The Intricate Art of French Cooking
By Jasmine Clark, Live Well Enhance You Contributing Writer
Do you like to cook? If you enjoy cooking – or you’re just a beginner but would like to get into it more – French cuisine is worth exploring. There’s a reason so many cooking enthusiasts love to go out of their way to study it.
July is National Culinary Arts Month, a month celebrating the hardworking chefs who create dishes that are not only tasty but are eye-catching art. This is the perfect month to step up your cooking game, and if you’re wondering where to start, you can’t go wrong with French cuisine. Let’s get a taste of some French dishes right now.
Quiche Lorraine: Egg pie
Quiche Lorraine is a popular French dish with eggs, bacon, cheese, and cream. The name comes from the Alsace-Lorraine region of France, which is in the northern part of the country. This versatile food is great for breakfast or brunch and can be served with side dishes or by itself. You can also add other ingredients if you want different flavors, but it’s best to try it out by starting with the basics!
You can buy a premade crust to make things easier, or create your own if you want. Julia Child’s Quiche Lorraine recipe takes you through the steps of creating the crust. Then you’ll have to put crumbled bacon in and also mix up your eggs and cream with salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Add cheese on top and bake, and you’ll have a beautiful quiche. Hint: Take it out of the oven when the center still slightly jiggles a bit and let it set as it cools.
Coq au Vin: Chicken stew with wine
The original purpose of Coq au Vin was to tenderize the tough meat of an older chicken. But if you have a younger chicken, you can still make this dish, although it’s recommended that you use dark meat because it’s tougher than white meat. The chicken in Coq au Vin is marinated with wine – traditionally a Burgundy wine – which causes the meat to become more tender. Of course, the wine is also there to add an exquisite flavor too.
Onions, carrots, mushrooms, butter, and bacon give this stew a satisfying multi-dimensional flavor. And it tastes even better if you refrigerate and wait until the next day to eat it. But if you can’t help but eat it right away, it’s understandable. No wonder Coq au Vin was featured on Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa – it’s a savory stew that’s fun to make and even more fun to eat.
Ratatouille: Vegetable stew
French cuisine just isn’t complete without ratatouille. This vegetable stew was good enough to get a movie named for it, after all. Food & Wine describes the dish as “a celebration of summer vegetables at the height of their seasonality.” It’s an explosion of rich vegetable flavor!
Ratatouille comes from the Provence region of southern France and is often made with tomato, eggplant, peppers, zucchini, and onion. It can be served hot or cold. It’s possible to make it by cooking all the vegetables at the same time, but in Rebekah Peppler’s recipe, the vegetables are cooked separately to get each one to the perfect texture and flavor. Mixing rosé in adds even more dimension to the flavor.
Gnocchi Parisienne: Buttery dumplings
Gnocchi Parisienne is a special treat that’s worth the effort. When you hear “gnocchi,” you may be thinking of the Italian food. But this type of gnocchi is from Paris and it involves pâte à choux, a dough often used in French pastries. In this recipe by Jacques Pépin, the gnocchi is made by using three cooking methods: creating the dough on the stovetop, poaching it, then baking it. The ingredients are simple elements such as flour, eggs, and milk, but the directions are very specific and need to be followed carefully.
Pâte à choux is a hot water dough, and hot water doughs are more common in Eastern cuisines than Western. But that didn’t stop the French from using it for pâte à choux, which is great because it makes Gnocchi Parisienne so delicious. Again, the technique used to get the gnocchi just right is very specific, but when you learn the ins and outs of how pâte à choux is made, you can use it to make not just gnocchi but many other wonderful baked goods. Warning: You’ll be spending a lot more time in the kitchen!
Feeling hungry?
Maybe this blog post made you hungry. If so, I’ve done my job. But if you’re not used to cooking French food, you may feel intimidated by it.
Still, it’s better to give it a try than to not try at all. Even if you make a mistake, you can always try again and create a more delicious result. Cooking isn’t about getting things right 100% of the time – it’s about the journey, the process, the mess you made along the way. Isn’t that a great metaphor for life? So get your cooking tools ready and have fun crafting French cuisine!
Jasmine Clark is a freelance writer from North Carolina. She enjoys writing about topics such as stress relief and positive thinking. She likes to encourage others to find ways to calm down and relax. In her spare time, she loves to write fiction stories and watch TV and YouTube. You can find her on Instagram @cozysachi.