Bon voyage

Life 3000 miles from home has its ups and downs, and the last couple of weeks have been a bit trying. Whatever Paris mojo I'd had earlier this autumn seems to have disappeared, either because I'm just off my French game or because the lingering glow of post-vacances tolerance has finally been extinguished from the natives. Suddenly my French isn't good enough for anybody, anymore, and more frustratingly I'm doing stupid things like fusing together pots and bowls used as double-boilers (admittedly a foreseeable, apparently inevitable, occurrence, in my weekly yogurt making; I've applied heat to the pot while applying ice to the bowl to break the vapor lock, but there's so much shared wall length and relatively little wall thickness that the two vessels won't act independently. It's out on the balcony now for one last-ditch effort at separation, and barring that, it'll at least make an impressive impression in the hood of the next Frog to lay on the horn. Still, a crying shame, as I love my bowl and I'll have to spend money to replace Madame's pot...) and shrinking my favorite sweaters. So it goes.

The ice-bound, vapor-locked pot-and-bowl double boiler that's soon destined for the garbage bin.

So when I had one of those baffling Paris exchanges at the market this week, it came as no surprise. I wanted duck breast, a pretty straightforward choice, given that I always buy from the same vendor, mostly because his magrets are better cleaned and plucked than many. But when I asked for one, he said he didn't have any more, despite the fact that we were both looking at several there in his case. Was this another "crepine" incident, or did he just not feel like selling me anything this week? Turns out that I'd asked for magret de canard, and he only had filet de canard. They're both duck breast, so what's the difference? The magret de canard is the breast from a fatted (ie, for foie gras) duck, whereas the filet de canard is the breast from a non-fatted duck. Learn something new every week.

Anyway, it's been birthday season here in the 16e, and usually we go out for a somewhat extravagant meal to celebrate them. But after all of the excesses of the last month, and with traveling yet to come, we decided to stay low key this year. But that doesn't mean there there can't be some playing with food. I particularly like getting to work with the same ingredients a few days in a row, to learn from mistakes, or at least try variations on a theme. Here's the highlights.

Mwah!!

This entry somehow didn't get posted when written, back in early Sept. No question it was user error. So think back to when summer was just winding down...

Summer's officially over in Paris.

It's not so much that the weather has changed, though this morning it was 46 degrees and we had a couple of days last week that didn't get out of the 60s.

It's that everybody's finally back from their vacances.

The elevator in our building no longer remains on our floor overnight, the hundreds of windows in the courtyard behind us, all white with their closed metal shutters in August, are now open, and the last of our food vendors are vending again.

And there's tons of kissing. Cheek kissing, that is. Two passes per person as friends or co-workers see each other for the first time in a couple of months. We were out to dinner recently when a table of 6 showed up, and the kissing must have taken 15 minutes, and a flow chart to work out. Kissing, kissing, kissing.

The French get, and actually take, a lot of vacation. Five weeks is mandated. If you work in an office, you probably get to pick when you take it. If you work in a shop that closes in the summer, you have to take your 4 weeks during the closure, leaving you with that 1 remaining week to get you through the other 11 months.

Which may explain why people seemed to be at their grumpiest at the end of June, several months after they've burned that last saved day, and at their nicest right now, after 4 consecutive weeks of being away. I've never found that a week of vacation from work was restorative. Two weeks was better, but returning to work was still usually a downer. Between the press of "Hey, before you go, can you take care of..." stuff leading into it, and the digging out on returning, sometimes it seemed it was hardly worth it.

But 4 weeks has done wonders for some of the grouches in my life, here. I've gone to the same boulangerie for a baguette or two and 4 pastries (our weekend breakfast) twice a weekend, and more recently for a baguette several times during the week, since about the middle of March. That's roughly 50 visits to the same shop. I'm not a difficult person to remember-- I'm abnormally tall for France, have abnormally goat-like facial hair for France, and speak abnormally poor French for France. And on weekdays, I go in early in my bike kit on the way back from a ride: pretty sure there aren't many Guy's Bicycles team members rolling through the shop. I always smile (hard not to, knowing that I'll soon be eating as close to heaven as can be achieved on earth), give correct change (change is hoarded here, but that's a topic for another day), and make an effort to be especially nice. Still, the shop matron never so much as grinned in her interactions with me. It's not that she was rude, she just wasn't personable. She was personable with others, sometimes. But even if I came in as she chatted with a customer about this or that, I'd get the stoney face when it was my turn.

