Gherkins & Tomatoes

Gherkins & Tomatoes

Meditations and Photographs about Food, Cooking, and Life

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Backlit artichoke side view

The Zen of Artichokes

October 3, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I love autumn. If it’s not the leaves and all the color, then I find poignancy in the drying and dying weeds littering the ground. They embody survival to me. One plant I particularly love is a thistle-like plant, filled with tiny seeds attached to billowy white parachutes. The least puff of wind forces the seeds out of their pods and they float in the wind, just like paratroopers, over the landscape, falling where they may, taking root at times […]

Categories: Agriculture, Cooking, France, French Cooking, Italian Cooking, Italy, Local foods, Photography • Tags: Artichokes, California, France, Italy, Meditations, Normandy, Photography, Thistles, Writing, Zen

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Still life 2

Another Holy Trinity of the Kitchen: The Magic of Milk, Eggs, and White Flour

September 21, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Every time I pour crêpe batter into my 8-inch Teflon*-lined crêpe pan, I see deep scratches, the ones that Habiba made with the fork she used while cooking a three-egg cheese-and-herb omelet one wintry Moroccan morning. The scratches don’t affect the pan’s performance, just as wounds and scars don’t fundamentally change who we are and how we function in the world. Pots and pans, like sugar-burned hands and fingers cut by dull knives, bear pale scars. These blemishes remind me […]

Categories: Agriculture, Cattle, Cooking, Eggs, France, French Cooking, Local foods, Milk, Morocco, Photography, Techniques • Tags: Crêpes, Eggs, Flour, France, French Cooking, Meditations, Milk, Photography

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France HUGE baguette old picture

Telling Stories, About French Bread

August 24, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Even years later, long after someone took this photo, I can see this young boy – I’ll call him Jacques –  standing in the street, lugging his heavy basket made of tree branches, no doubt the same ones that Jacques’s father might use on the poor boy’s legs if he doesn’t sell all the bread that day. Look at his shoes, it’s hard to tell, but is one of the soles higher than the other? And his toes, poking out […]

Categories: Bread, France, French Cooking, Photography • Tags: Bread, Elliott Erwitt, France, French Cooking, Photography

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DSC_0043

Dear Julia, Happy Birthday! #100, or, Why I Loved You

August 15, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Dear Julia, Happy 100th birthday! Today lots of famous food writers will write or post reams of flattering words about you. I know, I’ve already seen them, the New York Times leading the charge with three features about you, one by your friend Jacques Pépin. Like Jacques, many others will point out, once again, that you almost singlehandedly transformed the sorry excuse for food in the 1960s United States into the bounty and abundance that we see today in nearly […]

Categories: Chefs, Cookbooks, Cooking, France, French Cooking • Tags: Birthday, France, French cuisine, Jacques Pépin, Julia Child, Julie Powell, Mastering the Art of French Cooking

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Photo credit: C. Bertelsen

Where Rosemary Flourished, the Woman Ruled*

August 12, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I cut the rosemary this morning, the lack of love and attention these past few weeks plainly written in its leggy tendrils, reaching too far for the sun, like arms longing for something to hug. Rosemary, the herb of remembrance. What do I remember when the piney, resinous odor of rosemary sticks to my fingers and leaves a lingering perfume on everything I touch? I remember Morocco, where I lived in a very modern house, its kitchen festooned with orange and […]

Categories: Africa, Beef, Cooking, France, French Cooking, Moroccan Cooking, Morocco, Photography • Tags: France, French Cooking, Herbs, Remembrance, Rosemary

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Dana Polan French Chef

Julia Child’s “The French Chef, ” by Dana Polan

July 17, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“a history of early American television telescoped through the persona and history of Julia Child. . . . fascinating . . .” When you walk the streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts, you can’t miss the lingering traces of heroes and history. From the names of the men who brought you the Boston Tea Party to the dead in the Old Burying Ground near Harvard Square, the past perfumes the air. Nearly everywhere you’ll see pictures of a more modern hero, too. […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Cooking, Food News, France, French Cooking, Uncategorized • Tags: Book Reviews, Dana Polan, Dione Lucas, Florence Hanford, Food Television, France, French Chef, French Cooking, Julia Child, Nigella Lawson, Paul Child

