becca’95 asked:


Im making fairy cakes but i have to make them have a slight french twist to them e.g an ingredient that is popular amongst the french cuisine .

thank you
x

Griswald

choco asked:


Does anyone knows any french and japanese style mix resturant in Caliornia? around pasadena. Thanks

Alfred

dudeboy asked:


I need to make a French dish for my French class. I have no clue what to make. Any suggestions would be helpful. Please, nothing hard to make or expensive.

Unwin

Benedict Smythe asked:


There is no specific formula for learning a second language. Learning any language would require effort, time and much patience. There are many techniques, however, which will help any learner become more efficient in learning any language such as French.

There are two aspects that must be remembered by anyone wanting to learn French. First, learning French requires constant studying; and second, it requires much practice. These two aspects always go together as vocabulary words are rendered useless if the person would not constantly use them even in simple conversation.

5 Helpful Tips

1. Try to enroll in French classes. There are several ways that classes are held-in language schools or French classes in local communities, colleges or education centers.

2. There are now French lessons that are held online. Online lessons begin with the French basics such as vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, and lessons on verb. The online learner has the option to go through the outline of lessons or to study according to topics. Online lessons also point at the major differences of the French and English languages.

3. It would be helpful for someone learning French to purchase audio cassette tapes or CDs that teach French. This would give the learner an opportunity to learn French even in idle moments such as waiting in line or being stuck in traffic. Constantly listening to such tapes would make the learner accustomed to how French words are pronounced and how they can be used in everyday conversations.

Listening to French radio and watching television shows in French might be difficult at first but the learner would soon pick up the rhythms of the language. French people are also fond of making films so it would be an added learning experience if the learner could watch any of these films and take note of the French people’s cultures and traditions. Sometimes, understanding the general culture of French people would make the learner understand the etymology of their language. French movies with English subtitles would also be beneficial as the learner can read the meaning in English while hearing its French counterpart. This will give the learner an experience of decoding French into English.

4. Read French materials such as French magazines and newspapers. A learner must take note of all the unfamiliar French terms that he would encounter in all the articles that he reads. It would be helpful to have a French dictionary alongside every reading material.

A French learner must also get to read the famous French literary works of Alexandre Dumas and Jules Verne. Appreciation of France’s culture through these books would help the learner strive to understand the language.

5. The best practice for anyone learning French is to speak and write using the language. Use French wherever and whenever the opportunity would arise. Write grocery lists in French, decode the ingredients on French cuisine, and try thinking of things in French. This means total immersion to learning the language. One great way to constantly practice French is to join a coalition that promotes French such as Alliance Francaise (a non-profit organization).

Every French learner must understand all these aspects but, above all, he must have fun while learning. Minus the element of fun, learning French is nothing more than a need to just learn a second language.



Jasper

James Dunn asked:


There are several reasons why people would want to learn another language, besides their own native tongue. This is a notion which has been considered by a lot of people recently. One of most popular and easy to learn languages is French. Aside from the fact that it is considered as a romantic language, it is also easy to learn. From French cuisine, to French movies and French people every aspect is exciting!

Improve Your Language by Learning a Foreign Language

Learning a foreign language is always helpful. You will find that it becomes easier to study other languages once you have mastered a certain language. The more you enhance your foreign language skills, the more you will be able to comprehend other languages. If you learn French you will find it easy to learn other languages that have originated in Europe.

Widen Your Job Opportunities

Being able to speak French will greatly benefit you when it comes to getting jobs or when it comes to your career. This capability will heighten your market aspect since, you are perceived as an international asset. Employers are likely to prefer applicants who speak more than one language. Despite the fact that American English is widely spoken by most of the people in the world, businesses and companies constantly communicate with other clients who can’t speak it. The French are always conducting business with the United States, and if you know how to talk with French clients, you might just be on your way to promotion.

Open Yourself to Other Cultures

The language of France is strongly connected to its culture, which in turn, is connected with the history and traditions of the country. The native tongue of France defines it from all the other countries of the world. If you know how to speak French, comprehending the country’s culture will not be that hard. You will be able to look at France in a whole new light, seeing the country as a place which you have never seen before. Aside from better understanding their culture, you will be able to understand French movies, without looking at the subtitles.

