The classics
March 16, 2011 § 1 Comment
Valencia Street has this strange entrepreneurial culture where people sit in coffee shops for the entire workday and cultivate start-up business plans, occasionally chat with the people sitting next to them, and generally zone in on the social media pulled up on their Mac Books. I recently became one of these people. We drink fair trade coffee in the form of cappuccinos with pretty leaf designs in the foam and occasionally munch on empanadas from a start-up lady in the Mission or granola parfaits with yogurt from Strauss Creamery.
Nevermind. We relocated down the street, to one of the few casual hippie café spots on Valencia left over from before the hipster wave. The majority of the baked goods — standbys like frosted red velvet cake, peanut butter cookies and rice krispie squares — are in plastic wrap or on plastic cake plates and the lunch options are sandwiches and bagels. You know, like a normal café without the apple-bacon donuts. We have a whole booth to ourselves in the back, and honestly, it’s working out a lot better than the cafés that came before it. We remain, however, very open to café suggestions as we embark on this working café tour of San Francisco, so bring them on. Wait, nevermind, we switched again.
Now I’m sitting at the corner of 22nd and Bartlett under an awning and the heater while it sprinkles outside, on a couch with cigarette burns. A homeless man walks by and shoves a partially-destructed paper cup at us, and weed changes hands, and the guy sitting next to me is rolling as I type and a couple of tables down, two guys are playing chess and another is being interviewed and recorded as he sings about happy hours while strumming on an acoustic guitar. I had a burnt soy latte (the choices were soy or whole milk) and a huge chocolate chip cookie that the friendly guy behind the counter (but actually often hanging out in front of the shop smoking) dug out of the cookie jar with his bare hand. Um sorry, that sounds gross but it’s actually beginning to feel like home, except that my eyes are starting to water from all of the smoke. I kind of feel like the tool with the Mac Book here.
So I guess now’s the time to catch up on what you’ve been missing, A while ago, think way back to February 14th, my dad gave me a hand-held torch and a canister of butane fuel for Valentine’s Day. I’ve only been asking for one for a couple of Christmases and birthdays and no one ever seemed to believe that that was what I really wanted above anything. I mean, nothing can really beat the charm of being able to set fire to your baked goods on a daily basis in the comfort of your own kitchen.
The first thing I made was vanilla crème brûlée. The standard crème brûlée. The best crème brûlée. I would never prefer any other flavor. Sometimes the classics really are the best. These required very little time to make — just a while to set up in the fridge — and turned out smooth, creamy, and decadent without being heavy, the lightest custard I’ve ever tasted. And dusted with sugar, with a blast of heat from the new torch, it has a burnt caramel top coating that cracks like a windowpane when you take a spoon to it.
Definition of hipster
February 5, 2011 § 1 Comment
I can’t say my weekends normally include spending much time in the Tenderloin. That could be because, sitting in a café today, we were all distracted by the guy standing across the street in spandex shorts jacking off, but really that’s not what I’m here to post about. Today I went on the Tenderloin Coffee Crawl and was a “coffee tourist” for an hour or two. Wow, it’s exhausting work. My morning routine of boiling water and letting it seep in the French Press while I shower for approximately five minutes after my run seemed, well, embarrassing when confronted with the masses of San Francisco hipsters who own Chemex filters and use them to extract just the full body of coffee and who can talk for ages about letting coffee oils seep through and shine but not over extracting the grounds. Yes, it’s hard to compete, especially when there are a multitude of cafes who will do it for you.
But I did learn a thing or two about coffee on the crawl, which I think was the point for the non-coffee fanatics. And I mean, you really would have to be a fanatic, because I’m saying they are fanatics and I’m one of those annoying people to dine with who tops-out every meal with an espresso. First, we stopped at Farm: Table, the official organizer of the tour and arguably the first neighborhood small roasters shop in the area. As the brewing demonstration wouldn’t start for another twenty minutes, we enjoyed a free espresso and remarked that while it was refreshing to see sweet treats in the small sizes (the small sticky buns were especially adorable yet priced at $3.50), the prices didn’t seem to have dropped at all. Then we headed over to Little Bird, where De La Paz and Ritual Roasters were hosting a coffee tasting. I tried a little before getting distracted by the amusing hipster who walked down the line, aggressively slurping spoons of coffee and spitting them back into the cup one after another after another.
