meet the blogger: colloquial cookin'

(photo courtesy of Colloquial Cookin')

I started reading Colloquial Cookin' shortly after starting my own blog and was instantly enthralled and entertained by Claire's sharp wit and fun take on food. Finally! Someone who doesn't take herself so seriously and likes to cut loose with the rest of us! She's edgy (she makes fun of even her pupils and has a knack for finding the nasty in any photo) but sweet aanndd...she's française. Although her cooking is way beyond me, I feel like I can relate to her voice more closely than most. I had to find out more about this mysterious francophone foodie and ask her all my burning questions. She was totally game and so kind to do it. Everyone, meet Claire.

Catch me up on your background. You seem to frolic between French and English well...grrr...where are you from?

The easy answer is I'm French, but quite frankly I've moved so much there isn't a place I can say I'm from. Oh—I'm not from damn Paris, that's for sure. But I've lived there too.

What inspired the creation of Colloquial Cookin'?

Looking around I realized there were a lot of French blogs, written in French obviously. Yet I don't think many non-native French speakers would make the effort to try and read them. Being a language teacher (I have to stop saying before someone slaps me) I wanted to get English-speaking food bloggers to learn some kind of French, and everybody knows the first thing people want to learn from a language is always colloquialisms. That, and chat-up lines. Specifically for French I guess. I'll make sure to sure to start a second blog called Glamourous Cookin' on that topic.

Describe your earliest memory of cooking—where does the passion come from?

From being hungry all the time?! I wish I remembered when I started cooking, and I truly haven't got a clue, how sad! It may be because every single one of the meals I had as a child was prepared at home, so cooking was never a big deal. I remember making hundreds of crêpes one afternoon because a cousin of mine had gotten the oil proportion wrong and we had decided to up all the other quantities instead of throwing it away. Never seen crêpes the same way since.

I drooled over your flourless chocolate walnut cookies and those profiteroles. What is your favorite post or greatest achievement thus far in your blogging experience?

Tsk tsk tsk, I like ALL my posts. I'm a proud mother. Except for the brussel sprouts one, my ugly duckling. It was a disaster from start to finish in terms of photographic skills, and somehow the absence of lighting and the ugliness of the setting reflect how crap things were at the time. But the sprouts were bloody delicious and heart-warming, and I do the recipe all the time. Isn't that a good story?

What's in your fridge right now?

I need to do some serious shopping! Rainbow chards, guanciale, a red cabbage, silken tofu, a bunch of ramps (foraged in the woods) and a vat of homemade chili. The biers are not mine, they are my flatmates'. Of course. Ahem.

Name your drug: cheese or chocolate? Caffeine or alcohol? Sweet or savory?

I'm all for chocolate. All for it. Caffeine doesn't do much for me, although I love the taste of coffee, but then again you have to blame something for insomnia. I don't have a sweet or savoury divide—I can get a serious kick out of a board of finocchione, soppressata and toasted bread, but also eat lemon curd by the tablespoon. Not to mention sweet AND savoury mixed together, like a crisp caramel glaze on pork belly, or fleur de sel in chocolate sables.

Is there anything you won't eat?

I tend to be reviled by stinky cheeses, but I am getting better about incorporating the more neutral kind, like parmesan or pecorino, into baked or cooked dishes. I'm *almost* sold on the whole gougère idea. Bear with me.

What are you reading right now? (Cookbook or "normal" books.)

I am having a great time munching my way through Michael Ruhlman's Charcuterie. I want to make everything in that book, and it's a rare thing that I get so into one cookery book in particular. Other than that, I'm reading some obscure opus on musicians at the court of Frederick the Great for my doctorate, and learning by heart Pierre Hermé's Macaron. I'm one of those speculative bed-time cookbook readers, if you see what I mean!

And lastly, my favorite question to ask: what would be your last meal, beginning to end?

I have been putting back sending you this quiz because of that particular question. Some days I wish my last meal could just be one long omakase, some other days I would kill for a poulet à la crème with black trumpets and sautéed potatoes! And I still have all those crazy projects that seem equally appealing. Fingers crossed my last isn't coming too soon.

Thanks Claire!