ELISABETH LUARD

FRENCH LESSONS

A fine tradition of honest, down-to-earth home cooking is good reason to be grateful to nos amis across the Channel.

Of all the cities in France, the cooking of Lyon is considered the cat’s miaow: from the workers’ bouchons serving a couple of dishes at midday to go with the wine; to the Mères Lyonnaises, brawny begetters of today’s female chefs; to the sainted, late lamented Paul Bocuse.

Celebrate the restoration of our precious entente cordiale – let’s have no more rosbif jokes or laughter at serving roast gigot with mint sauce – and take the Autoroute du Soleil with a pitstop in Lyon for silk-weavers’ brains and Easter bunny with mustard. You know it makes sense.

Cervelles des canuts Cream cheese beaten to a soft green fluff with olive oil, vinegar and fresh herbs is known (for reasons best unexplored) as silk-weavers’ brains. Canuts, silk-weavers, were purveyors of silk ribbons until the nylon industry put the silkworms out of business in the 1920s. Serves 4

250g cream cheese

6 tablespoons double cream

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon red wine vinegar 1 garlic clove, peeled and finely chopped

1 shallot, peeled and finely chopped

Salt and pepper

Fresh herbs to finish (some or all) Finely-chopped chervil, chives, parsley, tarragon

Beat the cheese with the cream until smooth, then beat or whisk in the oil, vinegar, garlic and shallot. Season with salt and pepper, then stir in the finely chopped herbs. Refrigerate for at least two hours before serving. Serve with a bunch of radishes on ice and hot Melba toast. To Melba your own white-bread toast, slice horizontally and dry in a medium oven till curled and crisp.

Lapin à la moutarde Whether wild or hutch-reared, there’s never been a better way to cook a rabbit than with cream and mustard. Serves 3-4

1 hutch rabbit or 2 wild bunnies, jointed

1 large onion, finely sliced

Generous nugget butter

2 tablespoons plain flour

Salt and pepper

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

2 teaspoons whole-grain mustard

Large glass white wine

About 300ml double cream

Preheat the oven to 160°C/325°F/GAS 3.

Wipe the rabbit joints. If the rabbit is wild and of uncertain age, use a sharp knife to slip the translucent membrane off the saddle and legs. In a frying pan, soften the onions in a little of the butter. Transfer to a roomy casserole into which you judge the rabbit pieces will fit snugly.

Dust the rabbit joints through seasoned flour and fry them gently in more butter till well browned. Transfer to the casserole with the onions. Add the wine to the frying pan and bubble it up, scraping in the brown bits. Stir in the mustard and cream and pour the contents of the pan over the rabbit joints.

Lid the casserole tightly and transfer to the oven for about an hour at 180°C/350°F, till the rabbit is tender. Check occasionally and add a splash of water if it looks as if it’s drying out. Bubble up the sauce at the end if necessary to thicken and reduce. Taste and adjust the seasoning. (A little more mustard? A dash more cream?)

Serve with pommes lyonnaises – chunked potatoes cooked very gently in goose fat with finely sliced onion, diced bacon and just enough water, till the potatoes are soft and golden and have started to fry.