Ptipois

Okay, I think we're heading to a dead end (edit: whoops John I wrote that before seeing your post). To revive the topic, let me go back to Hathor's initial questions. I'll give my short answers (short enough, hopefully, to provoke debate) and we may go back from there. Because traditional recipes exist through local and individual variations set on a few basic principles, it is difficult to see the line. However I believe it has to do with respecting the basic elements that define the recipe, regardless of local/individual variations. Once you mess with the baselines, you get something else, not the traditional recipe. For instance no European chef has ever created a "Thai curry paste" that is really a Thai curry paste (and, for one thing, that tastes good). In my experience you just don't. Because there is no way to improve on the flavor of well-made traditional dishes. Their greatest achievement is precisely on flavor, and flavor is the very reason why they have endured over time. Slow cooking; sensible spicing; crispy roasting; strong, uncensored tastes; simmering that concentrates the taste; well of course you may have the illusion that you can improve on that but really, you can't. Or you create something truly dazzling in another way (again, Jean-François Piège's marvellous endive au jambon) but then that is no longer traditional cooking. I'm not sure this question really makes sense. I understand it as "is there any reason to cook totally traditional dishes if you want to be a cut above traditional cooking?" If a trattoria is a place where traditional dishes are made, and where traditional dishes find their greatest expression, then if you want to be a cut above that, well, do not cook any traditional dishes. Go into a different culinary research. Or if I understand the question differently: take a starred chef (for instance Ducasse) who wants to serve a traditional, auberge-type dish and improve it by refining it, making it more "respectable", and charge more for it: it is very unlikely that he really manages to improve on the original; he'll be much better off respecting it. And if he respects it, he will not have improved on it. That does not depend on the restaurant but on who awards the stars, and for what reasons.

I'd feel fine.

Dans mes bras ! Seriously I think the problem with the overall quality of the La Chapelle-gare du Nord South Indian/Srilankan food is simply that it is not made by very good cooks. For instance excellent rasgullas are (were?) made in the lower part of rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis, in a Pakistani joint that (so friends tell me — I have to go check) no longer exists. I could not find one rasgulla in the upper part of the street that was even remotely half good as those. The neighborhood is particularly good for food shopping (goat meat, endless rows of pickle jars, bananas cut from the stalk, turmeric face cream...) and not that great for eating out. I tend to stick to meat rolls, idli and sambar, ghee roti at Ganesha Corner, potato dosa at Dishny. But, sorry if I repeat myself: did you try the vegetarian place facing Dishny on rue Cail?

I second that. - The words "programmed obsolescence" have been introduced in Germany too. - Sixteen years is a decent old age for a dishwasher in the early part of the 3rd millenium. - Paris municipal water is mighty chalky.

Again, I'm not sure I know what that means. Or more clearly: I do not think there is an opposition between traditional and contemporary. The concepts are too messed-up. To me, the word "contemporary" only evokes time, not style, and what is described as traditional today is, more often than not, updated to suit contemporary tastes and regulations. So I prefer not to venture into that subject for lack of a possibility to define its elements properly. A typical example: recently we did a "baguette de tradition" tasting. The one that nearly nobody liked (except me) was the only one that really tasted traditional, i.e. whose taste, texture and smell were similar to the traditional baguette such as it used to be still available in the early 60s in some regions. "Baguette de tradition" is a good product but it was created recently and is by no means traditional (and does not actually try to be). Its taste and texture are adapted to contemporary tastes, while real traditional-style baguette, whenever it appears, is judged less interesting. But if your question is "can those regional cuisines absorb new ingredients and techniques", I'll answer "sure, why couldn't they?" — why today less than yesterday? That is what they have been doing since they began existing. Regional cuisines are like all other types of cuisines, they evolve constantly. I brought up the molecular element into the topic because it has been brought up in the other topic and it remains, in many minds, the most characteristic aspect of contemporary cuisine. At some point, you are bound to find it on your way if you want to discuss traditional vs. contemporary cooking (not that I think it is necessarily interesting or pertinent to do so, as I wrote in my first post in the thread, but that's the way things are right now).