Macarons 3

Macarons – Food of Dreams and Fairy Tales

July 11, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Macarons. Truly an example of “Don’t try this at home.” But how I longed to recreate the taste and the crunch of the macarons I greedily ate as often as I could, when I passed that fairy-tale bakery on the Rue de Rivoli, close to the Hotel de Ville metro stop: Maison Georges Larnicol. Although they’re kissing cousins of a sorts, modern French macarons don’t much resemble American macaroons. The extra “O” has nothing to do with it. Macarons likely […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Cookies, Cooking, Desserts, French Cooking, Uncategorized • Tags: Bérengère Abraham, Cookbooks, France, French Cooking, Macarons

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French Bistro

French Bistro: Seasonal Recipes

July 5, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“A visual feast as well as a gastronomic one . . . Organized by ten essentials that any successful bistro must have, French Bistro almost reads like a graphic novel, thanks to the prolific and colorful photographs.” When you walk into a Paris bistro straight off the street on a cool fall day, the odd leaf rustling at your feet as you cross the threshold, you expect something almost magical to happen, don’t you? And, according to the authors of yet another […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Chefs, Cookbooks, France, French Cooking • Tags: Bertrand Auboyneau, bistronomy movement, Bistros, François Simon, France, French cuisine, Paris, Parisian bistros, Paul Bert, Restaurants

French Table Webster

At My French Table

July 2, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

If as a child you loved fairy tales and dreamt of being Cinderella, or if you longed to be the handsome prince with a turreted castle, you’re going to adore Jane Webster’s gloriously illustrated At My French Table: Food, Family and Joie de Vivre in a Corner of Normandy. The book imparts the warm feeling you get snuggling up in bed with a magical story and a steaming cup of sweet cocoa. Along with Anne Willan’s From My Chateau Kitchen (Clarkson Potter, 2000), Susan […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Cooking, France, French Cooking • Tags: Amanda Hesser, Australia, Cookbooks, France, French cuisine, Jane Webster

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Paris to the Past

Paris to the Past – Traveling Through French History by Train: A Book to Love and Cherish

June 2, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“If you’ve even the slightest interest in France and her history, you will enjoy this highly innovative book. If you love France, and you’re a committed Francophile, you will swoon over Paris to the Past. As Ina Caro writes in her introduction to this delicious book, ‘I charted a route you could follow.’ And indeed she does.” What is it about trains that fascinates people so much? Obsessive collectors stockpile toy trains in their basements, singers like Johnny Cash sing longingly of […]

Categories: Book Reviews, France, French Cooking, Reference • Tags: André Le Nôtre, France, Ina Caro, Paris to the Past, Rail Europe, Robert Caro, Travelogues

Imam in Paris

An Imam in Paris: Al-Tahtawi’s Visit to France (1826–1831) by Rifa’a Rafi’ al-Tahtawi, Translated by Daniel L. Newman

May 14, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“For readers interested in early encounters between European and Arabic culture, An Imam in Paris: Al-Tahtawi’s Visit to France (1826–1831) provides an alluring glimpse into the life and thoughts of one man who recorded Parisian life around the time that Orientalism firmly captured the European imagination.” Rare is the native English speaker who reads and writes Arabic, classical or otherwise. And thus a vast body of literary work lies inaccessible to those who desire to increase their understanding and appreciation of the Arabic-speaking […]

Categories: Arab cooking, Book Reviews, Egypt, France, French Cooking • Tags: al-Tahtawi, Arabs, Daniel L. Newman, Egypt, France, Ottoman Empire, Travel memoirs

La Seduction

La Seduction: How the French Play the Game of Life: Explaining the French

May 7, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

In celebration of the 2012 French elections … “. . . your best bet for understanding the French would be to pick up La Séduction and read it at your leisure, preferably with a glass of wine and Debussy playing on your iPod.” While making coffee one morning in Paris, where she now lives, journalist Elaine Sciolino noticed the slogan on the Carte Noire coffee bag. The company touted its product as “A Coffee Named Desire.” Ms. Sciolino, author ofPersian Mirrors: The […]

Categories: Book Reviews, France • Tags: Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Elaine Sciolino, François Hollande, France

Ducks Tour d'Argent exterior

La Tour d’argent poinct ne leurre*, or, Pressed Duck, Blood and Guts and All

April 27, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

What is sauce for the goose may be sauce for the gander but is not necessarily sauce for the chicken, the duck, the turkey or the guinea hen. ~ Alice B. Toklas The famed, if slightly faded, Parisian restaurant, La Tour d’Argent, embodies the French idea of culinary hegemony. So do ducks. As you stand outside the window, peering into the sanctum sanctorum of the restaurant, traffic clattering behind you on the Quai de la Tournelle, you might not realize […]