We might have skipped one or two stops along the way, but we ended the crawl at Hooker’s Sweet Treats, which was holding a 4-way coffee demonstration i.e. demonstrating how to brew Kenyan Kii coffee beans in four different ways — a ground through a B60 filter, a finer ground shaken over ice, a Chemex-filtered brew using a coarser ground to avoid clumping and finally, seeped in a French Press for three minutes. According to the Sightglass Coffee Roasters presenters, the bean in question really shines through the most through the third preparation process. After each demonstration, we passed the coffee around and filled our little espresso cups for tasting.
Though the crawl itself could have used a bit more organization and guidance from one place to the next (perhaps they could take cues from the Dublin Pub Crawl), I’d say it was a fun way to spend a Saturday afternoon, off the beaten track in my own city.
One whole pound of chocolate
February 4, 2011 § Leave a comment
I’m back on the 9-5 schedule. I just wrapped up my first week at my new work, which is hidden in a tiny, sunny enclave park just off of the Embarcadero. At noon, the little park is alive with workers on their lunch break, the tiny, European-like cafes in the area swarming with people and the play structures hosting the occasional child enjoying a sunny weekday afternoon. Across the street, a little blue-fronted French restaurant serves $2.50 cappuccinos, which we take to go in china mugs (because we are an environmentally sustainable office), and makes rich, addicting dark chocolate truffles in house. Um, can you say dream-like office location? It doesn’t hurt either that there have been free samples of Tell Tale Preserve Co. caramels on my desk these past few days.
But proof that I’m not entirely a grown-up yet, I still haven’t adjusted to having to run at 6:30 a.m. in order to get to work on time. Seriously, I don’t know how people do it. But since I’ve decided I’m gearing up for a marathon — I’m looking at Vancouver May 1 if anyone has any input — that’s the way it’s going to have to be. Yesterday morning I discovered that firemen dispatched to put out the fire that burned an apartment building in the Castro take a break to catcall a girl running down the street. Today, I saw the sunrise over the Bayview. Who knows what I’ll see tomorrow. Oh wait, tomorrow’s Saturday. Happy weekend.
Yesterday evening, I took these cookies into Italian class with me. I think they were orgasmic. These are probably the first cookies I ever made entirely on my own. I took them to a swim meet when I was about thirteen, heavily coated in icing, because, well, I was thirteen and didn’t appreciate dense, subtly sweet, doubly incredibly dark and rich chocolate cookies yet. I mean, there is an entire pound of dark chocolate in these. And if you’re looking for a way to tell that these cookies are dated, the recipe is from a 1999 issue of the now-dead Gourmet 😦
And guess what I said when I presented them yesterday? Ho fatto dei biscotti chocolati per la classe. What, did you think my Italian was good enough to say something more complicated than that?
P.S. Biscotti in Italian actually means cookies not…uh…biscotti.
Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies
Adapted from Gourmet Magazine
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt (I used fleur de sel)
1 pound fine-quality bittersweet chocolate (I used 74%)
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter
1/2 cup sugar
3 large eggs
Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
Combine the flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt in a mixing bowl. Coarsely chop chocolate. In a saucepan or double boiler, melt butter and three-fouths chocolate, stirring until smooth.
Remove chocolate mixture from heat and stir in sugar. Stir in eggs one at a time until combined well and stir in flour mixture until just combined. Chill dough, covered, at least 10 minutes and up to 1 hour.
Drop rounded tablespoons of dough about 1 1/2 inches apart onto baking sheet and stud each cookie with a few pieces of remaining chocolate. Bake 10 minutes, or until just set. Cool cookies on sheet on rack 5 minutes and transfer with a spatula to rack to cool completely.
Top with icing sugar, icing or melted white chocolate, my decoration of choice!
