My first nougat encounter

I arrived way too early for last week's Chocolate and Zucchini party, so I wandered around Montmartre and killed some time. It was 8 p.m. on a Wednesday and the streets were packed with people enjoying aperitifs at cafes, doing their shopping and meeting up with friends. During my explorations, I learned two things:

1) I live in the most boring neighborhood in Paris.
2) I love nougat.


The first revelation was slightly upsetting. Whenever I escape the sixteenth arrondissement for the evening, I realize that the rest of Paris is out laughing, drinking and having philosophical discussions over oyster platters, while my neighborhood has already hung up its tweed coat and climbed under its tasteful duvet with a serious book and a mug of tea. I knew the deal when I rented my apartment, but because I have hermit tendencies, I usually actually like living in the sixteenth. It's tranquil, tidy and safe. I know this makes me disgustingly bourgeois, but so be it. (My poor ex-hippie mother was dying for me to rent a tiny, roach-infested garret in the Latin Quarter and shack up with some greasy beatnik performance artist while I was here, and I think it's safe to say that won't be happening any time soon.)

But Wednesday night in Montmartre made me a little jealous. All this time I could have been sipping pastis and flirting with bohemian Gallic guys at the local cafe! I could have been befriending my colorful cheese, fruit and meat vendors and dining on cassoulet in cozy restaurants at 11 p.m.! Everyone I passed seemed young and attractive and in love with life. In my neighborhood, you have to compete for tomatoes each day with Chanel-suited matrons sporting shellacked hair and yappy dogs, and the whole area closes up shop at 7:30 p.m.

As I ambled up and down the narrow streets bemoaning my uncoolness, I came across a cute shop with stacks of terrine and foie gras in the window. It called itself an "epicerie du terroir", which I suppose means that it specializes in high-quality regional products. Like a wasp to honey, I was attracted to a giant display of many types of nougat - mint, pistachio, chocolate, triple chocolate, citrus and on and on. So many colors and flavors to chose from, and each huge round had been sliced into portable, individually-wrapped pieces perfect for a salivating girl who couldn't quite wait until dinner. I asked the owner for advice, and he recommended one that had a few different types of nuts, citrus and a bit of chocolate. Pretty much a grab-bag, making it the perfect novice nougat. My slice was shockingly expensive (around $13), but it turned out to sustain me for over a week of nibbling, so it was a good investment after all.

I've thought about this a lot, and I think I've figured out why I'm now addicted. When it's perfectly fresh as this one was, nougat has a melting, fluffy texture that is very similar to chocolate chip cookie dough. It's almost too sweet sometimes, but the richness of the nuts and the zing of the citrus cut through all the grainy sugar. And you can break off a little bit, wrap the rest back up in its cellophane, and return for a little more in an hour, or the next day. Nougat is a loyal friend, great when you need a tiny sugar buzz or something sweet to snack on during those long, lonely nights holed up with a mug of tea in the silent sixteenth.

Appellations d'origine, l'epicerie du terroir
26, rue Lepic
Paris 75018

Making peace with pigeons: part two (Venice)

See Venice pics here.

Last weekend I flew to Venice for two cents plus tax thanks to a 24-hour RyanAir sale. Thank you, low-cost European carriers! The weather was cold and slightly gloomy, but I'd never been to Venice before and, like Disneyland, you gotta go once.

And Venice did remind me of Disneyland, with its snaking lines, its slow, gentle boat rides and the fact that it is a GIANT FREAKING TOURIST TRAP. Well, parts of it, at least. I tried to steer clear of these areas, but every time I started wandering aimlessly I inevitably seemed to wind up back at the buzzing fannypack epicenter that is Piazza San Marco.

I have one fall coat, and I've worn it so much lately that the sight of it makes me a little nauseous. I finally bit the bullet and got it dry-cleaned for an exorbitant fee before I left Paris. Someone must have alerted the Venetian pigeons to the fact that I ate one of their brethren last week, because shortly after my arrival I became the victim of a vendetta in the form of a splat of bird shit on my freshly laundered jacket. Anybody who tries to tell me that this is good luck is a jerk.

The food in Venice was good. The gelato was better. I went to Alaska in Santa Croce, which had a reggae, hippie feel about it. The owner is known for making wildly experimental flavors, but on the day I went everything seemed fairly typical. He suggested pistachio, which he had just finished making, and I added a scoop of fig as well. The pistachio was nutty and rich, but the fig was a little too mild for my taste. Anyway, he was super friendly and seems content with his life as a delicious gelato fabricator.


I also tried straciatella and nocciole flavors at Igloo in San Marco after having lunch at Rosa Rossa down the street. Very, very creamy and smooth.


On this trip, I did something weird. I ate the same dish twice. I never do this; my rule of thumb while travelling is to try everything that I can, with a special emphasis on foods I've never heard of before. But bigoli en salsa captivated me so much the first night that I had to eat it again. Here's a recipe (note: I don't think the versions I had used tomato paste). You have to really, REALLY like stinky fish for this dish, since it's made with either sardines or anchovies and is quite salty and potent. Italian parsley is crucial to cut through the fishiness.

