February 2007 Archives

Living in a foreign country, as an outsider, you tend to notice lots of contradictions. If you try to learn the native language, like I am, you'll notice there's all sorts of curiosities specifically designed to trip your up. When people ask me what I do all day, they don't realize that just to do something as basic as write a check, I often have to pull out the dictionary. (Although I've seen French people consult theirs almost as frequently.)

But English ain't no walk in le parc either...we've got where, we're, wear, ware...that all sound exactly the same but mean pretty different things.

One of the things you learn when speaking a new language is that there are lots of rules...and seemingly just as many exceptions. Sometimes they're things not taught in classes but you just need to learn by osmosis.

For example, Paris is generally pronounced Par-EE, without saying the final 'S'.

But if you say the name Régis, you say Rey-GeeSS you certainly do pronounce the final 'S'.

Similarly, if you mention the 16th arrondissement, most Parisians who don't live there (or is that 'their'?) will sneer and say, "Oh, they are all snobs over there" or "I don't like those people there, they're not very nice."

So imagine me being pleasantly surprised when I went to visit REGIS chocolatier in the heart of enemy territory.

Anyone who uses iPhoto probably remembers your first thrill of plugging in your digital camera and magically, with no effort at all, having your photos automatically downloaded for you. Then they're neatly filed on your computer so you can view, cut, or paste your memories until your heart's content.

It's great for the first few times, but once you've hit a certain number of photos, in my case the 1k mark, things start to slow w-a-a-a-y down, making it necessary to either burn them onto disks like the old days (iPhoto's dirty little secret, forcing us to resort to 'outdated' technology...bad Apple!)
Or sadly, just to delete them.

So I spent my weekend going through my older photos and realized that I never wrote about one of the most special places in France: Locronan, allegedly the birthplace of my beloved Kouign Amann.

Note I used the word 'allegedly'.
I'd been told by several French folks that the town is famous as the lieu de naissance of this buttery cake. But when I asked at the Office de Tourisme, the woman there had no idea what I was talking about. And wasn't all that interested in pursuing it with me either. So I'll let someone out there do the research since I'm too involved in burning photos onto disks all weekend. But even though Locronon may not the be the birthplace of this famous Breton Butter Cake, it's certainly become the epicenter for lovers of butter & sugar bound-together.

Although the town is teeming with tourists who come to gawk at the granite buildings and churches, the town is also teeming with other fans of the sweet-stuff: les guepes, or yellowjackets.

Every bakery had swarms of the lil' stingers flying all around, hundreds of them are everywhere, feasting their wings off on the sugary treats and tartlets for sale, like the rhubarb ones above. The women who work in the bakeries must've made some top-secret pact with the bees since they showed no fear of them and would swat 'em away while packing up tarts and cakes. We decided to use the bees as a guide and follow their advice, since they'd probably know which was the best Kouign Amann in town. Like truffle hunters use pigs and dogs, this pastry-hunter decided to follow the bees, and I reasoned the places with the most yellowjackets would have the best pastries.

I sometimes get messages from people pointing me to bargain deals they find on vanilla beans online, but I'm happy to spend a bit more on the top-quality beans that my friend Patricia Rain sources, someone who's dedicated herself to doing the right thing for the native farmers by working to ensure that the producers she works with get their fair-share of the profits. I suppose it would be different if I was going through a few kilos of vanilla beans a week, but for a couple of beans I split and use per month making Vanilla Ice Cream or adding to a batch of jam, paying an extra couple of dollars per year is money I consider very well-spent. Especially when I pull a slender bean from my stash, roll it around, and take a whiff of the tiny, fragrant seeds that cling to my fingers. The smell of pure vanilla is perhaps the most complex, captivating smell I can think of.

We're often faced with lots of choices in the marketplace.

With all due respects, the first time I met Sherry Yard, I was squirming in my seat. I was sitting in the originally Spago, in West Hollywood, overlooking the city of Los Angeles. The room was filled with celebrities, but I remember getting special treatment.

I arrived in my best; a well-tailored Italian wool suit that I hoped made me fit in a little better with all the glamorous types seated all around me. It was a great meal, and we were having a wonderful time. But the longer I sat in the stylish chairs, the most uncomfortable I was becoming. It wasn't that I felt out of place. It was that my rear-end was starting to itch uncontrollably.

