`The French Farmhouse Cookbook' is not a book which should be bought if all you want is recipes. This is especially true if you have two or more books of French recipes by, for example, Julia Child, Richard Olney, or Patricia Wells. This is not to say these recipes are not good. They are very good. It's just that a mere mortal needs so many recipes for green salads, roasted chickens, pistu soup, and poached fish with aioli. One fact that keeps down excessive redundancy is the fact that unlike the three luminaries mentioned above, Ms. Loomis is based in Normandy rather than in Provence. Therefore, butter will be the star of many dishes rather than olive oil.
The primary charm and value of the book is in the stories surrounding how the author, Susan Herrmann Loomis acquired the recipes and her background on the French farms. As the ever-present blurb from Alice Waters says, this is a cookbook `that expresses accurately the milieu of its recipes'. If you need any additional blessing on the book's authenticity, see the sincerely written Foreword by Patricia Wells.
The book is divided by the origin of the produce and the occasions for eating in the life of a French farm family. The first chapter of recipes gives the French take on the meze tradition. Since the whole of the Mediterranean world from Spain to Turkey takes a mid-afternoon break with tapas or Mezes or what have you, why should we expect the queen of Mediterranean cuisine to be any different (I reserve the role of king for the Italians). In this chapter, we see that chestnuts are not exclusively a northern Italian specialty. Gascony, among other provinces also claims chestnuts as an important food. My most interesting discovery is a recipe for anchoiade, a Provencal spread akin to tapenade made from anchovies. Yum.
The second chapter is devoted to soup. This chapter and the third chapter on salads will be most familiar to any readers of French cookbooks. The fourth chapter on dairy includes the obligatory recipe for an omelet. The variations on omelets are most interesting. The most valuable recipe may be for fromage blanc (white cheese) which is to the French countryside what yogurt is to the eastern Mediterranean.
The fifth chapter does chicken, and it is not limited to roasted chicken. The most interesting recipe is `Poule au Pot' where an old hen is stuffed with meats and vegetables and stewed, accompanied with vegetables to add taste to the broth, followed by additional vegetables to serve as a side dish. If nothing else, this recipe shows that complex preparations are not the invention of men in tall hats and bad attitudes. The chapter includes a fair number of duck and rabbit recipes as well.
The sixth chapter on the pasture is devoted to beef. True to the French love of the long braise, the headline recipe in this chapter is a daube, which is characterized by a very long marinade in wine followed by cooking without searing the meat, or at least that is what I thought until I read this recipe from Provence. That's why I read a lot of cookbooks. No one writer has the full story.
The seventh chapter is on fish. As expected, salt cod occupies the most prominent role in these recipes. You also encounter pibales, tiny eels from the Basque region that I have not seen mentioned since I read a cookbook from Daniel Boulud. The eighth chapter is devoted to vegetables, one of my favorite subjects, as one can easily afford to buy vegetables for eight to ten veggie dishes a week, while stretching two or three meat dishes over the same period. As expected, the favorite techniques for preparation are the gratin, the braise, and the puree. The favorite ingredients are the eggplant, broccoli, potatoes, and green beans. One important dish from the Basque region is the Piperade, a dish of heavily cooked vegetables and cured ham, sometimes with eggs. Like it's sister dish, the Provencal ratatouille and many others, the French always seem to cook the bejesus out of their vegetables.
The ninth chapter is all about artisinal bread, primarily sourdough bread made with `Le Levain', a starter which lives and breathes from week to week. One landmark in my culinary education was when I discovered that sourdough is not unique to San Francisco. That benighted city may have something truly unique in the world of artisinal breads, but Europe has been doing bread with natural yeasts for centuries. One can do worse than starting your artisinal bread exposure with this chapter. It includes recipes for my favorite olive bread, an interesting change from the olive bread of Rhodes. The chapter also covers savory tarts, one of my truly favorite French inventions. The tenth chapter is on sweets, primarily the kind eaten when their English brothers would be taking tea.
The last chapter has the recipes that always make me yearn for a true pantry that would stay naturally cool the year around. The stars of the chapter are jellies, jams, preserves, and marmalades. The sidebar on the contents of a French Farm Pantry is one of the most realistic I have seen, as it contains nothing which will not last several months without mechanical refrigeration or freezing. One unusual type of preparation in this chapter is in the recipes for flavored wines. More common are the recipes for flavored vinegars.
Aside from a wealth of lore, the book adds to our culinary French by providing many `astuce' or tips on dish preparations.
Highly recommended to cookbook readers of all stripes. Many recipes are easy, some, like daubes, breads, and Poule au Pot and its cousins are involved. This book is great culinary entertainment and information.
