Revisiting My Blog

Whoa! How long has it been since I wrote in my blog? Well, my family tells me they still check it every once in a while, so I guess I’ll share from some of the marvelous times I had before I finished my postdoc and moved away from Paris. I travelled to Belgium, Alsace and Germany before I left, and had an incredible lunch at the newly three-starred L’Astrance in 16th arrondisement, so I have some pretty cool stuff blog about. I have to admit that I’m no longer doing my postdoc in Paris, but at long last sitting at home with my fiancé. By the end of my 18 months in France, I was really ready to come home, but I can already feel the urge to travel coming on. For now, there are so many wedding preparations to take care of that I will have to satisfy myself with revisiting the people and places I saw, and the delicious food I ate during that last hectic month.
One of my favorite recurring Paris sights is the pianist outside Luxemourg RER station, across the street from the fabulous Jardin du Luxembourg, near the Pantheon. I’m not sure how he gets it there, but I think it’s pretty cool to step off the bus to see a piano sitting on the corner. He’s pretty good, too! You can also check out my YouTube video of him.

Not too Busy to Eat

Lately I've been busy working and job-searching, and blogging has pretty much fallen to a low rank on the priority scale. Fortunately, I found time to have a couple nice meals that you can check out on my Flickr site. They were both at neo-bistrots, L'Ourcine and A Mi-Chemin, which combine the fast service of a bistrot with more refined, higher quality food.

L'Ourcine is a well-blogged over place in the 13th, where I went last night with La Petite Americaine, brumaire, and Gregoire, a friend from Amherst who I now work with. More People = More Dishes and they were fantastic. A Mi-Chemin is just a place I happened upon by myself one night.

Both are recommended by me, but L'Ourcine is finer cuisine and you'll need reservations, and A Mi-Chemin gives you bigger portions with service one notch less professional. In case you're visiting Paris, here are the addresses:
A Mi-Chemin, 31 rue Boulard, Paris 75014 Phone: 0145395645
L'Ourcine, 92 rue Broca, Paris 75013 Phone: 0147071365
If you're not visiting Paris, tant pis (too bad). Feast with you're eyes anyway, its calorie-free. Cheers!

Blogger Postcards From Around the World: Part Two

I received a beautiful postcard on Tuesday, just in time for Valentine's Day. It came all the way to me from Mumbai, India!

Nandita, who has a blog called Saffron Trail, got this card in Pondicherry, which is the former capital of French India. I didn't even know there was a French India, and that France didn't relinquish control of Pondicherry until 1954! A Google search led me to this site with some photos of the place. I also found out that many travellers are drawn to Pondicherry because of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, a center for practice and study of a school of spirituality which combines yoga and modern science. Sri Aurobindo, a political leader who later became a spritual leader, wrote the verse on the postcard.
I'm separated from my fiance by an ocean right now, so there's no Valentine's dinner in my picture, so it is helpful and meaningful to me to think of our love transcending our lack of material contact.

But anyway, the material me celebrated Valentine's Day with a phone call home and a pastry from Laurent Duchene, on rue Wurtz: two heart-shaped almond-raspberry macarons with fresh raspberries and a nougat cream center. Pretty and delicious!



Check out all the other great postcards traveling around the world as part of BPW2.

