Fraise et Tomate

One of the lovely dinners we had in Paris was at Maceo, which was celebrating high July with a summer prixe fixe menu of strawberries and tomatoes. Chef Thierry Bourbonnais' focus on fresh and seasonal could not have come through more clearly, with luscious strawberries in every market and the first tomatoes ripe.

We started with a cold soup with the scent of berries and a delicate tomato flavour and revelled in the spacious room of pale wood. I loved being there in the pretty dress I had bought in London, earlier in our trip. Princess time!

Then we were served shrimp with berry-dyed alfalfa piled in a rosy heap with shreds of preserved lemon. With this pink swirl, it seemed perfect to be drinking the recommended rosé. Maceo is a sister restaurant to the famous Willy's Wine Bar and it's omnivorously wineophile owner, Mark Williamson, and the sommelier at Maceo did indeed seem to know his stuff. The menus on the website are a free mental vacation: http://www.maceorestaurant.com/

Our entree was lamb loin with the fat cap well crisped, served over roasted tomato slices with a pile of tiny sauteed mushrooms. Pure umami on a fork; this was Hubby's favourite course. Evening was falling, the breeze through the open window was cooler, we were enjoying ourselves and our dinner.

Always happy to eat dessert, I was excited at the plating of this one: wee dehydrated strawberries were scattered around a collar of nut tuile, which held tiny fresh berries. A quenelle of tangy creme fraiche ice cream lay along side. Too full for more dinner, I nevertheless demolished it.

We tumbled out onto the street after our leisurely meal and happily made our way to the Opera subway station, along with a strong minority of other well-dressed people - tourists, most likely, since Parisians flee the city in the summer. We were enjoying being alive and well-fed on a beautiful July evening in the City of Lights. Hubby kissed me on the platform; we laughed like we had a secret.

Flop pie

Mmmm...peaches. My second favourite fruit.

While on vacation, I had read Jeffrey Steingarten's 'The Man Who Ate Everything' and was inspired by his obsessive, perfectionist research to make traditional pie crust again. I've been using Edna Staebler's 'speedy pat-in pie crust' for a long time and although there's no top crust, a great streusel topping compensates in ways that mean no one notices the non-traditional bottom. My brother, in fact, believes it's the real thing. People don't make real pie crust much any more and it's been so long since they've tasted it that even those exposed to my mother's superior pies have apparently forgotten the unbearable lightness of crust. Great fruit and ice cream compensate for a lot.

Oh, but the crust. As much as I love peaches, and find them superlative in pie, great pie means great crust. Thinking of that lardy, flaky, tender pastry makes my mouth water, so maybe it's time to make my own again.

Steingarten consults - a soft word for the kind of obsessive pastry stalking he pursues with singleminded focus in person, via phone and fax - with Marion Cunningham, author of the Fannie Farmer Baking Book. After weeks of making pie he comes up with what he thinks is the definitive version - simple enough for an amateur, delicious enough for a gourmand.

Okay, I'm in.

After carefully reading the 8 pages of directions - not including the 6 pages on fruit fillings - and working my way through the process with strict obedience to detail - I had a non functional crust. As in, too dry, falling apart, with no structural integrity. I know to adjust baking recipes for the dry conditions in Calgary - flour is absent humidity here - but it can be hard to know how far to go - and clearly I had not gone far enough, even though I went to Steingarten's max. I wet a tea towel and spread it over my rolled dough, leaving it long enough for moisture to absorb into the crumbly crust, and managed, with the help of a scrubbed binder cover, and despite gritted teeth, to lower the two crusts into position around a peach filling.

But the proof's in the pudding, right? Unfortunately, post bake, despite an adequately browned top, the pebbly appearance turned out to continue on to the mouth feel. Can I tell you how disappointing it is to be all set up for pie nirvana and find inadequacy?

Hubby and guests - sharply warned that this was flop pie, and I didn't want to hear anything but happy comments - dutifully nod with appreciation. Okay, so it was willingingly finished in short order, but that just goes to my point about people no longer remembering good crust.

Perfect pie - still AWOL.

