Alsace, France

"My choice of subjects has been guided by a set of simple questions.  Does the subject interest me?  Does it amuse me? Is there an aspect of it that is not well known?  It's the technique of the magpie, hopping from one promising distraction to another, and it has the great advantage of being virtually all-inclusive."
– from Peter Mayle's Provence A-Z







The old writerly adage "write what you know" is as good of advice to a young want-to-be writer as there is.  Scan back through the vast images and dramatic twists of childhood and turn those episodes into something you can really sink your pen into.  Drifting upward upon middle-age, however, those same episodes, one hopes to some degree, lose some of their initial bluster.  The past becomes history, the future, well, we'll see, but let's do our best.  Regardless, there is always the prospect of the wish if one chooses to invest a bit of imagination in the direction of something that neither has, or more than likely, will ever exist.  If I am reading the wonderful culinary history French Regional Food by Joel Robuchon, for example, and come across the chapter covering the administrative region of Alsace, and look on over to the facing page at the wonderfully clear photography of the Christmas Market at Place

Colmar, Christmas Market at Place des Dominicains

des Dominicans, or a snapshot of a brewer at the microbrew pub Les Brasseurs in Strasbourg, well, I might wish to go there.  But will I?  The culinary arts are always at least two things at once: first, the very plate of food and the drink which the cook has just pleasurably created and will be consumed in moments; and second, the more abstract portion of culinary history – the intention and accident of food.

Les Brasseurs, Strasbourg

As hard as modern cultures have tried escape their culinary regionality via the consumption of long distance products at the grocery store or the vast network of chain food, once one settles down for a moment, takes a deep breath, and comes to grips with the beauty of real food resources, it all comes back to us once again – we are where we eat as much as what we eat.  Only the skittish mind of the digi-holic will continue to try to escape his or her history forever; it is a little like taking a warm bath and denying you are in water.  All of this is to say that a little re-investment in food history might take some slight prodding from a dream, a wish, or a bucket list as much as anything else.  As for my list, then, I could visualize such trip that would include an evening stroll in among the crowded streets of Colmar's Christmas Market, an evening sipping a micro pilsner at Les Brasseurs in Strasbourg, maybe a slight touch of Eau de Noix (local walnut liqueur) as a nightcap, and somewhere in between an order of Pates d'Alsace, a pasta made with fresh eggs. "The very first cookbook to be published in Alsace in 1507 already referred to Wasser Strieble, a liquid batter from which more or less thick fragments of pasta dough are dropped into boiling water.  At the end of the 17th c., Abbot Buchinger provided a recipe for Alsatian pasta that is still used today....In 1840, the first pasta business opened near

Colmar...after 1870, hundreds of bakers were making egg pasta...Today, only two companies produce this pasta."

Pork Tonnato

There are as many possible pitfalls as hopes or ambitions in cooking Mediterranean cuisine for family.  The Pork Tonnato recipe, out of the fine Food Network Magazine cookbook, looked

very graceful over on the accompanying page, pork medallions scattered over by capers, what looked like a rich hollandaise of sorts, and a pile of arugula for roughage.  A few things almost always come up when trying to reproduce the glossy pics however.  In this case, there were not available at the grocery store non-marinated pork tenderloins.  It should be said directly that our store has always carried excellent deli pork loins, usually soaked tastefully by cherry or, in the case of the loin I had to choose, apple.  Set on the grill with nothing more than olive oil for moisture and non-stick, these loins rarely disappoint.  But, as I hadn't completely grasped the concept of the full tonnato recipe, I wondered if other ingredients might not 'jive' with the apple?  Up until the very beginning of the cooking process (all the way until taste time to be exact), I would not know if the pork, the very showcase of the dish, would work.  I moved my mental finger over the rest of the tonnato (Italian for serving with tuna) list.  Looking at the pic, the tuna is not quite visible, which is surprising because the recipe eventually calls for 5 oz tuna packed in olive oil, drained, to drape over the two loins in the skillet.  By the end, before cutting into medallions, the tuna and the capers formed a very significant row of texture over the top of the

