Food

Du piment dans la vie

Posted on by MELewis

Variety may be the spice of life but I am a creature of habit.

While I enjoy many different flavours, I am addicted to one particular spice: freshly ground pepper. Defying all rules of gastronomy, I cannot begin a meal without a few turns of the mill over my plate. Recently I added salt to the grind, a far more unhealthy habit. But how I love those little salt bombs!

I am also cursed with bad luck when it comes to pepper grinders. Over my lifetime I have gone through half a dozen of the things. All start well enough but end in the same way: spewing chunks of pepper rather than producing finely ground flakes. Is it simply because they get so much use? Or is it in the quality of the mechanism?

Now that our last combined S&P mill by Bodum has ‘rendu l’âme’ (given up the ghost) we have procured the king and queen of salt and pepper mills: Peugeot. I was vaguely aware that the French name most famous for automobiles also made mills. But I was surprised to learn that they began by making coffee mills and all kinds of steel implements, from saws to watch springs. The ‘moulin à poivre’ was introduced by Peugeot in 1874, way before they got around to making their first motor vehicle.

Now I see why they chose the lion for their logo: sharp teeth!

Only time will tell if these new beauties will live up to that reputation. For now, they work like wonders on both salt and pepper, with varying choices of grind size to boot.

Speaking of grinds, we are still struggling to figure out the future of our new home project. No news, I suspect, is not good news. Nonetheless, next week will see us taking off for Japan (fingers crossed I get a negative PCR test) and by the time we return in December I hope there will be more clarity as to when (or if) we will be able to plan our move next year. In the meantime, I will be trying very hard not to think about it.

How do you spice up your life?

P’tit déj

Posted on by MELewis

Breakfast has always been my favourite meal.

Le petit déjeuner, often shortened in spoken French to ‘le petit déj’ or just ‘p’tit déj’ has a lot to love. First of all, it is is eaten as soon as you wake up (at least for me). No waiting, no socializing. Also, you please yourself. That means you decide what, when and where you have breakfast.

As someone who reads a lot, I figured out early on that one of life’s great pleasures was eating breakfast while reading. Not the stuffy old newspaper that my dad used to hide behind for hours over the breakfast table, but whatever book currently had me in its grip.

From there I soon decided to shift the whole operation back to bed.

At first breakfast in bed was just on weekends. Then I figured: life is short. Why not enjoy your favourite thing every day? So for most of my adult life, and with a few rare exceptions like travelling and having guests over, my p’tit déj is served each morning, by moi, in bed. No matter how early.

Now to the main event: the food. The typical French breakfast, the one we always called ‘continental’ traditionally consists of a bowl of café au lait, a fresh baguette sliced in half and spread with butter and jam. Add in a glass of orange juice and maybe a yoghurt, and you get what the French call ‘petit déjeuner complet’. The first time I saw this menu description in a hotel, I was outraged. ‘Complet’? Basically it was the above, but with croissants as well as bread. How could you call that complete? Where were the bacon and eggs? The toast and cereal? The fresh fruit?

The bacon and eggs belong to the full English, bien évidemment. And the French reserve hot meals for midday and evening. Breakfast is mostly a cold affair, despite the enticing warm fragrance of freshly baked ‘viennoiseries’ (general name for croissants and other delicious pastries like pain au chocolat or pain aux raisins).

When it comes to my own choice of breakfast menu, I try to follow the old adage for healthy eating: “Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.” Unfortunately I usually only get the first two right, and my weight reflects this.

My p'tit déj

Still, I get a few things right. Balance, for one thing. Most days I have oatmeal or muesli with unsweetened yogurt, nuts and dried fruit. On alternate days I have toast with cheese, an egg or peanut butter. If eating toast, I try to get my favourite bakery loaf: rye with walnuts or raisins.

A few years ago, I switched from juice to fresh fruit for breakfast, one of the best changes I’ve ever made in terms of glycemic index. It’s the only time of day I really enjoy fruit so I try to sneak in at least a couple of servings: kiwis, bananas, citrus, and berries if in season.

Last fall I had some stomach trouble and went off coffee for a while, which led to a change in my normal morning routine. Now for breakfast I have a pot of black tea, full-leaf Darjeeling s’il vous plaît. But I’m back on coffee and so by mid-morning I’ll have a large latté with two shots of espresso!