Foreign purchases; home adventures
January 27, 2011 § Leave a comment
You could say in the past four months, I have been in some of the most beautiful cities in the world, but I would say I have just returned to the most beautiful city in the world. There is really nothing that I can compare to running the sand dunes of Ocean Beach, up the hill past the Cliffhouse and through the trails along the edge of the cliff, down through the Marina past the Golden Gate Bridge, along the reconstructed native plant life of Crissy Fields, then letting the dirt trails dump you down in the heart of Fisherman’s Wharf. Pier 39 quickly gives way to the Embarcadero, which, if you follow the water all the way down past the ballpark and cross the water, will take you right back to the heart of the Mission and home. All this before 9 a.m. when the sky above the waterline is still a pink haze and the sun is just beginning to peak out from above Marin Headlands, streaming in over the bridge. There’s been barely a whisp of fog since I have been home in the foggy city and I can’t say I’m complaining. The air smells like weed, the homeless beckon from street corners, and frequent coffee stops take hours since every barista seems to work at a snail’s pace. Is it safe to say I find that all very comforting?
But meanwhile at home, I am delving into the treasures I have brought back in the forms of special local ingredients, commemorative menus and perhaps 4 months of every single food magazine I could get my hands on for those long hours at the airport. Just yesterday, my room was a scattered mess of torn-out recipes, bags of fleur de sel and assorted regional candies, notebooks (which I collect at an alarming rate) and then there was all my clothing, which anyone who knows me also knows I collect at an alarming rate. One of the many things I found absolutely necessary to bring back was a bag of pink pralines from Lyon.
Over the course of my weekend in Lyon I tasted various baked goods made from these highly-sugary, bright pink candies which enclose a tiny almond inside. I found them too sweet to eat on their own but loved them when baked up into buttery brioche, fruit and nut packed croquants (much like a biscotti) and ooey-gooey tarts. When I came home, I resolved to recreate my favorite — the croquant. I made them a little different than the ones I bought in Lyon, mainly because I had saved this recipe for a long time and I trust French food bloggers. I baked these up quite a bit longer so they lost the chew and became more of a dunking cookie (another habit I picked up in Europe — hey it’s not smoking right?)
And yes, I’m baking in French because I was walking to the metro station with a guy who works at the Swiss Embassy and felt my French getting a bit shaky, even though my Italian class likes to imitate my French accent because they think it sounds sophisticated.
Croquants aux pralines
Makes 20-30 croquants
250 g flour
100 g sugar
1 pinch salt
2 eggs + 1 oeuf beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Vanilla sugar for rolling
3 spoons pink pralines
Combine the flour, sugar and salt in a large mixing bowl. Add the two eggs and vanilla. Then add the pralines. Divide the dough into two pieces and shape them into long logs. Brush logs with beaten egg and roll in vanilla sugar.
Bake logs at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes. Using a serrated knife, cut the log in slices about 1 cm thick. Lie slices flat ona baking sheet and let dry in the oven for another 15 minutes, oven turned off.
The Fishmongers’ Company, London
January 18, 2011 § 3 Comments
A couple of days ago, I had the occasion to go on a quick, private tour of the Fishmongers’ Company, one of the Twelve Great Livery Companies of the City of London. The Hall, built in 1837 after a relocation from down the river, sits on the edge of the Thames, bordering the London Bridge. At its origins one of the original trade guilds of London, dating back about 700 years, the Company once controlled the entirety of the city’s fish trade, from who could sell fish to at which markets fish could be sold. Despite losing their monopoly on the fish trade in the fifteenth century, the Fishmongers’ Company still functions as an exclusive club of members — not much unlike the original “members” of the fish trade — and works to ensure the quality of fish that reaches the city’s market. For instance, the Company is responsible for carrying out proceedings against the sale of bad fish under the 1955 Food and Drugs Act and prosecutes offenders of the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries Acts while holding other sanctuary powers relating to sustainable fishing and food hygiene regulations.
The walls of the Hall are lined with the coats of arms of the Company’s past Prime Warrens (Chairmen). Most come from families with their own coat of arms but the occasional Chairman appointed without such will have one made for the occasion. The top level boasts a series of dining and sitting rooms, tastefully decorated in early Victorian style with later Regency tones, with delicate gilding and old paintings displaying open oysters and still lifes of the day’s catch. The Banquet Hall, which can seat up to 220 people, also boasts the famous portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, which has appeared on many postage stamps since Pietro Annigoni painted it in 1956. In the following room hangs the 1752 chandelier made of pure silver, which must be cleaned on a yearly basis. The dining rooms host lunches and dinners, catered by the award-winning Executive Head Chef Stephen Pini. Going downstairs, we find the dagger, with which Lord Mayor Walworth is said to have killed Wat Tyler in 1381, though this has recently been called into question by historians who say that the dagger, which comes in two separate parts, was actually made later.
