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Too much information? Or not enough...? 
Like so many things, the evening began with the best of intentions. On the next boat over, la mère and le père went away for the holiday weekend, leaving the teenage son alone to have a party. In an odd twist, the (French) neighbor's dining table was stocked with jugs of Coke, bags of le chips, pre-fabricated chicken wings (sold in foil pouches), and their host was grilling off some hot dogs. He also knocked over the grill of burning-hot coals—twice—on the deck, forcing a mad dash to hose it down. We Americans started with cold Sancerre, bowls of Lucques olives, crisp Iranian pistachios, jambon de Bayonne, before peeling cold shrimp, with a big platter of cheese before we ended with dessert: fresh mint ice cream and chocolates. In between there was also pâté and terrine Gascogne and wild asparagus. As I type these words—ouch!—I now accept that it's probably not a good idea to drink white wine, red wine, rosé, Champagne, absinthe, and water with all that. (Ok, I was just kidding about the water...) but I did get an invited to join the party next door, when the music started and I passed the bottle of absinthe in their direction. Hey, after all the damage done to int'l relations over the past few years, someone's gotta repair the damage, right? I don't recall too much, and most of my photos are fuzzy, for some bizarre reason. I do recall that the evening began by me losing my skivvies but I did find them before heading out. (That's the kind of week it's been.) Apart from Mort dropping his cell phone into the surging waters of the Seine and me making a new group of friends, we were fortunate to have Michael Recchiuti crash the party, ensuring that there was plenty of chocolate. I'd hope to post some better shots of yesterday, but had to rely on one of North African pastries from earlier in the week. And this morning I'm nursing a tepid café au lait, slipping on a fresh pair of unmentionables along with a neatly-pressed shirt, and heading to a chocolate-tasting with the experts at La Maison du Chocolat. And if that's not worthy of a spanking-clean, fresh pair of undershorts, I don't know what is. Permalink | May 9, 2008 | Comments (12) We're mid-week into our Paris Chocolate Tour here and we're having a great time. Everyone's enjoying the unusually fine weather, and of course, the chocolate. I wanted to post a few shots and notes in my spare seven minutes—it's 5:34am so forgive any typos or missed links. I'll catch 'em later...in my free time ; )
  Cheerful, and the amazingly-talented, Jean-Charles Rochoux shows us a chocolate replica of his arm in his laboratory. He made it for a Halloween display at a Parisian department store. The scoop of passionfruit sorbet is from Le Bac à Glaces, an ice cream shop just a few blocks away, where we stopped to cool down.
 At M. Rochoux's swanky boutique, his assistant Murielle, packs up a box of chocolate. Check out the sexy glove. Oh la la! I may need even more sorbet to cool down... If you do stop in, be sure to get a tablet of his chocolate from Peru. This is one of my favorite chocolates in his shop, along with the tablets of caramelized hazelnuts from Piedmont enrobed in chocolate as well as his latest; a bar of chocolate with a unctuous layer of creamy caramel oozing out.
 A light French salad: la salade parisienne. Yes, there is some lettuce tucked under that mountain of ham, but I was more focused on the yummy house-made fries at Le Nemrod that I dove on as soon as they landed. Unfortunately, being the consummate host, I did share a few with my table mates. But not before grabbing all the crispiest specimens. Since my salad was so light, my guests knew I needed the extra nourishment to make it through the afternoon. Did I mention how light it was? Just checking...
 Of course, it's not lunch in Paris without un peu de rosé. I had a little pitcher, which was just enough to carry me through the afternoon. Well, at least until dinner.
 If the above salad looked too light for you, the salad with soft-cooked egg melting over a huge mound of crispy bacon and studly croutons, may be more suitable to carry someone through a week of tasting chocolates. They also make a letter-perfect croque monsieur (and madame), if you're in the neighborhood.
Continue reading "Paris Chocolate Tour" » Permalink | May 7, 2008 | Comments (23) New chocolate-makers are springing up across America, in the most unlikeliest of places. Like Missouri. Who'd a thunk it?
His company, Patric chocolate, makes bars that are "micro-produced," and he's got two in his line-up, both using cacao from Madagascar. When I asked Alan what attracted him to the cacao from that region, he said "Since the bars are made from cacao that come from one single estate, and since the family there has owned it for quite some time, they really have been able to exert an extremely high level of control on the quality and consistency of the fermentation and drying, which is actually quite rare in the cacao world." Alan proclaims that this isn't pure "criollo" chocolate, a much-touted term for a varietal that almost all chocolate experts say no longer exists in its pure form. (Some chocolate-makers are claiming to the contrary.) Right now, the all the beans for Patric's bars are from a plantation in the Sambirano Valley. Continue reading "Patric Chocolate" » Permalink | May 4, 2008 | Comments (23) Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker for $19.99! I just noticed that Amazon is selling Cuisinart Ice Cream Makers for only $19.99! These machines are reconditioned, which means they were re-built at the factory and may have cosmetic blemishes. It's an amazing deal and an inexpensive way to chill-out this summer.
They also chill up a pretty mean margarita, too. Don't know how long they plan to feature these machines, but since they're at the top of their best-selling kitchen items, they'll probably go fast...
Permalink | May 2, 2008 | Comments (37) Goat Cheese Custards with Strawberries in Red Wine Syrup When I moved to Paris, I moved a whole ton of stuff with me. Plus one yellowed scrap of paper. It was a recipe that I tore out of some newspaper eons ago, for Goat Cheese Custard.  I had high hopes for the recipe, enough to schlep it with me across the Atlantic and look at it wistfully every once in a while, guarding it for almost a decade, until I finally got around to making it this week. Continue reading "Goat Cheese Custards with Strawberries in Red Wine Syrup" » Permalink | May 1, 2008 | Comments (25) |
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