My blogs runneth over

The "Arte y Pico" award

Just after receiving my first blogging award ever, for La France Profonde, another nice surprise came through my mailbox.

The Phantom Chef of The Belly Rules the Mind selected Cuisine Quotidienne for the above "Arte y Pico award." I appreciate the honor, especially when reading the rather stringent list of conditions for it:

"The terms of the award are:

1. You pick five blogs that you consider deserve this award for their creativity, design, interesting material, and also contribute to the blogging community, no matter what language.

2.Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone.

3. Each award winner has to show the award and put the name and the link to the blog that has given her or him the award itself.

4. Award-winner and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of Arte y Pico blog, so everyone will know the origin of the award.

When thinking about my choices, I realized that although Phantom had chosen cooking blogs, there was no stipulation about that; just "creativity, design, interesting material" and contribution to the blogging community.

To that end, I've cooked up an eclectic list of five winners, some from the culinary blogosphere and others from places far beyond:

Tongue in Cheek

The expat blog to end all expat blogs. Actually it's much more than that: lessons about love, life, and death against a backdrop of French antiques and memorabilia.

Chez Loulou

Food, fresh takes on the French countryside, and La Fête du Fromage. Also an inordinate fascination with abandoned buildings, which is right up my alley.

Siouxwire

For interesting content, you can't do much better than Siouxfire's "journey through art spanning both high and low brow across disciplines." I could spend days there.

A Title? What's in a Title?

Spacedlaw writes her primary blog, Spaced Out Ramblings, on Livejournal, but keeps this little jewel of a blog here on Blogger. Charming photos and music to go with them; nothing more.

L'ennui mélodieux

I'm glad I got this award so I could pass it on to Randal, because I can't quite imagine giving him the cute one with a red heart on it. L'ennui mélodieux's topics range and derange from poetry to politics, classical music to craziness, hockey to hard rock...and please forgive him for the ones (which I won't mention but in my case start with "h") that don't ring your bell because the rest is so damn brilliant.

The winners have been duly notified, and will certainly come up with some great choices of their own!

Of close-ups and cameras

(Photo NOT courtesy of Thierry Jouanneteau)

Thank heavens my husband is a shopper, or I would never even have evolved into the digital camera age. He is always keeping his eye out for the latest practical photography equipment, and manages to get good deals on it to boot.

He bought me my Canon PowerShot S45, which I like for its simplicity of use and the fact that it's easy to carry without being tiny -- I never feel like I'm really taking pictures with those extra-small cameras. I've used it for most of my photos on La France Profonde and have been quite satisfied.

On the other end of the spectrum, Thierry has a huge Pentax whose model number I won't mention because I'm afraid to take it out of its case to check.

He takes a lot of great shots with it, some of which I have featured on FP -- perhaps not enough to his liking, but I suppose he could start his own blog, right?

The problems with the Pentax are 1.) I don't know how to use it and 2.) afore-mentioned husband is never around when it is time to take food shots.

Yet, my Canon just didn't cut it for food close-ups.

Well, to make a long story not quite so long, Thierry recently got a great deal on a SONY Cyber-shot 1080 that I am capable of using AND takes great close-ups.

So now I can take credit for shots like the asparagus above, and this Greek-style feta chicken...

... all with a reasonably lightweight, easy-to-use camera.

I took it with me on my recent day trip to Albi with Loulou of Chez Loulou. I'm not sure it was vastly superior to my Canon for normal town photos, but it definitely did better with food, as witnesses this dessert pic from our meal at Restaurant Stéphane Laurens:

(Nems à la banane et au gingembre, ananas, chocolat chaud et glace au nougat)

And I'm definitely pleased with how it rendered this gorgeous cheese from Albi's covered market:

So to sum it up, my Canon is still going to be living in my purse, but the Sony will be lurking around the kitchen and accompanying me on food-related outings.

Here's to a new world of better food photos!

Bon dimanche!