loin, and the combined smells were accordingly distinct.  But this is getting too far ahead: this wonderful little Mediterranean recipe begins with a fine base of two hard-chopped shallots, hard-chopped carrots, four fresh basil leaves (how aromatic!), and then doused to settle by a cup of white wine (chardonnay is what we had on hand).  The fully browned loin sat over the top of this mixture for approximately another 20 minutes until the heat reached at least one hundred and fifty degrees, the tuna and capers absorbing the wine and vegetable steam, the pork loin building up its own internal juices.  The rest of the recipe consisted essentially of a lemon infused mayonnaise which was to be dolloped over the pork and a bed of arugula.  I had previously decided to boil some asparagus – still a

nice fresh green even in late September – and was to create a simple hollandaise packet to go over.  I decided that the hollandaise might substitute just fine for the mayo.  I cut what looked like the perfectly cooked loin into medallions, not quite as thin as what was pictured, but instead closer to an inch and half thick, a personal preference.  Placed them vertically on the plate (tuna still on top), ladled some of the shallot, carrot, wine sauce over, tossed arugula and asparagus down, and then drizzled the entirety with hollandaise.  At this moment, the dish looked considerably like the book pic; the heat was still nicely in the loin; the aromas clean, some sweet, some acid; and the additional greens looking, honestly, quite healthy.  Serving only myself the dish would have been a self-shoulder slapper: I liked the look, I liked the smell, I knew the pork was done well.  But what about the apple infused pork commingling with tuna, capers, a dash of lemon...and hollandaise?

Could this pass the common family critic?  The beauty of cooking for family and children is that there is always a hungry audience; the difficulty is that the subtleties of intention found throughout any given recipe are rarely if ever as important to them.  Either the bites work and are edible or they are not. A cleaned plate versus smashed-up piles food on plate will always indicate whether you have pushed over to the other side of gourmet a bit too far, or held in tight to the notion of sheer edibility.  Simple elegance seems to be a very worthwhile fine-line to shoot for as the aspiring home cook.  In this, the fantasy of cooking fine meals is accomplished, yet the result is enjoyed, even sometimes commented on as "something I never would have thought of, but good."  The loin was tremendous.  The apple had simmered down and become the essence of the tonnato ingredients.  The hollandaise pulled each of the components together.  It was devoured in minutes.

Chicken Tagine with Sweet Potatoes and Prunes

"Here in London it is an effort of will to believe in the existence of such a place at all.  But now and again the vision of golden tiles on a round southern roof, or of some warm, stony, herb-scented hillside will rise out of my kitchen pots with the smell of a piece of orange peel scenting a beef stew.  The picture flickers into focus again."  – Elizabeth David, on Provence






The gist of this blog is about the imaginative transportation from one place to another via the process of cooking.  David, above, in her classic the Cookery of the French Provinces, describes the "country to which I am always returning, next week, next year, any day now, as soon as I can get on to a train."  Although I have visited France twice myself, once to Provence, primarily in and around Nice, Mougin, and Aix, I do not have any more specific plans to return than common hope.  And so, as I begin to move through recipes such as Dorie Greenspan's 'chicken tagine,' the cooking becomes, I will quickly admit, partially about the  meal that I hope will result, but partially about the "vision of golden tiles on a round southern roof...some warm, stony, herb-scented hillside."

There's no real way for the artistic person to ever free from the dilemma of art for self versus art for others. Cooking just happens to be, I believe, the greatest medium we have for doing both simultaneously, and for which both gain... if the cooking is good.  I like to try to ensure both.

