flavors without following a recipe to the letter.
You’ll find a list of my Kitchen Essentials on page 7—these are the equipment and ingredients I prefer never to be without in my own kitchen. A list like this will obviously differ from one person to another and you may find that mine doesn’t reflect how you like to eat, but in my experience the things I have included enable me to whip up something tasty from a number of different culinary canons without too much difficulty.
Though in part a reference book, The World on a Plate is also deeply personal, showcasing my own culinary interests and experiences. It reflects where I’ve been, the people I have spoken to, and what I like to eat. I’ve chosen just forty of countless world cuisines so there are of course gaps, but I’ve included those I consider particularly formative in our contemporary eating habits. (One particular revelation was the extent to which Persian cuisine—the ancient cooking traditions of the country known today as Iran—has influenced so many of the major cuisines we know and love: Indian, Turkish, Levantine, Mediterranean. You’ll see that Persian influences keep cropping up over the course of this book.) For three European countries (France, Spain and Italy), China, India and the United States, I have included more than one region. They seemed to me too established and too regionally nuanced to justify grouping their various culinary enclaves together.
I want this book to be as comfortable by your bedside as it is by your stovetop—as much a book to be read as to cook from. My job as a food journalist affords me the opportunity to meet some incredibly talented chefs, food experts and writers, from whom I’ve taken inspiration and practical tips in equal measure. In each chapter, you’ll encounter an authority about the cuisine in question. They are too numerous to name here, but all have been generous with their time, knowledge and cooking. (I have been well fed while writing this book.)
I hope you enjoy reading and cooking from The World on a Plate and that, with its help, you feel inspired to set off on some international journeys from your kitchen, reminisce about places already visited or enthuse about travels to come.
Bon voyage and bon appétit!
KITCHEN ESSENTIALS
• EQUIPMENT •
WHEN I SAY “essentials,” I really mean it. I’ve read plenty of cookbooks that assume you have a mandolin, a Kitchenaid, even a sous vide, all of which have their place—but I wouldn’t class any of them as essential. You won’t need anything too specialist for most of the recipes featured in these pages. Remember, this is home-cooked food of the world and should require only the most rudimentary accoutrements of a working home kitchen.
I’m of the opinion that too much cooking apparatus confuses things, and personally I avoid using anything that endangers my fingers with an electronic blade or leads to a lot of tedious washing up. That said, a blender, for example, is definitely a useful piece of equipment if you want to make dips, sauces, soups and so on, and therefore makes it onto my list.
My favorite list of essential kitchen equipment is “The Low-Tech Person’s Batterie de Cuisine” in Laurie Colwin’s Home Cooking. (If you like reading about food as much as you like cooking it, and if you like your food writing wry, dry and sometimes a little cutting, then you need to acquire this book.) I’d echo most of Colwin’s recommendations, although in many instances she suggests having two of things (spatulas, even soup pots), which aren’t always entirely essential in my view, particularly if you have a partner/roommate/parent/other minion who is willing to wash up as you cook.
So here is a short list of what I consider to be necessary to make any of the recipes I’ve featured in this book, and indeed for you to freestyle from any of the cuisines I have covered. The corkscrew and radio are obviously optional, but if you’re anything like me . . .
LARGE NONSTICK FRYING PAN • It doesn’t need to be expensive. I bought my favorite for less than twenty dollars in the supermarket.
SAUCEPANS • A heavy-bottomed Le Creuset-style one that can also go in the oven and a light, medium-sized one (again, of the affordable supermarket kind). It does help here to have two on hand.
WOK • An essential accessory in the student kitchen circa 1998, but still very useful for blasting stir-fry ingredients quickly and effectively so that they cook without losing their crunch and goodness.
DEEP BAKING DISH/ROASTING PAN
CASSEROLE DISH
PRESSURE COOKER • Arguably not an essential, but really useful if you get into the habit of making stews, or just to soften ingredients in a fraction of the time. Pressure cookers generally require less water and, because they are cooked for a shorter period, ingredients are kept tender (meat), crunchier (vegetables) and full of nutrients (compared to regular boiling). They are relatively cheap to buy.
COLANDER
BIG MIXING BOWL • Glass, metal, plastic, doesn’t matter, but having a couple is always handy.
GOOD-QUALITY SHARP KNIFE
LONG FORK/PRONG
STURDY CHOPPING BOARD • “Sturdy” is important here. Nothing worse than the board sliding around while you work (which is also dangerous when knives are involved, of course). Invest in a solid, heavy wooden board if possible.
FOOD PROCESSOR OR BLENDER
MORTAR AND PESTLE • A heavy-bottomed one (mine is made of granite). I’ve learned that there’s nothing like grinding your own spices for a Neanderthal thrill.
FINE GRATER
PEELER
WOODEN SPOON
SPATULA • It never fails to delight me how good these are at clearing every last drop of mixture from a bowl.
SERVING PLATES/BOWLS • My favorite way of serving, and eating, is from big bowls or platters. I find this is a really easy way of making food look beautiful, no matter how underwhelming it might look before you serve it. Hummus, for example, can look pretty beige when you’ve just blended it. But transfer to a pretty ceramic bowl, drizzle on some good, extra virgin olive oil and a dusting of za’atar (see page 168) and it’ll look lovely.
1-QUART MEASURING CUP
KITCHEN SCALES
WHISK • An electric one is nice to have but not strictly speaking essential.
LARGE, FINE SIEVE
CAKE PAN
SPRINGFORM PAN
RANGE OF TUPPERWARE • Not just for housewives of the 1970s. Very useful if you want to make stuff to use or serve later, and for leftovers.
PLASTIC WRAP AND PARCHMENT PAPER
CORKSCREW
KITCHEN RADIO
• INGREDIENTS •
THIS IS A list of all the ingredients I try to keep in stock so I can depart the UK whenever the fancy takes me—my edible vehicles, if you like. I find that having these on hand guarantees being able to whip up something interesting, international and authentic at the drop of a hat, from a curry with coconut milk to pasta sauce or Levantine dip.
As ever, this is a personal list based on the food I like to eat. For example, I rarely use meat when cooking only for myself or one other person unless I have planned it in advance. If you are of a more carnivorous ilk than I, I recommend keeping some chorizo and/or pancetta in the fridge to add to things like pasta sauces or soups. You might also want to keep some kind of minced meat in the freezer—beef or pork for meatballs, pasta sauces or easy East-Asian dishes. A little plea: try to use organic meat where possible. It tastes so much better—not to mention being better for you, and for the world.
