La Cuisine des Ch'tis: Anne-Cécile Fichaux
Dec. 9th, 2008 09:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustCookbooks are the perfect holiday souvenirs, and this beautifully designed book on the cuisine of northern France has obviously been put together with that in mind. There are cryptic remarks in dialect, there are remarks about how and when things are traditionally served and the lavish colour pictures include typical northern scenes as well as the finished dishes.
The organisation of the book, too, works better to call up memories and images of the north than for the cook's easy reference: after a brief introduction by the author (who - naturally - no longer lives in the region) it is divided into 'the dishes of my childhood' ('my mother's rhubarb tart' - and I could be cynical about thhis, but then again, why shouldn't her mother have made rhubarb tart? it's a sort of sweet quiche, rhubarb baked in a pastry shell, with an egg and cream custard); 'cooking with beer' (includes beetroot soup, the 'welsh' which had so disconcerted us last year and grandma's recipe for rabbit cooked in beer, but with olive oil substituted for grandma's lavish quantities of butter); 'la grande cuisine du ch'Nord' (I don't know what makes these recipes 'grande cuisine', but the chicory soup looks good) and 'in the skin of a Ch'ti' (again, I don't know what theme this selection is meant to express, but it includes mussels and chips as served at the annual 'braderie' - the flea market which takesover the city of Lille, and an apple cake also called 'flamiche des corons', a coron being a pit village).
On the basis of that last one, which I have already tried (and it was excellent - but maybe next time, more apples and less cake), they eat well in the corons. I note also that whenever I had to look up a word I didn't know - vergeoise, cassonade - it turned out to be a kind of sugar...
The organisation of the book, too, works better to call up memories and images of the north than for the cook's easy reference: after a brief introduction by the author (who - naturally - no longer lives in the region) it is divided into 'the dishes of my childhood' ('my mother's rhubarb tart' - and I could be cynical about thhis, but then again, why shouldn't her mother have made rhubarb tart? it's a sort of sweet quiche, rhubarb baked in a pastry shell, with an egg and cream custard); 'cooking with beer' (includes beetroot soup, the 'welsh' which had so disconcerted us last year and grandma's recipe for rabbit cooked in beer, but with olive oil substituted for grandma's lavish quantities of butter); 'la grande cuisine du ch'Nord' (I don't know what makes these recipes 'grande cuisine', but the chicory soup looks good) and 'in the skin of a Ch'ti' (again, I don't know what theme this selection is meant to express, but it includes mussels and chips as served at the annual 'braderie' - the flea market which takesover the city of Lille, and an apple cake also called 'flamiche des corons', a coron being a pit village).
On the basis of that last one, which I have already tried (and it was excellent - but maybe next time, more apples and less cake), they eat well in the corons. I note also that whenever I had to look up a word I didn't know - vergeoise, cassonade - it turned out to be a kind of sugar...