I also hit the Saturday morning market near the Rialto bridge. It was wonderful; similar to the markets in Paris except with a huge emphasis on seafood, and lots of short, stocky Italian grandmas shouting and elbowing to get served.




Food markets always help me regain my faith in humanity, and this one was no exception. But regaining my faith in pigeons...that's going to take awhile.

Making peace with pigeons: part one

I've always been fairly carnivorous (I'm from Chicago, where sausage is essentially a food group), except for those rare times that I've flirted with vegetarianism if for no other reason than because meat sometimes seems kind of gross.

You know it's true. Even the most sanitized, generically pale chicken breasts in the U.S.A. can arrive with icky tiny blood clots or chewy bits still attached. And nobody likes to ponder the realities of the abattoir while they're chewing on a nice steak. But since I've been in France, I've developed a new theory: the more removed you are from the original animals, the more disgusting meat seems. It may seem counterintuitive (or to others perhaps completely obvious?), but I think that the more we process our meat into non-threatening, unrecognizable chunks, the more we cultivate a flesh-based Fear of the Other.

In the last two months of cooking school, I've ventured into previously uncharted meat territory (well, for me at least). In class, we have prepared and eaten snails, guinea hen, crayfish, lobster, crabs, rabbit, wild hare, deer, duck, wild duck, duckling, Bresse chicken, veal, chicken liver, wild boar, bone marrow, and other types of chicken, beef and fish too numerous to mention.

We have squeezed out the oil and cut out the glands at the base of a duck's back (this is how ducks preen themselves and keep their feathers water-resistant). We have pulled out leg tendons, and then singed the feet of these ducks and other birds over flames to remove the skin more easily. We have yanked out the guts of still-squirming crayfish, chopped up living crabs and ripped the claws off of blinking lobsters before tearing their bodies in half. And there is always a veal hoof lurking around somewhere, ready to add its gelatin to a stock.

I admit to whimpering like a baby when my crayfish did a big, wriggling back flip in a sad attempt to escape certain disembowelment under my clumsy grasp. And yes, I still get upset watching a creature die in front of me. But I think that if you're going to make the decision in life to eat animals, these are necessary lessons. I want to acknowledge that something died to feed me. I want to force myself to confront these vestiges of life and respect them. It just seems more honest than insisting that the meat arrive in your kitchen in prepackaged animaloid cubes, without any presence of blood, bone or feather.

Which brings me to the pigeons. Last week we made pigeon backs glazed with gingered honey. We had to prep the pigeons before cooking, and it was one of the bloodier jobs we've had.



The pigeons' bodies were just small enough to constantly remind me of my beloved pet parrot.


It was a hurdle. Other people have pretty strong reactions to the idea of eating pigeons, but for different reasons. I think because so many of them clog our cities and spend their days snacking on cigarette butts and bubblegum, we can't even conceive of a pigeon that isn't a type of vermin. But I've seen a few oddball pigeons in French parks in addition to the typical greasy kind; this breed is bigger and prouder, with a pronounced breast and a white ring around its neck. I like to think that the kind we ate in class are of this type.





Proud pigeon or greasy rat, it still became our lunch. And this time, I managed not to whimper.

Chocolate & Zucchini Party

Right now I'm in Venice, but prior to this I had a long, long week of cooking and eating, eating and cooking, and not much sleep. On Wednesday night, Christine and I met up at L'Homme Tranquille, a tiny, adorable restaurant in Montmartre, where Clotilde of Chocolate & Zucchini was throwing an anniversary party for her blog.

The room was STUFFED with jolly types of all sorts; so stuffed, in fact, that Christine and I spent most of the night out on the street with the overflow crowd. It was great fun to watch people walk by and and stop dead when they saw the party, salivating over our food and wondering whether they too could join in the fun (Uh, no). I hardly need say it, but dinner was excellent. You can read Clotilde's blog for an account of the menu, but allow me to note that the lamb and apricot tagine with couscous was sublime. My new goal is to master this dish.

I have no pictures, but you can catch a blurry glimpse of me in the photos on Clotilde's site. I'm in the picture that's second from the left, with a big goofy grin on my face (and a glass of wine, natch!).

When I got home at one in the morning, I looked at the bags under my eyes and thought, "Honestly, I don't know how many more of these marathon French eating experiences I can take."

Laughing my preposterousness, I tumbled into bed.

London: Raclette for breakfast, St. John for lunch ...and a brush with a Fat Duck

I'm going to take a cue from the blog of my friend Jason and make this post into a "phog". I hope you don't mind the lack of my usual excessive commentary (ha!); I just took too many tasty pictures in London that demand to be shared. So here goes:

On Saturday morning I met my friend Marc at the Borough Market.

I would be smiling too if I had this much cheese.

A quizzical squash.

Loads of tasty sausages.

Cheese on display at Neal's Yard.

Okay, I'm weird, but I think this is the most beautiful cheese I've ever seen.

Our breakfast: potatoes, gherkins and a generous scraping of toasty raclette cheese on top.

Yum, RACLETTE!

Afterwards we walked over to Brick Lane and went to a Bangladeshi supermarket.

Then we had lunch at St. John Bread & Wine. This is a cress salad with ox hearts. Delicious!

