Bastille Day

 Hey, a girl can dream.

La Fête Nationale

Le 14 juillet

Looking for a Bastille Day Cookbook read?  Check out Buvette.

How Cool Are French Zombies?

My friend , Anne,  and I are Francophiles.  We both subscribe to Elle à Table and we are always discussing how the French can throw a handful of raw asparagus onto a plate and make it look like art.   I am always saying, "How does there food always look so good?"

Guess what?  Their zombies look good, too.


The Sundance Channel is showing Les Revenants as The Returned.  It is a French Walking Dead, but those who return from the dead are French.  French zombies.  Now one might inquire: "What are French zombies like?"

Well, of course they are far better looking than American zombies.  No rotting flesh, non!  That would be so undignified.  French zombies return intact, coiffed, well dressed and sporting jaunty scarves.

French zombies return from the grave ravenous, but they do not want to eat your fleshy underbelly. A French zombie is looking for a lovely, ripe Camembert and a crusty loaf.

French zombies do not shuffle slowly, but comport themselves like dancers.

Those returned, and those they have returned to, are faced not with a zombie apocalypse, but with an existential dilemma.  For instance, your dead wife returns and causes you to nearly die of a heart attack.

Do you find this to be an abomination and kill her? 

Do you kill yourself? 

Do you give her more Camembert?

Do you ask yourself, "What would Sartre do?"


While they might not be grotesque, rotting flesh eaters, the French zombie does seem to create havoc.    It is a little early to judge the exact nature of the havoc and whether it is more terrifying than a full on zombie apocalypse.  I must confess, however, the thought of a long-dead child showing up in the kitchen raiding the refrigerator may be far more terrifying than a rotting Sophia shuffling out of a barn.

Damn those French!

Famous Food Friday --Gerard Depardieu

Today’s Famous Foodie is the French actor, Gerard Depardieu. The boy loves to eat so he learned to cook. The role that, as they say, put him on the map was his portrayal of a doomed, hunchbacked farmer in the film, Jean de Florette. He went on to win awards for his dramatic roles and when there was a need for some old French guy he acted in a few American productions, I'm thinking of Green Card.

After becoming a famous actor… he followed the famous actor path:

1. Buying his own vineyard
2. Opening a restaurant
3. Dating and impregnating supermodels

Don’t hate him! If you had bags of money you, too, would buy and vineyard and open a restaurant. OK, you would do the supermodel thing, too.



Depardieu took it a step further, writing his own cookbook, cleverly entitled, My Cookbook. As one might guess, the food is a very rustic French. The Revolution changed the course of French cooking. The bourgeoisie, the common man, made French cooking what it is today. The aristocracy had employed chefs, who now made food for the masses. Food became inexorable with French culture. As a child, Depardieu’s father made stews for the family. A favorite was cooked when a passing hunter would give his father a rabbit. Here is a rabbit much like his father made for him.

Rabbit with Rosemary

6 shallots
4 pink garlic cloves
4 rosemary sprigs
50 g (2 oz) butter
1 good fat rabbit, cut into pieces
1 glass of dry white wine
1 glass of water
salt and freshly ground pepper

Peel the shallots and garlic, leaving them whole. Strip the leaves fro the rosemary.

Melt the butter in a large, cast-iron casserole. Add the pieces of rabbit and leave them to brown on all sides. When they are colored all over, add the white wine and water. Season with salt and pepper, add the rosemary, the shallots and garlic, then cover and coo for 1 hour, turning the pieces once or twice during cooking.

Serve the rabbit straight from the casserole.

There is nothing better than rabbit straight from the casserole! Now uncork some wine and settle in with a DVD of Green Card, or perhaps Bogus. In Last Holiday he plays a chef and you get Queen Latifah, so hush up and eat your rabbit.

P.S. Once again, those rascally rabbits over at Cookbook Of The Day, stole our cookbook.