Météo: grand soleil pour ce dimanche

Courtyard of Palais de Tokyo


Jardin du Luxembourg


Parc des Buttes-Chaumont

A Little Perking Up

Parisians have nothing to complain about when it comes to winter weather, as I often point out to my work colleagues by a daily report of the current conditions in upstate New York. Part of the magic of Paris seems to be if it’s cloudy all week, its totally sunny and beautiful on Saturday. Okay, so maybe that was just these past two weekends. In general, the lack of sunlight when you wake up and come home and the preponderance of gray skies leave me a little sluggish, and craving bright flavorful foods that remind me that its warm and sunny somewhere else in the world.
So, I was excited to see that the latest issue of Régal, a French cooking magazine, had a series of recipes “100% vitaminé” that feature fresh fruits and zesty flavors. One of those recipes happened to be by Clotilde Dusoulier, a Parisian food blogger who has a cookbook coming out in the US in the spring. She has lots of great food photos and features on her website, Chocolate and Zucchini, but I never have actually tried any of them. That’s mostly because my tiny kitchen is just not very well-equipped, although I am always extremely tempted to go out and buy the high quality special ingredients she combs from the many gourmet boutiques in Paris.
This time, though, all I had to do was borrow a blender from a friend to try out Clotilde’s Pomegranate Lassi and Tiger’s Tongue Cookies. It also gave me a chance to try the Breton version of buttermilk, lait ribot, which she has featured on her blog.
The recipe specifies one pomegranate per serving, simply blended with lait ribot and sweetened with just a bit of honey, pretty much to taste. The fruits I had were a little on the small side, so I ended up with a color a lot lighter than the picture in the magazine, but the flavor did not disappoint. Overall, the drink was rich and creamy, and the added honey just took a little edge off the tartness of the fruit.
The cookies were a perfect accompaniment, too, crispy at the edges and soft and buttery in the middle. The recipe was the same as the vanilla version of her cat’s tongue cookies, only made to be twice as long. The cookies were trés facile, but unfortunately went soft after a day, and were not quite the same even after re-crisping them up in the oven.
I was so happy with the way that the rich tangy-sour flavor of the lait ribot complemented the sweet-tartness of the pomegranate that I decided to try one of the variations she suggested, which was to use passion fruits in place of the pomegranates. Of course, the color was even more pale, but the lovely fragrance and zippy tartness of the fruits really perked me up. You can see that there are flecks of the seeds, but the ones left after straining it were not perceptible in the drink's texture.
Although she suggests fondant au chocolat (molten chocolate cake) as an alternative dessert to go with the lassi, I think it would go perfectly with crepes, since we have now passed from the holiday season of the frangipane cake, I mean Epiphany, to Chandeleur, when crepes are the dessert. I made crepes yesterday and took them in for my labmates—half of them were plain but half had some cocoa powder in the batter. ‘Trés Originale!’ was their response to the chocolate crepes. Okay, well the recipe was by Pierre Hermé in a little chocolate cookbook I got with a weekend edition of ‘Le Figaro’ in December. But I happily took the credit and decided to reward myself by making another batch, just for me!

Blogger Postcards from Around the World

These postcards are now finding their way through the French postal system to a certain blogger whose name and address I received after we both signed up for Blogger Postcards Around the World #2, an event organized by Meeta at What's For Lunch Honey? For this event, each person sends a postcard (or three) to an assigned fellow blogger somewhere in the world and also then receives a postcard from someone else. Everyone writes about the cards at each end of their journey.

The theme was Valentine's Day, but I couldn't find specifically Valentine's cards at the papeteries, and although I found quite a few variations on postcards for 'I Love Paris' and 'I Love You', those didn't quite hit the mark for this occasion. I think that friends here don't generally wish each other 'Happy Valentine's Day!', and the focus is more on lovers and chocolate. Stretching to fit the theme, then, I chose a card that has a boy and a girl doing Parisian things like walking a tiny dog and sitting at a cafe, another that had confetti and the Eiffel Tower, and one showing a toy gorilla climbing a toy Eiffel Tower on a map of Paris, that kind of reminded me of King Kong's tragic love for Ann Darrow.

I'll post a link when my cards land on the blog of their recipient and of course I'll tell you all about the postcard I'm eagerly awaiting. Or, you can check out the other blogs that are participating.

Meeta's blog is also worth checking out for some nice photograpy and food blogging events. It's in my list of blog links now.

French Film: Jacquou le Croquant

I don’t know quite how to translate the title of the French movie I saw Saturday night, (‘Jack-o the Cracker’?) but I’m fairly sure this one won’t be seeing too many American movie screens, so the point is perhaps moot. Anyway, ‘croquant’ is a nickname given to the thousands of peasants who revolted against unfair taxation by nobles in the 16th century. The French book that inspired the film, as well as 1969 TV mini-series, tells the story of a rural peasant who is treated cruelly by the local nobility as a young boy, then grows up to lead a rebellion and get his revenge.

The leading star of the movie is Gaspard Ulliel, the former male model who starred with Audrey Tautou in ‘A Very Long Engagement’ and will soon be seen as the young Hannibal Lecter in ‘Hannibal Rising’. In this film, he loses the first half screen time to a cute kid who plays the young Jacquou, desperately in need of a hair cut(see photo). Among the other stars are Tcheky Karyo, who was also in ‘A Very Long Engagement’, and the darkly alluring Bojana Panic, in one of her first major roles to accompany her modeling career.

My movie companions were two fellow etrangers, from England and India, so I can’t say that we got everything from this movie, but we found that we had a good time anyway. It lasted two and half hours, and we were a little nervous about getting lost in the dialogue, but in fact even the least French-able of us could follow, due to the straightforward plot. Now, that seems like a contradiction, right? How can a straightforward plot go on for two and a half hours? The solution: about an hours worth of walking in the woods, in the snow, and running through fields of flowers. My Indian friend commented that she was worried that they were going to start singing and dancing as if it were a Bollywood film.

