The other day I was thinking of cocktails that were fall and winter-friendly. Calvados (apple brandy) of course is always in season, but I also had a bottle of spiced pear liqueur from St. George Spirits in California on hand that has a lovely pear flavor mingled with a bouquet of spices, that I’ve been meaning to incorporate into a cocktail. I had a hunch…
I discovered the Spritz many years ago when I went to espresso-making school in Trieste, Italy, and wondered what those big, icy orange drinks everyone was drinking at aperitivo hour were. I found out they were Spritzes, a drink also with roots in Austria, that was widely enjoyed by people in the Veneto region.
Almost everyone knows what a Kir Royal is; a flute of crème de cassis (blackcurrant liqueur) and Champagne or sparkling wine. But in Normandy and Brittany, the drink takes a decidedly regional turn, and becomes a Kir Normandy if made with Calvados (apple brandy), or Kir Breton, if made with Breton apple brandy, known as Lambig.
I never miss an opportunity to “go to the source,” so to speak. And in France, it’s sometimes just a train ride away. Barely an hour by high-speed train from Paris is Normandy, and it’s bucolic countryside, where even the cows have their own appellation; La vache Normande. Not only are the cows beautiful, with their wide black and mahogany speckles, and rings around their…
When I heard about La Cidrerie, I knew I wanted to go there. I like beer, but I don’t have the same capacity for it as locals do; young people in Paris seem to have no trouble polishing off those pint-plus giant glasses of beer that have become ubiquitous on café tables. Cider hasn’t gotten the same attention that beer, wine, and other French beverages…
I always wonder, when I open a cookbook, what recipe is going to jump out at me? I sometimes head for the dessert chapter first, but since man (and everyone else) can’t live by dessert alone – unfortunately – so I scan everything, from appetizers to main courses. I’m often drawn to cookbooks on French foods, of course, but also Spanish, Portuguese, and the areas…
I just learned a few more words to add to my French vocabulary while in the throes of remodeling this week. I already wrote about the five or six words in French for sink. And I finally got the difference between a mitigeur and a robinet (a mitigeur has one knob “mixes” the water, and a robinet has two knobs). Fortunately the word is the…
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