Paris Post: Photos from September 26

Sunny weekend, walked around the Louvre (didn’t go inside, frankly one visit is enough for a lifetime). But from the outside it’s lovely and spectacular.

 

Paris Post: Photos from September 13

Trip to the Marais and the Jewish quarter, for the world famous falafel. This is our best ‘celebration’ meal. I think we were celebrating our apartment in Montreal being rented (which has since fallen through, anyone need to rent a lovely furnished apartment in Montreal?).

Because the restaurant is closed on Saturday, we visited on Sunday and the line-ups were long on the left for take out, and shorter on the right for eat in, which we did!

  

And it was time for an updated picture of me in front of this restaurant I’d love to own… Have you seen the UK episode of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares that takes place in Paris? This is the restaurant, right down the street from the falafel place.

And here’s last year’s picture,
same restaurant was for sale then, too:

 

THEN I was filming the last video for the Fabulous French Desserts cooking class, soft peach cake:

 

 

 

I may have to buy some frozen peaches and make this right now, I’m starving!

~ All best, Shelley

Paris Post: Photos from September 12

I know I’m about 6 weeks behind in posting my Paris pictures. I’ll work on getting caught up over the next week or so. Not to worry, I’m still taking lots of pictures, I just have to sort through them to show you the best ones. (Nothing more boring that looking at someone’s BAD travel pictures…)

On Saturday, September 12th, we went to Parc de Bercy … big park and gardens which is next door to a big music sports / concert hall (this is where Madonna played when last here).

  Main entrance to the Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy (POPB)

 

yes, they have grass growing up the side of the building

 

the teenagers were having a lot of fun skateboarding down the many flights of stairs

 

this is the park next door

 

the gardens are set up so that you can sit on the grass between the flower beds

 

Alas, I don’t have any pictures of the outdoor restaurant, complete with live DJ spinning groove 1960s albums, where we sat and had a beer in the sun.

More to come

~ All best, Shelley

Paris Post: Photos from September 5th

September 5th was our 3-year wedding anniversary, and happily it fell on a Saturday, so we could spend the day out having adventures.

After a (bad) breakfast in a new café, we went walking on rue Cler, a little pedestrian street lined with cool shops:

 

And we found an amazing Italian boutique: I mean, can you count the different kinds of ham and sliced meats?

  the selection went on forever

 

I kept saying “wowie” over and over again, until it got tiring

 In the end, we bought some sliced rosemary ham and celeri remoulade to have for lunch

 

on this same street, we found the first Brussels sprouts of the year

 

For dinner, we went for rotisserie chicken and divine mashed potatoes. This restaurant has a house cat named Beaujolais that roams around the dining room. I’ve taken to calling this restaurant, affectionately, “charbroiled-cat”.
As in: “would you like to go to charbroiled-cat tonight for dinner?”

 

walking the streets after dinner

 

a giant full moon dead-centre in this photo

 

Then we ended up at the Guinness Tavern, where the drinks are expensive but the live rock band is free. Small place, packed tight with Parisians. The band sang a lot of English covers, like “Sweet Home Alabama,” and I was probably the only person in the room who could tell that they didn’t actually know the words in English. They sang the way a 3-year old sings “Twinkle Twinkle” … with made-up mashed-together words that sound approximately correct, but are hilarious in their incorrectness…

All best,
Shelley

Couscous makes you fly …

OK, not really, but it does makes me feel super-human. I love eating Moroccan food, I’m not sure why. I mean, really, couscous has a weird texture and the tagine veggies are usually waaay overcooked …

But holy-wowie it’s SO yummy, all those chick peas and the little
dish of raisins they serve on the side. All the dipping and sharing.

Here are my pictures from tonight’s dinner:

 first the lovely man serves some couscous on your plate, then he delivers the eat plate (left), and the chick peas (right), with the pot of broth and veggies (back, right)

 

so i serve up my plate, once, twice, three times by the end of it

 

in the end, all that’s left is the lamb bone

 

resto has funky walls and clashing print chairs

 

i look funny in this picture, young with bad hair …

 

mister with the furry face, his shirt kinda clashes with the walls

 

So now I’ve got to ask: what are you having for dinner tonight?