Categories: Duck, France, French Cooking • Tags: Canard au Sang, Challandais ducks, Claude Terrail, Ducks, France, Frédéric Delair, French cuisine, Julian Street, Tour d'Argent

French cooks stoned duck

Un vrai canard: Duck and French Culinary Traditions

March 21, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Do you associate ducks, along with snails and frogs, with traditional French cuisine? If so, you’re hardly alone. I do, too. And I often wonder, like many of us who write about food, just how some of these traditions begin. I think the answers might appall or thrill us. Last week, I read an old news story about Michel Rouyer, a French farmer from La Gripperie-Saint-Symphorien who tried to rid his ducks of worms by feeding them marijuana. I couldn’t help but […]

Categories: Cooking, Duck, France, French Cooking • Tags: Ducks, France, French Cooking, Marijuana

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French cooks pariahs

Assimilating “The Other”

March 15, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Leslie Page Moch, author of Moving Europeans: Migration in Western Europe Since 1650 (1992, Indiana U. Press), has written another book, Pariahs of Yesterday: Breton Migrants in Paris (Duke University Press, 2012). Her book promises insights into the process of integration, a very useful understanding of present-day migrants in France, people from France’s former colonies: Beginning in the 1870s, a great many Bretons—men and women from Brittany, a region in western France—began arriving in Paris. Every age has its pariahs, […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Europe, France, Reference • Tags: Bretons, Brittany, France, Integration, Leslie Page Moch, Migration, Paris, The Other

French cooks At Home in France

The Surprising French Kitchen

March 14, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

One of the best things about owning a lot of books is that I tend to forget what I have. That makes it seem like Christmas nearly every day, if you know what I mean. This morning I wandered through my house, poking at different books lounging in rather haphazard order on my rather odd collection of bookshelves. Searching for pictures of traditional kitchens, I stooped down in front of one of the Pier 1 bamboo bookshelves and pulled out […]

Categories: Algeria, France, French Cooking, Moroccan Cooking, Morocco, Spices • Tags: At Home in France, Christopher Petkanas, Dordogne, France, Mique, North Africa

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Photo credit: Kumar McMillan

Tasting France in Senegal

March 9, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The ocean there, it’s infinite, a place where horizon and water meet like a seam in a dress, a little bump and then smoothness again. Sunlight pierces the dawn’s fading blackness and, overhead, the parasitic gulls swirl, their curved yellow beaks moving incessantly, filling the air with their own peculiar songs. And then human voices join in, throbbing, shutting out the pounding noise of the waves. Senegalese fishermen singing Men, women, and children rush to the boats, thrusting their hands […]

Categories: African Cooking, France, French Cooking, Senegal • Tags: African Cooking, Fish, France, French Cooking, Mullet, Senegal, West Africa

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French cooks horsemeat parody

Eating Black Beauty,* Or, Horsemeat, a Taboo That Became a French Stereotype

March 1, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Taboo: A custom prohibiting or restricting a particular practice or forbidding association with a particular person, place, or thing. One of the most emotional experiences of my childhood came when I read Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, a story of a mistreated English horse. I remember sobbing for hours in the way that children can when they experience something so hurtful that only tears will do. Later, I saw a movie based on the book and the same thing happened, the […]

Categories: Asia, Cooking, Europe, Food writing, France, French Cooking • Tags: Culinary History, Emile Decroix, Food History, France, French Cooking, Henriette Davidis, Horsemeat

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Rue de Rivoli under German occupation

Rationing and the Black Market in Nazi-Occupied France: Some Thoughts

February 22, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“Life is hard (On vit mal). Everyone grows thinner. A kilo of butter costs one thousand francs. A kilo of peas forty-five francs. A kilo of potatoes forty francs. Still we must find them.” – Jean Guéhenno, August 1944 Speaking as the beneficiary of an immense system of food production in the twenty-first century, as the citizen of an increasingly obese nation where over two-thirds of my fellow citizens are considered overweight,  I can only imagine food shortages in one […]

Categories: France, French Cooking • Tags: Black market, Cookbooks, Culinary History, Food History, France, French cuisine, Jean Guéhenno, Rationing, World Wars

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France snails

It Might Be a Stereotype, but ….

