Fancy. It’s a little unfair because it is certainly not definitive, but that’s the reputation that French food has in western Canada. French food is the stuff of upscale restaurants, to be enjoyed only on milestone anniversaries and as a film cue for starlet-played ingénues to whisper wide-eyed “Which fork do I use?” to their inevitably older, more experienced, more sophisticated dining companions. Ah, sophisticated! That’s another word that we associate with the French dining experience.

From such loaded terms as fancy and sophisticated there is a quick slide towards a distain for the entire cuisine as a bastion of culinary elitism that is entirely distasteful. Quite apart from the obvious error of confusing an entire cuisine with its most intricate and expensive examples, associating French food with snobbery and thereby dismissing it as a dining choice is at least as pretentious as the very thing it distains. I wonder if it is not simply predicated on that greatest of human weaknesses – a fear-based rejection of the unfamiliar.

The fact remains that there is a mystique about French food that is a little intimidating to someone unfamiliar with good rustic French fare. Certainly, the reputation of Paris as a beacon of refined culture and symbol of old-world glamour is going to conjure all manner of exotic expectations from our fevered imaginations, but the real problem lies here: there are few French restaurants in the west that are casual, affordable, or downright inexpensive dining options. If you want Italian food, by contrast, you can pick anything from a cheap spaghetti joint with red checked tablecloths and wax-laden, raffia-wrapped Chianti bottles, to a sleek, decidedly upscale restaurant with selections of the finest and most expensive cuts and preparations. Here in Vancouver, it is only recently that we are starting to see the true French bistros and casual cafés emerging and I think that it is because only now do we have a population willing to support these places.

Julia Child began the long, slow struggle to educate North Americans on the beauty of French cuisine in her groundbreaking television series “The French Chef” in 1963. Despite her tireless efforts to make French cuisine accessible to a culture that viewed French food through xenophobic eyes, it has been a long road to get to the burgeoning interest in French food that our city is experiencing. Cooking shows have exploded as both entertainment and fashion statement, and have educated people considerably just in the way that Julia Child did, without heavy-handed lecturing or cajoling: simply exposing them to the wonderful dishes, and showing how non-threatening they really are. Not only relegated to daytime programming slots and public-funded stations, cooking shows are trendy entertainment for those who cook and those who simply like to eat… or watch. Now that television viewers have been salivating in their living rooms over the sexy food on the screen, they are considerably more interested in trying restaurants that actually offer these items. Of course, there are those who are inspired to dust off a recipe book and dig out the pots and pans, but that is a completely separate subset of those affected by the televised culinary revolution (whistling innocently).

I enjoy fine dining and am always happy to go to beautiful, expensive dining rooms for exquisitely prepared dishes that simply don’t exist in other restaurants. It is not solely the fancy aspect of French food that I crave, however. The simple foods – cheese, wine, bread – these are the flavours that move me towards this cuisine. Ris de veau is simply an unexpected bonus. The cuisine Bonne Femme – translated as “Good wife’s cooking” but perhaps better known as French country cooking – is an assortment of hearty, yet simple dishes, often put together fairly quickly, that is a far cry from the Cordon Bleu image of temperamental perfectionist chefs in tall white hats.

What is it that makes a cuisine? First and foremost it is the ingredients, including seasoning choices; secondly, it is the method of preparation which includes everything from the lipids-of-choice to the actual procedure: the order of the courses, whether bread is portioned in slices, by tearing, or in individual serving sizes; and finally the at-table choices: the adding of various condiments, whether fingers or cutlery or other implements are preferred.

Sometimes, it is the little rituals and things that surround and go with a meal that affect how we eat. Salt and pepper are perhaps the most constant items the world over, but the other accoutrements vary quite greatly. Whereas a Chinese table usually has soy sauce, chile oil, and perhaps vinegar on the table, a French table will have a small pot of mustard – often Dijon – and is likely to have a cornichon dish. The familiar patterns that we create, whether it is reaching out tongs to snag a pickle or two, the absent-minded spreading of butter, or the practiced drizzle of hot sauce, these are some of the things that define the type of meal that we are having.

French cuisine at its fussiest is very high on ritual, but it need not be dauntingly so. It isn’t all impassive waiters in a choreographed ballet, covered platters, and using the correct fork – although, if one is going to eat snails, it does make sense to have a little gizmo that actually holds the shells securely, don’t you think?

The foundation of any cuisine is really about the food that is commonly eaten on a regular basis by the majority of its population. Often, this is the food of the poorer or working class, since most cultures have more bodies in that category than any other. The richer class has access to the expensive and the imported, and have been at greater luxury throughout history to sample the delights from afar. The peasants had to forage for themselves – quite literally. The tougher and more challenging bits of the animal, the vegetables that were considered “beneath” their richer neighbours, and the wildcraft harvest of the forests and fields unclaimed (or poorly guarded) by royalty. It is out of this combination of provenance and necessity that evolves some of the richest culinary traditions: finding ways to make delicious the awkward, the overlooked, the unwanted, coaxing rich flavour out of odds and ends.

The cuisine Bonne Femme is more centered on the ingredients of a French meal than the high style of the upper class. Thus, you see a lot of fresh seafood in the ocean and river communities, a greater amount of red meat in the interior, especially in the grazing lands to the south, and a lot of garden vegetables and orchard fruits everywhere. It is essentially the peasant food of France, although it can certainly be prepared with more upscale components. The fisherman or fishmonger serves bouillabaisse made from the scrappy, cheap, or unattractive fish that are harder to sell, and changes as the popularity of certain components waxes or wanes. Likewise the butcher, with the varying cuts of meat. Occasionally, a dish that is essentially peasant fare, will be taken up as a darling of the upper-class, and simply made with the more luxurious ingredients – sometimes to good effect, sometimes losing something qualitative in the process. As Iron Chef has shown us many times, you can add foie gras or lobster to anything to come up with a “gourmet” dish, but the true delights of cuisine are in the skilled handling of everyday ingredients.

At the heart of it, country cooking is the soul of French cuisine. It relies heavily on food in its proper season, flavoured with the herbs and condiments that are signature to France. There is plenty of small game – rabbit and waterfowl in particular – which can be easily hunted for the table, and which becomes a signature element of the cuisine for its abundance and by its skillful preparation. The terminology is a little different than we may be used to, but it’s easy enough to learn, and the condiments are familiar enough to be encouragingly accessible. Best of all, we don’t need to wear haute couture to eat French food.
 

October 2005