I’d recommend growing your own herbs. It’s much more ecological than buying them ready-picked in supermarkets and herbs in those plastic packages turn bad very quickly. But even more than this, growing your own is a rewarding, low-maintenance way of producing your own ingredients—and ingredients that can transform a dish, at that. Just buy a window box and fill it with thyme, mint, parsley and basil to start. All they need is good exposure to sunlight and regular watering. And while we’re on the subject, you can assume that all herbs specified in the recipes are fresh unless it says otherwise.
FRESH • onions (white or red) • scallions • garlic • ginger • lemons • limes • eggplant • zucchini • spinach • tomatoes • fresh herbs: parsley, coriander, basil, mint, thyme • good loaf of bread
FRIDGE • unsalted butter • eggs • milk • Greek yogurt • Parmesan cheese • tahini paste • preserved lemons
FREEZER • peas • bread crumbs • chopped parsley • pita bread
CUPBOARD • dried pasta and noodles • basmati rice • dried couscous • all-purpose flour • granulated sugar • baking powder • cocoa powder • vanilla extract • dark chocolate • good-quality extra virgin olive oil • sesame oil • balsamic vinegar—again, good quality: they can really vary • white wine vinegar • soy sauce • fish sauce • canned tomatoes • tomato purée • canned chickpeas • canned coconut milk • dried chili flakes • dried spices: cinnamon, cumin, fennel seed, pimentón, ground coriander, caraway seed, garam masala, whole cloves • dried herbs: tarragon, oregano, rosemary • black pepper • Maldon sea salt • dried orange lentils • canned anchovies • jar of capers • canned olives • honey • Marmite*
EUROPE
Visit (http://bit.ly/1FLvBeP) for a larger version of this map.
• THE BORDEAUX GRAPES •
Bordeaux is most famous for grapes like Cabernet Sauvignon (high tannin, high acidity) and Merlot (fleshier, fruitier). These are primarily grown on the left and right banks of the Gironde estuary respectively and are often blended to make famous wines like Médoc, Saint Emilion and celebrated châteaux wines like Margaux. These grapes have traveled extensively, thriving in the abundance of sunlight and temperature extremes in parts of the New World like the United States, Argentina, Chile and Australia. In these locations they make for “bigger” (fuller bodied with more tannin, which is indicated by the dry sensation a red wine leaves on your palate) wines than their more reserved French counterparts. Malbec is traditionally a Bordeaux grape too, and is still grown around Cahors. It is, however, better suited to the terroirs of Argentina, which has become internationally celebrated for the “big” Malbecs that its high altitude and temperature extremes produce.
• THE LOIRE GRAPES •
Internationally, the Loire Valley is best known for its refined, high-acid white wine varietals such as Sauvignon Blanc (think Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé) and the Chenin Blanc of Vouvray. Sauvignon Blanc finds its most popular New World expression in New Zealand, where the vines of areas like Marlborough Estate produce distinctive, kiwi-flavored (pure coincidence!), almost grassy white wines. Chile, Argentina and the United States produce more rounded Sauvignon Blancs than either the French originals or New Zealand. Very often a grape variety becomes so strongly associated with New World wines that its French origins are overlooked. A case in point is the slightly fizzy, high-alcohol whites of Vouvray, which are made from Chenin Blanc, a grape that has made its name as the emblematic white wine of South Africa.
• THE BURGUNDY GRAPES •
Wines from the Bourgogne are often regarded as the most premium in the world, with the likes of Puligny-Montrachet and Chablis whites and Gevrey-Chambertin and Nuits-Saint-Georges for reds. Burgundy white wines are made from the Chardonnay grape. Chardonnay still elicits mixed feelings among some people, who associate it with cheaply produced New World wines, like those of the Californian Central Valley or Australian boxed wine. (I grew up with my parents’ mantra “ABC”—“Anything But Chardonnay,” due to less favorable associations with the grape during the 1990s.) Chardonnay is actually a very versatile grape that makes for New World wines of varied quality, ranging from entry level to high-end on the West Coast and in South America, Australia and South Africa. Pinot Noir is one of the lighter red varietals, which produces wines as suited to fish and vegetarian meals as they are to meat. It can have mushroomy, almost gamy notes and has been grown with success in the New World, particularly on the West Coast (in places like the Napa Valley and Oregon), New Zealand and in South Africa, which has also developed a Pinot Noir/Cinsault hybrid grape called Pinotage.
• THE RHÔNE GRAPES •
The Rhône Valley is most famous for the production of Syrah and Grenache grapes. It is a vast area which, though referred to collectively as “The Rhône Valley,” actually splits more accurately into two: the northern and southern Rhône. The northern Rhône is best known for pure Syrah wines like Crozes-Hermitage and Saint Joseph, while the south is better known for Grenache blends Côtes du Rhône and, at the high end, Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Syrahs are known for their smoky notes, black fruit and peppery flavor and have been grown very successfully (and famously) in the Australian valleys such as Barossa and McLaren Vale, where they are referred to as Shiraz and make for some seriously big red wines. Grenache thrives in hot climates and can also be found widely in Spain, where it is known as Garnacha.
• THE IMPACT OF PHYLLOXERA •
In the nineteenth century an invidious vine pest known as phylloxera, and similar to an aphid, devastated European vineyards. An estimated figure of between two thirds and nine tenths of vineyards were destroyed, and many areas of France were hit particularly hard. The insect was probably brought to Britain by a group of botanists who had been collecting specimens in America, where the bug is native (making American vines more resistant than European ones). From there it spread slowly across the continent. Some varietals were all but wiped out in their native lands. Specimens of Bordeaux vines like Malbec and Carménère had already been taken to the New World, providing these varietals with long-term protection. Today they thrive in Argentina and Chile respectively—almost the signature grapes of each—but are comparatively rare back in France. Malbec production in Bordeaux is small, while Carménère is considered the region’s “lost grape.” Argentine Malbec is renowned for its violet, vanilla and smoked notes while similarly smoky Carménère is known for its blackcurrant character.
FRANCE
The French . . . bring to their consideration of the table the same appreciation, respect, intelligence and lively interest that they have for the other arts, for painting, for literature and for the theatre.
• ALICE B. TOKLAS, The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book •
THE FRENCH HAVE long seen food as high art. They were perhaps the first to adopt the notion that a dish could, like a painting or a novel, be a masterpiece in its own right.* And while the rest of Europe has gradually come around to such ideas, haute cuisine is still championed and most classically executed by our Gallic neighbors.
