LES ARTS DÉCORATIFS AND FRENCH HOME COOKING

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Saturday Morning in Paris

The day did not get off to a good start as was still suffering from some of the worst jet lag I have ever had. Jerry put together a wonderful Parisian breakfast of yogurt & strawberries, Danish (from my class) orange juice and of course cheese and croissant. I drifted back and forth between consciousness and unconsciousness while he prepared it all.

After our breakfast I gathered my shopping bags and headed for the market to shop for dinner. I had planned on going to Edellerin, but I was just too tired, so I just shopped. For not speaking French I did very well, I got everything I wanted and prepared the way I wanted it. My first stop was the boucherie, where I picked up some beautiful veal scallops. After the boucherie it was off to the produce market. Here I got the freshest herbs and vegetables, chives, tarragon, parsley, fingerling potatoes, fennel, carrots zucchini, arugula, mesculan, leek and a beautiful heirloom tomato. From the produce market I went to the charcuterie for some bacon. The last stop of the specialty markets on this street was my favorite fromagerie. Here I got some gruyere, cream and crème fraiche.

On the way back to the apartment I had two more stops, the boulangerie, where I bought a baguette (to make fine bread crumbs with) a bread to make croutons with and fresh croissants to incorporate into my dessert. The final stop was the regular market for staples such as salt, pepper and sugar.

When I got back to the apartment Jerry had left for his day at the museum and some shopping along another market street Montorgueil and rue Montmartre. His contribution to tonight’s dinner was cheese, wine and a baguette.

I was still very tired so I unpacked the groceries and went back to bed, for 4 hours, I guess I was more exhausted from tax season and the trip than I thought. But at the moment I feel 100%!b(MISSING)etter. After I finally woke up I took a nice hot shower and began preparation of tonight’s dinner. That of course started with doing dishes (on vacation and still doing dishes)

Cooking

When you are staying in a small apartment you must be creative. I decided upon the night’s dinner while doing the shopping. Since I picked out the meat first I built from that. So in case you have not figured out the plat, I am making Veal Cordon Blue, with fingerling potatoes sautéed in butter and chives accompanied with sautéed leeks, carrots and zucchini. We are going to start with foie gras, our entrée (that means appetizer or starter) will be my version of a Lyonnais salad, I am going to call it the Salade French Kiss. All will be described later. Dessert is going to be a half croissant sautéed in butter topped with pears in caramel sauce and crème fraiche.

So back to being creative, I seemed to have gotten side tracked. There is no Kitchen Aide, no food processor, and no oven. My tools are a box grated, knifes, cutting boards, strainer and various utensils, certainly no wooden spoons or even a slotted spoon. I started with blanching the potatoes so they would not take as long to sauté. I then sliced half of the baguette to toast in a frying pan so I could grate them into fine bread crumbs. I ended up taking the rest of the baguette and grating the outer crust to add to my bread crumbs. After that was accomplished I sliced and blanched the carrots, sliced the zucchini and set in salt to extract the water so they will stay crisper while sautéing. My next step is to make my croutons and poached egg for the salad. Of course I first did another round of dishes. Oh look it is 5:30 way past wine-thirty.

Cooking cannot be stopped by wine-thirty, but then cooking should be done while drinking wine anyway. The croutons were prepared in butter and olive oil and cooked for 30 minutes until crisp. While that was happening, I washed and chopped the chives, washed and set to try the parsley and tarragon and have now started the water for the eggs. Timing is everything here as I only have two burners to work with. Fortunately they are better than my stove at home, even if there are only two of them.

I have tried to call Jerry a couple of times to see where he is in his day, but as you all know, Jerry and answering a phone don’t belong in the same sentence or even paragraph. I am going to try to get him to give a good description of what he did today so that I can put it in the blog; it isn’t all about me, well not all of the time.

A Bit of Jerry’s Day.

I am now off to poach the eggs and prepare the rest of the herbs. Jerry returned during the poaching and it appears had a very good day. He spent about 6 hours in the Les Arts Décoratifs. This museum is part of the Louvre and apparently is nine floors which he did all of them. There will be pictures and more description a bit later. His day started watching a parade on Rue Poullet which is just a block from us. There were a lot of drummers and children; it was some type of celebration of kids and music.

He also came back with three great cheeses and three bottles of wine for a third of what you would pay at home. I mean you really can’t get a Margaux for $30 in Portland or touch any type of Rothschild for under $40. He is now out getting a bottle of Sancerre for me to continuing cooking with (and it’s for the chef not the food). I hopefully can get Jerry to actually blog about his day; it will be more interesting that way.

