Mastering the Art of French Cooking with Nicole Spaulding

When Nicole Spaulding invites you into her Wakefield home, don’t be fooled. You may think you’re on the set of The French Chef, Julia Child’s beloved 1980s cooking show. The house, tucked away at the end of a dirt road, may remind you of the French countryside. Nicole will welcome you with a French accent and guide you to her kitchen, outfitted with antique French furniture. And you will spend a few hours cooking and eating some very French food. But you won’t actually be on television. Even more, those few hours will contradict everything you think you know about French cuisine.

“Every time we host a cooking class,” her husband Malcolm says as we sit down to enjoy the food we’ve been cooking that evening at Chez Nicole, “people ask whether we eat like this every day. And the answer is yes.” It’s hard to believe. A few fellow students and I, under Nicole’s guidance, have made a bounty: Salmon Rillettes; Cherry Tomato, Basil and Goat Cheese Salad with a homemade dressing; Chicken, Grape and Walnut Salad with our own mayonnaise; Zucchini Gratin; Roasted Pork Tenderloin with Mushroom Cream Sauce; Plum Clafoutis and Flourless Dark Chocolate Cakes. It’s hard to imagine cooking like that once a week, never mind once a day. “It’s true,” Nicole says. “But what on this table took more than 20 minutes?”

That’s her goal at Chez Nicole: to take her native French cooking, which Americans perceive as difficult, fussy, heavy food, and to demystify it. “I come from a family where cooking is a religion,” she says. “Everybody cooked. The dinner table would be a competition.” Looking around at all the dishes on the table, I realized that though we had made a lot of food, and that I wouldn’t normally make seven dishes for a meal, I could easily recreate any of it at home, and with little fuss. Nicole also emphasizes making simple things that will keep for weeks, if not months, if stored properly. I started my lesson that day by poaching salmon for Salmon Rillette, which is similar to a pate, but is a combination of cooked salmon, lox, white wine and shallots, with a few delicious ingredients to bind them. It takes about 20 minutes to prep, and maybe an hour to chill and set, and will keep in the refrigerator for about ten days, even though it’s fish. “Think about it,” Nicole says. “Oil is a preservative, salt is a preservative. You can make it once and have it for days.” The same is true of her very simple, very delicious salad dressing, which she makes by the large batch and has for months at a time.

Everything else was just as easy to make: Plum Clafoutis was just fresh plums baked in a vanilla custard cake. It took minutes to prepare. The pork – roasted and then finished with a quick sauce of mushrooms, mustard and cream. Easy enough for a Tuesday night. As we enjoyed our meal, Nicole told us about her home in the Southwest of France, where she and her husband still split their time. “If you think, where is the best place in France for food,” she says of the region known for truffles and foie gras, “that’s where I come from.” Her French sensibility of simplicity, and of eating the freshest, best foods of the season, was the takeaway from the class. There wasn’t a bechamel, or an escargot, or any other fussy food in sight. Nicole offers private cooking classes at her home in Wakefield.

ChezNicoleCookingClasses.com