But the wonderful thing about French food is that, for all its pomp and circumstance, Michelin-star* culture is by no means the only thing that matters. The French take great pride in their food at every level of production and consumption, with some of the most distinguished raw materials in the world. From rustic pâté and wine to crusty, soft, white bread, perhaps dunked in a vibrant pot-au-feu (a casserole of boiled beef cuts and vegetables, dubbed “soul food for socialists” by Anthony Bourdain); or boeuf bourguignon (the Burgundy stew of beef and vegetables in a sauce of bay leaves, juniper and Pinot Noir), French food culture is one that celebrates great ingredients as much as their plated results.
Look at a good road map of France and it will quickly dawn on you just how many of the world’s celebrated ingredients are French. Numerous towns and villages that have shared their names with a local food product pepper the roads, running like veins through the body of France: Dijon, Camembert, Pithiviers, Cognac . . . the French have gastronomy in their blood, they just get it. I think it’s fair to say that on average they have a superior level of knowledge about gastronomy, one that’s often noticeably lacking elsewhere. For instance, working in restaurant service has an altogether different cachet. Staff are expected to be highly knowledgeable about food and wine in order to answer the more probing questions of patrons. What is the chef’s technique for making the béarnaise sauce? Why is one vintage of Côte-Rôtie better than another? And so on.
It was French chef and writer Auguste Escoffier* who said, “If it had been an Italian who codified the world of cuisine, it would be thought of as Italian.” Though culinary trends come and go, French cuisine remains the benchmark for other culinary cultures and is endowed with a sense of timelessness. For chefs in the making, a classical training is grounded in French cuisine—its techniques, equipment, flavor and ingredient pairings, the attitude to wine—to which cooks can then add their own flair or, equally, apply to another cuisine. Learn to cook French, and the world is your oyster. Or should I say huître?
Arguably, the emergence of Modernist cuisine—think the developments in Spain and Scandinavia (El Bulli and Noma respectively)—wouldn’t have happened without French cuisine paving the way. Mastering the (simple, yet deceptively tricky) technique to make the likes of sauces and roux as well as presenting their culinary creations immaculately, France set the bar—a precedent on which subsequent culinary developments have been able to build. Coinciding with the decline of the aristocracy, this was the point at which French food became “codified” (to borrow Escoffier’s term), following a surge of restaurant openings by former private chefs. French cuisine as we know it, then, with its heavy sauces and immaculate presentation, developed as a result of shifts in the French class system. Restaurant culture became, and still is, integral to the advancement of French cuisine, allowing people other than the very privileged to buy into culinary advancements that had previously belonged in a noble, exclusive setting.
For a long time French food enjoyed a golden age of international veneration from cooks and eaters alike. In the past twenty years or so, innovations elsewhere—Ferran Adrià’s maverick creations at the now closed El Bulli in Spain, for example—mean that French food has been relegated by some for being unexciting. But for me, this misses the point. Innovation doesn’t really sit at the heart of French food culture. Technique is key—precise quantities and timings—as is having the correct, well-sourced ingredients and beautiful presentation. The ability of the French to repeat this formula time and again is, indeed, an art.
I have covered just four of the French regions, each with culinary offerings reflecting their climate and cultural mix. Normandy, where the landscape and produce are in many ways similar to those of the south of England, where orchards bloom and cream-colored cattle graze; the Loire Valley, one of France’s cooler wine-producing areas, which blooms with wonderful fruit, vegetables and river fish; Rhône-Alpes, the center of French charcuterie and home to the food capital of Lyon; and Provence, where flavors of the French Mediterranean collide in dishes that taste of the sunshine.
NORMANDY
It was an opening up of the soul and spirit for me.
• JULIA CHILD •
IN AN INTERVIEW with the New York Times, Julia Child* described her first meal in Rouen, Normandy, thus. She ate oysters and sole meunière and drank fine wine, experiencing the freshness and accessibility of just-caught seafood and the heady rush of eating great food in its homeland. Normandy might be just across the English Channel but there is nevertheless a noticeable shift in attitude around food when you arrive there. This “opening up” that Child experienced is a food ecstasy born of a place to which food is absolutely central. You have entered France. Food is life, and life is food. Bienvenue.
There’s not a huge amount of technique, or even necessarily cooking, attached to re-creating an authentic Norman meal. This isn’t the case with other areas of France, so Normandy is the perfect first stop on the home cook’s journey, allowing you to sample authentic French food without too much effort. This is the cuisine of which the best picnics are made: home to some of the world’s finest butter, most famous cheese, most delicious cider and, as everywhere in France, exemplary bread. Normandy draws attention to the fundamental simplicity of good food, the elemental composition of a satisfying meal, and puts the spotlight on the skill of producers rather than chefs. Normandy could be said to have less of a “cuisine” than other regions in France, simply because ingredients are often left to speak for themselves, in their natural state. The elements of Norman food derive from the rolling greenery of the Pays d’Auge, where the vaches des lunettes (“cows with spectacles”—named for the markings around their eyes) graze, and where razor clams and whelks wash up onto the brooding gray beaches beloved of the Impressionists.
As France’s dairy capital, Normandy is—quite literally—la crème de la crème. Cheeses are usually named after their hometowns—Pont l’Evêque, Livarot and, of course, Camembert (a surprisingly tiny village with only a church, a museum and a soundtrack of “moos”)—and are memorable for their chunky rinds and pungency, pairing brilliantly with local dry cider. Camembert was developed during the French Revolution by one Marie Harel, a Norman farmer and local cheese maker who sheltered one of the priests taking refuge in the countryside. The priest in question happened to be from Brie. The story goes that he shared with Harel the secret to making brie-style cheese, and the rest is history. It fast became the most popular cheese in France, iconic in its round wooden boxes, which, along with a spray of penicillium to preserve it, enabled the cheese to travel.* Half a million boxes were purportedly shipped to the trenches each week during World War I.
Great butter naturally paves the way for consummate pastry. In Normandy, puff pastry is used to make the beloved tarte tatin and douillons, in which pastry turnovers hug a filling of caramelized apple or pear; sweet crust features in a range of fruit-based tarts (see the recipe on page 25 for my mum’s Norman-inspired apple tart) and brioche, which can be found all over France, reaches an apogee of deliciousness.
