Christmas Concerts

Over the last couple of weekends, I've gone to two awesome Christmas concerts - one at a French church and one at the American Church. The American Church has a very professional music director, and the whole program was wonderful and eclectic. There were children's and adult choirs, handbells, and some invited professional classical musicians.

The French concert, though, was a group of young volunteers, called Pic'Pulse, performing an entire concert of Gospel music. I really had no idea that Gospel was so popular in France, but they were very well received and got a rousing ovation. They did a dozen classic Gospel songs like We are Climbing Jacob's Ladder, Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho, and Go Tell it On the Mountain, with a couple Zulu songs, including the National Hymn of South Africa. It was a really great concert, not because they were terribly professional, but because they sang with such enthusiasm. They may not have perfectly achieved the Gospel sound, but they sang with a lot of heart.

It was a bit strange to hear Gospel such with strong French accents, but anyway I admired their effort of learning so many songs in English. I have a fun time attempting Christmas carols in French, but I can't imagine performing by heart! Sorry about the blurry picture, but it was the best I could do.

Pic'Pulse has some more concerts in the spring, if you're around in May, and for the Fete de la Musique in June.

Wine Blogging Wednesday 28: Non-Champagne Sparklers

This is not a wine blog, nor a food blog, but it is about my experiences in Paris while doing my postdoc, and it would be ridiculous to claim that living in France had not broadly widened my experiences in food and wine. I have a blog, which makes me a blogger, so without any excuses I am participating in Wine Blogging Wednesday, even though it may not do anything to advance my career or my chemistry research. The theme for this blog event was sparkling wines from outside of Champagne, so I tried to select something interesting that was probably not available outside of France.

What I ended up doing is taking a look at the alternatives to Champagne which are available in a typical small Parisian grocery store. I was stunned to find out that there were so many sparkling wines at a fraction of the cost of the bottles of Champagne. There were sparkling wines for less the two euros! Could they be any good? Why are they so cheap? We may never know the answers to these questions, but one has to start somewhere, and it might as well be cost-efficient.

An aquaintance of mine who hails from Toulouse and was on my trip to Champagne with the Club International des Jeunes a Paris last November had mentioned her preference for the sparkling wines of Limoux, which I did find among the section of cheap sparkling wines in the grocery store. I selected two: a Blanquette and a Cremant. They are from the Languedoc-Roussillon, which is the region between Provence and the France-Spain border, along the coast of the Mediterranean sea, although Limoux itself lies 50 km inland, in the mountains.

Both the Blanquette and the Cremant are non-vintage wines distributed by Jean Babou, with not much else indicated on the label. Blanquette de Limoux is probably the oldest sparkling wine in France, having been 'invented' by monks in the 16th century who noticed that the wines they bottled in April became naturally sparkling in the bottles. The name 'Blanquette' is actually the local name for the Mauzac grape, which has a fine powdery 'blanket' on the underside of its leaves. The majority of the grapes in Blanquette de Limoux are Mauzac, with up to 10% allowed to be from Chardonnay and Chenin, according to the standards of the appellation controlee. The wine becomes sparkling in the bottle due to incomplete fermentation of the juice before bottling, avoiding all the steps of degorgement and addition of liquor that are necessary as part of the second fermentation in the Methode Champenoise.

When I poured this wine, it had a nice pale yellow color with foamy bubbles that lasted only a couple seconds and left behind a bimodal set of bubbles: big ones along the side of the glass, and some fine ones floating up from the bottom. The aromas were not yeasty at all, but rather lemon and green apple. The flavor matched the aroma, with the addition of a very light honey note, and it was acidic and quite dry. The attack was very light but came on stronger on the midpalate and had a refreshing, moderately lingering finish. At a price of 3.60 euros, I would take this to an informal party because it would strike up a conversation and be fun to drink, but its not worth dragging home on the plane to the States.

I also tasted a Cremant de Limoux, which is also an 'appellation controlee' but it is allowed to have up to 20% of Chardonnay and Chenin with the Mauzac grapes. It held up its bubbles longer then the Blanquette after pouring, but after those dissipated the wine was only weakly carbonated. Just as pale in color as the Blanquette, the aroma was less citric, with faint vanilla notes, but when it came to the the flavor it was right back to the green apple that I tasted in the Blanquette, with a more even balance between the front and midpalate, but hardly any finish. I searched this wine in vain for a hint of complexity. I have to say, though, that it was less acidic and significantly less dry (though not sweet) than the Blanquette, which made it more quaffable. I could drink this wine quite easily without getting tired of it, but I would probably get drunk quickly, since it's so mild and goes down so easily, even at 12.5% alcohol. For 4.50 euros, I was satisfied that I enjoyed this wine enough to buy it again, but I wouldn't try to introduce it to friends, because it's not really much fun to have a wine that is only a little sparkly. It doesn't really fit into the category of dud, party, or celebration drink, but rather, the sparkling wine that doesn't require any excuse: the one to have at home for when you've had a tough day. If I have to choose, I'll probably put this in the category of dud for its lack of sparkle and its forgettability.

