Ptipois

I think having a blog, or precisely a food blog, is fun. Period. Its main interest has to do with freedom, and like all free means of expression it requires a lot of rigor to be interesting. There is an art of the blog which is totally new, and very different from any other existing art of written or pictural expression. I am a writer, I don't need to get published. That's why I have a blog. I use it to relax, to put in things that don't get into my other writings. After a while the contents may become a basis for "official" writings but not necessarily, and to me this is not the purpose of the blog. All things considered, I think my blog is better than my published writings. If one wants to create a blog to attract attention and "get published", fine. But when I spot those blogs (they're very easy to find out) I think they're actually a bit show-offy. In a way, I disagree with this idea that blogging, the Internet means of expression, could be a preparation for "serious" publishing, a poor-quality version of the book or press article, the antichamber of the real thing. The good blogs, the ones that are fun to read, are the "disinterested" ones. There has to be some sort of carelessness in a blog, even though it may be very carefully made. They contain the idea that, hey, this is publishing already. Who needs more than this? I don't think one can express oneself as freely in a "real" book or column. There is always the publisher, the editor; there is always someone to tell you that "such or such a category or readers will not like this"... So if I blog, it it not so much to please as to write things that may displease some, and feel OK about it. If your purpose when creating a blog is the art of writing, by all means do. In this case the writing has to be very good, of course. But a good blog isn't necessarily based on writing. And if it isn't, it isn't necessarily based on the quality of the pics either. What makes a great blog may be a certain look on things, a consistent look that defines a style. There is a blog here that is the perfect example of this. It has little text. It's in French but I think anybody can see why it's good.

See here (in French but there are pics). Also this page. In English, no pictures. Perfect, a dictionary with pictures.

Technically, it is more a pâté. The original pâtés of France were encased in dough and kept for a long time. Now the distinctions are somewhat blurred, but it is commonly understood that a terrine is a preparation of meats/fish/forcemeats/vegetables etc. baked in an earthenware dish (the terrine), and a pâté en croûte is baked in a case of dough in some mold or terrine. But some preparations called "pâtés" are actually terrines, so there you go. I think the main difference between French-style and English-style pâtés/meat pies is the dough but basically they have the same origins. French style: the dough is thick and hard, meant to isolate the inside and preserve its flavors, and in the case of pâté en croûte is it not meant to be eaten. The English hot-water raised dough is delicious to eat but it is not used in French cooking. French pâtés encased in puff pastry or butter/lard shortcrust are generally eaten warm, dough and all. They are lovely old-fashioned dishes, worth reviving.

Well, that's why I wrote that Mallet would probably find local goat cheeses at markets, for they are the only cheeses artisanally made in Brittany, but not as typically Breton cheeses - since the 70's, goat cheese producers have been all over France. And they're good everywhere. Milk production in Brittany revolves around butter, lait ribot and non-artisanal, non-traditional industrial cheeses. it is really not a place with renowned cheeses. It has other talents.

Except for sushi and sashimi places, I can't think of any "inappropriate" place. It is very rare that you get a set menu and nothing else. Most of the time you'll have plenty of options to pick from. Many places will serve offal but you don't have to order it. As for duck, foie gras and rabbit, it is very unlikely that you'll be served them without being aware of it. And they don't usually bang the tête de veau or the pied de cochon onto your table without warning you first. You have to order them. Your questions are somewhat hard to answer when you know that every bistrot in Paris will have some of what your girlfriend likes and some of what she dislikes. Just don't let her order any of the latter, that's all. The places where they serve the best pieds de cochon in Paris happen to be the same places serving great côtes de bœuf. The king of oysters will also propose great fish and seafood. And if this is your girlfriend's first time in Paris, I'm quite confident that she will leave this town liking a few more things than she did when she arrived. You may help her in this. Coming to Paris is not likely to be food torture to her.