Lurking on my bookshelves: La Bonne Cuisine Pour Tous

Rather than buying more cookbooks, I have thought about (not necessarily decided, that might be going a bit too far) taking the time to get to know the books that are already occupying our bookshelves. Over the recent long weekends, I started out this vaguest of resolutions by perusing the above volume, which was part of my husband's meager prenuptial cookbook collection.

Unlike Les Recettes Faciles de François Bernard, which has taught me much of what I know about basic French cooking, La Bonne Cuisine Pour Tous had lurked on my bookshelf for years without ever being used, getting no more than a quick glance once or twice.

I expected to find a lot of information on Internet about this book, as it seems to be a definitive opus about French cooking of days gone by. But just about all I discovered in my Internet search were links to vendors selling used copies of the book, which is apparently out of print.

I did learn that my version, a reprint from 1979, is a virtually exact copy of the original work which appeared in 1908.

So, exactly 100 years after its original publication, I have finally plunged into this fascinating volume -- and it gives a clear picture of how sharply different French cooking was a century ago.

I read the entire chapter on soups and was amazed by some of the cooking times: two hours for a basic potato and leek soup, for example. Other than that, the recipe was about the same as the potato and leek soup I make.

Other soups, though, definitely didn't tickle my modern appetite. How about a potage fécule au lait tonight? Ingredients: milk and potato starch.

The 496-page cookbook includes advice about "what is eaten" every month. So what should be on the menu for May?

Have things changed that much? The above are lunch menus, and there are some intriguing combinations:

Menu two: A real protein festival: plaice, tripes and Bayonne ham? Plus a few eggs in the salad for good measure!

Menu three: Mutton brains with black butter AND cold veal? I'm not sure I'd eat mutton brains any month of the year, even if somehow May is the perfect time to enjoy them...

But I can see plenty of dishes we do eat: macaroni, cold asparagus, cucumber salad...

The book offers up four pages of menu suggestions per month, and dessert is usually just called "dessert."

What's interesting is that even when a specific dessert is suggested, it was apparently de bon ton to add the omnipresent dessert nonetheless:

"Crème au café; dessert"

"Crème glacée; dessert"

I could go on, but I think I'll go whip up a kidney omelette. It's that time of year...

CQ HQ May 2008

I didn't even get around to writing CQ HQ for April, but I have really enjoyed writing my CQ posts lately, after February's period of soul-searching and doubt.

As I look back over the last few months, I have some positive points to report:

1. Readership -- or at least page viewing -- is way up on CQ. In fact, it has surpassed my truest blog love, La France Profonde. Someone pointed out that this is normal, because there is a lot more interest in French cooking than in the Aveyron department! Oh well...

I'm not a big stat-follower, but it is still encouraging to see an upswing of interest in this site -- and it has led to more enthusiasm for the posts I write. So if FP comes from my soul, CQ is finally starting to come from the heart.

2. I joined a bloggers' network, Foodbuzz, a while back. I honestly don't go to it enough or use its social networking function, but it is a perky food site and I recommend you take a look. They have come through with an early promise to fund some redesign on my cooking blog, and that will be taking place over the summer. And I have just taken in FOUR BIG DOLLARS of advertising income from them for January. Hey, that's a Starbucks coffee this summer in the USA, right? (Although not in France where I recently learned on a trip to Paris that Starbucks drinks run at almost 5 euros -- I can imagine the chagrin of American tourists paying for their Starbucks fix under the current exchange rate!)

3. I have let go of the pressure to post often to CQ, having decided that a well-developed post once a week may be all I can handle for the moment, and is more pleasant to write than "posts just to post."

So basically, I'm looking forward to cooking since spring has finally sprung here, I'm planning on posting perhaps less often but well, and I can't wait for Madeline's redesign over the summer!

Cheers!

A Tale of Two Blanquettes

One of the inspiring aspects of food blogging is getting cooking ideas from other bloggers. It's one thing to go to a recipe mega-site and pick up an idea for Sunday lunch; it's another to glean inspiration from a fellow cook with whom I've been in blogosphere contact.

