DORIE GREENSPAN

My Paris Kitchen: Then and Now

 After whining about how hard it was to leave my new, almost-finished kitchen in Paris, I got comments and messages from friends and readers (and my mom) asking me to post more pictures of the space.  Well, I don't have all that many pictures -- I seem to have taken the same picture over and over -- but I've got enough to give you an idea of what the space looked like when I first saw it and what it looked like the day we had to pack our bags and fly back to New York.

First a bit of background.  In what turned out to be a whirlwind, we sold our Paris apartment on a Tuesday in June and took another apartment that Friday!  The new apartment, minutes from our old place in Saint-Germain-des-Pres, was in really good condition -- except for the kitchen, the room that, not surprisingly, meant the most to me.   Here's what it looked like when I saw it that Friday:

The built-in table is in a nice-sized room that the couple before us used as a dining room - they had turned the "real" dining room into an office - and the kitchen, a very narrow galley kitchen, is right beyond the swinging cafe doors. 

The dining room and the kitchen were painted white, except for one wall, the wall with the arch, that was covered with a dark grasscloth.

Here's the kitchen behind the swinging doors

You can see where the wall (lower left-hand corner) enclosed the space and you can get a sense of how narrow it was.  The white appliance you can see a bit of in the lower right hand corner is the fridge.  I'm used to a galley kitchen -- it's what I've got in New York and the one you see me in in my banner picture.  In fact, my New York kitchen is probably as narrow as this one or narrower -- I can stand in the middle of it, put out both arms and touch both walls.  But this kitchen felt even tighter, perhaps because it was closed in by the wall or perhaps because it wasn't very deep.  Whatever it was, I felt I wouldn't be comfortable in it and yet I wasn't sure what to do with it.  So I called my friends.

I asked my friends -- and neighbors -- Patricia Wells, the wonderful cookbook author and teacher, and Helene Samuel, the restaurant consultant and creator of  Cafe Pleyel, to come see the space and give me their advice.  (I know, I'm lucky to have such talented friends.)  And they each had a different idea.  While both agreed that the swinging doors should be removed, ditto the wallpaper,  Patricia thought I should work within the galley kitchen's confines, and Helene thought I should move the kitchen's working area out into the "dining room" and use the galley as a giant pantry and storeroom for small appliances, the dishwasher and maybe the washing machine.

In the end, I took  the advice of both of my friends -- kind of.  I tore down the wall that separated the kitchen from the dining area, removed the doors, the built-in table and the grasscloth, and decided to use the whole space as a working kitchen/office/and eating area.  In other words, I built a country kitchen.

Here's the way it looks so far:

You can see how tearing down the wall really opened up the space.  The island, in the foreground, has lots of storage, is a great work space, a terrific place for an in-the-kitchen meal and it's where I'll be writing.  The bookcase that you can see along the right hand side, used to be in our living room, but it works really well here.  I've got flour, sugar, spices, canned goods and some serving pieces in there.

I haven't had a lot of time to figure out how I'm going to work in the kitchen, but so far it seems that I'll be doing most of my chopping and mixing on the far side of the island and on the countertop opposite it.  When I'm back in the apartment, I'm going to hang the magnetic strips for my knives over that counter.

Here's the galley part of the kitchen:

You can see that I've got a nice little nook for my mixer and, right behind the striped pot holders and bread bag (cute, isn't it?), where the refrigerator used to be, I've got metal shelving to hold other small appliances, like my blender, food processor and coffee pot.

Here's the last picture:

It's the view from the island.  You can see that we were able to tuck the refrigerator into a closet; finishing the trim is on the punch list.  Getting the refrigerator out of the working part of the kitchen made a big difference. 

There's still more to do, but it's all little stuff and fun stuff, like buying new bread baskets and actually getting into the kitchen and cooking and baking.  I can't wait!

Au'revoir Paris

It's so hard to leave my kitchen now that it's almost finished, but I'll be back soon.

Off to the airport.

A bientot.

