Chefs will often talk about the fundamentals of french cooking, what are those fundamentals...

Chefs will often talk about the fundamentals of french cooking, what are those fundamentals? How do I become intrinsically familiar with them?

French cuisine is regarded as the go-to, high mark of Western food because a couple people systematized and categorized the food, techniques, and how a kitchen should be run.

Would you recommend this book?

>fundamentals of french cooking

butter

I'd recommend Julia Child before Escoffier if you're an English speaker, but Escoffier is pretty much the canonical text on classic French cuisine.

mother sauces
knife techniques
pan techniques
mise en place

They're both oldies, how do I filter outdated notions? Also as a pretentious European (but not french) I'd prefer to learn from yuropeans

>I'd prefer to learn from yuropeans

In that case I'd just suggest Escoffier, although Child is classically French taught and her book is better written when it comes to explaining techniques, but it is a little dumbed down for American houswives in the 50's (or whenever it came out) with limited access to ingredients.

just cook everything from "mastering the art of french cooking"

wa la, u r now better than 99% of all home cooks

I fucking detest Julie and Julia, but love the comments Julia Child made about how it was disrespectful and a mockery.

All of the above posts, + cooking technique: braise, sauté, pan sauces from sauté, poaching; the glorious mirepoix and herb combinations, fines herbes, herbes de Provence; 100 ways to prepare an egg; baking; desserts... The thing that is most interesting about French cooking, and I've said this here a lot, is that it is essentially peasant food, raised to the highest level. E.g. Escargots.

when to use wa-la appropriately after baking kwa-sawn to avoid making a fo-pa

it wasn't THAT bad

Any movie that demonstrates the smallest iota of passion for cooking gets a +1 in my book. If you can stomach the sight of John Favreau's weasel-faced paunch then you better be able to stomach Meryl Strep's impersonations.

>, but it is a little dumbed down for American houswives in the 50's (or whenever it came out) with limited access to ingredients.
Yeah, that's kinda my concern, I don't like the idea of putting effort into something and ending up with a watered down perspective anyways.

I didn't mind the Meryl Strep parts, I just fucking hate Julie for making a fortune off of a gimmick when she didn't know how to cook and was a picky eater who was scared of eggs.

I also don't understand the problem people have with Chef. I don't particularly like Favreau, but it was a fun and entertaining food flick that had some nice, semi-authentic food porn, despite having no conflict or real story arc.

"Mastering the Art of French Cooking" was not watered down, it was two damn volumes, her PBS related book "The French Chef" was not watered down, and her masterpiece on teaching people how to cook: "The Way to Cook" is exactly that, a masterpiece for the home cook. "The Joy of Cooking" is a cookbook for uneducated housewives and shit recipes that your grandmother and mother made that included cliche "high class" dishes like carbonara and shit casseroles made with Campbell's soup. Bite your fucking tongue young man and speak only of things you know about. For shame. Julia brought the elemental technique of French cooking to the states. You need to respect.

I don't respect the states at all though.
And why would I limit myself to home cooking. chefs are good at cooking food, lemme do it their way

Cary on with boiling all your food, bong

>I don't respect the states at all though.
>And why would I limit myself to home cooking.

1) You're an idiot.
2) You're only going to be a home cook if you only cook at home. That's a fact. If you really want to learn techniques youtube and cookbooks will only get you so far. Spend 6 months in a real kitchen and you'll learn how to cook like a pro by making as many dishes in a night as you would by cooking a single dish every night at home.

I'll just make 500 dishes at home every day. Checkm8

*by cooking a single dish every night at home over the course of a year

It's repetition and finding what works. Home cooks can't compare to restaurant cooks simply because they don't have to opportunity to repeatedly make the same dish or use the same techniques until they've mastered them.

*carry

u wot?

even if you dont cook the same fucking meal ever day doesnt mean you dont do the same meal atleast once a month, and over years you will eventually get it perfect

and you don't need to get any single technique perfect to have an overall high level of ability.

You can still learn the concepts though. That's what I'm curious about, is the some deeper understanding, rules or philosophy behind french cuisine?

All cuisines are based on braise (any type of stew), sauté & pan sauce (Indian for instance, or paprikash, or...), poaching is a little more localized. Elements of soup are more localized (sauces, e.g. fish, soy, etc.) but still have the same idea at heart.

>I don't respect the states at all though.
So you don't enjoy modern music or film?

This. Escoffier codified classic french technique but is pretty useless outside of a scholarly or historic interest. As stated, Julia Child is a much better jump off for cooks trying to get into classical french cooking.

Huh?

Escoffier took much of Careme's technique (also one of the codifers of technique in classical french haute cuisine) and simplified and modernized it. That along with his brigade system of kitchen management made re-creating what was found in the culinary tradition more accessible to modern cooks. His actual works are utilized more as textbooks than cookbooks at this point. There are much easier to follow and understand books out there for the actual creation of classical french cuisine (such as Julia Childs Mastering French Cooking). She did for Escoffier what he did for Careme.

Different user (original poster who suggested both), Escoffier is more like a text book for someone who already knows how to cook, whereas Child is more of a 101 class in basic French cuisine.

>I fucking detest Julie and Julia, but love the comments Julia Child made about how it was disrespectful and a mockery.
At that point, I think Julia had a little brain cancer. She was a nice lady, once married to diplomacy, and it was highly uncharacteristic for her to say anything negative openly. She was also a fool who didn't really "get" social media, blogging and the woman who idolized her. She found the whole endeavor kind of strange and foreign.

The movie was alright. If there was any criticism at all, all of the scenes of Julia were terrific history and it was obvious they should have just done an entire movie about her instead.

OP, the two books suggested to you are the "bibles" of technique needed to operate a professional kitchen on your talents...the teaching part.

>She was also a fool who didn't really "get" social media, blogging and the woman who idolized her

While that's probably true, her comments were all completely justified.

This dumb girl was making a fortune by doing a "I'm going to cook through Julia Child's book in a year, recipe by recipe" shtick, when she blatantly didn't know what she was doing, and the blog turned into a book, and the book turned into a movie.

Here's Julia Child - one of the most iconic celebrity chefs - being immortalized by a fucking retard exploiting social media and giggling and going "ew" when she has to cook eggs or a duck breast, when Child made a career out of bringing French cuisine to America. Then this Julie person went on to write another food book based solely on her fame from a book the premise of which was that she didn't know shit about food but was going to muddle through it anyway for her blog. Absolutely disgusting.

1. Knife skills. Practice on potatoes.
2. Stocks. Chicken, veal, fish, vegetable.
3. Mother sauces and their variations.
4. Techniques - Saute. Roast. Braise. Blanch. Pan roast. Poach.
5. Starches - potatoes, risotto, gnocchi, pasta

He said French not Southern

>blatantly didn't know what she was doing
>fucking retard exploiting social media and giggling and going "ew" when she has to cook eggs or a duck breast

Please tell me there's some lengthy takedown of this Julie I can read.

This x10