Formerly located by the busy fish market of Billingsgate Wharf — the market has since moved to New Billingsgate market by Canary Wharf — the Company works with schools, offers scholarships and draws together NGO sustainability campaigns to create a cohesive, neutral plan for the future of fishing. Most recently, the Company has become involved in eel fishing sustainability. But sustainable fishing isn’t the only plan the Company has for a healthier future. A tour of the building comes with a booklet on healthy eating by Stephen Pini on — you guessed it — deep-fried fish and chips. Offering a wide variety of fish, batters, sauces and methods of cutting and frying potatoes, the book gives a fresh take on the traditional pub fare.
Trying out some of the book’s flavor combinations, I chose to make a local halibut battered in cornmeal, Parmesan and chili. I flash seared the halibut in a cast iron skillet to get a crispy exterior then baked the middle of the fish through in the oven. For someone who fears making anything but cookies (and cakes, and pies and…well that could go on forever yeah?), I’d say making dinner is quite an accomplishment.
Also, did you know 2010 was the 150th anniversary of fish and chips? Well it was.
The Copenhague cookie bowl
January 14, 2011 § Leave a comment
Maybe all the traveling made me a bit delusional and I said I was tired of cookies, specifically Christmas cookies. But that’s wrong, I am most definitely not. Even though Christmas was weeks ago, it’s sunny enough here in San Francisco to run in shorts and this recipe didn’t turn out as I was hoping it would. Though in retrospect, I should have known better because the picture posted didn’t really look like the real thing. For your sake, I’ll explain that the real thing are tiny, thumbnail-sized, hard spice cookies that come in cone-shaped bags around Christmastime in Denmark. My lovely host in Copenhagen brought them home from the store one day and set them out in a bowl, alongside snowballs of candy-covered marzipan and sugar-coated almonds, and I probably went through half the cone over the course of the afternoon. And then, I started seeing them everywhere — at holiday parties we were invited to, beside the cash registers at clothing stores…They go by peppernuts in the states (do you say “the states”? apparently it’s something I picked up in England) but their real name is Pebernødder. And maybe it’s a little late for posting a Christmas cookie, but in my defense I had no kitchen around the holidays okay? Okay, I’m pretty upset about that too.
My lack of kitchen and disappointment over this recipe — the cookies spread too much, weren’t hard or sandy enough, and then they stuck to the pan, but that last one was probably my fault — aside, Copenhagen offered up the best array of food that I saw (and ate) during my time in Europe (and that includes Paris, shocking?). We started off really well the first night with dinner at the Vietnamese restaurant Lê Lê nhà hang. My plentiful bowl of mussels came in a light, spicy broth made with chili and coconut milk. Warm but refreshing, it steeled me for the cold Scandinavian darkness (and snowstorm) and the wind that comes in off the coast. At Jorden Rundt, we stopped for lunch on the way to the Kronborg Castle. Looking out at the water, where on a clear day (which it wasn’t) you can see Sweden on the other side, we were served huge sandwiches piled high with smoked salmon, sprouts and honey mustard dressing. The sandwich was about the size on my head and so incredible I probably would have forced it all down, if I hadn’t been so hungover. Then came dinner at Madklubben where I had fish on top of stewed leeks with apple and potato purees.
Danishes have never been my sweet of choice. Perhaps that is because I have always been grossed out by the ultimate continental breakfast item, the cheese Danish. I mean, that glob of pasty white “cheese” stuff in the middle of a sugary pastry is hardly my ideal treat in the morning. But perhaps I learned a thing or two about Danish pastries — which would probably all go by the word “Danish” in the states but, believe it or not, have actual names the way there is a distinction between “croissant” and “pain au chocolat”— from Lagkagehuset, the popular chain bakery in Copenhagen, known for its great breads and cakes. I also enjoyed æbleskiver, which translates literally to apple slices, though they have nothing to do with apples. They are actually little puffy pancakes, served with a dusting of powdered sugar and jams for dipping or smearing.
I also discovered that all ciders are not created equal. In Copenhagen I learned about the existence of pear, apple and cranberry ciders that are about equivalent to drinking one beer. They basically taste like fruit juice, which besides being a little dangerous, is also delicious. So I started ordering cider everywhere I went about Copenhagen only to discover that British cider is a very mildly sweet, sparkling beverage, which is pretty bland, though if I had to put a taste to it, it would be apple.