The Kindness of Chefs: A Continuing Tale

 

If you can stand it, here’s the latest installment of “Aren’t Food Folks Swell”.  (Just let me know when you’re tired of hearing about how nice everyone is in Paris.)

 

Pictured above, the evidence I present to prove, for the millionth time, the generosity of chefs.  It’s an almond-orange tuile and it’s the first thing I baked in my new oven in our new apartment, and the reason I was able to bake it, even though my kitchen still looked like the inside of a storage bin and almost everything I needed to bake was packed in boxes bound with the stickiest tape I’ve ever come across, was because I had this little container of dough in the fridge, a gift from Yannis Theodore

 

 

a chef at La Robe et Le Palais and a guy with boundless enthusiasm for his craft.

 

To back up, we ended up at the bistro, a small, lively, very casual place, at the suggestion and in the company of our friends Christian and Simon, who go for the simple, tasty and often original food (Simon and I both started with profiteroles filled with asparagus ice cream, topped with crispy bacon and surrounded by a goat cheese sauce – they were great) and the quirky wine list.  Well, it’s not really a list, it’s this

 

 

a library box with 250 wine choices arranged by color and style, each with info on the producers and tasting notes. 

 

It’s a great idea, it’s fun and it’s almost never used.  Most diners just leave it to the wait staff to pick a wine for them because: 1) giving the box a serious flip-through means leaving your dining companions to twiddle their thumbs for a good long while; 2) the odds increase that you'll end up with something you’d never have chosen – or known – to choose; and 3) everyone loves a surprise.

 

Dishes at La Robe et Le Palais are copious and, having had ice cream at the beginning of the meal (such a good idea), we were tempted to take a pass on dessert, but, stalwarts that we are, we resisted temptation and ordered one moelleux chocolat (a molten chocolate cake) with housemade vanilla ice cream, one creme brulee and five spoons, and that’s when the adventure began.

 

Who’d have thought that there was anything new to be learned from the good old standby, creme brulee?  But with the first spoonful, we discovered that in addition to the crackly sugar crust on top, the custard had an undersauce, making it the love child of creme brulee and creme caramel.  Michael liked it so much, he urged me to ask the chef what he’d done.

 

Enter Yannis Theodore, who was so tickled by our interest that not only did he tell us about his creme brulee – the sauce was jelly that he’d put in the ramekin before pouring over the custard (in the fall and winter, the bottom layer is roasted fruit) – he told us about his tuiles, too.  And then he went one better than the telling, he ran into the kitchen and returned with a tub of tuile dough and the recipe.

 

 

Can you see why I’m crazy about chefs?

 

Given that our oven had just arrived that day and was crying out to be christened – and given that I probably couldn’t have found flour and sugar in the packing boxes if my life depended on it – I took Yannis’s gift as an omen of good things to come in our new home and baked a few the following morning.

 

I used his dough and my instructions for Maple Tuiles (page 173 in Baking From My Home to Yours) and voila!

 

 

Merci Yannis for getting me and my kitchen off to such a sweet start.

Food on the Move

Thirty years ago, when my husband and I were building a kitchen (he was actually building it; I was just supervising and changing my mind at inconvenient times), we decided to splurge and hire someone other than Greenspan & Greenspan to paint the apartment.  Following a friend’s advice, we hired two Frenchmen, whose names I no longer remember, but whose seven – count’em – week stay in our apartment will never be forgotten.

 

That it took so long to paint our apartment had nothing to do with its size and everything to do with our painters’ ideas about how life should be lived.  The team would arrive at about ten and we'd have coffee together; at 11 they'd leave to move the truck – New York City alternate-side-of-the-street parking regulations; at 1 they'd break for lunch, a real lunch, set out picnic style and accompanied by wine, bien sur; and then at 2:30 they'd pick up their brushes again.  Do I have to tell you that within days, I was cooking for them? 