Orchards boasting crops of apples ripening on gnarled old trees create a patchwork of greens across Normandy. Apples can be loosely divided into two camps—those for eating and those for cider or Calvados production. Normandy cider is dry—or it can be, if dry is your thing. I love the smokiness of oak-aged brut ciders made in the town of Calvados, and also Calvados itself—the apple brandy for which the region is celebrated. This is widely used in cookery, as in flambéed tarte aux pommes, or sipped as a digestif. If you prefer a lighter, sweeter aperitif you could try pommeau—an apple liquor made by most of the little local cider and Calvados producers, which you’ll fall upon in practically every Norman village.
Third in Normandy’s triptych of great produce is its seafood. Moules (mussels) are ubiquitous, caught fresh daily and served à la marinière with bright yellow crispy frites. Turbot is the region’s most prized fish, but sea bass, sole, monkfish and skate are also common and eaten widely. They are served simply, with mashed potatoes and fennel, for example, with a meunière* sauce like Julia Child’s sole or, in the case of oysters, in their natural state. For me, local oysters epitomize the richness of Norman food in its purest form. They were longer and creamier than any I had tried before. It’s not surprising that the Normans are purists about serving them—a small squeeze of lemon juice to enhance, but not disguise, the salty flavor. Wash them down with a glass of Loire Valley Muscadet, and feel your soul and spirit open up—just like Julia Child’s.
PANTRY LIST • apples • freshly churned butter • cream • cheeses (Camembert, Pont l’Evêque, Livarot) • shellfish (oysters, mussels, clams, winkles, whelks) • fish (turbot, sole, monkfish, skate) • brut cider • homemade pastry
...
• BAKED CAMEMBERT •
I almost didn’t include this “recipe” for fear of patronizing you, but seeing as a) Camembert is quintessentially Norman; b) I make this all the time and c) it’s bloody delicious, I soon talked myself into it. You can use a range of “toppings” for the cheese or none at all, depending on your preferences. The Calvados-soaked version I’ve given below is the most dramatic, and clearly nods to Norman soil but, unlike alternatives such as drizzling some honey and scattering dried thyme over the cheese just before placing it in the oven, it does need to be prepared in advance.
• SERVES 1–2 PIGS OR 4–6 PIGLETS •
1 x 9-oz round of Camembert, in its box
2 tbsp Calvados
1 sprig rosemary, leaves only
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
French bread and crudités, to serve
1 • Remove the lid from the Camembert box, unwrap the cheese and discard the wrapping before returning the cheese to the box. Pierce the top of the cheese with a fork and carefully spoon the Calvados all over it, followed by the rosemary and seasoning.
2 • Allow to marinate at room temperature for up to eight hours (if you can marinate in the morning before you wish to serve it, that’s ideal), or for as long as you can short of that.
3 • Preheat the oven to 350°F and bake for 10–20 minutes. I like it super gooey in the center, so you can break through the white rind into a molten explosion of boozy cheese.
• APPLE TART NORMANDE •
My mum is an infinitely superior baker to me and excels at dishes in which fruit, pastry and frangipane get jiggy. This tart lasts a good few days in the fridge and bridges that long, lonely stretch of time between breakfast and lunch very well indeed. Try sifting a small amount of confectioners’ sugar over the top and serving with some crème fraiche (and a shot of Calvados?).
• SERVES 8 •
FOR THE SHORTCRUST PASTRY
1¼ cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for dusting
2 tbsp superfine sugar
7 tbsp cold unsalted butter, cubed
1 egg yolk
1 tbsp cold water
1 tsp vanilla extract
pinch salt
FOR THE FRANGIPANE
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
9 tbsp superfine sugar
1 medium egg, beaten
1 egg yolk
1 tbsp Calvados
2 tbsp all-purpose flour
1 cup ground almonds
3 medium apples, peeled, cored and thinly sliced
2 tbsp apricot jam for glazing (optional)
1 • To make the pastry, sift the flour into a mixing bowl and stir in the sugar. Lightly rub the cubes of butter into the flour using your fingertips, until the mixture resembles fine bread crumbs.
2 • In the center of the mixture make a well and add the egg yolk, water, vanilla and salt. Combine to make a smooth dough and gather together into a ball. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
3 • To make the frangipane, cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl and then add the egg and egg yolk separately. Mix in the Calvados. In a separate bowl, stir the flour into the ground almonds and then add to the batter mixture.
4 • Roll the pastry out onto a floured surface into a 10-inch circle about ⅛ inch thick. Lift into a 9- or 10-inch springform pan and then press down into the bottom of the pan and up the sides. Chill once again for 10–20 minutes.
5 • Preheat the oven to 400°F. Place a baking sheet in the oven while it heats up.
6 • Spoon the frangipane into the chilled pastry base and distribute it evenly. Arrange the apples in an overlapping spiral pattern, starting from the outside first.
7 • Place the tart on the heated baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes. Reduce the heat to 350°F and bake for another 15–20 minutes.
8 • To make the glaze, combine the apricot jam with a little water and then heat gently until runny. Remove the tart from the oven and brush all over with the glaze. Allow to cool in the springform pan for 5–10 minutes before turning out.
LOIRE VALLEY
They were wonderful days for us, days that I wished would last forever, swimming in the Loire or catching crayfish in the shallows, exploring the woods, making ourselves sick with cherries or plums or green gooseberries, fighting, sniping at one another with potato rifles and decorating the Standing Stones with the spoils of our adventuring.
• JOANNE HARRIS, Five Quarters of the Orange •
DURING THE SUMMER of 2012 I spent five days cycling through the Loire Valley with a friend. Our ride began in Tours and ended in Angers, and we pedaled from one famed wine region to the next—the Touraine, Chinon, Saumur Champigny, Anjou. We didn’t make it to Sancerre or Muscadet, but you get the picture: this area of three hundred square miles along the Loire River is internationally celebrated for great wine and known for its distinctive expressions of Sauvignon Blanc, the unique Chenin Blancs of Vouvray and for mastering the notoriously difficult Cabernet Franc grape. I didn’t know much about the food scene in the Loire before I went, but—on the basis that such good wine would surely be matched by great food—I wasn’t surprised to find culinary prowess that equaled its viticulture.
Respect for local wine is key to cooking in the Loire kitchen. Food and wine are almost yin and yang, designed for one another, and many of the sauces with which meat and fish are eaten contain wine produced nearby. The emblematic beurre blanc, for which you’ll find a recipe at the end of this chapter, is an obvious example.* To borrow Fernande Garvin’s words from The Art of French Cooking,* “Wine makes a symphony of a good meal.”