My appetizer: smoked mackerel with horseradish cream.

Marc's main dish was disappointing: just a pretty basic duck leg, looking a little wan for my tastes.

My main dish, on the other hand, was perfect. Salt beef with homemade pickled veggies.

And for dessert...an orange/plum crumble with creme anglaise.

Marc's dessert was a pear sorbet with pear vodka.

Afterwards we collapsed in a park and met this guy at a little farm nearby.

Fast-forward two days. (On Saturday night we cooked a giant dinner with Marc's friends near Brixton and two people threw up. But not from the dinner; probably from the enormous quantities of red wine that we imbibed while cooking the dinner. Sunday morning I had a nice greasy English breakfast at my hotel, and later we had a big lunch at Iran: The Restaurant (I LOVE that name!) on Edgware Road. That night I ate a huge steak and potato Cornish pasty, which gave me indigestion all night.) For Monday lunch, I went to visit Marc in Bray, where he is staging at the Fat Duck. You may have heard of it. I had a nice meal at the Hind's Head down the street, which is owned by the same person. But here there are no gels, oddly flavored lollipops or bacon ice cream; just pleasant, well-executed traditional English food. This is my Scotch egg.

They used duck eggs inside.

Salmon, cream cheese and cuke sandwich.

Triple cooked chips. These were wonderful.

Marc looking uber-professional outside the Fat Duck.

He gave me a quick tour. The restaurant is tiny and the ceilings are quite low because the building (like the pub) is about 400 years old. The kitchen was amazingly tiny; I don't know how they do it. We chatted with the friendly Scottish pastry chef, who was busy making beet tuiles and carrot/orange lollipops. It's fascinating to see how they are cranking out the most cutting-edge food in such antique buildings.

So, I left London yesterday with a new knowledge of meat glue and sous-vide cooking thanks to Marc, a bulging gut, and a backpack full of digestive biscuits and Maynard's Winegums. Back to school tomorrow...

Yauatcha: another quickie

I am in London for the weekend and am currently sitting in a smoky Internet cafe off Leicester Square. Although I already stuffed myself to capacity after totally overordering at a pretty good place on Edgeware Road called Iran: The Restaurant, I was pondering a quick trip (if only to peer in the windows) to Yauatcha, a fancy-pants dim sum experience in Soho. While searching for their address, I stumbled across this review by Giles Coren.

I know nothing of this man and have read nothing else that he has written, ever. But at this very moment, as I sit hunched in this smoky Internet cafe in which one can hear strains of Olivia Newton John entreating us all to Get Physical over the whoosh of the espresso machine, he has become my own personal hero. And besides benefiting from his wonderfully bilious sense of humo(u)r, he has taught me a new word: trollocks.

Two days of unamusing amuses bouches

Yesterday I couldn't cook to save my life. Well, that's not exactly true. Let's just say I had some small triumphs, and a few larger humiliations.

For the past two days we'd been working on assembling a variety of amuses bouches, tiny little portions of fancy food that appear at catered functions, cocktail parties and in fine restaurants before the appetizer course. We got a late start on both days and had to scramble to get as much prep done as possible. The class is slowly transitioning into a more autonomous working environment; the chef will yell out assignments and then we execute them without anybody looking over our shoulders. I'm excited about this but it also leaves room for error and confusion, especially when the translator mysteriously disappears and the chef assigns me to make the duck stock. We've had the recipes for chicken, fish and veal stock burned into our brains, but we hadn't yet made duck stock. I did the best I could to clarify my instructions without the translator's aid, but apparently it wasn't quite enough.

Chop up the duck - check. Brown the vegetables - check. Flambe with cognac - check (this was my first flambe, and at least it went swimmingly, without any eyebrow singeing in sight). Deglaze and reduce using Madeira - check. My pot grew full of a luscious brown bubbly gravy that smelled like everything holy.

At this point Chef returned and peered in.
"Looks great! You did the flambe on your own? Very nice, Sinteeahh!"
He paused, then looked again.
"But where is the duck??"

Oops. Apparently I was supposed to have colored the duck with the vegetables way back at the beginning. Due to my inability to understand the finer points of what Chef was saying, I thought we would be adding the raw meat later on. We do a variation of this for chicken stock, so it wasn't entirely improbable. But my erroneous logic was totally lost in translation. Suddenly I became The Girl Who Made Duck Stock and Forgot the Duck.

"Can you PLEASE tell Chef that I didn't forget the duck; I just thought I was supposed to add it later?" I beg the translator, who has now reappeared. It's still a mistake, but a less grievous one.
"You'll be a laughingstock," she says, giggling, as she ignores my pleas to clear my name. (Get it? Laughingstock? Har de har har.)

Later I was assigned to slice a loaf of spice bread and crisp up the pieces in the oven. Easy. I stick the tray in the oven and receive my next task, cutting a lobe of foie gras into bite-sized pieces and searing them.

As I begin on the liver, I check the spice bread obsessively. The oven is roaring hot, so there won't be much lagtime between the "crispy" stage and "burned to a crisp." You can, of course, guess what happens next.

