The other page featuring Kate’s notebook from The Paris Cooking School has lots of recipes and food notes. This page however features just a simple menu, with dishes selected from the main recipe page. It’s designed so you can create an entire Paris Cooking School menu at home quickly and easily. But you can also of course vary with other dishes from the main recipe page!

Copyright Note: All images of the notebook copyright Lorena Carrington, all food pics and recipes copyright Sophie Beaumont.

Paris Cooking School Menu

Hors-d’oeuvres (Appetisers):

Sylvie says the best hors-d’oeuvres are things you don’t need to fuss about at all, so olives, charcuterie (especially sliced saucisson, ie salami, and pate) cheese, etc, are all good. But you can also go a bit more fancy if you want—for example Gabi told us about pinxtos, which are like the Basque version of tapas and are delicious but super easy: just various toppings on pieces of sliced bread, everything from tapenade, anchovies, roasted capsicum, ham, prawns, cheese, tomatoes, etc etc!

Entrées

Asperges ou poireaux a la vinaigrette (Asparagus vinaigrette or leek vinaigrette):

Misaki and I made asparagus vinaigrette for the final group lunch, ultra easy and delish! Take a bunch of fresh green asparagus, steam for about 3-4 minutes, let cool. Arrange on a plate, drizzle vinaigrette over it. Et voilà 😊! You can also make leek vinaigrette—another classic French entree dish!– in the same sort of way, only you don’t steam the leeks, you toss them in hot oil, then add water to cover and cook till tender(then cool before adding the vinaigrette).

To make great vinaigrette: the basic one we made in the Paris Cooking School is just virgin olive oil mixed with red or white wine or cider vinegar, salt, pepper, and Dijon mustard. Obviously you have more oil than vinegar 😊 , it’s like 2 or 3 parts oil with one part vinegar. It’s got to taste tangy, not oily though. Sylvie also includes a little grated garlic and chopped tarragon in hers, when tarragon is in season that is. Otherwise she uses tarragon mustard.

Oeufs mimosa (mimosa eggs)

Boil eggs (one per person) for around 10 mins from the time the water boils. Let cool, then split in two, scoop out the yolks, and set part of the yolk aside (about half of one yolk, if you are using two eggs). Mash the rest of the yolk in a bowl with a fork, adding a touch of Dijon mustard, a touch of lemon, a dribble of olive oil (or, traditionally, homemade mayonnaise), salt, pepper.  Mix everything together and heap the yolk mix into the whites. Press the reserved yolk through a sieve to produce little yellow balls that look like mimosa(wattle) flowers. Place the ‘mimosa’ on top of the yolk mix, then set out on a platter, decorated if you like with herb leaves, and serve.  You can vary what you mix the yolks with. Sylvie says you shouldn’t be afraid to experiment!

Plat principal (main course)

Poulet au vinaigre (vinegar chicken)

This is something that Gabi told me about—Max made it for her. It sounds super easy and utterly delicious! You need chicken thighs (one for each person), one medium onion, 2 cloves garlic, 30 g salted butter, salt, pepper, water. That’s for the basic preparation. Then for a dish that will serve up to 4 people (adjust as necessary), for the sauce you also need 4 tablespoons vinegar(white wine or cider vinegar is best) 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard, 1 tablespoon tomato puree, 3 tablespoons dry white wine, and 3 tablespoons cream (cream is optional, Gabi says). Cut the chicken into pieces(not too small, not too big), chop the onion and garlic, and put onion, garlic and chicken in a pan over the stove, with the butter. Stir a few times till starting to colour. Add salt and pepper to taste and enough water to just about cover the chicken pieces. Simmer gently for about 20 minutes, making sure the juice doesn’t all disappear but also not keeping it too liquid. Add the vinegar, stir. In a separate cup or bowl, mix the wine, mustard and tomato puree, stir till well-blended, then add to the vinegar chicken mix. Simmer for 3-4 minutes, then spoon in the cream( if you are using it), stir, let it simmer another minute before turning off the heat. Serve with plain rice or plain boiled potatoes (super delicious with new potatoes!)

Coeurs d’artichauts au beurre et a l’ail (Artichoke hearts in butter and garlic):

Here’s a simple and succulent vegetarian main course. Sylvie says it’s best done with fresh, young, small artichokes; you boil them till tender, then discard all the leaves excepts a few close to the heart, cut off the tips of those leaves, then cut in half the hearts with their attendant leaves, and toss them for a couple of minutes in butter, in a pan over the stove, adding crushed garlic, and a sprinkle of herbs(thyme is good) at the end. You can also use canned artichoke hearts(but not the ones in oil in jars) And you can add other things to the artichoke hearts if you want, like mushrooms, which go well. For a vegan variant, use olive oil instead of butter. This artichoke dish is excellent over plain rice, or accompanied by baby potatoes.

