two. ate.

I think turkey is kind of boring. So two of the last three years, we have roasted a duck. With stuffing. And potatoes. And vegetables. And pie. Ok, we don't roast the pie....er... Our menu this year:

- Foie Gras Mousse with Cognac, Toast Points and Cornichons
- Our "Typical" French Frissee Salad with Lardon, Hand-made Crouton and Dijon Vinaigrette
- Roasted Duck with Sausage-Apple-Prune-Chestnut stuffing
- Roasted "Regular" and "Sweet" Potatoes
- Haricot Vert
- "Chess" Tart

Brief notes:
- the foie was left over from Janet's birthday dinner - there wasn't enough to make a pate so cognac and cream to the rescue
- the sausage was a Kentucky-style that I made back in June - just pork, pork fat, sage, salt and pepper
- I LOVE prunes so they HAD to go into the stuffing
- I had not intended to have a starch but roasted potatoes in duck fat are just too good not to do.
- a Chess pie is one of several pies from the 1700's that are made with things that you have "on-hand", like butter, eggs and sugar - I just baked it in a tart shell.

Posted by wm. christman at 11:31 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I always look forward to the night before Thanksgiving. Typically around this time of year, crab season starts. And so it did but there was some dispute among the crab fishermen and lots of the briny beasts were being held up from market...and the prices were, well, um...a bit high. But, no matter. The feed must go on.

We generally just hunker down with two whole crab, a loaf of crusty French bread, a salad and a bottle of wine from our cellar (right...the hall closet if you must know...). This year I got all inspired by our trip to Paris and made a charcuterie-based lentil salad with vinaigrette so we had that as well.... We eat until we have made a right mess of our living room then pass out for the evening. Most fun.

A few things to note: I *always* clean and "crack" my own crab that way I can save the crab "butter" (or "miso") for stirring into soups or adding to crabcakes. I don't really crack the legs as the guys at the market do (with a mallet, usually crushing shell INTO the meat...blah) but I make long-ish cuts in the shells. It works well and I don't get fragged. I (most) always make aioli. Garlic, oil and egg yolk for crab...a match made in heaven.

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On the Thursday before we returned from Paris, we discovered a "roving" market just 1/2 block from our apartment. There are several of these markets that pop up in different areas of the city usually every week for a few hours on a specific day. Stalls of everything you could want: fresh fish, meat, vegetables...rotisserie *everything* (chicken, andouilette sausage...), spices...damn, a true "Farmer's" market...

Who would have thought that lardon (bacon) in baguette could elicit such a reaction...
I finally spotted baguette with lardon and immediately fished out enough change to buy one...there was no waiting to eat. Well, except to point and gasp at Russell and Meriko until they followed suit and bought one (like I had to cajole them...heh). Oh my, lardon and bread together at last!

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Three blocks away from our apartment in Paris was a street called Rue de Martyrs. It was four short blocks of food heaven. Even though we were in Paris for the food (mostly) and that meant finding great places to eat (mostly), we could have easily eaten IN every single night because of Rue de Martyrs.

The stunningly good Charcuterie Lyon...
The Charcuterie Lyon was THE most amazing place. Pates (8-9 of them at least, always), rillettes, quiche (large, thick, amazing), sausage, lentil salad (to die for) and kind of other charcuterie delights. We were constant customers for those 9 days. Patisserie Seurre was actually the first shop Meriko and I walked into. It caught our eye (amid our slack-jawed amazement at the street's first two blocks of shops...) and we bee-lined most dangerously across the street. Cannelle (soft, dense caramel cakes) and macaron (not macaroon, but like two crisp halves of light cookie with a soft, rich, moist filling-chocolate, of course!) were the order of the moment. We went here several times as well.

Like zombies we walked, lured by the cannelle and the macaron...
Follow the extended link below for a few more photos...

Some other shops on Rue de Martyrs:

Many (good!) butcher shops here...lots of cuts you don't ordinarily see in the US.

Just one of several fish markets on this street - I liked the blue store front...

Friendly staff, good wine, nice whiskies...

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We both love (LOVE!) natto. Natto is fermented soybeans...it's primarily Japanese (I think) and it's fragrant, sticky (REALLY sticky) and goes well with a bowl of hot rice, on toast, or rolled up in a maki sushi roll (natto-maki) but we like it best mixed with spaghetti. Lots of people think natto is disgusting, rotten food...ah, those who don't know....our recipe for natto spaghetti is here in the extended entry...

