Food Safari

Hundreds of years of tradition, recipes that

range from rusty to odd cuisine. There's no

doubt the French have developed one of the

most elegant cuisines on earth. Welcome to

Join our food safari to learn how to make classic

French onion soup, golden crusty baguettes,

beef bourguignon from a master, and the decadent world of French desserts.

One great thing about the French cooking is

you don't need 100 ingredients. Pretty compact,

with 10 ingredients you've done it. So you've

got your base element and after that you just

buy fresh produce. You know, in every city in

France you've got two times a week a market,

but that's part of the French way of living. Jean

Brahimi is one of Australia's most celebrated

chefs. Training in Paris, he earned three

Michelin stars before moving to Australia,

working in some of our top restaurants. In

2001, he took over the Benelong restaurant

and continues to win awards. So, a French

pantry, Guillaume, what do you need for it?

Well, you know, this is a dream fridge.

That's the way my fridge should be. Butter. In

France, butter is started with your breakfast

on your fresh baguette, goes all the way to

lunch in your sauce and goes all the way to

your dinner. It's outstanding with fish. You

know, you taste a better quality butter. And

worth spending the money on. Absolutely. We're

not talking, you know, you don't have to

mortgage your house to have bread butter at

home. But it's all, you know, like butter

is good for you. I'm not asking you to have

250 grams of butter a day. I'm asking you

to have 200. I'm a very big fan of specks,

the smoked speck. Beautiful flavor. There's

other things you can do than just bake on

eggs. If I want to cook my beef bourguignon,

I want to put a piece of speck in it. As

they say, fatty's flavor. Well, I do believe

that. Yeah. So what other key things have

you got in your pantry? Mustard. I have to say we're a big fan of mustard at home.

You know, Dijon mustard. We take the Dijon mustard on the table with any meat. You

know, we'll have veal cutlets, some lime cutlets, some lime chunks. We put Dijon

mustard. You can make a great vinaigrette

using Dijon mustard. Beautiful. And one very

important thing is to quality salt. You know, Selle de Guérin, it is the best of

the salt for me. You know, when you taste

it, you taste the sea. And it's a different

salt than the, you know, the salt you get anywhere else. The only problem with

that is you be addicted with this product after that. Tell me, Guillaume, cheese

is something that you'd eat every day? I love it. Look at that. I can lock myself

here and say, I see you in one week. I'll be saying, can we make it two? In my

house, where I grew up, we have an average of six cheese. I think three

would be good enough. The blue, a wash wine, a heart. But I think three

is quite exciting. And you have cheese to

finish a meal? Absolutely. Absolutely. This

is more than just an ingredient in your hand, isn't it? Oh, this is gold. This

is... And actually, it's not gold, it's truffle. You know, the flavor of it is

outstanding. It's a really strong, earthy

flavor, isn't it? It's a fungus, you know.

Do you use them liberally? Absolutely. More the better. More the better. I use

them, everything, in a cereal puree. Make a beautiful pasta. Chef that, trust

me, they will go and say, what have you done last night? Oh, we just went to

Maven, we just have truffle pasta. What did you do last night? Good and good.

France Vidal worked as a chef for 20 years and now works in an acclaimed

patisserie. At the end of the day, she loves to make an easy French

classic, onion soup. I think it's the soup you pass on from grandma to mom and

daughter. And that's what I've been learning from my mom, you know, many

years ago, and see cooking and the lovely soup. The butter, melt the

butter and add the onion and cook at least for 20, 25 minutes. Let it cook slowly

and we're going to keep stirring. But all those brown bits, they're flavor,

aren't they? Yes, yes. It will give the color of the soup. Now I'm going to

put my flour. The flour will give the thickness of the soup and cook for

another two minutes just to cook the flour, too.

What are two liters? Another secret. Maybe a glass of white wine and my

seasoning. And I'm going to put some gruyere. I put it in now. Just a little

bit and it will melt but it give flavor. That's a nice color. It is. It's

beautifully golden. Yeah. We're going to bring to the ball and we will turn

it down and cook slowly. It's a French gruyere. Put this under the grill

for a few minutes to melt it and you put on the top of the soup in a bowl.

Yum. Bon appetit. It's a celebration of onions, isn't

it? It is beautiful. Four or five ingredients and

they're just magic.

Having the right tools to do the job is an essential in French cooking and

endless equipment has evolved for specialized purposes. In big cookware

stores, there's something for absolutely everything. Gabriel Gatte is one of our

most well-known French chefs appearing on television for most of the last

30 years he's been in Australia. He grew up in the Loire Valley of France,

learning many of the regional favorites from his grandmother, then going on to

train as a chef. He's the author of 20 cookbooks and has won awards for both

his books and his contribution to promoting French gastronomy. What do you

need? What are essentials? Well in terms of cookware, you certainly want a

couple of frying pans because the French people pan fry things like

seafood or breast of chicken and you really want a couple of pots, oven proof

dishes that you can start cooking on top of the stove and then go in the

oven. Now this is the French tool by excellence. You whip your cream, you

make sauces, every time that you have to mix something or fold in

something, this is it. This is a traditional French crêpe pan and you

French people do a pancake crêpe often because it's a celebration dessert that

you can make at any time during the year. Every family in France would have

one of those and you would probably have one of your grandmother because it

lasts forever. I think there's a real joy in making your own cakes and in

France there's a tradition of particular cake like tart. People make

fruit tarts because they're fruit trees so everybody has got some kind

of a mold which is really like a quiche mold so you can use them for quiche but

also you can use them for sweet pastries. When you think of French

cuisine you think of souffles of course and this is a souffle mold so

it's made of porcelain, it's very good conductor so you can have large

ones or small ones but it's not just souffles that you can make in

that you can make a crème brûlée, you can make a chocolate mousse, you

can make a crème caramel, you can make all kind of mousses that you can

mold. Now this is a tamis. The biggest use is to sift some flour but if you

want to make the finest of mashed potato or a puree you push that through

so this is a tool for delicate cooks. How many knives would you need? I

think you need two or three knives. You need a chef's knife that is about

like 30 centimeter long where you are going to cut pumpkins and you're

going to cut carrots, all the other vegetables. Then you need a paring

knife, short blade knife that you are going to peel you know the end of

potato and perhaps a medium-sized knife that you can chop onions or do

medium-sized jobs or three four knife and buy the best you can afford.

It's important to have a good knife, a good quality knife, very important and

if possible always sharp, you know. Do you sharpen every time you're cooking?

Every day, yes. You got a prawn on a salmon? Philippe Michel is one of the

world's most highly regarded French chefs. A protégé of Port-Bocuse, he's

opened restaurants under the Bocuse banner in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Houston and

Melbourne. In 2005 he opened the Brasserie by Philippe Michel at

Melbourne's Crown Casino. I can show you how to chop an onion for

example. Yeah. You remove the hard core there, try to get your finger like

that against the blade. So that that protects you from danger. Yes and a

lot of people try to go fast. Yeah. That's how they cut themselves. One, two,