Cynthia D. Bertelsen's Gherkins & Tomatoes
A Writer's Musings on Nature and Culture, Since 2008
It's been several days now, the media stream moves onward, darting here and there to other news, other disasters. And yet I remain static, stuck, still mulling over the attacks on Paris, mourning the loss of all those lives, as well as the so-very-French joie de vivre. Why does Paris haunt me, and others, so? In the hours and…
Continue reading ➞ France and America: Why Paris Haunts Us So
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…
Continue reading ➞ Dear Julia, Happy Birthday! #100, or, Why I Loved You
“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…
Continue reading ➞ French Bistro: Seasonal Recipes
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…
Continue reading ➞ At My French Table
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…
Continue reading ➞ La Tour d’argent poinct ne leurre*, or, Pressed Duck, Blood and Guts and All
"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…
Continue reading ➞ Rationing and the Black Market in Nazi-Occupied France: Some Thoughts
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)
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…
Continue reading ➞ The Expert (French) Cook in Enlightenment France: A Review
I have to tell you that the cookbook lists that come out every year around Christmas time drive me crazy. Like you’re really going to savor, say, 101 Recipes Using ___________? (Fill in the blank.) Or you’re going to run out and buy another Italian cookbook when you already own somewhere in the neighborhood of…
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…
Continue reading ➞ Who was Ginette Mathiot? And Why Should You Care?
It's a dog's world in France.
The Belleville market -- straddling the crossroads of Paris's 10th, 11th, 19th, and 20th arrondissements -- presents the determined photographer with a tremendous dilemma: how to take pictures without being literally swept up in the crowds and jostled like a buoy bobbing in heavy seas? Although the market runs from the Menilmontant metro stop to…
Continue reading ➞ Belleville Revisited
Gherkins & Tomatoes / Cornichons & Tomates celebrates an anniversary in a couple of days, and I would like to thank all readers --- old and new --- for their ongoing and strong support. A special thanks goes to friends and family, who keep me going by saying nice things and bringing me champagne. This…
Continue reading ➞ Celebration! With Champagne …
Want to make your own? Here's a recipe from Epicurious: Nutella and Banana Crêpes 4 servings Crepes: 1 cup all-purpose flour 1 tablespoon sugar 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 1/2 cups fat-free milk 2 large eggs, lightly beaten Cooking spraySauce: 1/4 cup hazelnut-chocolate spread (such as Nutella) 2 tablespoons fat-free milk 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 large…
Continue reading ➞ The Crêpe Makers of France
Like many of you, I dream about being in France. A lot. And, of course, I daydream about eating in Paris, in spite of naysayers who point their compasses at other, more culinarily au courant corners of the globe. I'm already making lists of culinary adventures in preparation for my grant-sponsoredjourney this fall, doing research…
When you bite into a chicken taco or scoop up guacamole, you probably won’t be thinking about France. Yet, France left indelible fingerprints on the cuisine of Mexico. Jeffrey Pilcher, in Que vivan los tamales!: Food and the Making of Mexican Identity (Dialogos) (1998), attempted to examine the question, but much remains to be done. In…
Continue reading ➞ What was French about Mexican Cuisine?
The Egyptians who fled to Marseille from Egypt after the Napoleonic debacle there (1801) brought with them a hankering for batarekh, now called boutargue or poutargue in Provençal. Happily, Marseille happened to be a place where they could find batarekh, a caviar-like product made from the pressed and dried roes of grey mullets (Mugil cephalus).…
Continue reading ➞ An Ancient Mediterranean Taste: France’s Boutargue
In his timely Arab France: Islam and the Making of Modern Europe, 1798-1831 (2011), Ian Coller writes of the Arab families associated with Ya'qub Hanna, an Egyptian, a Copt and first non-French general who'd served with Napoleon Bonaparte in his military campaigns in Egypt. The cover, I believe, was chosen to highlight the idea of…
Continue reading ➞ The Lost Arabs of Marseille: Food, Family, and France
A bouillabaisse fish, the weever is. Mentioned in William Verral's A Complete System of Cookery (1759) as "weaver," the weever fish's spines emit poison. According to Clifford Wright, a restaurateur in Marseille likely invented bouillabaisse, an expensive version of fish stew and not really the traditional fisherman's fish boil. So much for romantic nostalgia and visions of…
Continue reading ➞ The Fish of France: Weever (Trachinus draco Linnaeus )
A friend recently asked me, "Why is culinary history important?" Actually, her words came out of her mouth a little more harsh sounding than that: "Why are you wasting so much of your time on that stuff? Why don't you just write up some recipes, like how to make that great bread you always make?"…
Continue reading ➞ Why Bother with Culinary History?
In spite of French presence in India for a couple of centuries, trying to find Indian curry in France tends to be a bit of a chore. The first Indian restaurant didn't open in Paris until 1975. Those in the know (mostly British expatriates pining for curry in London) lament the lack of good Indian food,…
Continue reading ➞ To India, via Paris’s Le Passage Brady
In Pondicherry, Pondichéry, or Puducherry as it is now called again (since 2006), you still see streets sparkling with old colonial buildings, dating back to a time when passersby heard French spoken daily. Yet, those buildings, policemen's hats, and a fully functioning French lycée or school, are among the few overt signs that you'll notice…
Continue reading ➞ East is East and West is West: Pondicherry and French Curry
In a way, it's the French version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire." World-famous French chef, Alain Ducasse, chose fifteen women from Sarcelles, a suburb of Paris housing mostly poor immigrants mainly from France's former North African colonies. An article in The New York Times tells the whole story, almost a Cinderella saga: 15…
Continue reading ➞ Culinary Diffusion? Yes, in Alain Ducasse’s Kitchens
Before the second world war, filled with the wandering souls of the "Lost Generation," Paris throbbed with the fluttering notes of jazz and the clattering of horse hooves on cobblestones. And Paris also served as a subject for the art of photographers like Brassai, one of the earliest photojournalists, influenced by surrealism. Brassai (born in…
Continue reading ➞ Brassai’s Paris, a View Through the Tunnel of Time
If you saw the following headline pop up on one of the many news feeds streaming into thousands of computers around the global, you might think, "Oops, some editor didn't ingest their caffeine fix in time!" French Get the Taste for Fast [Ethnic] Food (Click on the link above to read the article that inspired…
Continue reading ➞ La Malbouffe, Oui ou Non? Fast (Ethnic) Food and the French
In the film, "Indochine," you sense the rampant orientalism that made Edward Said one of the most quoted scholars on the subject of colonialism and the creation of the "Other." The heat, the fans, the sweat, the passions, the exoticism and erotocism, all these visual cues recreate the mental picture many of us have regarding…
Continue reading ➞ The Things They Carried*: Brief Glimpses of French Food in Vietnam
