Rose Confit

Super awesome grocery store discovery of the week:



Man, the french will turn anything into confit (preserves.) Luckily for me, this rule applies not only to duck and garlic but to rose petals as well. I have a weak spot for anything floral flavored. Just ask my bag of candied lavender or my bottle of orange blossom water waiting back in the U.S. for me.

So I brought home the rose petal confit with no special plans for it, other than spreading it on my morning tartine or spooning a dollop on top of my post dinner yogurt. But last night, I walked into the kitchen and discovered Belinda eating (what I thought was) a quesadilla. I yelled "quesadilla" and Belinda looked back at me blankly while Matthias laughed. I realized I was in France and quesadilla shaped things in France are called crêpes. Belinda had once again created a delicious sugary french treat and was kind enough to share.



The rose crêpe eating commenced and I disintegrated into a pool of ecstasy. I wonder if I should go back to the gourmet supermarché and buy the 12euro jar of hibiscus blossoms to put into flutes of champagne...

Ratatouille Pizza

When the movie Ratatouille came out I had never eaten, nor heard of, the actual dish. Like the rest of America, (except the real foodies and the French Americans) after discovering it wasn't just the name of the rat in the film, I was curious to try it. Luckily, I met a seductively mysterious young French man just 5 months later. Matthias and I had only known each other for a few weeks when he told me that he was preparing a French dinner for his roommates and I was welcome to join. When I arrived at his apartment he was sitting at the kitchen table diligently chopping an onion. I ask if I could help and he handed me a head of garlic. I looked around the table at the ingredients and realized that this real live French man was going to make real live ratatouille. It was en exciting moment indeed. After rudely criticizing his knife skills (sorry!) Matthias started to sautée all of the vegetables and in not too long we gathered around the table with big bowls of delicious food and let the Ratatouille (the movie) jokes begin.
I was always too self conscious to try making it with Matthias around, so after he left for Paris in July, I finally decided it was time to make it on my own. I generally don't follow recipes when I cook or if I do, I inevitably make adjustments to ingredients and I knew that the main idea of ratatouille was so sautée a bunch of veggies into a soft warm mélange so I decided to put my ratatouille on a pizza in lieu of a sauce and top it with a simple grating of parmesano reggiano and a thick, sweet, balsamic glaze.

Ratatouille Pizza

Ingredients:


•pizza crust (I bought mine but feel free to use homemade)
•olive oil
•balsamic vinegar
•your favorite cheese
•some herbs (I used herbes de provence, fresh basil would go perfectly on top after baking)
•salt & pepper
•whatever vegetables you like, diced into small similar sized cubes
I used
- eggplant
- zucchini
- potato
- tomato
- onion
•garlic cloves, minced

Directions:
I try to use equal parts of each vegetable, with slightly more tomato. Start off by heating up some olive oil in a pan and dicing up the potatoes while it heats. Add the potatoes to the pan first and let them start cooking while you dice the rest of the vegetables. Add onions next, then the eggplant and zucchini but DO NOT ADD the tomato or garlic. Keep the heat relatively low, you just want to soften things up and start caramelizing the onion. Put your crust in the oven and cook for about 1/4 of the total time necessary. The vegetable mixture is going to be very moist and i like to give the crust a chance to crisp up a bit before getting it soggy with oil and juice. When the vegetables in the pan seem like they are getting soft enough to eat (mainly the potatoes) turn off the heat. Mix the tomatoes, garlic, salt & pepper, and your herbs and add them to the pan, which should still be warm, but turned off. Stir everything together and add it to the 1/4 cooked crust. Mine looked like this:



At this point, feel free to grate some cheese on top so it can melt into the vegetables in the oven. While the pizza is finishing in the oven, heat up some balsamic vinegar in your sautée pan with a bit of sugar and keep swishing it around until you notice it change in consistency from very runny liquid to more of a loose syrup. Take out your pizza and spoon the balsamic glaze on top. I added some fresh tomato slices. You could also put fresh basil on at this point.

The Weight Limit

During December, Belinda had a break from work so we spent our Wednesday mornings going to the marché together. Now Belinda is back to being a financially responsible adult and I'm back to being...unemployed...still. So, today I set off tout seul to fetch goodies and Belinda was kind enough to let me use her super french blue gingham grocery bag.

Matthias and I have been putting 20 euros each into a food fund every week. I start the week by getting essentials at the supermarché on Monday which is around 20 euros for eggs, milk, bread, yogurt, hummus, jam, butter, milk, etc. Then I spend 10 euros at the marché on Wednesday for all of our fruits and veggies, and the remaining 10 euros go to restocking at the grocery store or going to the boulangerie on the weekend. Breakfast for us is a tartine (toast) or baguette with butter and jam, plus fruit juice and a café for Matthias. Most jobs in France include meal vouchers, so Matthias uses those for lunch near his University and I have pasta or a hummus sandwich. For dinner, I try to utilize whatever fresh ingredients I happen to have on hand from my trip to the marché. So far, I think we have been doing exceptionally well with a very meager budget. Having a set amount of money to use has put me in a very creative food mood. I've been trying out lots of new recipes as well as relying on old favorites and have been attempting to use at least one new ingredient a week.

For today's trip, Belinda had requested a poireau (leek), some menthe(mint), and a kilo of clémentines. I usually get clémentines, carrotes, aubergines (eggplants), pommes de terre (potatoes), and anything else that looks particularly appealing. But this week, everything looked appealing and I couldn't stop myself from buying all of this:


*pommes de terre, potiron (french pumpkin), poireau (leeks), tomates, menthe, courgettes (zucchini), clémentines, poivron rouge (bell pepper), aubergines, carrotes*

Moneywise, I only went a few euros over budget which is no big deal, but carrying all of that back home has left me rather sore. Honestly though, tell me you would have been able to walk right past this plateau des tomates for one euro!



