(Cook) Book Review: Dinner in French
One of my favorite pastimes is reading recipes. Or rather, reading recipe titles, out loud, to my coworkers, and then making very focused eye contact, usually with absurd eyebrows. What can I say, it’s my love language. There is nothing that makes me more joyful about cooking than reading the recipes. The cute little introductory blurbs on the side that have an explanation about why this recipe means so much to them, them in this case being Melissa Clark of Dinner in French. It’s one of the few sections when the chef gets the chance to be personal and funny outside of the introduction, and who (besides me) reads the introduction?
But let me tell you, with recipe titles like these, who needs blurbs. Listen to this:
Radicchio and Baked Camembert Salad
Savory Gruyere Bread with Ham
Asparagus, Goat Cheese, and Tarragon Tart
Brown Butter Scallops with Parsley and Lemon
Spaghetti with Anchovies, Tomatoes, and Basil
Oxtail Bourguignon with Caramelized Mushrooms and Garlic
MELON WITH SAUTERNES
Straight up. This woman has given a recipe for pouring Sauternes over a cored melon, and that is the whole recipe:
Melon with Sauternes
Serves 4
2 small ripe Cavaillon or other melons, halved and seeded, at room temperature
Sauternes or other dessert wine, as needed, chilled
Fill the cavities of the melons with wine and serve one melon half to each guest, with soup spoons for eating. I like to serve these in deep plates or soup bowls to catch any overflowing wine.
Melissa Clark doesn’t even call it a recipe. She calls it a PSA, and if that is the kind of Public Service Announcement within which Melissa Clark trades, I will follow her twitter; I will follow her instagram; I will literally follow her with a pad of paper and pen to get these little nuggets of wisdom from the proverbial horses mouth. Melissa, hit me up.
Anyways, I haven’t made Melon with Sauternes. Mind you, this is not because I am unmotivated or unable. The only reason that I have not slathered melons with French, botrytised dessert wine and eaten them breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the last two weeks that I have had this cookbook is because I can think of a few of my aforementioned coworkers who would be upset to be missing out on the fun, and it seems cruel to eat Melons with Sauternes without them. So, I made home made pasta instead, a recipe which is sadly not in Dinner in French. The sauce though, the sauce is.
For my birthday, I received, like every twenty-odd year old home chef, a pasta maker. If you’re older than twenty-odd and you like making food, you had one, somewhere. Maybe it’s still in your kitchen in a back cabinet, collecting dust because after the shinny, new appliance feeling wears off, isn’t it just another single use kitchen tool that you never want to use because taking it out is too much work. And, you lost that one removable piece that is the only thing that you really need to use it; so, you just hold on to it until you ‘loose it in the move’, and you’re finally unburdened from all your useless kitchen appliance dead weight.
Well, I got my pasta maker in February. So, the shinny, new appliance feeling hasn’t worn off yet. I also had about a dozen eggs that were about to go off. So, I also made a bundt cake, but that’s beside the point. Terra wants these to be 500 words, and I’m already over.1 I made hand made linguine with my emergency-freezer-semolina-00 in order to make the aforementioned Spaghetti with Anchovies, Tomatoes, and Basil, and WHOA. It was so very, very good.
The only disappointing thing about this recipe, and don’t get me wrong, there’s not much to disappoint is that, by the time I had gotten the picture you’re seeing above, this scrumptious hand-made-linguine in a sauce of tomatoes, basil and anchovies went cold. I’m still eating it (as if I would let good anchovies, let alone good pasta go to waste), but let me tell you: cold [hand-made-linguine] with Anchovies, Tomatoes, and Basil from Melissa Clark’s Dinner in French is still lick-the-bowl-clean good.
In the photo that cost me a warm dinner, you will see a glass of red wine.2 Now, I’m not saying that this recipe should only be drunk with red wine. Pasta with a light, fresh tomato sauce is one of those lovely foods which can be drunk with white or red, or if feeling particularly adventurous, bubbles. But of all these style choices, I would stick to Piedmont wines. Piedmont is a wine region in the North West of Italy, right near France, and a wine/food aphorism that I live by is: grows together, goes together.3 There’s a reason nothing goes better with Italian wine than pizza and pasta. Indeed, the pairing was made for each other, and because Piedmont is near the French border, there is a little French influence as well.
So, a fun Italian, alpine wine, a plate of Spaghetti with Anchovies, Tomatoes, and Basil, and Melissa Clark’s Dinner in French to read out loud is all you need for a good evening. Well, maybe a hockey game on in the background, but aside from that I couldn’t think of a better night. Easy and fun, this recipe is totally achievable on a week night if you ixnay the hand-made-linguin-hay, I would also confidently substitute orecchiette, farfelle, or what ever fun shape you find in your grocery store travels.
HA! Any college grad will tell you that footnotes don’t count towards final word count; If you, like me, love bundt cakes exclusively for the name and the My Big Fat Greek Wedding reference, check out A Baker’s Year by Tara Jensen. It’s my baking bible.
Indeed, you will see a glass of undrinkable red wine that I sacrificed to the refrigerator gods two weeks ago that I would not drink outside of a very fruity sangria. I promise that the wine pairing above will be much better.
By no means should this pasta be drunk exclusively with Piedmont wine. I just love wine out of alpine regions, and Piedmont makes good wines out of an alpine region (Piedmont means foot of the mountains). Basically, I just think everyone should drink more Piedmont. You could probably pair this recipe with some less than desirable big-box-store-brand wine, and it would be amazing. Remember, I made hand made linguine, I obviously am all about over kill.
