[Traditional French Cooking Class]

Show-and-tell: this is the gear I bought for the cooking class I am taking this year! It’s part of the Cours Municipaux pour Adultes, a learning program sponsored by the Mairie de Paris (the mayor’s office), and mine is a weekly three-hour class to learn about traditional French cuisine. All classes offered in this program (although the quality of teaching no doubt varies) are a real bargain, since they are financed in great part by local taxes — for once I am more than happy to pay them — but they are reserved exclusively to Parisians (who have paid the aforementioned taxes, it’s only fair) and the odds of getting in are akin to winning the lottery. Word has gotten around, they get a lot of applications, but naturally there is a limited number of seats for each class, so it’s first come first serve.

I first learned about this cooking class sometime over the summer, and in the morning of September 1, the day the enrollment began, I walked over to the Mairie, picked up an application (plus a few for my neighbors) and within the hour had sent it off, with a good luck kiss. The kiss thing seems to have worked, because I soon received a notice to come to the school at a certain date and time, and after a somewhat nerve-wracking test (multiple-choice questions? for a cooking class? what has the world come to?) only 18 or the 42 candidates (out of some 500 applications) were enrolled. Including — big sigh of relief — yours truly.

The classes started two weeks ago, and so far so good! What will we be learning? The basics of traditional French cuisine — Potage Conti, Pintade Grand-Mère, Steak au poivre, Carottes Vichy, Tarte aux Poires Bourdaloue, Paris-Brest (yay!) — you will no doubt hear about some of these as the class progresses. This is in perfect complementarity with my recent acquisition of L’Art Culinaire Moderne and I am delighted for the chance to learn more about this side of French cuisine I don’t know so much about. Looking at the scheduled weekly menus, I got irrationally excited by the thought of making Oeufs Pochés Toupinelle — don’t ask.

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[Warm Leek Salad with Fresh Walnuts]

There is a special kind of grace in the simple combination of a few ingredients that you have on hand. The resulting dish has an air of spontaneity, a certain modesty, that makes it easy to love: you didn’t put much time or thought into it, there is little pressure on its shoulders to be successful, and this allows it to shine even brighter.

I was standing in the kitchen, thinking that something had to be done about the leeks sleeping in the vegetable drawer. Steaming them for a warm salad sounded nice, possibly with a lemon and olive oil dressing to tease their natural sweetness. My gaze then happened upon the fresh walnuts I had just bought from the produce store.

Fresh walnuts are simply walnuts that have been recently picked from the tree, as opposed to walnuts that have been stored for a while, causing their insides to shrivel and dry up. Fresh walnuts are a bit more difficult to break open, because their outer shell is still a little yielding, not yet rock-hard, and it doesn’t shatter as cleanly as that of a dried walnut. When you open it, you find that the brain-shaped flesh takes up the whole space, and there are traces of a slightly sticky sap. The walnut inside is much moister than a dried walnut, its thin skin peels off easily, and its taste is more subtle, less woody: fresh walnuts taste grassy and alive, holding but the promise of the familiar walnut bitterness that will develop later.

This sounded like the perfect ingredient to round out my dish, giving it a third taste dimension: a bit of sweetness from the leeks, a nice tang from the lemon dressing, and a hint of bitterness from the walnuts. The salad did not disappoint: very easy to put together, the different elements worked really well as a team, creating a clean, simple and enjoyable set of flavors.

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Last Saturday I went to the Marché des Batignolles, an all-organic market that’s just a short bus ride from where I live. I don’t go nearly as often as I’d wish: many different activities compete for my attention on Saturday mornings, and the whole sleep-in-and-laze-around-in-your-pj’s seems to win the game more often than not, especially when Friday nights are poker nights.

However, this time I had a companion, Meg, who lives not too far from me: she had never been to that market so we had agreed to meet for a little team-shopping. And just like having a workout buddy will ensure you don’t skip your exercising sessions, this was an excellent motivation to actually get up, get dressed and walk out into the bright but chilly morning, my little shopping bag in tow.

We bought plenty of fruits and vegetables from my usual produce stall — I got carrots, spring onions, green beans, shelling beans, wild roquette, apples, and delicious reine-claudes (green plums) the size of mirabelles (marble-sized yellow plums) — but we also made a stop at a much smaller stand that sold intriguing and unusual produce.

When we got there a middle-aged man was poring over the selection and I overheard him say, “Vous avez vraiment plein de trucs bizarres qu’on voit jamais.” (You really have weird things that nobody else sells.) The way he said it, nonplussed and slightly dubious, did not make it sound like a compliment — he walked away without purchasing anything. The lady seemed pleased to discover such excited expressions on her next customers’ faces.

Most of the display was occupied by a wide and colorful array of winter squash, in varieties that are very difficult to find in Paris: butternut squash, acorn squash, spaghetti squash, and lots of others to whom I’ve yet to be introduced, including really small ones that would make remarkably pretty decorations for a mantelpiece if I had one on hand. But to be truthful I am not the world’s biggest fan of winter squash, and my eye was drawn to other things.

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I tasted my first canelé some seven years ago, at Eric Kayser’s boulangerie on rue Monge. Maxence had a friend who lived nearby, they often worked on school projects together, and whenever they felt like a break and a snack, this is where they would go. Maxence adored their canelés, ordered them often, and made me try them.

Delicious. Simply delicious.

Canelés (alternate spelling: cannelés) are made from a batter that resembles a crepe batter. It is poured into copper molds of a special cylinder shape (sort of like a short section of a Roman tower) and baked at a high temperature until a darkly caramelized crust develops, hiding and protecting a moist, tender and slightly chewy heart. The batter also calls for vanilla and rum, so canelés are intensely flavored but not too sweet, and they have a freshness, a cleanness of taste that makes you want to eat half a dozen in one sitting. But of course, um, you don’t. You do, however, eat them for breakfast, dessert or just a snack in the afternoon.

Canelés are a specialty from Bordeaux that dates back (most likely) from the 18th century. It remained pretty obscure for centuries until a brotherhood of the canelé was created to promote it in the 80’s. Their efforts were very successful and the canelé came back in style over the following years — it can now be found in almost every boulangerie in Paris. (A cynical and/or well-informed friend told me once that pastry stores loved canelés because they keep really well and you can just keep selling the same stale ones for days before you have to throw them out.)

The traditional canelé is baked in copper molds, but those are pricy and rather tedious to use (you have to butter or beeswax them like your life depends on it), so nowadays home bakers use silicone molds — not exactly the same results, but good enough.

Maxence bought ours at a market stand on vacation a few years ago, and I’ve been using my aunt’s recipe to make frequent batches of canelés.

The batter is so easy to put together it’s really laughable, and then it’s just a matter of waiting — for the batter to rest, and for the canelés to bake and cool down. They keep very well for a few days in a metal box: the crust will soften (some people like that) but you can just put them back into the warm oven (say 200° C, or 400 °F) for five minutes and then let them cool again before eating: they will regain some of their original crustiness.

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