 

But here’s the best part:  when it came time for them to do the kitchen, one of them said, “Would you like me to show you how I make puff pastry?”  Of course it was an offer I couldn’t refuse and so, over the next three days, we made a batch of puff pastry a day, clearing off a stretch of counter to roll and turn the dough every two hours or so.  I’m sure the kitchen could have been painted in under three days, but I don’t think I could have found a better puff-pastry prof.

 

It wasn’t the first time a love of food became an unexpected link in an unlikely circumstance – since I’m obsessed with food and it’s always part of my conversation, I’m always meeting “food” people.  My husband says I attract them, but there’s no way I had anything to do with choosing – or attracting – these two men. 

 

 

 

Allow me to present Jean-Harry (on the left) and Rachid, the two gentlemen who were sent by the moving company to put our entire Paris apartment into boxes.  Since we’ve never really moved before – we’ve always arrived empty-handed and stayed put – the prospect of the move was terrifying and I was sure the reality would be worse.  But Jean-Harry and Rachid were calm, reassuring, old-hands at their jobs and, best of all, serious foodlovers, a fact they revealed after seeing that almost every book on the endless shelves was about food. 

From the moment Jean-Harry said, “It looks as though you’re very interested in cuisine,” we talked nonstop.  It seemed like with every box they tied up, they had another recipe (anyone for eggs cooked in sea urchin shells?), another memory of a great meal, a comment about a type of cuisine or a suggestion for serving (pair cold grapes with just-warm vegetable couscous in the summer). 

 

When they left, we exchanged email addresses and said we’d exchange recipes. (I’m hoping Rachid will send me his recipe for white couscous.)

 

People are always giving advice about how to get along in a foreign country, but I think that if France is your foreign country, there’s just one thing you’ve got to do:  Mention food!  You’ll have friends in a flash ... you might even get some recipes.

(BTW, if you're planning a Paris move, the company that sent Jean-Harry and Rachid, Corsica Demenagements, did a terrific job.  If only they were the company in charge of finishing my kitchen ...)

Moving: It's Madness!

How did we ever accumulate so much stuff? And do we really need all of it?  Too late for such questions.  We moved on Thursday and the moving men (about whom more when I've got time) packed everything including a dust kitty or two.  They were so incredibly efficient that there wasn't an instant to raise a hand and call out "stop!" or to make a last minute decision about that chipped coffee cup that was no longer useful but that I was saving because I loved the color.  Everything moved with us and now it's all got to be unpacked.

But not in the kitchen.  At least not now.  And maybe not for a while -- the contractor hasn't finished yet (yes, things are the same the world over) and the oven couldn't get up the staircase and there was a petit leak in the bathroom. 

And internet service?  "It will appear magically," is a rough translation of what Mme. France Telecom told me, and so we must wait. 

All this to say that you might not be hearing much from me for a little while.  (Although, if I can find a cozy internet spot and some time, I am going to try to respond to comments and, if I can unpack my books, come up with the list of cookies Victoria requested for Operation Baking Gals.)

Thank you all so very much for your well wishes -- I needed them and it looks like I'll need them for a bit more.

A bientot -- I hope.

Paris Priorites: Monoprix

Monoprix is my lifeline in Paris, the store of first-resort for everything from mascara and espadrilles to Monsieur Propre (aka Mr. Clean) and bananas.  It's part drugstore, part housewares store, part clothing store and part supermarket, and every part is really very good (not so surprising when you know that Monoprix is part of the Galeries Lafayette group).  And it's open until almost midnight -- a necessity for lots of us (how many times have I been 1 egg short when I've wanted to do a little late-night baking) and a rarity in this town.

When I came to Paris a decade ago, a friend said, "Make sure you live near a Monoprix," and I've been glad ever since that I took her advice.  But now we're moving -- this Thursday (yikes!) -- and while we love our new apartment, I realized we took it without scouting for that landmark.  (We're not moving far - we'll be just a 10- minute walk from our old store -- but when you're as spoiled as I am, you want those eggs as close as the corner.)  Happily, we just discovered there was no need to fret - a spanking new Monoprix opened a hop, skip and jump from our soon-to-be digs and it's a pretty swell one at that.

