mon nouveau grimoire

While shopping at a Super U store in Niort, I saw the following cookbook in the books section and, suddenly filled with lust, I decided on the spot that I had to have it:

This book, with its gimmicky title (The Easiest French Cuisine in the World), was part of a series of similarly sized and formatted books published by Hachette, a publishing house known for cranking out popular/populist material. Quite frankly, I'd have liked to buy the whole series, which seems to have been designed for children or retarded people. It's filled with huge fonts and giant pictures so that there's absolutely no confusion about what dish it is that one is making. I've taken some pics (click to enlarge, click to enrage) so you can see the simple format. The idea seems to be that most French food is easily accessible to the hoi polloi and can be made with few ingredients and very little instruction. Right up my alley.

Classic tartiflette:

Ham in Madeira sauce:

Toulouse-style chicken (featuring Toulouse sausage):

Classic "knife"-style steak tartare:

My fave, the old choucroute alsacienne, here going by its other name, the choucroute garnie (literally, "garnished sauerkraut"):

I think I've actually grown beyond the need for a recipe for the choucroute, but it's nice to be reminded of one way that the French approach it.

Below, one version of duck confit (watch bland Byron Talbott make his version here; it doesn't look bad at all, and it's very smartly put together, but the portion size is so damn stingy):

The classic coq au vin, which sounds like "cocoa van" without the final "n":

I knew something was missing from Véronique's boeuf bourguignon: mushrooms.

I've got a pork filet in my freezer. Pork tenderloins are both cheap and common in Korea, so I'm always on the lookout for new and interesting ways to cook them. This way uses prunes:

Just to fuck with your head: prune is the French word for a plum, but a pruneau is a prune. A raisin is a grape, while a raisin sec (literally, "dry grape") is a raisin, and a grappe de raisins is a bunch of grapes. A poireau is a leek, but a poire is a pear. A poivron is a (green) bell pepper, and a piment is a chili pepper. In Korea, the word piment, now pronounced pi-mang, has been misappropriated to mean "green bell pepper." Just to fuck with your head.