Who Needs a Cookbook?

Every once in a while I attempt to make dinner without the help of a cookbook. Usually it's a disaster, or I end up cheating and getting some help from the Internet, but tonight was definitely the beginning of a new era (the era in which I no longer need a cookbook but merely use one to supplement my clearly advanced cooking skills).

It all started on Saturday when I dragged myself out of bed at 8AM to go to the Peachtree Road Farmer's Market for their first market of the season. It was ridiculously crowded, and mostly only had a variety of lettuces since the season was still early, but Nick and I managed to get a away with some interesting finds. We bought a bunch of radishes (which we ate with some butter and sea salt) and carrots (which were the lucky subjects of my first attempt at pickling! More on that later). I also bought some snow pea shoots, which were these tender little green sprouts with a slightly bitter taste...the farmer suggested either eating them raw in a salad or throwing them in some pasta at the last minute. To finish it off, we decided to be adventurous and buy a rabbit and pork sausage from the new charcuterie booth at the market. That's where the cookbook-free cooking comes in.

Since there is no recipe that I know of involving rabbit sausage, I decided I'd make a pasta using that and the pea shoots I bought. That is, until I opened the sausage wrapping and smelled this horrible sourness that smelled like the meat was going bad or something. Nick called the purveyors of the sausage and after telling them their sausage smelled "rank" (in the nicest way possible!) they told him that its apparently supposed to smell like that and it should be fine once we cook it. Well we cooked it, and it tasted weird so we decided to cut our losses and get some emergency sausage from the Fresh Market down the street. Good decision.

So anyway, this dinner turned out super delicious. It was light and rich at the same time, and the flavors all went pretty well together. Here's how I did it:

In a hot pan, I sautéed the sausage (which I removed from the casings) until it was fully cooked and then removed it to some paper towels to drain. I also discarded the rendered fat from the sausages. Added a little extra oil to the pan (maybe half a teaspoon or so) and added one small onion, thinly sliced, and some red pepper flakes and salt. Once that was almost done caramelizing, I added two chopped garlic cloves and half a diced red bell pepper (again, add salt). Let that cook for a minute or two and poured in the remainder of a bottle of Marsala wine I had laying around (it came to about 1/4 cup). I deglazed the pan with the wine and let it reduce for five minutes or so. I added back the sausage and put it on low heat to warm the sausage back through. About a minute before the linguine pasta was done cooking, I added it to the pan with the sausage mixture, along with a couple tablespoons of pasta water to thicken the sauce. I let everything cook together for another minute, added a teaspoon of butter to round everything out, and it was done! Well, until I realized I forgot to add the pea shoots. I added those in off the heat, in the serving dish. It actually worked out pretty well since they're so delicate and too much heat would have wilted them too much.

And here's the finished product! (After its been partially devoured...)

I just realized that I forgot to add the Romano cheese I bought at the farmer's market. Guess I'll have to make up another recipe to go with that...

The Last Supper...or Lunch

I'd read about Chez Dumonet in the blog I've been referring to and Grace and I decided to check it out. We wanted to go for dinner, but decided not to risk going without a reservation, so instead we went for lunch. Not taking any chances!!

We arrived five minutes after they opened for lunch (of course) and got a table! I had heard amazing things about their boeuf bourguignon and duck confit, so I ordered the duck and Grace got the beef. Before our dishes arrived, the server brought out an amuse bouche of creamy gazpacho. Oh my gosh it was so good. I could have eaten a tub of that and been happy. It was creamier than most gazpachos I'd ever had and not totally overpowered by raw garlic. It tasted like a giant puréed tomato, with maybe some jalapeno added for a little heat and something else that made it slightly sweet. It made me a total gazpacho fan.

Next, our dishes. The chef himself brought my duck confit out!! He's a third generation Dumonet and has been cooking there for 28 years. The duck was AMAZING. I'd never had duck confit before, and I don't think I'll ever have it this good again. The skin was crispy and crackly and the duck itself was so tender. The potatoes on the side had a sprinkling of fleur de sel on top (I'm totally stealing that idea), and it made them even more delicious. Even the side salad was awesome. It had three different kinds of lettuce with just a bit of red wine vinegar, but what really made it was the chopped up parsley on top. Stealing that idea too.