I knew that I shouldn't stand up and engage in an all-out scratch-fest (although nothing would have felt better), but I didn't know what to do. The longer I sat, the more intense it got. The wool in combination with the padded chairs was driving me nuts!

But soon enough, it was time for dessert, the cavalcade started. Sherry starting bringing out all sorts of wonderful things; tastes of hand-dipped dark chocolates, puckery lemon tartlets, and twists of crackly caramel that were so stunning, all these hot-shot celebrities starting looking at me.

But miraculously, as I started to spoon up and savor all these desserts, the itching subsided and each dessert was more delicious than the next. That was the first time we met and I was charmed at what a genuinely lovely and funny person Sherry is.

A few years later, Sherry moved over to Wolfgang Puck's newer Spago restaurant, located a few miles away in swanky Beverly Hills which replaced the original. Since we were pastry-pals, Sherry and I run into each other every now and then over the years; her vivacious personality is infectious and I don't know anyone who's more enthusiastic about what she does than Sherry. And if you talked to her for a few minutes, as I recently did, you'd see what I mean...

David: Every time I talk to you there seems to be something new and fabulous going on in your life. After all, being the pastry chef at Spago in Beverly Hills makes you the pastry chef to the stars. Plus you make the dessert for the big Oscar dinner every year.

Who are some of your favorite celebrities that you've cooked for?

Sherry: I guess you can say them all, from David Lebovitz to Presidents.

David: Thanks for the flattery, but compared to Madonna and Andy Dick (ick!), I'm a rube. But I loved celebrity-watching and Spago is the best. I one stood next to Shaq O'Neill there and his feet were huge! But your boss is a bit of a celebrity too. You've been with Wolfgang Puck for a long time as his executive pastry chef.

How's it been working with him, and what's he like as a boss?

Sherry: At the 2000 Bon Appétit Awards, Barbara Fairchild introduced Wolfgang Puck as my boss. His response, with a chuckle, when he walked up to the mike was "Anyone that knows Sherry knows she is my boss!"

David: He's actually quite funny, and works very hard too, which I think is because he was trained as a chef from a really early age. I also like that he gives ample credit to the chef's in his restaurants, and they tend to stay with him for a long time.

I love the desserts you make. They're always so contemporary, with clean, modern tastes yet grounded in traditional pastry techniques. I remember a Concord Grape Gelée that you made, enrobed in dark chocolate that was exceptionally good.

You may have noticed a couple of explicit comments here on the site (more than the usual ones that I leave...)

Although I've closed comments for older posts due to spam, now they're appearing in recent ones, which I delete as soon as possible. (Yesterday I deleted 4785 junk messages.) I'm adding a comment verification feature shortly which should alleviate the problems, since I welcome and enjoy all your comments very much!

Consequently, many emails are not reaching me as well, for some reason, or are being returned as undeliverable. I don't know. If you've recently sent an inquiry, please check the FAQ's in the Category box (to the left) which may provide an answer to your question, or leave a comment here.

Global Warming=More Ice Cream

I recently recommend an ice cream maker to one of my friends. It was the model I used to test many of the recipes for my upcoming book, the Cuisinart ICE-50. He then sent me a message that Amazon is currently selling reconditioned models of this machine for just $129!
(That's $270 off the list price.)

That's an amazing price for an ice cream machine with a powerful built-in freezer. Previously, similar options were Italian ice cream machines that cost four-times that price. So no more jamming your canister in your freezer in advance, smashing that box of fish sticks and pushing further to the back the panopoly of long-forgotten containers of freezer-burned who-remembers-what.

You just press the button and start churning away. I don't know how long this offer will last, so get one while you can. I've been using my daily for months with excellent results (and have the gut to prove it.)

And they make excellent slushy frozen margaritas too...

2007 Bloggies

Congratulations to friends of mine, and of this site, for their nominations for 2007 Weblog Awards and the winners will be announced March 12th.

You're probably wondering what happened to my nomination.

This time of year brings Seville oranges to the markets in Paris. For the past few years, I kept complaining they were hard to find since it's perhaps my favorite of all jams and jellies to make and eat. But lately, they've been everywhere. (See? It pays to complain. Either that, or a whole lot of French produce suppliers read my blog.) And I found myself busy making a lot of marmalade, which was a whole lot easier since I came up with a brand-new, revolutionary technique which I couldn't wait to share.

