French Cooking Schools

There are many opportunities for attending a French Cooking School, after all French cuisine is famous the world over for the quality and flavour of food prepared following the French model and there are consequently a lot of people interested in understanding just how to achieve an authentic French style of cooking.

Attending French cooking classes is clearly an option for taking a fast track towards that understanding of French cuisine and an excellent way to introduce yourself to the techniques involved, particularly if you have easy access to Europe where most of the best French chefs and best instructors in French cuisine are likely to reside. Paris is a place that is targeted by many eager students that want to understand the mystery of gourmet cooking and haute cuisine, but never forget that many of the best French dishes come from regional sources, that said, one has to start somewhere and Paris as the capital cannot be a bad choice.

There are of course classes available around the world where you can learn to cook in a French style and many of them provide a high quality service to their students. So if you can afford it and know of local resources then that would to be a great way to start introducing yourself to French cooking.

One thing to bear in mind is the level of your objective, if that objective is to become a professional chef cooking in the French style then you probably have no option other than to immerse yourself in the whole culture associated with French cuisine. To me this would mean, learning the language, working with and being mentored by the best French chefs and understanding the psychology of French cuisine and the importance of food in French Life.

For the top French chefs, cooking is truly their vocation and being the very best at what they do is their objective. So if you have similar ambitions you will need to tread the same path and that is only acheivable through complete immersion in the whole of French culture and would not be possible just by learning a few techniques whilst taking a French cooking class.

Obviously this is an extreme example and for the vast majority they simply have an interest in French cooking, so less extreme measures for learning the techniques are perfectly acceptable.

If you examine the top selling Amazon products you will find that the top selling book at the time of writing this is a book called 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking' by Julia Child.

This book has received 83 reviews, 76 of them at a full 5 stars and the remainder at 4 stars mostly from residents of the United States of America.

The reviews themselves are comprehensive and compelling reading in their own right for anyone interested in cooking. It has helped complete novices to competent cooks and is clearly the must have book on the subject of French cuisine.

The author has recently had a film made about her life in which Meryl Streep plays the lead role, probably have a job to do better than Mama Mia but still quite an accollade to Julia Child.

I think I have answered this question but let me summarise, I believe it revolves around the level of your ambition and the price you are willing to pay for these new found skills : -

• If you want to live and make being a French chef your vocation in life, then you have no option really other than to totally immerse your self in the whole culture, which effectively means moving to France and taking on the whole shebang associated with classic French cuisine.You can find out more about becoming a French Chef on Wikipedia.
• If you have a desire to simply be the very best that you can at cooking in a French style and have the funds available then you should enroll on a French cooking class and get yourself off to a great start at discovering all about French cuisine.
• If you are like the vast majority of people interested in cooking and would love to find out more about how the master race of 'haute cuisine' do their cooking so that you can aspire to similar standards, then you could do a lot worse than purchasing Amazons number 1 best selling book for Mastering the Art of French cooking.