Pig's feet

A few weeks back, my friend VL's (who lives in Hong Kong now) coworker came to Paris for training. This means I had another person I can have dinner with! She'd never been to Paris before, and it was a Sunday night, and we know how notoriously annoying it is to find a place that's open for dinner on a Sunday. I gave her a few choices and we decided to go to Au Pied de Cochon next to Les Halles.

Sure its touristy, but she just wanted to get a feeling for traditional French food and I don't think thats just an awful place to try the basics. But even though their Soupe a l'oignon gratinee (one of my favorite French dishes) is supposed to be pretty good, it fell flat.

Too little flavor in the broth, and too much cheese. I barely even saw an onion in there! And then I ordered what I thought were mussels, as in mussels in their shells piled high, but I got something reminiscent of escargot dishes, a mussel or two in each little hole, with some kind of tomato / herb sauce on top. Also underwhelming. But it was redeemed with a glorious fromage frais topped with almond crumble and morello cherries. I could've just eaten that all called it a night. (And look, the girl take gorgeous photos too!)

On the plus side, it is open 24 hours and claims it hasn't closed its doors since 1947 so I guess if you're starving in the middle of the night, you can go and get some porky goodness (I actually had no pork whatsoever tonight...although maybe I should have and that was my problem?). Just skip the soup.

Sweet sunshine

Yesterday was the nicest weather it's been since I got here. The sky was blue, the sun was shining, I had no umbrella with me. I walked around, got one of my favorite breads from Bread and Roses (rye loaf studded with raisins and currants) and some Bordier butter from La Grande Epicerie. It's supposed to be the best butter ever. I think I need to put it on some plain bread, not the rye bread, to really taste it. But it tastes like creamy sweet sunshine. And looks like it as well. It has that nice freshly churned yellow butter color. I also found my 0% cherry yogurt but LGE is all the way across town and €2.34 for a pack of four! I get a pack of 8 mixed flavors for that much! 

And then I was off to brunch to meet up with my new-found Texas friend. And then I realized she's never had macarons (seriously? I was appalled!). So I made it my mission to have her try some. There is no way you can live in Paris and not eat macarons. I barely know anyone who doesn't like them (although some find them too sweet, I think there's a flavor for everyone). First stop was Pierre Herme, where I was foiled yet again and failed to get an Istaphan macaron. One day I will find it. So instead I got passionfruit chocolate and apricot pistachio. Then Gerard Mulot for the passionfruit basil one there. I'm glad to say she's now an official macaron lover. 

Between brunch and macaron store hopping, I stopped by Poilane to finally pick up one of their rustic apple tarts. I took it home. It didn't last long.

I kept stealing bites in the kitchen over the course of 15 minutes. Then I couldn't take it anymore. And shoved the rest in my mouth. And chewed. Happily. Very happily. 

Japanese in Paris

Paris for some reason has a ridiculous amount of Japanese restaurants. And they always give you "salade de choux" or cabbage salad, which I personally think is a French riff on carrot and daikon slaw. At work, everyone always orders from this one Japanese restaurant on rue de Petits Champs but it's not that great. I got their vegetable tempura once (which strangely came with shrimp) and it was good but fried to a golden brown meaning the batter was more like fish and chips fried than tempura fried. Good but not what I wanted. But I really like their salmon yakitori skewers, they're never dry. And I just discovered you can get half a mango or a quarter of a pineapple for dessert (its off the menu!). 

Anyhow, its been rainy and blah in Paris the past few weeks (I've come to terms with it, and wonder when it isn't rainy and blah, although a few minutes of sunshine brightened my day today!). I really wanted something warm in my tummy. I was actually going to go and get some miche Poilane from Monoprix and have that with ratatouille (I'm a bum on Fridays and pretty much every other day...my future apartment owners have nothing to worry about since all they're worried about is noise!). But I got a text. Dinner. Score!

So my dining companion, being ever so gracious and agreeing to come all the way from the 16th (or is it 14th?...maybe 15th?) to the 2nd. We went to grab some udon at Kunitoraya on rue Saint Anne. It's like the epicenter of all things Japanese it seems. The whole street (and some side streets) are lined Japanese restaurants with a few Japanese bodegas and bookstores here and there. And a couple of restaurants always have a line out the door it seems, including this one. 

Warm, chewy and doughy, just how I like my udon.

This is no HS cafeteria

Look at me...I'm being a dork and writing about my corporate cafeteria. I've never really used corporate cafeterias before and I'm fascinated. I've given this one a couple tries and haven't been disappointed. You get a full plate of food (usually three choices daily) and three sides. A side can be salad bar, dessert, yogurt, pre-made appetizers or two pieces of fruit. They also sell half bottles of wine (but I think those are extra). They just renovated the cafeteria and the space, although crowded, is a bright a cheery refuge from these awfully dreary Paris winters. So everything is brand new and clean (we'll see how long that lasts). But I was really excited to see them doling out food from the big Staub cast iron pots. That's a nice investment right there. And look at my tray full of food.

This is all together less than 4 euros! I got rabbit (it wasn't very good actually) with potatoes and stewed sauerkraut, two clementines, a yogurt and a poached pear. And bread. French ppl like bread. Granted on a regular (non-cafeteria) day, I usually get a sandwich (I try to avoid baguettes for the most part and get the smoked salmon on pain de mie from Kayser) or a salad or something small and this here, well, its a lot of food. I save the fruit and yogurt for later, although I sometimes succumb to dessert (there goes my "No 'S'" rule). But it's so cheap and completely respectable which means I might have to go there more often. Now if only I could find willing accomplices...