And because we live in France, and the bakery is just two minutes away, I’ll have croissants on the weekend. With jam, merci. On a tray.

What did you have for breakfast?

Photo by Sergio Arze on Unsplash

Le frometon

Posted on by MELewis

There is nothing like a bit of cheese to get you through January — or any day, any time of year. To me, le frometon, as it’s affectionately called, is the perfect comfort food. Along with eggs it is the reason I could live fairly happily as a vegetarian but not as a vegan. Let me give you a tour of a few personal favourites.

Leading a sheltered life outre-Atlantique until my mid-twenties, I was only aware of maybe three types of cheese: cheddar, Swiss and Gouda. I won’t count Philadelphia. Somewhere in the early 1980s our culinary horizons expanded in Canada and I discovered such delicacies as Brie and goat’s cheese.

None of it prepared me for France. The first time I opened the fridge door and was hit by that smell — What or who died? — I knew things were going to be different. Raw-milk cheeses, especially the softer ones like camembert, are like living creatures whose enzymes keep maturing until they reach a level bordering on the putrid. This is when many French cheese lovers consider them ripe.

These days, while cheese is a staple of my diet, I rarely venture into the ‘fromages qui puent’ like camembert. I have nothing against them but it just so happens that my preferred varieties are less inclined to stink up the house.

Comté (the ‘m’ is pronounced like ‘n’) is my go-to hard cheese. Made from unpasteurized cow’s milk in the Franche-Comté province of eastern France, it is ubiquitous in France. I love it for its somewhat rich texture and easygoing flavour — not too strong or too bland. My favourite way to eat it is as a snack, on its own or with an apple. It’s also lovely grated and melted in an omelette.

Saint Agur is my favourite of the blues. Unlike the famous Roquefort, which is a sheep’s milk cheese from the south, it is softer and creamier with a bit of a tang but not the raw force. It is not a traditional cheese but was developed commercially in the Auvergne region to woo the French back to the fading glory of the blues. The move was apparently successful as it is the most-consumed blue cheese in France today.

Le Gruyère Suisse d’Alpage

There are no holes in my favourite Swiss cheese. What we generally think of as Swiss cheese in North America is actually Emmenthal — it’s the one with the holes — and while it originated in Switzerland, it is also made in France. Gruyère Suisse (preferably d’Alpage, meaning from Alpine pastures) is by far the tastier Swiss cheese. Dense and flavourful, my preferred aged variety has little hard crystals that tell you it has reached its nirvana of maturity. Can you see them?

I love goat’s cheese in just about every form. Its tangy taste, its velvety texture. ‘Rocamadour’ is one that I often buy as it’s just the right amount for one serving. A tiny, perfect raw-milk delight.

Okay, I’m going to get some people’s goats now by naming another Swiss cheese. Apologies to my French friends but I live very close to the border and it must be said that the Swiss also know a few things about cheese as well as chocolate.

La tomme Vaudoise is another tiny, perfect wonder of a cheese. It is one of the few whose edible mould of a skin I eat without qualm. It comes from our area, just across the lake on the Swiss side in the Canton of Vaud, and is often flavoured with ‘ail des ours’ (wild garlic leaves), truffles or grilled pine nuts. I enjoy it plain.

So there you have it, the cheeses that most frequently populate my frigo.

Although I do have a confession to make. I could be shot for treason saying this but if I could only have one kind of cheese, it would probably be a good old, sharp cheddar.

Comfort food, right?

What’s your favourite cheese?

La truffe

Posted on by MELewis

Their rich yet subtle aroma is earthy and reminiscent of rich chocolate. They are prized for the intense flavour they bring to cooking and the rarity of their supply. They are most often found in certain regions of France and Italy.

Truffles are found growing in the root systems of trees like oak, beech, birch, hazel, pine, and poplar, especially where the soil is light and high in limestone. In France, the Périgord region in the southwestern part of the country is most famous for its prized black truffles or ‘la truffe noire du Périgord.’ The best white ones are said to come from Alba, Italy.

