For me, it's the range of fresh food available. I'm lucky that, from where I live in South East England, i can be in Paris in a couple of hours. The cheese is my favourite thing - the stinkier the better! I trained as a pastry chef when I was younger and did a lot of work based on the classic French style. My favourite time every week was choosing the cheeses from the cheese van that came round - 500 perfect cheeses - I could have died in that van and been totally happy.

Rustic French food, food and wine and friends, Anthony Bourdain-style - that's what I'd like to see!

Beef Bourgignon!

It's not a dish per say but what I prefer are real butter croissants and chocolatines and crusty baguettes, the ones that last only a few hours.

Oh, it's so hard to choose. Maybe cassoulet from southwestern France.

This week is going to be PERFECT to get me (even more) excited about my honeymoon to France -- I'm getting married on Saturday, and we're leaving for France on Sunday!

Where to begin? Beef burgundy, pissaldiere, croissants, potatoes au gratin, tarte tatin-just a few that I can pull off the top of my head at this early hour on the West Coast

REALLY looking forward to this week!

Oh yay, French week! I can't even begin to choose my favorite French dish. I love a butter and sugar crepe while walking down the street in Paris. A brioche from a boulangerie. David Lebovitz's French tomato tart. Hachis Parmentier. Handmade chocolates from the Champs-Elysees. Foie gras, duck confit, and on and on and on. Oh boy, it's been too long since I've been to France..........

Perfect timing--after making up a gumbo this weekend (okay New Orleans but rooted in French tradition--it started with a roux!), I am eager to explore more French cooking--especially sauces and hearty vegetable stews with fall coming on strong today. I know it is not considered the most vegetarian friendly of cuisines, but please keep us in mind.

So we're not doing "Europe Week" after all? An entire continent of food in five days!!! The whirlwind of reductionism didn't make it that far I take it. I call shenanigans.

There are so many! Steak au Poivre and Frisée Salad with Lardons and Poached Eggs, Grand Marnier or Chocolate Souffles...

I love France and French food. I look forward to new ideas this week! Now if only I could teleport myself to Paris for breakfast at a cafe.

foie gras, pate, cheese. And macarons.

Not a meal, but you could make one out of that!

Steak tartar and duck leg confit.

Ditto Hachis Parmentier. Confit de canard. Kouign amann. Chouquettes. Potatoes Lyonnaise.

I think my favorite french foods are all cheeses: Brie, camembert, chevre, roquefort, emmental, etc. All delicious with yummy french bread.

I also adore croissant and crepes and brioche and all the lovely slow cooked meats the french have perfected.

I totally forgot to add that I love pate. It is so yummy in all its varieties, I can almost forgive the goose abuse.

That wonderful standard viniagrette you get on lettuces in France that I cannot seem to replicate at home. I can make a good one, but it just doesn't taste the same - what is the secret???!

I haven't tried a lot of french food, but I love everything I have tried and cooked at home.

My favorite thing to make at home are Croque Monsieurs ... well, my version. Using one piece of bread instead of two. SO TASTY!

Also, LOVE a chocolate croissant, macaroons, pastries and baguettes. Béchamel sauce!

Looking forward to this week!!

How did I forget french onion soup?!? I think I answered this question before my stomach woke up.

I will be glued to The Kitchn this week. France is my fav place. Ever.
Macarons, croque monsieurs, mousse, cheese, champagne, tourteau poitevin, fougasse, madeleines, flamiche, mini gougeres........

Cassoulet. You pretty much hit all the high notes w/that one.

I need to add ;) creme brulee, souffle, quiche lorraine...and have to get to work instead of dreaming about French food!

yes to croque monsieurs AND madames!

Canard confit! and real butter croissants and madelaines

Post-wise, I would love to see a post on Bistro-style dishes. They have such an interesting history and appealing style, and I've been learning more about them in a fantastic cookbook called Paris Bistro Cooking by Linda Dannenberg. However, this book was published in 1991 and even though 19 years isn't really a long time, it does have a bit of a dated feel. So I would love to see a post that could update us on the faring (and fare!) of Bistros today.

As for my favourite French dish? Take me to the south of France, with soupe de poisson avec sa rouille!!

Oh but also with winter coming up in France, maybe some Lyonnaise cuisine would be good too: the hearty, rich fare of the Bouchon is perfect for keeping off the chill.

