FRENCH was our big winner this quarter! I missed that we actually had two French nominees (both Provincial and Provençal) in our nominating thread, and put only Provençal in the voting, but all French cooking is welcome on this thread! Looking forward to exploring rich sauces and classic techniques with you HOs for the next few months. Happy new year and bonne année à tous!
Merci, bonne année ! Question, is it French provençal cooking? or French general cooking counts too?
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I have really been asleep while reading. I have been thinking “provincial”, i.e., country French, rather than only the food of Provence. tant pis…
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I think discussion of any French cuisine is more than welcome! Will be interesting to learn how Provençal cooking differs from that of other regions and which techniques and ingredients are similar/different. You will be our resident expert this quarter! 
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Provincial would be more interesting than Provençale, as we are in winter, how to cook provençale without the fresh vegetables is a bit of a challenge. I guess this can make it more interesting.
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Actually, i just went back and checked the nomination thread, and it looks like Barca nominated Provençal while you mentioned Provincial (country) French. I should have combined/clarified this for the voting thread - my bad! Let me take Provençal out of the title and clarify this in my initial post, so that we broaden the topic a bit.
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Basically it is the use of olive oil vs butter and heavy sauce in the North. More seafood food, fresh season fruits and vegetables.
A good summary here:
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Agreed - I updated the title and first post to indicate all French. Maybe some of our HOs in the Southern hemisphere will chime in with Provençal dishes using their lovely summer produce!
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It will all be delicious in any/every event.
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For those who could understand French, I strongly recommend the videos of Julie Andrieu, she has a TV programme called “Les carnets de Julie”, each episode she visits a different French city and the locals cook a few dishes that are specialities of the region.
Or you prefer to read (or translate with google), you can try with her website. Many recipes are quite original and some quite unknown even by the French. Well, the country is big!
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I’m just a home cook, @Barca has done the Bocuse and Ducasse cooking school, she is a real pro! 
And @pilgrim knows all the good restaurants and chefs in Paris!
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But maybe this thread will take us out of Paris and into country homes. That’s where is all starts,
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For years I’ve tried to understand Parisian local cuisine, it’s rather limited, most important dishes come to the capital via other parts of France.
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France has 13 regions, if cooking 1 region weekly, you can roughly do the whole France in 3 months! 
(bigger version here)
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Yes we do and quite varied …
For example from Navarra and La Rioja we have White Asparagus and Wild Cardoon.
From the solariums, spinach, tomatoes.
Galicia, potatoes …
And numerous others. We have alot of sun, though it is quite chilly in the early mornings, by noon, temperaturas climb up approx. 15 to 20 degrees. So it may start off at 5 degrees centig – by noon to 13.00, it is close to 20 degrees centigrade.
We also have alot of mushrooms from the Navarran and Rioja regions as well as The Girona - Pyrenee foothills and Lérida.
Hope you had a lovely New Year´s … Have a healthy, successful and fulfilling 2020.
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It’s interesting that Paris street markets reflect an enormous array of Euro-Afro produce year round, while provincial, i.e., small community markets, offer mostly local produce. However, even at these small usually weekly markets, specialty vendors offer meat and cheese with wider provenance.
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I admit the reason I didn’t vote for Provençal, and the reason I voted for Nordic/Scandinavian, is that all the ingredients I like that I associate with Provence are imported from Mexico this time of year. I don’t crave much Provençal food or other southern French food until mid May. And there isn’t much point in using fresh tomatoes in Canada until June. Lol.
I’m glad you are opening it up to food from the French provinces. The food from the Alps, Lorraine, Alsace and Burgundy is winter food imo. 
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Same here, tasteless greenhouse tomatoes, zucchini, eggplants coming from Morocco and from Spain in the market right now, and price is not justified.
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@naf the Spanish produce I buy in Canada during the winter often has better flavour than the Mexican produce I buy! But neither compare to local during the summer🙂
The asparagus and cherries in the Canadian stores are imported from Chile right now.