In my quest to taste alternatives to Champagne I also bought a Brut de Loire and Cremant de Loire, which were in fact actually from wine stores. But, I'm just one girl and I didn't have the chance to open them up yet. They're chilling in my fridge, though, ready for me in case of a really tough day (or a really great one!) or for someone to appreciate them with me. I'll write about it here if any of those things happen.

Truffes au Chocolat et Piment d'Espelette

In my last post, I talked about truffles, as in tuber melanosporum and tuber incinatum, but here I'm talking about the truffle which only sort of looks like a truffle and is not nearly so rare, though occasionally just as expensive. Before my cooking class this weekend, it had not actually occurred to me that the dusting of cocoa powder on a chocolate truffle is supposed to mimic dirt.
Anyway, inspired by a dessert I got a nibble of when I went for cassoulet with La Petite Americaine a few weeks back, I decided to investigate the combination of chocolate with Piment d'Espelette, the only spice to be given is own controlled appellation of origin, similar to the designations for wines like Champagne and Bordeaux or cheeses like Roquefort and Brie de Meaux, which must follow rigorous preparation guidelines in order to maintain their identity. Piment d'Espelette is a spicy red pepper, but only in French terms of spiciness, rating a 4 out of 10 on the Scoville index of heat, with a warm, sweet aroma. The pepper is named after the town of Espelette, or Ezpeleta, in the Basque region along the border of Spain and France. It was originally brought to Spain by explorers returning from the New World 400 years ago, so it's fitting that it should be paired with chocolate, another gift from the New World. In Basque cooking, it is added to stews, omelettes, and sauces and also rubbed on roasted meats.
I added the ground pepper to the ganache for the truffles and then finished with barely a sprinkle of it on top of the truffles after dusting them with cocoa powder. I had never made truffles before, but found the recipe involving piment d'Espelette on a French health website, so I figured it was worth the trouble, since it was health food and all. The pepper is not really discernable at first bite, but if you let the chocolate stay on your tongue and melt, there is a delicious lingering warmth. I'll report back later on the reactions of mes amis francais!

L'atelier des Chefs Part Deux: La Truffe Noire

I have an incredible amount of work to do at the moment, so for anything pleasurable, I find myself trying to really justify to no one that what I want to do will be VERY productive for improving my quality of life. Otherwise, I better just sit right back down at the computer and keep on working. Fortunately, the bad angel over my other shoulder tells me that I'm only in Paris for a few more months and I'll regret it later if I miss out on living the good life while I've got it. So my brain gets stuck on the decision whether to seize the day for work or for play, until something unusual comes along.

Now, what could be more rare and intriguing then the ephemeral black truffle? You'd have a hard time finding one even if you were standing in front of it in the forest, as they're hidden in the leaves and well camouflaged like black golf balls covered with dirt, requiring the use of trained dogs to hunt them down. I've never even tried truffle oil, and I'm pretty sure that I won't be cooking with truffles in the foreseeable future, but I always wondered what all the fuss was about. It just so happens that the Atelier des Chefs was holding a 2 hour class to explore cooking with black truffles. Et voilà, it's, as they say, 'Mon Noël à Moi.'

It turns out that a black truffle is just a little ball of fungus, with hard, dry, bumpy exterior, and an interior very finely marbled in white and black. The more finely and evenly marbled your truffle is, the better its quality. How can you know this before buying it, I wonder? They're stored in cool conditions, but once at room temperature or warmer, black truffles exude a rich, earthy aroma which, while strong, isn't really pungent or assertive. I think it's this balance of earthiness and delicacy that makes truffles special in food dishes. But who in the world first thought of eating something the dog picked up, which smelled like dirt? It frequently occurs to me that there is no limit to what weird stuff the French will eat, and the weirder the better. It must be something in the wine.

The instructor was the same Japanese chef that I studied with last time when the 'special' ingredient was corn. This time we made a whole menu of starter, main dish and dessert, all featuring truffles. For the 12 of us, there were two good size truffles, coming from Drôme, a département in the Rhône-Alpes region. These truffles probably retail for 350 euros per kilo, while their cousins of another species from the Perigord region in the southwest retail for about 1000 euros per kilo. Funny enough, I read in a French cooking magazine, Regal, that you have to be careful because there are also Chinese black truffles on the market which are a different species, mass produced, of inferior flavor, and no aroma. I'd probably buy the wrong ones anyway, and that's why I'm happy to let the chefs do the buying. At L'atelier des Chefts, our recipes involving truffles for 6 people called for 30g of truffles. The menu, with four recipes, called for 20g of truffle per person, for a cost of 7 euros of truffles per person, not counting any other ingredients. Fortunately, the recipes make economical use of the strong aroma of the truffle, which acts as a condiment. According to the chef Regal interviewed, though, a dish should be 10-15% truffle, at minimum, or half as much if you have the pricey kind from Perigord.

