Foreign Cookbooks - Today, France!

In what I hope will be part of a longer series, I came across two cookbooks from France that are held in the same high-regard in France as our American classics are here.

If you remember, this was a question I posted last week when musing about how we hold several cookbooks in high esteem, and I wondered if they did this in other countries.

Here's what I've discovered so far:
There is a book called the Larousse Gastronomique, which I had heard of before and completely forgotten. It was first published in 1938 and clocks in 1087 pages. And to think, editors in the US were concerned about the size of Julia Child's first book. Ha. It is an encyclopedia of culinary terms mixed in with recipes. The original book was purely French food, but a newer edition includes cuisine from other countries as well.

The other book is The Encyclopedia of Practical Gastronomy and is now out of print, but Julia Child herself gushed about the book and its broad scope and witty writing. I'm going to see if I can find a copy somewhere for cheap. I can't read French, I can barely ask my way to the bathroom, but it's worth a go.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the French have an affection and reverence for the cookbooks like we do. Scratch that, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that we have an affection and reverence for cookbooks like the French do. Despite public grumbling to the contrary, we share so much in common with the French, and owe quite a bit to them as well, that we are in essence family. There's enough material in this subject alone for a wholly new post, so I'm going to save my thoughts on this for later.

As for more foreign cookbooks, I'm going to bug my mom about German cookbooks. I know she has a few stashed away, and maybe I'll get to take some pictures and learn more about them. There is one classic German cookbook for Americans that I know of, by Mimi Sheraton, that I'm frankly not fond of, but I couldn't tell you why. I need to stew on it for a while.

More later.

What Next?

Last night's Boeuf Bourguignon went well, though the meat was a little dry. I can't be sure if that was from its age or the cut, but I'm not going to sweat it. Cooking for me, as anxious as I get, is about experimentation, and being willing to make mistakes. It's not about being perfect, at least not at this level, because I'm not going to be perfect.

Beef will be dry, gravy will lump, the onions will burn, and I will have to throw them out and start over again.

I will say this, however, the sauce, the veggies, out of this world. I followed the recipe exactly, and used three cups of a four-year-old red Zinfandel from California which was somewhat dry, and a little sweet, and it made for a great base. I did not put in the mushrooms, per my wife's request, though I cooked them on the side and mixed them into my final dish.

So, tonight, I'm not cooking. Heather wants to make one of the kids' favorite dishes, and it does not come from the Julia Child cookbook, if you know what I'm saying, so it will be more pedestrian fare. I'm not complaining. The kids don't want to eat fancy food every day, my wife won't tolerate me taking over the kitchen, and I do have other things going on that require my attention, like a job, coaching, PTO, fixing up the house, etc. Though, how great would it be to just cook, without the whole, having to own a restaurant and never being home on the holidays bit.

Maybe I should be someone's housewife. I will willingly be someone's housewife if they want. I'll clean their house and cook their meals, and they just have to pay me what I make now and give me benefits. I'm absolutely down with that. You just have to fight my wife for me. Good luck. She throws a mean right hook.

But even if I was cooking tonight, I don't know that I'd be cracking open MtAoFC. It's a fabulous cookbook and I'm infatuated with it, but I'm also a huge fan of Chinese and Indian food. I'm dying to have some Chicken Tikka Masala. Like right now. Someone bring me some. Maybe I'll make that in a few days, or maybe I'll crank out some Chicken with Broccoli. The world's too wide and big and wonderful to drill down into a single cookbook for too long. I've got too many other things I want to fry...I mean try.

So, what's next?

Tonight: Boeuf Bourguignon!

We have an eye round roast that needs to be cooked today, so tonight, I'm making a Boeuf Bourguignon.

I have the Julia Child cookbook open and I'm planning out the cooking. I have learned that I need to prepare everything before I start, or I get stressed and rush. Cooking shouldn't be like that, so the first thing I'm going to do is go through the recipe and mark everything I need, including my pots and pans. The French call this a mise en place. The literal translation is "putting in place", but it really describes a method for preparing all of your individual pieces ahead of time into individual containers, measured and organized so the cooking is easier.

If you had a recipe that called for:

• Four cups of red wine
• Two bay leafs
• Two springs of parsley
• A tsp of thyme
• 1 lb of mushrooms, sliced

You would have your four cups of wine measured out already, a container for each spice (or one containing all of them mixed together, if they went in at the same time), and a bowl of your mushrooms. You do all of this before you really begin the process of applying heat to anything.

As a German, it appeals to me in the way I struggle to explain. The Germans have a common phrase "Alles in ordnung" which means "Everything's in order." You usually say it when someone asks you how you are. We say "Okay" or "Going well", but the Germans say "Alles in Ordnung." The Berliners will sometimes say "Alles in Butter," which means the same thing, but gives life a deliciously rich and fatty sense, no?

If you've ever been to Germany you know that order is very important. I think there's a tiny Teutonic taskmaster in my heart somewhere pacing the halls and snapping brisk instructions when things fall out of balance. "Säubern Sie das Haus!" "Waschen Sie die Teller! Schneiden Sie das Gemüse! Gießen Sie den Wein!" (He may be bossing me, but he's very polite about it.)

And so I go about trying to get everything ready ahead of time. For me, the mise en place is not just about getting the ingredients ready, it's not just about making sure I have all the right tools, it's also about preparing me, the chef. I need to be ready, so I'm putting myself in a place where I can cook.

Luckily, with this dish, I will be able to do large parts of it ahead of time. The onions can be stewed now, the mushrooms sauteed as well and put aside, so at 2.30 I can put in the roast and be, generally, stress-free about the whole affair.

I'll never be completely cool about cooking. Even dishes I breeze through worry me when I'm finishing them up. Are the bits uniform enough to be pleasing, is the sauce spiced enough without overpowering everything, are all the vegetables cooked just right? I feel much like an expectant father in the last minutes before serving.

Still, it should go okay.

I'll post pictures and thoughts tomorrow.

Cookbooks

In the US, there is a certain fetishizing of cookbooks. There are several "legendary" or "essential" cookbooks in the US that every chef is supposed to have:

"Mastering the Art of French Cooking", "The Joy of Cooking", Alice Waters' "The Art of Simple Foods", "On Food and Cooking"all spring to mind right away.

We collect them like grigris warding off the potential of a failed soufflé or a hollandaise gone bad. I know there are others, but they sit central in the American mind as the backbone of any essential aspiring gourmand's basic education in food.

And that begs the question in my mind, do they do this in other countries? Are there a handful of deadly important cookbooks in France that get handed from parents to children, or stolen with a passel of notes and scribblings inside? Do the Germans have some cookbook that is a bastion of tradition? Do the Japanese read the recipes in some revered cookbook like they're gripping narrative?

Or is this a uniquely American invention? And if so, where does it come from? Why these books? What does it say about who we are as Americans?