Spring in Paris

I love the spring in Paris. It arrives much earlier than in Toronto so by mid-April I'm enjoying favas, peas, baby onions and new potatoes. I tell everyone that I come to Paris in the spring just so I can eat white asparagus. Well, I've just discovered that I may have to change my travel plans. 

Friends in the Bayou

While the weather was warmer in Louisiana it was the warmth of the people that impressed me most - friendly and unfailingly polite. The importance of good manners is often overlooked today. From the culinary students to people in the street, there was an acknowledgment that you existed - a smile, and greeting often followed by a conversation. That's something I miss in Toronto. In Paris I will get a bonjour from strangers in the street and often find myself at the bus stop talking to someone I've just met. When I return to the Toronto, I have to adjust, my hellos to strangers in the street as they are usually met with a start and then discomfort.

Winter Cooking

Provence is a mere memory and winter is biting hard this year in Toronto. In France it is the warmest winter in a century, I was just in Paris and it was warm enough to have a drink on the cafe terraces (with the heaters). Here it is the coldest winter in some time. It feels like the coldest since I first arrived, but my memory for cold is very selective. One big plus is that this bone chilling and pipe freezing -18C weather, yes we still have a heater warming our bathroom pipes, usually means bright sunny days. The photo was taken during a snow storm, but most of time I can sit in my living room bathed in brilliant although not warm sunshine.

Bitter Christmas

With everyone talking about Christmas baking and cooking I'd like to put a word in for eating something bitter at this time of the year. Bitter has been my life over the last year or so as I've been working on a book about bitter foods to be published by Ten Speed in September 2014. I think there should be a little bitter in every holiday menu. Bitter foods spark the appetite and more importantly help you digest your food, very beneficial at this time of year when we all tend to over indulge.

White Asparagus Part 2

As I said in White Asparagus Part 1, I'd always just boiled my white asparagus. Well this asparagus season we went to Spring restaurant in Paris. My favourite taste in the meal was the grapefruit jelly for many reasons, but the white asparagus were delicious too and a revelation. Obviously  chef Daniel Rose shares my opinion that white asparagus should be big and fat, look at these beauties in the photo. You can read about Daniel and his restaurant in an article written by my friend Lesley Chesterman.

White Asparagus Part 1

I'm an asparagus snob. For me asparagus are white and fat. You have to peel white asparagus, so you want something left when you finish and I'd rather eat three fat ones than half a dozen skinny ones.  When I first came to France eons ago, green asparagus, the only ones I was familiar with at the time, were no where to be found. You could find skinny wild green asparagus, but everything else is white. Today green are everywhere. To my taste white asparagus are superior to green. They are the same plant except the white ones are buried under a mound of sandy soil. This protects them from the light and stops the formation of chlorophyl resulting in a pure asparagus taste, free of the grassiness of the green ones.

Cardoons

One of my favourite places in Paris is the Luxembourg Gardens. This photo was taken in the autumn when cardoons were part of the flower borders, I've also seen them in Parc Montsouris. I wanted to sneak back late in the evening to harvest a few stalks, but the gardens, wisely,  are closed at night. 

Zurich

Last November I was invited to Zurich for the launch of my Fat book in German Fett. The trip from Paris on the TGV was pleasant on a high tech Swiss train that signalled where we were and how fast the train was travelling. We had good insider information about where to eat and drink, which was very helpful as Zurich is a lot pricier than Paris. And my husband and I spent a wonderful weekend in Switzerland, without once eating raclette, fondu, or chocolate.

Tripe Truck

I was excited when I learnt that the Tripe Truck would be in my Paris neighbourhood in November. It was scheduled to be at Montparnasse twice in the same week: Monday and Wednesday. Monday arrived and I jumped on the 58 bus and headed to the station. I walked around and around the square in front of the station - no tripe truck.

Sweetbreads

I love being in Paris for lots of reasons, one of them being the ready availability of offal. In my local market we spied sweetbreads, ris de veau in French. I would like to bust several myths concerning sweetbreads -

 #1 sweetbreads are testicles - they are not. Testicles are testicles. I just read on a blog this week that sweetbreads is another term in English for testicles, it is not! Sweetbread is an old term from the sixteenth century, "sweet" refers to the this odd bits's prized status and bread comes from the Old English word broed meaning flesh. 

#2 sweetbreads include the pancreas - they do not. Unfortunately, in North America the pancreas is often sold as a sweetbread, even by butchers who should know better.