NATTO SPAGHETTI ("natto-spa")
********
Ingredients:
- spaghetti
- natto (one pack per person)
- two green onions (I have also substituted very thinly sliced white onion in place of green onion. It gives a slightly stronger flavor.)
- canned tuna (in oil), broken apart into small pieces
- 1-2 TBSP soy sauce
- karashi (japanese mustard) to taste
- canned tuna oil (from tuna can above)
- nori seaweed
- 1/4-1/2 stick butter at room temp (optional)

********
How:
0. Toast nori over flame (if you've got it). Cut into small strips. Or just find some small strips of nori and use those.
1. Boil water for spaghetti.
2. Thinly slice green onion.
3. Open and drain tuna, reserving oil.
4. Scrape out natto into a mixing bowl. Mix natto w/ chopsticks to avoid crushing beans. I usually mix it about 40-50 turns/times...maybe more. Mix until it becomes slightly frothy, being gentle to not mush the beans...don't worry, it'll get frothy REALLY quickly.
5. Squeeze out tsuyu (sauce) and mustard packet(s) into natto. Mix some more.
6. Add onions, 1/2 of tuna, 1 TBSP soy sauce and continue mixing natto. It will get less sticky once you add these things.
7. Taste and add tuna oil, additional soy sauce, karashi to taste if you want. Basically, season to taste.
8. Salt boiling water and cook spaghetti.
9. When spaghetti is done, heat and dry a bowl to toss spaghetti in...
10. Put half of butter in bowl followed by cooked (hot) spaghetti and the other half of butter and toss.

Or omit butter and go to step 11.

11. Pour the natto mixture onto the spaghetti and continue to toss until distributed in spaghetti.
12. Taste and adjust soy sauce if you want then plate.
13. Put shredded nori on top of spaghetti.
14. Eat!

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Janet and I spent the day out at the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs-Elysees plus set off to finish up some last minute shopping. We go home tomorrow and we've got one last night to celebrate.

Walkies on the Champs...wit' da baguette sandwich snack-stylee

Our constant companion in the form of a food guide book, Patricia Wells' Food Lover's Guide to Paris, had been a real asset to finding good food in Paris. It's hard to find but by all means try and get a copy especially if you're going to Paris. Meriko and I had been scanning the book all week to find THE restaurrant for our goodbye dinner. We finally decided on a handful of places and ended up making a reservation for Au Trou Gascon, a small place in the 14th. We all dressed for the occasion and since we had a bit of a trek, we bundled up for the Metro ride and subsequent walk.

From the outside, Au Trou Gascon just looks like a fairly generic restaurant. Once inside though, it was all white linen and black-clad, tuxedoed waiters. White blinds on the windows let you know that there WAS an outside out there but just barely. We were in a different world aesthetically and we were about to be in one culinarily.

A small barrage of waiters attended to our every need - all friendly, some speaking English when we needed it...true pros: we felt very welcome. Aperitifs for Janet and Meriko: champagne aux pruneaux. Of the delights on the menu, we zeroed in on starters and mains and left dessert for "after".

Foamed foie...yum.
As was a constant at most of the restaurants we went to, foie gras took a part in any starters, and Au Trou Gascon had their versions. And as a constant to our meals, foie gras was ordered. We also had Notre Vieux 'Jambon tranche devant vous (Gascony old cured ham cut from the bone). The foie gras arrived with a light foam surrounding it - it looked and tasted delicious. The jambon was semi-dry, lightly salted, very nutty...very well balanced.

Beautiful, tasty ham...

For mains (and for me), it was ALL about the cassoulet. I vowed to have both steak frites (see entry below) and cassoulet before leaving Paris. And part of what led us to Au Trou Gascon was their cassoulet. Meriko and I ordered cassoulet (Le Cassoulet "Trou Gascon" aux Harcots de Mais), Janet had the monkfish with white beans, bacon and chanterelles (Pave de Lotte, Roti, Haricot de Mais aux Lardons, Etuvee de Girolles), and Russell had a rabbit (Lapin...I somehow lost the name...sorry) entree which was like a large slice of sausage made from various parts of the rabbit - kind of a reconstruction of the rabbit in a round shape. With the help of the sommelier, we chose a 1999 Saint Veran Terroirs de Davaye White Bordeaux.

