The Cheese Thing

So what's with the cheese?  I mean, cheese is intended to go on TOP of things like pizza, burgers, or lasagna.  You might dip nachos in it if you're feeling like more than the usual salsa dip. You could grill it in a sandwich or spread it on a bagel.  I used to consider myself a bit of a cheese snob because I eschewed the standard fluorescent-orange cheddar for the "fancy" natural-colored white sharp cheddar.   

What about the REAL cheese snobs?  How can the French consider that cheese is sufficiently interesting, in itself, to warrant a course of its own during a meal?  That last is a stereotype that is mostly true.  Most restaurants and families at home offer cheese before desert.  Much is made over the number of different cheeses in France, with numbers anywhere from dozens to thousands depending on how you do the counting.  How can we even imagine that kind of variety when most of the cheese we encounter is either mozzarella, cheddar, or, well, SQUARE?   

 I certainly wasn't prepared, but I can now testify that there is, indeed, an incredible variety; some if it is rather pungent, and while most is delicious, some varieties are an acquired taste.  Roquefort in particular has as strong a scent as its reputation suggests.  Mind you, many French people don't like it.  That or they say, "Well you don't eat it ALONE!  It's best with bread, butter and red wine."  Taste in cheese is very personal, everyone has their favorites, and not liking one variety is not a shameful or unpatriotic thing.  My wife likens it to how Americans  have their favorite brands and flavors of chips out of the dozens of varieties available.  

What seems silly to us is so only because we don't have such a wide variety available to choose from. It is genuinely silly to obsess about cheese in a world where you have so little, but an abundance of difference opens up the possibility of appreciating those differences.  

The Myth of the Rude Frenchman

I grew up with the typical 'Pepe le Pew' stereotypes of the French that are so common in the US.  I thought all Frenchmen were rude and arrogant, wore berets and horizontally striped shirts, had thin mustaches, ate smelly cheese and carried around baguettes of bread.  I never really believed any of that was true, but I had no other images to replace them with.  Hence:

Of all these, the only ones that turned out to be true were the bits about the cheese and the bread.  I'll discuss all of them eventually, but the worst are the first two.   They're mentioned in films, TV, books, etc., always with an air of certainty to it, as though 
it were a cultural trait as ubiquitus as the British tendancy to politeness and tea-drinking.   It's so common that I hear it from the French themselves.   Many French people have bemoaned to me the rudeness of their own countrymen,  all the while being perfectly polite and personable to me.  Now, either they stop being nice when I turn my back as part of some giant conspiracy of 'let's mess with the American by being nice to him, or the stereotype is simply, flat-out wrong.  

Where did this impression come from? After all, stereotypes like this aren't formed overnight, and by only a few people. How could all  American tourists who have visited for the last half century or so be so wrong?  

When people visit France , they dont really visit FRANCE, they visit Paris.    Now, Parisians have a reputation in France much like New Yorkers in the US.  It's a big city, and people generally have a tendancy to be a bit taciturn with strangers.   Not only that, but when you are a tourist, your primary form of contact with REAL parisians is in the subway.  It's my personnel experience that the Paris Metro at rush hour can make even affable Oklahomans capable of growling at strangers, but it's not a permanent effect.

The French people I have met have been unfailingly polite, almost to a fault.  Perhaps that's part of the problem, because that politeness results in greater formality.  This is more true of the older generations that of young people, but on average, the French do have a tendency towards formality.  Sometimes it could be perceived as arrogance,  because that politeness can seem overly formal. In the US, formality can come across as arrogance because we tend to equate familiarity with friendliness. This is not a failing on our part any more than formality is a failing for the French!  But we must be careful to recognize that in other cultures, too much familiarity  can be taken for a lack of respect.  

Ironically, we tend to think of the Frenh as arrogant because they are  mcuh more formal than we are and they tend to think US arrogant for EXACTLY THE SAME REASON!

An American in Paris

When I was growing up, I never imagined living anywhere but the good 'ole US of A.  I took Spanish in high school because I'd heard it was the easiest, and while I enjoyed my high school trip to Europe when I was 16, I never imagined I would actually live there one day.

Now I am living in suburb south of Paris, I have a job, and, what would be most impressive to my younger self, I speak French (passably)!   My primary work is in teaching English to businesspeople and university students.  (I also now teach Math and IT at the French branch of an American University.)