After four days shuffling along snow-covered streets in heels and enjoying every minute of it, I realized that I would love to see Scandinavia in the summer. Which means I’ll have to make another trip to Europe no?
My darling little peppernuts, I guess you look cute enough. But no recipe today because I am not entirely happy with them. Calling all Danish grandmothers.
My Paris
January 12, 2011 § 3 Comments
My Paris. It doesn’t even feel strange to use the possessive when referring to the city. Ironic though it is that I say this right as I am preparing to leave, I am not leaving with a neatly packed, cohesive New York Times article “Paris in 36 hours.” Indeed, my list of favorites may at first seem random, packed full of tiny places where this little American was once happy, often clustered in quartiers the tourist wouldn’t often happen upon, unless he was the type that could stand being out of sight of the Eiffel Tower for significant periods of time. It doesn’t include many decadent cafes (though Café de Flore was a lovely experience), where one dreams of sipping a chocolat chaud à l’ancienne and eating a croissant on a lazy Sunday morning, reading the paper, whose headlines scream updates on the French grève. Much of the eating centers around 3-course lunchtime meals and snacks snatched from the streets. And the shopping, well that’s another story altogether but needless to say I didn’t spend a lot of time on the Champs d’Elysées.
I’ll start with the food, because that’s the reason people come to Paris, no? I haven’t done a lot of croissant testing so I am afraid I am ill-qualified to recommend the best when it comes to them; Just be sure to get them in the morning, and only a croissant beurre, as a standard croissant is made with margarine and therefore, not as good. However, I have made the crepe rounds here and now get all my crepe Nutella and galette oeuf-jambon-fromage from the vendor with the little orange storefront on the Boulevard Saint Germain (at St. Michel), right next to the Haagen Dazs. You can tell the guy with the unibrow behind the counter a little blond girl from San Francisco sent you. There’s usually a couple of people in line, as they make the crepes on the spot (many places these days seem to pre-cook and re-heat on the skillet) but there are a few seats inside and the prices are right (crepe prices go up by about 5 euro if you order them in a restaurant).
Eric Kayser (8 rue Monge) makes excellent pain viennoise (long, slightly sweet loaves) with nuts, chocolate and dried fruit varieties. The patisserie opened up a small café a couple of storefronts up the hill, where I spilled an entire café crème on one of my first days in Paris trying to sit down at a wobbly table. In contrast, I’ve spent some pleasant mornings on the circle at the bottom of Rue Mouffetard, reading with a coffee and half a baguette spread with butter. Their bread and butter is quite good, and all I can attest to, besides good service, by a pleasant, smiling blond girl, which is in itself, a rare find here. In you’re in the area, Les Caves de Bourgogne across the street is worth the wait for dinner. I had a perfectly cooked fillet of fish served with butter-herbed pasta and a summer rosé when I was there in September. Another good restaurant in the area, and a bit higher end, is L’Agrume, which has a five-course tasting menu (45 euro). When I went, it included a tuna-mango tartare, stewed lentils with truffle shavings, and a poached white nectarine with crème Chantilly served alongside a slice of crusty puff pastry.
There are a couple other good places to eat that I recommend across the river in the 9eme. Tout Autre Chose (13 rue Rodier, M: Cadet) is the restaurant front worked by volunteers which funds a non-profit run by an American woman. They serve a daily set menu (entrée+plat+dessert or any of the two) of simple, in-season cuisine, which may include a brothy soup of only green vegetables, poached salmon on a bed of wild purple rice, and a syrup soaked orange cake for dessert. Coffee during the holiday season comes accompanied by house-made caramels au beurre salé.
Another good restaurant in the area is Cacahuete, where the chef himself came out with an extra bowl of crème Chantilly after my French colleague smothered her face in the first spoonful off of our perfect moelleux au chocolat.