Brittany is not a cheese place. It is a butter place. Butter is indeed great, but there is no cheese tradition worth mentioning. If there is a good cheese shop in Belle-Ile, cheeses from other regions will be available. You may also find some local goat cheeses and cottage cheese at markets. The traditional bretonne pie-noire cow looks a bit like the Holstein (black and white) but it is shorter and sturdier, with a longer body and long horns. The pie-rouge looks like the pie-noire with different colors. You're more likely to see pies-noires in Belle-Ile. The froment du Léon you won't probably find in Belle-Ile, which is in Southern Brittany. It is an old breed from Northern Brittany, and the Guernesey cow was bred from it. There are few froment left, the breed is threatened with extinction. It produces excellent, rich milk, like the Guernesey and Jersey breeds. Butter churned from froment du Léon milk is as good as butter gets and yellow-colored (rich in carotene). Also, two beautiful breeds fighting extinction: la vache nantaise la vache armoricaine Your question is quite appropriate. The importance of the cow breed in the quality and taste of milk, therefore of butter and cheese, is often overlooked. There would never have been any camembert without the Norman cow or reblochon without the tarine cow. And cantal is directly correlated with the special quality of salers milk.

I had forgotten about "Chez Omar", but you may go there with your eyes shut. It's a great place, popular, simple, generous. You may have a little trouble finding a table but just wait for your turn. Service is adorable, couscous is delicious. The lamb kidney brochette is heavenly. Not the same kind of place as Le 404, which to me is the one acceptable Momo place, though a bit overhyped and overpriced, but nothing like the London Chez Momo. The food is okay, above average, but not worth walking miles for. I also heard a lot of nice things about Le Pied de Chameau, near the Beaubourg center, but I have never been there. I'm too busy returning to hole-in-the-wall couscous places that have everything I can wish for.

Sounds great, but I can not find any information about this place on the net, even on the french yellow pages that don't mention any restaurant at this address. couold you tell me more ? thanks ← The last time I was there was a couple of years ago. I haven't been there since. Maybe they have moved. The only way to find out is to go there directly.

That stew was certainly mafé, but actually the peanut-sauce based stews are known all over Subsaharian Africa. The very best I had so far was from Cameroun. As a rule, African food gets better following a West-East direction, Senegal food being a bit coarse and greasy sometimes, the best cooking being found in Togo and Benin (and Nigeria). Cameroun and Congo have many delicious dishes too. In Paris, I'd recommend sticking to Togolese and Beninese places, as well as Camerounese restaurants (there are quite a few, sometimes tiny places, in the 11e, 18e, 19e and 20e). For "the other" Subsaharian cuisine, try the Ethiopian place I mentioned in another thread, Ménélik. With apologies to Suzy: I do not recommend the restaurant at the Mosquée de Paris, though the setting is beautiful.

My favorite couscous in Paris are served in very simple restaurants. Try Chez Hamadi-Le Boute-Grill on rue Saint-Séverin (5e) and La Mitidja on rue Lacépède (5e too), truly wonderful but very, very simple. I'm suspicious of chic couscous in restaurants, if you insist on grand couscous it's always better at home. Only simple couscous is hard to imitate. Chinese-Vietnamese: Tricotin, avenue de Choisy, is one good cheap place. Large and always crowded. Vietnamese: in the covered arcade above Paristore, avenue d'Ivry. Several little places, the best being the last one at the end of the mall. Senegalese: in Paris, the West African restaurants I like are not Senegalese. I don't think Senegalese food is the most interesting one in the subcontinent. For nice Beninese food, try Fifa, rue Joseph-Dijon (18e). Outstanding poulet braisé at Chez Zoé la Congolaise, 74, rue de Ménilmontant (20e), but I had to wait for it for 1 hour and a half. Was worth the wait though.

Very sad, indeed. It has been known for awhile - and cattle breeders agree on this - that Holstein cows are preferred for their ability to produce large quantities of milk, but it is not good quality milk compared to, say, the milk of Norman cows, Ferrandaises and Aubrac cows in Auvergne and Rouergue. Making camembert or cantal cheese without the milk that originally produced them means added difficulty and a drop in quality. And those cows produce more milk, fine. But then there's milk overproduction and nobody really knows how to deal with it. That's a good example of European regulations painting themselves in a corner. It also has to be said that the various breeds of regional cows are very handsome (and that applies to all European regional cow breeds, not just French) and are part of the general beauty of the country. Fortunately efforts are made to preserve our bovine heritage. The lovely red Ferrandaise cow nearly disappeared, some people are fighting to keep her on the Auvergne slopes. And just as fortunately, thin-legged, huge-bellied Holstein (which is not a very sturdy breed) will not fare in certain geographical conditions, and won't prosper in the mountains (which accounts for the survival of high-altitude breeds like Abondance and Tarine in the Alpes, Salers, Ferrandaise and Aubrac in the Massif Central. The "mad cow crisis", all evil effects aside, has also helped redefine the problem. Regional breeds are preserved to ensure good quality meat in medium or small-sized cattle farms. That is the case of Limousine, Salers, Charolaise, and to a lesser extent Normande, Bazadaise, etc. This helps preserve our milk cow heritage as well. For instance Charolaise is good for meat, but it is very poor for milk. This is why Norman cows are used for feeding calves in the Charolais region. When crossing the Bourgogne-Mâconnais-Nivernais region by train or TGV, do you sometimes notice that herds of white cows in fields are sometimes studded with two or three cream-and-brown cows? These are the Norman wet-nurses. You may notice that Norman cows are used for this purpose, not Holsteins (it seems that humans are treated with less consideration than calves here ). You may also notice that this sort of re-regulation of cattle diversity through several factors has nothing to do with the "market" (although perhaps indirectly, through the ESB crisis).