Pretty, tender, monkfish...
Janet's monkfish was a compact chunk of meat surrounded by the beans and chanterelles and a "foamed" sauce. The meat was tender but dense as monkfish should be and was cooked (in Janet's words) "perfectly". Russell's rabbit was very exotic tasting ("there's some rich, liver-y bits in there") and looked like a slice of 5" diameter sausage sauced with a glossy brown reduction.

In a very few minutes, this cassoulet will magically disappear!
The cassoulet...oh, man...the cassoulet. A shallow pan of fat white beans, lamb shoulder, house-made sausage and duck confit in a stew sauce which was hearty, savory, rich and warming and was everything I expected. Even the presentation was intriguing: the duck was covered in a light coating of parsley and bread crumbs which was lightly broiled so it was vividly green...a small duck leg mountain with spring grass glades amidst a valley of beans and meat. Truly amazing.

Dessert was a challenge. Everyone was stuffed but we needed something sweet to complete the meal. We chose one dessert to share and the waiter knew right away what we wanted but what we got was totally unexpected.

Being treated as special guests: our strudel and toffee glace x 4...
We chose a Tourtiere Chaude, Glace Caramel Sale (Warm Gascony "Strudel" with Salted Toffee Ice Cream) and four forks. Five minutes later, four plates arrived each with a small slice of the strudel and small dollop of the toffee ice cream. We each had our own and was just enough. I think we were all blown away by the thought put into the concept of "sharing" a dessert.

The answer to the question "Can you possibly eat any more dessert?" is "Uh...sure, you got an extra stomach?"
And then it happened: the pastry plate to go with the coffee. Six different cookies and cakes. And then it happened AGAIN: the chocolate plate to go with the coffee and/or after dinner drink. A small army of fine chocolate delights. To say we were well beyond the limits of "full" would be an understatement but the entire experience met and surpassed our expectations. Everything from start-to-finish was top shelf - a fine way to end our Paris adventure.

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Our new-found buddy Claude (of L'Alsaco, see entry below or in the archives) recommended HIS favorite restaurants to us when we ate in his. He gave us a handful of business cards and gave some pretty specific descriptions of each one ("this one: the food is expensive but the wine is not"...and so on...). We were starting to get a bit worn out (and Russell and I were still a bit ill) and chose something close to the apartment.

Tonight is the first night of Nouveau Beaujolais and all of the restaurants are celebrating. At Chez Cusimir, the party is just getting started. Chez Cusimir is exactly what we've been looking for in a neighbourhood restaurant or at least it fits "bistro" pretty well. Small, very homey, chalkboard menus, lively clientele and waitstaff...ahh. We have had a few "interesting" experiences in local (as opposed to "tourist") restaurants all involving the locals looking askance at four food lovers chattering away in English, probably louder than anyone else in the restaurant. Cusimir was a totally different experience: everyone chattering away in their native languages, no strange looks, all food-wine-food-wine...the most whole-fun restaurant experience we've had so far.

Our menu included starters, mains and dessert - 2-4 in each category all written on a smallish chalkboard propped up on a chair near our table. As with several meals on this trip, Janet and Russell concurred on dishes as did Meriko and I. They ordered the foie gras terrine; Meriko and I ordered the soupe des legumes. The foie was rich, smooth, as satisfiying as all of the ones we've had so far. The soup was a cumin-laced, pea puree which was medium thin and huge in flavor. We had a big tureen of it so everyone had some. Delicious. Naturally, we had two bottles of 2005 Scea du Chateau Cambon Beaujolais Nouveau.

For mains, we followed our spouse-food-swap suit: Janet and Russell opted for Saute de Biche (venison) with ratatoule, Meriko and I, the Coquilles St. Jacques (scallops), Tartare de Tomates au Pistou with Puree de Celri.
Rich biche...
The venison was a rich stew of dense deer meat with a reduced sauce: very, very hearty. Jan eschewed the ratatoule due to her experience in Amsterdam but it was decent but nothing special. The scallops were served broiled in their shells with a simple tomato and pesto sauce. A little pot of celery root puree sat in the center of the plate and was an excellent counterpoint to the tangy scallops.

Coquilles St. Jacques and a pot of celeri puree...

Dessert was a Pain Perdue with apples and a caramel sauce. Pain Perdue is what we call French Toast and this one was beautifully cooked (one had to order this in advance...with the initial dinner order). From experience, soaking then slowly pan saute'ing bread is a bit of a trick as you want to preserve the creamy soaked bread inside but crisp the outside just enough to give it tooth. This one was definitely done "right". The apples and sauce made the dish complete.

