bleudauvergne

Oh C'mon Menton1, why not choose one city and give it a try. Since there are so many you like, you could start by saying you don't normally pick favorites, but if someone is asking for recommendations in a town you know, maybe you could be of help with ideas for the basic types of establishements. I love the tree tunnels too. Any more members in Paris willing to chime in?

When your butcher asks you if you want to take a photo before he wraps a piece of meat. When your kitchen camera has rabbit blood and duck fat smeared on the lens.

I'm going to have to anwer for Lyon here. Bistro: Chez Pierre Lyon 3e or La table de Hippolyte, Lyon 1e Brasserie: Well, for the ambience of an old time Brasserie, I'd choose Brasserie Georges, it's old, it's pretty, they make beer. The food is standard brasserie fare, nothing sublime. When I really want good beer I choose Ninkasi. Neither offer really good food. Patisserie: La Gribiche, cours Lafayette 3e. They have a tea room. A nice stop when on foot from Les Halles to the Presqu'ile. Cheese Shop: At Les Halles, cours lafayette 3e - Maréchal for certain goat cheeses, and Cellerier for cow cheeses. Market: Quai St. Antoine Lyon 2e, best days are Friday Sat & Sunday. Thursday, the market at Blvd de la Croix Rousse is hopping. Croix Rousse has a Bio market as well. Boulangerie: Richard, Place St. Vincent Lyon 1e. Wine Bar: Le 110 Vins Lyon 5e. ONE star Michelin: Gourmet de Seze, rue de seze, Lyon 6e. Favorite book on food in France: I love them all, every single one of them.

This all looks so good. I love pigs feet, having first eaten and prepared them regularly in China and now in France. I learned to cook them the Chinese way but I have to say that stuffing them Jack's way just looks too good not to give a try. I also like ChefJohnny's ingredients for the braise, using apples & juice. For C.Johny's recipe, I am assuming that the leeks will give a lot of flavor to the dish. So much so that using fennel in the mirepoix might be a symbolic gesture. Any thoughts? When shopping for this dish, can I save a few centimes and use onions, leeks & apples or should I definitely try and get fennel?

What's a 'pablum' baby?

We've just had the pleasure of watching our niece here in France start with solid foods. She starts meat tomorrow. Lets see. Her first solid food was a vegetable - carrots. She then went to green beans, and then pumpkin, etc. Now they feed her several different things at each meal, the veggies first, then a bottle which they are slowly phasing out, and then a fruit compote. Typical baby food. My sister in law feeds the baby from store bought pots. Other friends use a combination steamer/blender, a lovely little contraption that I will definitely get once we have children. You steam whatever veggies/meat in it and flip it over and blend it in the same receptacle with the steaming juice. It was a snap, and when we were visiting with them, she prepared all of his food from mixes of vegetables she had picked herself. Her son was just starting with meat at around 6 months and his first meat was duck which she prepared in a vegetable puree. They supplemented that with a formula/cereal bottle at the time. Another couple with a 6 month old gave their son vegetable soup, and then various purees. Strange but many of the babies (around 6 months) simply adore artichoke heart puree. None of my French friends seemed to breastfeed for very long. But I don't really know in general what the fashion is these days in France.

I am positively drooling over these kitchens. Thank you for posting about them, Dave.

I got mine bottled - this year my novel straining idea worked quite nicely. I cut a large sized (x6) coffee filter to one thickness and lined the french press with it. Still pitch black after straining, but the filters caught a good deal of sediment. Good flavors coming out. Slightly bitter but it will mellow soon. Luckylies, you'll want to wait another 2 or 3 weeks.

Abra, its gorgeous!

When you do choose to cook through the seasons, there are dishes that you start to associate with special memories, especially when you note the good recipes and cook them again, even if you have the dish once a year. I noticed once I'd been around the seasons a couple of times that my notebooks were chronicling a lot of great seasonal dishes and I sort my notebook recipes by season. These past three days I've worked a little each day to prepare a civet de cuisses de canard. Not only do you have to wait for this dish to marinate, braise and serve on the third day, but for this particular recipe you also have to wait for the cepes and quetche plums to overlap. Well worth the wait from both perspectives, I think. When we start getting some real game, things are really going to pick up. I think that for anyone really interested in food and cooking, autumn is the best time to visit France.

Game season is coming up... Wow Moby I agree those look amazing. The color looks great if you ask me!

They announced on the radio that the price was officially 10€ a kilo - but the price has been aywhere between 12 and 20, depending on the state of the shrooms and the rip-off factor of the vendor.

Love it. That brie looks wonderful and the fruits too. The other day was the official opening of the cepes season. I've been planning out all kinds of great dishes that use them, and just waiting for them to arrive. The first day, we prepared them simply just to enjoy the flavor. That first taste of the season is always heavenly.

When I was in Paris, my future husband and I would meet at various places when he could take a break from his work. We decided to take a picnic in the park at the Buttes de Chaumont. In anticipation of our picnic, I went to some covered market which did not seem too far away from there, I have no idea where is was now, my memories of Paris are very vague and I even mix up the names of parks and museums now. I picked out all kinds of things, and spent nearly the entire weekly food budget - sliced sausages and pickles and sauces of various kinds in little jars. In my mind we were going to have sandwiches in style. I remember being slightly miffed at him because he claimed that the sauces would spoil the sandwich, and would not eat them, and he said I bought too much meat. We still had a lovely picnic. I agree with everything on Dave's list - just go to any traiteur, and point at what looks good. They will pack all kinds of lovely things into plastic boxes that travel well to any picnic spot you can imagine. I used to carry a folding pocket knife and a dish towel everywhere along with me in my knapsack. Two very useful things when you want to picnic on a budget but also in style.

