Professor of French Marie-Claire Morellec is a native of Brittany, a region in western France. She spoke to The Collegian about French cooking, and the differences between American and French cuisine.
What are the specialties of your region?
In terms of food, the specialty in Brittany is a lot of seafood because of the coastline. We have a lot of scallops, crabs, shrimp, mussels, and lots of fish of all kinds. Seafood is a big part of the cuisine there. You also have a lot of fresh vegetables because it is a very temperate area, so vegetables grow easily there.
Is there a special way they cook seafood in Brittany?
It’s never breaded — that’s one thing. It’s mostly grilled, and served with lemon juice and butter. But it’s never breaded. In Brittany, people use salted butter all the time. It is used in most recipes.
Did you bring your cooking with you when you came to America?
I adapted to the country a lot, and at the same time I developed my own tastes. The basis of my cooking is what I saw my grandmother make. She often made crêpes, so that’s one thing that I like to make. My friends and my family are usually pretty happy when I decide to have one of those dinners. Crêpes are a specialty of Brittany.
What are some of your favorite things to make?
Actually, I’m very fond of any kind of Mediterranean cooking — the French, Italian, Turkish, North African. All those cuisines interest me, mostly because they use a lot of very interesting vegetables. It’s actually a very healthy diet, because you do use a lot of vegetables, and olive oil, which is good for you.
That diet is very diverse, of course. And very tasty. And it is very pretty on the plate.
What do you like to put in your crêpes?
Ham, cheese, eggs. Also Nutella! It’s one of my friends’ favorites.
What do you see as some of the differences between American and French eating habits?
When I first arrived, people ate—I thought—mostly sandwiches. I think that many families kept with the tradition of making dinner every day but a lot of families abandoned that tradition because of their busy schedules. Also, with the advent of TV dinners and fast-food restaurants, families did not feel the need to cook regularly. People didn’t look at it as being so essential. I think things have changed. I do see a great change, and an awareness to what is needed to eat healthy, and also what to cook. People seem to be enjoying the act of cooking. They seem to enjoy discovering new things, which I really didn’t see much in the early ‘70s. Then, thanks to Julia Child, Americans rediscovered cooking and saw that cooking a great meal was not overly difficult.
Unfortunately, I think things have evolved for only part of the peopl, not for everyone. I think there are still too many people that rely on fast-food restaurants and think that cooking is a great mystery never to be understood, or that you are a food snob if you pay too much attention to what you put on your plate. It is still something that is not quite in the culture for everybody, but I think it’s evolved a great deal.
In what specific ways do you see this progress in cooking?
I see that particularly in the quality of bread. When I first arrived here, what you found was Wonder Bread. You found sliced bread in a plastic bag, end of story. Today, even in Kroger you can find different kinds of bread that are fresh, that you can cut. Of course, making bread in France is not something that people do because you just go down the street and there is a bakery right there, and you buy your bread after work.
I think the other thing that has changed, there’s also the awareness of what dinner means. A lot of people now are starting to understand that beyond the food that is being shared, you also have a conviviality, an aspect of getting the family together, of communicating, and of sharing your day. All these things are now present that used to be present before and were kind of dropped for a while. Because people get busy with their days. But I think people are making more effort these days to have dinner together. There’s an awareness there that it’s not only about food, but about sharing a nice moment together.
sodell@hillsdale.edu