I heat a pan and start searing. Since it's almost pure fat, a slice of foie gras only needs about thirty seconds over high heat before you flip it, count to ten and place it on a towel to drain. Making sure I got each piece to achieve a perfect caramel brown color required a fair amount of concentration. So much concentration, in fact, that I entirely forgot about the spice bread, which someone pulled out of the oven just as it began to smoke.

Ugh. The worst part was owning up to the mistake. Two slices out of twenty were salvaged. Chef kindly didn't yell or anything like that; he just quietly reworked the recipe. Instead of a slice of bread for each portion of foie gras, we'd sprinkle spice bread crumbs over the liver as a kind of garnish.

As I ate my foie gras sans gingerbread slice, I took some comfort in the fact that at least the foie was cooked nicely. And my flambe had kicked ass (even if only I saw it!). So I'm not totally hopeless. But I just hope nobody brings up that damn duck stock again.

Get ready for lots of pictures...

Stuffing scallops with truffle slices.

Scallop presentation: seared, served with endive and crostini.

Prepping tomatoes.

Tomato presentation: stuffed with zucchini and carrots.

Raw tuna with herb marinade.

Seared foie gras with burnt gingerbread crumbs. It's all the rage.

Potato gratin with reblochon cheese. This was just comfort food we made for fun. Mighty tasty.

Preparing to bake violet creams with fresh raspberries.

Violet cream presentation: with strawberry coulis.

Rose creams with red fruits and basil (because we used up all our mint that morning making Moroccan tea!)

Pouring custard into the apple crumbles.

Apple crumble presentation.

Drinking sparkling water and Grenadine (which we would later use to marinate pork): Chef Goulaze, Nina, Nastia.

The groaning table.

Final presentation of everything!

Making heretical yet tasty Tarte Tatins

We're back in the full swing of classes. Now that we have begun the intermediate-level Ritz Escoffier course, the recipes are getting longer and more complex. Every day we prepare an appetizer, entree and dessert in three hours. I'm finally feeling better after three weeks of flu, but now of course a few of my classmates are ill. I think this plague must be circulating through the entire population of the city, one arrondissement at a time.

Yesterday we had a late-night pastry class. On the agenda was a mango Tarte Tatin and a Napoleon cake. I see apple Tarte Tatins on menus all the time here, but I'd never really thought about what exactly defines such a creation. Who or what the heck is a Tatin, anyway?

Answer: it's a hotel AND the last name of a flaky nineteenth-century female cook (flaky! Get it??). According to the official Tarte Tatin website, the dessert was invented by Stephanie Tatin at her family's hotel after she accidentally inverted her renowned apple tart before baking one day. Frankly, I don't see how such a mistake could be possible when it was poor Stephanie's signature dish, but the website does note helpfully that she was "not the brightest of people." So revered is the Tarte Tatin that a confederation of foolishly-dressed men meets annually to "taste, evaluate and defend the Tarte Tatin." The brotherhood also travels around France to "to congratulate and encourage those who maintain this original recipe and to criticize the heretics."

You can see their approved recipe here. Imagine a flaky pie crust without sides that's topped with caramelized apples, and you're in the vicinity of a proper Tarte Tatin. It's actually baked upside down, with the dough placed on top of the apples, and then flipped just before serving.

Given these requirements, the Ritz school should expect an angry knock on its front door any day now from the clog-wearing Confrerie, because our mango Tarte Tatin was pretty darn heretical. I hope my involvement doesn't get me deported. Where did we veer away from tradition? Not only did we use mangoes in place of apples, we used frozen mangoes, probably flown in from some far-flung banana republic (or, ahem, mango republic) because according to both our translator and our pastry teacher, fresh mangoes available in France are, and I quote, "disgusting".

Well, thank goodness. If the French had somehow managed to locate a consistent source for amazing mangoes year-round, I might have to kneel down right now, kiss this hallowed ground and sell my plane ticket home, because there would no longer be any reason to leave. (See the graphic at the top of this page to understand the importance of mangoes in my life.)

Sauteing the mangoes in caramel sauce.
Although the Confrerie is "particularly tired of seeing very ordinary apple tarts or tarts made with other fruit served under the attractive name of Tarte Tatin," I am not. I only met my first tarte Tatin last month. It doesn't bother me one bit to see its good name sullied with the addition of impostor, imported tropical fruit. Especially when I think about the pounds and pounds of apples that certainly loom in my future this fall and winter.

After cooking the mangoes in caramel sauce and baking the rounds of crust separately, we used an enormously heretical yet extremely fun instrument to caramelize the tops of the slices (as you would for a creme brulee) before assembling them on the crust. Put a giant cattle prod in my hand that hisses angrily upon contact with fruit and sugar, and watch me grin gleefully. Then watch the grin fade to panic as nearby parchment paper ignites into a column of flame.

Molded mango ready for culinary cattle prod.

Applying bursts of heat to caramelize mango tops.
We served our Tatins with cardamom ice cream and green apple puree and a stripe of chocolate sauce that looks easy and minimalist but actually proved quite difficult for us to execute. It seemed like we could fling chocolate everywhere but on the plates, causing us to laugh hysterically. Our teacher just looked on, bemused and exhausted at the end of a long day. The Confrerie would not approve.

Final presentation.