A few coffees and calvados (calvados'es?) later...we trudged off into the 32° night air sated, happy to have finally appproached the kick-ass French restaurant experience.

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When faced with a menu listing over 300 different kinds of teas (hell, there may have been even more) with an accompanying booklet describing those teas, the only thing one could do WAS go out for some air. Mariage Freres is famous for their selection, blends and tea room.

We opted for a pot of Earl Grey and a Ceylon what I'd be hard pressed to remember and a largish blini and a ginormous plate of smoked salmon. Really, we expected a lot less and a lot less would have been better as lox overload quickly set in. The blini, however, was pretty fantastic, split in half lengthwise with some creme fraiche and a small dab of caviar. The tea? It was pretty fantastic and each pot held lots of it. The tea definitely was the winner here.

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Nothing like starting the morning by traipsing through a kilometer of skulls and bones in the recesses of underground Paris. No, really. Something straight outta the Goth tour guide "must-do" list, the Catacombs allowed us to indulge in feeling spookier-than-thou or just kind of creeped-out. After a while the realization that there are more "people" down here than all who currently live in Paris left us kind of numb and not at all hungry. OK, it could have been the bakery goods we took with us "just in case" that we happily munched before we entered the empire of the dead.

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It's 8 pm and it's time to get our steak frites on! Down the street to La Mauzac, table for four, menus....hey! Wait a minute. No onglet. No frites. Lots of foie gras. (OK, that last part isn't so bad....) But still....I want my dish, dammit.

After debating whether we should ask for it or not (bad idea usually since there's a reason a restaurant *has* a menu), we (well, Meriko drew the short lots as the asker) decided to ask. Bad idea. Really bad idea. The man who owned the place said that he cooks his food with what is fresh and in season and that the menu was what they had. I'm not sure he was offended (turns out he wasn't - just confused why we asked) but at least two of us felt like we had just insulted the entire nation of France and maybe the hilly parts of Belgium.

We got over our bad selves and proceeded to wreck another menu. The foie gras menu was pretty amazing and an "asiette" (plate) for selected foie pates was ordered along with some other starters. Janet and Russell opted for the duck confit; Meriko and I, the coate du beouf for two, done "blue" (more on that in a minute). Oh and a bottle (maybe two) of a 2004 Alaina Julien Guillot Bourgogne.

The foie selections were stunningly good with the an ultra dense pate with a slightly blackened crust being best. One was served with a bit of fig confiture. Wow. On to the mains...

Duck with pineapple...
The duck was served with pineapple and sated the meat-and-fruit-marriage cravings of Janet and Russell. Meriko and I were all about the MEAT. A large, thick slice of what we speculated as ribeye arrived, fully raw in the middle (that's "blue" or "bleue") but crispy on the outside. Roasted potatoes made their way to the table as well...meat, potatoes, red wine. Oooh, this was one flavorful piece of beef. Caloric sanity in the form of a small salad of frisee with vineagrette also arrived which provided relief.

Meat: bleue...

We lingered over dessert and after dinner drinks and the staff was real nice to us...we even were invited back for the first day of the Nouveau Beaujolais season (tomorrow). Just show up at around 8 and we'll get you in to enjoy another nice meal...just don't ask for steak frites!

Posted by wm. christman at 11:03 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

One of the reasons we came to Paris was to get a classic Steak Frites (grilled steak and "French" fries). So far we had seen not one place with, nor one plate of it. However, we had heard about this place called La Mauzac which apparently has grilled onglet and frites. At 6 pm and colder than cold from standing at the Eiffel Tower, we headed off.

At the door around 6:30p, we inquired about a seat for four. Now, regular restaurants in Paris open late and start serving at 8 pm - brasseries (neighbourhood bars) and some bistros are open "non-stop" which usually means somewhere between 12 and 24 hours... So we bit at the 8 pm slot then searched around for something to do for 90 minutes.

The L'oree du Parc brasserie on the corner looked inviting and had a window table for four. Wine, coffee and whisky began to arrive and we sat and continued to document the trip, entertain the owner's dog (man, I have seen a dog in every brassierie here....it's seems that it's part of the deal...), and generally get warm. We debated ordering rillette (long, slow cooked pork mixed with pork fat and served cold to spread on bread) until hunger would not let us rest. I know that this kind of thing makes some people squeamish or screw their face up into a "oh my, that is SO unhealthy..." look but hey, this is food of history because when one didn't have heat or fire 24/7 or a refrigerator one did their best to preserve their food - this is just one of those ways. If you get a chance, (or if you can get over your fear) you should leap, not jump, at the chance to eat rillette.