Bakery Breakfasts, 7th arrondissement

We never set up the dining table for breakfast in Paris. Instead, Hubby would hike the 6 flights down to our local bakery (how I love that man!) and climb back up with a bag full of my requests. He would make dark, strong coffee, I'd prep some fruit and we'd read and nibble and sip and enjoy the morning on the couch. Sunday every day!

I love pain de chocolat, and ate a good many of these, but I had an exhuberant fling with the chausson aux pomme, a flaky pastry filled with tangy apple puree. I wish it could have been a lifetime relationship, but I haven't found a Calgary version. For breakfast with fresh cherries - sublime.

Sometimes Hubby brought a goat cheese and tomato tart, which we would share, and he would have a croissant as well, and I would have pain de chocolat, each of us hoarding our favourite. There were no offers to share.

Strawberries were in season, tiny, thin-skinned, juicy and voluptuously fragrant strawberries. Strawberries like I remember eating from the garden, and finding no where else in my adulthood of hard, pink, scentless blobs from Safeway. Why does Europe still have devastatingly good strawberries while we eat tasteless styrofoam? There should be an inquiry. It's a national scandal, but most of us have forgotten what we're missing and don't complain. Well I'm complaining now. I'm mad at North American strawberries and I don't know if there's anything they can do to make it up to me - short of giving up their hard-hearted ways and becoming real strawberries again.

I topped the lightly sugared berries with a healthy dollop of creme fraiche - just to round out our food groups - and gloated that such a thing was available at the corner store.

If I could eat breakfast like this everyday, I'd stop skipping it. I'd become a devoted, enthusiastic, evangelistic breakfast eater. All hail the continental breakfast! Okay, maybe especially when eaten on the Continent.

Days of wine and cheeses

We've been home a month, but in that time we've recreated our recurrent Paris picnics several times, enjoying wonderful cheeses, baguette and wine, often a Sancerre or Muscadet, for dinner.

There were at least 4 cheese shops within three blocks of the apartment we rented, including the famous Cantin cheese dynasty, now headed by daughter Marie Anne, one of the few companies in Paris which ages cheese in their own cave to the perfection their trained noses detect. http://www.cantin.fr/

I was a little intimidated by the store: instead of the cheerful profusion in other local cheese shops, each cheese was displayed on a separate stand in the temperature controlled room, like a Cartier jewel without the glass. Uniformed staff reverently cut each piece and wrapped it in Cantin labeled paper once they deciphered an approximation of what I was asking for, my French being non-existent. I found it hard to limit my selections; after all they had four kinds of Comte, my favourite gruyere. I only bought two, along with that king of cheese, Beaufort; a stinky Brie de Meaux; and two goat cheeses, young and old. The bill: high for France but better than Calgary.

Fresh chevre, however, was not sold at Cantin - it was available at every corner grocery store, along with creme frais, Brittany butter and lardons. Avec moi! (fake French expletive) What a country!

We were lovingly savouring the last of the Beaufort on the Chunnel train to London a week later. It will be months before Beaufort is available in Calgary, which we looked forward to across the coming cold of autumn with a rueful toast.

The moveable feast to be found in the other local cheese shops looked like this:

Amongst a long list of things I hope to return to Paris for, a far more thorough exploration of local cheese is one of them. Until then, I will keep my tastebuds trained and happy with locally found Piave, Vigneron, Chevre Noir and Vintage Gouda, ready for the next visit, deo volente.

Bonjour, mon ami

Home again, home again...a month in Europe was definitely only enough time to really get a taste for great pastry. Hopefully our road leads back someday.

A month without cooking - aside from a couple of simple dinners early on when we were in a 17 century cottage with a wee kitchen - has left me out of the groove.

With jet lag temporarily at bay, we headed to the farmer's market, since foraging for a great restaurant was no longer how we were to be fed. sigh. But great ingredients like baby potatoes, ripe avocado, and sweet corn were inspiring without requiring any more than the simplest preparation.

Hubby has learned to make guacamole, so while he was concocting what tasted good to him, I steamed the potatoes and corn, and chopped a mix of herbs; the remnants from my balcony pots after a wicked hail storm, to toss with the potatoes in butter. It wasn't a fancy meal but it was freshness of summer.

