Fine Dining and Tacos

While we're here in the City of Light we're enjoying both excellent meals and excellent companionship at those meals. I'm proposing new nicknames for Paris, with my top contenders so far being City of Food and City of Calories.

As promised in my last post, I'm catching you up on our incredible meal at L'Arpege with Jeff Clavier on Monday 7/11. Brad and I had been there before in 2005, but didn't have the full degustation experience that we had this time – and this was wonderful. I'm reconstructing the list of courses from memory, so I may be missing one or two, but I'm providing links to an excellent photo-rich review that can give you an idea of what the food looks like. We didn't have the opportunity to photograph the courses during our experience since Brad's phone wasn't working at the time. You'll have to visit for yourself for the tastes!

L'Arpege Listing of Courses:

Amuse bouche of tiny pastry cups with beet cream or radish and tomato
Tomato soup with scoop of creme fraiche (my 2nd favorite course)
Single egg in shell – a L'Arpege signature, with creme fraiche, maple syrup, and chives (3rd favorite course)
Assorted grilled vegetables
Lobster in thin white potatoes (my favorite course)
Red onion gratin with black currants (my least favorite course)
Three vegetable ravioli in consomme
Fish with lemon and pepper for me, fish with white wine for Brad and Jeff
Another fish with green tea powder / lamb for Jeff
Cheese course – incredible Comté
First dessert – rhubarb in mille feuille (rhubarb somewhat overwhelmed by the pastry. I would have preferred more rhubarb flavor.)
2nd dessert – basil ice cream with stewed yellow plums and black currants
Tray of sweets in multiples of 3 with some fascinating vegetable flavor macarons
And surely that is enough!?!!
Oh, the wines – chosen by Jeff. I don't remember the white, but the red was a pinot noir from the Mazis-Chambertin region of Burgundy

A lengthy, thoughtful, and astute review of L'Arpege on the Food Snob blog, with gorgeous photos, is worth a long read, and includes some history on Alain Passard's personal evolution as a chef.

And here is a link to a series of photo tags for L'Arpege on Paris by Mouth. Beautiful.

We had a couple of days to recover, lying about like pythons after devouring several goats, then our friend, Jud Valeski, from Boulder, Colorado, arrived – which necessitated venturing forth in search of more food.

We ate at Saturne, which is reviewed here:

review on the New York Times

review on Paris by Mouth

review on Paris Notebook

review on John Talbot's Paris

Since Jud has a phone that actually works in Europe, he took these beautiful photos of our beautiful meal. We missed photographing the starter, which was chunks of tuna tartare with small slivers of sardine, white onions, parsley, and drizzle of viniagrette.

We're also missing a photo of one of my favorite parts of the meal, which was a hearty country bread served in a linen basket filled with fresh hay that smelled wonderful.

But here is our first entree – fish for Brad and me, and chicken for Jud:

And our second entree – line caught sea bass with peas and summer squash

And dessert of a fromage blanc ice cream with tiny meringue balls and raspberry granita coulis -

A nice way to start our nice week with Jud with modern French food.

But sometimes you just want Mexican -

After yet ANOTHER day of pouring rain and gray skies, Brad was officially ready for some not-French food. From my extensive (borderline obsessive) reading of food blogs, I knew there are now a few actual Mexican food options in Paris.

We took a taxi to Candelaria, which we didn't know had been reviewed in the Sunday Times T Magazine on May 6th and further reviewed in the New York Times on May 31, 2011.

We're not usually so au courant (see my French?!) but the handmade tacos and actual salsa were worth squeezing in to the tiny, very crowded place. We sat at the single communal table and ate real Mexican, which helped drive away some of the damp and chill of the Parisian summer.

And then it was the weekend, and time to rest from our dining labors.

Longtime Gone / Postcard from Paris

I don't usually quote lyrics by the Dixie Chicks, but my last post was September 1, 2010 and it has indeed been a long time since I've posted to my blog. I think this is primarily due to laziness and the ease of use of Twitter, which I use multiple times each week.

But now I'm in Paris for a month and have more to share than fits in the 140 characters of a tweet, so I'm actually going to post a post. Whee! How exciting -

I have been tweeting away while here, with lots of links to my Google photo albums, which I hope you're enjoying. I'm mostly using my aging Nikon D100 digital SLR camera as a point and shoot and not taking advantage of its magic powers, but I think I'm at least sharing some of the visual flavors of Paris.

