French food – the menu

Its France week!!! I can hardly contain my excitement. Hooray!!!! *jumping*

As I am so excited, I’m going to make a departure from my usual format, and introduce the food before introducing the country. There’ll be an introduction to France, I promise, but right now I’m too excited and salivatory (is it a word? is now) to look up details of the population and geography.

I adore eating French food. The creamy and heavy, the light and piquant, pastry and herbs… Yum!  The perfectionism, fresh ingredients, and focus on sauces and flavour combination appeals to my foodie side, too. In fact, a few days of making French-ish food at home is what sparked the idea for this blog.

Sadly, I’ve not had any passable ‘French’ food since I became vegan (except my home made stuff). As a side note, if anyone knows anywhere in Melbourne, or the world, really, where you can get passable French-ish vegan food (outside of France), let me know.

So, it could be a challenge, but one I’m looking forward to.

French food varies from region to region, but generally has an emphasis on fresh local produce, and honoring the flavours of said produce. They use a lot of vegetables and fruit, but also a LOT of meat, cheese, wine and the like, which could pose some hurdles for us vegans.

I haven’t yet decided on the final list, but it will definitely include:

• Rataouille
• Onion Soup
• Creme Du Barry (cauliflower soup)
• Leek and something tart
• Pistou (soup)
• Croissants
• Beef Bourguingon
• Fennel and orange salad
• Creme Caramel

It may also include:

• A daube tofu/tempeh (usually beef or chicken)
• Green been salad
• Celeraic puree
• Gratin Dauphinois (scallop potatoes)
• Various sauces
• A stew of some sort
• Clafouti
• Pate
• we’ll see…

Hope you can stay with me for it… but to be honest, I’d do this week’s menu with or without the blog. Hooray for the French and their fabulous food. There’s a reason this cuisine is found all over the world.

Links

You probably don’t need hep to find French food on the internet, but here are my favourite sites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_cuisine As always, Wikipedia is helpful.

http://www.easy-french-food.com/ A great site for French recipes, in english.

http://vegetarianandveganfrance.com/ A veg*n France site, in English

http://www.frenchentree.com/fe-vegetarians/ A page with some Vegetarian/vegan French hints.

http://www.vrg.org/journal/vj98nov/98bfrench.htm Some helpful vegan french recipes.

http://www.theveggietable.com/recipes/frenchrecipes.html More vegan French recipes.