Tender, gorgeously sweet corn with butter - I mean really, it only comes for such a brief time of the year, it becomes a temporary addiction. Winter memories of those exploding, luscious kernels keep my summer hope alive.

It was one of those days

I had lots of last minute things in prep for our trip and somehow also had a naked rack of ribs in the fridge. And ribs are new to me. But I'd read up on Cook's Illustrated time-condensed technique for a tender, crusty rack and was prepared to make it work around my chores. The frugal cook must persevere and use the ribs, the asparagus, the baby potatoes! Unthinkable to leave them and hope the housesitter actually cooks.

I made the rub and rubbed it. I phoned the credit card company, donated the eye glasses, emailed the friend, dropped off the DVD's, picked up the prescription, bought the sunscreen, mailed the letter. One store didn't have what I want, but that's okay.

Back home, I soaked the wood chips and started the grill. Except the temperature wasn't getting to where it should be...blast. CI wants me to slowly and smokily grill the ribs first but to ensure we eat before midnight I can't wait for a propane refill. So I'll be doing this backwards - into the oven go the ribs, on a rack over a pan of water, basted periodically with apple juice and fruit vinegar mixture, the way CI asks for them to be finished. One way or another, they'll be okay.

In between packing-laundry-cleaning, I called the phone company, since I was not able to dial long distance that morning. For 45 minutes, I was bounced between departments, agents and hold. Most of the time, not only can the person I'm speaking with not answer why I can't dial long distance - they can't find my account! I doggedly supply my name, address, phone number, account number and date of birth to each new person I speak to, only to end up frustrating both of us by the fruitless search for my record; being transferred and repeating the process. In the end, it really becomes the end. They can't help me because they can't find me and never offer to follow up and get back to me. I refuse to do business with a company whose database has no record of me when presented with the account number and the phone number they gave me. A TECHNOLOGY COMPANY!! Not okay.

Two hours later, Hubby arrived with the refilled tank and got an earful of my story, with full furious frustration, followed by presentation of the home phone file - I am deleting it from my 'to do' list and demand Hubby find a replacement company. He, as usual, is very amused by my rant, laughing aloud at the company's incompetence and my passion over it, and agrees to arrange a change of our telecom supplier.

The wood chips get fired up again, and this time complete the job, although with less smoke than I would have hoped. We eat at 9pm and the ribs, despite their messed up process, are quite fabulous. Rich, tender and flavourful, we gorge ourselves and forget the lesser issues of technology and empty propane tanks.

PS. No innocent telecom phone flunkies we harmed in the course of the neverending pointless conversation.

And the winner is....a hybrid?

Recently, Slate hosted a cook-off between the precise and particular food geeks of Cooks Illustrated and the democratic user-driven free love of food52. Both websites supplied their premiere versions of braised pork shoulder and sugar cookies for Slate readers to make and compare. http://www.slate.com/id/2252446/entry/2252447/

The end result seemed to be that CI had the technique nailed and food52 had the best marinade flavour. I've braised pork before and it's a lovely meal with savoury drippings just crying out for mashed potatoes to sop up that sauce. Mmm.

So I cut to the chase and stole the (reportedly) best of each for my own test. I used the food52 spice mix and loved the aroma of the orange rind, it was reminiscent of mexican el pastor. I marinated the meat 24 hours and flipped it periodically as it soaked up the flavour. Then over to the CI technicians and their cooking method with the roast above the braising liquid. It came to the recommendeded 190 degree temperature more quickly that I expected. I let it rest and carved it up but the expected pulled pork texture did not materialize. Although tender, it just wasn't that unctuous bite that I was expecting. I think it needed more time in the oven to fully melt all the connective tissue and become perfectly moist succulence. Sadly and strangely, the flavour wasn't all that, either. The meat was pleasant tasting but the fennel/orange/garlic flavour was muted enough to be almost unrecognizable.

The pork shoulder made a nice meal - but as Hubby and I discussed recently, 'nice' really barely feels like a compliment. Next time, I'm doing things MY way.