And then in case you ever get sick of French food — which is more possible than you would think — there’s Aux Delices du Liban (3 Rue Estrapade). You’ll find a lot of Lebanese, Thai and North African restaurants scattered around different neighborhoods especially around Place d’Italie, where you’ll find Chinatown, and in the 20eme. When a friend of mine lived in the 20eme, we frequented a bar called Les Deux Marches (M: Alexandre Dumas), where our favorite bartender is there every night but Monday and the last drink of the night is always on the house (presuming you pay for all the others, which we never did). We spent an incredible amount of time in the Saint-Germain-des-Pres area, where you’ll find rue Princesse (M: Mabillon) with the hopping Frog and the Princess, usually bartended by several English guys. On Friday and Saturday nights, the crowds spill into the street between the bars and the people you meet outside can be the start of some very interesting, random nights. I’ve always been curious about the mozzarella sticks at the Frog but our late night eats have always been frites at Café Mabillon, which is supposedly the “place to be seen” though I never would have guessed it at 3 a.m.
All ye faithful Dubliners
January 10, 2011 § Leave a comment
I’m sitting in a hotel lobby in Dublin on the final leg of Eurotrip 2010/2011 with no working phone, a pounding headache and seven hours to go until I get on an overnight ferry to Liverpool. It’s maybe a little lonely, and I’m so tired of travel that I can hardly manage wandering around my favorite city of the whole trip for more than two hours without becoming exhausted. Such is not the glamorous life of the world traveler. The hotel manager just told me I wasn’t allowed to eat my scone while sitting down in the hotel, which I think is a bizarre rule, and, as protest, I will not be purchasing the cappuccino I was thinking about ordering. This hotel is one of the most bizarre places I have ever stayed, a building caught preserving old-school charm without the renovation and management to make it enjoyable. My room had to be inspected the first time I took a shower because apparently, if you don’t properly close the shower door, which doesn’t actually fit the shower wall, the water drips through the floor into the lobby. The fire alarm went off by mistake my first night here, followed by a loud and continuous ringing that woke up everyone in the building.
Sure the Library Bar is charm itself but when someone stands in the way of me eating Guinness bread and butter, I have a major problem. Nevertheless, whenever I tell a local where I’m standing, I automatically gain “posh” status. I automatically become an art history major with ripped tights, sitting in the dimly-lit bar, sipping an espresso and reading La Chute by Camus. Opps, I actually am reading that. The thing about traveling alone is that you instantly become a philosopher, your people-watching becomes more in-depth, often involving more analyzing, more eavesdropping, I am never forced into restaurants and thus end up eating mostly scones and butter. I can take only 10-minutes for my 11 euro ticket at the Guinness Storehouse, because let’s admit it, it’s a Disneyland centered around the famous beer and more than a little tacky. I took one look at the top-floor bar of the window-encased tower with views of the entire city and headed back down the nine flights of stairs.
But despite all my complaints — really I have become very critical as this trip has progressed — and no matter how many museums and old churches I just can’t bring myself to visit anymore, I can picture myself living in Dublin as I could not in any other city I have visited, save Paris. It is rustic, with an eye to preserving Irish tradition and history — not European, World War II history — and while it is not the postcard-perfect Vienna or the bustling metropolis London, its rougher edges seem comfortably livable. It seems fitting that I would end here, after trekking across thirteen cities, when the edges of my journals are worn and torn and losing color and all my photos seem to blur together into outlines of rooftop views and butter. When I’m watching the sunset at 4 p.m. instead of 8 and I’m somehow still smiling when random people approach me on the street, even though Paris has taught me better than that. It’s funny that in a city whose center has been overrun by foreign chains, the Irish character still dominates one’s world view, that this country, which has failed in so many nationalism movements and rebellions against the British, really restores your faith that national identity still has a place in a world that is becoming more and more globalized.
I haven’t felt this comfortable with strangers in a long time. Because, and this feels funny saying as my family is British, if the Irish kept fighting, then so can I.
Choux Chantilly
December 22, 2010 § Leave a comment
The metal gates of the passage du Grand Cerf clang open on a late Sunday morning to reveal a red carpeted passageway, off of which we find the apartment which will host our first, and likely only, cooking class in Paris. I should start by saying that baking is something I usually like doing alone, or with my family, or one friend. Several of my best friends can attest to times we have excitedly decided to make gingerbread houses for example, only to have me take over the whole project because I wanted it to look “just so.” Or times when I have refused to hand over the wooden spoon to my little brother because I like being the one mixing for that moment when the cookie dough begins to come together and starts looking like real dough.