And we've started taking advantage of the literal flavors of Paris in the past ten days or so and making some new friends. We had lunch at Les Gourmets de Ternes with Toby Ruckert and Margit Brusda from Stuttgart, Germany, New Zealand, and India, as well as Nabil Hanga from Lagos, Nigeria. It's mostly a meat place, serving slabs of the cold blue beef the French seem to admire, but 4 of the 5 of us had fish instead. Brad really enjoyed the baba au rhum dessert, but I didn't love the celebrity-obsessed owner and don't need to go there again, especially since there is a world of dining splendor surrounding us.

The next day we had lunch with Cliff Shaw and Christy Clark from Boulder, Colorado at Restaurant Dominique Bouchet which I felt was our first "real" French meal. I had salmon carpaccio with pink peppercorns and Granny Smith apple bites, tuna and avocado stack for Brad, giant pasta tubes with lobster for both of us, and dessert of chocolate tart for me. The experience was similar to the meal I enjoyed and blogged about at Les Bouquinistes in April 2005. The space was clean and modern, with contemporary art on the walls and a simple decor. I would have happily gone again during our time in Paris except that, in the Parisian way, the restaurant is closed from July 14th through August 29. So French.

After our now normal afternoon siesta, we had an excellent high-end meal that evening with Rodrigo Sepulveda Schulz and his lovely lawyer wife, Anne, at Laurent in the outdoor garden in the Parisian twilight overlooking the Champs-Elysees garden. Although I'm allergic to wine, which is extra unfortunate and difficult in France, I could smell the incredible Domaine Francoise Raveneau 2000 Chablis Grand Cru Blanchot even though I couldn't drink it. My beautiful lobster helped comfort me. And dessert was a comfort, too.

The very next night we were delighted to have dinner with longtime New York friends Fred and Joanne Wilson at Les Fines Gueles which Joanne blogged about here, complete with fun photos. If you squint you can see my fun French scarf in the background of a shot or two. Les Fines Gueles is one of a crop of wine bars I keep reading about on the Parisian food blogs I've recently subscribed to. One of my favorite reviewers, David Lebovitz, reviews it here. I would eat here every week.

The next day we walked down to Sunday lunch to meet Jerome Camblain and Nathalie Besancon at Cafe Marly, trying to burn off at least some of the accumulating calories. The best thing about Cafe Marly is that it overlooks the glass pyramid entrance to the Louvre. As is usual for places with superb views, the food and service are inversely proportional to that view – but what a view!

And the next day, because we hadn't been eating enough food, we had a legendary Top Ten List meal with Jeff Clavier at L'Arpege, which is probably worthy of its very own separate blog post. Truly amazing meal. Here's a photo of L'Arpege lobster from another one of my new favorite Parisian food blogs, Paris by Mouth.

Brad is very relaxed and happy from lots of sleep and an exploration of French wine. Here's his list of his first week in Paris.

I'll do another post soon (famous last words?!?) about eating at Saturne and the upcoming repeat vists to Top Ten List restaurants Le Cinq and Guy Savoy.

Bon appetit!

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What’s on my Needles?

I started knitting last summer in Keystone after a 20 year hiatus, and have thoroughly enjoyed making gifts for friends and family over the past year.

In June I finally finished a baby blanket for my cousin Josh and wife Brie's new baby boy, Benjamin Shoemaker. I'd been working on it through the winter but didn't quite finish before his birth date in May. These aren't exactly "baby" colors, but they're colors that I enjoy working with. I liked the mock cable look and used a machine washable acrylic yarn for practicality. Another of my cousins had a baby boy in August, but I haven't managed to make a blanket for him yet.

In between working on Benjamin's blanket, I whipped up a scarf for
my friend Maureen's birthday. It is modeled here by her husband, Dave Jilk, demonstrating an unexpected flair for the true spirit of fashion.

Since we were going to be in Alaska for the entire month of July, I thought I might finally make something for myself. I ordered my favorite yarn, Misti Alpaca Chunky in Urban Autumn, online and started making a blanket for myself. I used the same baby blanket pattern as the Rollie Cohen baby blanket from fall 2009.

I got about 5 inches
into it and realized it was going to weigh approximately 117 pounds
before it was done and would smother me if I fell asleep under it while
watching television. I wasn't trying to replicate the feeling of the lead protective covering you wear during dental x-rays.

So I pulled it out.

I thought I'd go back to what I know best, and made a scarf instead.

I used a simple moss stitch and things progressed nicely.

Here it is wet-blocked with the stitches stretched out:

Then I took a week-long daily Forrest Yoga class and gave the completed scarf to the teacher as a thank you gift.

