1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (22 page)

The Alsatian soil and climate are well suited to producing the right kind of cabbage for pickling, and the abundant supply means there are still many homes, shops, and restaurants where sauerkraut is cured on the premises. Finely shredded fresh cabbage is layered with rock salt and juniper berries in a wooden barrel or stone-ware crock, covered with a cloth, and weighted down by a lid made of nonreactive material. Within three weeks, the cabbage cures itself as it releases its own brine. To try this, choose an outdoor or basement location, lest the rising aroma of the pickling cabbage turn you off long before it is ready to be eaten.

Whether you’re self-curing or hiring out the job, please pass the sharp Dijon mustard or the sweeter, grainier
moutarde ancienne
, along with floury boiled potatoes and a glass of golden beer or an Alsatian sylvaner or riesling.

Where:
In Paris
, Chez Jenny, tel 33/1-44-54-39-00,
chezjenny.com
;
in Colmar, France
, Chez Hansi, tel 33/3-89-41-37-84;
in New York
, Quatorze Bis, tel 212-535-1414;
in Great Falls, VA
, L’Auberge Chez François, tel 703-759-3800,
laubergechezfrancois.com
.
Further information and recipes:
The Lutèce Cookbook
by André Soltner with Seymour Britchky (1995);
foodnetwork.com
(search choucroute garnie).
Special events:
Sauerkraut festivals: Waynesville, OH, October,
sauerkrautfestival.com
; Phelps, NY, August,
phelpsny.com/sauerkraut-festival
; Scappoose, OR, September,
scappoosecommunity.org
.

Cherry bread pudding might be the easiest way to describe this simple but seductive dessert, at its best when the juiciest cherries are in season. Lovely and light and perfumed with vanilla, it is as cheerful looking as it is novel (at least in the world beyond France), a crustless custard pie dimpled with whole cherries. The cherries should not be too large, and, if you and your guests are brave, should remain unpitted to prevent their juices from running out. A batter much like that used for crêpes—eggs, milk, flour, vanilla, and perhaps a touch of brandy—should be poured over the whole cherries, and the top then liberally sprinkled with sugar to impart a crystalline glaze.

Clafoutis is best served warm. Its center will relax and sink a bit after it is pulled out of the oven. Never mind—just give it a snowfall of confectioners’ sugar right before cutting it.

Clafoutis can be made with many other fruits—plums, pears, apples, and blueberries, for example—but winey cherries deliver the best color and flavor.

Further information and recipe:
Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1
, by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, and Simone Beck (1961);
saveur.com
(search cherry clafoutis).

Need proof that France occupies the geographic heart of gastronomy? Consider the humble cookie, which is approached with the same delicacy and intricacy the French apply to haute cuisine. The results are as gorgeous as they are delicious. Cookies in France are not kid stuff, and they are as likely to be found in high-end bakeries as in grocery stores. Though variations abound, seven classic types abide:

Langue de chat.
The slender slip of a cat’s tongue is an accurate descriptor for these fragile, paper-thin butter cookies. Extremely delicate, the langue de chat has a pure, subtle flavor evocative of fresh, sweet heavy cream. A few regional variations exist, including an excellent chocolate candy version, but in general the plain butter version predominates. Historians date the cookies to the seventeenth century, when white sugar and piping bags (necessary for turning out the precise amount of dough that begets the langue de chat) simultaneously became commonplace. The gently sweet, snappingly thin treat makes a wonderful accompaniment to ice creams and chilled desserts, and is welcome with tea.

Macarons.
Perhaps history’s first official cookie, the macaron is traced by food historians to Cormery, the commune in central France where it was first made at a monastery in 791. Local legend says the cookies were created in the shape of monks’ navels, but their name comes from the Venetian word
macarone
, which means fine paste and refers to the ground-up almonds from which they are made. Traditionally, the diminutive cookie involved little more than those almonds and/or coconut, along with sugar and egg whites, but in the name of high fashion, macarons became lighter and more like meringues, sandwiched together with crème, chocolate, ganache, and fruit jam or honey. The original stands unequivocally above the rest. Macarons have the distinction of having been adopted as a Passover seder dessert alongside traditional macaroons. No one is quite sure how this came to be, beyond the cookie’s lack of flour. Several regions in France are famous for macarons, most particularly Saint-Émilion, the small medieval village near Bordeaux in the southwest. In Paris, many fine patisseries specialize in the dessert; the two most famous are Ladurée, which has been baking the treats since 1862 and prides itself on its variety of flavors, and Pierre Hermé, a former head pastry chef at Ladurée who has set up his own shop, which has arguably become even more famous than its forerunner.

Stacks of colorful macarons have timeless French allure.

Calissons d’Aix
. Soft, flat, narrow ovals with pointed ends, the traditional sweetmeats of Aixen-Provence are shaped like almonds. Made of almonds, sugar, candied melon, and fruit syrup or orange-flower water or rosewater, the marzipanlike delights are in fact so prized that they are protected by the French government: The sweets are historic, having been made for centuries in Aix. (The exact moment of origin is the subject of controversy; some pinpoint a wedding breakfast in the 1400s, while others vouch for the commemoration of the end of the plague in the 1600s.) Regardless, the makers of these emblematic cookies (the
calissoniers
) form the Union des Fabricants de Calissons d’Aix, a group whose aim is to protect the integrity of the product and provide a guarantee of quality to the consumer. Government regulations spearheaded by the
calissoniers
stipulate that in order for the cookies to receive the label
calissons d’Aix
, the almonds must be from the Mediterranean and the cookies cannot include preservatives or artificial coloring and must be made only in Aix. Eaten with coffee, tea, Champagne, and the musky-sweet Beaumes-de-Venise dessert wine, they often come in keep-sake metal boxes; particularly lovely is the circular version, in which the cookies are arranged like flower petals, said to be a special gift for those in love. This isn’t one to try at home: According to Elizabeth David in
A Book of Mediterranean Food
, “these delicacies belong rather to the province of the professional pastry-cook or confectioner than to that of the amateur cook.”