When we stayed in Paris about 8 years ago, for breakfast we had the most amazing demi baguette filled with brie and meats and veggies from the boulangerie round the corner from our hotel. Nothing special, but oh so good!
I love French pastries and have made madeleines at home. I finally found some cannele molds, that will be my next adventure in recreating a little bit of France at home.

For me it's not one dish but the entire French approach to food itself. From eating what's in season, to cooking it with respect, to sitting down with family and friends and savoring every meal, they have the right idea. I particularly admire how they treat their children.

Decades ago I saw a documentary that highlighted the French public school lunch program and was amazed at the level of attention and care that went into it. Yesterday, CBS "Sunday Morning" ran story about their public school lunches today and that attention and care hasn't changed. Kids there still eat real food off real plates.

We would all do well to adopt at least some of their ideas into our lives and those of our kids.

Tartiflette!
Potatoes, bacon, onions and Reblochon cheese. The perfect winter dish.

Ratatouille. I'm a vegetarian and the man is lactose-intolerant, so French food is tough. There are many things I/we love, but one we MAKE all summer long, is ratatouille. We are so lucky our little one loves it too.

Oysters, poulet des Landes, foie gras, roquefort, champagne.

Cheese. Croissants. Crepes. Mussels. Snails (by which I mean: garlic butter).

Almond Croissants, macarons, baguettes, duck confit and foie gras!!

So hard to pick, but here's a start: pissaladière, tian, ratatoulle, socca, vegetable soufflé, clafoutis and of course, baguette.

champagne and pain au raisins. that counts as a dish, right?

it'd have to be macarons and souffles!

souffle, crepes... aaaaah I am so hungry!

*forages for French cheese*

Macarons. Also, tarte flambee from the Alsace region.

Coq au vin. Diots au vin blanc. Pain au Levain. Cassoulet.

Miabica -- ditto. My children have those sorts of lunches at school everyday -- 3 courses, china plates, cloth napkins, and "real" food. I wish we could bring it back with us!

My theory is that in North America, we are so price-conscious, we have completely lost the sense of what food tastes like... I think it is part of our Anglo-Saxon culture: a protestant worth ethic, frugality, and a repression of sensual pleasures. France is so different (and Italy too)! Here, people savour a strawberry... During strawberry season, I can often find 7 different varieties of strawberries at my weekly French market, all of them amazing. The first year here, I and other North Americans, balked at paying $7.50 for a punt of strawberries (remembering only too well what prices are at home), but now, we don't bat an eyelash at the price, because they are the most amazing and flavourful strawberries we have ever eaten. Chicken? I often pay $40 dollars for a single chicken. Yeah, $40!! But -- it's a Poulet de Bresse! (others are cheaper, but this runs 16-18 Euros a Kilo). This is the most delicious chicken; it tastes like a chicken that lived a really good chicken life, and the resulting meals, well, using a watery, soft supermarket chicken from the States just wouldn't produce the same meal.

Until we really embrace good food -- food produced with integrity, for flavour and not just cost and our current notions of "value", then I don't think there is much hope of change. I find it so interesting that in France and Italy, where they have such a food-centric culture, you do not see that many fat people, much less obese people.

Personally, I love the subsidies to farmers that allow them to produce the most delicious nectarines I've ever eaten. (I haven't had a good nectarine in the US in 20 years.) Those subsidies support all those delicious ingredients that make French cuisine, even the mst humble, so marvelous.

I guess that's my way of supporting mschatelaine's rant on the inferiority of US food culture. I'm fat, but when I go to France I loose weight despite eating to my heart's content because the food is so much more flavorful and satisfying. (At least that's my theory.)

All that said: My kingdom for a macaron!

I once made Pate de Canard en Croute it was okay.... my favorite dish is Moules Marinieres & Pom Frites. <http://gabrielaskitchen.com/2009/10/09/not-mexican-but-a-culinary-feat-nonetheless/>

Impossible to name a favorite! It also depends on the season, and the place. Oysters on the half shell with a petit blanc in Ile de Re, Magret du canard in Bergerac, tagine chez Omar, Fondant a la cafe de l'industrie.....Oh my goodness, I'm getting all emotional.

I know I am about a month late to this party, but I had to add this little bit:

When I was a kid I lived in a little town outside of Paris, and we were walking distance from my school. My brother and sister stayed late for theater a lot, and one day my mom and I walked to the school to pick them up, stopping at a bakery on the way to pick up a baguette for dinner. The baguette was still warm and my mom and I ended up eating the entire thing on the walk, with no butter or jam or anything. Oops. We had to stop by and pick up another on the way home. That is my favorite French meal. :)