I can't tell you how much I wish my "Week with Wini" could go on forever. I've gotten to know her only slightly through emails and conversations about this week's postings, but I hope that someday, someway I'll get to meet her beautiful self in person.
Today's post is "Top Ten questions for Wini". She was so gracious to spend time this past weekend answering and she has some informative answers ... Read, learn, and enjoy.
1) With all the cookbooks available on French cooking (Julia Child, Virginia Willis, Jacques Pepin, Anne Willan, Patricia Wells … I could go on!), what was your motivation to write your own cookbook about French food?
Indeed, there are great French cookbooks out there! However, I don't know of anyone who takes quite the same approach I do. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how French women truly bring beautiful food to their tables every day, in spite of the fact that they work outside the home (just like most of us). This isn't a "how a chef cooks at home" book, nor is it a book about French restaurant classics. It's not necessarily a book for hobbyists who want to spend three days making a cassoulet. It's a book for people who want to discover the fresh, vivid, simple, life-enhancing way the French eat every day (without spending all day in the kitchen).
2) What was your first experience dining in France?
I was on a high-school cultural exchange trip, and our group was supposed to be in the lobby of the hotel at 6 p.m. to head across Paris for dinner. My friend Cindy and I slept through our alarm (thanks to jet lag) and ended up--wide-eyed, 16, and on our own on the streets of Paris. We asked a kind stranger in the metro where we might find a good restaurant, and he directed us to the Restaurant Chartier. It was amazing—not just because it was the first time I’d had a lovely French roast chicken and true French fries, but because we sat at long tables with other French people, who treated us like we were family (even though we could barely understand them, nor they us). They kept filling our glasses with their wine, and everyone was so welcoming and merry. Who wouldn’t fall in love with France after a first night like that?
3) As I understand it, you live part of the year in America and part in France. Do you have a permanent residence in each country? Why or why not?
I have been a freelance food editor and writer for many years, mostly for the Better Homes and Gardens family of publications. Over the years, I've worked with great editors, who understand that come June, I'm off to France for a major chunk of the summer. (Fortunately, my husband is a college professor, so he has some freedom in the summer, too.) We do not own a place; however, we often go back to the same apartments we have rented in the past. We simply do not want to tie ourselves down to one place, even though Collioure has stolen our hearts (and is where we generally stay). Before Collioure, we rented the same apartment year after year in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, another wonderful town on the Mediterranean.
4) The French tend to use every part of every animal and vegetable in their cooking. Waste not, want not! Much of it sounds unappetizing to me whether it is made in a French cuisine or not! What food do you absolutely refuse to eat?
While I respect the way the French use every bit of the animal, I personally am not a huge fan of things like tripe (stomach lining) and other entrails. I also want to stress that my book doesn’t call on any hard-to-find meats or obscure ingredients. If I couldn’t find an ingredient easily in America, I didn’t put it in the book. (Hence, no recipes for kidneys, wild boar, etc.!). French women don’t chase ingredients down on the Internet, so why should we? It’s not in the spirit of bonne femme cooking.
5) Have you eaten escargots? And do you like them?
Oh, sure! They’re good, but a classic, old-school-French cooking. You won’t find escargot in my book, because I focus on more contemporary-styled food. And besides, classic escargot is more about the wonderful intense butter and persillade (garlic-parsley) sauce than it is about the chewy bits of snail. Once you key into what the garlic-parsley-butter combo can do in cooking, for anything from veggies to fish, you don’t need the snails! (And yes, I give info on persillade in my book.)
6) When you come back to America from your time in France, what is the number one food product you bring back (besides the obligatory pain au chocolat) in your carryon bag?
These days, with the Internet, you can get so many things you love in France delivered to your door. However, I always try to bring back
- Lavender honey from Provence: Their lavender honey is so different than ours—theirs is opaque and spreadable, ours is clear and pourable; theirs is simply more intense.
- Amora Dijon mustard: It’s a really sharp mustard that I love; however, more than that, I love the little mustard jars, which can be reused as casual juice or wine glasses. They have pop-off tops, so can also be used as wonderful storage vessels for little bits of this and that.
- French mayonnaise: I love French mayo, and it comes in a tube with a star tip, which makes it really easy to pipe a little bit of mayo on a halved hard-boiled egg for the classic French first course, oeufs dur mayonnaise.
- Chocolate: I always seek out the town’s best artisanal chocolatier (such as the wonderful Cadiot-Badié shop in Bordeaux), and bring back a bit of killer-good chocolates to share with my friends back home.
7) Do you have a favorite region of France in terms of the foods it is known for? If so, what region is that and why? (This sounds like a beauty pageant …. “and why?”) Ha.
I have traveled in every region of France, and I love the food just about everywhere. I must say I love the Southwest of France best, from Bordeaux just to the Languedoc region, including, the area that is known as Gascony, on down to the Pyrenees. They do beautiful, refined food, but it’s never fussy. And of course, they have great wines. And cheeses. I’m a huge fan of the Pyrenees sheep’s milk cheeses—I can’t get enough of them. Truth be told, I probably like the food in Southern France best simply because that’s where I’ve spent the most time. If I spent more time in the Loire Valley, for instance, or over in the Savoie, that would probably be my favorite gastronomic region. It’s all good.
8) Have you attended culinary school?
No, I have not. But I have worked in many restaurants, I’ve traveled extensively, cooked a lot, and I’ve worked as a cookbook editor and writer for many years. I know how to professionally test a recipe and how to write a recipe to make sure that the cook will get the same great results. I also know how to make sure the effort-to-enjoyment ratio of all my recipes end up on the cook’s side. That’s so important to me: There’s nothing worse than recipes that don’t work, or recipes that are just too involved for the pleasure you get out of them.
9) Who has been your biggest French culinary influence?
Pierre Franey! He was a French-born chef who lived in New York and wrote the New York Times’s “60-Minute Gourmet” column. When I lived in New York City, I used to read his column every week, and I basically learned how to cook quick, easy, everyday French meals from him. He truly keyed me into the “sauté-deglaze-serve” way of cooking that defines an entire chunk of the book (that is, how to make a diverse array of fresh, vivid, and intense pan sauces for 30-minute cooking at its true-to-France best). A lot has happened since Franey wrote his books about 30 years ago. We can get better, fresher ingredients, so we don’t have to use as much butter and cream as he did. I like to think that my book takes his vision of everyday French cooking, and brings it forward to today.
10) Can I stow away in your baggage on your next trip across the Atlantic?!
Sorry! I only do carry on. But you are welcome to come visit me anytime. I’ll be in Collioure in June—just email me through my website and we can meet in this lovely corner of the world.
Oh Wini — I am "kind of" small, but that long of a trip in the overhead bin would probably give me cranky spirits and creeky bones. I would so love to meet you in Collioure in June, but I don't think it will happen this year. WHEN it does happen, we'll enjoy fabulous market finds, create the most fabulous meal to share all the while enjoying a sunny southern French evening together. Deal?
Thank you for allowing me to showcase your new book and I wish you all the success in the world!
And to all my faithful readers ... if you want to purchase Wini's new cookbook, you can find it HERE. Treat yourself!