I like sitting in front of the oven, peering into the little window, with the oven light on, watching cakes rise, watching the tops of soufflés turn golden brown, watching the edges of cookies crisp in the seconds before you take them out of the oven. I could do this for the entire hour it takes for the bread to finish baking. Or for the fifteen minutes in takes for these little choux pastries to rise and the pastry to puff around little balls of air, making perfect little capsules in which to pipe Chantilly cream or pastry cream, perfumed with vanilla bean and folded with some extra butter (you know for that glossy finish, and because, let’s admit it, it’s France, and a little extra butter goes into everything French).
So I’m afraid I spent much of this Sunday afternoon sitting on the floor in front of the oven window watching the first batch of choux puffs fail miserably as they turned into flat, eggy patties, and then smiling excitedly as the second batch puffed up brilliantly into sugar-crusted balls of hot air. And then I spent the second half of Sunday licking pastry cream off my fingertips, abandoning any semblance of dignified consumption.
Bonne journée et au revoir
December 16, 2010 § 3 Comments
The last time she came to visit, my best friend asked me if I believed Paris was the « city of love, » as people often say. I think I replied to the negative, laughable as it was that this city full of aggressive French men coming at you in every direction could ever hold the keys to my heart. Afterall, this is a city where it is hard to walk out of a restaurant without a waiter’s number, where we have bartenders who have never charged us and take us out to questionable places after they close up the bar. A boring Tuesday night might include bringing home two red roses, my crepe vendor keeps requesting my email so that I can send pictures from America but I keep going back because I swear they’re the best crepes in town. I have now finally learned to avoid eye contact after being followed through several metro changes. One of my very first days here I was shoved into a wall in broad daylight on a busy sidewalk by a guy who wanted to kiss my face, you can hardly walk down the street without having to say, “Désolée, je n’ai pas de numéro de téléphone.” I have sat in smoky bars at night, wishing only for 5:30 to come so the metro would start running again and I could escape the griminess of men sitting uncomfortably close to me.
Where is this, you may ask, surely this is not the beautiful, classy, romantic Paris they show you in the movies. No, this is the Paris of real-life nights that end at 7 a.m., nights of pushing through crowds, dancing to house music that seems to shake your insides, the Paris that hardens you, makes people say “la vie à Paris, c’est dure non?” and then the Paris that, after a long fight, finally lets you breathe, lets your soul take that raspy first breath after hours spent in the smoke and the sweat, pressed against leather jackets and legs propped up in 4-in stilettos. Because it is Paris that has taken my heart afterall, not one of the “friendlier” French cities. And after three months here, when I went out for a Thanksgiving dinner with some Americans here, and the waiter actually thought I was French, I swore I never wanted to leave this country. This country where the espresso shot is not in fact taken as a shot to keep you awake while studying, but actually savored as a way to end a pleasurable meal, and where hazelnut is the only natural accompaniment to milk chocolate. Where strange noises like “Bah” seem to have been adopted into the language as if they were actual words, where one would never dream of being discreet about the giving of extremely critical once-overs on the street, where hugs are replaced by two kisses, even amongst people who have just met.
But despite its eccentricities and its failures — the lack of taxis being one of my main concerns — Paris allowed me to grow in a way no other city has. Being for the first time wholly and completely alone in a new city has forced me to have lunch with people I would never have spoken to in the states and who have ended up surprising me for the better. It has forced me to accept that things are usually — and especially in France — not going to go my way and when it comes down to it, life is about just letting yourself go where you know you want to go and forgetting the rest. For me, it has been about learning certain neighborhoods like the back of my hand so that I only need myself to get out of situations. And for all the times we have stood on street corners waiting for buses and taxis that never came, there have also been times when walking from the 16eme to the 5eme meant seeing the sunrise, times when a smile could get you a brioche from the local boulanger. And when, even though you ditched out on the 850 euro table he bought you at the club, he offers you money for the cab ride home and still wishes you a “bon voyage” the next week, you know you are leaving a lot of good people — and very good-hearted city — behind. And so Paris, even though you may sometimes come off as cold and standoffish, and even though I was sometimes scared and put off and felt like running away, je t’adore. Though I am still struggling to accept that “J’adore” means “I like” and not “I adore.” So when I say je t’adore, I really mean I adore you.
The end.
Wow that’s sad isn’t it.
Soufflé Days 