This has led me to meet a cross-section of French people, and invariably one of their first questions is, "What do you miss from home?"  Well, of course I miss my family (I do see them as often as we can all arrange!), but that's not really what they're asking about.  They want to know what I like about life in France, what I miss about life in the US, and what the differences are.  I usually tell them, "Well, I kind of miss Dr. Pepper when I'm here, and I miss Camembert when I'm there."

I usually have to explain what Dr. Pepper is, but then they laugh.  Then I add, "You know, in the US, quiche is considered 'fancy'."  They stare at me disbelievingly.  They refuse to believe.  They say, "But, it's just quiche!"  And I say "Yes, but it has a French name.  In the US, everything French has a fancy image about it.  You know you are in a fancy restaurant, or at least a restaurant that is trying to be fancy, when they serve quiche."  They laugh, and I think they usually don't believe me fully.  After all, in France quiche is...  well... it's just quiche!  We have it maybe once a week.  It's fast and easy to prepare.  There are thousands of variations, but the basic recipe is dead simple.  It's what you cook when you're too busy to do a real meal, so you whip together a quiche.  You cook it to use up leftover vegetables or meat.  It's comfort food.  It's like pizza to Italians or meatloaf to us.

Do you like omelets?  Do you like pie?  How about an omelet pie?

So what's the deal?  Why do we think of quiche as a kind of fancy-shmancy thing?  I think it has to do with a flawed perception of French culture as elitist.  Do they have their 'elites'?  Sure, but they have their 'regular people' too.  I'm not even sure I know how to define those two groups reliably, but however you do it, France has both.  They're not trying to be fancy when they say something in French, they're just talking.



One of the first things I learned to cook here was quiche.  Here's the recipe I use:


1 pre-made pie shell
2 eggs
About 2 cups of milk
3 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons instant mashed potatoes (optional: this is my own secret ingredient!  It makes the pie fluff up nicely)
1 handful shredded cheese (I use 'Emmental', which sounds really fancy but is a very common type of  cheese here that you can buy pre-shredded at the store.  You could probably use Mozzarella or Cheddar and it would work fine.)
2 slices ham, diced
optional: salt and pepper to taste

Crack the eggs, add the milk, whisk in the flour and potato powder(you can use a fork), toss in the rest.  Unroll the pie crust into a standard 9-inch pie pan and dump the filling in.   Cook in the oven for 20 minutes at 425 degrees.

After this there are countless variations.  The one I made today included 2 shredded carrots and a leek (A sort of giant green onion, found in the 'Fancy European Vegetable' section of your grocery store.  In France it's in the 'vegetable' section.)  Add a bit of milk if necessary so your mixture stays just a bit liquidy (this is a technical French cooking term).

The result:

Bon appetit!

Quenelles a la Normande

Servings: 4
Preparation Time: 15 min
Cooking Time: 20 min
Reheating: OK
Cost: Affordable

Ingredients:

4 Quenelles
1 teaspoon corn starch
3 teaspoons flour
~2 cups milk
1 large onion (~1 cup)
1 clove garlic (or more, to taste)
4 slices of ham
1 cup shredded emmental
1 cup finely sliced mushrooms

seasonings to taste:
curry + touch of ginger
crushed red pepper


1. Mince onion and ham.
2. Place quenelle into casserole dish.
3. Heat oil, garlic and seasonings in large skillet
4. Add onions. Saute until brown.
5. Add ham. Saute until slightly brown(crunchy if you like it!)
6. Add mushrooms.
7. When mushrooms are cooked down, partially drain liquid directly onto quenelles, use rest of liquid to start bechamel.
8. Cover ham mixture and put on low heat while doing bechamel.
9. Add bechamel to ham mixture.
10. Pour over quenelles.
11. Top with cheese.
12. Cook in oven for 20 minutes 180C(~350F?)

Velours de Mais Croquant et Jambon Fume

Servings: 4
Preparation Time: 10 min
Cooking Time: 15 min (longer is better)
Reheating: OK
Cost: Affordable

Ingredients:

2 cans 300g of corn
1 bouillon cube vegetable
50g sliced (smoked) ham
600ml warm water
1/2 onion
20cl condenced milk
3 teaspoons flour
20g butter



1. Peel and mince the onion.
2. Drain and wash the corn.
3. Melt butter in pan.
4. brown onion in butter
5. add corn
6. add flour... mix well to prevent lumps
7. add warm water with boullion cube
8. cook over medium heat for 10 min
9. put contents of pan in a mixer
10. add concentrated milk while mixing
11. pour mixture through a fine strainer to remove corn skins
12. serve in four bowls
13. sprinkle finely sliced ham and serve