February 19, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I love this picture of a snail. Like many mollusks, snails seem to have been  eaten in substantial quantities by early man, as witness the mounds of snail shells found in archaeological sites. See Prehistoric edible land snails in the cirum Mediterranean: the archaeological evidence (2004) (Extensive bibliography)

Categories: Art, France, French Cooking, Photography, Posters • Tags: France, French cuisine, Snails, Stereotypes

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France food for France war poster

France and the Food of War : I

February 16, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Food offers us so much – nourishment, familial connections, status, comfort, security, and – above all – survival. Truth be told, food allows us to wake up each day and face the world again. With our bellies churning with adequate fodder, we trudge or dance along the path of life, free to create art or waste time complaining about the annoying antics of other humans, be they politicians or our next-door neighbors.  For when we know where our next meal […]

Categories: France, French Cooking • Tags: Caloric intake, Culinary History, Food History, France, Rationing, War, World War II

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Fatema Hal

Fatema Hal: The Interchange of Culinary Ideas Between Morocco and France

February 13, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

On Tuesday, Fatema’s talk (in French) is on “Maroc-France: La cuisine en partage” (“Sharing Food and Cuisine: Between Morocco and France”). Fatema will also do a demonstration on almond briwats on Wednesday March 14, at 3 at GU (Location is ICC 425), and she will give a talk at the French Embassy/Maison Française on Thursday March 15 at 7 p.m.: “Le Maroc sur la route des épices” (Morocco and the spice road). This talk will be translated in English.

Categories: Food News, France, French Cooking, Moroccan Cooking, Morocco • Tags: Culinary History, Fatéma Hal, Food History, France, French cuisine, Moroccan Cooking, Morocco

Photo credit: C. Bertelsen

Dreaming of France on a Foggy February Morning

February 5, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

This morning I woke up to fog so thick that I wondered if perhaps I’d morphed into a another place altogether, like London. The branches of the large oak clinging to the hillside resembled nothing less than a print of a retina found in an old medical book. I started thinking of France as I made my coffee, even though last night it snowed in Paris of all things, as the author “Becoming Madame” so clearly shows, and I knew […]

Categories: Art, France, Photography • Tags: Culinary History, Food History, France, Paris, Snow

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French cooks Imam in Paris

Arabs in France: An Early Account by an Egyptian Imam

January 20, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Rare is the native English speaker who reads and writes Arabic, classical or otherwise. And thus a vast body of literary work lies inaccessible to those who desire to increase their understanding and appreciation of the Arabic-speaking world. Because there is this hole in the material available to scholars and others, the scholarship of much of Europe’s past likely could be construed as being incomplete or even erroneous. That’s why it’s necessary to herald the appearance of works like An […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Egypt, France, French Cooking, Middle East • Tags: al-Tahtawi, Culinary History, Egypt, Food History, France, Imam in Paris, Orientalism, Ottoman Empire, Paris

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Cooks Aertsen Cook in Front of Stove

The Expert (French) Cook in Enlightenment France: A Review

January 14, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

If you scrutinize sixteenth-century Dutch artist Pieter Aertsen’s painting, “The Cook in Front of the Stove,” you will see a rather stereotypical image of servant cooks, one that persisted in popular memory in Europe until well into the nineteenth century. Sean Takats, assistant professor of history at George Mason University and codirector of Zotero, attempts to get beyond that image in his thought-provoking new book, The Expert Cook in Enlightenment France. Beginning with the premise that much what passes for fact […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Chefs, Cooking, Food writing, France, French Cooking, Methods, Paintings • Tags: Chefs, Cooks, Culinary History, Food History, France, French cuisine, Pieter Aertsen, Sean Takats

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Art credit: Pierre Marcel

The Apples of France: What’s the (Hi)Story?: Speculations about the Origins of Apples in France (Part II)

January 6, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The frosty morning mists of early autumn roll through the hills, swirling like a white cotton-candy carpet at the base of the gnarly old trees. Branches creak and sway with the weight of the fist-sized apples, some blushing like tiny faces, or red-cheeked as it were from the chill of the windy gusts. So much a part of European culture and cuisine, apples seem to be a native food, an ingredient in so many traditional dishes. But the apples we […]