There was at least some dancing: a crucial clog-dancing competition which ended in a tete-a-tete between the Count and Jacquou. Guess whose inspirational clog-dancing was the talk of the town, and who left in disgust (see photo of the Count and his youngest daughter).

The adult Jacquou has two main women of interest in his life: his sweet childhood love Lina, of the flowery fields, and the proud huntress La Galiote, the youngest daughter of the Count. In the course of the movie, both of them try to sneakily catch glimpses of naked Jacquou. Nonetheless, the two are opposites, and even though Jacquou wants to hate La Galiote, he is attracted by her fiery will and dark come-hither eyes. Jacquou himself is pretty much consumed by the need for vengeance against the Count, but somehow finds himself torn between them, especially at the end of the film. I won’t give away the ending, but I will say that, in the end, a boat sails away into a beautiful CGI sunset.

If your interest is piqued, you can watch the trailers and clips on allocine.fr.

Tribute to Abbé Pierre

This was the scene outside the Val de Grace hospital on Blvd Port Royal tonight and for the last several days, where people have been paying tribute to the late French Catholic priest, Abbé Pierre. The letters, flowers, and candles honor his lifelong campaign for human rights and especially the provision of housing for the poor and homeless. Just after the war, there were many poor and working class families in France without adequate housing as a result of limited public construction and the destruction resulting from the war. He served in the government to speed up the starting of public housing projects, and several years later, during an especially cold Paris winter, he issued a famous radio appeal to all of France to support those in need, and the Emmaus movement took off. The Emmaus International organization supports campaigns all over the world to relieve suffering by improvements in living conditions among the poor. The best tribute to this great leader would be to do what you can to contribute to the movement to end extreme poverty and to defend human rights.

Weekend in London

I had a great time in London last weekend, but I’m little sad because I didn’t have time for even half of the things that I wanted to do. Fortunately, its not difficult to get there from Paris, just two and a half hours on the Eurostar. I went by plane this time, only because the Eurostar would have been 70 euros more expensive than flying. Even though the flight is less than an hour long, flying takes far longer than going by train because of the hassle of getting to the airport and going through security. On the positive side, I had an awesome view of London at night from the airplane.

I bought my trip as a package through lastminute.fr, and I was a little nervous about the hotel, but it turned out to be a good location and it was pretty standard relative to the norm for inexpensive hotels in Europe, though not memorable enough to recommend. The hotel itself was on a side street in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, which sounds pretty impressive, doesn’t it? The neighborhood was quiet, but it was close to a tube station, so I could get to the heart of London without much trouble. My first impression of England was that British people are more friendly than the French, because the subway drivers are so polite (‘please, mind the gap’) and that I actually got valuable assistance from one of the ticket cashiers at the tube station, something that I have yet to experience in Paris.

Friday night, I had dinner with a bunch of students, professors, and alumni from Harvey Mudd College. The students and professors were concluding a two week trip that was the capstone of a semester-long course on Dickens and Hardy. Having dinner with them was a real treat because they had a lot of interesting stories to tell about their trip and about life at Mudd. We were at a well-known pub called the Albert, near the Victoria tube station, that has a restaurant on the upper level that features a carving station of roast beef, turkey, and pork, with all the traditional English trimmings. After the dinner, I went with some of the students to another pub.The atmosphere in English pubs is really convivial and appealing, compared to the bars and brasseries I’ve been to in France, where I never have felt quite comfortable. It doesn’t hurt that good beer is pretty darn cheap (less than two pounds for an English pint).

Saturday, I met up with an American friend who works outside London, and together we visited the Tower of London. Our tour, led by one of the caretakers of the tower, who themselves live on the grounds, was fabulous.

The guide was very engaging and gave a lot of interesting insights into the history of the tower, which is actually a castle of multiple towers, of course. They keep a flock of ravens there because of the traditional superstition that the tower would fall if the ravens all leave. The ravens will sometimes let you get pretty close to them, but they are not so appealing when you are watching them tear apart a piece of raw meat.

After the Tower, we had lunch in another pub, where I had a rich and juicy venison stew with potatoes. Then we browsed the National Gallery, including the current special exhibition highlighting the relationships various impressionist artists and artists in later movements in painting. Just outside, Trafalgar Square was completely mobbed with people celebrating a Russian Winter Festival, which seemed more like a rally since all we saw were speeches being given in Russian and a lots of vodka advertisements. Finally, we went over to St. Paul’s for the evening vespers, which was a lovely experience, but after a busy day of sightseeing, I admit that I nodded off for a few minutes.
On the way to dinner, we stopped to walk along the river and got some nice views of Parliament and Big Ben.

