Really, I like to cook anything, but specifically, I enjoy cooking French food. It doesn’t hurt that I love to eat and have no aversion to butter. I’ve also been lacking in blog inspiration, and was thinking about trying to generate more posts. Finally, I recently saw Julie/Julia, and imitation being the highest form of flattery, I’ve decided to blog about cooking, specifically my cooking.

First, if you’re local and know of a good place to buy fresh whole fish, I’m all ears. The best option I’ve found is to call Whole Foods. I’ve talked to a few people at their seafood counter, and inferred that they buy from one of a few sources locally that cater to restaurants and food markets. Seattle Fish Market in Denver is one of these places. You can’t, as an individual, purchase small quantities direct from these wholesale suppliers, but you can get it on buys through your local Whole Foods. Some caveats I’ve found are that you have to give them good lead time (at least a week) if you want something really specific, but they can often find something that will work for you on shorter notice. For example, this week I decided somewhat late in the game to make fish (for 4), and while I couldn’t get a whole 4 pound fish on short notice, I can get two 2-pounders. This isn’t really the same amount of meat (extra heads, bone, etc.), but it’s close enough for my plans since I was a little heavy on the serving side with a single 4 pounder (3/4 to 1lb per person is a good rule of thumb for whole fish unless it’s a weird variety that is extra bone-y or extra meat-y). Plus, I can always make dessert or another small course to make up for it, which adds work for me, the cook, but if you find cooking joyful, that’s not really a problem.

A couple short words about French food: it’s easy. If your mental imagery of French cooking is tiny portions artfully served for very high prices, well, that’s a bit sad. It’s true that that particular style of presentation-heavy, palate-targeted cooking is a lovely and enjoyable art form, but it doesn’t detract from the bulk of provincial French food enjoyed by all the social classes in that country for centuries. So anyway, here’s a meal I’m planing for this weekend. Future posts will get straight to the cookery, but hey, it’s my blog and I can pretentiously describe French cuisine if I like before getting to the meat of the post. Get it? The mea… yeah. Anyway.

I’ll be poaching fish (snapper) with a julienne vegetable medley and sauce parisienne, which like most French sauces is just a variation on one of the basic sauces, in this case a velouté made with fish stock and having cream and egg yolks added. If I wanted to be super pretentious I could call this Filets de poisson a la parisienne. The vegetable medley will be potatoes, carrots, and probably shallots or maybe a leek, something fairly classic that pairs with sauced fish. Here’s roughly what I plan to do.

Acquire, scale, and gut the fish, then remove the fillets and de-bone. I’ll also be getting some extra fish trim from Whole Foods (bones, heads - probably halibut). All the trim goes to making fish stock in white wine vinegar. The fish stock also becomes the poaching liquid and the base for the velouté and ultimately the sauce. All the prep and stock work comes earlier in the day. When cooking time approaches, I’ll go ahead and julienne the vegetables, then season and cook them. Next, put the fillets in a baking dish, add the vegetables and season the dish overall. In goes the fish stock, which then goes into the oven for poaching. After it’s done, the poaching liquid comes out into a saucepan and turned into velouté, then sauce parisienne. Plate, add sauce, some nice crusty bread, and pair with a good white wine. I could also brown the sauced fish slightly, maybe adding bread crumbs, and then I could tell people they’re eating the very impressive sounding Filets de poisson gratin a la parisienne.

If I’m feeling ambitious for dessert, I don’t think you can ever really go wrong with creme brulee, and it’s an easy addition if you don’t mind making caramel. It also gives me an excuse to check out a new spice shop I learned about courtesy Tara, the Savory Spice Shop in Boulder.