Abbeys, châteaux, convents and pastel farmhouses punctuate the landscape and stud the banks of the Loire. This delicate balance of nature and the man-made encapsulates something effortless about rural France: quaintness erring on the right side of twee. Fruit trees from which fairy-tale red apples and ripe plums dangle are commonplace, as are fields of sunflowers standing at attention like ranks of smiling soldiers. With more sun than Normandy farther north, fruits like apples and pears are sweeter here, and farmed for food rather than drink. We cycled past patchworks of allotments boasting a glorious stench of onions, green and white beans, carrots and leeks, mushrooms and asparagus, pumpkins and primeurs (early season baby vegetables).
The Loire River is extensive, stretching from its source in the Rhône-Alpes (see page 33) and traveling alongside Burgundy before taking a sharp left toward the Atlantic Ocean. The Loire Valley region is surrounded by very varied, mineral-rich soils as well as different microclimates. Both food and wine take on an ultra-local character here as a result; each city has its own food speciality and the attributes of local wines change dramatically from one village to another. Two-wheeled travel was the ideal way to experience this, enabling us to make regular stops to taste local wines, charcuterie and pastries.
The three rilles are the region’s signature meat dishes and make a mean accompaniment to a local dry white wine: rillettes, a pork-based paste from the Tours and Saumur areas; rillons, cubes of belly pork preserved in fat, from Touraine; and rillauds, slow-roasted chunks of belly pork from Anjou. As we will see once we get to the Rhône-Alpes, French cuisine has long championed the use of offal and offcuts of meat. In the United States and the UK this might be thought of in terms of chef Fergus Henderson’s concept of “nose to tail eating,” but in France eating the whole animal isn’t a concept, it is common practice. Typical of the Loire and western France is pig’s head soup, a recipe for which appears in the 1929 book Les Belles Recettes des Provinces Françaises (“Beautiful Recipes from the French Provinces”), contributed by one Madame Meunier from L’Oie in La Vendée, just south of the Loire. She instructs us to boil a salted pig’s head for just under three hours with kale, stale bread, peppercorns and garlic before serving the broth over more bread and eating the head separately (with cabbage that has been cooked in cream). This is the kind of food still eaten in Loire villages. In some countries, using the whole animal might be a tradition to which we have returned, but in France it is one that they never lost.
The Loire felt to me like a landscape of storybooks and fairy tales, with knights on colorfully decorated steeds, damsels with plaited hair and courtship in the mazes of the immaculate châteaux gardens. I imagine medieval huntsmen returning from the forests to châteaux kitchens bearing spoils of deer and wild boar, which chefs would prepare with wild mushrooms and sauces a la crème. The good table wine and hearty meals you find in the region today are part of a long tradition.
As well as the abundance of the forests, the river itself is brimming with food: freshwater fish such as pike, trout, salmon and eel. They are delicious in dark soups or stews like matelotte d’anguille—eel stew, rich in local red wine, cognac and shallots—or more simply served with a beurre blanc. This is a classic sauce of the Loire Valley, prepared by reducing butter with shallots, vinegar and Muscadet, a simple dry white wine native to the zone surrounding the city of Nantes (and made from the Melon de Bourgogne grape).
Goat cheese from the Loire is iconic and a good example of local food produced to complement the region’s wine. Pyramid-shaped, ash-dusted and made with raw goat’s milk, Valençay is perhaps the most famous, but Chabichou du Poitou, Crottin de Chavignol and Pouligny-Saint-Pierre (all from the Berry region between the Cher and Indre Rivers) are also well-known. Most local wines would accompany these beautifully, but I had a particularly ecstatic experience with a chilled Saint-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil and some Valençay.
Desserts, patisserie and sweets put the vibrant fruits of the Loire Valley to good use and inspire Joanne Harris in Five Quarters of the Orange.* French staples like chausson aux pommes (apple turnover, one of which my mother would buy me every Saturday on her unlikely baguette run in Streatham, where I grew up), and tarts filled with crème patissière and crowned with strawberries, line shop windows alongside local favorites like tarte tatin. This tart of caramelized apples turned upside down on pastry is said to have originated at the Hotel Tatin in Lamotte-Beuvron, a town between the Loire and the Cher. Meanwhile, Angers is known for its plum cake, pâté aux prunes, which is not unlike a tarte aux quetsches* and the city of Tours produces a nougat with almonds, cherries, apricots and candied orange. The local moelleux or doux Vouvray, sweetened by noble rot,* would make a beguiling partner for either one of these—if you’re indulging in dessert.
Stock up on freshwater fish, some ripe vegetables, Muscadet and the wherewithal to whip up a beurre blanc on your first kitchen trip to the Loire Valley, and imagine yourself riverside: your bike propped on its side, the breeze in your face, booze on your breath, surrounded by wildflowers . . . and the stench of onions. Just the right side of twee, indeed.
PANTRY LIST • freshwater fish (pike, trout, salmon, eel) • local charcuterie (rillons, rillettes, rillauds) • local cheese (Valençay, Chabichou du Poitou, Crottin de Chavignol, Pouligny-Saint-Pierre) • fruits (apples, pears, plums, strawberries) • vegetables (shallots, carrots) • good butter • homemade pastry
...
• SALMON AND BEURRE BLANC •
In theory a beurre blanc is simple. In practice it is a little harder, but making one is a skill well worth honing. It’s the typical sauce of the Loire region and perfect served with river fish such as salmon. You’d be mad not to use a (good-value) Loire Valley wine to do the region justice. Muscadet almost always comes at a decent price, is usually tasty and/or inoffensive (depending on your views on Muscadet—I love it), and isn’t wasted on cooking.
• SERVES 4 •
2 shallots, finely chopped
1½ tbsp flat-leaf parsley, chopped
4 salmon fillets (5 oz each)
juice of ½ lemon
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
FOR THE BEURRE BLANC
1 shallot, chopped
½ cup white wine, preferably a Loire Valley one
such as Muscadet
1½ tsp white wine vinegar
1½ tsp flat-leaf parsley, chopped
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cubed
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 • Preheat the oven to 400°F.
2 • Line a casserole dish with foil and lay a bed of shallots and parsley across it, then place the salmon fillets on top. Squeeze the lemon juice and sprinkle the seasoning over the fish, then put another sheet of foil over the fillets, securely.
3 • Bake the fish in the oven for 20–25 minutes, until it just starts to flake.
