Recently I ate at one of those small neighborhood restaurants whose fame spreads beyond the quartier and people come from other neighborhoods, as well as from other countries, to eat at because it is très reputé. Le Repaire de Cartouche (99 rue Amelot) is one of those restaurants in Paris. It’s known for very good food and an especially compelling wine list. The prices aren’t…
When folks ask me what the French do for Thanksgiving, I don’t think the word they’re expecting to hear are “Um, nothing.” And why should they? It’s not as though America shuts down for le 14 juillet. Still, a few places around here do get into the spirit and you’ll see a few bags of cranberries at the market, a few more sweet potatoes piled…
One assumption that I’m going to make about the French is that they’re not afraid to make things au pif, or “by the nose”. I don’t know if a precise recipe for sauce vinaigrette actually exists. But if there is, I bet few people follow it very closely. And Romain is no different from his compatriots when it comes to recipes, and rules. They are…
Bakers who tackle French recipes get stumped by the sugars, which don’t necessarily correspond to the sugars available elsewhere. All supermarkets in France carry white granulated sugar and there’s often unrefined sugars, such as cassonade, which grocers stock and are widely-available. In America and elsewhere, bakers often have to do a bit of hunting around to find the corresponding sugar. French brown sugars are quite…
About a year ago, I was having supper in a friend’s apartment and everything we ate was simple, and tasted really good. He’d lived on a farm near Toulouse for many years, where he worked for one of France’s agricultural organizations. Now he lives in Paris and I was surprised when he told me that the onions we were eating on the tart he’d made…
When I started this site back in 1999, I had forums, where people could chat and post messages about food and cooking. As the blog evolved, we had to say goodbye to it, but one question lingered: Is couscous pasta?
If you go to Lyon, you’ll find Saint Marcellin pretty much everywhere. It’s the best-known cheese from that region, and the user friendly-sized disks are inevitably piled high at each and every cheese shop you step in to. Locals bake them at home and slide the warm disks onto salads, and I’ve not been to a restaurant in that city that didn’t have Saint Marcellin…
Every year I get a number of requests from people looking for a recipe for great Pumpkin Ice Cream. In my book, The Perfect Scoop, I have a recipe for Sweet Potato Ice Cream studded with maple-glazed pecans, but there’s something about the fall that also makes people think squarely of pumpkin. I’m a big fan of sweet potatoes, personally, but old traditions die hard. So a Pumpkin…
I’ve been living in France for almost eight years and in all that time, I’ve yet to make even one of these classic French pear tarts. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a bakery that didn’t have wedges of this tart in little paper footings, ready to take out and be consumed right away. So I guess because I could always buy one, why…
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