All best, and happy Friday
Shelley

Paris Post: Pictures – Tour Montparnasse

Paris pictures from July 30th.

City is already in quiet-vacation-mode

 

i like this sandwich window, with choices like “poulet avocat tomate” and “chévre jambon crudités”

 

Now here are pictures from the top of the Tour Montparnasse:

the big green space is Jardin Luxembourg

 

 

 

from the rooftop desk, you can see the Louvre in the foreground (long) and Sacre Coeur in the background (middle)

 

 

 

 

 

 

here’s a picture of the cute man, wearing a t-shirt he hand painted

 

 I got tired of posing while a. tried to take the ‘perfect’ picture’

~ All best, Shelley

Recipe Research: Cup of Summer

In French, my ‘cup of summer’ would be pot d’été (pough debt-tay). Though perhaps it’s really a cup of springtime, since rhubarb isn’t available for long. I buy extra rhubarb when I can find it, even here, and give it a quick rinse, whack it into 1/2 inch pieces, and stick it in the freezer in 1-cup bags so I can pull it out later when required.

This ‘pot of whatever’ dessert was trial #1 for my new French dessert. Here’s the original dessert at 2 Euros per serving (about $3.10 Canadian):

The crumble was dry and had nothing to do with the lemon. The meringue on top was cold, of course, and the whole thing was uninspiring.

 

Here’s my first attempt at improvement:

rhubarb, coconut cookies, whipping cream, butter, strawberries, and vanilla sugar

 cut up and cook some rhubarb

 

add some strawberries in the last minutes of cooking

 

crush cookies in the groovy cool new mini blender/chopper

 

mix with a bit of melted butter and put in small glasses

 

layer with the cooked rhubarb-strawberry compote, and top with whipped cream made with vanilla sugar

Shelley’s note #1: I would have used wine glasses, but alas we’re already broken two this month, and so there aren’t enough left to make up this dessert.

Shelley’s note #2: Katharyn, if you’re allergic to strawberries, you can make this with rhubarb alone, or you could combine other fruits like blueberries and raspberries.

Shelley’s honest opinion of this dessert: It was yummy, but not super-wowie-terrific. The cookies are nearly the best part so if I didn’t have access to great coconut cookies, then it would be crummy – no pun intended. Gingersnaps, a good logical substitute that would marry well with strawberries, are not easily found in Paris, and when found are called “English cookies” (as in from England).

Future Idea #1: Perhaps I’ll try again with a lemon curd filling and a regular shortbread cookie crust.

Future Idea #2: We did have a pot-au-chocolat for dessert that was lovely … good chocolate, whipped cream, egg whites, a tiny bit of instant coffee (or rum).

My search continues for Fabulous French recipes that I can include in my upcoming video cooking class. 

Your ideas? Let me know what you think.

~ All best, Shelley

Paris Post: Crème fraiche

I want to share a little bit of ‘what’s going on in the inside of Shelley’s head’ … and it relates to crème fraiche.  I have started researching recipes for my upcoming “Fabulous French Basics” video cooking class.

To begin, I have two French cookbooks purchased on previous trips. I also brought some Montreal-French magazines (old issues of Ricardo are pretty great).

In one French cookbook, nearly every single recipe has crème fraiche in it. Need a cream sauce? Making quiche? Cooking fish? It’s everywhere.

Now, this is a problem.

Because I do not want to design recipes that have unusual ingredients. Yes, I know we can find crème fraiche in North America, but it can sometimes be tricky, it’s expensive, and then what do you do with the leftover?

It’s not like my special jar of apricot jam that I can save safely in the fridge till I make apple pie again. 

Crème fraiche is fresh.  It’s gonna expire.

I went online to try to find a good substitute for c.f., and one that doesn’t involve ‘cooking’ anything with ‘buttermilk’ to ‘make your own’ that has to perch on the counter and ferment (ick!). 

Finally I found what looks like a pretty close substitute:  mix equal parts of sour cream with whipping cream, and let sit in the fridge overnight.

Now I want to test that concoction next to a tub of crème fraiche to make sure they do taste somewhat the same (yes, i know c.f. can be whipped and has all sorts of other ‘wonderful’ qualities, but we’re just making dinner here, not solving world peace, therefore so far as I’m concerned, if it TASTES the same, then it’s good enough to be a substitution).