Since Seville oranges are rife with seeds, which makes slicing them difficult since you have to keep moving the seeds around with your slippery fingers, while trying to cut the oranges, then finding more, and fishing around deeper inside to extract more, plucking them out, etc...Each Seville orange has perhaps twenty to thirty inside.

So I thought, what if I was to squeeze the juice and seeds out first, strain them, then pour the juice back in? The seeds are precious commodities in jam-making, and get saved and used since they're so high in pectin. They're wrapped in a sack and cooked with the marmalade giving the marmalade gets a suave, jellied texture. And this simple method makes the whole process much easier.

You might be interested to know that Seville Orange Marmalade was created because of an error. Apparently an Englishwoman in 1700, the wife of a grocer, was stuck with some sour oranges that were bought cheaply from a boat that was carrying them from Seville. Since there was a storm, they wanted to get rid of their stock or oranges quickly, so the grocer bought them. But they were inedibly sour so his wife decided to try making jam from then, and viola!...Seville Orange Marmalade was invented.

Seville Orange Marmalade

Two quarts

Adapted from Room For Dessert (HarperCollins)

I recently updated this recipe to include a pre-boiling of the orange pieces, simmering them in water until cooked through as some varieties of sour oranges tend to be resistant to cooking, and the pre-boiling ensures they'll be fully cooked.

6 Seville oranges (see Note)
1 navel orange
10 cups (2.5 liters) water
pinch of salt
8 cups (1.6 kg) sugar
1 tablespoon Scotch (optional)

1. Wash oranges and wipe them dry. Cut each Seville orange in half, crosswise around the equator. Set a non-reactive mesh strainer over a bowl and squeeze the orange halves to remove the seeds, assisting with your fingers to remove any stubborn ones tucked deep within.

2. Tie the seeds up in cheesecloth or muslin very securely.

3. Cut each rind into 3 pieces and use a sharp chef's knife to cut the rinds into slices or cubes as thin as possible. Each piece shouldn't be too large (no more than a centimeter, or 1/3-inch in length.) Cut the navel orange into similar-sized pieces.

4. In a large (10-12 quart/liter) stockpot, add the orange slices, seed pouch, water, and salt, as well as the juice from the Seville oranges from step #1. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer, and cook until the peels are translucent, about 20 to 30 minutes.

(At this point, sometimes I'll remove it from the heat after cooking them and let the mixture stand overnight, to help the seeds release any additional pectin.)

5. Stir the sugar into the mixture and bring the mixture to a full boil again, then reduce heat to a gentle boil. Stir occasionally while cooking to make sure it does not burn on the bottom. Midway during cooking, remove the seed pouch and discard.

6. Continue cooking until it has reached the jelling point, about 220F degrees, if using a candy thermometer. To test the marmalade, turn off the heat and put a small amount on a plate that has been chilled in the freezer and briefly return it to the freezer. Check it in a few minutes; it should be slighty jelled and will wrinkle just a bit when you slide your finger through it. If not, continue to cook until it is.

7. Remove from heat, then stir in the Scotch (if using), and ladle the mixture into clean jars. Sometimes I bury a piece of vanilla bean in each jar. (Which is a great way to recycle previously-used or dried-out vanilla beans.)

I don't process my jams, since I store them in the refrigerator. But if you wish to preserve them by canning, you can read more about the process here.

Note: Sour or Seville oranges are called in French oranges amers and are available mid-winter in many other countries around the world as well.

My ultra-special mix for Hot Chocolate with Salted Butter Caramel is now available at several outdoor markets in Paris, and we hope to make it available to our friends in the US and elsewhere.

One kit makes 6 warming cups of the most luscious hot chocolate you'll ever have since it's infused with smooth, buttery salted caramel (made with Breton butter), bittersweet French chocolate, and a soupçon of hand-harvested fleur de sel. It's equally delicious made with whole or low-fat milk.
I love it, and I hope you will too!

UPDATE: This is no longer available.

You can find French- and Belgian style Hot chocolate recipes on my Recipes page. There's a recipe for Salted Butter Caramel Sauce in my book The Sweet Life in Paris, if you'd like to make your own!