Grace's boeuf bourguignon was to die for too. They braise theirs for 24 hours here...literally, I would put the beef in my mouth and wouldn't get the chance to chew because it would melt in my mouth too quickly. And the sauce...oh my gosh the sauce. I wanted to pour it over everything in sight. It made my boeuf bourguignon sauce look like brown water compared to it. Imagine the thickest gravy ever, and then multiply it by a billion. It was the richest sauce I've ever had too. It was served with buttered (and I mean BUTTERED) tagliatelle, which I had never thought to do, but I will definitely do from now on. It was heaven.

So at the end of the meal, we've managed to make it through without totally embarrassing ourselves in front of the very Parisian clientele. Grace was on the lookout for me and every time the waiter left the room I would whip out my camera and snap a shot really quick. I didn't want to be THAT guy. ;-)

Georgia On My Mind

I think everyone here was feeling a bit homesick this week, so some of us decided to go try out the American diner that's down the street from us for some comfort food.

This place is called Breakfast in America...it's covered in American flags and all the staff is either American or British. It was amazing to be able to say more than one sentence to them without having to stop and translate in your head. I'd been craving a Caesar salad ever since I stepped off the plane, and every time I found a "salade caesar" in a cafe, it was some weird version of it that I couldn't recognize. I mean, seriously, Caesar salad without garlic and romaine lettuce?

I got a Caesar salad and a chocolate milkshake, which was so good. I don't even drink milkshakes in America. It just seemed like the appropriate thing to do here, and yes, it definitely was. The whipped cream always tastes a bit off though. Must be the unpasteurized milk....

Unfortunately, the salad was way too overdressed and the lettuce (again, not romaine) was a bit wilted. But at least it kind of reminded me of a legitimate Caesar. Needless to say, its #1 on my list of things to make when I get back. That, and carrot cake.

Yesterday, my trusty sidekick Grace (I told her I need to come up with a cool nickname for her for this blog) and I went on a mission to find A L'Étoile d'Or candy shop. The best candy shop in all of Paris, according to David Leibovitz whose blog about food in Paris has become my tour guide. It took forever to get there because we kept getting lost and walking in circles. Thanks, Google Maps. We finally made it though, and we walk in to see there is only one lady working the cash register. I was so disappointed because I had read that the best part of the candy shop is the owner, Denise Acabo, who is the nicest woman in Paris (proof: she uses the "tu" form when speaking instead of the formal "vous". Definitely a laid back woman.) Plus I was all sweaty from the walk and the sales lady was making me self conscious because she kept staring at me.

But then! The door to the backroom opens and there's Denise Acabo! Imagine this little woman with long pigtail braids that just rushes over to you and starts joking and laughing all while speaking French a mile a minute. I tried to keep up...but I feel like all I kept saying was "Je veux acheter tout vos magasin" ("I want to buy your entire store"). She liked that. ;-)

I had come on a mission for two things: chocolate by Bernachon, and salted butter caramels by Henri du Roux. We were both lucky and unlucky though...luckily, we had gone to the store that day because she was closing it for two months that night! And unluckily, she was basically trying to get rid of everything in the store, so her selection was a little more sparse than usual. 

I did see some of the caramels though, but there was only one package of like 5 or 6 left, so I bought those and also some ginger caramels and a lime caramel that tasted like key lime pie. So good.

Then there was the table of Bernachon chocolates with its "Do not touch" sign displayed prominently. Denise Acabo is the only candy seller in Paris that is allowed to sell these chocolates. Bernachon is a chocolate maker in Lyon, and is the only chocolate maker in the world that makes his own chocolate from scratch. As in, he starts with beans and ends up with the bar that you eat. Usually, chocolate makers have to buy their base chocolate from suppliers. 

I just realized that I haven't tasted any of it yet since I bought it. Most of it I got gift wrapped to take home as presents, but I bought the only white chocolate bar they had for myself. Ok hang on I'm going to try it.

......

Hmm....ok, so it's definitely not sit-there-and-eat-a-whole-bar-of-it chocolate. It's way too rich for that. One piece is plenty. It also doesn't taste like any white chocolate I've ever had...probably because white chocolate in stores is only cocoa butter, but REAL white chocolate has cacao in it, just very little. It tasted a little nutty, and I'm looking at the package now and it says it has almonds in the ingredients list. It's not what I was expecting. But still, better than any chocolate I've ever had! I bought the milk chocolate with coffee, dark chocolate with coffee, and "creole" which is like rum raisin. I'll have to try them all when I give them to people as presents!

So at this point, after getting the caramels and the chocolates that I came for, I start to realize that Denise Acabo is the greatest salesperson in the world because shes just so nice that you want to make her happy and buy everything in her store. Let's just say I bought way more than I should have.

