American Pie

I'm a self professed America criticizer. This makes it easy for me to sit through French dinner conversations as well as modern theater pieces about how much Americans suck. I do not feel offended because I agree, a lot of Americans do suck. Yesterday, when I was purchasing Aubergines, the man selling them to me asked me where I was from and when I replied "California" he told me Bush was crazy. I tend to believe that he was more stupid than crazy, but I agreed with the man and had to hold back from declaring "Vive la France!"

Something else happened to me yesterday as well. Something that I didn't have much control over...something I didn't really think about until after it happened...I made an apple pie. Now, I don't necessarily like apple pies. I'd never made one before and my grandma didn't bake them for me when I was young (we made key lime instead.) I've even stated previously on this very blog that I don't believe in baking...but for some reason I picked up a pre-made pâte, diced up some pommes and drizzled on the buerre, sucre, and jus de citron. Belinda's boyfriend poked fun "that's the only thing American's know how to make!" but it was a damn good pie and for a fraction of a second, it made me proud to be an American...having Obama instead of Bush helps out a lot too...

Le Loup Blanc

Ok, yea, I know I just made a post about how I never go out to eat but now I'm going to write a post about a place where I went out to eat, so just stop judging me. Thanks.

My friend Bruno's boyfriend was in town and had just had his anniversair so Bruno made reservations at Le Loup Blanc: restaurant atypique. When we arrived we ordered drinks to start. I got a pêche Kir which is a flavored white wine. Some olive tapenade with super skinny breadsticks were brought out to snack on in adorable little ramekins laying neatly on a black slate platter. Our menus were brought out and I think we all got a little shock when we first attempted to open them and realized that they were bound with sheets of metal. Upon lifting the metal slab I was greeted by a list of meat dishes, followed on the next page by the seafood, and lastly a whole page of vegetables. There were 4 froids (cold) options and 4 chauds (hot) options.

Now, next to the meat & seafood dishes there were three prices listed. Technically, the vegetable dishes were counted as sides, so the idea was to choose your protein and then pick either 2, 3, or 4 side dishes to accompany it with the price increasing for each additional side. There was also a note that if you were a vegetarian, you could simply choose 4, 5, or 6 sides as your meal. I was reading this all in French and I was pretty sure I understood, but in the back of the menu they had everything printed in English so I read through it quickly to make sure that I had it all figured out. Of the froids dishes, everything sounded delectable. There was one that was just tomatoes served several different ways, including tomato sorbet, there was a melon salad with coconut milk and lime sauce, mandarin and greens with a rosemary sauce, and a quinoa tabbouleh. For the hot, it wasn't too hard to find my selection, it was Fondue of something and the something didn't really matter. I passed on the mashed potatoes, artichoke and I can't quite recall the last one.

I generally feel a little silly ordering in front of a large group of French people, but imagine the horror of listing off six different items. It's not that it was any more difficult because of the amount of words involved, it was more like humiliation of being the greedy American boy who was ordering almost 1/3 of the entire menu. I will say, it was all worth it if for nothing more than that amazing tomato sorbet. Lucky for me, I even got to finish off somebody else's who was a little offput by the nonstandard preparation of the most delicious fruit/vegetable around.

Gratuit

Being money conscious in Paris is not very easy. This is a major city, therefore, it is expensive to do just about anything. I try as hard as I can to fill my day with 0€ activities. Walking instead of using the metro is the first step, and if I do use the metro I make sure to buy my tickets in un carnet which is a reduced price for buying ten at once (technically un carnet is a notebook but contrary to the name, they do not give you a booklet of tickets, just a stack of ten.) I try to walk to gardens and parks because these are free to enjoy. There are lots of museums that offer free or discounted dates for students or people under the age of 25 so I always check for information online about specific locations. The easiest way to save money in Paris, though, is not to eat out. This city is serious about food. We're talking multiple course meals, apéritifs to start, and wine with dinner. So far, I've only eaten out four times and I generally spend more in one meal at a restaurant than I do for en entire week's worth of eating at home. Now, if money is not an issue for you, obviously Paris has plenty to offer, and don't worry there is one thing in Paris that is gratuit (free.)

