{"id":4505,"date":"2012-08-24T20:24:03","date_gmt":"2012-08-25T01:24:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=4505"},"modified":"2012-08-24T20:24:03","modified_gmt":"2012-08-25T01:24:03","slug":"la-bonne-cuisine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=4505","title":{"rendered":"La bonne cuisine"},"content":{"rendered":"

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If you buy something at the mall, it’s only half a thrill — the thrill of acquisition. If you buy something at a second-hand shop, it’s the full thrill — the thrill of acquisition plus the thrill of the hunt. Because you never know what you’re going to find at a second-hand shop. This week, for $5, I found a classic French cookbook.<\/p>\n

I have very few cookbooks anymore. Specialized cookbooks (for example, Beard on Bread<\/em>), sat on the shelf and were never consulted. There’s only one kind of cookbook that I find truly useful — a complete, encyclopedic cookbook. That’s why the 1943 wartime edition of The Joy of Cooking<\/em> is my favorite cookbook, used regularly. I may page through it looking for inspiration. Or maybe I have too many eggs on my hands, and I’m trying to think of something new to do with them. Or maybe I want something chocolate, but I’m not sure what.<\/p>\n

Though for years I subscribed to Gourmet<\/em> magazine, I’ve never really been a student of French cooking. I have, however, been a student of the French language, and I read French fluently, though I never claim to speak it. So I was thrilled to come across this copy of Le Livre de la Bonne Cuisine<\/em>. It’s a classic in France, in many ways analogous to America’s The Joy of Cooking<\/em>. It’s encyclopedic — 770 recipes, 668 pages, 1,200 photographs. Like The Joy of Cooking<\/em>, it was largely aimed at diligent new housekeepers who wanted to upgrade their cooking. This is the 1989 edition. It assumes that you don’t know a great deal, so it covers lots of basics, things such as how to clean a chicken, how to slice uncommon vegetables, pastry techniques, what to do with a lobster, or how to filet a fish.<\/p>\n

I don’t do a lot of cooking in the summer — just enough to survive. But as soon as the air is cool, so that the heat of the kitchen is comforting rather than oppressive, I cook. This fall and winter, I plan to work on my French cooking skills.<\/p>\n

I need to get a kitchen scale, though, and metric measuring vessels. Though French recipes use tablespoons and teaspoons as a measure, liquid ingredients are given in metric measures, and many ingredients, including butter, sugar, and flour, must be weighed. Williams-Sonoma, here I come, for a little mall shopping.<\/p>\n

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If you buy something at the mall, it’s only half a thrill — the thrill of acquisition. If you buy something at a second-hand shop, it’s the full thrill — the thrill of acquisition plus the thrill of the hunt. Because you never know what you’re going to find at a second-hand shop. This week, … Continue reading “La bonne cuisine”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-food"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4505\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}