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Musée d'Orsay is a fine museum with a real decent cafe. Before we trotted to the Eiffel Tower (pretty amazing in it's own right), we tucked into the Cafe's fare. You'd think that a museum's cafe would either be super-high-priced or super-low-quality because after all you are dealing with lots of tourists but no, this was nice.

We had been living on meat, duck fat, bread and chocolate for several days so it was nice to get some green leafy vegetables in us. Salads seemed to be their strong suit so who were we to argue. A nice mixed green with anchovies, egg, crouton and random veggies tossed in a basic dressing. Sitting and noshing under the gigantic clock that faces the outside world. Lots of light, nice food, quiet banter...

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Russell was starting to feel worse than in the morning, so he and Meriko headed back to the apartment but Meriko was going to meet us at the Rue De Martyrs (the local market street) so we could pick up the last ingredients for our second home-cooked meal in Paris: veal saute (with the extra veal from the nice butcher man.)

We made it to the market and I SMS'ed Meriko so that we could get together. She wasn't going to make it. So now we're in a slight panic because we left a bit later than we had intended and it was nearing 7 pm which is about the time the shops start to close. Now we had to navigate the maze of food and try and get everything. Fortunately, we scored most everything in a very short span of time, hurrying into shops trying out our best (which was not very good) French language skills.

But the one thing we were after were these delicious-looking roasted potatoes which were roasting with some equally good looking chicken (we bought the chicken on Saturday). They occupied one roasting rack in the middle of a vertical roasting unit and were being basted by the cooking chickens. We had been eyeing these for a few days now.

See those things in the middle...pommes de terre in full roast!

As we approached, panic set in - the potatoes were gone! Damn. Basic part of dinner now in jeopardy...then, Janet saw them. There were about 15 of the delictable nuggets in the roasting pan right in front of us. Without hesitiation, I got the clerk's attention and without even uttering "bonsoir", I waved my hands over the roasting pan and declared "Pommes de terre, s'il vous plaît!" She might have been offended for me not following language protocol but I think she knew her product and matched that with the "I-have-to-have-these-potoatos-right-now" look on my face. She scooped, we paid, said our good byes, we win.

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In Galleries Lafayette (a large department store in Paris), there is a food floor (lucky us. more food). Actually, I am completely accustomed to the food floors of the department stores in Japan and I'm not quite sure which came first. Although much smaller than the football sized fields of food counters in Japanese stores, this one was replete with specialty counters for chocolate, baked goods, foie gras (yes, one whole counter devoted to foie and in Paris, imagine that! ), cheese and jambon (ham).

We browsed and dreamed of sampling nearly everything. At the jambon counter, there was a hefty plate of freshly cut meat and some cheese. Below that, small bite-sized bits of baguette sandwich with...er, you guessed it: more ham.

Janet (who usually spies sample setups faster than anyone) completely missed this until I pointed her in that direction. A friendly smile and curious browsing was all it took for the jambon-fed, hunky counter person to offer her some tidbits. "What? Me? Oh, I couldn't....er, ah, well ok, just a little bit...."

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The absence of Wiouf-Miaou (there was just an apartment building where it should have been) turned our thoughts to lunch. Meriko and I both spied Auberge & Cie on the way to Wiouf-Miaou as somehow familiar so we opted to lunch there.

As it turned out, we mistook Auberge & Cie for some other place but no matter. Taking a break at a toney little bistro in the middle of the day wasn't the worst thing one could do. Selections were straight forward: a set menu (starter and main or main and dessert) plus a handful of a la carte plates. As straightforward as the menu was the food: good medium-hearty bistro fare.

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This morning was our turn to buy bread for breakfast. A quick trip out found three or four boulangeries within 3-4 blocks (not surprising). I was on a brioche quest and we were rewarded.

Breakfast was a leisurely affair as this was earmarked as a shopping day. Some time out for buying gifts and trying to find doggie things for Janet. Boots for Meriko. And stuff like that. We rewalked Rue de Martyrs (I don't think I could EVER get tired if walking this street) and cut through trying to find Wiouf-Miaou, a dog and cat store. Geddit? "Wiouf" "Miaou"? Along the way, we spied a few places that matched up with items in one of our restaurant guides and file THEM away for very near future reference because it was nearing lunch...