Enhance Your IQ and Your Personality

Do you know that when you study and speak other languages, you will be able to enhance specific aspects of your intelligence? It has been reported that studying a foreign language will help you increase your skills in problem solving and your memory skills. Children who learn another language oftentimes have higher scores in language and reading and math tests. Aside from enhancing the intelligence of a person, it also helps in improving the personality. When going through the process of learning, a person develops patience and discipline. This is the reason why, most people who have learnt a foreign language decide to learn another one.

Learn French Online

If you want to learn French, you have the option of learning it over the Internet. There are several sites which teach you the language with the use of media files. Plus, there are also course levels like; beginner, intermediate and advanced.



Lloyd

Mimi asked:


Trying to get my money’s worth, not over priced and over rated. Want a nice place for dinner on a birthday.. Could be romantic or fun, trendy enviroment. Thanks in advance!!!

Herbert

Virginia Bola asked:


Americans have their French fries, the British have their chips, Latin America has its papas fritas, and the French have their pommes-frites.

We love them. The potato, that most ubiquitous and perennially popular vegetable, is simply sliced into strips and deep fried. The fast food chains have managed to create total consistency so that fries at a McDonalds in Kalamazoo are identical with those offered in San Francisco, Atlanta, Moscow, or Madrid. They are the ultimate finger food, easily consumed behind the wheel, standing in the subway, or walking down the street. Some of us choose to add ketchup, or vinegar, or salsa, but they also taste great just as they are.

The civilized world has a giant addiction to the lowly tuber. It is hard to conceive of the centuries of eating that took place before potatoes were brought back to Europe from the New World and became a staple of every country’s cuisine. What did the poor eat before potatoes made their appearance? Bread? Grains? Vegetables?

The advent of the potato changed our diets forever. It was easy to grow, plentiful, and cheap. The flavor was mild, marrying well with almost anything we chose to eat with it. Its texture changed depending upon how it was prepared. And how many ways we invented to cut it, cook it, and use it with every meal imaginable!

We baked it in its skin or roasted it in bite-sized pieces. We boiled it whole or mashed it into a creamy mush. We grated it and fried it for breakfast. We made soup of it and made it a key ingredient in stews. We made pancakes out of it. We sliced it, riced, it, and diced it. We put it into bread, rolled it into dough, and created America’s favorite snack, the potato chip.

But the masterpiece that captured us all was deep frying it. Thick, country-style chips, shoe strings, curly and spicy -we loved them all: golden and crisp and perfect.

French fries now make up 25% of our children’s intake of vegetables. Fast food nutritionists attempted to substitute healthier alternatives which were peremptorily dismissed by the majority of their customers. Fries remain the accompaniment of choice for all fast food: burgers, hot dogs, chicken, fish, roast beef, and ribs. We simply cannot get enough and never, ever, seem to tire of the little crunches of pleasure.

The innocuous potato, relatively low in calories and packing its fair share of vitamins and minerals, has been transformed into a culinary weapon of mass destruction. Disfigured by saturated fat into a caloric and artery-hardening horror, the French fry may be the deadliest peril we face on a daily basis.

Just a few orders of fries a week can increase our weight by ten pounds a year! Over a decade, that’s a hundred pounds, over a lifetime, an awe-inspiring figure. With 60% of us overweight, half of that figure actually obese, we must look to our dietary intake to find the cause. As diabetes and other weight-related conditions mushroom, we know in our hearts that lifestyle changes are needed.

We go on diet regimens, drink liquid meals, fast, cut out sauces, and have our stomachs stapled. We join gyms, buy home exercise equipment, and follow along with television fitness shows. We blame the additives in our food, the hormones in our meat, and the fat in our salad dressings. We forsake the carbohydrates and sugars that our bodies can’t process and opt for high fiber breads and low fat milk.

We refuse to believe, because we don’t want to believe, that a seemingly harmless, crisp little addition to our meal can pack such a lethal wallop.

“But I just nibble a few,” you wail, “And not every day.” It’s not the single meal intake that leads to an explosion. It’s the cumulative total, day after day, year after year, that plants the time bomb within our system. It is the additive effect of repetitive use that eventually reaches critical mass and our physiology implodes.

Imagine, if you will, that not one fry was sold or eaten over the course of a year, anywhere in the United States. With just that change alone, the collective national weight loss could exceed a billion pounds!

