Niagara author debunks French food in debut cookbook
Audrey Le Goff was determined to make her debut cookbook beautiful.
But not too beautiful.
The Niagara-on-the-Lake woman knew if “Rustic French Cooking Made Easy: Authentic, Regional Flavors from Provence, Brittany and Beyond” was a jaw-dropping, gasp-inducing volume, it would do little in her mission to change the perception North Americans have of French food.
“There is the idea that French food is inaccessible,” Le Goff said. “To me, I wanted a beautiful book but not too beautiful that people would look at recipes and say ‘I’ll never be able to recreate that.’”
Bucking the trend of overstyled food photos serves another purpose for the newbie author, too. It sets up “Rustic French Cooking,” an off-shoot of Le Goff’s Pardon Your French blog, to become a classic used regularly by home cooks rather than a book that holds court and collects dust on a coffee table. As someone who consumes as many food photos as she creates, Le Goff knows what can happen if she goes overboard presenting recipes she hopes others will make.
“It’s true with a lot of bloggers. I love their photos — they’re so beautiful — but I’m not motivated to make their dish because I think I’ll never be able to make it like that. For me, I used the same (photo backdrop) in 95 per cent of the photos and minimal props to keep it accessible.”
The book, published by Page Street Publishing Co. last month, is filled with Le Goff’s fondest French food memories. It serves as a comestible love letter to her birth nation, which she left 10 years ago when she moved to Canada and settled in Niagara-on-the-Lake with her husband, Marc.
When the Brittany-born Le Goff arrived on this side of the Atlantic, she learned quickly that people here both oversimplified and overcomplicated French cuisine.
On the one hand, French food was all croissants and just a few recipes. On the other, those recipes were “sophisticated” and executed with “a strict and unapproachable cooking style.”
It was unlike the food she grew up with — soul-lifting buckwheat crepes filled with andouillette, a tripe sausage, or comforting fish soup with crusty croutons.
The North American perception of French food was also void of its regional idiosyncrasies. It ignored the German imprint on cuisine in Alsace or the Spanish influence of Catalonia, which straddles both France and Spain, thanks to the stereotype that only Parisian haute cuisine graces dinner plates in la République.
“A lot of people think French food uses a lot of butter but they don’t know that in the South, they use olive oil,” Le Goff said. “Or when they think of Mediterranean food, they don’t think of France. They don’t know that sauerkraut is popular in (Alsace). They think it’s just German. To me, the book is doing its job showing how diverse French food is.”
It also shows how easily it can be adapted to life in Canada. Le Goff has her Canadian husband — and his tastebuds attuned to the palates of his fellow countrymen and women — to thank for that. Her beloved andouillette, given praise in the book’s introduction, doesn’t appear in any of the dishes she presents on the following pages. Others, including the popular school lunch of puréed pike dumplings called Quenelles, deferred to more populist recipes, such as oreilles d’ánes, a creamy spinach lasagna common in the French Alps.
LeGoff might have been eager to include those Quenelles, but Marc? “He’d say ‘Yeah, it’s good but I don’t know if people here would get excited about it.”
A recipe also had to work in Canadian kitchens to make the cut. That sometimes meant using ingredients that wouldn’t be considered traditional but still managed to keep the recipes authentic in taste and presentation. Take the Greek yogurt and heavy cream Le Goff uses in her Alsatian cheesecake recipe instead of the standard — and hard to find — fromage blanc also known as quark. That kind of flexibility, rather than its stereotypical rigidity, is true to what French food is, Le Goff noted.
“In my opinion, it doesn’t make these recipes any less authentic. It gives everyone a shot to make great French recipes even though you live here,” she said. “It’s why I say ‘authentic flavours’ on the cover. I like that because for me it’s so hard to say what is an authentic recipe. I’m sure some people from France are going to look at my recipes and say ‘There shouldn’t be this ingredient’ or ‘I wouldn’t do it this way.’ It doesn’t make mine any less authentic. It’s just a different way of making them.
National honours
Niagara’s dining scene has once again garnered national attention.
Dispatch ranked ninth on the Best New Canadian Restaurants 2019 list published by enRoute Magazine last month. The St. Catharines restaurant is the second in the Garden City to make the list after the former Port Dalhousie location of Treadwell was No. 8 in 2006.
Poulet Basquaise
(Basque Braised Chicken with Peppers)
Makes 4 servings
This emblematic dish from the French Basque Country is a favourite of home cooks: it’s a quick braised chicken recipe simmered in a rich peppery sauce, along with some chorizo sausage for a spicy kick. It’s easy to make and has a great burst of fiery colours and sun-kissed flavours.
One of the signature flavours of this dish comes from the Espelette pepper, a quintessential spice in Basque cuisine. This chili is solely grown in the Basque Country, but is widely available in its ground form in France. It can be found in specialty stores in the rest of the world and you can purchase it online too. If I ever happen to be out of it, I use a blend (see note), which closely re-creates the delicate, sweet smokiness of the Espelette. 2 tbsp (30 mL) extra-virgin olive oil, divided 4 oz (115 g) chorizo sausage, cut into 1/4 (6-mm)-thick slices 4 chicken leg quarters (1.5 kg), skin on 3 medium onions, peeled and sliced into half rounds 3 cloves garlic, peeled and minced 4 bell peppers (3 red, 1 green), seeded and cut into 1/4 (1.3-cm)-thick strips 2 tomatoes, diced 1 tbsp (25 g) tomato paste 2 tsp (4 g) ground Espelette pepper 3/4 tsp crushed red pepper flakes 1/4 cup (60 mL) white cooking wine 1 cup (250 mL) water Salt and fresh ground pepper Cooked white rice, for serving
In a large high-sided cast-iron skillet or Dutch oven, warm 1 tablespoon (15 mL) of extra-virgin olive oil over medium heat. Add the chorizo sausage slices and cook until browned, stirring occasionally, about 7 minutes. Transfer to a plate and set aside. Add the remaining oil to the skillet, and add the chicken leg quarters to the pan, skinside down.
Raise the heat to high, and cook until the skin is browned, about 7 to 8 minutes. Transfer the chicken to the plate with the chorizo; do not discard the oil in the skillet.
In the same skillet over medium-high heat, add the onions, garlic and bell peppers. Cook until tender and glistening, about 8 minutes. Stir in the tomatoes and cook until tender, about 7 minutes. Stir in the tomato paste, Espelette pepper, crushed red pepper flakes, cooking wine and water. Bring to a simmer, scraping up the browned bits from the bottom of the pan.
Return the chorizo and chicken leg quarters to the skillet. Simmer for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the liquid has thickened. Remove from the heat, and add salt and ground pepper to taste. Serve with white rice. Note: If you can’t find Espelette pepper, mix together 1 teaspoon smoked paprika, 1/2 teaspoon sweet paprika and 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper. Reprinted with permission from Rustic French Cooking Made Easy by Audrey Le Goff, Page Street Publishing Co. 2019.