Truite aux amandes (Trout with almonds)

A fabulous simple fish dish is one Anja and Stefan made for the final group lunch: trout with almonds. You take a (river) trout, dip it first in milk then in salted and peppered flour, pan-fry it on both sides for a few minutes with a little oil, take it off the pan and lay it on a serving platter or dish. Drain the cooking juices, add a bit of butter to the pan, and toast a handful of flaked almonds in it for 2 mins, stirring constantly. Slip the toasted almonds onto the trout, and serve with potatoes, either small new ones or those braised ones I described earlier, which work well. You can vary it by using whole almonds, caramelising them with sugar and water in a pan first, and then when cool, scatter over the fish once it’s ready to serve.

Légumes (vegetables): a quick note

Traditionally, vegetables were served separately to the main course in France, but these days, people don’t always keep to that. But they do always serve some vegetables, and as you’d expect, they are cooked deliciously, simply and quickly! And French cooks take full advantage of the seasons to present vegetables at their most delicious.

Le pain: a note on bread

I loved going to our local neighbourhood boulangerie (bakery) in Paris to pick up bread fresh every morning for the day. Bread (le pain) is an indispensable part of every French meal, served at breakfast of course but also at other meals to mop up sauces, push food onto forks, served with cheese, etc etc! The classic baguette and its several versions (such as ficelle, or string, the small thin variety of baguette, or baguette tradition, made with sourdough) is well known of course but there’s also ‘pain de campagne‘ a heartier sort of bread that keeps quite well (unlike the baguette, which basically should be eaten on the day you buy it, which is ideally the day it’s been made!) And there are also other grain varieties, such as seigle (rye) and sarrasin(buckwheat) etc etc. Choice is up to you!

Intermission

A green salad is very commonly served in France after the main course. It’s dead simple: use a mix of your favourite salad leaves, and toss with vinaigrette.

Fromage (Cheese)

This is when cheese is served in France, always before any sweet dessert, never after, as in many English-speaking countries. It isn’t always served in a meal, by the way. But if you are going to have a cheese course, then provide just two or three cheeses, plus some crusty bread (which is classically French) or crackers/biscuits, if you prefer.

Gateau Pithiviers (Pithivers cake): Pithiviers pie originates in the town with the same name, in northern France, and it’s an absolute classic of home baking. Normally it’s made with puff pastry, and certainly that’s the classic way of doing it, but Sylvie showed us a different, easier method that doesn’t involve all the palaver of making puff pastry and is as easy as shortcrust pastry (though you can of course use bought puff pastry!) So, you need: for the pastry; 150 g plain flour; 50 g cold unsalted butter; crème fraiche(sour cream)or buttermilk. For the filling: 125 g almond meal; 50 g castor sugar; 1 egg yolk; about 30-40 g softened unsalted butter; drop vanilla essence. Optional: drop armagnac or cognac. For glaze of the pie: 1 egg yolk. To make the pastry, cut the butter into pieces and rub through flour till mixture ressembles fine breadcrumbs. Add enough sour cream or buttermilk to make a soft but not sticky dough. Set aside to rest in a cool place while you make the filling. Mix almond meal, sugar, egg yolk, softened butter and vanilla essence in a bowl, and cognac/Armagnac brandy too if you wish. It needs to be fairly soft but holding together well, a bit softer than bought marzipan. Then divide the pastry in slightly unequal halves(the bit for base and sides needs to be a bit bigger than the bit for the top. ) Roll out each part. Lay the base and sides part in a buttered pie dish and then spread the almond mixture over it to cover it to every corner. Place the pie lid on top of that, pinch sides together. Then paint top with egg yolk and score it with a sharp knife taking care not to go right through top (it’s just for decoration really.) Bake in a moderate oven, around 180C, for about 40 minutes. You can serve warm or let it cool down.

A note on wine:

For the appetisers, aperitif-style wines will often be served, such as vermouth, or else you might have cocktails, or champagne. Or indeed, whatever you like!

Entrees and main courses: In terms of the dishes listed in this menu, whites or light reds or rosé would work best. But other dishes, in the main recipe page, such as steak and frites, would rather be paired with reds of course. Cheese can sometimes be paired with red wine, but it’s up to you. Despite their purist reputation, French people seem remarkably open-minded when it comes to wine, and Sylvie says it’s no longer considered weird to serve say, light red wine with fish.

Sweet wines can be served with dessert. My favourite is Sauternes, a luscious, but never cloying, golden aromatic wine from the Graves area of the Bordeaux region(Graves also produces lovely dry whites by the way). But good ‘botrytis’ or ‘noble rot’ wines are very acceptable.

A very small list of my favourite French wines: Sancerre (the superb Loire Valley sauvignon blanc wine made by vignerons in the Loire Valley, such as Max’s family); Beaujolais (a lovely light red from Burgundy); in deeper reds, both Bordeaux and Burgundy produce many types of superb wines; in rosés, the Rosé d’Anjou (a very drinkable rosé, light and fragrant, from the old province of Anjou, in the Loire) is my favourite; and in sweet wines, the superlative Sauternes, as described above. Lots of other great wines all over France, though, it’s certainly not what’s lacking there! You can get many of them outside France too–and of course you can, if you wish, replace with similar style wines available locally.

Finally: my summary of Sylvie’s approach to food is: take pleasure in it, care about ingredients, think simple and superb, fresh and local, don’t be afraid to experiment—and have fun!