Paris – French Cooking Class
Nov 15th, 2006 by Ian
The market
On Tuesday, Oana and I spent half a day at a French cooking class. Our early day started with a visit to one of the markets near the Roland-Garros stadium to the west of Paris. This market runs daily in one of 3 or 4 locations in the arrondissement, all year round, independent of weather.
We met our cooking instructor there, and she took us around the market as we picked up the ingredients for the dishes we were going to make and were taught a few new things. The market in Paris is very similar to an open air farmers’ market, but there were a few differences. The market sells farmers’ food and has many specialty stalls – a pork butcher, a bird/rabbit butcher, a cow butcher, a fish monger, a cheese stall, bakery stalls, organic produce stalls. In Vancouver, the point of a farmers market is to sell food that is perceived to be higher in quality, fresher, organic, sustainable, or unavailable in a supermarket. However, the markets in Paris have stalls for the supermarket produce; the market we visited has a very small section of rather poor looking organic produce and a few large stalls dedicated to wholesale, supermarket-like produce such as fruit which is impossible to grow locally at this time of year.
The market also has stalls which sell random items – vacuums, TVs, sweaters – which is fairly common for a European market. There is even a market inspector who ensures each vendor follows the specific expectations for their area – each area specialist has a license for that specialty.
As a matter of courtesy, you do not select the produce from the stall yourself, but ask the stall minder to select it for you and trust them to find the best item for your needs. The vendors all seemed to take both cheques and credit cards. All in all, this Paris market was very similar to what you find at Granville Island or Lonsdale Quay and less so to a farmers market.
The fish monger
The fish monger sells many different kinds of sea life. Each different product has a sign that indicates where the produce was caught – Ireland, England, Normandy, etc. – and if the produce was frozen and thawed or is fresh.
The produce vendor
Each produce item also has a sign that indicates the country of origin, the rating and the price. When the produce is harvested it is given a rating. A rating of A.O.C. indicates the highest quality, a rating of 1 indicates that there are shape imperfections or colour defects, and a rating of 2 indicates that there are wounds and bruises or shape imperfections. The ratings don’t change with the age of the fruit – they are determined at the time of harvest.
The cheese vendor
There are four general types of cheeses – hard, soft, goat and blue. One of each should be served to make up a complete cheese course.
The rabbit and bird butcher
The rabbit and birds in the display retain their heads and feet – apparently this keeps them fresher. The chicken feet can be used to gauge the age of the chicken, which must be at least 80 days at this market (as opposed to 40 days or less for farm-raised, hormone-injected chicken which attains the same size for half the price). The feet of the chicken come in different colors and the colour of the chicken meat can indicate the feed the chicken consumed over its lifetime – corn or wheat.The meat for our entree was rabbit. Our instructor spoke to the rabbit butcher who selected the de-furred rabbits and proceeded to remove their heads and feet and cut the rabbit into appropriately sized portions for our cooking. The rabbit came with its liver and kidneys intact.
The cooking
We cooked two items in class: Honey Mustard Rabbit and Pistacho Caramel Topped Braised Pineapple. Apart from using a cocotte, and using real vanilla beans and hand scraping them, the cooking technique was quite familiar. I haven’t cooked rabbit or pineapple before but neither recipe struck me as distinctly French. The meal paired well with beaujolais wine and was good especially since I skipped breakfast, but it wasn’t good enough for me to cook it at home. I would have much prefered escargot and coq au vin and something you can light on fire for a French cooking lesson but maybe not many other tourists would – Oana and I were the only 2 of the 8 who tried the rabbit liver. The teacher was one of the finer points of the event, the school was at her house in her renovated attic and was very clean, modern and well thought out. The teacher herself was quite charismatic, enthusiatic and interesting and it was very nice to get a view of parisan life through her eyes.