Return to Cooking

It is time to start the main course and the dressing for the salad. I will start by taking the meat out to get it to room temp. Then I will cut my bacon lardons and sauté them. The dressing will be made by deglazing the pan the bacon cooked in with red wine vinegar. Eventually I will slightly wilt the arugula and add the bread crumbs to enrich the flavor. So I am off to do that.

JERRY’S BLOG

Les Arts Décoratifs

This part of the Louvre was turned into a museum in the early 1900s. There are nine levels in all with levels 5-9 in the southern most tower. Each floor covers a period in history, ranging from the 1500s through 2000. The rooms are filled mainly with furnishings of the day complimented with paintings, ceramics, etc. The whole experience was a total recall of my History of Furniture classes-from styles to the actual designers. This took me about 5 hours and I didn’t even see the textiles section. There were no crowds, unlike the throngs that were visiting the main part of the Louvre, so it was easy to navigate and take pictures. I would recommend this museum to anyone interested in history. You can get a free audio guide or read the descriptions on placards that explain what was going on in the world when these pieces were made.

After the museum I made my way north to Gallery Vivienne, the first indoor shopping mall in Paris in the 1800s before there were paved streets. Today it is filled with restaurants and boutique shops, but no food shops, so I left, passing through Place des Victoires where this a huge statue of Louis XIV on a horse, for Rue Montmartre looking for a cluster of food shops that I had heard existed. No such luck so I headed up to one of the grande boulevards and headed east to connect with Rue Montorgueil, but overshot and had to walk back quite a ways. Once there, (a pedestrian only stretch concentrated with cafes and food shops) I found a good fromagerie, boulangerie and wine shop to get items for dinner. The metro back was chaotic, as one of the stops I needed was closed, causing a re-route onto 2 other lines-and being Saturday evening, were packed like sardines.

Dinner

So the sautéed potatoes and the vegetables turned out perfect and the way I intended. However the Veal Cordon Blue was a different story, without an oven it took too long to cook and thus the veal was a bit tough, well at first it was a bit under cooked, Chef Ramsey would not have been happy. The Tarragon cream sauce turned out nice and the taste was good, but it would have been easier to cook the entire dish in an oven. The 2007 Margaux we had with dinner was exceptional. We didn’t make it to the cheese course or dessert both will be incorporated in to brunch tomorrow. Lucky me Jerry gets to be on dish duty, I did four rounds but he gets the worse round. The chef really shouldn’t have to cook should he? The long and short I cooked (and I am not bragging just ask Jerry) a pretty good meal in a very difficult kitchen so take that Master Chef, you should have picked me.

We are now at the end of the day. We had planned to go to Café Michou a Darcelle XV like show, yes Michou is as old as Darcelle, but Jerry walked for miles and didn’t get my four hour nap so we are just going to chill listen to Divaville on KMHD and drink our wine. Like I said the point was to live like Parisians not be a tourist.

Tomorrow we were going to go to a place for a Jazz brunch but it has since closed so instead we will do brunch in the apartment and then head for the Pompidou Museum of Modern Art, the one major museum we have not yet seen.

Today’s Food

Breakfast – prepared by Jerry: Danish, yogurt with strawberries, orange juice, coffee and croissant and cheeses.

Lunch – I slept Jerry had a ham and cheese Quiche

Dinner – Cooked by the famous Chef Chris of DeLightful, DeLovely, DeLicious catering

Aperitif’s: Champagne with foie gras and mouse canard

Entrée: French Kiss Salad – Bacon Lardons, sautéed brioche croutons, wilted arugula, mesculan, heirloom tomato topped with a poached egg served with a bacon vinaigrette.

Plat: Sautéed potatoes in butter and chives, sautéed fennel, leek, carrots and zucchini, Veal Cordon Bleu in a tarragon cream sauce.

Wine: Segla Margaux 2007.

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Photos

Foie Gras
Can you say heart attack?

Comments

[nancy]

Is that an electirc stove?
Are you cooking on an electric stove? I just moved into an apartment with an electric range after cooking on a gas range for over 30 years and I'm terrified. If you can prepare gourmet meals with an electric range I'll stop whining. Your diary is fabulous - I really enjoyed Jerry's trip to the museum. Live, love and enjoy, nb