50 cheeses disappearing in 30 years doesn't seem that much to me in regard to the number of cheeses remaining and the number of cheeses rediscovered. Not that I think they should have disappeared at all, but produce has been appearing and disappearing in this manner throughout European history, and 50 in 30 years doesn't exactly look like a cheese-genocide to me. Thousands of secrets have died with their sole keeper since at least the Gauls. What I gather from this article is not so much the standardization and blandification of taste (which is an unjustifiable calamity, market economy or not, but which is also no news at all) as the many efforts and initiative made by individuals and associations to preserve our culinary historical heritage, which is not only about cheese. The efforts towards the preservation of animal heritage (regional cow breeds), high-quality meat, local grape varietals, traditional apples, pears, cherries, forgotten vegetables, etc., is a force not quite as strong as the European steamroller, but it is far from useless. Though still modest, it is growing to become a counterpower against blind standardization. People who count on authenticity and taste are not going to be deprived of their choices so easily. There are even people who fight for this within the EU government. I believe that preserving quality, wholesomeness and variety should not be called "going backwards". Nobody wants to go backwards in Europe but nobody wants to jeopardize our treasures either. What should be achieved is a better control of the machine. The EU indeed functions like a big machine nobody really knows how to manage. Nobody *wants* the death of raw milk cheeses, it is just that everybody seems to be caught in a kafkaian structure, between overcomplicated texts, lack of communication, and the ever-present power of lucre no one has really managed to counteract yet. While some raw milk cheeses may be endangered, I see more raw milk camemberts available in supermarkets (not only chic places like Lafayette Gourmet) than ever before. And certainly many more than back when raw milk cheeses were not supposed to be endangered. There has never been such a wide choice of good-quality food available in Europe; my main concern is that, for the time being, simple good stuff has become rare and expensive, so it is more readily available for rich people. The true perversity of the situation is that a chicken of "normal" quality (i.e. a chicken just the way it should be) has become a luxury item, and a chicken of below-average quality has become the norm. But I hope that eventually, in terms of food production, society will gradually follow the current movement and the quality of "average" food will improve. Laws and regulations are not written in stone. Once it will become more widely known that raw milk is indeed not the origin or listeriosis but that over-sanitized foods become less germ-resistant, the rules will be adapted accordingly. Much more serious than the disappearing of a secret cheese formula with the passing away of the druid who made it in his cave is, to me, the legal apparatus actually forbidding the making of some excellent traditional foods or making their production impossible. It is true for cheese production, fruit production, cattle breeding, etc. This is not a necessary evil, it is a deeply inhuman and pervert streak in the EU apparatus, the result of ignorance and laziness, and it needs to be fought. The EU is still trying to define itself, mistakes were inevitable, and any law apparatus of such importance is there to be questioned, adjusted and amended as necessary.

Badoit (sparkling) must have rated very poorly as a non-sparkling water.

You might try and grab one at Le Petit Riche, rue Le Peletier (http://www.aupetitriche.com/site.php), and dine in one of the most beautiful settings in Paris.

I really think you guys should go to D'Chez Eux. I'm not joking. I clearly saw in my mind a picture of you ten beaming above the red-and-white checkered napkins and having a good time. Really. They have a website too.

It includes potatoes, cream, cantal, sometimes onions and preferably some Auvergne cured ham. A light dish, quoi.

In Auvergne, this is called a truffade, and cantal is used instead of reblochon.