It started at Michael Ruhlman's site (which is up to 468 comments) with Anthony Bourdain's take-down of the Food Network.

Then it moved over to Elise's Simply Recipes, where I felt compelled to add my 2 centimes worth....

"I'm curious when people say they appreciate these time-saving cooking shows. But really, how long does it take to make good food? A roast chicken can be tossed with a broken up head of garlic and some herbs in less than 30 seconds. And how many seconds does one save by opening a bottle of pre-made salad dressing as opposed to mixing together a few spoonfuls of olive oil & vinegar? Is it really that much easier to rip open a box of cake mix than to drop a stick of butter in the mixer, add some eggs, then stir in some flour?

And doesn't homemade foods taste better, and is far healthier for you (and much less-expensive), than all those convenience foods? Other than as a gimmick, I don't see how how saving a few minutes is really worth sacrificing your family's health and well-being for by using all these processed foods. While I don't begrudge any tv chefs cooking with real ingredients, it's quite a disservice to spray things with aerosol cheese and call it dinner."

While I realize that everyone's busy (and I'm sure to get some remarks that not everyone gets to live in Paris), I wonder what people are doing where they don't have time to eat anymore. When I moved to France, they practically had to nail me in my chair to get me to sit down and have a decent meal. I was so used to eating on the run (in my car, in the shower, etc...) But cooking and eating are two of the most fundamental things that human beings do, but what's happened to us if we can't do them anymore?

I feel bad when people tell me they don't have time to cook.
Not everyone has the luxury of going to an outdoor market like I do and doing their shopping, then taking the time to prepare a proper meal three times a day. Especially in these days of multiple jobs and kids running underfoot. But surely stopping in the supermarket, picking up some chicken and vegetables, and roasting them in the oven with a drizzle of olive oil, salt and pepper for an hour takes marginally more time than dumping cans into a saucepan. And isn't it far tastier and more nutritious, and cheaper than pre-packaged foods you'd heat up in a microwave? I can't believe that popping frozen waffles in the toaster and dousing them with artificially-flavored syrup really easier, less-expensive, or better for anyone than a few slices of toast with butter and honey.

Why are these programs so popular?

I think I've finally become French.

At the supermarket this morning, my total came to exactly 15€.
I fished around my wallet and found a 20€ note.

So I handed that over.

With an apology, of course.

I don't know if some of you noticed this, but there's been a petit void in cyberspace lately. As some of you know, Michèle of Oswego Tea has moved to London and at the same time ended her blog. The good thing is I don't need to add that pesky backwards accent anymore now that she's moved to England. (Although she started adding the British extra u to words like flavour...who does she think she is anyways, Madonna?)

A while back one of my readers advised if I ever got back to London, I need to go to Melt, one of the highly-regarded chocolate shops in the city. Since I didn't know when I'd get back there, I thought I'd send Michele in to check it out.

So I started bugging Michele to get over to Melt to hopes she'd write an entry here about it. It took her a while, but she finally wrote back, saying she was really busy after her move, but realized that it was time to "...get my ass to melt!"

However in deference to folks searching the internet for photos of butt-melting (which I'm sure there are out there...) I changed her wording a bit since I didn't want to get my potty-mouth washed out with soap, like Michele's gonna get next time she comes back to Paris for punishment.
Which may incite more internet searches, bien sûr...

While I've no doubt pictures her butt melting might be far more intriguing to some readers out there who came expecting something other than a visit to a chocolate shop, you'll have to make do without. But for those of us who've missed Michele's terrific blog, I finally was able to get her to do her guest post here on my site about getting her butt to Melt.
And here it is.

Getting My Ass To Melt

When a friend sends you an email asking for a favour, admit it, sometimes you worry. In the back of your mind there's this nagging voice that says "Please don't let it have anything to do with moving a large couch up a narrow flight of stairs.."

Luckily for me, the friend in question was David, who at the first mention of looking for a new apartment will come right out and say "Don't ask me to help you move." I think he waved a finger the first time he said that to me.

The favour he wanted of me?

Yesterday, I decided that since I was the last person in the world to be using Safari as a web browser, I should switch to Firefox. Everyone says it's better and since I use Movable Type for the blog, Firefox has little buttons to make things bold or to italicize, so I don't need to type in a bazillion symbols everytime I do that.