For dinner, we went to an Italian restaurant across the street from the Lambeth tube station. It’s not a big, well-known, or fancy looking restaurant, but the friend I was with had been there before and knew that the food was really good, which was absolutely true. I had one of the night’s specials, a seafood risotto, which was really memorable for the perfectly cooked rice, with pieces of squid and octopus that were tender and not rubbery and overcooked. I had imagined it would come in a creamy parmesan sauce, but it was in fact based on a lovely rich tomato sauce. The prices were very reasonable for London, with starters averaging 6 pounds and main dishes around 10 pounds, and all of the servings were generous. The name and address are Cotto Restaurant, 89 Westminster Bridge Road.


Saturday was a lot sunnier than Sunday, but you’ll have to forgive all of the shadows in my photos, because the sun didn’t really get very high, even at mid-day. After taking some photos at the Tower Bridge, I decided that it was a nice day for a stroll, and as I walked from The Royal Courts of Justice in Westminster to St. Paul’s Cathedral the bells were ringing in the beginning of the service, which was awesome. From there I went over to the Covent Garden Market and checked out Neal's Yard. It was really a shame that the Neal's Yard Dairy was closed, since I've read so much about their delicious cheeses. Next time, I'll be a more dedicated food lover and go shopping on a market day!
Anyway, then I walked over to Soho, took a picture of the Palace Theater,

went through Chinatown and on down to Leicester Square. Recently went to an exhibition of Hogarth’s works at the Louvre, so I had to photograph his statue in the square. I’d like to imagine that he’s turned away in disgust from the Starbucks across the street behind him.

I guess my walk took me by some of the more cheesy touristy places, but it was fine with me. You can’t spend all your time in museums! Eventually, though, I was pretty cold, so I spent a few hours looking around at the National Portrait Gallery. After a couple hours, I thought I had the lineage of all the kings and queens straight, but unfortunately they didn’t stay that way very long. In general, the portrait gallery is really worth seeing, especially with the audio guide to give a few entertaining stories about the portraits and their painters as well as their sitters. It was somewhat disappointing to me to see JK Rowling and Daniel Radcliffe among their more recent portrait acquisitions, but I guess they hold a pretty important place in the cultural scene, at least for now.

Oh, there are so many other cool places to go in London. I’m eager to go back to go to the theater and the Tate Modern, and several other museums, and cathedrals, and go to Greenwich, and… Maybe I should do another postdoc over there. Just kidding, Matt!

Banoffee (or Banoffi?) Pie

I took a short flight to London last weekend to meet up with some Harvey Mudders and bounce around the city a little with a friend. I had a great time, and saw tons of different things that I hadn't the chance to see the last time I was there. I'll write about it later, but you can check out pics from Saturday on my Flickr site, and have a taste of this dessert that my friend and I shared after dinner.

It's Banoffi Pie, which was supposedly invented at the Hungry Monk Restaurant in 1972. This incarnation wasn't completely true to their recipe, which calls for cooking an unopened can of condensed milk in boiling water for five hours. The crust was more like a crushed graham cracker crust than a shortcut pastry, and there were chocolate bits and chocolate sauce all over the top, but the banana and toffee combination was delicious, and something I wouldn't have thought of. The British seem to like their toffee pretty well, even in yogurt. I ate this, but it was too sugary for me. I like the image of toffee springing from a dewy blade of grass, though.

Christmas in Scotia, NY

I meant to update my blog during the holidays – silly me, I thought I would have spare time during my two weeks of vacation! However, I was fully occupied with enjoying the time I could spend with my family and of course with my fiancé and his mom. It was the first Christmas that Matt and I had ever celebrated together, and also the first time that my family had met anyone from his family. Matt waited for me to come back from Paris to go shopping for decorations, only to find out that the stock of decorations in the stores had dwindled, few trees were left for sale, and that even finding lights for the tree was difficult! Of course, it was worth the trouble and a nice memory, since the tree was, in the end, beautiful.

My lovely stand mixer and I spent some quality time together over cookie dough, even though my Christmas Eve search for the ice cream maker attachment was unsuccessful. Here are some of the cookies my family decorated: frosted sour cream cookies (made with lard!), unfrosted sugar cookies, and my favorite peanut butter cookies with chocolate kisses. Cookie consumption was at very high levels this week.


Although there were terrible snowstorms out west, the weather in Scotia was mild and rainy. Since I have spent the last 10 Christmas holidays in Florida and because of course Paris has little hope of seeing snow this winter, I was disappointed to miss what I considered to be my only chance to play in the snow. A few days after Christmas, we did get a little, which was beautiful while it lasted (about 36 hours). Sunday morning, I took a little walk around Scotia, and ended up following some squirrel tracks down to the Mohawk river.

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.