First, by storing the truffles in a closed plastic container with eggs for two days, the eggs were allowed to soak up some aroma from the truffles. For the starter, we poached those eggs and served them on a creamy lentil soup, on top of which some slices of truffle were crumbled at the last minute. This picture shows the soup and the eggs, but not the truffles, since they really need to be crumbled on top at the last minute. The best temperature for appreciating the aroma of truffles is 57C (from the Regal article) and the aroma degrades quickly, somewhat like the way that the aromas in coffee don't last very long at high temperature.
In the next dish, we cut incisions part way through a trio of beautiful scallops and tucked a thin slice of truffle inside each, then skewered the scallops and truffles together. After letting the scallops rest in the fridge to allow the truffle's fragrance and flavor permeate the meat, we simply pan-fried each face of the skewered scallops in a small amount of olive oil. What was left of each truffle after our slicing was chopped up and added to a vinaigrette of radish and celery brunoise (very small dice, about 5mm on a side) with olive oil and white balsamic vinegar. To take advantage of every bit of the truffle's flavor and aroma, the dry outer part that we peeled off before slicing the truffle was saved by chopping it up and using it to infuse some softened butter that was later added to a potato purée.


Our purée was 'façon grand chef' which implies a heart-stopping 450g of butter for 600g of potatoes. The women in the class were quite hesitant about all of this butter, but the men in the class almost universally called for our instructor to bring out more butter!

The dessert was a traditional fondant au chocolat, with a slice of truffle hidden in the middle. I wasn't all that impressed with this, compared to the direct aroma and sense of the truffle in the starter and main dish. In fact, and since you can't see the truffle and its taste is a bit mild, I didn't feel that truffles really enhanced the chocolate cake. I'm sure there is some other combination of truffle and chocolate that is more interesting. Sorry, no picture on this one, but it looked pretty much like any other molten lava chocolate cake. I like this photo, if you must have one.

It was pretty fun to play around with a fascinating ingredient that I would never come across otherwise, and the food was indeed delicious in the end. For less money than I would have stresfully spent trying to cook with truffles on my own and wonder if I was missing something because I bought Chinese fakes, I got to relax and play around with them in someone else's kitchen. It was fun for sure, and definitely an experience I'm glad to have had in Paris.

Bringing Good Things to Life

The Christmas season seems to officially commence in Paris with the lighting of the trees along the Champs Elysees, followed by the lighting of other popular pedestrian areas around Paris. For the first time, all of the lights will be powered by electricity derived from renewable resources, which is kind of a nice acknowledgement of the drawbacks of conspicuous consumption. Nevertheless, a multinational corporate 'partenaire' is required.

Just across the street from chez moi, the bakery has finally taken down their Halloween decorations in favor of a very festively lit teddy bear. Part of the window display is a Christmas log cake, or buche-noel, with an invitation to guess its weight. On December 18th, she or he who makes the closest guess wins their own buche for six people, but I refrained from entering since I'm going back to the US the next day. I did not, however, refrain from buying a fresh multigrain baguette to have with jam and coffee this morning.

Happy Thanksgiving!

American Thanksgiving doesn't really enter into the French consciousness at all, but in the spirit of the holiday I did manage to give thanks for all the wonderful people in my life and to also overeat.

For my lab members, I made (for lack of a good pumpkin) Sweet Potato Pie, and for the love of all things nutty, Pecan Pie Bars.

The sweet potato pie was not a real winner with my labmates, but I'd never actually had it and I was amazed to find that it tasted pretty much like pumpkin pie. (Don't worry, it all got eaten) The pecan pie bars, on the other hand, went over really well and if you ask me nicely I might tell you which recipe I used from allrecipes.com.

For my real Thanksgiving meal (not that dessert can't ever be a meal to give thanks for), I went to a cozy restaurant called 'Les Ormes' which had a special menu created by the American chef who heads up the wine study group I go to a couple nights a month. I am used to rich Thanksgiving meals, but this one was really sumptuous. It had all the hearty American elements you'd expect, but in a much more refined way than you get at family dinners were the food comes in huge serving dishes and everything goes on the same plate. Meredith did a great job with the menu, and I'm definitely going back to Les Ormes on a regular night. The restaurant itself has a Michelin star, but its very warm and welcoming, with none of the pretension I had expected to come with the prestige. The host and hostess were kindly attentive and helped out with a nice wine selection of a premier cru nuit-st-georges from 1999.

Without further ado, the menu:
She-Crab Soup
Pumpkin Soufflé
Roast Turkey with Gravy, Cranberry Sauce, and Oyster Corbread Stuffing
Dessert Bites
Pecan Pie and Potimarron Ice Cream

"Study" Group

I had the fortune to be invited by Amy to join a Wine Study Group hosted by Meredith, a fantastic chef from Louisiana who bakes up delicious bite-size gougeres (cheesy puff pastries) like it was as easy as breathing. Meredith cooks in a lovely little restaurant where the owners are willing to let us take over the place on a couple Sunday nights per month. At the first meeting, there were just four of us to taste a few sparkling white wines, but our group expanded to 12 for the second meeting, which means we got to taste a greater number of wines(selected by each individual or couple), and therefore also made use of the crachoirs (spitoons in English, but doesn't the French word sound much more elegant?)

