Cooking workshop - Le hachis-parmentier

Welcome to our first demo-cooking workshop during this autumn in the AF kitchen!

Le hachis parmentier, a traditional French savory dish, brings many warm and fond memories to French families as they gather around the dinner table during a chilly wintry weather. 

Le hachis parmentier, sometimes translated into cottage pie or Shepherd's pie in English, is composed of mashed potato (purée de pommes de terre) and minced meat (viande hachée); very often beef (bœuf) is used. It is named after the apothecary Antoine-Augustin Parmentier who, convinced that tubers, notably potatoes, can help fight the famine problem, introduced the dish to Louix XVI.

Before that, potatoes were not at all popular in France, and were at one point, legally banned. It was thanks to this man, who had to consume potatoes, and often only potatoes, during his imprisonment by the Prussians during the Seven Years' War, that the vegetable was rediscovered and reintroduced in France (and eventually became a solution for the food crisis.)

The dish was probably born in Paris. It gained its reputation in many brasseries in the capital who made and perfected the dish; some chefs improved it by using other meats, new vegetable and spices.

With our French teacher Claudia, at the same time a passionate home cook, you will get to know all that is about the dish.

Though it's mainly a demo cooking class, you will have a chance to participate in stages of the preparation. You will also get a bilingual recipe in English & French so that you may try it at home.