The poor potato is ill-equipped to perform as a deadly weapon. It offers us enjoyment and variety and taste and health. But we have taken its honest goodness and distorted it into a slow killer. With every bend of our elbow to pop its sweet flavor into our mouths, we lay down fat on our hips, our stomachs, our arteries, and our pancreas.

Let’s save ourselves and save the potato. Much as we hate to admit it, the French fry is something that has to go, before we do.



Cary

manoj kumar asked:


French cuisine is the amazingly high standard to which all other native cuisines must live up to. The country of France is home of some of the finest cuisine in the world, and it is created by some of the finest master chefs in the world. The French people take excessive pride in cooking and knowing how to prepare a good meal. Cooking is an essential part of their culture, and it adds to one’s usefulness if they are capable of preparing a good meal.

Each of the four regions of France has a characteristic of its food all its own. French food in general requires the use of lots of different types of sauces and gravies, but recipes for cuisine that originated in the northwestern region of France tend to require the use a lot of apple ingredients, milk and cream, and they tend to be heavily buttered making for an extremely rich (and sometimes rather heavy) meal. Southeastern French cuisine is reminiscent of German food, heavy in lard and meat products such as pork sausage and sauerkraut.

On the other hand, southern French cuisine tends to be a lot more widely accepted; this is generally the type of French food that is served in traditional French restaurants. In the southeastern area of France, the cooking is a lot lighter in fat and substance. Cooks from the southeast of France tend to lean more toward the side of a light olive oil more than any other type of oil, and they rely heavily on herbs and tomatoes, as well as tomato-based products, in their culinary creations.

Cuisine Nouvelle is a more contemporary form of French cuisine that developed in the late 1970s, the offspring of traditional French cuisine. This is the most common type of French food, served in French restaurants. Cuisine Nouvelle can generally be characterized by shorter cooking times, smaller food portions, and more festive, decorative plate presentations. Many French restaurant cuisines can be classified as Cuisine Nouvelle, but the more traditional French restaurant cuisine would be classified as Cuisine du Terroir, a more general form of French cooking than Cuisine Nouvelle. Cuisine du Terroir is an attempt to return to the more indigenous forms of French cooking, especially with reference to regional differences between the north and south, or different areas such as the Loire Valley, Catalonia, and Rousillon. These are all areas famous for their specific specialty of French cuisine. As time has progressed, the difference between a white wine from the Loire Valley and a wine from another area has slowly diminished, and the Cuisine du Terroir approach to French cooking focuses on establishing special characteristics between regions such as this.

As part of their culture, the French incorporate wine into nearly every meal, whether it is simply as a refreshment or part of the recipe for the meal itself. Even today, it is a part of traditional French culture to have at least one glass of wine on a daily basis.



Barrett

FairesRuleTheLand asked:


Which in your opinion is the better in culinary cooking taste and food. Both countries boast they have the better foods, but which one do you really think is better in their cuisine French or Italian??

Dorian

Phil Chavanne asked:


Yet another interesting stop in our culinary adventures in Paris, the Le Gourmet restaurant offers great French cuisine for prices I hadn’t seen in Paris in 15 years.

by Phil Chavanne

Lunch time, where to go?

This is the third installment of the series of articles which I set about to write a couple of weeks ago on eating out well in Paris. I love food, I love good cuisine, and I want fellow travelers to enjoy Paris to the hilt. That’s enough reasons to guide them to those places I am certain they will enjoy.

Lunch time in Paris is restaurant time. People who work in the city do not carry their lunch bags with them. They rarely enjoy the benefit of a corporate catering service, but even if they do, such catering is hardly a feat for anyone’s eyes and taste buds.

Small restaurants perform a vital service: they feed the locals rather satisfactorily, inexpensively, and in record time.

What applies to locals applies to travelers, and your next culinary stop happens in just such circumstances. After a long morning walk in the quaint streets on the slopes of the Montmartre hill, you feel nicely hungry. Your steps lead you to Place de Clichy, a busy crossroads between the 17th, the 9th and the 18th districts (metro station: ‘Place de Clichy’).

Time for a gourmet experience!

Le Gourmet

You may be hungry, but you are no fool. You want to eat well, and spend your heard-earned cash on food worth this name.

In my considerate opinion none of the eateries positioned around Place de Clichy are worth the money they ask for. I find their cuisine either overpriced, or downright vulgar. I never had a satisfactory lunch at any of these places.

So where to go? Not far away.