About twenty years ago, which I hope means the statutes of limitations has run out, when working in that vegetarian restaurant I mentioned, someone brought in something for us to, er...well...let's just say, it was something that was designed to change your perception of reality if you took it.
So of course, we did.

When you work in a restaurant, you develop a rhythm, especially when it comes to setting up your statio in preparation for the rush of customers. If you have a fixed menu and you've been working in the same place for a while, when you arrive, you can almost work on auto-pilot to make sure everything's in place (called mis-en-place), so when the rush comes, you're full-organized and never get buried under orders (or as they say, 'in the weeds'). If you've done it right, the evening runs like a finely-tuned Swiss watch. If not, you've got no business in a restaurant kitchen.
And your night will be a catastrophe (not to mention the customer's as well).

So one evening, someone brought in something which we ingested that was terribly strong and radically alerted our 'perception of reality' (yes, even vegetarians have their vices). As we started our work, though, the owner arrived and surprised us with a brand-new menu, full of items we'd never seen before. So we had to completely change our set-ups and prepare all new dishes.
It was a massive bummer, to put it mildly.

It's like your computer crashing, taking everything with it, and you need to re set-up everything again. To make a long (long) story short, once the customers arrived, it was like your worst dream coming true, the kind where you're running towards something, but the faster you run, the farther away it gets. So as the order tickets started coming in, we all panicked and found ourselves seriously in the weeds (in more ways than one), and the evening was a catastrophe.

When I installed my new browser yesterday, everything changed on my little Mac.

My beloved bookmarks, which I've spent years collecting, I cherished as your grandmother cherishes her Hümmel figurines, were gone. And the look of my blog platform changed: Yes there were those terrific little buttons that add links, italics, and what-not, but each time I used one, it jumped up to the top of the document, meaning I had to re-scroll back to where I was typing, prompting a mad dash to find where I left off. So like coming down from a bad high, back to my familiar reality, I've returned to Safari.

I guess old habits die hard. Like my love for rustically grainy breads, and had a chance to return to one of my favorite bakeries in Paris yesterday when I had a doctor's appointment on the other side of the city.

When I moved to Paris, I was pretty shocked at how expensive things were. And I don't mean Louis Vuitton suitcases or Kelly bags. Something as simple as a sponge at the supermarket would cost 4€ or a plastic storage container at the BHV might run you 15€ around here.

Ouch!

Then I learned about the Paris pas cher stores all over town. Although concentrated mostly in the less-chic neighborhoods, they're sort of 'catch-all' shops that sell everything from scissors, thongs, cookware, hammers, luggage, shampoo, and old Nicole Kidman movies she made when she was a teenager.

I've found they're great places to scratch your shopping itch. You never know what you're going to find exactly, but they're great fun to wander through and see what they've got if you pass one. You'll know you've found when if there's lots of stuff hanging from the ceiling, stacked out front, and piled high if you peek inside. Frequently there's an overwhelming smell of insecticide or mothballs, but you get used to it after a few years, I guess. (Judging from the people who run them, who seem to be oblivious.)

Paris pas cher, in case you didn't know, means 'Paris Not Expensive', and the term is also used to denote bargains in the city. Since the dollar is tanking, I thought I'd share a few of my money-saving tips with you I've learned along the way:

Drink Like a Parisian

If you're sitting in a café, you'll notice that few people are drinking soda. Most are lingering over tiny coffees, which cost about 2€ instead. You can stay as long as you want without having to order anything else once you've finished, no matter what you ordered. My theory is people order coffee because it's the cheapest thing you can get. I'm often guilty of that too. (If they ask you to pay, it's usually because the waiters are changing shifts, so don't fell obligated to split.)

Standing at the counter cuts the prices roughly in half so if you're just looking for a quick thirst-quencher or a shot of caffeine, you might want to stand.

(I'm a total rube myself. One of my first times in Paris, I ordered a coffee at the counter, then carried it over to a table. That got quite a response!)

In a café, order wine by the carafe which is usually drinkable and inexpensive. Don't feel like you need to spend a lot of money on wine in a regular restaurant either. Unlike in America, it's easy to find good wines in the 15-25€ range. Don't be afraid to order the Vin du mois or something they're featuring.