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Oh MY. This place was the FIND of the trip so far. Ok, well, we had a little help from Patricia Wells. The extra bonus part was that is was just two blocks away from the apartment. L' Alsaco is an Alsatian French restaurant serving classic Chocroute (sauerkraut with smoked meats and sausages). It was that plus a whole bunch of extra-bonus food finds.

Claude (chef of L'Alsaco) obviously cares about his food and his customers. We were greeted warmly from the moment we stepped in. The great smells inside gave us a preview of what was to come.

The starters: preskopf, tart, warm salad...
We ordered the preskopf (head cheese), a alsacien tart (bacon/onions/creme on thin freshly rolled dough), warm potato salad with lard (Alsacien for "bacon"). The amazing dish (they were all pretty damn good) was the salad. Small slices of white potato flecked with parsley and crowded with freshly cut, thick lardons of homemade bacon. Soft, crispy/crunchy (since this was no supermarket bacon, it had it's share of bone and cartilage), smoky...this was so satisfying that I could have eaten a main course sized portion of this alone.

Chocroute: Oh my GOD...
All of us had the chocroute in various sizes. I'm am GLAD that I ordered the smaller plate (sauerkraut plus two smooked meats and sausage) because even that was a ridiculous (albeit 150% delicious) amount of meat and cabbage. A piece of pork shoulder, pork side, one mild and one spiced sausage on top of a small mountain of he best sauerkraut I have even had kept me busy for the rest of the evening. Smoky, fragrant, juicy....

We capped the evening with several glassed of eau de vie picked by Claude himself from a list of about 40 different kinds (including truffle and aparagus (!). Actually, we picked a wine that L'Alsaco with out of and Claude brought another bottle and told us what had happened and if we didn't like it we should just let him know and he'd bring us another. With the eau de vie, he offered to pick his favorites and the wine choice had been so good that we immediately agreed. He brought four - three made from wildflowers and one make from pepper. Delicious. As a bonus, he brought us a fifth and asked us to guess what it was (it was garlic). We got up to leave; sated and full and all the while Claude had as much fun we had - a true sign of a chef who really cares about his customers. One really couldn't ask for more.

Worth every Euro...

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The Louvre is possibly, no wait, this IS the largest museum ever. Beyond seeing the Venus De Milo and other classics, you need several days here. But, I bet you already knew that.

Tartines...
Halfway through our art attack, we crusied off for lunch at Le Pain Quotidien a few blocks away. Tatines and coffee. Janet's was a artichoke puree, smoked ham (like prosciutto) and shaved parmesean. Mine was the same smoked ham with three mustards. Other than Janet being a bit bent at the concept of "ham" being more like prosciutto, the food was good. Le Pain itself was filled with communal tables and the bustle of people eating, waiter serving and bakers baking. Nice.

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We followed through on our threat to make blanquette du veau tonight. Actually, yesterday's veal buying spree was an interesting lesson in speaking French in that one must be prepared to deal with something entirely different than what you wrote down on the index card and practised for 20 minutes before screwing up the courage to ask, in this case, for 1.5 kilos of veal.

One slightly eaten blanquette du veau...
Our friendly butcher understood the asking part but when he put an additional .15 kilos to an already oversized pile of meat and asked (I think) "is this amount ok?", it got real quiet. As in deer-in-the-headlights quiet. Er....we fumbled around trying to say "less" which ended up as "cut the meat into cubes". No. Stop that. Please. Merci. The butcher's wife (we think) said to him "no, stop cutting the meat". He finally (literally) threw up his hands, took the pile of meat and put it on the counter and moved away mumbling...either at his wife or us. Probably both.

Eventually, we got our veal with much foriegn langauge angst afterward. We made our stew with a nice salad and some pate and cheese and bread and dessert and we were stuffed. Again. Oh and wine...so we were a drunken lot as well. Ah Paris.

Posted by wm. christman at 11:35 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Blecchh, last night I felt some sort of cold coming on and intended to be gloriously content to chill for at least the morning. So much so that both Janet and I slept in until 11. Meriko and Russell went out and bought croissants and eclairs and made coffee. Heavy on the groggy, we smacked up some caffiene and ate.

Today is a light day: a walk to Sacre-Coeur, a browse near Pigalle and some shopping to fill-in what we need for dinner. And we need salad. It's all about balance. Leafy vegetables. To counteract the bread. And butter. And creme. And pate. And...you get the picture.

Basilique du Sacre-Coeur is a beautiful church - you can see the upper part of it from our apartment - and the walk around the grounds is a perfect way to spend a chilly-sunny early afternoon. Huge columns of steps get you to the entrance of the church from which you can see lots of Paris from above.

