DORIE GREENSPAN

Recycling the Empties in Paris and New York

Last night I had a dinner party with lots of wine, as you can see, and this morning I had to toss the empties into the recycling bin, located in the courtyard in full view of all of my Parisian neighbors.

There isn't a time when I do this that it doesn't make me think of differing attitudes (or at least what I perceive of as differing attitudes) between my French and American neighbors.

In our New York apartment, the recycling bin is in a common back hallway.  Whenever I toss a bunch of bottles into the bin, I have the same thought:  "What will the neighbors think when they see soooooooo many bottles."  

In Paris, as each bottle crashes to the bottom of the bin and breaks, I imagine my neighbors looking out of their windows, seeing me, l'americaine, and saying: "Bravo!  She's getting the hang of life here."

Good-Bye New York/Bonjour Paris

It was almost hard to fly out of New York last night - it had been one of those glorious you-know-summer-is-on-its-way days and everything that wasn't already in bloom in Riverside Park was promising to bloom the instant you turned around.  I knew it wasn't going to be like that in Paris, since my friend Helene had already sent a message that read, "Pack pullovers - it's winter here!"

In fact, this morning, as the taxi from the airport drove along the Boulevard Saint-Germain-des-Pres, there were women in pullovers.  And not just pullovers, woolen scarves, too.  It wasn't quite winter and it wasn't quite spring, either, but never mind, it was Paris and, as always, it was exciting to be coming into the city:  No matter how often I return to Paris, I still get first-time flutters. 

I've got a certain ritual for settling in, but it went by the boards this afternoon because, as soon as I walked out of my apartment, here's what I saw

Before you get nervous, this is art, not accident.  It's one of several works in all media installed around Saint-Germain-des-Pres as part of the 8th annual Parcours Saint-Germain, which pairs artists with luxury boutiques and mythic Saint-Germain-des-Pres spots, like Le Cafe de Flore and the Place Furstenberg.  This year's theme is Once Upon a Time and the upside-down Citroen Traction (our son's favorite car - I don't think he'd like to see it in this condition) is an installation by Claude Leveque. 

Across the street, at the corner of the Church of Saint-Germain, there's an odd doll-like sculpture that's attracting lines of people who want to be photographed with it and, around the corner, at the Place Furstenberg, one of Paris's most photographed squares, the open space is now inhabited by a fantasy family

The works stay up through June 19 and, if you're here and in the neighborhood, it would be impossible for you to miss seeing at least some of the installations.  If you won't be coming, take a look at the website, it's really well done.

When I got back from my walk-around and checked my mail, I saw that there was an exhibition that I would have loved to have seen, but which closed yesterday.  Called Gourmandise, it was a show of jewelry designed by Aude Lechere and "inspired by the world of Poilane."  The show was held at the Ibu Gallery in the magical Palais Royale Gardens and, judging by the invitation, it's just as well I couldn't go because for sure I'd have wanted this, a gold ring to match Poilane's perfect butter cookies, Les Punitions (or Punishments)

Don't you wonder what the jewelry that matched Poilane's huge round loaves of breads looked like?

Good news!  I just found out that Gourmandise will be at Ibu Gallery until July 31. (edited June 11, 2008)

Red Wine and Oysters: A Re-Match

Remember when I wrote about having red wine with oysters in Paris?  Well, Eric Asimov, chief wine critic of The New York Times, did and he decided to try the combo himself.  The results of his taste tests are described today in A Rule Just Waiting to be Broken. 

Eric, who loves oysters and really knows and loves wine, tells about pairing his oysters with four red wines (one of them the Marcel Lapierre Morgon I had with the pictured oysters and rillettes at Le Comptoir).  It's a great story - Eric is an unfailingly engaging writer - and it will give you a sense of why the pairing might work ... or might not. 

Click over, it's a good read.

Bacon: Make Mine Sweet

Good news baconlovers - we can now have our favorite ingredient in every part of every meal: appetizers, yup; main dishes, check; and desserts, you bet!  Following my theory that if you see something twice, it just might be a trend, I'm officially declaring baconized desserts a trend.