Wine Study No. 2: Pinot Noir of Burgundy





For the second of our wine studies, we tasted red pinot noir wines from Burgundy. Nearly all of them came from the the Cote d'Or, a wine growing region which runs south from Dijon to the area just south of Beaune. Many celebrated wines come from this region, the heart of wine-growing Burgundy. One of the defining characteristics of Burgundy is the small scale of the wine production, in which vineyards may be as small as one hectare (2.5 acres) and rarely over twenty five hectares (62 acres). The region is divided up into many small named areas, or vignobles, each with its own terroir.

There are four levels of burgundy wine: regional appellation, village appellation, premier cru and grand cru. In the Cote d'Or and Cote Chalonnaise just south of it, you have around 30 vignobles which qualify as grand cru, more than 300 which qualify as premier cru, and 25 or so villages which have their own appellation. Some village appellations are said to be better then others, but together with the premier and grand crus account for 35% of burgundies, with the remaining 65% being either a blend of wines from throughout the region or from a less prestigious village. As a result, the quality of the average wine depends alot on the individual producers. This also means that the Burgundy region has hundreds of small-scale producers and caves to visit!

On this virtual visit, we tried to travel roughly from north to south, so we started in the Cote-de-Nuits.

1. 2002 Domaine Thierry Richoux Irancy (Appellation Irancy Controlee) I couldn't find the producer's website, but here is the contact info: 73, rue Soufflot 89290 Irancy +(03)-86-42-21-60 (unverified by me, sorry). Irancy is the most recent to acquire an apellation controlee for the village wine. The youth of this wine showed in its pale color and crown, and it was a bit acidic and light on the palate.

2. 2004 Moillard-Grivot Bourgogne Pinot Noir (Appellation Bourgogne Controlee) The bottle indicated that the negociant-eleveur is in Nuits-St-Georges, but that doesn't necessarily indicate the source of the grapes in the wine. Nuits-St-Georges is the village which gives its name to the Cote-de-Nuits, and also produces wine bearing its village name as well as a premier cru.

Now, leaving the Cote-de-Nuits, we reach the Cote de Beaune, which makes up the southern half of the Cote-d'Or.

3. 2004 Pierre Andre Bourgogne Pinot Noir Reserve Vielles Vignes which indicates the Corton as its center of production. Vielles Vignes means 'old vines,' suggesting that it comes from vines which are less productive and therefore yield richer, more concentrated fruit. Corton is an area in the Cote de Beaune which has the largest acreage of grand cru of all the villages in Burgundy. Still, the regional appellation means that the grapes can come from anywhere in Burgundy. 2004 is supposed to have been a year of over-production, which usually leads to good prices. My notes say this wine was 'thick and gamy,' and more tannic that the first two.

4. 2001 Domaine Michel Julliot Bourgogne Pinot Noir (Appellation Bourgogne Controlee) from Mercurey, in the northern part of the Cote Chalonnais. The domaine, which is now run by the grandson of its namesake, makes wines of the village appellation and premier cru. They also manage vineyards in the Cote-de-Beaune, so it's possible that some of those are in this wine, since it only bears the regional appellation. In our tasting, I noted that this wine was the first one that I thought was distinctly not fruity. My notes just say, 'smooth and not acidic.'

Okay, we have to come back north to the Cote-de-Nuits just for the next one.

5. 2002 Moillard Chambolle-Musigny
The website is the same as for the earlier Moillard-Grivot. The village of Chambolle-Musigny has grand cru vineyards, but this bottle just indicates appellation controlee, so I'm not absolutely positive that it's grand cru. My notes indicate that this was slightly tannic but still delicate.

6. 2001 Domaine Bouchard Pere et Fils Beaune (Appellation Beaune Controlee)
As a city, Beaune was probably founded in 52 AD by Julius Ceasar, around several sacred springs, and its name actually comes from the patron god of those waters. Beaune is called the wine capital of Burgundy, and every year hosts a famous auction of wines donated by winemakers, the proceeds of which go to a hospital. The village wines of Beaune are not known for having any particular marked characteristics, but are drinkable in their youth but also able to be aged 10 years are more.

7. 2001 Domaine Contat-Grangé Saint Jean de Narosse Santenay (Appellation Santenay Controlee)
Santenay was well known for its spring waters, popularly sought at one time for therapeautic values, before becoming well known for its wine. The terroir of Santenay is known for producing firm, structured wines without too much finesse or complexite.
The winemakers of this village wine are actually a couple who moved to Burgundy from Annency in the Haute-Savoie, Yvon and Chantal Contat-Grange. Their operation is located to the west outside of the Cote-d'Or, in Dezize-les Maranges. They are also well known for the wines they produce bearing the name 'Maranges.'


Meredith snuck in two "curveballs" for fun, and that's definitely the kind of fun I like. The first was a wine from one of her preferred pinot noir producers, that is actually made from Gamay!

8. 2002 Domaine de la Vougeraie, En Bollery Terres d'en Face

The second was a 100% pinot noir from Alsace, just north of the Jura:
9. 2004 Wunsch et Mann Cuvee Rouge d'Alsace Pinot Noir 2004, Appellation Alsace Controlee

For the last wine, we headed back to the northern part of the Cote-de-Nuits one more time to a very reputable village. We tasted this wine last in order to have it decanted and given time to 'open up.'

