Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2016 i SAVEUR

Of all the butter-smeared, dog-eared, duck fat–splattered cookbooks lining my kitchen shelves, perhaps the most well-loved, scribbled-in and consistently consulted is Saveur Cooks Authentic French, published by this magazine in 1999. I’ve made the gougères so many times my arm hurts just looking at the photos of pâte à choux being beaten into fluffy submission. Frankly, I just like saying “pâte à choux.” Because, while I’m an earnest embracer of prevailing culinary currents—be they New Nordic, Japanomania, or Whatever We’ll Be Writing About Next Month—the truth is I’m something of an unapologetic romantic when it comes to classic French cuisine. I drink Marc de Bourgogne, despite its notes of lighter fluid and egregious affectation. I think of my young children as a burgeoning kitchen brigade. And I curl up with…

Niedermorschwihr, Alsace I arrived in a wet snowfall at 6 a.m., the same time as the young employees and apprentices. It was December 3 at Maison Ferber, the family’s shop in the village of Niedermorschwihr, in the hills just west of the city of Colmar in Alsace. Christine Ferber, pâtissier-confiseur, had the somberness of someone who lacks sleep. She always wakes up early, she said, and works long hours. She joined her father, Maurice, in the family business in 1980. She had trained in Paris and brought back with her a sense of luxury. Maurice, dressed in crisp white, set the tone of the workshop—happy but disciplined, with a strong seriousness of purpose. I had come to see Christine make her kugelhopf. It’s a cake, but more precisely, it’s a…

Not long ago I found myself sitting in a neonlit bus shelter at 3:30 a.m. The sidewalks of Paris were black and shiny after a hard rain on a winter’s night. I passed the time waiting for the bus, half reading a magazine and eavesdropping on a pretty African woman with intricate black-cherry-sodacolored braids who was chatting in a beautiful, lilting creole with a friend in faraway Mayotte, a French island near Madagascar. After she ended her phone call, I could feel the lady staring at me. When I looked up, she smiled and asked, “Why are you here?” “My job,” I answered brightly. “I’m going to work as a baker.” She chuckled and arched her eyebrows. “Now that is some good honest work,” she said. Once on the bus,…

I used to love climbing the single crabapple tree across the street from my childhood home. Its pretty pink blossoms would erupt into perfume each summertime. By autumn, when the waxy, golden-green fruits would appear on its branches, I’d be in an almost delirious state of overexcitement, wild for these wild fruits. Then I’d taste them and they were...awful. Excruciatingly sour and bitter, mealier than uncooked potatoes. Certain that there must be a secret to figuring out how to enjoy them, I tried everything: waiting for them to mature on the branches; picking from the tree’s upper reaches; eating fallen fruit; trying to ripen them on the my bedside table. Nothing helped. They never mellowed. Cut to an apple orchard in Normandy, many years later, beneath a tree covered in…

11th arrondissement In 2014, Le Servan, an airy, light-filled bistro, opened its doors in Paris’ 11th arrondissement, an up-and-coming neighborhood that has since become the hub of cool. At its helm: Tatiana (left) and Katia Levha, two Philippine-French sisters. Tatiana honed her skills at L’Arpège and L’Astrance, and in her small, open kitchen, turns out inventive yet comforting dishes, like clams in Thai basil broth and asparagus with tandoori cream. Katia sources the impeccable wine list and runs the warm, informal service. Sit down for a meal, and Katia comes over to recommend a glass or answer a question about an appetizer. As she goes to confer with Tatiana about something, you feel as if you’re dining at the home you wish you had—a feat all the more impressive because…

The Queen of French Fries was not born potato royalty. Suzy Palatin grew up in the French-Caribbean outpost of Guadeloupe before moving to Paris. While working as an actress and model there, she found that there were no french fries in the capital that met her exacting standards. So she turned her attention to tubers, headed for the stove, and started frying. In time she was making frites for an esteemed circle of food-minded friends, including the chefs Jean-François Piège and Guy Martin. Hearing rumors of her frying prowess, legendary pastry master Pierre Hermé headed to her house to try a few and, blown away, promptly gave her the royal title. In her book on the subject, Les Pommes Frites, Palatin reveals her secrets: Wash and dry your potatoes thoroughly,…

A bouchon is not a bistro. Bistro: a term deprived of meaning, splashed about globally, indiscriminately. Toulouse has bistros. So, too, Tuscaloosa and all points in between. • The bouchon, by contrast, is a fixed type, a local phenomenon, stubbornly immutable even as the world around it insists on changing. The bouchon does not travel. Only here—where the snaking Rhône and Saône rivers meet, and the charcuterie shops in the old town are hung with swaddled, pearshaped pork sausages called Jésus de Lyon and the windows of the pâtisseries piled high with the distinctive hot-pink pralines that figure into nearly all local pastry variants—do we encounter this endemic species, the true workingman’s bouchon lyonnaise. • What does it look like? Not much. Plain butcher’s paper over red-and-whitechecked tablecloths. Buttery light…

APPREC I ATION I’ve heard that you should never meet your hero. I met mine, and I want to amend the rule: You should absolutely meet your hero, if you have the chance. Just don’t offer to make him breakfast. • I have idolized Michel Bras for the better part of two decades. He is one of the most influential, forward-thinking chefs on earth, and from his restaurant overlooking Laguiole he changed the way all of us think about and present our ingredients. I’m fairly sure he didn’t set out to do this. He was just minding his own business on the top of a mountain— focusing on his land, and his food, like a culinary monk. He obsessed over and mastered vegetables, and then, drawing inspiration from his surroundings,…