Maitre Marcel

30th July 2020

Bouillabaisse Back to Basics — a modern version of a recipe by Jean-Baptiste Reboul

Jean-Baptiste Reboul wrote “la cuisinière provençale” in 1897 and it is still a standard-bearer. I recently bought fish at Port la Nouvelle with the aim of making a Bouillabaisse.

This fish soup with chunks of fish has become a famous Marseille dish of broth, lots of fish and sea food, served with a garlicky and peppery rouille and even some grated cheese.

Main dish Poultry

1st June 2020

Spatchcocked cockerel on the grill

Spatchcock, or butterflying, is a method in which one cuts the backbone away from the bird and flattens the carcass.

Fish Main dish

1st April 2020

A simple aïoli

For many people aïoli is a garlic sauce that goes over fries, kebab or shawarma. But in the Provence, aïoli is more than that and can be an entire festive meal with fish, snail, squid, artichokes and other vegetables with a dollop of the creamy garlic sauce.

Vegetables

26th February 2020

Fried spinach with apple, shallot, sambal and soy sauce

A quick recipe for a healthy vegetable side dish of spinach and apples.

Main dish

22nd December 2019

Pancakes!

In France, people eat a lot of pancakes. They are flat and called “crèpes” and can be sweet of savoury. In Breton pancake eateries they have savoury “sarazin” crèpes that could rival with pizzas. The “crèpes Suzette” is an alcohol soaked sweet desert. In the Netherlands where I grew up, the pancakes are thicker and can be baked with slices of lard or apples. I […]

Beef Main dish Mushrooms Pastry

18th November 2019

Beef pear with trumpet of the death mushrooms

My butcher usually keeps two special cuts aside when he gets a new carcass — the poire and the merlan — and I have the right of first refusal. I hardy ever refuse.

These are very fine cuts, one is oblong and looks like a fish (merlan being a whiting) and the poire looks like a big pear. They come from near the topside, in English butchery terms. For French butchers, they are near the tranche. It is lean and delicate meat and not so well known because there is just about a pound of it on an entire cow.

Main dish Pasta Seafood

18th November 2019

Pasta with clams, Saint Jacob scallops and squid

This weekend was the “Foire aux harengs et à la coquille de St Jacques” in the coastal town of Dieppe but we could not go to the Normandy port.

To mark this weekend of herring and scallops and encourage the hard-working small-boat fishermen there, I made a dish with scallops from my local fishmonger.

Main dish rabbit

2nd October 2019

Rabbit with tomatoes

The butcher had a nice halved rabbit and the neighbours had brought us tomatoes from their harvest, so the combination seemed logical.

Poultry

23rd September 2019

Guinea fowl with apples and cider, in a bag

A relatively easy recipe for fillet of guinea fowl with cider and apples, cooked in a bag in the oven. It almost cooks itself.

Poultry

14th September 2019

Free-range chicken in a casserole

There is free-range and free-range.. The poultry on sale at the butcher’s or in the supermarket may be labelled free-range but that does not mean they could roam about the farm as their ancestors. There are some poultry farmers around here with large barns where the birds can actually move around and are not squeezed together in cages. We also know some people that keep […]