4 • Meanwhile, make your beurre blanc. Put the shallot, white wine, vinegar and parsley together in a pan and bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer over a medium heat. Allow to simmer until the sauce has dramatically reduced in volume (it will thicken, too) to about 2 tablespoons of liquid. Turn the heat to very low and whisk in the butter, a little at a time. Season with salt and pepper.
5 • Strain the sauce through a fine sieve into a heatproof bowl. Discard the shallot, parsley and seasoning sediment and then place the bowl with the liquid into another bowl half-filled with boiling water to keep the sauce warm until you are ready to serve.
6 • Place the salmon, shallots and parsley on plates. Spoon the beurre blanc over the fish and serve with boiled new potatoes or rice.
• UPSIDE-DOWN PLUM CAKE •
I was determined to pay tribute to the garden fruits of the Loire Valley and especially the plums, since I am an ardent lover of plums in all forms: fresh from the tree, in jams, compotes, puddings and, best of all, my mother’s pièce de résistance, the plum shuttle, in which she sandwiches tart prunes and almond frangipane between two pieces of puff pastry and bakes it in an egg wash. The typical pastry of Angers (the end point on my Loire Valley cycle trip) is known as pâté aux prunes, a similar plum and pastry arrangement. I felt the apple tart Normande would suffice for French pastry, however, so have instead taken inspiration from Angers and included this fantastic plum cake recipe from Eric Lanlard’s book, Home Bake. Merci beaucoup, Eric!
• SERVES 8 •
14 tbsp unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing
1 cup superfine sugar
5 medium eggs
1⅓ cups self-rising flour
10½–14 oz fresh plums, stoned and halved
1–2 tbsp light brown sugar
sprinkling of mixed spice
2⅓ tbsp golden syrup*
1 • Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease a shallow 9-inch springform pan with the extra butter, and then line it with parchment paper.
2 • In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Whisk in the eggs, one at a time, until well combined. Sift in the flour, then fold it in gently.
3 • Put the plums in a roasting dish and sprinkle with the light brown sugar and mixed spice. Bake in the oven for about 15 minutes or until the fruit is soft and sweet. Drain off the excess juice.
4 • Place the roasted plums in the base of your prepared springform pan. Add the golden syrup, then spoon the cake mixture on top. Bake in the oven for an hour or until the cake is cooked through. Allow to cool in the pan, then remove. Flip the sponge onto a serving dish, so the fruit and syrup are visible.
RHÔNE-ALPES
In a dining establishment in Lyon, you can eat pig fat fried in pig fat, a pig’s brain dressed in a porky vinaigrette, a salad made with creamy pig lard, a chicken cooked inside a sealed pig’s bladder, a pig’s digestive tract filled up with pig’s blood and cooked like a custard, nuggets of a pig’s belly mixed with cold vinegary lentils, a piggy intestine blown up like a balloon and stuffed thickly with a handful of piggy intestines, and a sausage roasted in a brioche (an elevated version of a “pig in a blanket”). For these and other reasons, Lyon, for 76 years, has been recognised as the gastronomic capital of France and the world. The world is a big place.
• BILL BUFORD, Observer Food Monthly •
MUCH OF THE French food we are exploring concentrates on the masterful manipulation of raw materials, or indeed the raw materials themselves. As Bill Buford* notes, these take on a particularly carnivorous character in this nook of southeast France, which is encircled by five other French regions including Provence (see page 40) and Burgundy, as well as Switzerland and Italy to the east. Welcome to the Rhône-Alpes, home to Lyon, France’s second-largest city and charcuterie capital.
The region of Rhône-Alpes is a confluence, most literally, of two rivers: the Rhône and the Saône, but it is also where many of France’s agricultural and culinary kingdoms meet, giving the region a wide range of ingredients on which to draw. In French Country Cooking, the Roux brothers* cite Charolais cattle, Auvergne lamb, trout from the Alps and dairy from Bugey and Dauphine as among the riches of the area, to which I would add the white truffles from Tricastin and Drôme (a vast majority of the French truffle harvest), as well as produce from Provence to the south (think seafood and endless herbs) and Burgundy to the north (Dijon mustard, Epoisses cheese and fine wines).
Lyon typifies France in all its rustic glory, in all its perfected coarseness, in all the polished simplicity of cheese and charcuterie, bread and wine eaten off a crumby gingham cloth. This is the food I remember over Michelin-starred meals. It is usually delicious, very often gruesome and always real. Local food like some of the charcuterie outlined by Bill Buford above is often enjoyed in bouchons, typical Lyonnais taverns. Meat products including rosette (pork salami), andouille (smoked sausage with garlic, wine and onions), andouillette (fried sausage of small intestine stuffed with tripe), boiled sausage with potatoes, and Jésus de Lyon (the fat, knobbly hard sausage not dissimilar to the rosette or andouille but with meat chopped more coarsely) are all central to the bouchon experience. Quenelles are another favorite, small oval dumplings of minced fish or meat bound by egg yolk and bread crumbs, then poached. In Lyon these are typically made of pike sourced from the Rhône and served in a white sauce not unlike a béchamel, making for comfort food of the freshest, most local sort.
The Lyonnais and people of the Rhône-Alpes at large take great pride in local food, much of which has achieved AOC status.* This includes the chickens from Bresse (poulet de Bresse)—often described as the Dom Perignon champagne or Beluga caviar of the hen world—which are almost an emblem of the Tricolor flag with their white feathers, red crown and blue feet. Many chefs say this is the most tender poultry out there.
AOC wine and cheese go hand in hand in the Rhône Valley. Syrahs such as \Crozes-Hermitage and blends such as Côtes du Rhône (which use grapes such as Carignan, Mourvèdre and Grenache blended with Syrah) are world famous. The region also produces some beautifully crisp Viognier for blending. Mixed breed cattle such as Abondance, Tarine, and Montbéliarde graze the luscious pastures. Given the prominence of foraged items such as chestnuts (from Ardèche) and hazelnuts and walnuts (from Grenoble) in the cuisine of the Rhône-Alpes, it comes as little surprise that the grasses produce a consistently nutty flavor in cheese made from cow’s milk, regardless of the texture. Cheeses like Vacherin, Reblochon and Raclette are some of the well-loved results.