Truth is, I don't eat croissants very often for the simple reason that I don't like to get dressed until I've had my morning coffee & toast. So having one is a relatively big deal for me, since croissants are only good early in the day: I refuse to eat one after 11am if I can help it. Like anything made with copious amounts of butter, they don't get better the longer they've been out of a hot oven.

Although stories abound, no one quite knows who invented le croissant. It's believe to be in an invention of the Austrians, who created a crescent-shaped pastry to oppose the Ottomans, who had invaded their country. They symbol of Turkey is a crescent, and granted, who doesn't like to eat Turkey?

Except maybe vegetarians. So maybe croissants were invented by and/or for vegetarians?

Aha...a new theory emerges...this is how rumors get started on the internet, folks, and perhaps people will be quoting me decades later: "David Lebovitz says croissants were invented for Austrian vegetarians!"

But today, I think few would argue that the croissant is most closely associated with France and in fact, one rarely comes across a bakery in Paris that doesn't offer their own version. If you need further proof of their proprietary alliance with French gastronomy, ask yourself when was the last time you heard the words das croissant?

Back in my intrepid youth, when my hair dipped below my ears (when I had hair, that is...), I flirted with vegetarianism.

I should probably say it was more than a passing fancy; I was a veg-head for about six years and even worked in a vegetarian restaurant. At Cabbagetown Café in Ithaca, New York, we'd ladle up bowls of Cashew Chili or curious soups, like the one that a bra-less (and pendulous) co-worker would insist on enriching with generous dollops of peanut butter.

And don't get me started on the bizarre customers we'd get. We had one regular, whose name we didn't know (so we just called her 'Beyond') who would sit in the dining room and order only a bowl of brown rice. Then she'd spend hours in the dining room writing in her journal, in the teeny-tiniest letters imaginable, eating her rice grain-by-grain.

And we never knew what our long-haired baker would come up with. He once made a lovely-looking, golden brown-crusted pie for dessert. When I cut it open that evening to serve the first wedge, I'd discovered that he filled it with sweet black beans and an alarming amount of cumin.

(Unfortunately, it, um, accidentially fell into the garbage before I could serve it.)

Eventually I got tired of being served pizza smothered with soggy 'veggies' (God I hate that word...is it really all that hard to say 'vegetables'?) and was constantly dreaming about diving into a big, soft, overstuffed corned beef sandwich.
When I told my 'alternative' doctor about that, he said, "You know, if you're craving something, that means your body needs it. So you should probably go ahead and have it."

With that advice, I left his office and made a beeline to the nearest Jewish deli, and ordered a big, honkin' mound of hot corned beef barely contained by two sharp-crusted pieces of caraway-flecked rye bread with a smear of hot mustard. And from that day on, my vegetarianism was kaput.
My mother, by the way, could not have been more pleased since before, whenever I'd arrive home for a visit, she'd be carving a big slab of alarmingly-rare roast beef.

Free Bikes In Paris

Over 20,000 bicycles are on their way to Paris as part of the mayor's plan to make the residents of the city less-dependent on cars. (Many citizens of the city are absolutely irate about the new bike lanes.) The bikes will be free to use and can be picked up at one of 1451 stations, then dropped off at any one of them as well.

The system is set to be in place early this summer, just in time for tourist season.

Pack a helmet!

Partial Smoking Ban Begins Today

Today marks the beginning of the ban on smoking in public places in France. It's believed that 12 million people smoke in France, and nearly 66,000 smokers die each year due to smoking-related illnesses. 25-30% of all adults smoke in France (which is below the European average), and half of all young adults under 35 light up too.

(Tip: If you're smoke-sensitive, don't sit next to a table of teenage girls. Trust me.)

The air in 42% of all places that allowed smoking was considered "dangerous". Smoking is now prohibited in public buildings like hospitals, stores, offices, and schools, and there are stiff fines for smokers (68€) and business owners. The total ban on smoking in bars, caf&eagrave;s, and restaurants, will begin in 11 months, starting January 1, 2008, and the EU Health Commissioner has proposed a total ban in all 27 EU countries.

Currently it's illegal to talk on a cell phone while driving, considered a public danger. But curiously, smoking indoors has been tolerated and vigorously defended. Today I expect to see a lot of people grousing in the street (les râleurs).

And speaking of 'as seen on the streets of Paris'...

C'est très Parisien?

I'm heading out for a walk...it's gonna be fun out there today!