French Impressions: 150 Fabulous Foolproof French Regional Recipes

Northern France

First, catch your frog...

May we propose some oyster and champagne soup from Brittany, accompanied by Normandy lettuce bread and followed by Loire Valley frog’s legs and roasted swan as Richard the Lionheart liked them served up? Then you could round your modest meal off with a soufflé created by the original celebrity chef, Antonin Carême. Or you might simply be in the mood for some of the less exotic dishes regularly served up in the country kitchens and working men’s cafés of northern France.

Donella East has spent twenty years exploring the rural hinterlands of France while organising and trying to prevent her travel writer husband George getting into too much trouble. On route she collected a host of traditional, unusual, rare and sometimes outrageous - but always real - recipes from French country cooks and the obliging owners of one of France’s best-kept culinary secrets.

As the magic hour of midday approaches, tens of thousands of rural bars across the country open their doors to gangs of working men in search of a cheap and filling meal.

Now, four carrier bags’ worth of menus and recipes written on the back of beer mats have been collated by their owner to represent a complete range of delicious dishes. There are more than 150 recipes for starters, main meals, puddings, cakes, bread and the occasional culinary oddity in this first of a series covering every part of France, so enjoy your cook’s tour around the kitchens and cafés of eight very different regions.

French Impressions Food - The North features more than 150 recipes from eight northern regions, stretching from Brittany in the west to Alsace-Lorraine in the east. Together with notes on each regions history and cultural traditions, the menu of recipes for each region is laid out under Starters, Main Meals and Puddings, together with sections on speciality breads, preserves, drinks and unusual dishes. As Donella explains, the most fertile hunting grounds for her recipe-collecting were the cafés and bar restaurants offering an ouvrier service: Ouvrier means any blue-collar male worker, and the term is also used for small bars and restaurants where workers can get a substantial and cheap mid-day meal. It is here that, along with national favourites, you find the traditional dishes particular to that region, and what the diners like to eat at home.

Lionhearts Roasted Swan.....

Traditional dishes featured in the book include Drunkards Soup from Normandie, cows tongue in sauce from Champagne...and even Roasted Swan, a dish regularly served to Richard the Lionhearts guests during Medieval banquets at his castle in the Loire Valley.

Now that Donella has catalogued her favourite regional recipes in the North, she is working on volume two of the series.

'It has been great fun doing the first book', she says, 'and it is good to know that all those old recipes have been gathered together for the future. It has also been really enjoyable making the dishes up and trying them out on my husband. He was always a great fan of French regional cooking, and after getting through a hundred or so dishes in a few months, he is quite literally an even bigger fan than before'!