Our heavenly boulangerie was to close on Aug 4, until Sept 3. I was terrified-- would we survive? Even though I'd been in there 50+ times, our bread and pastry consumption is such that I've had plenty of experience with the alternatives. And though I can get some reasonable stand-ins for the baguettes closer to the apartment, the substitute croissants, chaussons aux pommes, and other pastries just leave us sad. I don't even want to contemplate the emptiness we'll feel weekend mornings after we've left Paris.

We left for Japan Aug 1, and so I went in that morning for our Last Breakfast in over a month. I purchased my goods from Mme Stoney and at the end of the game of one-upmanship that is any exit from a shop in Paris, I added "... et bonnes vacances!"

And she smiled.

As I picked up the baguette and pastries I'd dropped on the floor in shock, she said that they'd be open for a few more days. But you could tell that she was looking forward to les vacances.

Since then, it's been a whole different vibe in that shop. My first visit was their first Fri open, on my way back to the apt after a short but hard ride in a cold, soaking early morning rain. Drenched and covered with road grime, I was worried about messing up the jewel-like shop, losing whatever meager rung I'd gained on the favor ladder in August. But she smiled at me when I came in, and as she got my baguette commented on how dedicated I was to be riding on a miserable day like that. Since then, it's been all smiles and (a little) chat, helping me with names of unlabeled items, helping me when I tell her I shouldn't buy a kouign amann again today by saying, "mais vous êtes sportif!" I like her.

Now that I know the secret to getting in good with my vendors, it's only another 10 months of grouchy service before I can work on the others.

Lunch before dinner

Karen surprised me last evening by announcing that, even though she was pretty shelled after traveling and being sleep-deprived all week, she was feeling sprightly enough to want to eat dinner out. This was both good and bad news. The good news is obvious, but eating out at a real restaurant in Paris on Saturday night without a reservation is a bit of a challenge.

Unlike the States, where empty tables are usually up for grabs, many Paris restaurants do just 1 seating per night, and if the tables are reserved for 8:45, they will not be made available to you at 7:00, even if the place is totally empty and an 8:45 reservation won't show until 9:00. This puts a lot of Americans out. "They were so rude to me-- the place was empty, and they still wouldn't seat us. They hate Americans over there!" Now, there's no shortage of making fun of Americans over here, and for sure there's some animosity in some sectors, but not getting an empty table in a restaurant without reservations isn't a symptom of that.

Thankfully, also unlike the States, reservations generally don't require a week's or month's planning. Reserving on weeknights can be as simple as calling that day during the lunch service, or even as soon as they open in the evening. But if it's a cheek-by-jowl charming little bistro you're hoping to eat at on Saturday night, you'll want to call a day or two in advance.

So we decided to take our chances at a little place in the 6e that serves brasserie food on Sat nights with a no-reservation policy. Being Americans who still usually eat dinner earlier than 9:00, we figured we had a decent chance of getting a table straight away at 8:00. No dice-- there was already a line when we arrived, but it was short enough that we figured it was worth trying out.

Lines in Paris cause me a little angst, because it's hard to tell when they mean something and when they don't. To a Parisian, the line is great way to keep order for everybody else, but it is (obviously) not meant for someone as important as them. Doesn't matter whether it's a grocery store or an airline ticket counter. Heck, a Parisian with a hangnail wouldn't think twice of trying to jump a line of trauma patients needing time-critical care in an ER. So unless you're willing to bust some balls and defend your turf, lining up for a table at a restaurant means you'll probably be hungry a very long time while others show up and take empty tables without waiting. Surprisingly, the wait staff at this restaurant were unwavering in maintaining the integrity of the line, and it was a mostly hostilities-free experience.

The last person in line when we arrived at 8 was a young woman who by first appearances could have been Parisian: she was thin, wearing a nice dress and high heels, had no guide books in her hands, and she was smoking. Always encouraging to see locals at your restaurant. But it didn't take long to see that she probably wasn't, in fact, from Paris. First, she wasn't wearing black. Second, though smoking, she was clearly uncomfortable with it. She kept moving the cigarette around to keep the smoke from drifting too heavily at us or the people in front of her. People are no longer allowed to smoke indoors in public places in France, including restaurants, so smoking outside is done with a vigor and authority you don't usually see in the States.

The final proof came, though, when she turned to me, nodded to her cigarette, looked me straight in the eyes and said earnestly, "Je suis déjeuner." As already implied, no Parisian would ever apologize for smoking outside. And even more revealing to the careful observer, no Parisian would apologize for smoking outside by saying "I am lunch."

Presumably, she meant "Je suis désolé," which would indicate some regret, though I'm not sure how much, exactly, since in the metro I usually hear it used in instances where it's obvious the offending person performed the offending act entirely willfully.