Spacedlaw wondered about the identity of the yellowish main dish in the black pot on my last Sunday Stovetop post. It was a bit strange-looking, but absolutely delicious, and had been inspired by a post by Ken from St. Aignan about Blanquette de veau.

The first weekend of April was indeed stewy weather, but to be honest, as nice as Ken's recipe looked, I'm not a big fan of blanquette de veau, which I often find a bit bland. So I decided it was time to try a local specialty of the southern Aveyron -- blanquette d'agneau.

Comparing Ken's veal recipe and my lamb recipe, we can see that they are similar in their cooking method. But Ken's blanquette de veau includes several vegetables that are lovely in this stew but did not appear in my recipe: carrots, mushrooms and baby onions.

I found "my" version of the dish from the cookbook Recettes en Aveyron which abounds in simple, authentic recipes -- simple if you can read French, that is.

Aveyronnais cooking tends to be rather meat and dairy-oriented, and the farming in the area doesn't include a huge amount of vegetable-growing. So perhaps the fact that carrots, mushrooms and baby onions don't appear in the recipe reflects a lack of availability of those ingredients among sheep-raising farmers on the rocky plateaus of the Southern Aveyron.

Blanquettes can actually be made with veal, poultry, rabbit, lamb and even fish, although blanquette de veau is definitely the most famous version. As the name implies, they are white stews, often prepared in a roux-based white sauce.

Lamb blanquette is very tasty, and in fact the only blanquette in my Larousse Gastronomique is a lamb version by Roger Vergé. His recipe seems to take about a day to make and incldes white beans, carrots, mustard (?) and 3 lambs' feet rubbed with lemon juice.

I'm sure it's delicious, but I think I'll stick with my simple peasants' dish!

Sunday Stovetop April 6

This meal was a bit on the beige side, but then again last Sunday was a beige day. Saturday was gloriously sunny, and Sunday started to veer to grey...and somehow, that made for beige weather.

I actually have quite a bit to say about this meal, but am feeling too lazy to write it -- so it may come in installments.

I do want to thank Loulou for her fabulous baked asparagus risotto recipe, which you can see on the right. There's a little too much hazy sunlight on it to get the full picture, but the principle of baked risotto may have changed my life.

(Sure, my life has really been transformed by learning to simmer my risotto in the oven rather than stirring it on the stovetop.)

How trite. It is truly time for a vacation.

Caught in my own trap

Once I told you all that last week's "mystery dish" was actually a classic dish and that the recipe was from a famous cookbook, a lot more guesses came in -- all wrong, of course, but who can blame the guessers?

My version of osso bucco from The New Basics Cookbook was hardly respectful of the Rosso and Lukins recipe, nor of osso bucco recipes in general.

Where are the round veal shanks generally associated with the dish?

Well, my butcher didn't really have the proper cut on hand, so I improvised by slicing the veal meat off the end of a shank that he had sold me for a good price...

Why so many vegetables, especially zucchini, when the recipe usually only calls for onions?

Because I had them on hand...and vegetables are good for you, right? In France, we're being overrun with posters telling us to eat at least five fruits and vegetables a day, so my osso bucco modification was a healthy one!

But I can definitely see why no one got the right call on the recipe! It simply looks nothing like the usual photos of the dish, and probably didn't really deserve to bear its name.

Thanks for trying...

The Mystery Dish

This looks quite tasty, and I'm sure it was -- in February when I cooked it.

The problem is, I truly have no idea what it was, nor when exactly I made it...

Why the hell don't I label my food photos the moment I upload them?

Postscript on Saturday April 5th: for those of you who suggested "pork and vegetables over orzo," I have news for you: I managed to find out what this was by looking in my meal diary, and actually it's a real dish with a real name, and from a famous cookbook to boot!

So the original point of my post was just to moan about how I don't label my food photos, not to turn this into another guessing game. But now that I know what it was, you can guess away!