Sweetbreads are the thymus gland which consists of two parts, the throat sweetbread and the heart sweetbread. They are only found in young animals as the animal ages the thymus gland atrophies, which explains why sweetbreads are in short supply and expensive.

The sweetbreads in my market were the desirable veal heart sweetbreads, bigger and more compact. 

The first step is to soak the sweetbread in cold salted water. Then poach it in a court bouillon, a fancy name for a liquid flavoured with vegetables, herbs and spices, see Odd Bits. This takes about 5 to 15 minutes depending on the size of the sweetbread. Test by pressing with your finger tip, they should be firm but still springy. You can see that the sweetbread becomes more compact. Slide the sweetbread into ice water to stop the cooking. When it is just cool enough to handle, remove any fat, gristle and as much of the membrane as you can.

Place the sweetbread in a pie dish lined with a clean towel, fold the cloth over the sweetbread and place another pie plate on top. Add a weight to lightly press the sweetbread and refrigerate for 2 to 3 hours to firm up. Normally my sweetbread would fall into small pieces as I usually only find the throat ones in Toronto. The heart sweetbread stays intact so I decided to sauté it whole. I seasoned it with salt and pepper, browned it gently in butter turning and basting until it had a good colour, but was still springy, about 12 minutes.

You could add a sauce, but when the sweetbread is this good it needs nothing else at all.

Fat is now Fett

I was very excited to learn some time ago that Fat would be published in German and now it's finally a reality. To celebrate the Swiss publisher is holding a Fat dinner on Friday November 9, in Zurich.

Kohlrabi

Perhaps, like me, you've never given the vegetable kohlrabi a second thought, or even a first thought.  I bought it several years ago when I was food styling. It looked cool, so I tucked it into a display of artful vegetables in a photo. Did I eat it? Probably, because I hate to throw food away, but it left no memorable impression. As Grigson says inn her book Jane Grigsons Vegetable Book
"There are better vegetables than kohlrabi. And worse".

Paris in the spring

The spring has started wet and cool here. Although the weather isn't spring-like, the produce in the markets screams spring. The main reason we come to Paris at this time of the year is to eat white asparagus. These beauties were displayed with a bulb of new garlic.

Other books

Les Éditions de l'Épure specialize in small format books. They have produced over 250 titles that range from Apricots to Sardines by way of Camembert and Pot-au-feu leftovers. These books are all beautifully crafted, with specially chosen papers, textured covers with French flaps and hand stitched with linen thread. And, in very French style, their pages must be cut before you can read them.

Smiling in the Supermarket

So I was a little rough on Parisian old ladies in my last post. Perhaps they read my blog because lo, and behold when went in the supermarket it was full of them, all smiles and no shoving.

Joys of Paris

It's fabulous here in Paris, but it can also be very frustrating. Today for example there is a strike, pretty standard practice in this country and we've adjusted to them. However, it is the egocentric nature of many Parisians that really makes us crazy. I recently tweeted that my husband, not a small man, was pushed out of the way when boarding a bus. There is no orderly queuing like London, just a free for all that resembles a rugby scrum when the bus finally arrives. And the victors? Usually the little old ladies.

Tasty Odd Bits

You'd think I'd eaten enough odd bits over the last couple of years while working on my book Odd Bits: How to Cook the Rest of the Animal, but when my husband suggested we go to Le Ribouldingue for dinner I said yes straight away. How could I not return to the restaurant that introduced me to cow's udder and testicles?

Paris à l'indien

Well I'm guessing you weren't expecting a mango photo from Paris. We've been here over a week and haven't stopped running, the joy of being property owners. No matter how tiny the space there is always something to be fixed, repaired or replaced.

Paris Dreaming

Well Odd Bits is off to the printer and I'm now packing and dreaming of Paris. The good news is that the weather there is warm and sunny so I'll be happy to leave cold, wet, windy Toronto.

Tart Tatin part 2

Just a quick post to say that tart tatin doesn't have to be restricted to apples - in the summer I make it with apricots but I make a caramel first, then add the apricots, the heat of the oven is enough to cook them with the pastry. Cooked apricots are slightly sour which balances the caramel brilliantly. Another favourite is quince.

I made this quince tart tatin in Paris last October. with the quinces from Franck and Lise's garden. They took for ever to soften and the smarter method would be to poach them first, then add them to the caramel like the apricots. But this tart had the most fabulous flavour from the long slow cooking and the quinces imbued the caramel with their powerful perfume, plus  the colour was fabulous.