Filet of Sole Dieppoise
Visiting northern France is a pleasure, with many villages along the coast offering a variety of fresh seafood. The seaport of Dieppe, captured between high cliffs and the seashore was more of a resort in its heyday, but the fishermen still bring in a catch worthy of your attention, and the local cusine benefits greatly from this treat. Parisians would take the train here, then ferry over to England. The English used to come here to swim, now they have discovered warmer places like Spain… but that’s another story.
There has always been plenty of sole to catch in these waters, and one local offering is “Sole Dieppoise,” a tasty dish that also features another local favorite, mussels. Modern variations also feature shrimps and exotic mushrooms, but locals keep it simple with the sole and mussels swimming in a divine sauce. Here is my own variation of the classic seafood dish from Dieppe; easily made anywhere you can get some fresh filet of sole and mussels.
If you love art for the good old-fashioned pleasure of seeing paint beautifully applied to a canvas, then this is the show for you. The curatorial goal is to demonstrate the influence of 17thc Spanish artists—Velazquez, Goya and Zurburan—on 19thc French artists like Manet, Delacroix, and Courbet. But in order to make that convincing case, the curators also happened to assemble an extraordinarily gorgeous group of paintings. Half of these hail from what is referred to as the “Golden Age” of Spanish painting, and the other half from a time when the French avant-garde never looked better.