Snails and So On: Difference between revisions
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Also known as "Le Grand Cuisine", Haute Cuisine (literally "High Cooking") has its roots in the cuisine of the middle ages and of the Ancien Régime but really took off after the French Revolution when the guilds were disbanded and anyone could be a chef if they wanted. It was eventually codified by Georges Auguste Escoffier in the late 19th century. This is the cuisine of fine restaurants and hotels, of the well to do who could afford cooks. Haute Cuisine uses spices very sparingly in contrast to the heavily spiced medieval dishes of France, but uses fresh herbs more liberally. Most recipes call for extraordinary amounts of cream and butter, and deglazes and reductions based on wine are common. Fresh ingredients are pulled from all over France, from Normandy and Brittany to Lorraine and Provence, so you will find a truly astonishing variety, but it does not take on much of the regional character. If you go to an expensive French restaurant, this is most likely what you will be served, if it isn't Nouvelle cuisine (see below). At its best, it's a bit antiquated but very enjoyable; at its worst, you get what Calvin Trillin once described as "stuff-stuff with heavy": indifferently prepared with leaden, pasty sauces and dull flavors, barely worth putting on a buffet table, never mind in front of a $50/plate diner.
Classical French cuisine is one of the best-documented and codified in the world. Parts of it have roots going back into ancient times (the Greeks made bechamel sauce long before Béchamel existed), but it was popularized in more or less its current form in the 19th century by one of the first celebrity chefs, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie-Antoine_Carême Marie-Antoine Carême]. You'll want to read Escoffier's ''Guide Culinaire'' for the traditional treatment, as well as ''La repertoire de la cuisine'' by Escoffier's student Louis Saulnier; for a more modern approach, Joel Robuchon's ''Tout Robuchon'' <ref>The Complete Robuchon</ref>, Jacques Pepin's ''Complete Techniques'', and ''The Elements of Cooking'' and ''Ratio'' by Michael Ruhlman are all good introductions. François Tanty, a French chef who trained under Carême in the early 19th century, had cooked for the Russian royal family; as a very old man, he retired to the United States with his sons and wrote [https://web.archive.org/web/20130824101041/http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/cookbooks/html/books/book_46.cfm La Cuisine Français] in 1893, which may have been one of the first such books published in the United States.
===La Nouvelle Cuisine===
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===Cuisses de grenouilles===
Aka Frogs' Legs. They do taste somewhat like chicken. The French don't eat them that often, it's more a touristy thing.
===Escargots===
Snails. They
===Boeuf Bourgignon===
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===Couscous and other North African imports===
What pizza and Chinese-American food are to the US and Canada and curry is to the UK and Ireland, couscous and certain other North African dishes are to France -- cheap, tasty, convenient (usually takeout), not typical of what usually goes on the table, and thoroughly naturalized despite eaters' perceptions of exoticness to the contrary. Couscous is a small, pebbly, quick-cooking pasta eaten from Morocco to Sicily and Libya, and cooked and served alongside meals like tagine (a Berber meat stew traditionally cooked in a pot with a characteristic conical lid) or vegetable stew; it's sometimes even used as a dessert, served with honey or sugar and spices. Because of their origins in Islamic countries, these dishes are usually made with lamb or beef, never pork; a spicy beef or lamb sausage called merguez is fairly common as well.
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[[Category:Snails And So On]]
[[Category:Food Tropes]]
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