Fondue de Poireau

My amazing friend/culinary partner in crime and I hold a special place in our hearts for the leek. In my life before Paris, I'd only ever eaten it in one dish, a dish that my friend and I perfected together one amazing winter vacation a few years ago. His mother emailed us a recipe for potato leek soup and we gathered the ingredients, washed the creepishly grimy leek folds and made a damn good pot of soup that we topped with crushed kettle chips, the ultimate secret ingredient (i went on to create a kettle chip battered tofu recipe after this as well.)

Now that I'm in France, I can't help but see leeks everywhere. It seems like every shopping bag in town has some tall green stalks shooting out of it. In the interest of fitting in, and trying to use leeks in a new way, I bought a few at the market and looked at them for a while before shoving them into le frigo. As luck would have it, Belinda decided to use the leek that I had picked up for her to make Fondue de Poireau that very night, and I just happened to lurk around the kitchen long enough to memorize how she did it.

Although the word fondue simply means "melted" and when you say "melted leeks" nothing that interesting pops into mind, I can't help but salivate when I hear the same word in French. If I see a fondue something on a menu, I'm ordering it. No questions asked. True, it's probably because my brain has been wired to associate fondue with cheese and cheese always sounds appetizing, maybe that's why I modified my Fondue de Poireau a bit to include some parmesano. I also wanted to add a starch to the meal that wasn't just hunks of baguette (not that going that route would be bad at all.) So here is my recipe for Fondue de Poireau based on observing Belinda and incorporating another element which you could easily knix if you decide to simply dip hunks of bread into your melted leeks.

So, this is not necessarily a traditional quiche but I'm not sure what else to call it, so just go with me on the name, ok? Thanks.

Quiche aux Pommes de Terre et Fondue au Poireau(there has to be a simpler way to say this...)

Ingredients


Crust
• 2 or 3 potatoes
• a few eggs
• some milk or cream
• some oil or butter

Fondue
• 1-2 leeks
• garlic
• butter
• a little crème fraîche
• salt
• pepper
• parmesano reggiano

Directions
I started by thinly slicing my potatoes, you could also shred yours if you prefer. I almost always leave the peel on when cooking potatoes, but feel free to remove that as well. Next, I got a pie pan and lightly rubbed it with olive oil. I layered my potato "coins" into the oiled pan until it was completely covered. I baked the potato-only crust for about 15 minutes at around 425˚F. While it was baking, I got out a bowl and cracked an egg into it and whisked in a little bit of milk (which in France means that it was actually half&half.) I then lowered the heat on the oven to about 300˚F and poured the egg/milk mixture onto the crust and let it continue to bake for another 20 minutes while I prepared the fondue.

For the fondue, I diced up my leek (only use the white part) and added it to a saucepan with a heap of butter and some sea salt. I let it sautée over medium low heat for about ten minutes before adding a few cloves of minced garlic. I put a cover on the pan and let it simmer for another 10 minutes on low heat. After the leek seemed like it was melted and broken down with the butter I removed it from the heat and added a few spoonfulls of crème fraîche and some shaved parmesano reggiano as well as cracked pepper. Then I poured the hot fondue onto the freshly baked crust and and Matthias and I devoured it within a few minutes.

Lafayette Gourmet

Leave it to me to walk into one of Paris' most famous department stores and make a b-line past the clothing straight to the second floor grocery store. Lafayette Gourmet is the biggest food purchasing space that I have encountered in France. Similar to Tokyo's food dedicated department store floors, Lafayette had the feel of an upscale supermarché mixed with in-house dining options. There was an Italian themed deli counter as well as an Asian food stand with chefs cooking right in front of you, an Eric Kayser mini boulangerie and a chocolatier in the corner. These were mingled throughout the typical refrigerated cases of milk, cheese, and yogurt as well as mountains of confiture, a relatively huge salt and pepper section, every type of oil and vinegar imaginable, a fish monger, flavored syrups, good old coca-cola, and duck confit around every corner.