I'll take a closer look at it but right after reading it diagonally I feel very much in harmony with Swiss Chef's posts. Interesting topic, with something of a "fly-paper" dimension though. Some questions need to be answered very cautiously, especially when it comes to interpreting the origins and consequences of introducing new ingredients and/or cooking techniques at different periods of history. The social resonance is the first thing to consider (who introduces the stuff, why, in what circumstances, and for whom). In that respect, the introduction of tomatoes in Italy (or France) centuries ago cannot be interpreted similarly as the introduction of freeze-dried prosciutto powders, deconstructed sardines in test tubes and virtual lasagna in the late 20th c. The meaning behind things, their social dimension, is not the same. For a start, I'll stick to two main principles: - I do not think "traditional cooking" and "non-traditional" cooking should be opposed as concepts, not only because cooking is part of a time continuum but also because, whenever the opposition is justified, it means that there is something wrong with one or the other. The only gap between those two styles, IMO, has to do with sociology and politics and not with cooking itself, which at the bottom is one skill. - It is, IMO again, sterile to oppose "traditional-style" cuisine and the new test-tube/freeze-dried/espuma trend because each one of them has a tendency to live on its own distinct plane of existence. The latter, at its worst, is to be thrown into the "boys with toys" category and left there. At its best (Adria the only example that comes to my mind), it is not really cooking, it is a highly mental art form that uses the sense of taste to manifest itself, and in that respect it should not be defined in terms of "good" or "not good". (The reluctance of many to accept that is merely a reluctance to allow their sense of taste to convey ideas and sensations that they accept from their sense of sight and hearing in the context of modern and contemporary art. In simpler terms, they think it is perfectly OK to have your mind blown and your sensorial feathers ruffled through your eyes and ears, even if the experience is not pleasing to the senses, but it is not OK to let your palate bring you a similar experience.) In-between, at its acceptable professional level (i.e. Jean-François Piège's deconstructed "endive au jambon"), it is only well-made cooking cleverly arranged and it implies the same skill and talent as would a perfect, non-deconstructed endive au jambon.

Um, that Picard seems to be a lawyer. All Picard locations on the Picard website. Find your Picard here. By the way, rue André-Mazet is in the 6e. There are two Picard locations in the 6e (rue Mazet and rue du Dragon) and two in the 7e (Duroc and Grenelle).

More specialized: you can order online from La Librairie gourmande.

Congratulations for your wife's good taste, langue de bœuf is a great dish. Used to be my Norman grandmother's favorite dish and is not far from being mine. It is most often prepared à la sauce piquante (a sauce made from a light roux, the cooking stock from the tongue, onions, a bit of white wine or madeira, tomato purée, herbs and a final addition of chopped gherkins and capers). It may also, more rarely, be served en tortue. The sauce is similar but heavier in tomato and madeira, and there's quite a lot of fresh herbs infused in the wine, including basil, marjoram, savory, and sage. No gherkins or capers. Slightly less common than sauce piquante is sauce madère: similar to the former with more madeira, less herbs and no pickles. Langue de bœuf has become very rare in restaurants. Not elegant enough. Some bistrots will sometimes propose it but they're few and far between. More likely, you will find some at corner cafés as a plat du jour (look on the chalkboards) and, even more likely, at charcutiers-traiteurs around lunch time, the last refuge of plebeian dishes.

News from L'Hôtellerie Malaysian week at L'Orénoc Malaysia will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of its national independence from September 3 to 8 with a gourmet week at the hotel Méridien Étoile. Chef Wan and his assistants chef Shaiful and chef Hasbullah will join chef Claude Colliot in the kitchens of L'Orénoc. Their dishes will be served at the restaurant and at the hotel bar La Terrasse du Jazz. There will also be a Malaysian cooking class on September 8 (15 €). Le Méridien Étoile - 81, bd Gouvion-Saint-Cyr, 75017 Paris. L'Orénoc: 01 40 68 30 40 - La Terrasse du Jazz: 01 40 68 30 85. Métro Porte-Maillot. Website.