That is indeed what they said at their recent press conference. I think they forgot to mention that they found their three Michelin macarons pretty useful for the building of their "financial empire" in Asia, which now - as they say - represents 90 % of their business, and does not necessarily deliver 3-star quality. Knowing them as rather modest people, I was expecting a bit more sense of proportion from them.

Quite possibly, and Bocuse is supposed to have answered, to a journalist who asked him: "Who cooks when you're not here?" "— The same guy as when I'm here."

If you are coming to France with the objective of having a meal whose author "outcooks Thomas Keller" (or indeed outcooks anyone else), I'm afraid you're in for some disappointment, and also for overlooking some meals that would be enjoyable in their own right, while being very far away in their inspiration from your original reference. This has nothing to do with your archetypal chef being American or anything of the sort, it's just that by having such set standards you're bound to narrow your range of sensations. To my knowledge (which is not very wide), there is only one chef who achieves the experience you're describing; "human experience; sadness, love and whimsy", though on a very earthy, Catalan level. It's Ferran Adria, of El Bulli, Roses. With him, eating becomes more a literary experience than a sensorial experience, and this is achieved through the bare senses. However, this is so remote from the general experience of good food that I put it in a different category. To me, it is already not cuisine anymore. Which means that in no way does my appreciation of his meals get in the way of my idea of other chefs'. I would indeed find everything dull if I set my standards at Adria level. Also, everyone has his or her style. Keller's ways you like, it may very well be that you don't like Adria's. Would it mean that you'd rate him at a lower level? I have to say that I am not a believer in the Michelin star system, I tend to find my gastronomic happiness aside from it. I have sometimes found the "beyond-yumminess" you mention, but not necessarily in starred places. Also, when I travel, I like to put my taste experience counter back to zero and forget whatever I've eaten before. I do not do this out of fairness but in order to rely more on my senses than on my intellectual memory. I don't know if I have "an excellent palette" but this has been satisfactory so far. By the way: truffles were at the end of their season when you had them in Montpellier. Thus they might have been a bit assertive. But it is in the nature of truffles to be strong-flavored.

I had those dishes too (not the strawberries though). I did not find the contrasts disturbing. It is a style. Laurent Pourcel's cooking is rich in assertive tastes, definitely more assertive than other more "international" chefs', and his research on textures is, I believe, remarkable but not to everybody's liking. You didn't like some dishes, but I don't think they should be called "missed steps". However, let's go back to the point. How did you like it as a two-star meal? Personally, I've known the Jardin des Sens almost since the beginning, and I've seen this cuisine go up and down, then up again. It had dropped for some periods between 1997 and now. I sensed a definite progression upwards since 3 years ago or so. The irony is that the place lost one star at the moment when I, and some others, felt Laurent's cooking had never been so perfect.

And I should add that the cooking at the Jardin des Sens is better than ever. What was sanctioned was very probably the opening of too many restaurants in too many places and the general feeling that the Pourcels were spreading themselves too thin. However, I think the sanction is unfair to Laurent Pourcel, who focuses entirely on his kitchen and does a wonderful job. The Jardin des Sens in itself didn't deserve to lose this star.

It has lost one star at the latest Michelin rating. It's all over the press.

Well, it was a two-star meal actually. What do you think of it now?

If our friends are still unaware of the relative smallness of Paris, they will indeed tend to stay in the 10th or maybe risk a foot into the 18th (just above) or 11th. But nobody comes to Paris for this, even for a weekend. Paris is too small to focus on one area only. Everything is either within walking distance or no more than 30 minutes away by métro. I can vouch for it, both Paris "Chinatowns" are worth visiting. The accent is more Southeast Asian and Vietnamese than truly Chinese, but this is by no means a rule. Some restaurants in the 13th propose some good Chinese food, albeit a bit sloppy, but that's exactly how I experienced it in Shanghai. I didn't take part in the comparative discussion about the different Chinatowns but I know my place well enough, as well as the food one can find there, to recommend it safely. However, Adrian actually wrote "in the 10th", so that's where my mention of the Southern Chinatown is truly irrelevant. If he's interested in "ethnic" food (and he didn't mention Chinese specifically), better stick to Belleville, in the 11e, or La Chapelle, or Château-Rouge and Barbès in the 18e, if his family is reluctant to cross Paris. The Ethiopian address I gave is indeed very good.