On the ground floor there's the drugstore, upstairs are the clothes and mini hardware, kitchen gear and office supplies shops, and downstairs is the grocery. My husband, Michael, and I took a spin around all three floors yesterday, and when we went down the escalator to the supermarket and were greeted by this view

  

Michael exclaimed, "I love the French!  It's perfect that the first thing you see is wine." It's equally perfect that just beyond there's plenty of butter, sugar, flour and eggs. 

How nice to know that future cookie-crises can be averted.  Now if only my oven would arrive ...

BEHIND THE SCENES AT PIERRE HERME:French Macarons and More

As many of you know, I’ve been a Pierre Herme fan (okay, the president of his fan club), for years and years, in fact, since about 2 minutes after I met him in 1993.  At that time, he was the chef-patissier at Fauchon and had just created a cake that had the food, art, design and architecture worlds buzzing:  La Cerise sur Le Gateau, or The Cherry on the Cake

 

This was the cake’s official “headshot,” done by the gifted photographer Jean-Louis Bloch-Laine (who also did the photography for Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Herme).  The shape of the cake was conceived by Yan Pennor’s (sic), who went on to design Pierre Herme’s rue Bonaparte boutique in Paris, as was the three-sided box that was tied with a wide satin ribbon.  When you undid the bow, the sides of the box fell away and the bright red cherry on the top was revealed, in almost the same way a clown would pop out of a jack-in-the-box. 

 

When you got the cake home, you’d open it at the table, so that everyone could share in the drama, then gently lay it down on its side and, following the gold leaf lines, cut it into six perfect portions, each one containing all of the cake’s elements: hazelnut dacquoise, milk chocolate ganache, milk chocolate whipped cream, thin sheets of tempered milk chocolate and a spread of milk chocolate, praline and crushed wafers.  (A make-at-home version of the cake, called Plaisir Sucre, is in Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Herme.)  Everything about the cake was surprising, including its being made with milk chocolate in a country where bittersweet reigns.

 

Since that time, Pierre Herme has gone on to create so many desserts that have changed the way we think about pastry.  Case in point, his family of Ispahan desserts

 

 

based on the now iconic trinity of rose, raspberry and litchi (today, there's even a yogurt that plays on this combo), which has been appropriated by almost every pastry chef in France. 

 

Even knowing Pierre Herme’s desserts as well as I do and for as long as I have, I was as excited as a little kid when I visited his kitchen behind the rue de Vaugirard boutique a couple of weeks ago.

 

My guide for the visit was Andre Loutsch,

 

the 29-year old pastry chef who is part of Pierre Herme’s “test kitchen”.  As Andre explained, Pierre Herme creates all the cakes – and, as Pierre has often said, he creates them in his head – and then the work of turning the idea, its components, its “architecture of taste,” a term Herme has used for years to describe the combination of a dessert’s taste, texture and temperature, into something “real,” falls, in part, to Andre, who works with Herme to make the actual dessert and to give it its final look. 

 

It goes without saying that Pierre Herme wouldn’t have chosen Andre Loutsch to work at his side if he wasn’t talented, but what struck me immediately about the young chef (who is about the same age Pierre was when I met him) was his extraordinary enthusiasm for his work.  When Andre talked about macarons, it was as though he had only discovered them a minute ago.

 

The kitchen, under the direction of Colette Petremant, Herme’s executive chef (I wish I’d snapped her picture), who’s been with him for almost forever (it’s rare that anyone leaves), is smaller than you’d imagine and, like every other Pierre Herme kitchen I’ve ever been in, calm.  There’s a peaceful, purposeful quiet in the kitchen (one I’ve never been able to attain in my own kitchen – even working alone, I make more noise than Colette’s entire team!).  

 

As you enter, there’s a wall of pictures

 

   

 

And then, to the right, the space where dough is made

 

 

Everything that has dough, from tart shells to croissants, lives in this corner.