Crêpes dentelles
. The classic cookie of Brittany, the crêpe dentelle starts as a very thin, lacy pancake that is rolled into a cigarlike cylinder and then cooled to a beautiful brown, buttery crisp. The indulgence was invented in the late nineteenth century in the town of Quimper, where the superbly crunchy cookies are still made today by the very same method: Crêpe batter is thinly spread on a flat griddle; when it has cooked to the right temperature and consistency, the “pancake” is folded around a long, sharp knife, then cooled until crisp. Some canny home cooks roll thin pancakes into layers and bake them, but there’s no need to bother: The crêpes dentelles made by Brittany’s Gavottes brand are delicious and fanciful fun in their distinctive foil wrappers. They are available in good gourmet food shops around the world.

Tuiles
. Considered by many connoisseurs to be France’s best and most iconic cookie, the tuile is named for the beloved old Roman-style terra-cotta tiles atop Venetian villas. A whisper-thin, crisp curved disk made of ground almonds, the tuile achieves its characteristic shape by being taken straight out of the oven and instantly slid over a rolling pin or wine bottle to cool.

Palmiers
. The name
palmier
may translate to “palm leaf,” but most Americans know these caramelized sugar and puff pastry cookies as elephant ears, for their double-lobed shape. Flaky, buttery, and marvelously, shatteringly crackling, palmiers are made by folding the pastry several times and then coiling it into its much-loved heart shape.

Where:
In many locations in France and in New York
, Ladurée,
laduree.com
;
in France
, Pierre Hermé at various locations,
pierreherme.com
; La Cure Gourmande,
la-cure-gourmande.fr
;
in Aix-en-Provence
, Calissons du Roy René,
tel 33/4-42-26-67-86,
calisson.com
.
Mail order:
The Frenchy Bee,
thefrenchybee.com
(search gavottes crepe dentelle; macarons; calissons de provence).
Further information and recipes:
Macarons
by Pierre Hermé (2009); for a tuile recipe,
Butter Sugar Flour Eggs
by Gale Gand (1999); for palmier recipes,
Martha Stewart’s Cookies
by Martha Stewart (2008) and
The Fearless Baker
by Emily Luchetti (2011); for a langue de chat recipe,
The French Cookie Book
by Bruce Healy (1994);
caramelizedblog.com
(search saint emilion old-fashioned macarons).

Savor this classic in a rustic setting.

Here is a frugal answer to the quandary of owning a rooster past his mating prime: the classic French peasant stew that showcases a brilliant collaboration between wine and poultry, traditionally a
coq
—that is, a rooster, not a
poulet
or a
poussin
or a
poularde
—and
vin
, something as red, rustic, and feisty as the old bird himself. Stewed long and slowly, the tough meat becomes soft and toothsome.

The old boy is cut up, put in a pot, and bedded down with onions, shallots, carrots, garlic, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, plenty of salt and pepper, a little salt pork, small white mushrooms, and a quantity of red wine, most suitably from Burgundy. From this humble start comes a magnificently mellow blend of homey flavors, the bird’s juices commingling with the wine in a wintry, saucy tribute to good old-fashioned French home cooking.

One of the first published accounts of coq au vin appeared in 1913, when the French zoologist and natural philosopher Mathurin Jacques Brisson discovered the dish while traveling in the south-central Chaîne des Puys region and recorded his pleasure at learning that a tough old rooster could morph to such benignly mellow goodness. It traveled stateside via Julia Child, who popularized the rustic preparation through her 1960s PBS television program
The French Chef.

As Julia demonstrated, coq au vin really does make a great home-cooked meal, especially now that ordering a rooster from a specialty butcher shop is becoming ever more possible. Failing that, choose a nice, plump chicken weighing four to five pounds. The classic accompaniment is steamed new potatoes sprinkled with parsley, but it’s sometimes fun to take a flyer and serve it with buttered fresh noodles.

Where:
In Nuits-Saint-Georges, France
, Au Bois de Charmois, tel 33/3-80-61-04-79,
auboisdecharmois.com
;
in New York
, La Mangeoire, tel 212-759-7086,
lamangeoire.com
; the Breslin, tel 212-679-1939,
thebreslin.com
;
in Miami
, DB Bistro Moderne, tel 305-421-8800,
dbbistro.com/miami
;
in Orlando
, Le Coq au Vin Restaurant, tel 407-851-6980,
lecoqauvinrestaurant.com
;
in Washington, D.C.
, Et Voila, tel 202-237-2300,
etvoiladc.com
.
Further information and recipes:
The New Making
of a Cook
by Madeleine Kamman (1997);
Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1
, by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, and Simone Beck (1961);
The Food of France
by Waverley Root (1992);
hubertkeller.com
(click Recipes, then Poultry).