Categories: Apples, Cookbooks, France, French Cooking, Methods, Photography • Tags: Apicius, Apples, Culinary History, Food History, France, French Cooking, French culinary history, Kazakhstan, La Varenne, Le Menagier de Pari, Marianne Mulon, Tractatus de modo preparandi et condiendi omnia cibaria, Vivendier

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Braeburns (Photo credit: C. Bertelsen)

Apples in France: What’s the (Hi)Story? (Part I)

January 3, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

You might say that apples and I have a special relationship – apple sauce and apple cakes and apple pies. I grew up climbing a majestic apple tree in my yard and adored the smell of the fluffy pink blossoms when spring finally swooped down on eastern Washington state and all the snow melted. One day when I was a young child, my father and his boss at the nearby university grafted a couple of branches from different apple trees […]

Categories: Apples, France, French Cooking • Tags: Apple History, Culinary History, Food History, France, French Cooking, French cuisine, Lamotte-Beuvron, Tarte Aux Pommes à la Solognote, Tarte Tatin

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Strasbourg in the Cold (Used by permission.)

Bringing Home the Bacon … and the Onions and the Cheese: Tarte Flambée, Flammekueche, or Alsatian Pizza Bread

December 18, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

One cold, rainy day in October, I sat in front of a fireplace in a  small weinstub, or bistro, in Strasbourg, France, listening to my growling stomach. I couldn’t face another round of choucroute, that heavy Alsatian ode of love to the pig and the cabbage. On the greasy menu, fingerprints from previous guests clearly visible on the laminated plastic, one dish stood out: Flammekueche, also known as “Tarte Flambée.” I ordered it. And a bottle of Alsatian Riesling, never […]

Categories: Food writing, French Cooking, Recipes • Tags: Alsace, Bacon, Bread, Cuisine Francaise, Culinary History, Flammekueche, Food, Food History, France, French Cooking, Tarte Flambee

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Juan Diego

December 12: The Virgin of Guadalupe

December 10, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Patron Saint of Mexico and the Americas Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes once said that “…one may no longer consider himself a Christian, but you cannot truly be considered a Mexican unless you believe in the Virgin of Guadalupe.” Apocryphal or not, the story of the Virgin of Guadalupe makes fascinating reading. And the food’s pretty good, too, like most feast-day food tends to be. But first a little history. An Aztec convert, Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin*, first saw the Virgin […]

Categories: France, French Cooking, Mexico • Tags: Atole, Cooking, Culinary History, Food, Food History, France, French Cooking, Mexico, Recipes, Saints' Days, Virgen de Guadalupe, Virgin of Guadalupe

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Pasta symmetry

Have a Little Symmetry

November 27, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Pasta and curtains – who would have thought they’d be so similar? And symmetrical?

Categories: Art, France, French Cooking, Pasta, Photography • Tags: France, Pasta, Photography, Symmetry

French cooks cover Breton peasant

Memoirs of a Breton Peasant: Sifting Through the Nostalgia

November 21, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

It’s not often that the words of poor peasants appear in print. And when they do, it’s a cause for rejoicing, especially for scholars pertaining to the Braudel/Certeau school of the history of daily life. What’s more, our current nostalgic longings for a more paradisiacal past evaporate quickly in the light of these often ruthlessly real portrayals of life. Even though he’s been dead for over 100 years, nineteenth-century Breton peasant Jean-Marie Déguignet would be rubbing his hands together in glee […]

Categories: Book Reviews, France, French Cooking, Reference • Tags: France, French Cooking, Jean-Marie Déguignet, Memoirs, Memoirs of a Breton Peasant, Peasants

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Ginette Mathiot

Who was Ginette Mathiot? And Why Should You Care?

November 15, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Ginette Mathiot wrote books that bring up long-lost taste memories in France, much as Marcel Proust’s oft-quoted prattle about about madeleines. Only her work proves infinitely more readable and enjoyable. She also basically sticks it to Julia and makes French cooking seem less like a prolonged session at the dentist’s. One of her books, Je Sais Faire la Patisserie, appeared in an English translation on bookshelves on November 5, 2011. It’s a book that just might crack open the mysteries […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Butter, Cookbooks, Cookies, France, French Cooking • Tags: Book Reviews, Chocolate & Zucchini, Clotilde Dusoulier, Cookbooks, Cookies, Dorie Greenspan, France, French cuisine, Ginette Mathiot, Je Sais Cuisiner, Je Sais Faire la Patisserie

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Photo credit: C. Bertelsen

Feeding French Dogs …

November 9, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

It’s a dog’s world in France.