Lichtenstein and good coffee, two reasons to be happy. News from L'Hôtellerie I have been getting (in both my mailboxes, snail and e) the professional magazine L'Hôtellerie-Restauration for some time now, and it only just occurred to me that some of the info could be pertinently conveyed here — once in a while because not everything is interesting, far from it. So here goes: Do yo want to see Marc Veyrat's hat in a glass case? Then you should head to the Musée de la Bresse in Saint-Cyr-sur-Menthon (Ain) to view the exhibition Toqués de cuisine. A collection of food-oriented paraphernalia lent by famous chefs to the museum: signed chef hats, antique cookbooks, vintage menus, photographs, rare tableware… Exceptional items, they say. Musée de la Bresse-Domaine des Planons - Hameau La Mulatière - 01380 Saint-Cyr-sur-Menthon (Ain). Tél. : 03 85 36 31 22 - fax : 03 85 36 37 30. musees.paysdelain@cg01.fr Slow Food France celebrates the potato Ain't they cute — I mean the little spuds. September 15: Slow Food France will hold its first National Day on the potato theme. UNO and FAO having declared (did you know?) 2008 "Year of the Potato", and deservedly so, potato being the 4th food crop in the world. Chefs and producers are invited to celebrate the miraculous tuber through new dishes, workshops, potato picking, perfect-purée ateliers, etc., and to contact their closest Slow Food convivium. To find the closest convivium click here, where you will find a PDF about the first events: some are already programmed in Paris, Corsica, Haute-Provence, Monaco, Languedoc, Bordeaux, Val-de-Loire and Auvergne. Journées du Patrimoine Because cooking belongs to the national cultural heritage just like châteaux and other monuments, French cuisine will play a part in the next Journées européennes du Patrimoine, on September 15 and 16, from 11 AM to 5 PM, at the Ecole Ferrandi. Recipes like bœuf en daube, bouchées à la reine au ris de veau et au riesling will be demonstrated for visitors, and the boulangerie-pâtisserie section will also be open to the public, with much croissant-making and madeleine-baking to view. Ecole nationale supérieure Grégoire-Ferrandi, 28 rue de l'Abbé-Grégoire, 75006 Paris. Tel. 01 49 54 28 00. Website.

Yes please. (I would not count on finding raw sheep's milk in Paris.)

"Lait ribot", "lait battu" and lben are not buttermilk but a totally different product. Besides I am not sure the lactic ferments are the same for each one, but they are similar to each other. They are fermented (yogurt-type fermentation), churned skimmed milk. They are often confused with buttermilk- — perhaps because fermented milk is called "buttermilk" in the US? Lait ribot is one of a few fermented milk products particular to Brittany (there is also gros-lait, a jellied, slightly gooey soured milk). Buttermilk (babeurre) is stricto sensu the by-product of butter-making and is obtained from cream, not milk. It is a thick, sourish, off-white liquid, absolutely delicious but not commercialized in France (I think it is illegal to sell it). I had the opportunity to taste real buttermilk at a butter farm and I wish it were more readily available. A recent report of artisanal butter-making in Brittany, with a picture of buttermilk poured into a bottle, may be found here on my blog.

You probably mean Sinorama, and it is indeed decent. While we're at it, Cambodian-run Tricotin, in the lower part of avenue de Choisy, looks like an eating factory in a glass case but is good and wholesome. Though the place is spacious, it is packed during weekends. Dim sum quite good, noodle soups quite honorable, "nouilles maison" excellent. Looks are generally deceiving in the XIIIe. The best food is generally served in the simplest surroundings (Pho Bida Saigon, Pho 14, Tricotin, Rouammit, Li Ka Fo, Le Fleuve de Chine, etc.) Particularly, Lao Thai stubbornly refuses to submit to the "Phuket nostalgia" style and serves what is, in my opinion, the best Thai food in Paris. While Paradis Thai, a few steps away on rue de Tolbiac and complete with wooden apsaras and tacky Asian décor, serves some of the most dreadful imitation of Thai food I've ever tasted. On the other hand, places that look like eating factories may also be really bad, like Hawaï on avenue d'Ivry.