Last week at Gramercy Tavern, after having had bacon in a fabulous bean and cauliflower side dish (served in a cast-iron skillet, it was both great looking and so delicious), it turned up in this truly extraordinary dessert

It's a chocolate - mostly milk chocolate and very soft - ganache tartlet topped with a little not-sweet creme fraiche, a few flakes of Maldon sea salt and, here it comes, teensy, tiny bits of crispy bacon behaving just as if they were streusel.  It was perfect! And just right with the milk chocolate.  I don't think the bacon's effect would have been as stunning, or as right, had the chocolate been more bitter.

The tartlet would have made anyone sit up and pay attention, but it made me giggle because, only the night before, at Dovetail, a new restaurant on Manhattan's Upper West Side, the menu offered a brioche bread pudding with bananas and bacon brittle.  Yum, right?

Well, the bacon brittle looked pretty startling on the menu, but it was ringing bells in my head.  A quick Google and I found lots of recipes on sites as different as Chowhound, Off the Bone and the Chicago Sun-Times, which took the recipe from the book, Everything Tastes Better with Bacon.

And I think I remember seeing something about bacon cream - maybe bacon-infused cream that's whipped or put in a siphon - I just can't remember exactly how it was done or where I saw it.  But I'm not worried, I have a feeling it will turn up soon.  Maybe even tomorrow night ...

Any bacon sweets in your neighborhood?  Maybe even chez you?

Michael Laiskonis: Ace Pastry Chef/New Blogger

Yesterday, my friend Michael Laiskonis, the extraordinarily talented pastry chef of Le Bernardin restaurant in New York, wrote to tell me that he's launched his blog.  It's exciting to have a new neighbor in cyberspace, especially one who is so smart and has so much to tell us and to teach us.

For his first post, Michael muses on "The Egg" and gives a recipe - pictured above - for an eggshell filled with milk chocolate creme brulee, caramel sauce and caramel foam and topped with a drizzle of maple syrup and a few flakes of Maldon sea salt.  It's a showstopping restaurant dessert that can be accomplished chez you with patience and two pieces of fancy, fun equipment - an egg-topper and a whipped cream siphon.  I think  it could also be made in teensy espresso cups (and I hope Michael doesn't mind my suggesting this for us homebakers).

Whether you make the egg or not, you'll find interesting thoughts about eggs, the recipe's roots (as soon as I saw it and the words "maple syrup," I thought of Alain Passard in Paris and, indeed, Michael acknowledges Passard as a source of inspiration here) and Michael's way of working.

I'm really happy to have another friend in the ether - I think you'll be, too.

Ronnybrook Milk Bar:Soups, Shakes, Salads and More at the Market

There are so many reasons to love the Chelsea Market - among them Amy's Bread, Sarabeth's and the Chelsea Wine Vault - and now there's one more:  Ronnybrook Milk Bar.

Those of you who know the Market may remember the tiny milk bar, where you could get ice cream cones, fresh-from-Ronnybrook-Farm milk and butter churned from Ronnybrook cream.  Well, just a few months ago, the bar was transformed into a modern-day soda shop/luncheonette, a place with enough charm to make us nostalgic for a time most of us know only from books and movies, and enough edge to make you think it would be cool as a club.  (I bet the pumpkin-pie milkshake would be great with a shot of rum.)  Actually, it's already been vetted as cool:  I.D. magazine featured it in a recent issue.

But unless you're a designer and want to see what Mark Sarosi (above), who spent four years with David Rockwell (aka, Mr. Restaurant Design), has done with the space - okay, even if you're not a designer, you should see it:  look at the way the milk crates lining the walls pull out for extra seating:

you need to go for the soda-fountain treats - the shakes and ice cream cones, the lavender-infused milk (yum), the floats - and the food.  The menu is so appealing and the ingredients so terrific - as much as possible, Mark is trying to source his products from other local farms - that it's just not easy to figure out what you want.

Cast-iron eggs with roasted mushrooms, Ronnybrook's farmer cheese (I love good farmer cheese) and herbs?

Country-style turkey meatballs over buttered egg noodles with sweet cream gravy?