10. 2002 Domaine Humbert Freres Gevrey-Chambertin (Appellation Gevrey-Chambertin Controlee)
There is no other village in Burgundy which counts as many grand crus as Gevrey Chambertin, and the grapes for this wine came from old vines, some of which are in vineyards adjacent to the grand cru vineyards. This wine was compact and very balanced, so that the overall taste was somewhat elegant. Some tasting notes online suggest smoky, forest-floor, and muscular qualities, but I didn't taste that.

Whew! That was great. Next time we'll be tasting white wines from the Cote d'Or.

I found much of the information I gave about the wines of Burgundy in a book called Burgundy - Touring in the Wine Country, by Hubrecht Duijker, which I borrowed (in its French translation) from the library. It is not the most recent book, so if some of the information is not quite up-to-date, that's the reason, and I definitely will correct it if someone leaves a comment about it.

L'Atelier Des Chefs

For my birthday, a friend of mine invited me to join her at L'Atelier des Chefs, a cooking classroom in a department store, for a night of "nouvelle cuisine." So, finally the date arrived (it's Paris, where it seems like everything nice has to be reserved way in advance) and it was really great! Well, I got there late because of a security issue on the Metro and my bad decision to try to take the bus during rush hour instead. It turns out I missed the chopping of vegetables and peeling of citrus, so in a way I don't feel too bad.

The teacher was a cheeky (in a cute way, of course) Japanese woman, difficult to catch on film but fun to try to follow. She really moved with lightning speed, it's not a trick of the camera.



So, the first dish was "Langoustines rôties aux courgettes, sauce maïs, agrumes et coriandre" which involved some butterflied langoustines sauteed in olive oil and served with a sauce made from blended fresh corn, grapefruit, and oranges, with some coriander and hot pepper thrown in there too. It was all spread over a bed of lightly sauteed zucchini.



The next dish involved cooking foie gras, however this time there was no need for olive oil because the liver renders a shocking amount of grease as it cooks. My French friends assured me that there was still plenty left in the foie gras.



The final plating involved a bed of diced beets, and half of which were cooked and half of which were raw, and some of which were mashed up in the blender. Over the beets we put a griddle cake of cornmeal and fresh corn that also contained sauteed onions and a little hot red pepper powder, and topped whole darn thing with a piece of foie gras.



The food was beautiful and tasty (you get to take home what you make) and the class was fun, so I'm hoping to be able to take another one, especially because it's not really the kind of food that I have experience with. I was kind of disappointed after the class, because I didn't think I would be able to ever really do those dishes myself. Those feelings disappeared right away because, after the class was over, my friends decided to try to replicate the dishes at home for a bunch of people that were coming over THAT NIGHT. It worked and it was great! I guess that's what I get for keeping company with chemical engineers. I am completely in awe of the amazing hostess skills of the woman who invited me. Alice, tu es incroyable. (Et vous aussi, Cécile et Laure!)

Visiting Reims

The highlight of my visit to Champagne was, of course, the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Reims. It is an overwhelmingly ornate gothic cathedral, highly influenced by Notre Dame de Paris, which was built just slightly earlier. I have decided that gothic cathedrals have to be some of the most difficult subjects to photograph. From the outside, it's difficult to capture the size of the building while retaining the details of the sculptures, all of which tell stories. On the inside, it's usually dark and the aspect ratios of the features are not camera-friendly. So, for the whole story, you really need to look at the website of the cathedral. If you read French, there is a ton of historical information, and if you don't, just click on Voir tous les albums photos at the bottom of the page.

One of the distinctive features of the cathedral is the set of tympani above the entrances. Usually, these are carved in stone, but in Reims they are stained glass. In my photo, you can see that the cleaning of part of the cathedral has just been finished. Like other gothic cathedrals, the stone was originally painted in vivid colors, to gild the lily.



Of course, thanks to fire and wars, most of the statues were severely damaged or lost, so the current statues are replicas, while the originals rest in the neighboring Museum of the Palais du Tau. The most recent destruction of the cathedral was during WWII, and this site was then chosen for the celebration of reconciliation between the French and the German governments, in 1962.

One of the sculptures, called the Ange au Sourire (Angle of the Smile) is considered a uniquely beautiful example of medieval art. I suppose the sculpture does have a fluid quality not usually seen in statues of saints posed like wooden soldiers. The parish's website even gives a prayer suggested for meditating while contemplating this angel:



My translation of the prayer originally by Jean-Marie Guerlin:
You, the Angel of the Smile, messenger of God, the stone-cutters knew quite well how to express on your face the very smile of God, to tell to all who contemplate it, how much God loves them, how much he is close to them! You, the Angel of the Smile, have braved all the destruction to be, among us, a sign of joyous hope and tenacity, of reconciliation among people.

