Parisian Home Cooking: Conversations, Recipes, And Tips From The Cooks And Food Merchants Of Paris

Parisian Home Cooking: Conversations, Recipes, And Tips From The Cooks And Food Merchants Of Paris Review

`Parisian Home Cooking' by chef / restaurateur / culinary journalist, Michael Roberts is an early entry into what is becoming a very crowded field of cookbooks on French cooking at home, whether in Paris, Provence, or one of the many other culinary rich regions of France. The principle competitors in this market are lead by Patricia Wells, who has at least three (3) titles in this French home cooking sweepstakes. Susan Hermann Loomis also has three, if you include her culinary memoir `On Rue Tatin'. Her latest `Cooking at Home On Rue Tatin' is an especially good entry into this field. There are even several classics in this genre by Madeline Kamman and Richard Olney, but I have not yet read or reviewed them, so I mention them with no opinion on their quality. One of the most recent entries is from TV Food Network Celeb, Ina Garten, `Barefoot in Paris', which has much merit, but as much of that quality is due to her travelogue content as it is to her culinary content. To my mind, the very best entry into this genre is Amanda Hesser's `The Cook and the Gardner', which has so much more to offer it is probably best considered in a class by itself, but it does overlap the subjects of these other titles.

Two prominent virtues of chef Robert's book are its low price and its simple recipes. The books by Wells, Loomis, and Garten also have simple recipes, which points out that all these books are really dealing with what has famously been classified as `cuisine provincial' and not `cuisine bourgeois' which is the subject of the great books by Julia Child, Elizabeth David, and Richard Olney' and certainly not `haute cuisine' which you will find in Wells' collaboration with Joel Robuchon. While most recipes are simple, Roberts has the virtue of having a few more recipes for money. Oddly, I don't see much greater depth in the description of the recipes based on the fact that Roberts is a trained chef and restaurateur.

All these books have some overlap in recipes, but not as much overlap as you may see in similar books on Italian cuisine. In fact, Roberts gives several very interesting recipes for `potted' dishes, which seem to be a species of rustic pate. About half of his soups are based on very common themes of beans, leeks, potatoes, mushrooms, cream, and onions, but some are quite new to me, such as the sauerkraut and Brussels sprout soup from Alsace (bordering on Germany).

The section on egg recipes is something of a surprise, as it completely eschews classic omelet recipes in favor of scrambled eggs. The only recipe with `omelet' in the name might be much more properly be called a frittata as it is done with six or more eggs, cooked on the stove top and finished in the oven, without folding. To make this turn even more interesting, the author says that French home cooks simply do not bother with the true omelet as taught to us by Elizabeth David, Julia Child, and a battalion of other notable culinary writers. Two things keep me from gigging the author on his opinion. One is David's dictum that an omelet is what you want to call it. The second is the fact that the author has lived, studied, and worked in Paris and I have not, at least not for several decades, so I take him at his word when he says the everyday at home egg dish in Paris is the scrambled egg, not the omelet. Even so, his description of the scrambled egg method, while very good, is not the very best I have seen. For that, look in `Simple to Spectacular' by Chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten and journalist Mark Bittman. As someone who has struggled with scrambling two eggs, I strongly recommend Roberts' suggestion that scrambling should be done with no fewer than six eggs. On the other hand, I find the techniques here for soft boiled and coddled eggs to be too good to miss.

Most of Roberts' salad recipes are pretty standard stuff except for his unusual suggestion on the use of verjus as a replacement for vinegar. What is so delicious about this notion is not that it is very new, but that it is so very old. Verjus is a common ingredient in most Medieval and Renaissance cookbooks and it probably went out of fashion when commercial vinegar production was well established.

As with any good French cookbook, the vegetable recipes always seem to be the most interesting, especially the gratins and tarts.

The seafood recipes are heavy with mussels, scallops, and salted cod with poaching, fennel, and pan-frying done in many different ways.