Roasted herbed Berkshire pork sandwich with avocade aioli (a great idea) and watercress on 7-grain bread?

If the world were a perfect place, we'd have a Ronnybrook Milk Bar near us no matter where we lived and the adorable Mark to whip up shakes for us at the first sign of an urge to slurp.

Heads Up New Yorkers: A Good Program at NYU

I just got the info on this program and want to pass it along because I know it's important and I think, knowing two of the speakers, it will also be very, very interesting.  Here are the basics: The Farm Bill 2007:  Understanding the Political, Agricultural and Nutritional Impact OR Understanding That What You Pay For an Apple or a Twinkie Can Affect Public Health

The speakers are: Marion Nestle, Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health at New York University and the author of Food Politics and What to Eat, Dan Barber, chef of Blue Hill and Stone Barns at Blue Hill (these are the panelists I know and they're both terrific speakers), and Christina Grace, manager of Urban Food System Programs at the NY State Department of Agriculture and Markets.

Monday, November 12; check in at 6:45; Presentation 7:00-8:30; Reception to follow

Click through for all the details

The Dinner at Del Posto: Bon Appetit/Buon Appetito

It took me sooooooooooooo long yesterday to post the names of the Bon Appetit Award Winners, that I never got around to telling you what we ate at Del Posto.  In between the cheers, clapping and wonderful camarderie, there was truly memorable food and wine from Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich.  Here's the menu:

ANTIPASTO

Insalata Salumi Misti (which included the great Swiss chard tourte at the top of the plate)

Tocai Friuliano, Bastianich 2005

PRIMI

(Cloud-light) Potato Gnocchi al Pomodoro with Basil Pesto

Rosato, Bastianich 2005

FOLLOWED BY

Hand-made Orecchiette with Lamb Neck Sausage ( a WOW!)

Vespa Bianco, Bastianich 2004

SECONDO

New York Strip Steak with Summer Bean Salad (it should have read "Amazing Summer Bean Salad") and Crispy Brasato

Morellino di Scansano, La Mozza 2005

DOLCE

Crostata di Mele with Almond Cream and Pancetta Streusel (another WOW from pastry chef Nicole Kaplan)

Dindarello, Maculan 2006

Biscotti Assortiti

A Swell Party: The Bon Appetit Awards Dinner

Last night was a terrible night to go out to dinner in New York - all the chefs were at the Tenth Annual Bon Appetit Awards Dinner at Del Posto, the restaurant owned by Mario Batali, who was running around in his trademark shorts and sneakers, welcoming everyone to his home and generously doling out bear hugs

Joe Bastianich, who wasn't in my line of sight, but whose wines we all enjoyed, and Lidia Bastianich, the Italian mama we all wish we had

seen here with legendary editor, Judith Jones, the woman responsible for the publication of, among hundreds of other books, Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl (she is the one who, as a very young woman working in Paris, found the manuscript in the slush pile and championed its publication) and Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking (and almost all of Julia's other books), and who has now written her own story, The Tenth Muse.

The event is relatively small because the guest list is pretty much confined to past and present award winners, Bon Appetit staff and contributors (which is how I got my precious invitation) and friends of the Bon Ap family, which means great chefs, restaurateurs, artisan producers, trendsetters and designers.  I can't believe I was lucky enough to be seated with Eva Zeisel, who, at 100, just designed two new lines of dishes from scratch

Eva Zeisel, who was the recipient of last year's Bon Appetit Lifetime Achievement Award, is seated to the left, her daughter, the actress and childrens' book author, Jean Richards, is next to her, and Barbara Fairchild, Bon Appetit's Editor-in-Chief, is standing.

The invitation read: 6:30 Reception, 7:30 Dinner and Awards Presentation, but it was well past 7:30 when we sat down - people were having way too much fun chatting and catching up with one another to pay attention to the staff gently and probably way too softly imploring us to be seated.  I mean, how would like to be the one to tell Jeffrey Steingarten, Vogue's Food Critic and The Man Who Ate Everything, he had to put down his reverse vitello tonnato and take his seat?