 

 

When I was there, the rose filling for the Ispahan was being made

 

 

 

But, sadly, not the macarons.  Not that there weren’t macarons to see.  There was an entire refrigerated room filled with macarons,

 

  

 

the room Andre called “Ali Baba’s cave”.  Andre said that no one leaves the boutique without buying a macaron and he’s probably not exaggerating.

 

I caught the team early in the morning when they were between projects and getting ready for breakfast, which is an all-work-stops time in the kitchen.  There’s coffee, tea, cakes, of course, bread from Claire Damon’s Des Gateaux et du Pain down the street and the same great butter that Pierre Herme uses for his pastries. 

 

And, because it was still early, I was able to watch the shop come to life as the pastries were arranged in the display cases.  Here’s the Cherry on the Cake “in situ”

 

 

 

A quick aside:  When La Cerise sur le Gateau was conceived, the mold for it was made of plaster.  Just a few months ago, the cake joined the modern age: the new molds are silicone.

 

 

 

Don’t you love the indentation for the cherry?

 

And I saw the fabulous Mosaic desserts, combinations of pistachio and griottes, sour cherries, that are only available for a few weeks during the year, les temps de cerises (cherry season)

 

 

 

And, finally, one of PH’s most unusual creations, a dessert made with spaghetti – real spaghetti – cooked in strawberry juice, called Emotion Fragola (fragola is Italian for strawberry)

 

 

 

The night after my kitchen tour, Pierre and I were having dinner and I asked him where that dessert had come from.  He said he’d read that Italians had once made a dish with pasta and strawberries and the idea so intrigued him that he kept playing with it until he finally came up with this – a winner, which has the strawberry-cooked spaghetti (yes, it's al dente), crushed strawberries, balsamic gelee and mascarpone cream.

 

I finished my behind-the-scenes visit just as I’d hope I would – tasting macarons with Andre

 

 

 

And forcing him to do the impossible – choose his favorite: milk chocolate/passionfruit. 

 

Fortunately, Andre is politer than I am and he didn’t put me in a similar spot.  I could never choose just one favorite – never.

Cafe Salle Pleyel Burger: The Burger of The Times

You may remember that last fall I wrote about the terrific hamburger at the Cafe Salle Pleyel, a restaurant created by my friend Helene Samuel, about whom you've heard me talk before.

Well, today the Cafe Salle Pleyel burger got big-time coverage -- it's the star of Jane Sigal's extensive story In Paris, Burgers Turn Chic.  It's a really good story and, after you read it, you should take a couple of minutes to view/listen to the accompanying audio/slideshow as well - the pictures are swell.

Now here are the two best parts of the story: 

First, there's guest chef Sonia Ezgulian's recipe for the Pleyel Burger with capers and cornichons and Parmesan cheese (my photo was taken when the cheese of choice was a very American cheese).

Second, and unimaginably exciting, wonderful, smart, funny, talented Helene Samuel is the author of The New York Times's Quotation of the Day.  In the space usually reserved for the words of heads of state, Nobel Prize laureates and rock stars, my friend Helene is quoted as saying about the burger:

"IT HAS THE TASTE OF THE FORBIDDEN, THE ILLICIT -- THE SUBVERSIVE, EVEN."

It makes our national favorite sound pretty romantic, doesn't it?

Give A Man A Fish ...

On my way home from the Marche Saint Germain this morning, I kept thinking of the Chinese proverb:

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.  Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

I'd just bought a kilo (about 2 1/4 pounds) of sardines and I'd hoped that madame, the fishmonger, would filet them for me.  And she would have -- if I'd only wait 30 minutes, please.  Because it was a warm, sunny, perfect Paris day, and because I'd no more shopping to do to fill in the time, I said I'd filet them myself.  Madame gave me a quizzical look -- read doubtful -- and, because she was too polite to say, "I bet you've never done this before and don't know what you're in for," she said, "You know, you've got a lot of sardines and it will take you a while to filet them."

"Well," I said, "I really do have to get back home, so I'll take them as is.  But," I asked, "would you just show me how to do it?"