Truffles can be cultivated but are most often found growing wild under trees. Truffle pigs or dogs can be trained to earth them up, but the pigs are more inclined to eat the bounty before the hunters can grab them. I guess because they are, um, pigs?

Oddly enough, some of the best truffle dogs look quite like the prized truffles themselves, don’t you think?

One of the things I love most about truffles is the word play in French. ‘La truffe’ is either a truffle or — you guessed it — the canine sniffer that finds them. In other words, a dog’s nose.

The resemblance is quite remarkable, n’est-ce pas? Although I wouldn’t want to eat a dog’s truffle, especially if it looked like my dog’s (not the one pictured below, which actually doesn’t look bad…). And also as I know where it’s been!

However, as much as the authentic truffle is to be savoured, there is a disturbing trend in restaurants these days to use truffle oil, a fake, chemical flavour that bears little resemblance to the real deal. Personally, as I am highly sensitive to perfumes and other synthetic (chemical) smells, it gives me a headache.

I enjoy the taste of truffles but am not crazy enough about them to go truffle hunting or pay the price for the privilege of slicing off shavings from one of the little nuggets to flavour a nice risotto. I will happily order such a dish if prepared with authentic truffles by a good chef. I recently heard about one such place in Paris, an Italian restaurant: http://www.prestofresco.fr/

How do you feel about truffles? Have you ever been truffle hunting?

Le yaourt

Posted on by MELewis

If you think cheese is the biggest staple of the French diet, think again. Here in France, le yaourt (yah-OOrt) is consumed morning, noon and night. Either for breakfast, as a dessert at lunch or dinner, and even as a snack, although probably not more than once or twice a day at most.

The variety of yoghurts on offer was one of the biggest differences I noticed when we moved to France. The category takes up an entire aisle in the grocery store – both sides. Strictly speaking, however, this part of the dairy section offers not just yoghurt but other ‘produits laitiers’ (dairy products) and alternative desserts from soy and lactose-free vegetal sources.

Another difference is that yoghurt in France is almost exclusively sold in individual servings — pots de yaourt — rather than the family-size containers in North America.

yaourt

French yoghurt is traditionally made from cow’s milk. You will also find variations made with goat’s milk (chèvre) and sheep’s milk (brebis). Sheep’s milk yoghurts are most often referred to as Greek-style or ‘à la grecque’ (although not all so-called ‘Greek’ yoghurts are made of sheep’s milk). The best ones are thicker and more sour-tasting (my favourite — yum!). Most varieties of yoghurts also come in non-fat or ‘0%’ versions, accounting for its own section on the dairy aisle.

The French also enjoy ‘fromage blanc’: literally ‘white cheese’ or quark, which is similar to ricotta or cottage cheese but without any visible curd. It belongs to a family of fresh cheeses that are similar to yoghurt such as faisselle and the thicker, richer petit suisse. Fromage blanc is often served for dessert with fruit compote or a simple spoonful of sugar. In restaurants, it sometimes comes in a little puddle of crème fraîche.

In France, yoghurt must adhere to strict regulatory guidelines in order to be labelled as such. It is made of milk that is fermented by two types of bacteria: lactobacillus bulgaricus and streptococcus thermophilus. While they sound less than appealing, those are the little guys that do all the work for our gut by pre-digesting the milk proteins and making them more easily assimilated in the body. (More details in French here: https://www.europe1.fr/societe/le-yaourt-est-il-vraiment-si-bon-pour-la-sante-3625073)

Yoghurt is undeniably a key part of the diet here. French kids don’t drink milk, or at least not much. They get their calcium from yoghurt and cheese. My kids grew up and thrived on a steady diet of yoghurt and petits suisses.

Now my daughter is vegan, and I have recently discovered some tasty dairy alternatives made with almonds (not great for the planet, but alas…). I am not a fan of soy, but I do support dairy alternatives for dietary and moral reasons that each of us must decide for ourselves. Clearly, it is a trendy new category taking up more space in French dairy cases.

As for me, I am a die-hard yoghurt fan. Each morning, I have a plain, probiotic yoghurt for breakfast with fruit and nuts. My evening indulgences often include a Greek-style low-fat yogurt with a bit of fruit or honey. Unless, of course, I go for ice cream. But that’s another story!

How do you like your yoghurt – or not?