Kelly's is quite a logical explanation if you ask me. Charles, you can rest assured that this is what's up.

I wonder what the health and safety regulations entail for opening an establishment of this sort in France. It would be worth a look into.

That did look like a beautiful dinner. Amazing. Thank you for sharing it with us. So Lorna, how did the souffle turn out, you know, when you were 11 or 12? Do you remember what went through your mind when you first tasted it?

I was suprised to see that Sonia Ezgulian, chef/owner of Oxalis, has closed her doors for good and is developing a restaurant-appartement concept. She plans to do dinners once a week. Obviously this will not be dans le noir. Has anyone seen this sprouting up among other French chefs, anywhere in Paris, for example? Any buzz or opinion on this phenomenon?

Just in - Sonia Ezgulian, chef/owner of Oxalis, closed the doors for good over the summer. She's not dissapearing forever, however, we'll see her again in a restaurant-appartement concept with a dîner gastronomique once a week (by reservation) and also cooking classes.

Carol Gillot, a painter and photographer, has a blog aptly entitled Paris Breakfasts, in which she recounts various breakfasts in Paris, cafe scenes, etc. and shares entries from her sketchbook. This entry recounds a breakfast at Cafe Flore. If you are planning out your breakfasts, you might want to browse through her blog for entries on her various breakfast excursions.

Very hard to judge without tasting. First course: Very close. Edge goes to chef 2 for simplicity and visual impact although the whole idea of that avocado with the stilton biscuit looks very good too. Second course: A tie. Third course: I'm going to have to lean to chef 1 on that one. Gorgeous. It looks like a tie.

Really happy to see this blog with you two blogging together! During Henry's blog, I was crossing my fingers. Ha! I knew it would happen. I'm a huge fan of Abra's & littlemissfoodie's cooking too and I've never had the opportunity to taste ! You are very lucky to all be so close together. Henry, where should we send our ingredient suggestions? Shold we post them to the blog?

How I wish Andi Pena Longmeadow Farm had sent me a PM when she was having some trouble. When an animal is on my cutting board, I don't waste my time harking back into the past, not my childhood pet or story books, nor do I bother to think up narratives of any sentient mind activity of the creature may have had in its brief life. What I do is toss myself headlong into the future - This brings me to see what this creature on my cutting board is : parts. Lovely meaty juicy sauce laden parts just waiting for me to cook them and serve them, nurture and nourish my loved ones with, and hopefully, if I've done justice to a dish, expand the depth of my appreciation for. Carving an animal for cooking is a noble act. When you do it yourself, there is something in the truth of food that is uncovered. Since I have learned to seek out really fresh poultry and game, thus in many circumstances carving it myself, I have noticed that I take a moment as I begin in the kitchen to remember that this animal's life was extinguished in order to nourish humankind. I give thanks for that now more than I ever did. Maybe that is strange. Milagai's comment in a question above deserves some attention. Andi Pena Longmeadow Farm did have a valid point in starting this thread. We might go as far as to say that half the thrill of discovering a new kind of food are the barriers within us that we cross along the way to full appreciation of them. Sometimes the barriers are in your mind, like the rabbit carving, but sometimes they are educational, technical, involve learning about a culture, a mind set, any number of things. We set our own, and we cross them, and we feel enriched in doing so. I say bravo to Andi Pena Longmeadow Farm for examining her own barriers to carving rabbit, working through that, and sharing it here. And by all means, if you want to try out cooking rabbit but are a bit nervous about it, please don't pass it over just because of that. Everybody had a first time. Don't let that discourage you from preparing a lapin a la moutarde, because, I am telling you, it is something you do not want to miss. - And Mallet, that is one super looking pictorial. Bravo.

My thought is - they caught your eye, Bryan. You picked them up because you had the feeling that they'd fit in the aesthetic of what you're trying to create. You've tested them and they function well. My advice is to go with your gut feeling. Something you might do is test these out and get some feedback from your guests. You can always change later if after your guests have had their say, you feel like they should be replaced with something else.

Hey! Busboy! I told you that I knew a place where you could get Block Ice just down the road for your ice chest - but did you want it? No! In fact when I happened across the the block ice for sale at a Casino between Toulon & Hyeres I was tempted to buy a block just because it was there - it just seemed like a miracle. Thank goodness my husband was there to restrain me. Looking back on our lunch I suppose we were being terribly French by offering single ice cubes to you from the bowl. Sorry about that. Freezers in homes equipped with ice makers are a rarity here. Wouldn't it have been funny if we brought out a block of ice and an ice pick and broke off chunks! Now that is something I want to try now. Restaurant seating logic is quite a complicated topic, on the other hand. Very difficult to say how one or another place is going to handle people. I suppose it has a lot to do with where the restaurant is, what is their regular clientele, what's considered the prestigious seating in the establishment by the owners, etc.