Because food is more than fuel for the body
I am trying out a new online fresh retailer, Tauziet et Co, that allows me to buy goods direct from the producer in southwest France. There is plenty available around here, but not everything. The more you order the smaller the transport fee, so when I do order it is a full carton. That isRead More
One Monday morning on our weekly farmers’ market in Mirepoix, the poultry lady had chicken livers. Not the soggy reddish things in a plastic container at the super market – which are more than decent – but, well, big livers. The point is that most “chicken” killed and sold are in fact still chicklets –Read More
At a market nearby I found a man selling fresh fish from his small fish farm in the mountains, using clean spring water, as many fish would prefer. He used a net to catch the fish from plastic containers on the back of his car. I prepared the fish in the simplest possible fashion toRead More
I like spinach. I do not believe it makes me strong like Popey the Sailor Man (and he ate them from cans…) but it is healthy. On the farmer’s market in the town here they sell “cold-ground” spinach, big rough leaves with a snail here and there. It will not last when it starts freezing.Read More
For some reason I often associate rabbit with Belgium and like to make a rabbit stew with prunes in Belgian beer. Perhaps because we had a rabbit when I was young and it was a Belgian race that grew rather fast. My parents thought they had bought a “dwarf “ rabbit that would live quietlyRead More
Winter is the season for root vegetables like the celery, as well as the truffle. Celery is inexpensive while truffles are rather expensive, but there are ways to overcome this and add a bit of truffle flavour to a dish with truffle oil. So I did here, I cooked a chopped-up celery with six potatoes,Read More
The butcher had some nice veal kidneys – bright purple in white kidney fat that he removed for me. I like kidneys but we do not eat them often because of the high cholesterol content. But they are a source for many minerals. Cauliflower has no cholesterol and is rich in vitamins and minerals.
When the vegetable stand on our market had French green asparagus, I could not resist buying them and decided to make a spring risotto. White asparagus are available in the south of the Netherlands; solid and straight stems that make a wonderful meal with eggs, potatoes and cream. In France, the white variety, sometimes withRead More
The French eat more offal than many other nationalities. In the Netherlands, I sometimes ate liver or blood sausage but that was about it. In France, I discovered sweetbread, kidney and spleen but I have not yet dared to eat heart or lungs. A French editor once tested my willingness to adapt to France andRead More
I love to cook with the seasons and to use seasonal products, provided they are not very expensive such as the morel mushrooms at the moment. One of the early manifestations of Spring is the appearance of young shoots of various vegetables and plants. Such as bear garlic. I first ran into this herb inRead More