The poultry recipes also include the usual collection of excellent chicken recipes, heavy on the methods for treating older birds and roasters. I was especially happy to see three different chicken casseroles. Turkey, duck, and rabbit also get their usual quota of recipes.

In the chapter on red meats, there is the usual collection of veal, beef, lamb, and pork recipes, including a very nice take on preparing `minute steaks'. No treatment of our famous Philly cheese steak does as good a job of detailing the best way to coddle rather than to sautee the thin meat.

The chapter on desserts follows the lead of the egg chapter, in that the average Parisian will simply not bother trying to compete with the local Patissier. So, most of the desserts are quite simple, more assemblies than fully baked cake or pastry. The author does, however, go to the trouble of giving us a lemon tart recipe, including a shortbread-like crust very similar to the Chez Panisse sweet tart crust.

Speaking of Chez Panisse, I suspect Alice Waters and Jeremiah Tower would take issue with the author's bio that credits him with pioneering `California cuisine'.

A very nice, inexpensive book of simple and authentic Parisian recipes. Recommended.

Parisian Home Cooking: Conversations, Recipes, And Tips From The Cooks And Food Merchants Of Paris Overview

In Parisian Home Cooking, Michael Roberts offers a look at how real people shop, cook, and eat in the City of Lights. The side streets and markets of Paris come alive with anecdotes about traditional recipes and the daily shopping. Each chapter takes a trip to a different part of the market, with descriptions of the shopkeepers and their goods. And more than 150 recipes document the meals that many Parisians know by heart and consider their daily fare.

This isn't fancy restaurant cooking that is difficult to duplicate in the home kitchen, but rather wholesome, easy-to-make recipes, most of which take less than thirty minutes to prepare. Take your pick from Smothered Duck Legs and Apples, Baked Tomatoes with Pesto, and Stuffed Cod with Asparagus. Indulge yourself in Lamb and Red Bean Stew, Tuna Braised in Sherry with Rosemary, or Parisian Bread Pudding. From cover to cover, Parisian Home Cooking is a delicious way to bring a bit of everyday Paris into your own home.

Parisian Home Cooking: Conversations, Recipes, And Tips From The Cooks And Food Merchants Of Paris Specifications

Picture for a moment a package of salmon steaks wrapped in plastic, labeled with a price sticker, and put out on display with the rest of the shrink-wrapped seafood in your neighborhood giant supermarket. Or for that matter, picture yourself racing through the supermarket, getting the food shopping over with as quickly and as sanely as possible. This is the opposite of Michael Roberts' Parisian Home Cooking, a cookbook as much about attitude as actual food.

Through artful recipes and engaging street photography, Roberts brings to life a culinary Paris found in private homes, a cuisine with a different sense of rhythm than anything American. Lunches are longer. Dinners are later. Shopping for the best ingredients imaginable is an interpersonal experience to be savored. "The charm of a French meal," Roberts writes, "is their insistence on quality ingredients and balanced flavor, in respecting those ingredients by not overcomplicating the cooking...."

To take this book to heart in an American city, Roberts suggests we "make marketing an adventure." To this end he finds himself making full use of ethnic markets and groceries, buying fish from Japanese markets, fresh poultry in Chinese markets, and so on. "The Indian grocery is where I buy chickpea flour for making socca, a Niçoise crepe.... Don't think that you need access to a French market or gourmet emporium to cook French food."

That said, prepare for the likes of Senegalese Salt Cod Fritters, Cream of Sorrel Soup, Escarole Salad with Mustard Vinaigrette, Green Beans and Morels, Scallops with Noodles and Basil, Turkey Cutlets with Sage and Lemon Butter, Braised Rabbit with Mustard and Calvados, Roasted Turnips with Sage, and Spiced Poached Peaches.

Roberts divides his book into the traditional courses of a French meal, starting with little things to nibble and encourage an appetite, and ending with dessert. Traveling the pages in between takes the casual visitor deep into the heart of Parisian markets, then back home to a small kitchen filled with the heart-healing aromas of a simple, divine meal, Parisian style. --Schuyler Ingle

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