Читать книгу Food of Paris - Marie-Noel Rio - Страница 11

Seasonal Cuisine

Authenticity and precision,

the keys to perfection

Curnonsky, prince of gourmets, declared that "Cuisine is when things taste like what they are." This astonishing paradox is probably the best definition of French cooking, where the highest art consists of doing away with the most erudite techniques to serve a dish that blends textures, tastes, and cooking methods to produce something that appears as nature intended.

Good cuisine starts at the market, where every product has its high season. Everyone knows that you cannot find wild mushrooms or game out of season, but few people realize that all meat and seafood also have their moments of perfection, which vary from species to species, just like fruit and vegetables. Whether you are seeking higher quality or better prices, there are many advantages in buying products at the height of their season.

It is thus important to be able to evaluate the freshness of a piece of fish, the quality of a cut of meat, and the ripeness of a vegetable or fruit, as well as the happy (or unhappy) marriages between various ingredients. A novice would be wise to follow the advice of a good recipe, a friendly cook or a competent grocer: nothing delights honest craftsmen or enlightened people more than sharing their experience and knowledge with anyone who is truly eager to learn. In general, specialist grocers, experts in what they sell, are preferable to supermarkets where you have to sort the best from the worst, and where it is hard to get away from industrial production.

Harvesting leeks, illustration taken from Tacuinum sanitatis, a treatise from the 15th century. Leeks, like most vegetables in the Middle Ages, only appeared on the tables of commoners.

Finally, it is better to make your purchases as near to mealtime as possible, to avoid having to stock them in the refrigerator, which is always bad for fresh ingredients. This may seem rather complicated, but with a successful trip to the market you will already have taken a big step towards culinary triumph.

The menus of good Parisian restaurants change at least once a season and have a different market dish or menu every day, often composed that very morning according to what delights they have gleaned from their purveyors' stalls.

The window of Hédiard, the world famous luxury grocers, founded in 1854.

A restaurant kitchen in Paris in the first half of the 20th century.

Once the preparation itself begins in earnest, success depends above all on precision in cooking. Overcook a sea-bream by just a few minutes and its delicate flesh will turn to mush, whereas doing the same to an oily fish will give it more or less the appearance and consistency of an old shoe. Forget to let a duck rest after removing it from the oven and the flesh will be unpleasantly tough. Over-boil baby vegetables and they will be irremediably ruined, becoming soft and tasteless. On the other hand, if you do not give the meat for a stew the hours of cooking it requires in order to reach the desired tenderness, it will be inedible.

Cooking techniques (grilling, frying, roasting, braising, steaming, boiling, simmering) are simple but precise, and require a little organization and the right equipment (see page 29). Sauces have become considerably lighter. But that does not mean that cream, butter and classical beurre blanc have been banished from the Parisian kitchen, where they are still used with moderation to enrich cooking juices and coulis. Variations are infinite, although the basic techniques are in fact few in number. The thick sauces made with a flour roux, once a mainstay of any decent French kitchen, have all but disappeared.

Now, more than ever before, Parisian cuisine concentrates on freshness, quality of products, and precise execution, which is hardly compatible with industrial agriculture. Today's high-technology agiculture produces tomatoes all year round in a nutritive liquid under neon lights, perfect in appearance and perfectly insipid in taste, and provides unbelievably red mid-winter strawberries that have the taste and consistency of papier mâché.

If you are in a hurry why not prepare one of those many very simple Parisian dishes that are tasty and quick to make? Not only will you increase your dining pleasure but you'll do no harm to your health either.

The cooking brigade at the Brasserie Marty, in the heat of the action.