Be Good to Yourself

I find that when I write at home I want to snack. All the time. Living in Paris, surrounded by baked goods, dairy desserts, cheese, and sausage makes the endeavor all the more thrilling. Much more interesting that writing one's dissertation. Yesterday I went hungry shopping at Monoprix which always results in the purchase of some sexy snack. True to form, I fell victim to a bag of individually wrapped madelines. Individual wrapping ensures that each sexy cookie will retain its moist, buttery flavor. I came home and tried to write but ended up eating madelines instead.

Not that I need justification for snacking, but just in case I did, I found it in Walter Benjamin's "The Writer's Technique in Thirteen Theses." The first thesis justifies just about any indulgent behavior: "Anyone intending to embark on a major work should be lenient with themselves and, having completed a stint, deny themselves nothing that will not prejudice the text."

Procrastination

The mighty wood pigeon, sitting on our balcony. I've taken to dissertating in the living room, out of the evil reaches of the internet cable. Instead of going online, I have the distraction of the rooftops and the hot ornithological action that Paris has to offer.

Eating in Paris: Au Fil des Saisons

While Xtino and Elena were here for the holidays, we were looking for a restaurant that was moderately priced and delicious, not an easy thing to do in this town. For us, moderately priced means no more than 40ish euros for a three course prix fixe menu. We found Au Fil des Saisons and made a reservation. They offer a 33 euro prix fixe menu with a ton of delicious choices on it, including the best confit de canard I've eaten in France. A word of caution: they use foie gras as a garnish! It came on top of my appetizer and my main course, not that this is a problem. Au contraire.




The best way to make brussels sprouts delicious: serve them with a light broth, split in half and put a big hunk of seared foie gras on top. This dish was magical. The best part of it was that it kept changing as you ate it because the foie gras slowly rendered itself into the broth. Thus, at the end of eating the sprouts and the foie, you were left with this incredible foie gras broth perfect for bread dipping.

The dish being consumed.


Another slab of foie gras on top of braised pork with lentils. Also quite good.



TOTAL PERFECTION: crispy, sexy skin and the requisite slab of foie gras.

The wine list was totally reasonable and the desserts were great. This place is a rare Paris find.

• 6 rue des Fontaines du Temple / 75003 Paris
• Temple ou Arts et Metiers
• 01 42 74 16 60
• monday to friday (lunch and dinner) and saturday dinner
  

Hidden Kitchen, Paris

A couple of weeks ago we had the extreme pleasure of dining at Hidden Kitchen, a sort of underground super club run by these two young, American chefs. For 70 euros, you get 10 courses and wine pairings, a pretty good deal for high-end gastronomie in Paris. The food, for the most part, was quite wonderful. The issue with this sort of supper club is the people you get stuck with. Because Hidden Kitchen accommodates only eight diners per night, you are stuck with whoever happened to reserve that night. For our dinner, all of us, except for V, were Americans. That's just fine with me; so many restaurants in Paris on any given evening are filled with Americans so it's not so surprising that Hidden Kitchen would be any different. But unfortunately for V and I, we sat at the end of the table and got stuck next to a VERY TACKY lady who would not stop talking the WHOLE EVENING. She spent the entire night telling us how very special she was. The highlight of her exegesis was when she talked about her friendship with Bob Hope, how he "touched" her life with his kindness, how she was personally affected by his death, and how Bob Hope's son continues to be one of her very best friends. I wanted to find the off button but there was none. So this has nothing to do with the quality of the food, but it is one of the risks of dining at Hidden Kitchen.

The food was excellent although we did find the portions to be a bit skimpy. Even though we knew it was a tasting menu, some of the courses featured food that looked positively lonely on its plate.


Celery Root Soup with Thai Basil + Clementine: light, flavorful, the clementine was a wonderful addition.


Gnocchi with Roasted Cauliflower, Olives, Parmesan: good, not amazing.


Seared Scallop with its Liver (the orange thing), Cranberry Puree, Some African Spice on top of the Scallop: really amazing, creative, beautifully presented. Wonderful flavors.


Cinnamon-"smoked" Duck with an underwhelming Butternut Squash Ravioli (note: this is where we started feeling that the portions were stingy; what you are looking at is one small cross section of a duck breast. We all felt that we deserved more). The cinnamon flavor was remarkable. I should have begged for a second slice.


Braised oxtail with mushroom risotto and Parmesan cheese on top: the oxtail blew me away; completely tender and infused with that sexy braising liquid; the risotto was VERY underdone but had great flavor. A bit more oxtail would have been nice.