This is another problem.

Couldn’t find sour cream in Paris, and no one knew what I was talking about when I asked.  Sour Cream?  You want your cream to be sour on purpose?

But when I think of how we eat sour cream, it’s not very French!  It’s kinda Tex-Mex.

And we’re so used to the lovely tex-mex influences in North America that it’s hard to imagine a grocery store, like the Monoprix on rue Grenelle in Paris, that does NOT have tacos, salsa, guacamole, and SOUR CREAM. 

André said, “well then maybe you’re going to create French recipes for North America using your Montreal-Canadian magazines.”

Gee, I coulda stayed home for that!

And all of my Canadian recipes call for … you guessed it … stuff I can’t get here:  cottage cheese, cream cheese, sour cream.

After days and days of researching ‘expat’ websites, to check out where other desperate souls (avid cooks or those just plain homesick), buy their creamy stuff, yes, I did find a speciality store that carries “international” food, including cheddar cheese! 

I bought some sour cream, I’m going to do the c.f. substitution test.

Phew, it’s complicated making new recipes over here   But we were richly rewarded with tonight’s dinner, quiche made with c.f.  Yes it’s sort of like sour cream, but lighter, and the texture of the quiche was not greasy at all like those made with cream. The quiche was unusually solid and kind of smooth, in fact.

Of course, I added potatoes to the quiche lorraine recipe, and some cheese, and some onions.  It was more like my White on White Quiche recipe from The Veggie Club with bacon and cheese…

Which is to say, it was yummy.

Tomorrow I’ll mix up a cocktail of mock-c.f. and we’ll see how it goes.  Never a dull moment on this side of the pond.

~ All best, Shelley

Paris Post: Banana bread with chocolate bar

Chocolate chips aren’t really French. Yes, I can buy them in specialty “foreigner’” stores here in Paris. But is that really necessary? Not when there’s SO MUCH Belgian chocolate around. The banana bread I baked today has chopped up milk chocolate bar in it. And it’s pretty darn yummy. Divided up the batter between my two small loaf pans; one loaf eaten already, the second hiding in the freezer where it will (hopefully) be safe for a few days.

  

I have been baking banana bread and donating them to the women’s shelter in Montreal for years (six years, actually). Since Christmas 2008, YOU have been helping me by sending banana bread money   From December to date, we’ve made an amazing 142 banana breads for the homeless shelter … all thanks to your donations

Now that I’m ‘away’, my mom and tiny baby sister (age 37) are baking up a storm to keep up with demand. For a donation of $2.75, we buy the ingredients, bake, and deliver one full-sized loaf that serves 10-12. Freshly baked loaves are happily being gobbled up by Phoenix House, a teen homeless shelter.

If you’re interested in sponsoring a banana bread for August, you can click on the button below; $2.75 per loaf (Canadian) is about $2.50 USD.

And if you’d like the recipe to make your own — to eat or to donate — you can find my family recipe here.

All best, Shelley

Paris Post: Pictures from Monday July 13th

To maintain normal working hours that match up with North America, I’ve been working 6 pm to midnight local time, which works out to noon to 6 pm Eastern (9 am to 3 pm Pacific).  This means that I’m at my desk when most of Canada/US is around and emailing/calling me. 

So, since I’m starting work each day at 6 pm, that means I have the entire whole day off to walk around town, explore, shop, buy groceries, test recipes, get lost, find a metro to get home, buy more wine, and take pictures.

Here are some pictures from Monday, July 13th. 

We met André’s cousin, Annie for lunch; she’s lived here for 10 years already!  Notice the fantastic T-shirt A. is modelling

 The view from Annie’s office

A short walk from Annie’s office, is Jardin des Tuileries, where they have an amusement park set up for 2 months (anyone with kids should plan to visit during this time, entry is free, you just pay a bit per ride).

 

The back of A.’s shirt

 It’s hard not to like these gardens, very relaxing.
People on their lunch breaks.

 

me in front of a huge lavender field

Coming up, pictures from Tuesday the 14th (Bastille Day) including great Eiffel Tower fireworks shots

All best
Shelley