Categories: France, French Cooking, Meat, Photography • Tags: Boucherie, Charcuterie, France, French cuisine

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Street criers of Paris (Art credit: Francois Gerard, 1700)

Cris de Paris: The Street Criers of Paris in Bygone Days

November 4, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Mushrooms abound in the markets of France in October and early November. And since I found stalls bursting with all sorts of mushrooms, I began to wonder if there were any “street cries” or market songs or whatever you might wish  to call them peculiar to mushrooms. Associated with various métiers (or trades) dating back to the Middle Ages, these cries/songs provide some hints about foods sold and the way people like ambulatory vendors advertised their wares in days before […]

Categories: France, French Cooking, Mushrooms, Photography • Tags: France, Mushrooms, Oysters, Paris, Pleurottes

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Photo credit: C. Bertelsen

Worshipping Different Gods … The French (Food) Reformation

November 2, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

People throughout history reveal their preoccupations through their architecture, artifacts, and the written word. These aspects reflect what matters to societies at various times. It comes down, in a way, to questions of taste, not just alimentary, but cultural and moral. The fashions, the trends, the modes of the day pass and morph into others as the years go by. Like all ideas, current preoccupations – with simple, natural, sustainable, green – mirror the concerns of a certain segment of […]

Categories: Art, French Cooking, Local foods, Locavores, Photography • Tags: Aix-en-Provence, Cafés, Choir stalls, France, French Cooking, Paris

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French cooks Turbotiere

For French Cooks Who …

October 31, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

have everything – or nearly everything – in their batterie de cuisine. A Turbotière, for cooking, well, turbots. Available, the pan, that is, at E. DEHILLERIN in Paris ( 18 et 20, rue Coquillière – 51, rue Jean- Jacques Rousseau, 1st arrondissement) for the princely sum of nearly 570 euros ($826.25). Considering the size of turbots, the price shouldn’t surprise you too much. And here’s an old pan for the same purpose, for comparison.

Categories: Chefs, Cooking, Cooking equipment, France, French Cooking • Tags: Copper cookware, France, French Cooking, Turbotière

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French cooks armagnac vieux

L’Armagnac Vieux of the Tour d’Argent (and More)

October 29, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Beauty comes in many guises. Appropriately for a restaurant in full view of Notre Dame and its mythical hunchback, the dining room of the Tour d’Argent in Paris resembles the prow of a ship sailing off into the sunset. Some critics say its reputation for good food departed some time ago. An auction in December 2009 cleaned out its wine cellar, the better offerings hidden from the Nazis by a false wall built during their occupation of France. These ugly, […]

Categories: France, French Cooking, Photography • Tags: Armagnac, France, French Cooking, Paris, Tour d'Argent

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French cooks MFK Fisher house Aix

Aix-en-Provence, and the Questions of Exile

October 24, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I have been reading food writer MFK Fisher’s book about Aix-en-Provence – Map of Another Town (1964) – written about her time here in the 1950s.  She spoke of the incredible loneliness she felt, the sense of being an “outlander,” her very word. In other words, she addressed the question of exile. She lived near where I sit tonight. For a while anyway, she rented a room at 17 rue Cardinale, with the unforgettable Madame Lanes. She detailed her thoughts and […]

Categories: Cooking, France, French Cooking • Tags: Aix-en-Provence, Benedictines, France, M. F. K. Fisher, Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur

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Photo credit: Kevin McCormick

Garlic, the Perfume of Provence

October 20, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Or is lavender really the perfume of Provence?

Categories: France, French Cooking, Garlic, Photography • Tags: France, Garlic, Photography, Provence

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Food forms the very essence of life, from the fruit fly to the elephant, with humans in between. So much of what we do revolves around cooking, eating, and the finding of food. Here you'll discover stories, meditations, and photographs celebrating the places that we call home. And, of course, the food that garnishes it all.

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What’s Cookin’ Here

  • A Bare Table is Like an Artist’s Canvas
  • “Stew’s so comforting on a rainy day.” *
  • Singkong, Manioc, Mandioca, Mandió, Tapioca, Yuca: Singing the Praises of Manihot esculenta (Cassava)
  • The Promise of Apple Blossoms

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