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe she was indeed Parisian and she wasn't referring to her cigarette, at all. Maybe she was just coming on to me. Paris is the city of romance, after all, and marital fidelity here is casual enough that Karen's presence by my side might not much deter a zealous paramour-to-be. And "I am lunch" is kind of a sexy and intriguing line, actually.

Either way, it took all of my focus to keep my composure and not burst out laughing. Detecting a British accent in her delivery, I thought it would be mean to respond, "Chéri, tu n'es même pas petite déjeuner*."

*Darling, you're not even breakfast.

Goldilocks and the 3 butchers

I had today what is becoming for me a fairly typical Paris experience.

I did my food shopping at a variety of stores: onions, leeks, spinach, and cherries (yes, really, more cherries-- they're not going to be available and good that much longer!) at one of the produce vendors; cereal, grapeseed oil, and sugar (to replace the bag that disappeared into the jam) at the supermarket; eggs at the fromagerie; mushrooms that we call chanterelles at home but are called girolles here at another produce place (chanterelle sure sounds like a French word, why isn't that used here?); and a guinea fowl (pintade) at the butcher that's the most accommodating about veal bones and chicken carcasses and such-- gotta keep on their good side.

But today I needed something I hadn't bought here before, caul fat. Caul fat is one of those wondrously useful things that comes from the insides of animals that people get all icked out about when they know it's there. It's basically the fatty lining of the body that surrounds the organs, and it's nature's perfect wrapper. Stuffing or rolling a cut of meat and need to tie it up with string? Fuggetaboudit-- wrap it with caul fat, instead, which will hold it together and baste it at the same time. Individual patés? Perfect. Though I can get it from my butcher at home with a day or two's advance warning, I figured that every butcher in Paris would have it, given the metric tons of terrines, patés, and other charcuterie in this city.

I asked my pintade butcher for crépine graisse (the term I cleverly found on Google translation), and he said yes, he had it fresh, and brought out a fancy paper-backed sheet, wrapped it, and sent me on my way. Score! When I got home and unwrapped it, though, it wasn't what I was expecting. Caul fat is a delicate webby/lacy thing, and this “graisse” that the butcher had given me was a solid sheet.

So I Googled “caul fat France” to see if I was asking for the right thing, and it seems the proper term is just crépine. OK, try again. I went to another butcher just around the corner, a friendly fellow who preps a mean roasting chicken, and asked him if he had crépine. Nope, only frozen. He even tried to think of where I could get it fresh, but couldn't. Uh-oh-- maybe this will be harder than I thought. But I think he was amused that the weird American guy who insists on keeping the chicken feet he cuts off my birds was asking for it. And it's none of your business what I do with all those chicken feet...

My last easy option was the butcher across the street from him, where I'd never been. I asked for crépine, and the guy behind the counter looked at me blankly. I asked again, same blank look. Oh man, was I really going to go home empty handed? But as I started to explain what it was, I saw in the display case a bunch of stuffed meats, all wrapped with, wouldn't you know it, caul fat. So I pointed to those, and said I wanted the exterior of those (I couldn't think of the word for wrap). He gave me another name, which I started to memorize, and then he started to pull out slices of veal. No, no, no. The other exterior, the sheet around them. Oh, he said, that's crépine.

Long pause.

Now it was my turn to look at him blankly. I swear that's what I said. There are only 2 vowel sounds in that word, and I think I made both of them reasonably well. That's what I heard when I said it, anyway. But it's not the first time this has happened. Before we came to Paris, I was relating to one of Karen's French colleagues the story about my the amusing French tutorials from my friend at work, starting with "jambon means ham," and she looked at me with the same blank face the butcher had. She hadn't understood my pronunciation of jambon. And I thought, oh boy-- this is going to be a lot harder than I thought. I'd be curious to know how many other words sound just a little different from crépine and mean things totally irrelevant to butchery that he was unable to recognize it.

In any event, he had it, and even though I apparently massacred his language, he seemed pleased I wanted crépine, and even more pleased that I was excited about it. But just look at it-- how could one not look forward to using that? It's beautiful.

Crépine. No, no-- not that crépine, the other one.

The mystery not-crépine substance.

So I have my caul fat. But can anybody educate me about this other stuff? I asked specifically before he retrieved it, and it's of pig. Though it looks a little membranous, it's more fragile than it looks. I'm guessing a layer of something from under the skin at the belly, since he was pointing there (I'd assumed that meant organs, but...). He kept saying it was graisse (fat), and it has fat, for sure, but I'm not sure it is fat. In any event, I've thrown it in the freezer, in case I figure out what it is and what to use it, so any enlightenment would be appreciated. Merci!