Trish Deseine is, to use her own words, “whacked”. Not only has she just
returned from cooking for 300 people at a food festival, but she has been
dashing about town trying to retrieve her car, which has been towed away.
Flopping on to a black sofa in her sixth-floor flat in the north of Paris,
she admits to being tired but happy - and the woman who has been hailed as
the queen of French cookery writers has more than most to feel happy about.
Deseine, 44, has sold more than one million books worldwide, won a host of
awards and earned plaudits from the critics. “She is the milky blonde who
has triumphed in gastronomes' hearts,” enthused François Simon, whose pen is
feared throughout French cuisine. “She has signalled the end of the learned
era of macho chefs handing down lessons and recipes that are impossible to
reproduce.”
What makes this all the more remarkable is that Deseine is from a land that is
often dismissed by the French as a culinary desert. The daughter of a beef
farmer and a teacher from Ballyclare, Co Antrim, she moved to Paris after
meeting her French husband at university, stumbled into cooking when she
lost her job as a press officer and forged an improbable path to the top of
Gallic gastronomy. Her bimonthly cookery column for French Elle is widely
read, her books have pride of place in bookshops and her creative but
practical recipes have been hailed as a godsend for French dinner-party
hosts weary of the overly complicated creations of Michelin-starred chefs.
Now France's ans-wer to Nigella is seeking to win over British food lovers
with her new book, Trish's French Kitchen, as well as a cookery programme
for UKTV Food in the new year.
So how did an Irish girl with no formal culinary training end up teaching the
French, a nation of food-lovers, how to cook? “I am not teaching them
anything - they know it perfectly well,” she says, emphatically. “I'm giving
them a different vision of the way they've always cooked.”
Deseine talks of their “deep respect, understanding and love for their
cuisine”, enthuses about “the way food permeates all French life” and
rejects any suggestion that they have fallen so low that they need to be
rescued. But, after spending half her life in France, the divorced mother of
four exhibits an ambivalence to her adopted home - a mix of fondness and
irritation. If she learnt to cook, she explains, it was to prove herself to
her French in-laws. “I had much to prove but, at the same time, it was very
liberating because their expectations were so low,” she explains with a
smile. “It was a pride thing really, getting them to say: ‘Well, actually,
this is quite good.'”
Having cut her teeth on traditional Irish and English dishes, she then moved
on to more complicated French classics, which she often tweaked and
simplified. But it was after she was made redundant that her culinary
adventure really took off. Together with her now former husband, the couple
started a mail-order catalogue supplying flour, chocolate and spices to
chefs, and then to the public, for which Deseine contributed recipes.
In 2000, the publisher Marabout chanced upon the catalogue and asked her to
produce a book, which was to revolutionise modern food writing in France.
According to Deseine, up until that point French cookery books tended either
to be “dreary daily household cooking or glamorous accounts by chefs of
their own brilliance, with not much in between”. Petits Plats Entre Amis was
different: it was attractive, with clear, simple recipes and stunning
photographs. It also contained a good dose of Irish wit, including the
golden rule that you should never accept help from dinner-party guests, as
they will then see your mistakes in the kitchen. “The whole idea of my
books, both the French and the English ones, is to make people want to get
into the kitchen,” she says enthusiastically. “They look at the photo and
look at the recipe and think, wow, I can actually do that.”
In all her 12 books - but most notably in Je Veux du Chocolat!, a 154-page
celebration of the sweet stuff - there is a sublim-inal message that women
should cast aside their complexes. “Enjoy the guilt,” she says with a smile,
especially as “guilty pleasures can be much more interesting than simple
pleasures”. Deseine has no time for the size 8 society hostesses described
by Mireille Guiliano in her bestseller, French Women Don't Get Fat, or for
what she believes is France's “sinister and dangerous celebration of
extremely skinny women. These women aren't allowed to enjoy food because
their appetite is perceived to be threatening to men. Embonpoint is supposed
to show that you've lost control,” she says, squeezing her own hint of
embonpoint around her hips. “It's total double standards.”
The Irishwoman may have taught the French how to throw a dinner party, but
getting them to shed their prejudices at the table may take a little longer.
Trish's French Kitchen, by Trish Deseine, is published by Kyle Cathie at
£19.99. It is available from Times BooksFirst for £17.99, including free p&p:
0870 1608080; timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst
Coq au vin
It is such a shame that what started as the pinnacle of French cooking has
become the victim of shopping centre and motorway self-service restaurants,
where - it goes without saying - what is served bears little relation to the
original.
The dish hails from Burgundy and purists would not dream of pouring anything
from outside the region into their pot, but I like to use sun-filled
Châteauneuf-du-Pape. The main thing is to go for the best you can afford,
avoiding “cooking wine” at all costs.
I also add a good swig of Cognac or brandy to make the taste even richer. I
use poitrine fumée in this recipe - smoked pork belly - but chunky smoked
bacon lardons would work just as well.
Ingredients
125g butter
Olive oil
1 free-range chicken, chopped
2 garlic cloves, peeled, plus extra for croûtons
20 pickling onions, peeled but unpickled
200g poitrine fumée, cut into chunks
Cognac
2 bottles good-quality red wine
1 bouquet garni
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
250g button mushrooms
1 baguette, for croûtons
Method
In a heavy-based casserole, heat half the butter and some oil and brown the
chicken with the garlic, onions and poitrine fumée.
Pour the Cognac over the chicken and flame (be careful). Stir, then add the
red wine and the bouquet garni. Season lightly with salt and pepper.
Bring to the boil and simmer very gently for about 3 hours, until the chicken
is done.
Just before serving, fry the mushrooms in the rest of the butter until golden
and add them to the casserole.
Slice the baguette, rub the slices with a cut half-clove of garlic, sprinkle
some olive oil on and toast under the grill. Serve on top of the coq au vin.
Far breton aux pruneaux
Along with kouig aman, this is Brittany's most emblematic cake. A robust
confection of sweet crêpe batter studded with juicy prunes and flavoured
with rum, it matches the equally robust Breton climate and is great to take
on windy picnics. It is, of course, just as good served at the end of a meal
or in slices with a cup of tea or coffee.
Ingredients
150g plain flour
125g sugar
4 eggs, beaten
500ml whole milk
Dash of rum
200g pitted prunes
1 egg yolk, beaten
Method
Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4.
Sift the flour into a bowl, add the sugar and mix. Make a well in the centre,
add the 4 eggs and whisk vigorously until the batter is smooth.
Pour the milk in little by little, whisking all the time. Add the rum. Butter
the inside of a 20x22 or 24cm gratin dish. Pour the batter in and scatter
the prunes through it, pushing them under the surface slightly.
Brush the top of the far with the beaten egg yolk and cook for 25-30 minutes,
until the top is nice and golden.
Serve warm with crème fraîche.
How is cooking with Châteauneuf-du-Pape considered 'simple home cooking'?
Also, what's new and 'creative' about Coq au Vin or prune flan?
Louise, London, UK
Good God!, She had her car towed away, great article.
brian keating, agde, france