I like this quote from a French website that I found on google:
"Temple de la gourmandise et de la gastronomie, l’espace Lafayette Gourmet, situé au 1er étage du magasin Homme des Galeries Lafayette du boulevard Haussmann, propose... de nombreux produits originaux et innovants, pour le plus grand plaisir des papilles !"

They seemed to have packed every basic item as well as a huge list of rare and unique ingredients into this slick, clean space. I probably spent at least an hour ogling all of the goods. If my financial situation allowed, I would have departed with a mountain of culinary delectables. While the prices were not unreasonable for most of the basic items, the specialty things got a little scary. For instance, the Japanese isle had packages of 10 sheets of nori seaweed for 8.50€($11.00)...back home i buy 10 packs for $1.00 or less.

Some of my most wanted include: balsamic glaze in three different flavors, basil flavored sugar, Himalayan sea salt, this insanely expensive olive oil that came packaged in a small clay pod which kept it completely light protected and had to be broken open to get the oil out, the entire chocolate isle, saffron threads, vanilla beans, the yummy looking tofu they were cooking at the Asian counter, these adorable homemade looking pots of confiture with cute pink polka dot fabric covering the lids and handwritten labels, lavender syrup, shizo leaves (the quintessential Japanese herb), and anything that the Eric Kayser Bakery felt like handing over.

So, if you are in Paris and you are searching for some esoteric foodie joy, go to le premier étage of Les Galeries Lafayette Homme and I guarantee you will not be dissapointed, until you hand over your credit card to pay.

Lait Chaud

Sitting in le café (the place where you order drinks) for hours and sipping...un café (a coffee) is quite simply a required part of life in Paris. It's part of the cities charm. People fly here from all over the world to engage in this activity. The French love to take it easy. They work 30-35 hours a week, compared to the U.S.'s 40. Many businesses close several days a week, and almost the entire country takes the month of August off. I have been trying my best to fit in around here. I walk around town with my baguettes, down bottles of wine, ingest the stinkiest of cheeses, stroll by the Seine, and refuse to take the elevator to the top of Le Tour Eiffel. See, I didn't even call it The Eiffel Tower! The one thing, though, that I cannot do, is drink un café. I have never reacted too well to coffee, it makes me nauseous and jittery. The French version would make me even worse since they only serve espresso shots here. Every time we stop at a café I get overwhelmed with fear. There is one other warm drink that I ordered back in the States, although I called it by another name. Here in Paris, I ask for un lait chaud (a warm milk) which tastes like sugary melted butter. Sure, le serveur who delivered my lait chaud yesterday set it down and said "pour l'enfant" (for the child) with a smile, but at least everyone sitting around me saw my steaming mug of liquid and assumed I was just another Parisian, enjoying the sweet life.

Krishna Bhavan

This week, an old friend arrived in Paris for a two year stint at AUP. I was pretty excited to hang out with not only a fellow American and fluent English speaker, but a vegetarian as well. There are quite a few vegetarian restaurants scattered around the city that I found on this website and I've been waiting to try them out.

My friend was craving Indian, which I could never get tired of, so we met at Place de Clichy and walked about 15 minutes to Krishna Bhavan. Although the sign out sign said Indienne Végétarienne there were also meat options on the menu. We chose the reasonably priced set lunch menu for 7€ which included an appetizer (either a vegetarian samosa or a battered, fried, eggplant) a main course (your choice of curry, vegetables, beef, or chicken) and a dessert (a semolina cake or a tapioca pudding.)


The Semolina Cake


The Tapioca

We also ordered naan and lassys, she had mango, I had rose. The only negative was the tiny overpriced naan, which in true French dining fashion was served first even though you aren't suppose to touch it until your main course arrives. It was cold and hard by the time our curry came. I'll definitely return but next time I'll skip the naan.



I'm sad that I didn't get a shot of these when they were full, the colors were so bright.