Melissa Clark on Cooking French
My family’s true connection to the French was through our shared obsession with the food — learning about it, exploring it and preparing lavish feasts with it. When we weren’t cooking, we were planning the next meal, chasing the daily markets from small town to even smaller town, reveling in the figs, the sausages, the incredible cheeses we couldn’t get at home.
We also went to fancy restaurants. It was my dad’s quest to eat in every Michelin-starred restaurant in France, and he came pretty close, despite getting lost along the way. Pre-GPS, losing our way on tiny country roads was just a normal part of the journey to a meal.
When my kindergarten teacher asked me what I did with my parents every August in France, I said, “First we get lost, then we have lunch.”
And this is exactly how I approach cooking. Yes, there are times I might meander down a seemingly dead end of harissa gougères only to end up with a buoyant soufflé, but I always find my way because, really, I’m not going very far. It’s all right there, rooted in my New York-Jewish-Francophile DNA. And my cooking ends up playfully and unmistakably French. At our house, the conversation might be in English, but dinner’s in French.
– Melissa Clark, Dinner In French
Here’s to the ongoing exploration of food, our mixed bags of experience and cultures and to (always) finding our way.