Deconstructing food porn: a quickie

I can't tell you how happy it makes me that someone out there is researching food porn and the Food Network; my friend Rachael in SF sent this to me.

Go to www.onthemedia.org and scroll down to the show called Pornucopia. It's academic and food-related, I promise!

Paris, the hot and the not

Every time I told someone that I would be moving to Paris over the summer, the reaction was the same: "Ooooh my god! You are SOOOO lucky! That's my dream!" More than perhaps any other city in the world, Paris taps into a big fat romantic vein buried deep in the American heart. Somehow the city retains exclusive rights to the following tourist fantasies: drinking Champagne and kissing in front of the Eiffel Tower, clinking coffee cups over fresh croissants while watching the sunrise from the balcony of an opulent hotel room, shopping leisurely at gemlike boutiques and colorful markets, and admiring (perhaps bedding) handsome men and beautiful women skilled in the arts of seduction.

Ain't nothing wrong with these fantasies. We're Americans; we work too hard, we prioritize practicality over aesthetics, convenience over flavor, and science over art. I think we need to retain in our collective imagination a place in which beauty and deliciousness and joie de vivre still triumph; and for many of us, that place is Paris.

Perhaps if a gal spent just a week here with an unlimited budget, a chauffeured car and a suite at the Hotel Crillon, she could manage to sustain the Paris-Champagne-shopping fantasy. For the rest of us, though, I think travel anywhere usually ends up being a combination of blissful, fleeting moments when our expectations are fulfilled, long periods of sweaty trudging, map-reading and miscommunication, and occasional lightning bolts that cause our carefully constructed visions of a place to come crashing down around us. This heady cocktail is why I find travel to be so addictive, I guess. But part of me also wishes that we could do a better job of demanding that our Parisian dreams be realized in our daily lives in the States. Why do we need Paris to relax, to fall in love, to slow down and enjoy life? Can't we apply a little of this spirit to the American lifestyle?

Tomorrow marks the two-month anniversary of my move to Paris. Since I've arrived, I've noticed that slightly shocked expressions appear on the faces of friends and family whenever I've brazenly dared to complain about any aspects of life here. Complaining about living in Paris is, I admit, a little like winning a free Porsche and then mentioning that you had hoped for the color black instead of red. But I don't want my blog and conversations to turn into dishonest dishing up of Paris travel porn; I want you to know that for every beautiful, flaky pain au chocolat in this city, there are plenty that are dry and freezer-burnt; for every chisled Adonis that brushes against you on the Metro, you must endure the furtive pinches of twenty smelly old codgers.

So, in honor of the past eight weeks, I have compiled a silly, short list of eight things that I appreciate about my new home, and eight things I could do without.

Without further ado:

Cindy's Paris: HOT
1) Open admiration for strangers' food and fashion choices
It's acceptable here to praise someone on the beautiful pastry they are about to eat, or to gaze approvingly at their sparkly accessories.
2) Converse All-Stars
I have been wearing these (in black, always and forever) since I was 14. Thank god I happen to be here while they are hip.
3) Kirs
Such a good girlie drink: not overly strong, pretty-lookin' and big enough that you can nurse one for an hour.
4) Occasional bouts of collective public politeness
I love it that everyone holds the heavy metal Metro exit doors for the people coming up behind them, and that many people stand up (giving up their seats) to make room when the Metro car gets too crowded.
5) Hagen Dazs Midnight Cookie ice cream
Chocolate base with chocolate cookies; as far as I know, we don't have it in the U.S. Probably responsible for five of the ten pounds I gained while living in London. Alas, it costs about $8 a pint here.
6) Giant, crazy fashion glasses
I am not fashionable. Not even close. But I love the big colorful designer glasses everyone wears here. I know they look like goggles to Americans, but I can't help it. I want some.
7) Entitled old ladies
Elderly women (at least in the 16th, my neighborhood) dress to the nines every day just to do their shopping. They command respect, especially when they shove you aside if you're in their way.
8) Free reign to enjoy yourself and the pleasures of life without guilt
Need I say more?

