La cuisine française

French cuisine is highly regarded and has given the world many great dishes and techniques, and good food plays an important part in French people's lives. They are rightly scornful of cultures that have lost the tradition of eating meals together as a family, as many French families still eat a three course lunch or dinner together every day. However, in some aspects French people have a long way to go when it comes to food, especially in their approach to foreign cuisine. We love French food but we also love Italian, Thai, Japanese, Vietnamese etc and in any one week in NZ would cook meals from several different cuisines. The ethnic food we cook in NZ may not be strictly authentic but we at least always try to adhere to the general principles of a cuisine. The family we are staying with at the moment are great cooks when it comes to French food, but any deviation to this is a bit hit and miss. Take pasta, for example. To me, and I'm sure to most NZers, pasta is the ultimate easy meal - mixed with a tasty sauce and sprinkled with parmesan. In this household, and many others in France, pasta is a side dish. It gets mixed with butter then, at the table, you mix in tomato ketchup, mayonnaise (optional), and gruyere cheese. OK, it's not altogether inedible, but that's not really the point. You'd think the country right next door to Italy might have picked up some tips on how to serve pasta! Many people seem to have a limited knowledge of foreign cuisines and it is difficult, or very expensive, to buy foreign ingredients. In Paris, a small bottle of regular-brand soya sauce in Paris was going for around 8 dollars. We also found out, to our dismay, that corn chips sold as "chilli-flavoured" are actually curry powder flavoured!
The other thing we have found living here in Annonay, is how easy it is to please people with the sort of food we cook regularly. We've made several loaves of bread, and even though they haven't worked as well as in NZ due to differences in flour and oven temperatures, everyone has raved about them. It seems that is unusual for people to make their own bread here, which I suppose is normal given the numerous bakeries everywhere. Stu also made his famous German plum cake to rave reviews. It was unlike anything that people had tasted before, as cakes here are usually dense and chocolately, soaked in alcohol, or filled with pastry cream (not that there's anything wrong with any of those!). When it comes to us trying to make or give suggestions about French food, however, we have encountered a bit of distrust, as surely a foreigner wouldn't know how to make French food properly. I was chastened by a French guy yesterday for suggesting that you could make pastry in a food processor. Heaven forbid!
We're very glad to come from a country that, possibly due to having no real food tradition of its own, has embraced the food of the world.