One of the things I got though were some liquor chocolates. She described them as Grand Marnier flavored and rum flavored etc etc, so I thought it was just going to be chocolate with flavoring. Nope. I took a bite of one in the street and oops, it's filled with a shot of liquor! The chocolate was basically a hollow shell with liquor inside. It was still a pretty delicious combination, though I'm a little scared to try the other ones...

I tried one of the salted butter caramels on the way home...let's just say it was mindblowing. Literally the best thing I've ever eaten. 

Oh, and just as Grace and I are discussing with each other how  we each just spent 80euro on CANDY, the radio in the shop starts playing Georgia On My Mind. If THAT's not a sign, I don't know what is!

more french food please

I had such a French day today! After spending a whopping 20 minutes in the Musée d’Orsay, Grace and I got bored and decided to go find lunch somewhere. We found a decently priced bistro and sat down to eat. I hadn’t had a croque monsieur yet, so of course I ordered that and a French onion soup. Which is just onion soup in France. And French fries are just fries here too. And hotdogs here are apparently “American hotdogs”, so we can feel better about that I guess...except I’m pretty sure the French are just trying to clarify that hotdogs are definitely not a spawn of their culture.

Anyway, the croque monsieur was alright, but nothing to go back there for in particular. Same with the soup...honestly, I think I make a better one myself back in the US of A. But ten points for the ambience! Here is my attempt at looking cool while eating soup:

After my super heavy meal we split dessert, which happened to be on my list of top ten things I wanted to try in Paris: Ile Flottante. I’ve wanted to try Ile Flottante ever since I saw my soulmate, aka Barefoot Contessa, make it on TV, but it looked just complicated enough to where I was too lazy to ever try to make it. Overall, it wasn’t bad.  A little too sweet for my taste I think, and I’m not a huge meringue fan. And now I’m wondering why it was ever even on my top ten list. Oh well. Atleast I can tell Barefoot now that I’ve tried it when we meet at the Seine later in my imagination. 

For dinner, my eating buddy Grace and I went to Tastevin, recommended by her mother. It was conveniently located right next to our hostel, but it took us about an hour to make it there because we went the complete opposite direction first to go to Glou, recommended by my dad. We’d gotten to Glou and they didn’t serve dinner until 8, so we left to go to Tastevin, only momentarily distracted by L’As du Falafel as we walked by it, but we had promised to try this place so we kept moving. So difficult. I’m obsessed with falafels from there.

Anyway, we arrived at Tastevin with 3 minutes to go before the dinner shift started. We thought it would be embarrassing and very touristy of us to just walk in there, so we circled the block and saw this really disturbing butcher shop with chickens and ducks with feathers and heads still attached. I’ve added un-beheaded chickens to the list of things I will never cook with. Number one is live lobster. Too scary.

We made it back to the restaurant at the fashionably late hour of 7:02, and were seated. This place was so cute and French looking on the inside...it looked like you were eating from inside someone’s fairytale cottage. 

I started out with a salad of watercress with Roquefort cheese and walnuts, which reminded me of Nick’s mom because she made me a bleu cheese believer. The cheese here was super pungent, but I ate it all. Well almost all. There was just so much cheese! There’s only so much I can handle...

Grace, being the adventurous poultry-innards eater that she is, ordered the chicken terrine. It had an interesting flavor...kind of like a cold hotdog. I’m sure that’s like the worst description of terrine ever...

My main course was amazing...I ordered the Sole Meunière, and got their last one. Grace was glaring at me for that one. The sole was wonderful though…it was swimming in butter and lemon juice, and the tomato one the side gave it a really good fresh flavor. The rice on the side soaked up all the juice and it tasted like nutty brown butter. I’m surprised my arteries aren’t completely clogged right now, but that was so worth it.

Grace got the red roulet fish, which was covered in a pesto sauce. Very delicious...I’d never had red roulet and I’m wondering why it’s called red roulet when it was white fleshed fish. The best part of it was the pesto though, because I’m pretty sure it had thyme in it as well as basil, and those are the best two herbs on the planet.

For dessert we decided to share a scoop of pistachio ice cream. The restaurant served Berthillion’s ice cream, whose store is located across the street. Since we had been planning on going there after dinner (but saw it was closed), we were totally up for killing two birds with one stone. It was awesome ice cream of course. Tasted like someone had mixed a pistachio with sugar and frozen it. 

So that was the end of our French food day! I had basically every French classic I could think of, all in one day. I need to do this more often. And there should be no more eating at McDonald’s just because they have free internet. So shameful.