Cindy's Paris: NOT HOT
1) Open disdain for strangers' food and fashion choices
Wolf down a messy kebab or wear ugly sweatpants on the Metro, and receive the most disgusted, hate-filled gazes of your entire life. People make their opinions pretty clear here. As a side note, I find it depressing to watch the few brave souls that try to eat on the go. Public eaters in Paris resemble public nose-pickers; they are joyless and ashamed, yet each group remains motivated by their single purpose. The eaters often follow a pattern: they take tiny nibbles, then hide the food between bites, then take more tiny nibbles, all the while clawing repeatedly at their faces to erase any errant cream sauce. Even though this is a city that guiltlessly embraces the joys and pleasure of eating, the social rules are pretty strict about when and where it can occur.
2) Human/animal emissions
I know the dog poo issue is a tired old chestnut, but I will add that there is also quite a bit of puke decorating my neighborhood streets. Let's put it this way: I can think of better things to gaze at on my Sunday morning walk to the laundromat than pigeons breakfasting on a pile of hurl.
3) Being surrounded by models while you're busy stuffing your face
I didn't even know it was Fashion Week until I noticed a disproportionate number of tall, willowy women with severe haircuts sipping bottled water (served by a fawning waiter) near me at lunch the other day. It's enough to put you right off your enormous creme brulee!
4) Tucking your jeans into your boots
This is very hip at the moment. On me, it looks like a pirate.
5) Razor Scooters
Remember these from the dotcom days? For some reason, they never quite went out of fashion here. Seemingly dignified people can still be seen zooming around public places on them, which makes me resentful. Why is it okay to look TOTALLY RIDICULOUS on a scooter, but not okay to forego blow-drying one's hair? Paris, let's make a pact. I'll stop giggling at the forty-somethings on kiddie scooters if you stop glaring at the slimy tendrils clinging to my neck every morning.
6) Tiny cups of espresso that cost $6
They're everywhere. I love you, tiny espresso, but you cost so very, very much.
7) Using your old fancy shopping bags to haul shit around
People are always conspicuously swinging their wrinkled paper Hermes shopping bags around on the bus and train. It reminds me of being sixteen; after we got our drivers' licenses, we swished our car keys all over the place, including laying them carefully out on tables at restaurants and playing with them absentmindedly while talking to our friends. "Look!" they said. "This girl DROVE HERE! In a CAR!" As far as I can tell, these tired old bags serve the same purpose, except for shopping. "Look! This woman once bought an expensive scarf! WORSHIP HER!"
8) Lastly, my dollhouse-sized kitchen trash can
It forces me to take out the trash every single day. NOT HOT.

Bingeing with Paul Bocuse

After finishing my exams, I was ready to collapse into my sweet, soft bed and cough for the duration of the weekend. But my parents were visiting, and we had planned a trip to Lyon to visit our former exchange student, Sophie. I hadn’t seen her since I was in fifth grade, and I was excited to meet her husband Michel and her children.

Here are some of my Sophie memories:

1) She introduced our family to crème fraiche, and would cook us French dishes that we would bestow with creative names like “Poulet a la Sophie”. When her stylish mother Francoise came for a visit, they made us Ile Flottante.

2) Sophie and I would play a Sega game called Teddy Boy endlessly, and occasionally hold Monopoly tournaments with my cousin Renny, whom she may or may not have been dating. I was too young to know the difference. Sometimes when she would lose at Teddy Boy, she would direct a stream of French invective at our television that seemed to go on for five minutes. She would never tell me what she was saying, despite much begging and pleading on my part.

3) Sophie was sophisticated and elegant. She was a bit older than the other kids at our high school, and wore shoes with square toes, something that seemed very exotic for our part of the world in 1987.

4) Because Sophie was sophisticated and elegant, I think she was fairly bored with American high school life. I remember that she used to go downtown with my cousin to bars and nightclubs on the weekends and come home in the wee hours of the morning, which made my mom nervous. Even at age 10, I knew Sophie was cool.

Since moving here, I’ve thought a lot about what it might be like as a European exchange student in America. I have heard from friends here that our giant, moist blueberry muffins, our twenty-four-hour services and our gargantuan, sparkling supermarkets are particularly endearing. But America is so spread out; there is so much space, and maybe less emphasis on family and community than in many European countries. Perhaps it can feel like a really lonely place. I wonder what it must have been like for Sophie back then.

When we finally reunited, she had hardly changed. I hope I have, because the last time she saw me I had a poodle perm, braces and acid wash jeans. Mon dieu. We had a lovely lunch at her flat – roast duck, potatoes, salad, cheeses, bread, and sliced pineapple for dessert. This was quite enough to keep me stuffed for the rest of the day, but we were instructed not to fill up because we would be dining that evening at Paul Bocuse’s restaurant, L’Auberge du Pont de Collonges.

Sophie coordinates events for Pignol, a famous patisserie in Lyon. She knows Paul Bocuse himself through her job as well as through her family, so she was able to reserve a tour through the Bocuse kitchens for us before we sat down to dinner. I was fairly quivering with excitement; as I told my parents earlier, “I don’t care how sick I am; I’ll make it to Bocuse even if they have to wheel me in on a stretcher!” Luckily no such measures were necessary.

This will sound weird, but the restaurant’s exterior reminded me of the façade of an American steakhouse chain. It was painted in all kinds of garish colors, with giant murals and kitschy ceramic animals scattered about. If the exterior was unexpected, the kitchens were in line with what I had imagined: immaculate, moderately sized and filled with copper. Some of the chefs accomodatingly posed with us:


After we were seated, Chef Bocuse came out and made the rounds at our table. He was grandfatherly but pretty serious. He disappeared into the kitchen, but then returned a few moments later and grabbed my arm, instructing me to follow him. I was being offered the chance to have my picture taken solo with The Master himself! It was thrilling, but I was also kind of freaked – and many of the pictures reflect this, showing me with a wobbly smile and a strangely cocked head a la Paris Hilton, as if I couldn’t quite process what was happening: “Is the father of Nouvelle Cuisine really clutching my arm? Please God, don’t let me have a coughing fit right now! Oooh, I hope I get to try some of those tiny pumpkin mousse cups I see on that rack across the room!” I wouldn’t have been more excited if it had been Jude Law next to me.


