No complaints about the food at Racines. In fact, it’s one of the best places I’ve eaten in Paris in a long time.
Unfortunately I took some of the worst pictures of one of the best-looking—and probably the most heavily-inked—restaurateurs in Paris, so you’ll have to go meet Pierre Jancou for yourself.
Believe it or not, there’s much more to France than Paris.
Or so they say. I obviously don’t get out much, but last year when I went to Camp Cassoulet, also in attendance was Jennifer of Chez LouLou. Although all who were invited I knew previously, she was the only one I didn’t. Brave girl!
LouLou lives in the Southwest of France, which I think it just beyond the 13th arrondissement. (I haven’t tried to take the métro there, but that’s where I think it is…isn’t it?)
She’d written up an intriguing recipe on her blog for Sour Cherries with Bay Leaf and bookmarked the page, assuming I wouldn’t see sour cherries in Paris: they’re about as hard to find here as they are in the states.
So when I saw fresh griottes, I almost lunged at the stand, and walked away with 2 kilos (about 4½ pounds).
A dining companion said to me— “Let’s eat inside. It’s too smoky out there.”
I began my cooking career at a vegetarian restaurant in Ithaca, New York. Although you’ve probably heard of the other vegetarian restaurant in town, I worked up the hill at the Cabbagetown Café. While we weren’t as famous, the food was quite good. (I say we were better, but I’m somewhat biased). I guess the public agreed since by the time we opened the door each day for lunch and dinner, there was already a line down the sidewalk of hungry locals and regulars waiting to get in.
We cooked everything from scratch from produce brought to us by farmers in the area, directly, before it was trendy or cool to pat ourselves on that back and write an article about it.
We just did it.
I finally got a chance to track down that butter I found worthy of rapture from Le Jules Verne. Oddly, when I searched the name, I found out that I actually commented on way back in 2006. How I forgot about it, I’ll never, ever know.
It’s from Pascal Beillevaire, a chain of cheese shops in France. While their cheeses are very good, I have a little bit of difficulty getting past the beret-wearing salesclerks, theatrical straw mats, and hyper-bright lighting.
Living in Paris, it isn’t always very interesting watching television, which I sometimes like to do during dinner. Sure there’s some great French channels, but I’m kinda lazy when I’m eating and prefer the English-language ones, which usually means CNN International. It’s not bad, but they often repeat the same story over and over and over again, tweaking it ever-so-slightly each time they report it.
(Although one story they haven’t reported on, oddly, is their reporter who got caught in Central Park with a knot—and more, in his knickers.)
So I often find myself flipping through cookbooks while I eat, glazing over the text and scanning the glossy photos. But when I came across this one, for Florentines, I stopped and bookmarked it right away.
I’m always attracted to anything nutty, crispy, salty, or caramelized, and this recipe had them all.
This is the salad I made myself for lunch today:
And I decided that I would use it to finish one of the previously unfinished posts.
Note that there’s no canned corn. No rice. And yes, real potatoes, garlic, and fresh green beans. Except for steaming the green beans, it took me all of about 2 minutes to put together. The potatoes were leftovers and were just as good cold as they were caramelized and freshly-roasted out of the oven the night before. And the cheese is cut from a hunk of cantal that I buy from the heartthrob-worthy cheese guy at my Sunday market. Needless to say, I always make sure I have plenty of cantal on hand.
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