Andrew Prior

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Celebrating the Finest Experts in French Cuisine

Two Years of Fabulously Delicious

Today we are celebrating the 2nd anniversary of Fabulously Delicious. Yes, that’s right, we are in our third season, 2 years, 84 episodes, 51 guests, and over 49 hours of content devoted to French food. So this episode is a celebration of some of my favorite parts of just a few of those episodes.

The very first episode of Fabulously Delicious was with American Pastry Chef Molly Wilkinson. Molly is an Instagram sensation and runs a fabulous online pastry cooking school as well as doing cooking classes in her fabulous apartment in Versailles. I had to ask the most important question when it comes to Macarons and that is what is the difference between a Macaron, Macaroon, and Macron?

Something that I love about talking French food with people on Fabulously Delicious is getting to know the guests through their food memories and with that learn not only about them but also about dishes and ingredients through those chats. Maxine Kien a French chef working in NYC was talking about his memories of his father and we went on to learn about the French street food Socca.

Gabriel Gate

Last year I was fortunate enough to visit Cognac and specifically the lovely boutique cognac maker Cognac Bertrand. One of the co-owners of the family-run business Therese Bertrand was kind enough to give me her time and shared with us amongst other things what is Cognac and how it differs from Brandy.

I’ve been so fortunate with Fabulously Delicious that some of my food heroes have given up their time to come chat with me and one such food hero is possibly the most popular French chef in Australia Gabriel Gate.

Gabriel shared so much with me on this chat that it was hard to narrow down something to share with you here. At the end of the recording, I thought that I’d found a new friend and I think after listening you’ll feel that way too. So I thought I would share with you what his hometown and area in France are like in this segment of the podcast which you can listen to by clicking the link on the photo of Gabriel.

Solvig Coulon missed French markets so much when she moved to Sydney Australia that she set up one in Sydney and it’s been going from strength to strength. Solvig shares with us what makes the markets in Provence France so special.

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Will Studd

Do you know what the history of restaurants in Paris is all about? Well, Alec Lobrano a famed food writer in Paris filled us in on this but I just loved the fact that he wouldn’t actually say the name of the restaurant he wouldn’t because he didn’t want to be responsible for people going there as it isn’t as good anymore.

Geoffrey Finch does tours in Paris if you’d like to combine wine and Paris on your next trip. Geoffrey has one of those voices you could listen to for hours and it was great to learn all about the vineyards of Paris from Geoffrey, especially how many there are. I had no idea that there were so many or how important the Paris wine industry was to France.

Another food hero that I’ve had the pleasure to chat with and who just shared so much with us about his love of French cheese was famed cheesemonger Will Studd who you might know from the popular show Cheese Slices. If you haven’t seen it you should look it up asap. Will went on to talk about Roquefort cheese but also told us a fabulous story about how Camembert cheese became so popular and important to French cheese. You can listen to this via the link attached to Will's photo if you’d like.

Finally, at the end of each episode, I ask my guests what’s the most Fabulous thing about France to them. Bruno Feldisen the French judge on the Great Canadian Bake Off who I had the pleasure to talk about his life both personal and professional, his time on the bake-off was a highlight of this chat, and if you a fan of competition cooking shows you should definitely listen. It was Bruno’s answer to my final question that I remember for the fact it was so off-kilter and not something I thought he was going to say.

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