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Monthly Archives: June 2010

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Is it art? Or just eggs? Hard to say at La Grande Epicerie.

Don’t bring eggs, bring a concept…

June 30, 2010 by Frenchfoodfool

…to make customers feel good and open their wallets. That’s what they really understand perfectly at La Grande Epicerie on the left bank of the Seine river next to Bon Marché: to stage food, and to let even simple staples look like precious goods or even art. The Epicerie is kind of a Parisian brother of  Harrod’s in London or KaDeWe in Berlin, a highly over-priced food store in the end, yet a very beautiful one. I’m sure they have […]

Categories: Paris, poetry, Whatever Works • Tags: Food, Shopping

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One ingredient, a thousand options: fresh raw shrimps.

A thousand and one meal…

June 29, 2010 by Frenchfoodfool

…can be made of fresh raw shrimps, if you find any in your neighbourhood. It’s one of these products you can buy without having a recipe in mind already. ‘Cause there’s as many options to cook them as you have kitchen ware at hand. You could use your wok, frying the shellfish together with almost any vegetable that you find in your fridge. You can deep-fry them just coated in a tempura or any other dough. You could think about […]

Categories: Whatever Works • Tags: Food, Shrimps

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Question Plate

A profound question about food…

June 25, 2010 by Frenchfoodfool

…that you can chew on over the weekend. You know, I’ve always liked these games where you’re asked what REALLY counts in life. And I’ve always hated people who say: “mobile phone” when asked what they would bring on a desert island. Boo! Now here’s my question to you. Think twice. Have fun. This is a mouth-watering game!

Categories: Whatever Works • Tags: Death, Food, France, Life

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The peanuts make the dish: Indonesian-style satay.

Satay means: get your hands dirty…

June 25, 2010 by Frenchfoodfool

…while fumbling with marinated chicken strips in order to get them on skewers somehow. It IS ugly but you’ll be rewarded with nice food. I’ve seen a street vendor once in Jakarta who prepared his stall for lunchtime. In my memory HE managed to put the pieces together without getting his hands dirty at all – and in no time, of course. He produced 80, 90 satay in the same time I need for only ten of them. And then […]

Categories: good food, skills, Snack, World • Tags: Chicken, Food

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Baking blind with a little help from new friends: ceramic stones.

Here’s a funny kitchen helper…

June 24, 2010 by Frenchfoodfool

…for all people who like to bake their own tarts and cakes. It’s nothing else in fact than little bone-shaped morsels made of ceramic and produced only for weighing down your shortcrust pastry while baking it “blind”, which means: before really filling it. People have weird business ideas, don’t you think? I’ve been offered the little stones who replace the dried beans (or lentils) I had used so far, never ever knowing whether they were still good for cooking after […]

Categories: skills, Whatever Works • Tags: Baking, Food, Kitchen Helper

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You can use them for cooking, you can eat them right away: anchovies.

Judge a book by its cover…

June 23, 2010 by Frenchfoodfool

…when it looks like this beautiful pack of anchovies. It’s a can wrapped in a box I bought at the organic food shop just around the corner today, a very retro style thing  after all. But this doesn’t seem to be  just about nice design and good marketing. If you follow the trace of producer Ortiz on the web, you’ll stumble on an informative website telling the story of this family business since 1891. And if only half of the […]

Categories: Apéro, good food, seafood, skills, Whatever Works, World • Tags: Anchovies, Beauty, Food

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Blow out the candles, will you? Birthday cake, eight years already!

There’s no birthday without a cake…

June 22, 2010 by Frenchfoodfool

…and no brighter smile on a kid’s face when it’s home-made. This is what we got yesterday to celebrate a boy’s eight years. Don’t know how other cultures celebrate birthday but I really like the European way: it’s nice to see the little ones working hard to blow out the candles, eager to get their sweet share. And as long as the lights are still burning, there’s odd Christmas feelings always mixed in, even in summer. Yes, time goes by.

Categories: Whatever Works • Tags: Food

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Soaked in rum and sugar, glazed with preserved apricots: almost good.

Give me a baba, with lots of rum…

June 21, 2010 by Frenchfoodfool

…to help me forget what’s happening down on Knysna’s “Field of Dreams” in South Africa where the French national football team is going to pieces. Whether you’re familiar or not with names like Domenech or Anelka – you might have heard of what’s happening: the French players were on strike, imagine, their coach is humiliated, the mission chief has resigned, the top striker was sent home, the French newspapers and TV stations report as if on drugs, it’s a national drama […]

Categories: good food, signature dish, skills

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Four ingredients, a thousand pleasures: Italian "Caprese".

What really makes a classic dish…

June 20, 2010 by Frenchfoodfool

…is quite easy to say. Once upon a time it was just an idea for a simple, yet perfect match in food, a great recipe like salade niçoise, Caprese, a traditional Greek salad, a pizza Napoli and you could also say Sushi or Nasi Goreng or Peking Duck. Early travellers stumbled on those dishes that seemed to prove that God did exist after all, offering such formidable food all over the planet made of locally grown ingredients, not harvested long before […]

Categories: good food, Lunch, Whatever Works, World • Tags: Food, Italian Food

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Tell me how much time you need: big, tricky fish.

Share a fabulous salmon feast…

June 19, 2010 by Frenchfoodfool

…featuring a huge salmon of at least 2.5 kilogram (!) in the main role and some best potatoes as supporting actors. It’s a classic French drama because this fish will be poached in a court bouillon which makes it a very tricky guessing game whether it’s cooked or not cooked at all – or well-done and ruined – and there’s a lot of suspense involved, believe me. It’s a classic French dish, too. If you succeed, you’ll have a delicacy to […]

Categories: Dinner, good food, Lunch, seafood, skills • Tags: Fish, Food, Salmon

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Summer is back in the city: cherries, raspberries & Co.

Catch of the day, a summer’s basket…

June 19, 2010 by Frenchfoodfool

…containing cherries, strawberries, raspberries, girolles mushrooms (their season in Europe starts now) and lots of other good food. I’ve got fresh garlic and two hands full of delicious new potatoes from famous Noirmoutier island close to Nantes (or maybe the potatoes were famous first). Then there’s other vegetables I’d consider staple food like sweet pepper and eggplants, in the paper on the upper left some veal escalopes are hiding, the bananas will serve to cool down my kids; the Chinese believe […]

Categories: good food, poetry, Whatever Works • Tags: Food, France, Paris

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The French may lose, the French will drink: Pastis ad in Paris.

We’ll drown the shame in Pastis…

June 18, 2010 by Frenchfoodfool

…while dreaming of summer beaches along the Mediterranean coast. You’re not the football type? And you haven’t heard about Mexico’s 2-0 win against les bleus yesterday night? Never mind, you’ve just missed the ongoing vuvuzela concert down in South Africa and some nice moves by the Mexicans. The French players were in fact going down from the first minute maybe due to a feeling of homesickness: I mean, now they will return to lovely France much sooner than expected! They will […]

Categories: Drinks, Whatever Works • Tags: Food, France, Pastis

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