Destruction of religious art seems to be a recurring theme as I visit the cities of France, and one cannot help but be sad when one imagines all the beauty that is lost to the world through violence. I guess it helps to put a hopeful spin on things, that they might change and we might not have to repeat the cycle ad infinitum.

There is a lot more history in Reims, because it was a pretty major Gallo-Roman city, and in fact the first cathedral on the site of Notre Dame de Reims dates back to the fifth century! Hopefully I'll get a chance to go back and see the museums, and drink more champagne!

For lunch, I do recommend the Brasserie du Boulingrin, 48 rue de Mars, +33(0)3 2640 9622. On that site(a bit off the tourist track) since 1925, they serve a broad variety classic French brasserie fare, including platters from their oyster/shellfish/lobster bar. My lunch menu was 17.50, for appetizer (warm lentil salad with sausage), main dish (cod brandade wrapped in crispy filo pastry), dessert (hazelnut cake), wine (red, white or rose), and coffee. The restaurant seemed very popular, and not only with travelers.

Tasting at G.H. Martel in Champagne

The CIJP organized a day trip to Champagne last weekend, which included a visit to the winecellars of a champagne producer, G.H. Martel, in Reims. Unfortunately, it's not where any of the processing goes on anymore, since they moved to accommodate increased production volume. There are lots of similar caves in Reims, a short distance from the city center.



The Champagne-Ardenne region is the most northerly wine-growing region of France, and one important role of the caves is indeed to maintain the humidity (90%!) and temperature of the wine. It feels quite chilly down there, even more than above ground, because of the damp air.



The Methode Champenoise process for making sparkling wine is very involved and costly , since no machinery is allowed in picking the grapes, the juice must be extracted very carefully to keep from tinting it with the skins of the pinot noir and pinot meunier grapes, the stored bottles must be turned (sometimes by hand) regularly and because the carbonation requires a second fermentation. Of course, for a long time, producers have tried to adapt technology for making the process more efficient. Now there are machines to turn the bottles and, even more bizarrely, the yeast is removed after the first fermentation by turning the bottle upside down to collect it in the neck of the bottle, freezing the neck, and opening the bottle to make the plug of solids pop out. This process is not done at the degustation site, but they show visitors a video of it. The older gadgets looked a little like torture machines at first glance.



The caves in Champagne are dug out of very chalky stone, so soft that a fine powder rubs off on your fingers if you touch it. This place where the stone was chipped away scarily made me think of the faces of the Nome king and his monsters that swim through stone in the movie Return to Oz.



After the tour, there was the tasting, of course! It may seem strange that we started with the Grand Cru, but it had a classic fine brut champagne flavor, while the following champagnes, a millesime (made with juice from only one year's harvest), a demi-sec (slightly more sugar), and a rose, were variations from what most people think of in champagne.



If you're interested in visiting, G.H. Martel has various locations listed on their website, including the cave we went to located at 17 rue des Créneaux, in Reims, and their telephone number is +33(0)3 2682 7067.

Nearby is the Basilique St. Remi, where the bishop who baptised the first Catholic king of France (on Christmas eve in 496) is entombed. Sorry, my picture turned out blurry and dark because of the dim lighting.

Day of the Dead: Pan de Muerto

A couple of Mexican friends of mine, Juan and Yeri, invited me to 'help' them make Pan de Muerto today, to celebrate the Dias des los Muertos. According to their recipe, this traditional bread is a sweet, slightly eggy yeast bread flavored with orange juice and orange flower water. The top of the bread is decorated with balls and a cross of lines of dough in imitation of a skull and crossbones. It's a type of bread that Mexican families place on temporary altars to be shared with the spirits of the ancestors.

Rather being an occasion of fright, this festival celebrates memories of those who have passed away and even involves making jokes and holding 'roasts' of people, teasing them about the vices that will eventually lead to their demise. Instead of trick-or-treating for candy, Mexican children ask for money from parents and relatives in order to buy a sugar skull that has their name written on it, which they consume at the end of the festival. Families get together and celebrate their loved ones, even with mariachis in the cemetery!

Anyway, in Mexico my friends always bought their pan de muerto at a store, so we weren't quite sure about the recipe and the desired texture of the dough during the process. Between the three of us, we managed to make a tasty bread and have fun doing it, even though it didn't manage to replicate the traditional bread we were trying to make. It didn't rise nearly enough, but topped with enough melted butter and sugar, we couldn't go too far wrong, and frankly I thought it was delicious. Yeri made a fantastic hot chocolate using traditional Mexican spiced chocolate tablets, brought from her hometown of Oaxaca, and Juan missed the fact that a less dense bread would have acted more like a sponge for dipping in the chocolate. What's the word in Spanish for gourmandise?

 

Hanging out by the oven and sipping hot chocolate was a perfect way to spend this Toussaint holiday, which seems to have thrown Paris headlong into the oncoming winter with blustery winds and chilly fingers, despite the sunny blue skies.

Dijon - Sans Moutarde

Last Saturday, on my trip to Burgundy, we arrived in Dijon at night, and ended up wandering around the streets in the rain. The former ducal palace is lit up at night, and the plaza in front of it had fountains with lights that change color and intensity. The next day we went up in the tower, which dates from the 15th century. The semicircular design of the plaza was by Jules Hardouin-Mansart, the architect of Versailles, in the 17th century. It was pretty foggy, so we couldn't see much past the buildings immediately around us, but it was a pretty nice tower, anyway.