And then the parade of food began. Complimentary Paul Bocuse Champagne, those delicate cups of pumpkin mousse swirled with whipped cream and a sprinkle of bacon, and appetizers. I had “Dodine de canard a l’ancienne truffee et pistachee et foie gras de canard maison.” A dodine is a kind of terrine – this one had pieces of duck that had been layered with pistachios and truffles. The slice of foie gras was as close to heaven as it gets for me. And there was another surprise – a beautiful, glistening round of celeriac mousse topped with Sauternes gelee and a nice fat slice of truffle.

For me and my crippled French, ordering off menus here always involves a little bit of risk-taking and guesswork. I chose “Filet de boeuf Rossini, sauce Perigueux” as my main dish, but I wasn’t sure what exactly would arrive. I guessed that sauce Perigueux would involve truffles of some sort since Perigord is France’s truffle region, but that was as far as my speculation went.

What did arrive was a gorgeous filet of beef in a pool of rich, truffle-spiked sauce, surrounded by potatoes and cepes and topped with a generous slab of seared foie gras. Whoops. I probably committed an atrocious sin by ordering two dishes involving foie gras, but since nobody seemed to be sneering openly at me, I dug right in. I’m going to get gout from all this foie gras consumption, but that’s another story.

My parents split this fish, encased in a very pretty crust:


Then the cheese tray arrived. I really, really didn’t think I was going to be able to make it. I was stuffed, almost to the point of feeling sick, and I didn’t want to test my limits. But I figured if I was ever going to be able to eat a meal of this magnitude, it would be now, since cooking school has been daily encouraging me to consume more and more massive portions. It’s like my stomach has been going through Olympic training, except that it gets bigger instead of more toned.


My favorite cheese was the Saint Marcellin, which Sophie said is available in Paris but isn’t as good as that which can be found in Lyon. My hunch (call me crazy) is that even the worst Parisian Saint Marcellin is still light-years better than Kraft Cheddar, so I’m willing to take a chance. After the cheese course, we were each presented with a crème brulee.

“Ahh, dessert. A nice, classic crème brulee to finish a wonderful meal,” I thought happily before polishing it off. I leaned back and stretched, wondering idly whether I would suffer from insane indigestion all night now that I had concluded this marathon dining experience.

Then a strange thing happened. All the waiters started rolling up carts around our table and bringing out sweets from the kitchen. Cakes appeared at my elbow: dramatic cakes, topped with long dark chocolate shavings, and charming autumnal ones, topped with cocoa and meringue mushrooms to resemble a forest floor. Giant bowls of exotic fruit salads arrived, and tall parfait glasses filled with crimson fruit and sweet wine sauce were carefully placed in neat rows. Big silver tureens filled with strawberry sorbet and vanilla ice cream were set next to a plate of pretty white puffs that would become Oeufs a la Neige. A platter of Baba au Rhum was accompanied by fig and raspberry tartlets and tiny cups of wild strawberries and raspberries.

Apparently, the crème brulee was an appetizer. We were trapped, completely surrounded by a mammoth assortment of classical French desserts (and complimentary glasses of delicious dessert wine). We were supposed to request whatever we wanted, and as much as we wanted. I think I’ve had dreams like this.

I made do with a tiny slice of the “forest floor cake” (that’s what I call it, at least) and a cup of wild strawberries. “You don’t want anything else? You are sure?” asked the waiter. He seemed disappointed in me. But I couldn’t. I might have exploded all over Paul Bocuse’s pretty dining room in Lyon.


After finishing up and admiring the weird ceramic duck dishes and Bocuse ashtrays in the gift shop(!), we stumbled out into the cool night air. Later, I would toss and turn for a few hours as my body tried to process the enormous amounts of rich food and the evening’s brush with celebrity. As I lay in a half-dreaming state around 4 AM, I distinctly remember thinking, “Only a few more hours until breakfast!” God help me.

Our final exam: no blood, but sweat and tears

The six week introductory course at the Ritz flew by, and all of a sudden it was time for us to take our dreaded final exams.

I say “dreaded” because we didn’t know what to expect. Our teachers kept it all purposely mysterious until the last minute, perhaps correctly banking on the fact that a certain amount of obfuscation might inspire us to take the whole thing more seriously. A few days before the exam, they passed out a list of six recipes for which we would be responsible. We wouldn’t have to remember ingredients; those would be provided by the school. All we had to do was memorize the steps involved in the creation of each dish. During the test, we would be randomly assigned an appetizer and a main course, and would then have two and a half hours to prepare them for our instructors and a panel of judges from the hotel and school.

Unlike most cooking schools, the Ritz doesn’t have individual stations for each of its students. Most cooking is done on the hulking range at the front of the classroom under the watchful eye of one of our instructors. Things are very group-oriented, which definitely fosters friendships and camaraderie but may mean that you don’t actually get to bone an entire chicken yourself because there are only three for twelve students. I struggle with this format; on the one hand it means we get to cover many more dishes than we would if we were each measuring out our own ingredients and doing individual presentations, but it also means that the instruction is occasionally less hands-on than I would like.

