Cocktail culture has landed in Paris. It took a while, though. France has always been known for its wine and beer, rather than Torontos, Cosmopolitans, and Martinis. And many of us have memories of trying to explain to a very confused café waiter how to make a martini, when they want to serve you a glass of Martini & Rossi (vermouth).
There’s one thing difficult about living in France. And that’s getting recipes from a French woman. It’s not because they closely guard their secrets (which every woman has the right to do), but it’s because they frequently use recipes as guidelines, rather than making them by following exact proportions and fixed preparation times. So if you ask a question about a recipe, you may get…
I won’t lie to you; fall is a very difficult time of year for us bakers. It’s not that I don’t like apples, pears, quince, and apples and pears, but it’s always sad to see summer fruits like peaches, nectarines and the line-up of strawberry baskets disappear from the markets. And I know I’m not the only one to see stone fruits go, as there’s…
We seem to be going though an age of competitions and it’s interesting for me to see so much fascination with being a chef, and people acting out on television what goes on (or they perceive goes on) in restaurant kitchens. I spent most of my life behind the stoves and let me tell you, it’s often not pretty and I would not want anyone…
When I was in Nice a few months ago with my friends Adam and Matt, I wanted to show them some of the more unusual local specialties, ones you wouldn’t come across unless you were actually in a certain region. French cooking is very regional, which is why you won’t find bouillabaisse in Paris or all that many macarons in Nice. And a lot of…
Over dinner on my final night in Ireland, one of the other diners who is Irish said to me, “I just came back from Paris…”, and he hesitated for a moment, and continued “…and the food wasn’t very good.” It’s probably unimaginable a few years ago that someone from Ireland would be criticizing the quality of French cooking. But it shows how far Irish cooking…
People often ask me if I make my own bread. Since where I live, within a one block radius of my apartment there are literally four very good places to buy bread that is baked fresh daily (and it’s very inexpensive, around €1-€2 a loaf), although I admire those who do, I can’t rouse myself to bake my own. Yet when I got back from…
When I was in Mexico last year, after they were able to uncurl my iron-clad grip on the airport entrance door frame because I was having a hard time leaving all those warm, freshly made corn tortillas behind, on the walkway to the departure gate, I realized I had a few extra pesos jingling in my pocket. Thankfully aside from a lot of great Mexican…
In August, most of the businesses in Paris shut down while a vast number of people take their annual holiday vacations. And in case you think that’s a grammatical error, in French one says les vacances, in the plural. So if you have a problem with that, I would tell you to take it up with them yourself, but right now most of them are…
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