Or break up the conversation of (from left to right)

Eric Ripert, chef of Le Bernardin and Bon Appetit's 2005 Chef of Merit, Dan Barber, chef of New York's Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns and this year's Chef of Merit (who gave an acceptance speech that was so funny I thought the talent scouts from late-night tv would grab him on the spot) and Joel Robuchon, who, in addition to being Bon Appetit 2006 Chef of the Year and chef of L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon in Paris, New York and Las Vegas, is the man most great French chefs consider the greatest chef.  Actually, it's not just the great chefs who idolize him, Americans are pretty crazy about him too, which explains why, when M. Robuchon was leaving and gave me the traditionally French set of kisses, a woman passing by said, "You're never going to wash your face, are you?"  (Well, maybe not those two spots.)

While the awards are very serious, the presentation was pretty lighthearted, which is just what you want and just what you'd expect from our host, Ted Allen, the food guru from Queer Eye, who now hosts the PBS series, Uncorked: Wine Made Simple. 

He's seen here with Peter Elliot (left) of Bloomberg, who looks like his separated-at-birth brother.

And the evening's winners were:

Chef of the Year:  David Chang of New York's Momofuku and Momofuku Ssam Bar

Cooking Teacher:  Molly Stevens, author, most recently of All About Braising

Chef of Merit:  Dan Barber of Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns

Pastry Chef:  Kamel Guechida of Joel Robuchon's restaurants in the MGM Grand in Las Vegas

Wine and Spirits Professional:  Audrey Saunders of Pegu Club in New York City

Designer:  Kelly Wearstler, designer of, among many other places, Whist, the restaurant in the Viceroy Hotel in Santa Monica

Food Artisans:  Herb and Kathy Eckhouse, whose company, La Quercia produces extraordinary cured meats

Tastemaker:  Target Stores

Restaurateur:  Laurent Tourondel, whose BLT (Bistro Laurent Tourondel) restaurants in New York have become a not-so-mini empire

Food Writer:  Barbara Kinsolver for her wonderful book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, about a year of eating locally

Humanitarian:  Father Gregory J. Boyle, who founded Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles and helped thousands of gangmembers become bakers, chefs and caterers

Lifetime Achievement:  Ari Weinzweig and Paul Saginaw, founders of Zingerman's Delicatessen in Ann Arbor, Michigan and a great online resource for all things delicious

Back to (Chocolate) School with Valrhona

On Monday, when all the little ones were heading back to school, I went to class too – chocolate class.  The class was a Valrhona Chocolate seminar called The Cultivation of Taste and my classmates were a pretty swell group.  Among the 70 or so people who played hookey from work to learn more about chocolate and to taste Valrhona’s new crus were the cookbook author Rose Levy Beranbaum, Judiann Woo and Raina Bien of the go-to website Pastry Scoop, Chocolat Moderne’s Joan Coukos, Alexandra Leaf of Chocolate Tours of New York, and my tablemate for the afternoon

Michael Laskonis, pastry chef at Le Bernardin and 2007 James Beard Outstanding Pastry Chef of the Year.

It’s not easy to keep a room full of opinionated professionals quiet for three (count’em) hours, but that’s what Pierre Costet, Valrhona’s Chief Cacao Sourcer (I almost wrote sorcerer)

And Vanessa Lemoine, their Sensorial Analysis Manager, did.

Speaking in French (there was a simultaneous translator on hand) and working in tandem, Pierre and Vanessa led us through the growing, fermenting and drying of cacao beans, the intricacies of finding and working with growers and the science – and pleasure – of tasting. 

There was way too much for me to recap reasonably, so I’ll just hit a couple of the highlights.

Cultivating Cacao and Cacao Growers:  As Pierre was talking and showing us pictures of the cacao growers he works with in South and Central America, the Caribbean Islands and Africa, I was struck by two things:  the startling contrast between where chocolate starts, i.e. the rustic plantations and simple fermentation and drying facilities, and where it ends, i.e., the world’s most luxurious boutiques; and the similarity between cocoa and coffee.  Then, in yesterday’s New York Times, there was a long and thoughtful piece about coffee and the similarities were reinforced for me. 