Madame pulled out a well-worn fileting knife -- very thin at the top and not so wide at the bottom -- laid the fish out parallel to her with the head to the left, made a diagonal slash below the gills, then pressing the flat of the knife against the backbone and rib bones (they're probably not called that, but the names make sense to me), she cut cleanly to the tail and lifted the filet away from the fish.  She flipped the fish over, still keeping the head to the left, and repeated the motion.  The skeleton that was left wasn't as neatly picked clean as the one Picasso made famous, but the remains looked clean and symetrical and she'd done it in 30 seconds.

Returning chez moi, I cleared the decks, sharpened a paring knife and put on some music.  I had 12 sardines and figured that had madame cleaned them, it would only have taken her 6 minutes.  I probably could have waited, but I'm glad I didn't because it only took me half an hour, I did a pretty decent job of it, and I learned something.  Not bad for a Sunday morning.

I also got to turn the filets into escabeche, a dish in which the sardines are first quickly sauteed and only partially cooked, and then drowned in hot aromatic oil and vinegar, a mixture that completes the cooking and pickles them, too. 

The downside of escabeche is the wait -- once the dish is assembled, it needs at least 6 hours in the fridge to cure.  Had I remembered that I'd have to hang for so long before tasting the my work, I might have found the patience to wait 6 minutes for the fish to be fileted.  Of course, what I would have made up in time, I'd have to forfait in bragging rights.

Here's a recipe for SARDINE ESCABECHE from The Cafe Boulud Cookbook (Daniel Boulud and Dorie Greenspan, Scribner's)

Makes 6 servings

1 1/4 cups extra-virgin olive oil

Flour for dredging

Salt and freshly ground white pepper

1 1/4 pounds sardine filets, skin on (from about 2 1/2 pounds whole sardines)

2 sprigs thyme

2 sprigs cilantro

2 sprigs basil

1 tomato, peeled, trimmed and thinly sliced crosswise

6 pearl onions, peeled, trimmed, and thinly sliced crosswise

3 cloves garlic, peeled, split, germ removed, and thinly sliced

2 small carrots, peeled, trimmed, and thinly sliced

2 stalks celery, peeled, trimmed, and thinly sliced

18 fennel seeds, toasted

18 coriander seeds, toasted

2 bay leaves

Pinch of red pepper flakes

1 tablespoon ketchup

1 1/2 teaspoons sugar

1/2 cup white vinegar

Juice of 2 lemons

Lemon wedges for serving

Pour 2 tablespoons of the olive oil into a large nonstick saute pan or skillet and warm it over medium heat.  Spread some flour out on a plate, season it with salt and pepper, and dredge only the skin sides of the sardines in the flour, shaking off the excess.  Slip the fish into the pan, flour side down, and fry on the flour side for 1 1/2 minutes - the fish will be undercooked, but it will finish cooking in the marinade.  Lift the fish out of the pan and pat off the excess oil; discard the frying oil, wipe out the pan and set it aside.

Arrange the sardine filets attractively in an overlapping pattern on a rimmed serving platter or in an oval gratin pan that holds them snugly.  Strew the thyme, coriander, basil and diced tomato over the fish and set the platter aside for the moment.

Return the pan to medium heat and add 2 tablespoons of the olive oil.  When the oil is hot, toss in the onions, garlic, carrots, celery, fennel and coriander seeds, and bay leaves to cook, stirring, until the vegetables are almost cooked through, 5 to 7 minutes.  Add the remaining 1 cup olive oil and all the other remaining ingredients, except the lemon juice and wedges, to the pan, bring to the simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes.  Pull the pan from the heat and stir in the lemon juice.

Pour the hot sauce over the fish.  Cover the platter with plastic wrap and allow the mixture to cool to room temperature.  Chill the escabeche for at least 6 hours, or overnight, before serving.

To serve:  Serve the escabeche with lemon wedges on the side.  If you'd like, you can drain off some of the marinating liquid, emulsify it in the blender, and use it as the dressing for an accompanying green salad.

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."