When you are on Place de Clichy, turn yourself so as to face the downward slope, with the metro station in your back. Aim at Rue de Clichy, left of Rue d’Amsterdam. Walk down the street for about 200 yards, and turn left in Rue de Bruxelles. Walk another 200 yards. There you are on the right sidewalk.

Your next favorite food stop is located at No. 19 rue de Bruxelles.

Name: Le Gourmet.

Identifiable sign: its French bistro-style facade. And a crowd.

Entering the bistro

If you happen to walk in at around noon thirty, you may have to wait just a tad. The place is packed. I have been to this restaurant numerous times, and I still have to be there the day it is not packed at lunch time.

My advice: come at around 12:00 am, and grab a spot before everybody else does.

The place exudes old charm, with dark wood panels, old posters, menu slates marked with chalk on the walls, a traditional bar, a mosaic floor, bistro-style chairs and tables. It smells good, though cigarette smoke can become an issue at times when the facade door isn’t left open.

The owner and chef bought the restaurant about 2 years ago from its first and long-time owners, an elderly couple who retired after having steered the ship for longer than any local can remember. The new owner liked the decor, and decided to preserve it as-is, except for the facade which was changed early in 2006.

In this very Parisian setting, patrons feel immediately welcomed and are quickly seated either by the boss or a smiling waitress. This is lunch time, and they know patrons are in a hurry. No unnecessary delay.

Seated, and menu in hands

The menu is in fact chalked on the slates that hang on the front and back walls. A remarkable feat for such small a restaurant, the menu changes every day.

Anyone who lived in Paris for some time knows that restaurant menus do not change beyond the ‘plat du jour’ – the main fare for the day. Even the ‘plat du jour’ does not change that much: from one week to another, the same courses tend to get back on the menu.

Not so at ‘Le Gourmet’: the menu changes everyday and no two weeks are alike. True diversity. Even if you were to eat there every day for 20 days, you could try 20 different courses.

Gourmet cuisine is a mission

The boss comes from the province of Touraine, in Western France. He likes to work on French traditional dishes, and his cuisine draws its main inspiration from the famous Burgundy and Lyons regions.

Among the ‘terroir’ dishes served at Le Gourmet, you can taste veal knuckle (souris de veau), prime cuts of veal (onglet de veau), roasted gilthead bream (daurade royale rôtie), stewed duck (pot-au-feu de canard), pike dumpling (quenelle de brochet). And the list goes on.

To get fresh products from his favorite suppliers, he wakes up at 3:30 am every day to go to the wholesale market (the Rungis market, situated south of Paris). He buys only what he needs for the day, loads up his truck, and heads back to his restaurant where he’s spend the rest of the morning to cook for lunch.

The chef’s motto is “fresh products, traditional preparation”. He uses butter, not margarine. He doesn’t buy frozen products, and no off-the-shelf sauces as he prepares his sauces himself. He is light-handed on spices which he thinks ‘are all too often used to hide something’.

Appetizer, main course, dessert, wines

Le Gourmet’s menu typically offers a choice of 4 appetizers (such as a warmed up goat cheese served on a loaf of country bread), 3 or 4 main courses (meat, fish, poultry), and 4 desserts.

The choice of desserts is also ‘old-school’: depending on the day, your selection may include chocolate whipped cream, baba au rhum (a spongy cake saturated with dealcoholized rum), biscuits with ganache (a mix of chocolate, cream and butter), orange cake, fondant cake, floating island (beaten egg whites floating on a French custard), red fruit pies, and so forth.

Light wines get the lion’s share of the wine list. The chef’s hometown is Valencay (in the heart of the Touraine region), and he purchases his bottles directly from local producers. The list comprises a variety of well-thought-of vines: Gamay, Cabernet, Valençay, Bourgueil, and Saumur-Champigny.

All this for how much?

Beyond the quality of the food you are served at Le Gourmet, the check is another pleasant surprise. For a meager €13 (about $16), you have a full meal served in record time in a most pleasant atmosphere. For just a few more bucks, you have the wine to complete your experience.

To be honest, there are very few Parisian restaurants which will give you that much for such a low price. Le Gourmet wins my vote any time, any day. I recommend it to you wholeheartedly.

Where?

Le Gourmet

19 rue de Bruxelles

75009 Paris

Tel: 33 (0)1 48 74 53 42

Subway station: Place de Clichy

Lunch and dinner



Quade