The Difference Between Odor and Aroma:  While we English speakers think of odor as something unpleasant and aroma as something delicious, Vanessa Lemoine made a completely different and extremely interesting distinction between the two.  When you bring something to your nose and smell it, what you smell is the odor.  Odor is direct.  However, when you are eating something, you are also smelling it, but indirectly or retronasally.  What you smell through the post-nasal route is aroma.  According to Vanessa – and I’ve heard and read this before – 90% of the information you get about what you eat and drink is gotten through your nose.

FiveTastes And Maybe One More:  This is my favorite news flash.  As you know, our tongue can distinguish sweet, salty, acidic and bitter tastes, as well as umami, which is a very complicated taste found most notably in protein foods.  Now, according to Vanessa, there’s the possibility that our tongues have a sixth taste receptor and what it tastes is licorice!  (As many of you know, I’m a licorice lover, so you can be sure that I’ll be finding out as much as I can about this and reporting back to you.)

How to Taste Chocolate:  Here are the seven steps to getting a full picture of the chocolate at hand: 

1) look at it so that you can appreciate its color (and its sheen – if it has been properly tempered, it will have a shiny finish);

2) bring it to your nose so that you can smell its odor;

3) break it and listen for a crisp snap (another sign of good tempering);

4) put it in your mouth to assess its texture;

5) let it melt in your mouth by pressing the piece of chocolate against your palate with your tongue;

6) distinguish the aromas, which usually come one after another and often in this order – the volatile aromas, the fruity and floral aromas, come first; they give way to the warmer aromas, those of roasting and spice; and finally the heavier aromas, aromas of toasted nuts, camphor and woods, come in; and

7) while you’re appreciating the chocolate’s aroma, you taste it, and with most chocolate what you taste at the start is acidity, which makes you salivate, and then bitterness, which is a persistent taste and an important chocolate flavor. 

And, after you’ve tasted one chocolate and want to taste the next, you should clear your palate with flat water and crustless bread – the crust (we’re talking about a loaf with a significant crust) has too much flavor and it will interfere with your tasting.

Having been instructed on how to taste, we began to taste, starting with two chocolates that Valrhona is just releasing:  Abinao, a strongly flavored, toasty, roasty chocolate with long-lasting tannins and a very high cacao content, 85% (I loved it); and Tainori, a Dominican Republic chocolate with 64% cocoa and a kind of tang, which Vanessa referred to as freshness (from the camphor flavor) and likened to the flavors you get from a sucking candy. 

Then we tasted another chocolate that I really liked, Alpaco, which was so interesting because it had the same cocoa percentage as Tainori, but was much stronger in chocolate flavor, proof once again that you can’t buy chocolate by the numbers.  With chocolate, it’s about where the bean came from, how it was fermented, dried and roasted and how the beans were blended.  (It really sounds like wine, doesn’t it?)

Finally, we tasted Palmira, which is a 68% chocolate, but which was completely different from all the other chocolates in the panel.  Palmira is made from extremely rare porcelana beans and it is a single-estate chocolate, meaning all the beans come from one estate, Plantation Palmira near Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela.  I really liked this chocolate, which seemed warm and toasty and a little spicy and all-around lovely.  (Lovely was the word I wrote in my tasting notes, even though it wasn’t one of the “approved” descriptors.)

Our reward for being such good students was five chocolate desserts made by Derek Poirier, a Valrhona chef who teaches and trains pastry chefs in the US and Canada, and Yann Duytsche, a former Valrhona pastry chef, now chef of Dolc par Yann Duytsche in Barcelona.  Some of the desserts came from Duytsche’s new book, Sweet Diversions, some were based on recipes from Valrhona's L’Ecole du Grand Chocolat and all used what Valrhona calls Grand Cru chocolates.

Here’s the box of desserts we were each given

The five cubes in the line up were:  Coca Nibs Foam; Alpaco Sacher; Abinao Hot Chocolate (with a brioche beignet); Tainori Jelly (a light agar-agar mousse); and an Araguani Cube Cake.

As I walked home, I kept thinking that if school were always this interesting – and delicious – there’d never be an attendance problem.