Raclette—from racler meaning “to scrape”— is a hard, dark yellow cheese often served melted over boiled potatoes and eaten with charcuterie and pickles (the perfect antidote to a cold day spent on the Alps) while Reblochon’s name derives from the verb reblocher, “to squeeze a cow’s udder again,” and harks back to the Middle Ages when farmers were taxed on their milk yields. They would avoid milking each cow of every last drop until the landowner had measured their yields. Reblochon—the cheese of the re-milked cows, was made from the second milking. This was also the cheese known as fromage de dévotion, the cheese offered to Carthusian monks by farmers after their land had been blessed. Vacherin, that wonderful, stinky cheese mess sold in wooden rounds, also originates in the Rhône-Alpes (although there is a Swiss version, too).
Cheeses are fashioned into a rich array of dishes such as gratin Savoyard, native to Savoie (an eastern area of the Rhône-Alpes), which is cooked in meat stock with fresh hard cheese (often Swiss cheese, like Gruyère, from just over the border—see recipe on page 38). Cheese fondue also expresses the slightly more Germanic tendencies of the Rhône-Alpes cuisine. Fondue, which is said to have originated in Switzerland but is also popular in Austria, is a specialty in and around Savoie and Lyon. The local variety might contain a mix of melted Comté, Emmental, Vacherin or Beaufort. Bread spiked with long forks is dipped into a big bowl of hot melted cheese shared between eaters.
Speak to someone who has spent an extended period in Lyon and they’ll probably say they gained weight—and that’s hardly surprising. Add sweet goods to all this cheese, meat, cream and wine and the calories keep on coming. There’s Viennoiserie, pastry and patisserie products that, as the name suggests, originally came from Vienna, but which have been perfected by the French—brioche aux pralines, pain au chocolat. The chestnuts of the Ardèche are made into crème des marrons for use in cakes, tarts and pastries or are glazed with sugar syrup (to make marrons glacés), sometimes used in puddings such as a Mont Blanc (chestnuts and whipped cream). There’s France’s best white nougat from Montélimar,* and then there’s brioche. Brioche is one of those foods that straddles savory and sweet to make a versatile canvas for fruit, cream and the likes of cocon de Lyon—little pastry parcels with sweet almond cream—but equally for meat and cheese. This confirms my suspicion that, in the Rhône-Alpes, you’re never far from some meat. It’s a great place to be piggy, but perhaps not to be a pig.
PANTRY LIST • charcuterie (andouille, andouillette) • good-quality chicken (if you can’t get an AOC poulet de Bresse, then, no matter, just get the best organic chicken you can find, preferably from an independent butcher) • quenelles • cheese (Vacherin, Reblochon, Raclette) • butter • olive oil • brioche • nougat • marrons glacés • crème des marrons • wine (Syrah, Viognier)
...
• GREEN SALAD WITH VINAIGRETTE •
Alors! So this dish is hardly unique to the Rhône-Alpes, but given the proliferation of porky products in the region, this simple salad would be a respite from meat-eating and the perfect side to accompany quenelles or andouille with good French bread. Few things beat a really well-executed green salad doused in garlicky dressing, and I fear I’d be shortchanging you if I didn’t provide instructions on how to make an authentic French vinaigrette, one that will linger on your breath for the rest of the day after eating it. This is very similar to my grandmother’s version, except I have swapped in Dijon mustard (infinitely superior to all other mustards, in my view) for the dry Colman’s that Granny used (she was ever faithful to Norfolk, where Colman’s is made). Dijon mustard also marks this dressing as local to southeastern France, if not to the Rhône-Alpes, then just a short distance north in Bourgogne. The salad can be as basic or elaborate as you want. I prefer to go for garden vegetables, avoiding the radicchio and frilly lettuces of farther south in Italy. Round lettuce or lamb’s lettuce is lovely and soft. Sliced radishes, grated carrot and chopped chives make nice additions.
• SERVES 3–4 •
4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
1 heaping tsp Dijon mustard
juice of ½ lemon
2 garlic cloves, very finely chopped
big pinch sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
salad leaves of your choice
1 • Simply put all the ingredients other than the salad leaves into a jam jar and shake vigorously. The vinaigrette matures well, so make in advance for an even better dressing.
2 • Douse your salad in vinaigrette just before serving. (Don’t do this bit in advance or you’ll be left with soggy lettuce.)
• A NOT-QUITE-CASSOULET •
I created this simple recipe that showcases andouille, the smoked sausage of the Rhône-Alpes, but without using duck, as in a regular cassoulet. (Expensive + greasy + cute = duck just isn’t my favorite meat to cook with.) It combines the other basics of the classic dish—navy beans, bacon lardons, lots of garlic and bay leaves—into a stew that’s crying out to be washed down with one of the region’s Syrah or Syrah/Grenache blends.
• SERVES 6 •
14 oz dried navy beans (or cannellini),
soaked overnight
7 oz pork shoulder, diced
7 oz bacon or pancetta, diced into lardons
2 bay leaves
2–3 tbsp olive oil
1 stick celery, coarsely chopped
1 onion, coarsely chopped
1 carrot, coarsely chopped
6 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 bouquet garni (two stems each of thyme
and rosemary, tied together)
10½ oz andouille, cut into ½-inch slices (if you
can’t find andouille, use another smoked
sausage such as chorizo)
juice of ½ lemon
2 whole cloves
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
TO SERVE
¾ cup fresh bread crumbs, toasted
3 tbps flat-leaf parsley, coarsely chopped
drizzle of extra virgin olive oil
1 • Preheat the oven to 285°F.
2 • Drain the beans of their liquid and put them in a large saucepan, covered with water. Add the pork shoulder, bacon lardons and bay leaves, bring to the boil and simmer together for 15–20 minutes over medium heat. Then drain the mixture, keeping back about 1 cup of the cooking liquid, skimmed of any foam.
3 • Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan over medium heat and fry the celery, onion, carrot and garlic for 5 minutes or until the onions start to turn translucent. Do not let the garlic burn.
4 • Add the bouquet garni, andouille and the mixture of beans and other meats. Put the reserved cup of cooking water over them, plus more water to cover, then add the lemon juice and cloves and bring to a boil.
5 • Transfer to a casserole dish and cover with foil or a lid, then place in the oven for 2½ hours. Fish out the bay leaves, cloves and the bouquet garni and season to taste. Serve spooned into bowls with a scattering of toasted bread crumbs, parsley and drizzle of olive oil.