Bulgur wheat

Some of my new years resolutions (or things to try in the new year) were to learn to cook legumes (lentils, beans), squash (I really want to get some delicata squash) and to incorporate more grains in my diet. I tried my hand at polenta for the first time last week (yes, polenta is not one of the three things above). It was alright when soupy but it hardened into something really delicious. I was going to make baked polenta fries with the leftovers but there was no polenta left since I couldn't keep myself from eating it cold.

When I was in Sao Paulo, I had the best tasting brown rice ever. It was completely unadorned and really nutty flavored. I'm usually not a huge fan of brown rice, it just tastes bland. But this was amazing. I googled it later and I think it was short-grain japanese brown rice, which I'm going to have to go hunt for. Shouldn't be too hard, I live in the middle of Japan town it seems, with ramen (or as they write, "lamen", which I find hilarious because I don't know whether Japanese people find that offensive or not since they can't really pronounce their R's...but I digress). But craving something rice-like but not white rice, and, in a seemingly serendipitous (didn't think I'd ever use that word, did you now?) moment, NYTimes decided to have a whole section devoted to bulgur wheat.

I don't know if I've had it before but I'd read about it and it kinda looked like that best-ever-Sao-Paulo-brown-rice so I got some. And I must say, it's deliciously chewy. I'm going to eat more of this (plus, its healthy and full of fiber!)

Bulgur salad with veggies and feta  (I took the contents of my fridge, but the base salad credit goes to a certain cook who made us the best coq au vin a few weeks ago, you know who you are!)

1 medium sized tomato

1 small cucumber (or 1/4 of those huge cucumbers)

1/4 of a red onion

1 1/2 cups of lettuce, chopped up (probably 4 - 5 leaves)

1/4 cup of feta, crumbled

1/2 cup of par-boiled bulgur wheat

olive oil

salt

Cook the bulgur wheat according to the instructions on the box (probably put in salted boiling water for 10 - 12 minutes). Meanwhile, dice up the tomato, cucumber and red onion (finely dice that one), as well as the lettuce if you haven't done so already. Put everything into a medium bowl. Add the crumbled feta, about 1/2 a tbsp of olive oil and salt, to taste. Mix it up. 

When the bulgur is done cooking, drain and rinse under cold water (I think this probably strips some nutrients, and I guess you can put it in the fridge if you make it ahead, but you just need it to be cooled). 

Add to the salad, mix, adjust salt to taste, take a big spoon (no forks for this!) and eat!

Making the rounds

My corporate apartment looks like a page (or three) out of the ikea catalog. The kitchen is ikea with ikea tableware, glasses, pots, pans, everything. It's almost like I'm cooking at JP's again - same cutting boards, same colander, same cheese grater, same pots and pans...sounds like all the tools for some pasta! And so, shying away from jarred sauces at Monoprix (they don't seem to be very good, are tiny, and way overpriced), I made the tomato sauce that has (apparently) been making its rounds on the internet for a while. I only recently read it on Smitten Kitchen (one of my favorite food blogs!). 

Deb is right...this sauce is pretty gosh darn lusciously silky (I mean come on, it has 5 tablespoons of butter!). I think I'd add some herbs to it for a better flavor profile but even by itself its yum. I tossed the sauce with some orecchiette. I don't know if that was the best choice of pasta shape (I think buccatini would be really good...or I guess spaghetti), but that's the only pasta I have on hand at the moment. Plus, I find orecchiette really adorable. Please note, that amount of sauce below is not all the sauce. That's probably 1/4 of it so...1 tbsp of butta.

Other things making the rounds that I have yet to take a stab at are the Jacques Torres chocolate chip cookies and the Jim Lahey no-knead bread. I'm waiting or the rest of my stuff from NYC to arrive (it's somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean...) particularly my Le Creuset for the no-knead bread (and other recipes I have yet to make). Which means I gotta wait until I move into my apartment (can't wait!). Same for the chocolate chip cookies. Gonna start baking and bringing stuff to work like I did in NYC...but I'm going to stick to the good American stuff: brownies, cookies, cupcakes (surprisingly, I haven't seen them here yet) and rice krispie treats (although I hear the ingredients are hard to procure here for that...anyone wanna stash some rice krispies and marshmallows in their suitcase for me?)

Juveniles

I like wine bars. I like wine bars a lot. There's something about the ability to get a glass (or bottle) or wine and have a few appetizers / snacks thats just so appealing. In New York I use to go to Las Ramblas with JP (although we tended to drink 2 pitchers of sangria and get 5 - 6 tapas and make an entire dinner out of it...). I wanted to go to Le Garde Robe but when I got there it was closed. So I wandered over to Juveniles, my second time there. It's a wine bar that specializes in Australian wines (although the owner is Scottish I think?). So between having 3 different wines (not that I remember what they were but they were a white, a rose and a red from Lebanon), I got this:

I hadn't eaten all day so I was starving. This was a "crostini" with a jambon cru (cured ham), tomato (underneath the ham) and a garlicky-Parmesan-I-don't-know-what-that-green-stuff-is-but-its-damn-good pesto-type sauce on a baguette. Totally hit the spot.