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.
I am lucky to have a good, well-provided and reasonably priced butcher’s. Sometimes, however, I run into something even better when I have the possibility to buy directly from the producer. In France you can go and visit a farm, you can order online or you can find them on producers’ markets and that is how I got to know the people of the Ferme du […]
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 and the French way of life by ordering me a plate […]
I can still remember the first time I had veal kidney, rognons de veau. It was in 1994, I had started to work in Paris and the local editor-in-chief invited me for a lunch in rue Montorgeuil. Upstairs in a smokey restaurant, he ordered the days’ special and recommended it to me. Unsure whether it was a test, I acquiesced and a while later there […]
Veal is a tasty and lean cut of meat. As I wrote before, the problem is to find a good supplier of meat from an animal that has not been mistreated. Once that step is taken, and in France the meat is generally of good origin, you have a fine ingredient. You can eat it hot on the first day and serve cold slices later. […]
French cuisine is full of myths, mystifications and fables. Classic recipes sometimes have disputed origins. So it is with dishes named ‘Marengo’, after the June 14, 1800, battle in northern Italy by Napoleon against the Austrians. One of the stories is that Napoleon’s cook, a Swiss chef named Dunand, the son of a chef for the Prince of Condé in France, assembled some meagre provisions […]
Veal is a very tender and lean kind of meat. Please make sure you are buying meat from a calve that has been able to drink mother’s milk and walk around and not from an industrial ‘crate’ veal. This practice is luckily no longer tolerated in the European Union, but there remains a big difference between a milk-fed or formula-fed calf, or a free-raised calf. […]
Liver is slightly controversial. Not everybody likes the taste, not everybody likes to eat offal. Yet liver is the best kind of offal you can get and veal liver is tender and delicious. Liver is a source of proteins with low fat, it has vitamins A C D, B2 B5 B6 B12 as well as vital mineral salts such as copper, phosphorus, iron and zinc. […]