For a people that have tried to resist the on-the-go style of eating, symbolic of the current Anglo-Saxon lifestyle, and prioritize home-cooked sit-down meals around a table lovingly adorned with loads of baguette and bottles of wine, the French sometimes have questionable taste. Hear me out. They’ve successfully mastered a number of foods – from breads and carnivorous main courses to caloric creamy sauces and gut-busting sweets – but their unoriginal and frequently bland side dishes leave me perplexed if not utterly disappointed.
On any given day in Paris, you can find local fresh produce, dairy and meats at one of the 20 some open-air food markets and if you can’t manage to make it to one of those (because you’re lazy), the veggies at most supermarkets are a fine alternative. Still, every time I go to the supermarket (which merit an anthropological study of their own), I witness educated, cultured and individuals, who outwardly appear to be slow food subscribers, throw already-prepared meals and an arsenal of canned goods into their caddies – green beans, peas, carrots, corn, beans, even raviolis. What happened to the kind of French cooking that inspired Julia Child?
Sure, canned foods are simple, quick to prepare, long-lasting and certainly a better option than McDonalds but when the French boldly claim to have the best cooking, taste and ingredients yet cook with the canned stuff, I start to think they’re just a bunch of phonies. {As it turns out, the method of preserving food was actually created by the French…gasp!}. I have a friend whose French mother-in-law grew up on a farm, accustomed to only the freshest of ingredients and cooking everything by hand, yet today cooks almost entirely with canned vegetables and pre-packaged sauces. As a San Francisco gal, you can imagine how much this bewilders my friend. My mother-in-law is the daughter of charcuterie merchants (deli meats, sausages, ham, pâté, etc.) and also grew up accustomed to fresh from the open-air market ingredients and while she doesn’t used canned goods, she uses low quality oil and poor butter and salt than could ever be considered part of a healthy diet. Equally bewildering.
Many restaurants offer up a standard side of salty fries, overly buttery mashed potatoes, rice with no flavor, mixed greens salads devoid of any nutrients from the dressing-bath it suffered, or limp, tasteless green beans. Not exactly what you’d imagine from fine French cooking. Most of us would expect better when dining out but that doesn’t mean you need to settle for tasteless canned veggies for home-cooked meals, either. Our plate of a traditional side dish has recently been upgraded and it made a world of difference….
Continue reading this post for more + a dud-resistant recipe
{adapted from the original posting on BitchBuzz.com}
For a somewhat related debate, an interview panel on France 24 discussing the multitude of reactions to UNESCO’s addition of French gastronomy to their cultural heritage list. Video below:
