Restaurants across Paris serve the finest French cuisine but of course the best chefs know that great food starts not in the kitchen but in a food market in Paris. Here you will find superb French produce, sourced from all the regions of France and brought together in one tantalising place. Learning to select the best and freshest produce from in season ingredients is the foundation of all great cooking and at Le Foodist our cookery course starts not in the kitchen, but in a food market in Paris. Here we teach our students how to select the best produce and from these beginnings build a fantastic menu.
Parisian markets such as Marché La Chapelle can be large and confusing to the uninitiated but a good grounding in the basics of French cooking will help you find your way around. At Le Foodist 'Travel and Chef' cooking lessons in Paris, we teach some of the basic cooking techniques on every course and once armed with the knowledge of how to prepare fresh ingredients, the food market in Paris becomes easier to understand. Once we have selected the best ingredients, we can return to the kitchen to begin to construct our menu.
Understanding how ingredients are prepared and cooked will help you select the most appropriate produce from any food market in Paris. Our approach to teaching includes discussion about where ingredients come from and how they are used and these talks will greatly enhance your understanding of the produce that you see. We think that to understand great French food, you must understand the culture which has produced it and the market is the perfect place to observe how ingredients come to Paris from all over France and beyond, depending upon the climate and history of their home region.
Hearing about the origins of produce during our French cooking courses gives you a much greater understanding of the importance of each individual ingredient and how to best use it in your cooking. The best ingredients should be treated with respect and allowed to shine on the plate. Indeed, our cookery courses tell the story of these ingredients, from the regional farms where they are produced to the food market in Paris where we select them and hence to our kitchen where they are prepared with care and skill.