A large part of the palace itself was made into a fine arts museum, of which the most famous room is the Salle des Gardes. There are three tombs with recumbent figures, John the Fearless with Margaret of Bavaria, and Philip the Bold, as well Burgundian tapestries and altarpieces.




When I visited there was an exhibition of movie costumes going on, dispersed throughout the museum. Most were gorgeous robes and dresses from French period films which I'd never seen, but they chose their most famous gallery for the display of a couple costumes from Harry Potter. Nice.



Dijon has many beautiful churches, the most famous of which is Eglise Notre Dame, only because it is right on the tourist circuit marked on the sidewalk by arrows and an owl logo. At the church, the marked path takes you to an owl sculpted into the side of the church, and the legend is that, upon touching this owl, one can make a wish and it will come true. Apparently, a lot of people have tried it, because that poor owl was pretty worn down.




Although Notre Dame is the most famous church in Dijon, it is not the main cathedral, which is the Cathedrale St.-Benigne. My camera died, so I don't have any photos, but the most interesting aspect of the church is actually what is now underground. There is ongoing archeological excavation of the site and a collection of artifacts, some paleolithic from the sources of the Seine in Burgundy. Because the original foundations of the abbey there date from 1000 AD, they are now underground due to the construction and accumulation of earth around it . The crypt of the cathedral is even older, and features a rotunda of three circles of pillars, echoing the tomb of Christ in Jerusalem, a type of rotunda of which only 8 are known in the world.

When you say Dijon, everybody thinks of mustard, but now I will always think of the treasures of Christian religious art there. I didn't have any really special food in Dijon, but I suppose a blog entry about traveling to Burgundy would not be complete without someone eating Escargots de Bourgogne, so I'll show you when I ate them (clumsily) in Paris. I didn't have any in Dijon because I wasn't hungry after my enormous lunch in Vezelay and spending the large part of the day sitting on a bus.




The best thing about eating escargot has to be the rich sauce of parsley and melted butter, which is probably a magic sauce that might make anything taste good. Although escargot are offered to tourists all over the place, I think it pays to go to a nice place because snails can turn tough when they're not cooked right, or maybe if they're not fresh. At Le Bousquet, on Avenue Bousquet, 7eme arrondisement near the Eiffel Tower, they were delicious.

Chablis and Vézelay

Besides being the wine capital of lower Burgundy, Chablis has its origins as a medieval village. There are even some houses remaining from the middle ages, and two round towers reconstructed in 1778 to replace those of the original fortifications around the city, built in the 1400's. The "Porte Noël":


During the 9th century, monks from St. Martin-des-Tours, fleeing the Norman invaders, brought their relics of St. Martin to Chablis, and they were eventually placed in the Eglise Saint Martin, which was then was reconstructed beginning in the 13th century. Above the door on the south side, you can see a cross decorated with fleur-de-lis and animals, and the door itself is covered with horseshoes and strap hinges from the 13th century. These were brought by pilgrims as offerings to St. Martin, at that time the patron saint of horsemen.

Our next stop was the gorgeous hilltop town of Vézelay. In the 12th century, it was a very important religious and commercial hub, as the starting point for one of the pilgrimage routes from France to Santiago de Compostela, in Spain. From the abbey at Vézelay, St Bernard preached the call for the Crusade, with King Louis VII among the parishioners. Later, King Philippe-Auguste and Richard the Lionhearted met here before going on the Third Crusade. So, it's very apparent that the town was a major religious center, and therefore fitting that the basilica at the summit was enormous and richly decorated. Of course, the Huguenots and the Revolution disposed of a lot of the beautiful carvings and sculptures, but what remained was carefully restored in the 19th century, especially the architecture and the interior doorways and pillars.


In fact, when I entered the basilica, I was reminded a little of the feeling I had when going into the St. Peters in Vatican City, especially when I saw the huge doors from the narthex to the nave:


The tympanum of this doorway is really stunning, picturing Christ enthroned, with his apostles around him, and people of every sort being called, below Jesus and to the upper left and right, the overall message of the work being that the word of God is intended for the whole world.

The crypt houses a piece of a relic from Mary-Magdalene, although our guide emphasized to us that relics are more of a matter of faith than of the physical world.



That didn't stop someone from stealing another of the church's relics of Mary Magdalene, just three years ago. I guess that means the worshippers will have that much more faith.



I had a delicious and very reasonably priced (entree, plat, dessert; 13,5 € ) lunch at a restaurant in Vézelay called Les Glycines, which means The Wisterias. The terrace is indeed covered in wisterias, but they bloom in the spring, so it was just greenery for us. The portions were hearty, and the piece of local Charolais beef that I had was very flavorful and juicy, crowned with a rich, buttery 'Morvan-style' sauce. No one in my group had space in their stomach for the dessert of tarte aux pommes , so we took it to go. When we finally got around to eating it, we found unexpected delight in a creamy almond paste layer hiding under the apples. Yum! Yay for French food outside of Paris!