We passed an interesting moule-frites place along the way. Filing that away for future reference.

Posted by wm. christman at 05:35 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Paris is a food paradise to us. Most everything we like to eat originated in either France or the Orient. You'd think that we'd be going nuts to eat at all of the fantastic places here. Actually, it's more complicated than that. We also cook. Meriko and Russell (our friends and apartment mates in Paris) do so as well. In fact, Meriko and I often cook together. Therefore, our first mission was to stock the apartment with everything we'd need if we were forced to not go out and eat...in case of burning cars, riots, restaurant strikes and so on.

Since Janet and Russell are both sick (Jan still, and Russell just getting...and I think I'm coming down with something), Meriko and I walked down to Rue des Martyrs. Rue des Martyrs is a "market" street with all manner of shops selling food: prepared, fresh, baked, and so on. No mega-mart here, just local proprietors serving the needs of the locals (and now, us).

There is some serious food on this street. As we walked slack-jawed, we were stuck with the notion that we could live off this street for a really, really long time. Bakeries (Patisseries), Fish Mongers (Poissieires), Butchers (Boucheries) and Charcuteries.

We had planned to make our respective spouses a Sunday dinner of a Blanquette du Veau (White Veal Stew) and intended to get ingredients for that but ended up getting about 5-6 meals worth of food. Well, 5-6 or six lunches and dinners...since one can get fresh bread every day (right down on the corner!), breakfast means just a quick jaunt to buy croissants, brioche, baguettes and other treats.

For the noon trip our shopping bags were loaded up with:
vegetables, fruit, fresh bread, mushrooms, bottled water, flour, coffee, rice, thyme, bay leaf, parsley...
and later that evening we went again (this time with Janet too, she's feeling better) and got:
wine, whisky, veal, fresh creme, fresh yogurt, pate de foie gras, spinach, lentil salad and cheese quiche...

We may have been the only tourists in Paris who, in the first 24 hours being here, spent 100 Euro on food only to prepare and/or serve it to ourselves. We snacked, munched, quaffed and moaned our way through a bunch of this food tonight...

Posted by wm. christman at 11:35 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

After an uneventful Thalys ride back to Paris, Gare Du Nord was lousy with people because it was Armistice Day (1918) in France. Of course, we didn't know this and just chalked it up to Paris being, er...Paris. What we didn't know was that our apartment was a mere four blocks away as we queued up for a taxi. Our driver gave a little chuckle when I asked him to take us to our apartment and I thought it was just my horrible and barely rudimentary French. After sitting in 15 minutes of traffic that got us all of 20 meters, 5 minutes later I realized why he was so amused. Without traffic, the ride would have been about 3 minutes. Or we could have just walked. Still 15 Euros for a slightly frenzied set or arguments between the cab driver and other folks outside and a quick dash to our swank pad seemed worth it...mostly.

Our apartment is incredibly beautiful...top floor with skylights and wickedly cool rooms and a full kitchen. And steep stairs. So steep in fact that there were no less than 20 warnings about them from Philippe (translated through his partner). Ok, and not shit, these are steep. So much so that we opted for the downstairs bedroom even though the bed is quite small.

After sitting and snacking on Spanish sausage and tea, we went trolling for a place to eat a real dinner. We ended up at a place just across the street and an Italian one to boot. Sole Caffe & Cucina was a decent meal with a linguine with foie gras and creme that Meriko chose and the tagliatelle that Janet and Russell had. The rest was good but not great. I think we had the typical first-time-in-France restaurant experience with switching off waiters that realized that our French (except for Russell's - four years of schooled French) was not so good. We managed to make do though.

Posted by wm. christman at 10:34 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Meriko (who we are sharing an apartment with in Paris starting tomorrow) recommended a "rad" tapas bar called A La Plancha (at Looiersdwarsstraat 1e 15) and said it was "rad".

We walked Amsterdam all day, mostly in the drizzling rain...Janet is still trying to recover from her intestinal bug. Food has been literally absent from the day save for a quick bite at La Garotte. I did convince her to buy a small baguette that she happily munched on throughout the afternoon.

It was with all hope for a good meal that we searched for A La Plancha. It's kind of hard to find but totally worth it (get to Leidseplein, walk to the left of the bank of Cafés with the giant Rolling Stones tongue on the front...this street will be Lijnbaansgracht, turn right on Looiersgracht, turn left on the third instance of Looiersdwarsgracht (1e)).