From now on, I think I need to impose a weight limit. spending 14 euros was a bit too heavy, next week, it's back to 10.

Speaking Math

I have always had the desire to become multilingual. My neighbor when I was young had a Caucasian father and a Nicaraguan mother and I remember listening to him speak to his family members in Spanish with just a tinge of jealousy. I studied French in high school and was extremely passionate about learning the language but even though I made it to Advanced Placement French Level 6 my skills weren't actually very advanced at all. Naturally, part of moving to Paris included me finally being able to work on my French language skills. To be honest, I'm still not speaking very much French even though I live in France, but my comprehension of written and spoken French really has made a surprising leap in the past month and a half. My biggest problem getting around Paris though, is with speaking math.

Unlike languages, I hate math. I have always hated math. I have never wanted to be multimathematical. The reason that I am dating a mathematician is so that I never have to do math myself. "Hey Matthias, what's 15+12?" *rolls his eyes at me*
Back to my point, when you buy things, people tell you how much you owe them , IN FRENCH. If it was just about memorizing numbers (and as long as it's a whole number below 69 I'm fine) that would be one thing, but the way that French numbers work is very ...mathematical. I hate math so much that I refuse to really learn how it works, but it's something along the lines of adding and multiplying to get big numbers. For instance, the number "70" is said "40 + 30" but to make it even more confusing, the number "80" is said "20 x 4." Add whole euros and centimes together and my brain really isn't cut out for all that work. Overpaying is a nice option, the issue there being that Parisians pretty much demand to have exact change. Coming from the land of credit card bliss where I almost never ever ever used cash the idea of always having exact amounts of cash on me at all times is just not really very realistic. Besides, euro coins are heavy and the smallest bill available is a 5. So I'll just keep going along giving people too much money or sometimes not enough because being yelled at in French is so much lovelier than doing math.

Huile D'Olive

As an American living in the 21st century, there are certain things I've come to expect in life.

1. I don't think I should have to wait...for anything...ever.
2. I think people should be nice to me when I buy things from them.
3. Merchandise should be clean and of good quality if you expect me to purchase it from you.

So I went to Monoprix, our local supermarché to buy some extra virgin huile d'olive and came back empty handed, for not just one or two but all three of the reasons listed above.

I have yet to go anywhere in Paris that did not have a line. I'm pretty certain that they like it this way too. Sure businesses could stay open 7 seven days a week (as well as 12 months a year) or hire more staff, or install self checkout lanes, but then your huile wouldn't seem so exclusive, would it? This issue arose when planning our trip to Versailles as well. The Château has about 4 million visitors a year...and three people at the ticket counter every day. That means that you get to wait in line for at least an hour just to buy a ticket. You can purchase online ahead of time, but then you have to wait for your tickets to be mailed to you.

It is also laughable to bring up the notion that "the customer is always right" in France. Here, the customer is always lucky that they are breathing French air and that's about it.

The last, and perhaps worst, item on the list is one that still continues to shock me. It's basically ok to have dirty, broken, crumpled up, used, old, junk sitting around and still expect to have someone pay for it. Although I did bypass the congealed huile, I ended up breaking down and purchasing un râpée to grate my vegetables even though the white plastic on all of the râpées in the store were covered in black dirt or soot of some kind. IN A GROCERY STORE. So I brought it home and washed it and used it and everything was fine and Matthias explained that its natural for oil to congeal (!?!) and that I need to get over my American ideas about perfection and then he asked "oh god, you're not gonna make a post about it are you?" and I probably said no but it's late and I can't sleep so there you have it.

And just in case you're thinking "wow, what a jerk, he's so lucky to be living his dream life in Paris, how dare he complain about lines and dirt!" I totally agree. My lovely friend, Jeannette said to me recently, "Paris is terrible and wonderful." I totally agree, and that's why I love it so much. Tomorrow, I'll go wait in line to purchase my grubby oil from the sneering old lady at Monoprix and I guarantee I'll be smiling the entire time.

Les Soldes

Unlike America, where a vigilant shopper can track down sales almost any day of the year, in France, the government regulates sales to just twice annually. The coutrywide event occurs every January and July and is called Les Soldes.Due to this occurrence, it is becoming increasingly difficult for me to walk anywhere in Paris without having the urge to stop in to one of the hundreds of clothing shops that are sprinkled throughout Paris and purchase absolutely everything, "but, it's on sale!." So, today I stopped resisting. While some people may think that being deprived of year round sales would be awful, I think I rather prefer the French method. Since Les Soldes only happen twice, when they do happen, they get real serious. Prices drop 50%-70% on basically everything, everywhere. Sure, you have to fight through throngs of scary Parisians and rip the best deals from the clutches of the old and weak, but I think my new silk v-neck was worth it.

Dans Ma Cuisine

The other night as I was chopping and sautéeing up some vegetables to throw into a few bowls of miso soup (yea...i know, miso in France...) an adorable french man appeared with a camera to document our cute (tiny) kitchen and my amateur (terrible) knife skills. "it's for your blog!" he declared. And how could I refuse this kind gesture?



It may not be a fully equipped gourmet kitchen (what, your hot water heater isn't situated above your toaster?)



Yes, the strainer may have a very large hole in it, and it's true, the only spatula is missing its handle. Kitchen knives? bah! we employ the use of the multifunctional butter knife.



Mais, J'adore ma cuisine.