This meal is particularly 'exotic,' as Greenspan describes. Yet warm, soft and comforting.  I liked the approach to the softening of the white onions as step one: slicing two, and letting them essentially

slowly break down for half an hour on low heat at the bottom of the 'tagine,' or in my case a good sized dutch.  This would then create the steam base for the assembly of the rest of the meal, creating a wonderful bottom-to-top cooking sequence which permeated the chicken pieces and finally up to the top layer where one pound of sweet potatoes perfectly cooked (no stirring, or the 2-inch pieces, too soft by the end, would break to mush).  The onions, chicken, and potatoes then were the solid layers; what was sprinkled or poured in between served as the pique for the imaginative transportation to the

Mediterranean.  Two large pinches of saffron were added, as well a star anise, a touch of cayenne, a

a pinch of cinnamon, bay leaf, a touch of honey, and 12 prunes.  Just as Greenspan predicts, once the entire tagine cooks (45 minutes at a slight bubble), and the chicken pieces are draped by the onion, potatoes and juices, it becomes quite an adventure in discovery to figure out whether you are entering into a bite of sweet (especially prune and honey) or of earthy spice (especially the hay-like saffron and edge on the cinnamon).  What you do know is that by the time all of this ventilates up to the potatoes, they have captured a North African, Southern French region.  The afternoon sun outside shines a little bit brighter; the family eaters raise their chin muscles, nod in the affirmative, and dive back down into the plate.

French Bistro

"Yet beyond all this, the attraction for many is a longstanding idea of France, an almost mythical view of the country seen through a prism in which historical and cultural associations merge with the idea of a specific lifestyle."
– from A Brief History of France









Great French cookbooks such as French Regional Food by Joel Robuchon, or Around My French Table by Dorie Greenspan have more in common than the fact that they both represent an earnest

passion for French recipes – they both come from cooks who have spent either years or a lifetime in the country itself.  For Robuchon, he declares in his foreword that he "was born in Poitiers, in the Poitou.  It is my 'homeland' – the region of my childhood and the place where I undertook my first

apprenticeship when I was just fifteen years old."  For Greenspan, she describes a long-standing
desire to transplant to Paris from NY, traveling for years "back and forth between New York City and France.  Then, thirteen years ago, I became truly bicontinental: Michael and I moved into an apartment in Paris's 6th arrondissement, and I got the French life I couldn't ever have really imagined but had

always longed for."  To have the blessing of placing one's nose on the very windows of the local buchons, cafes, bistros and markets of French streets and back alleys would no doubt be the best way to learn the historical craft of the greatest culinary heritage on earth, but here, in these pages, is writing about the idea (as referenced above) of France and French cooking.


In many ways it is the imagination itself that is at the very cause of great cooking. Results, of course, must be had – the steak must be pink and tender, the bread soft, warm, and earthy, the salad fresh.  Yet

fine cooking isn't mechanical.  To set one's imagination around the art of cooking is what sets the cook, I believe, inside the mind of the food, if there is such a thing.  To project the idea of a favorite food into the process is what allows for a variety of good results.  If the recipe calls for cut ham, then, as I've always felt, cut the ham the way the imagination would like it eventually done, then execute.  If

the imagination can tell that a soup has become too thick, despite the prescribed intentions of the recipe, then add water to make it the way the imagination would like it.  This doesn't even begin to cover the notion of the senses and how they are evoked in the cooking process. Taste, sight, smell, even the sound of the crackling of the bacon onto a skillet, are non-mechanical ways of enjoying the process of cooking...that enjoyment is then transferred over and onto the product.

If the cook is able to summon the imagination this way for creating recipes, then he or she can also summon the imagination to consider what it might be like to create authentic French cuisine, to visualize various regions of France where so many of the ingredients of the great recipes have grown.  To be able to refer back to the historical genesis of a food as you cook it is as direct a way to appreciate what has come before as any other.  Like the great archeologists who salivate at the idea of placing their hands on a trinket of sunken treasure in order to 'sense' history, so too does the imaginative cook "see through a prism in which historical and cultural associations merge with the idea of a specific lifestyle."