A La Plancha looks an awful lot like a sushi bar with chiller cases along two sides of a longish bar. At first, it seems like there in no menu but it's actually on the wall opposite the bar. Or you can do what we did, which was just point at what we wanted.

We started with a white bean, pepper and onion mixture which was like a salsa/bean salad plus some bread with aioli. The aioli was amazingly white and with a slight gritty texture and very delicious. The white bean dish was a good starter as well.

Because Janet was sick, we stuck to things that weren't too 1) spicy, 2)tomato-ey, or 3) involved too many vegetables, in that order. She still suspects that vegetable goulash from two nights ago...

Everything we had was excellent (the fava beans and jamon were especially so) but if we were both at 100% then we probably would have had every single fish dish in the house. One end of the bar is all raw fish prepared in the way you indicate to the proprietor. The marinated anchovies (boquerones) looked very good but it was a fair bet that I would be able to eat an entire plate alone.

In the end, we were as sated as we would be and then the bill arrived. It seemed that we ate quite a bit of food (or at least I did) and the bill was still criminally low. Just over 20 Euros for the food and beers and aqua con gas.

Posted by wm. christman at 11:32 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Being sick on vacation:
- allows you to sleep enough to recover jetlag (although you feel like crap in an altogether different way)
- allows one of you to go buy things at foriegn supermarkets to make your better half feel better (digestif biscuits, 7-Up, a piece of cheese, some cool-looking yogurt and banana for me)
- really sucks (Janet is suffering and that makes me sad)
We're really not eating anything today.

Posted by wm. christman at 10:15 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I didn't happen to mention that we're staying at Xaviera Hollander's Bed & Breakfast... Xaviera herself recommended a local spot called La Falotte so off we went, teetering from being awake for well over 30 hours from the flight and train ride.

La Falotte is a half French, half Dutch place with a Dutch standard meat-potatoes-veg set menu. You could get ala carte too. The special was a nice sized piece of pork fillet in a wine sauce with potatoes and what tasted like either fennel bulb or celery root (but looked like chunky library paste). The meat n' potato were very good. The root was a bit bland and slightly bitter. I should have been wary when the waitress said that there wasn't a word in English to describe the veg...

Janet had vegetable goulash which she said was a bit too tomato-ey for her taste. I thought it was pretty savory but nothing special.

Toward the end of our long (the Dutch believe in a slow, heavy, leisurely feed) meal, the chef came out and serenade several of what appeared to be his friends with his accordian. While that was ok, he did eventually ask us where we were from and then started a rendition of "Home On The Range". And yes, it was expected that we sing because let's face it, ALL Americans know the words to that song by heart. Unfortunately (or really fortunately), we didn't, he was interrupted and we escaped without flexing vocal chords.

Overall, we'd give it 6 or 7.

Epilogue: Ok, crap. Janet is now sick with some stomach thing. Was it the goulash? The satekroket? The airline food?

Posted by wm. christman at 11:05 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Many hours have passed and we're finally in Amsterdam. The first thing Jan spots after getting off the Thalys train is an automat of a sort that vends "kroket" - a deep fried pastry, more over a collection of deep fried treats. Kroket is pretty much like a croquette, only in a convenient shape and size for on-the-go knoshing.

One Euro and a paper sleeve later, we're munching on a satekroket which ends up being a log of highly spiced mashed potato in a deep fried casing. It's pretty good but kind of odd on the first bite.

Perusing the rows shows all kinds of krokets: sausage, cheese, meats, more potato...a vertiable smorgasbord of treat. We vow to buy more tomorow.

Posted by wm. christman at 05:57 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Hi there. Welcome.

1. We cook.
2. We eat.
3. We eat out.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

We're foodies through and through. When we plan vacations, we pick restaurants *first* then a place to sleep. We talk food constantly. We search out the unique and special in any neighbourhood we happen to be in. Then we talk some more about where we're eating next.

Two. Ate. is actually a morphing of a previous food blog called (not so uniquely, I was told a few days after I created it) "Mise En Place". That used to be a place where my cooking adventures were shared...unfortunately, not enough time in the day to think through how I created something to be able to write it down...so it stagnated.

However, Jan wanted to blog about our upcoming vacation (first time to Paris and Amsterdam) so I decided to create Two. Ate.

I think you'll get lots of entries here about what we do best: eat. So welcome.

-wm. and jan

Posted by wm. christman at 08:07 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)