If eating top-quality food at a five-star hotel restaurant is a little out of your price range, then you will be pleased to hear that a number of bona-fida French chefs are offering cooking classes and easy-to-follow recipes for amateur gastronomes eager to cook up their own French cuisine.
"In France, it is quite common to prepare tasty and simple home-cooked meals," said Louis Jonval (喬鹿), a visiting French chef. "And believe it or not, most of the ingredients needed to prepare French dishes are available in Taiwan's traditional markets."
Jonval, who was born in Morocco, is keen to get Taiwan hooked on the culinary delights of his adoptive country and has published two books containing simple French recipes using ingredients readily available in Taiwan.
PHOTO: SEAN CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
"I usually shop at the Pin-chiang traditional market, where I can get most of the ingredients I need," he said.
Jonval learned the art of cooking from his family, which has been in the restaurant business since the 19th century. He ran a French restaurant for 10 years on the Cote D'Azure in southern France before coming to Taiwan for the first time, returning more than 20 times in the past seven years.
"It's simply not true that French food can only be enjoyed at top restaurants. Many of the ingredients are available and cheap in the traditional markets," Jonval said.
PHOTO: GEORGE TSORNG, TAIPEI TIMES
He pointed out that it is the difference in dining habits that makes Taiwanese people think French food is aloof and obscure.
"In France, people usually eat at home. It's probably only one day out of the week that people dine out," Jonval said.
"If French food took a long time to make, then how could it be possible for French people to eat home-cooked meals everyday," he said.
"But here in Taiwan, the situation is reversed. People dine out most of the time," Jonval said.
Jonval also destroyed the myth that French food is difficult to prepare.
"When we think of Chinese food, we usually think of shark fin soup or bird's nest soup, but as a matter of fact, Chinese people don't eat that kind of food everyday," Jonval said. "The same idea applies to French food."
Jonval's two recipe books, Comment faire la cuisine francaise a Taiwan? and Bonjour Fruit! are packed full of great ideas for chefs keen to try their hand at some French cooking.
In the books, Jonval recommends shopping areas where readers can purchase the ingredients and cooking utensils he writes about.
Most of the spices for French cooking, including laurel, cinnamon, saffron, pepper, thyme, rosemary, garlic, nutmeg, fennel and clove are available in Di-hua Street, which is famous for selling dried foods and and traditional Chinese food ingredients.
"The supermarket in the Breeze Center also sells a number of imported materials," Jonval adds. "Fresh spice plants can be found at the Nai-hu Flower Market or the Chien-kuo Flower Market."
Recently, five-star hotels in Taiwan have started offering public cooking classes.
The Sherwood Hotel Taipei has been giving cooking demonstrations since 2001. The class runs twice a month and provides live demonstrations, detailed take-home recipes and a three-course meal. The cost of the classes varies from NT$900 to NT$1,200 depending on the price of the ingredients used.
According to the Sherwood's public relations office, the number of students has remained steady over the past three years, but because of the size of the kitchen the hotel has to control the number of students.
"One of the reasons we started the cooking classes was to let our customers know that making French food could be easy and down-to-earth, while also gourmet," said Pulina Lin, the Sherwood Assistant Public Relations Manager.
"It's often the case that the students are people who have eaten at the restaurant and we have many foreigners participating" Lin said.
French chef and manager of Sherwood's Henry's restaurant Jean-Marc Cauquil said, "I think the students that come to the classes usually just want to spend a nice morning here.
"It's like a show they are attending. We dress them like chefs, with hats, jackets and aprons," he said.
"I simplify my recipes a lot. I always choose the ingredients that are available in the local markets, and I'll do something that is more elegant and modern on the plate, something the students have never seen before," Cauquil said.
"When I come across ingredients that are not available in the local markets, I either avoid it or find something else to replace it," he said.
"For instance, caviar is not something that is always available, and sometimes Japanese fish is quite often used," Cauquil added.
"We also keep the courses simple, featuring appetizers, main courses and deserts," Cauquil said.
"Even though we work in a five-star hotel restaurant, we advocate the principle of simplicity. It is very important to keep the foods tasty, but the procedures simple" said the chef.
Commenting on the food culture in Taiwan, Cauquil said, "Taiwan has a strong and diverse food culture, and among them I think Chinese food and Italian food are the most popular."
"I wouldn't say that French food here is fashionable due to the limited amount of restaurants. Right now I think the concept of fusion is being used in cooking," the chef said.
"I like to combine different concepts of foods together, like Japanese with French," he said.
The chef said that many foreign ingredients can be purchased in Tienmu, or the supermarket in the Sogo Department Store and the Breeze Center.
In addition to the Sherwood, other hotels that operate cooking classes include the Ambassador Hotel, the Formosa Regent and the Howard Hotel.
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