The prospect of the exam, in which we would each get to cook two dishes on our own from start to finish, was both exhilarating and daunting. I am mildly obsessed with our gorgeous periwinkle blue La Cornue stove, and the thought of manning all of its roaring hot burners by myself was thrilling. On the other hand, I was worried that I would forget parts of my recipes, or burn my sauce, or set my hair on fire. You know, typical cooking school student fears.

I began reviewing my recipes on Thursday and noticed a funny tickle in the back of my throat. By Saturday the tickle had erupted into a full-blown cold, and I was down for the count. I spent the weekend sipping tea in bed and trying to review the steps for Tarragon Chicken and Pork Fillet with Grainy Mustard Sauce without passing out. By Monday (our longest day of classes yet), I was very, very sick with what now seemed to be the flu, and fairly miserable to boot. My parents were arriving from the U.S., my exam was the next day and I had to keep dragging myself around to classes for fear that I would miss crucial last-minute exam information.

On Tuesday, I felt as prepared as I could be under the circumstances. I doped myself up with the variety of medicines I had amassed over the weekend, met Nastia for a pre-exam lunch and review session, and changed into my whites. We intercepted some of our classmates that had been assigned to the morning section; they were glowing and happy, telling us not to worry, to have fun, and that the whole experience was relaxed and enjoyable. I took this advice with a grain of salt, however, because their section had been staffed by the more easygoing of our two instructors. Our supervisor often drives us hard and can be pretty tough. I like it.

We each chose an envelope, and I was satisfied with my selection: my old friend Oeufs Meurette for the appetizer, and Sea Bass with Sweet Peppers on Herbed Couscous for the main dish. I started slowly and with much deliberation, carefully writing down the steps for each recipe and marking all the prep that I would need to do first. I began by methodically brunoising my peppers, making sure that each one was a perfect little square. I tried to ensure that my work area was clean and tidy at all times. I dropped a handful of herbs and garlic into a pot of boiling water to start infusing my couscous water, and then carefully chopped up some lardons for the final garnish on the egg dish.

“Sinteeaah! Be careful! You infuse those herbs too long in the water, your couscous will taste terrible!”

The instructor’s stern warning jolted me out of my happy codeine haze. Nervously, I tasted the water. It tasted like …water. The herbs hadn’t done much of anything yet. I went back to slicing bread rounds.

“Sinteeahh! How much people you cooking for? Twenty? You don’t need so much.”

I looked down at the pile of bread I had cut into little circles. Okay, true, it was a tower big enough to feed our entire class rather than four judges, but I wanted to be sure there would be enough to cover me in case I scorched some, or dropped them on the floor.

“Chef, I’m American. We do everything big.”

He laughed and turned his attention elsewhere. Phew.

Two and a half hours later, I was no longer cooking methodically or deliberately. I was cooking in a frenzied panic, sweat pouring down my temples, wisps of hair escaping my ponytail and clinging damply to my neck, apron stained with red wine, cutting board long abandoned and not so tidy anymore. I had gotten my wish: I was camped in front of the stove, repeatedly lighting fussy burners, ruining my first poached egg by forgetting to turn the heat down and allowing the yolk to break into my vinegar water, reducing a pot of red wine, sweating shallots and haphazardly sautéing my carefully chopped peppers. I had completely forgotten how sick I was.

Unfortunately, I was starting to get really nervous. And earlier, during my pre-exam lunch with Nastia, I had gulped down an espresso. This combination gave me the shakiest hands of my life, a liability when one is trying to carefully and artfully pour mahogany colored sauce onto a minimalist white plate. The sauce flew everywhere, droplets instantly baking onto the plates’ superheated rims.

“SHIT!” I croaked as I rushed to wet down a dishtowel and clean up the sorry mess. “SHIT SHIT SHIT!”

“Do not worry. Just take it easy. It is all fine,” said Nastia, appearing at my side. She had already served her Provencal Vegetables appetizer to the judges, and with zenlike calm began garnishing my eggs with delicate chives.

“Thank you thank you,” I blubbered.

“But where is your fish?” she asked.

“I haven’t even cooked it yet,” I replied, and when I saw the look of shock in her eyes I knew I was in trouble. We had been assigned the same sea bass dish to prepare, and out of the corner of my eye I saw that her plates - delicate fillets resting gently atop their beds of beautifully molded couscous – were ready and waiting across the room on a silver platter.

“SHIT!”

The rest of the exam was a blur. I turned in my dishes only a few minutes behind schedule, but also managed to melt a plastic container right onto the flattop of the aforementioned gorgeous stove. Luckily my teacher was in the other room judging the dishes, or I would have received a scolding for my carelessness: “Sinteeeaaah!! What have you done here??” I wiped up the molten plastic quickly with my dishtowel and nobody was the wiser.

Later, when we went to the library to receive our critiques, I noticed that among all the full plates of food we had created, one had been scraped clean. A judge had liked my Oeufs Meurette so much, he’d eaten the entire thing. This meant more to me than any grade. I fed a French chef French food!

So, Nastia completed the exam with flair and elegance. She made it look easy. I made it look like a trainwreck. I found out later that two of my classmates had actually broken down in tears. But in the end, we all passed, and tomorrow many of us will continue on with the intermediate course. Only five weeks until the next exam!