Last weekend, I went to Burgundy with the Club International des Jeunes a Paris, a non-profit organization that runs activities and excursions all the time, focussed on student-budget activities. We (50 or so of us) went by bus from Paris Saturday morning. As much as I didn't like having to sit in the bus for so long, I had a great time and saw an amazing amount in such a short time.
Our first stop was for a wine tasting in Chablis. I think I had never even tasted Chablis before, and I was very pleased with it's dry, herbal nature. Chablis comes in four appelations: Petit Chablis, grown on the peaks of the hills surround the Serein river valley, Chablis, grown further down the slopes and accounting for the majority of the production, Premier Cru Chablis, grown in areas with south and west exposure, and therefore more protected during the winter, and Grand Cru Chablis, grown on 100 hectares very close to the river, on its north bank. Chablis is made entirely from Chardonnay grapes, and aged in stainless steel barrels, and only very rarely for a short time in oak just for a hint of oakiness. I'm really tempted to go back to Chablis because the producers are located right in the town, and my interested was really piqued to visit them, especially for the Chablis wine festival this weekend.

Chablis is situated right on the river, where you can see the old wash-house (lavoir):



Our degustation was at the Cave des Connaisseurs:

Travaux Pratique Tarama and Tzatziki

My advisor in France, Ilias, is originally from Greece, and this week he did a 'lab demo' of how make two Greek specialties, tzatziki and tarama. The pictures are on my Flickr site, as a set called MMC Travaux Pratique.
The tzatziki was delicious, although I think they probably don't use fromage blanc in Greece -- I think tzatziki is usually made with plain yogurt. Ilias has issues with industrially manufactured yogurt, though, and he can tell you all sorts of reasons why it's not actually yogurt.
I still think tarama is a little weird. I don't remember seeing it when I was in Greece a few years ago. It's apparently basically cod fish eggs with mashed up bread, olive oil, and lemon juice. It makes a pretty good spread, but it's definitely salty.
The best part was eating with all of my labmates. We all work pretty independently in the lab and it was great to spend the time to have a big lunch together, even if there was no big holiday or occasion to celebrate.

Autumn - The Tuileries Garden is Still Pretty!

Before coming to Paris, I lived in central New England for six years (btw, I think we are missing a term in our language -- grad school is really a separate category from 'living' as most people know it.) There, autumn was signalled by road-side farmstands selling pumpkins, a visit to the u-pick apple orchard (for hot mulled cider and freshly made cider-donuts), and the changing of the colors of the leaves into a brilliant array of red-yellow-gold, colors seemingly designed to warm the soul as the temperatures dropped. I moved there from southern California, so it was quite fresh and enjoyable the first year, but the second year was associated with foreboding about the bitter cold of winter. In the end, I think I took it for granted, or maybe even resented the 'leaf-peepers' jamming the expressway coming and going between Vermont and New York. But now, unbelievably, I miss my grad school home. My fiancé's parents, visiting him in upstate NY and planning on doing some leaf-peeping themselves, asked me on the phone how the change of seasons was here. All I could think of was that, a couple weeks ago, I got hit on the head by a falling chestnut pod while sitting in the park. It did seem to me that Paris is just not that pretty right now. Then I thought: That can't be right!

That thought merited a Sunday afternoon detour to the Tuileries Garden. Of course, the Tuileries garden is still pretty, even in autumn, when most green stuff is turning brown and dying.





So, I sat for a few minutes and watched ducks dodge sailboats in the fountain. I felt a kind of pleasant calm, sitting there, soaking up the warmth of the sun. Rather then worrying about the cold, damp, dark winter coming, I just drank in the happy glow of the Parisian Sunday afternoon, forgetting all about the foliage of New England.

Nuit Blanche

I didn't stay up all night, but I did wander around the Marais for a bit, to see what there was to see. Firstly, there were a lot of people. Secondly, we had to wait in line for each 'attraction.' (Perhaps the second is more of a corollary to the first) Fortunately, the lines moved along fairly quickly at each place, and everyone could have a good time. Most of them were art installations that didn't take more than 5 minutes to see. I went with a friend, Florence, first to a garden near the Hotel Carnavalet, where there was a large tent in which the artist had sand installed, and a live satellite image of a beach in Tahiti was projected onto the wall of the tent, with the sound of the waves and birds being broadcast on speakers, and I swear I could feel a little ocean breeze. Very relaxing.
Then we went to an installation by Carlos Garaicoa, who had made candles in the shape of various famous monuments and buildings, and as the night progressed, the monuments melted and disappeared. Behind the table of candles, live video close-ups were shown on a giant screen. The whole thing was set up in a church, so the collection of candles also played off the theme of religious ritual.



We also went to see a giant necklace dangling in a pool of water.



Finally we went for a cafe and, having lost most of our momentum, decided to call it quits for the night. I guess I'll leave the staying up all night to the young whipper-snappers. Here was the scene at Eglise Saint Merri, next to the Pompidou Center.