It was most probably lben, North African buttermilk. To be drunk as such or mixed with sugar, honey, syrup, etc., or as a side dish/drink with couscous. You may also find "lait ribot", very similar but Breton in origin. "Lait battu" on the bottle will most likely refer to the Maghrebi specialty.

Probably because it is La Cape.

Just like David said. 5-10 $ a night seems really cheap when you're buying knowledge, and even for a room without the knowledge. I certainly would charge more but I'm from Paris For cheesemaking, and particularly goat, just any region makes it now. Places where goat cheese is a traditional item are Berry (around Bourges and Sancerre), Loire valley, South Burgundy (around Macon), Poitou-Charentes, Aquitaine (particularly Quercy) and Provence.

They are friendly inside Paris too. Maybe you should explain what WWOOF is, with a bit of detail, so that you're more likely to get a detailed reply.

I think the Macval is within walking distance of the Villejuif-Paul-Vaillant-Couturier métro station. There is also the Vitry RER station but it does not look closer. You could also get a cab at the Institut for a short ride. Transversal

I wondered about that too. I thought perhaps there is not much difference in taste between refined hazelnut oil and tasteless olive oil, but 1) that would be very farfetched and 2) that is still not much of a praise for the professional tasters who took care of that business.

I'm really sorry, I saw this post only today. For your next trip to France: my favorite Moroccan olive oil is sold in plastic bottles (1 litre) and is of a very dark green color. It belongs to the category of "fruité noir". The brand name on the label is "Oued Souss". It will cost between 7 and 9 euros a bottle. You can find it in some Maghrebi food stores, especially in halal butcher shops. I like it a lot, but beware, it is an acquired taste and will certainly not please those who like the acrid-artichokey taste of fashionable olive oils. I have heard that it is only good for Moroccan dishes and salads, and there may be a truth to that.

Even if there may be frauds in France that I have never heard of, they are not likely to be as serious as the olive oil frauds in Italy. The market of French-produced olive oils is too small and mostly for domestic use. And the AOC system is quite strict, it covers most of the French production. Then again, it is important to read the labels. As for French brands of cheap olive oils like Puget, Lesieur and the like, the oils are indeed imported from countries like Spain, but remain of good quality. The New Yorker article only confirmed what had been widely known in Southern Europe for some time. I almost never buy Italian olive oils, cheap ones are either tasteless or of irregular quality; expensive ones are — apart from being too expensive — generally too "green" (modelled after what is expected to be the contemporary taste). I much prefer a riper taste, or a "fruité noir", obtained from slightly fermented ripe olives. As far as I know, the recent craving for acrid, pungent olive oils that leave a tingling sensation in the back of the palate was "fabricated" by Italian oil producers. This hype is spreading around, some Spanish and Corsican oils are beginning to show that. It would be a good idea to shoot a new "Mondovino" documentary about the standardization of olive oil. Having tasted a certain number of French AOC olive oils, I find that they show less of that standardized, aggressive taste. They are rounder and more varied, each region having its own olive varietals. I also like olive oils from Spain, Portugal, Greece, Turkey and Morocco.

They're all in my last update of the topic except the odd secret place and a couple that need further testing. I still recommend Le Transversal — it would be a pity to be so close and not try it when so many Parisians do not go there because it's deep down in a suburb. The place is beautiful and soothing, too.

Well they will be as close as can be, and they should try it anyway. At the last Summer Fooding the most interesting dishes by far were by Passard, Chareau and Colliot. I really like that chef and that place. Some Asian restaurants in the XIIIe are really good, you just have to know where they are. And if our friends want to sample them (info by PM if needed), they just hop onto the métro and it's 3 stops.

Since you are asking about Villejuif alone, and do not necessarily want to stray away from it, there are two solutions: - head directly to the next city, Vitry-sur-Seine, really close, and to its new museum of Modern Art (MacVal). Eat at Le Transversal, the museum restaurant. Laurent Chareau's cuisine is really interesting. - a few métro stops away from Villejuif on the line n°7, you have plenty of Asian options in the 13e. Unfortunately I do not know about Asian restaurants in Villejuif. There are Asian supermarkets and stores, but I'd tend to believe most of the better restaurants are still in Paris, just across the Périphérique.