So I still haven't made anything for myself.

I thought I might get brave and try some socks, and bought some fun yarn, but then I decided I wasn't brave enough to attempt that without being able to get human help.

I started another scarf project with an interesting loopy-looking pattern:

But I got bored with the simple 4-row repeat and pulled it out.

Then July was over and it was time to come home to Boulder.

So I'm trying again to make something for myself. I'm using a yarn that I bought to make hats, but I haven't managed to move from two dimensions into three. It turns out the amount of yarn wasn't really long enough to actually make a scarf, so I browsed some at my superb local yarn store, Shuttles, Spindles, and Skeins to find a complementary yarn. I found a Donegal tweed green with a purple fleck I think will make a very nice striped scarf for myself. I'll experiment with how wide the bands of each yarn will be and we'll see if I can actually FINISH something without pulling it out!

Home Cooking

I made dinner for friends Jason and Jacqueline on Saturday night. I love to cook, but somehow haven't manged to do a nice meal at home in probably a year.

It won't be so long until my next effort.

Jason and Jacqueline took all of the photographs and agreed that I could assemble them into a little photo essay.

Brad did his usual job of arranging antipasti appetizers in a visually appealing and tidy manner:

We began with butternut squash and pear soup topped with parmesan and toasted pine nuts from The New Vegetarian Epicure cookbook.

Here I am holding grilled salmon entrees, which I totally cheated on and bought at Whole Foods. We generally keep a vegetarian house and I rarely cook even fish. The other dish is Tuscan white beans simmered in fresh sage and garlic cloves basically the entire day and served on a bed of fresh baby spinach, topped with parmesan and toasted pine nuts, also from New Veggie Epicure.

The open spot on the plate is for polenta with grilled asparagus, topped with parmesan and toasted pine nuts.

You may notice a toasted pine nut theme emerging?!

Here's Jason preparing to enjoy a chocolate pot de creme with raspberries from 365 Great Chocolate Desserts, topped with fresh whipped cream and more raspberries. This dessert is so rich and decadent that conversation usually halts while it's being eaten and for some period after while the blood sugar drops back into conversation capable levels. This is an old favorite (the dessert, not Jason):

Since the pots de creme are a guaranteed success, I also tried a new recipe for coffee flan from New Veggie Epicure. Whole coffee beans and a cinnamon stick are steeped in a milk and cream combination for at least an hour, which infuses the flan with an extra rich flavor. I have to be careful not to accidentally discard the liquid in the sink and retain the coffee beans and cinnamon. I've done that before, but managed not to do it on Saturday morning.

The flan turned out beautifully, and I even flipped it out of its baking dish onto a serving platter in one piece, although I missed the center of the platter.

Brooks is always interested in whatever is happening in the kitchen and likes to poke his nose in.

Jason and Jacqueline brought perfect Colorado peaches from the farmer's market as well as lovely fresh flowers.

And this morning, as I finally assemble Jason and Jacqueline's photos, their flowers are opening beautifully –

Snazzy Socks

One of Brad and my tips for happy relationships is gift giving. We have a date the first of each month, which we manage to do about 90 percent of the time, and we exchange gifts, which we manage to do about 50 percent of the time. Sometimes we do significant gifts (Range Rover to Brad, killer earrings to Amy), but often we just do something small and thoughtful.

I've been looking for socks that are as exuberant and unusual as my husband is, and recently discovered that Robert Graham makes these wonderfully colorful dress socks.

So these are my August 1st gift to Brad –

Planes

One of the things you notice in a small town where there isn't much noise is what noise there is. In addition to overlooking Kachemak Bay and the Homer Spit and part of the Kenai mountains, we overlook the Homer airport, which generates a surprising number of small plane takeoffs and the run-up engine checks prior to takeoff.

I've traveled many miles in small planes throughout Alaska, mostly in high school as an orchestra geek. I was fortunate enough to play in the Fairbanks Symphony and the Arctic Chamber Orchestra and saw parts of Alaska that are only accessible by air. It's also the way to get to where the bears live.

Summer Break

We're in Homer, Alaska for the month of July this year. It's easy to see why we like it here. Here's the view from our front porch when I arrived:

Here are a couple of shots from the airplane window as I flew in to Anchorage, with the peaks of the Alaska Range poking through the clouds.

One of the terrific things about coming here for a month is having a a calendar with no appointments on it — a thing of beauty, leading to the best night's sleep I've had in months.