The object of pride of all the French is the cuisine of France. "High cuisine" is akin to high fashion, it is used only in solemn occasions, it requires experience and appropriate preparation. Gourmet - connoisseurs of gourmet food, enjoy in France honor and respect. In the French cuisine everything is important - the taste of the dishes, their decoration, the order of delivery, tableware and accessories.
History of French cuisine
To be at least once in life in France - a country where food is elevated to the rank of a cult - is not this the dream of every gourmet? Today, French cuisine is a standard of refinement and delicate taste, but even in the 15th century, the French (who would have thought?) Consumed all the fatty, overcooked, tasteless by itself and abundantly flavored with randomly selected spices. Changes on the French dining table occurred after the place on the throne was occupied by Catherine de Medici.
The first thing that Catherine introduced was useful habits of washing her hands before meals and using cutlery, and then she also encouraged her subjects to unprecedented gastronomic delights .The Queen arrived from Florence with a staff of the best chefs, the French aristocrats were the first to adopt Italian cooking traditions from them, and then the high kitchen got to the bottom of society .After connecting the imagination, the French began to create their own culinary story .And today everyone can taste delicacies of French cuisine where they are cooked best - in France .
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The kitchen is high ...
The classic lunch of "high cuisine" (originating from feasts of French kings) consists of at least six (and more often of 10-12) food changes. Therefore, to maintain vivacity, mobility and harmony of the figure, each dish is supposed to try a small portion. After having put yourself a full plate of food, you deprive yourself of the opportunity to try the next gastronomic masterpiece.
Frog legs
For foreigners, French cuisine is, above all, exotic. But before you go to France for new flavors, make sure that you are ready for gastronomic experiments. Mollusks, oysters, mussels, snails can be unusual for our stomach treats. However, as true gourmets assure, only the uninitiated scowl their nose and turn away from exotic delicacies, in particular, from the famous frog legs.
Ironical nickname "Frogs" the French got thanks to the predilection to eat a leg of specially bred "meat" breeds of frogs. The meat of these amphibians is very tender, reminiscent of chicken, besides it is low-calorie and contains a lot of nutritious and useful substances. Frog legs are bought by Frenchmen strung on a string, a dozen at a time, and fried in deep frying or breadcrumbs.
Oysters
A gastronomic tour to France can hardly be called a budgetary .Take at least the oysters .There was a time when no food was available without them: in the houses of wealthy aristocrats, the oysters were stuffed with poultry, served meat with oyster sauce, baked pies with them, and the poor pickled oysters replaced meat .Their abundant use has led to the fact that the number of oysters in nature has dramatically decreased, and the product itself has become a delicacy not available to the common people .In the middle of the XIX century in France, even issued a decree prohibiting the collection of oysters from May to August in order to provide them with the best conditions for reproduction .
Today oysters in Paris are ordered to order in brasseri (beer restaurants), to them you will be offered a suitable wine. Most likely, it will be champagne, Alsatian wines or chardonnay. The taste of oysters varies depending on the way they are cooked, but real connoisseurs eat them raw, seasoning with only a few drops of lemon juice or Tabasco sauce.
According to doctors and nutritionists, oysters are extremely useful for health, because it is a pure protein enriched with trace elements. Molluscs for real gourmets are grown in special water bodies, in sea water with a low salt content, which makes oysters surprisingly delicate. Cancale, a small town in Northern Brittany, is the capital of oyster fisheries. Here you can visit with an excursion an oyster farm, and, of course, taste the most interesting mollusks.
Foie gras
Legendary pate of goose liver foie gras, is prepared quite simply: spices, cognac are added to the liver, after which the semi-finished product is left on ice. When the product is sufficiently marinated, Madera and truffles are added, carefully grinded and baked in a water bath. The fineness of the preparation of goose pate is in the geese themselves - for its production birds of special breed (with enlarged liver), living on a special diet (corn kernels) are used.
Snails
At Christmas on the table, the French usually find grape snails, known to the whole world as "escargo". Eating these large snails, they are also called Burgundy, in a marinade with a lot of seasonings is considered a symbol of a beautiful life. It is best to eat them or freeze them for the future in November, then they are well fed. Later, they fall into hibernation and after awakening in April will again be several months gain weight. Of the small dark snails, sauces are usually cooked.
Of course, it is not at all necessary that you become an adherent of shellfish and snails from the first time, maybe you will not like their taste, but to join the high French cuisine is at least out of curiosity.
... and everyday
It is clear that oysters and foie gras, for most French people, are not products for everyday dinners. However, everyday French cuisine is also somewhat refined.
Spices in French cooking are not crushed and remain floating in a ready dish like ours, but carefully tied with a thread, the resulting bouquet is dropped into a pan with a cooking product. After the herbs have given the dish its taste and aroma, they are extracted and discarded.
The French like to use cognacs and wines for cooking. Red wine, in which meat is stewed, and white wine, in which the fish is baked, give the gastronomic products a special taste and aroma. Even in soups and broths wine is often added.
The choice of meat for a family dinner turns for the Frenchwoman into an intricate quest. Lamb is preferable to eat at the end of spring, and the lamb should ideally be grazed in meadows located near the sea. The milk lamb should be two months old, and the Easter lamb should be three months old (and the French can really distinguish them!). Meat varies in stages of readiness - there are only six. And God forbid the French restaurateur to serve meat "with blood" if the customer ordered meat "blu" (almost raw, cooked at a temperature of 50 ° C).
Garnish for meat dishes should not be simple either. Our traditional meat with potatoes the French mistress does not understand. The Frenchwoman will cook or put out several kinds of vegetables, cut cabbage, lettuce, celery or tomato salad into garnish.
With a visible inclination to excesses, French cuisine is actually very "economical". Nothing is thrown away, everything goes in the way - tops and vegetable cleanings, stale bread and fruit peels. Soups, salads, canapes and pastries are made from them. Any dish can be "saved" and given it the desired taste, using sauces. The same dish, flavored with different sauces, can change its taste beyond recognition.