This dish was my absolute favorite and yet again, I wanted more than I was given. Two tiny raviolis made out of blanched radish slices stuffed with fresh goat cheese. Served with a light dressing and roquette.


Dessert: chocolate beggar's purse filled with molten chocolate cake batter, served alongside a star-anise infused grapefruit section. In comparison with the other dishes, dessert was HUGE. not that this is a problem, but it would be nice to have some continuity.


Despite wanting more, we all enjoyed it. Well, and despite the people we were seated next to.

rotten fish

Viktor and I made it out of the house early enough today to go shopping for sunday dinner at the market on Avenue d'Italie. The bi-weekly market is the largest one in the 13th arrondissement, with everything from the typical fruits and veggies to rotisserie chicken and spices. We decided on some reasonably priced trout fillets and decided to make trout amandine, a classic dish made with beurre noisette and carmelized sliced almonds. We also picked up a beautiful head of rouget lettuce and some dynamic light green zucchini. So I'm at home, having already made the potatoes, zucchini, and salad. All I have to do at this point is saute the trout and then I smell it: ROTTEN! Lame. Luckily Monoprix was open (ouverture exceptionelle pour les soldes!) and I procured some veal for a last-minute schnitzel. With carmelized almonds in the bread crumb mixture. It was fabulous. But the rotten fish sucked.

Delicous Fecal Sausage: Chez Gladines

Last night, Josh L's friend Damon was supposed to come over for soup and a movie. The Vietnamese soup place was closed so we decided to venture over to the Butte aux Cailles to try a restaurant that many people, including a certain art history professor who claims to enjoy good food, have recommended. Chez Gladines is somewhat of a neighborhood institution. It is one of the few restaurants where French people will wait in line for a table to free up. They wait because you can get a HUGE meal for 10 euros. The food is basque, which means it's hearty and flavorful. The perfect kind of food for a cold, rainy Paris night.

So we get there at 7:15 and have no trouble getting a table. The menu is simple: there are huge salads, plates of sausage and cheese as appetizers, Basque chicken, stuffed peppers, tripe, steak, cassoulet, confit de canard. The wine list is cheap and wonderful. We got a bottle of red, Gaillac for 12.70. We can't decide what to order. I eventually chose the Basque chicken. Viktor goes for the andouillette. Damon gets the cassoulet and his friend gets a giant salade complete. The food comes. The giant salad is the winner for taste and presentation. It's gorgeous: a huge egg, generous amount of cured, thinly sliced ham, cantal cheese, lots of lettuce. My chicken is slathered with a tomato, onion, bell pepper sauce that I'm mildly intrigued by until I taste it. The sauce tastes like tomatoes and nothing else, the chicken is a bit tough. It wasn't the worst dish I've ever tasted but it was disappointing. The cassoulet was OK. The biggest surprise of the night was the andouillette.

Poor Viktor, the adventurous eater. It turns out that he got the famous, or infamous tripe sausage. If you look at the photo below, you can check out a cross section of this thing. They literally stuff it with tripe. And it smells. I have never seen Viktor not finish his dinner. He literally took one big first bite, then a smaller second one. Then he hid the rest of the hulking sausage under the lettuce on his plate. He would not tell us what it actually tasted like because we were still eating. He wanted to spare us the graphic metaphor. After the meal, he told us it tasted like shit. No literally. It's not a metaphor. Take a look at the wikipedia entry on andouillette; it's hilarious: "While some find that hot andouillette smells of feces, food safety requires that all such matter is removed from the meat before cooking. Feces-like aroma can be attributed to the common use of the pig's colon (chitterlings) in this sausage, and stems from the same compounds that give feces some of its odors." He is deeply traumatized.

Paris top 5: Chinatown edition

1. Cheap mangoes that come in many varieties at the store across the street from our apartment.
2. Wholegrain bread from the bakery next door.
3. Soup #12 at Song-Huong Restaurant (more on this later).
4. Living near line 14: across the whole city in 10 minutes!
5. The fish counters at the giant Asian grocery stores: dinner for 3 euros.

5 things

1. new ice cream flavor obsession: chocolate therapy @ ben and jerry's = chocolate ice cream, chocolate pudding ribbons, chocolate cookie.
2. ann arbor really needs rain: all the grass is brown.
3. it is a tedious job to catalogue eva hesse slides: just try listing the media. Resin, cheesecloth, polyethelyne, wire....
4. i can't wait to move to paris.
5. viktor's exhibition is now open. buy his art while it's still cheap.