• GRATIN SAVOYARD •
This indulgent potato dish makes a great side dish for many of the pork products for which the Rhône-Alpes is best known, as well as roast dinners. It’s even delicious on its own with some green salad. It is native to the Savoie region (hence its name) and for true authenticity Beaufort cheese is used, though given that this isn’t exactly ubiquitous, most people make it with Gruyère. I prefer to use chicken stock and always add the nutmeg, which builds in a delicate layer of warming spice.
• SERVES 4 •
2¼ lb potatoes (preferably waxy, but any suited to
boiling will work), peeled and sliced into ⅛-inch disks
1 garlic clove
3 tbsp unsalted butter
5 oz Gruyère cheese, grated (about 1¼ cups)
½ tsp ground nutmeg (optional)
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
⅔ cup beef or chicken stock
1 • Preheat the oven to 425°F.
2 • Crush the garlic with the back of a spoon to release the flavor and rub it all over a wide ovenproof dish. Then grease the dish with one third of the butter. Place half of the potato slices in a layer in the bottom.
3 • In a bowl, mix together the cheese, nutmeg, salt and pepper. Sprinkle half of this over the potatoes. Take another third of the butter and break it into little bits. Dot these over the potatoes and cheese, then layer the rest of the potatoes on top, followed by the rest of the cheese and the final third of the butter. Pour the stock into the dish.
4 • This last stage is optional, but if you’re a garlic freak like me, I recommend slicing whatever’s left of the clove super finely and sprinkling it over the top. Bake the gratin in the oven for 30–40 minutes and allow to stand for 5 minutes before serving.
PROVENCE
It went beyond the gastronomic frontiers of anything we had ever experienced . . . We ate the green salad with knuckles of bread fried in garlic and olive oil, we ate the plump round crottins of goat’s cheese, we ate the almond and cream gateau that the daughter of the house had prepared. That night, we ate for England.
• PETER MAYLE, A Year in Provence •
THE CUISINE OF Provence has been canonized by writers and brought to life as much with words as with flavors. It might just be me, but the very word “Provençal” seems somehow to glisten on the page, calling to mind a sapphire blue sea, green and red salads gleaming in olive oil and dreamlike imaginings of the Riviera as conjured by writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald. In her introduction to A Book of Mediterranean Food, the great Elizabeth David lists just some of the features of the Mediterranean culinary tradition of which Provence is no small part: “. . . the saffron, the garlic, the pungent local wines; the aromatic perfume of rosemary, wild marjoram and basil drying in the kitchens.” Ingredients make up a bright palette, and on the Provençal table, are used to create a masterpiece.*
The French writer and filmmaker Alain Robbe-Grillet recalls his friend the literary theorist Roland Barthes musing, “In a restaurant it is the menu that people enjoy consuming—not the dishes, but their description.”* The words, the bright names of ingredients, the voluptuous-sounding dishes are all part of the experience of the food—perhaps in no cuisine more than the Provençal. Elizabeth David, writing shortly after World War II when rationing was still in force, took this idea to prose, verbally awakening the imaginations of British cooks to a canon of dishes involving not powdered egg or Spam, but hefty glugs of olive oil, hunks of butter, garlic, aromatic herbs and strong salty flavors from both land and sea.
On a more tangible level, Provençal cuisine shows us what food can be when great produce is available. Ingredients are a combination of those we have on home soil but better, riper—tomatoes, herbs, fresh fish—and those that only a Mediterranean climate can produce—such as capers, anchovies, olives. This cuisine prizes simple, well-loved flavor combinations and the mastery of technique, of getting the meat, the shellfish, the vegetables, the sauces perfectly au point. As we well know, only practice makes perfect. I hope I can introduce you to the skills so that you can at least start practicing.
First things first, always keep a few Provençal staples in the kitchen: canned anchovies and olives, jarred capers, good olive oil and a flat-leaf parsley plant neither break the bank nor take much upkeep, and when coarsely chopped and mixed together make a good tapenade. This is wonderful to dunk vegetables or bread into with drinks before a meal, complements cheese beautifully or can accompany chicken. Another super simple but very typical thing to try is combining butter with olive oil, lemon juice, capers and parsley to make a classic multipurpose sauce for fish such as mackerel and bream.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
What Is A Cuisine? 3
Howthis Book Works 4
Kitchen Essentials 7
Europe
The Grape Vine
France 19
Normandy 22
Loire Valley 27
Rhóne-Alpes 33
Provence 40
Spain 47
Catalonia 51
Northern Spain 58
Central Spain 63
Andalucía 68
Fried Foundations 74
Portugal 76
Italy 84
Lazio 86
Emilia-Pomagna 94
Calabria 100
Sicily 105
Veneio 112
Eastern Europe 118
Germany 127
Scandinavia 135
United Kingdom 142
The Middle East
Sugar and Spice and AH Things Nice 154
Turkey 158
The Levant 166
Israel 177
Iran 184
Asia
Shaking Up the Spice Route 196
India 200
North India 203
South India 212
Thailand 220
Vietnam 228
China 235
Guangdong (Canton) 240
Sichuan 244
Korea 250
Japan 256
Africa
Hot Stuff 266
Ethiopia 270
West Africa 277
Morocco 283
The Americas
Melting Pots 294
California 297
Louisiana 303
Mexico 311
Caribbean (Jamaica) 319
Peru 326
Brazil 333
Argentina 341
Further Reading 349
Credits 355
Acknowledgments 357
Index 359
What People are Saying About This
“Fantastic stories about a broad range of cuisines . . . Engaging and illuminating, and the food cries out to be cooked.” —Yotam Ottolenghi, author of Plenty and Jerusalem
“There are cookbooks that teach you to cook, others that help you to understand gastronomy. The World on a Plate feeds your soul.” —Ferran Adrià, author of The Family Meal and A Day at elBulli
“Not only a delight to read but also peppered with delicious recipes, facts and flavors from around the world.” —Rachel Khoo, author of The Little Paris Kitchen
“Deserves a place on every serious cook’s bookshelf. Intelligent, informative, entertaining, and very handsome. Mina Holland’s prose is as engaging as her recipes. She is an exciting and authoritative new voice in the world of cookery and food writing.” —Russell Norman, author of Polpo
“Amiably executed and attractively plated up . . . Holland is a resoundingly enthusiastic guide. . . . Most importantly, The World on a Plate makes you hungry.” —The Guardian
“Gastronomic heaven.” —Observer New Review
“A fascinating look at who’s eating what, and why, across the globe . . . A heady mix of history, anecdotes and recipes for beginners to confident cooks alike.” —Daily Mail