April 2009 archives

Aside from the massive safe in the Banque de France, probably the toughest place to get in to in France is the Ecole de Grand Chocolat Valrhona in the little town of Tain l’Hermitage. Admission to the professional cooking program I attended is by invitation only, and several times of the year, pastry chefs and chocolatiers from all over the world come to Valrhona to watch and learn how their chocolate is made. And even more important, to discover the best and tastiest ways to eat it.

Our chef-instructor was Philippe Givre, who was good-natured, but never let us forget that we were there to work-work-work. And he was perhaps the best example of the hard-driving pastry chef.

Continue Reading Valrhona Chocolate School…

A woman who writes highly-regarded bread books recently contacted me. She’s coming to Paris, to ask me some questions about various bakeries and their baguettes, and which I liked. I wrote her back, that I didn’t want to sound like a dick, but when you live in Paris, you usually buy your bread from the local boulanger (there are four within a block of my apartment) rather than slogging through packed métro stations, being shoved from side-to-side en route or sitting next to some teenage yakking and tapping madly on their iPhone (pronounced EE-phone), and making two or three connections to get to some charming little bread bakery only to find out that they’re closed that day, for a fermature exceptionnelle…from 1:37 pm to 4:06 pm…every forth Wednesday of months ending in “e”.

I hate to have that whiff of “I’m over it, missy” air about me, but if I have a four hours to kill, I’m not inclined to spend a that time crossing Paris in search of a loaf of bread. Not that there aren’t breads worthy of taking a trip like that, but if I have four hours to kill, I need to spend it doing something useful—like I did yesterday, when I used those few hours to go to three different supermarkets to find the lait frais demi-écrémé which I use in my morning coffee.

Continue Reading My Crack Baguette…

I have two strategies for finding good restaurants, which I use often—especially when traveling. I’ve never, ever been steered wrong using them, and I’m happy to share them with you.

One method I employ is to walk into a fish market and ask them where to eat. Fishmongers always know where to find food that’s impeccably fresh and those strapping young men never fail to steer me towards the best addresses.

The other method I rely on, if it’s lunchtime, is to walk around and see what restaurants are packed-full of older businessmen. Most often they’ve worked in the neighborhood for a long, long time and have their favorites—which is usually because of the good food.

Continue Reading A la Petite Chaise…

Here’s latest information about Paris transit passes. Tickets and passes are available in métro and bus stations, as well as RER and train stations, and kiosks at Orly and Charles de Gaulle Airport. You’ll also find a link at the end for a listing of other places in Paris to buy transit tickets and passes.

Please note that many of the métro stations have changed and the people in the ticket booth no longer sell tickets. The major stations, however, are still manned by cashiers. Most of the transactions are now done by bilingual machines which don’t take American credit cards, although the machines they do take cash and coins in euros. I recommend bringing exact change in coins when you go.

Also prices are subject to change and for the most up-to-date information, follow the links provided to check on prices directly at the website(s).

Paris passes are generally good for zones 1, 2, and sometimes 3, which are sufficient for most visitors. Tickets to the airports or to Versailles are best purchased separately.

In my opinion, if your arrival dates jibe with the ones for the Navigo Découverte, that’s the best pass as it allows unlimited travel so you don’t have to fumble and worry with tickets and transfers.

Continue Reading Paris Transit Options…

I’m often asked about kid-friendly things to do in Paris. Since I don’t have any kids (at least I don’t think I do…) I asked my friend Paul Bennett, a writer who runs Context Travel and has three small children, to contribute a guest post: Top Ten Things to Do in With Kids in Paris. Thanks Paul!… -DL

It always sounds glamorous when I tell people that my wife and I split our time between Paris and Rome. But that runway-model images wears off pretty quickly when I mention that we have three kids and a dog and spend far less time sipping kirs at sidewalk cafes than stacking the kids on top of each other in order to fit ourselves on the metro during a rush-hour dash to school, debating the pros and cons of each arondissement’s public pool, or waiting desperately for the ferris wheel to open in the Tuilleries–the high point of a kid’s year in Paris, let me tell you.

Is Paris child-friendly?

Continue Reading Ten Great Things to Do With Kids in Paris…

There’s sort of some rhyme and reason to my cheese-buying habits. One fromagerie might have the most amazing butter, so I’ll trek over to the place St. Paul to buy a packet of it. But if I want a round of Selles-sur-Cher, I’ll go to the fromager at the marche d’Aligre who always has beautiful ones on display. For St. Nectaire and Cantal, I’ll only buy those from the husky Auvergnate dude at my market on Sunday mornings and refuse to even taste one from anywhere else. His are just so good, I don’t bother doing any comparison shopping.

Last week my neighbors from San Francisco came to visit and I took them to my Sunday market, where I figured we could gather the ingredients for a semi-homemade meal, sans the tablescape.

Continue Reading Comté…

(Because of the terrific feedback many of you had from her pain d’épices recipe, I invited Flo Braker to do a guest post, and she graciously accepted, presenting my all-time favorite cookie of hers…)

This traditional Belgian cookie, known as almond bread (pain d’amande), is a favorite from my catering baking business in the early 1970s. The raw sugar’s light golden color and distinctly old-fashioned flavor, similar to that of turbinado-style sugar, gives this cookie its unique taste, texture, and appearance.

Continue Reading Flo Braker’s Pain d’amande Cookies…

Well, I wouldn’t say it was exactly stealing. But last time I was in the states, I was going through one of my frighteningly-full storage lockers (there’s your glimpse into the glamorous life of international living…) and while rifling through cookbooks, I came across my own personal book of handwritten recipes, a fat mess of pages, stained with butter, eggs, almond paste, and lord-knows what else, that I compiled during my years working in restaurants.

It really is a treasure trove of recipes and I was thinking I should start a “working my way through the book” blog, dedicated to doing each-and-every recipe in there. Then I thought the better of it and got that idea out of my mind—fast.

The main reason being that most of the recipes make a hundred servings and call for things like 80 egg yolks or 5 1/2 cups of honey or 8 quarts of heavy cream.

Continue Reading Why Stealing is Wrong…