Friday, April 17, 2009

buon riposo



We stay at a country house on a hill overlooking olive and orange groves that lead the eye down to the sea. On this hill, there were once mulberry trees used for producing some of the finest silk in all of Italy. But like so much else in this wild place called Calabria, that is no longer true. Our accomodations are simple yet elegant, the house belonging to a noble family. We have all that we might need: a kitchen in which to brew jasmine flower tea or cook a pasta with fresh fava beans, sheep’s milk cheese from Crotone, and pancetta cured by a farmer’s wife who lives not far from where we are staying. Pythagorus hailed from Crotone, about an hour south of us on the coast. In that city, he taught his mathematical theorems and held dialogues on philosophy--the scene really still the same in every modern caffe bar on every corner or street in all of Italy.

A cacophony of birds wakes us in the morning as if we are housed in a tropical aviary. The wild cats, a black one, a white one with a black tail, and a silvery tabby who looks like a rare panther from Mesopatamia watch us at the table outside from beneath the oleander. Their eyes flash green with hunger and we feed them leftovers from our bowls until they are contented and settle down to bathe and sleep. The sun is hot these days, duplicating our northern summer, and we are told that the rains have stopped now. We seek out the sun, then once that has become too much, we search for the shade. Calabria, a land shaped by strong sun, is defined by shade. We are told there will be no water until autumn. The orange trees are in flower and the air is scented with a fat and slightly waxy perfume lulling us. Yesterday, the sky was filled with gauzy haze, perhaps a condition promoted by the grove fires as the contadini prune the trees and burn the leaves and thin branches. Beyond the Ionian, the horizon appears as fog. Today, the clouds streak like wisps of mares’ tails and the eye leads out into the water. A white boat chugs along the surface, somewhere a fisherman fishes, though we cannot see him. The afternoon is heavy with tranquility, only the birds and the rustle of wind. After coffee, we break the quiet with eating fresh strawberries warmed in the sun.

--Deirdre

Monday, April 6, 2009

aperitif




It doesn’t matter which of the three cafes you choose of an evening at the congress of streets convening across from the Ecole Militaire. You must have Sancerre, the pretty, aromatic white wine, or a glass of champagne, to be consumed alongside oysters dressed in fresh lemon and shallot vinegarette. A kir would suffice as well. The waiter will probably bring a dish of olives or chips to salt the palate. Here, there is a great Parisian show: you take note of the current fashions handled expertly in Parisian hands: leggy boots with narrow heels, skirts with flirtatious flips, stovepipe pants, scarves and foulards wrapped elegantly around necks. Tourists idle by, dazed because they have just arrived today and they are jet-lagged, or because they have spent all day in the sun with their heads tilted up looking at great monuments. As the sun disappears behind the Champs de Mars lighting the sky violet look to the right and watch the spire of the Eiffel Tower over the buildings, the lacey pattern of iron and grid caught up in the newly leafed branches of the park trees. At the top of the hour, white lights shimmy up and down the iron confection, the quotidian moment of the evening hours marked by such festivity, a hold over from the millennium celebrations. While the waiter lights the candles on the tables, the flashes of sparkle mingled with the pearled bubbles of the Champagne and briny oyster make for the sublime.
--Deirdre

first tango in Paris


A handful of pilgrimages in the city of Paris. Paris itself is a pilgrimage, a city worth staying in for as long as you can. I have a list of desires: a walk in the Buttes de Chaumont, an aperitif at the Hotel du Nord on the Canal St. Martin, oysters and champagne at the café, any café, at Ecole Militaire, dinner at Le Baratin in Belleville. We decide not to see the classic French film Hotel du Nord because frankly it is classically, tragically French. Two crazy lovers who make a suicide pact in a room above the bar at the Hotel du Nord, a pact that goes awry, and a man who suddenly finds himself a murderer enlists the help of a pimp and a prostitute to escape. As you can imagine, the story does not end well, and we are no longer young students who thrive on tales of obsessive love and existentialism. Instead we search out affirming narratives : meals that begin well and end even better.

Our reservation at Le Baratin is late, but we don’t mind. We’ve needed all this time today to walk and see and we find that we arrive back home with only an hour before we must go out again. The restaurant appears almost out of nowhere off a long, straight street that gradually falls downhill, around a corner to the left like a surprise. A busy Friday night. One waiter, one chalkboard menu. Simple bentwood chairs around wooden tables. The old leather seats on the bar stools are cracked and show their stuffing. Wine bottles are scattered all over the bar. The white and tiger tabby slinks beneath the tables and sits on the bench hoping for scraps. The barman’s mother (he is really a passionate and erudite sommelier, and we assume she is the barman’s mother—there is a likeness in the curve of the nose) sits at a table for two, alone, with a glass of wine. From the chalkboard menu, we choose the carpaccio of mullet with red onions, yellow beets, and finely diced strawberries, a ceviche of cabaillaud in citron vert, thin slices of raw beef in an exotic sauce of apples, walnuts, and hot pepper, asparagus (it is meant to be white, but the white are sold out) with gossamer pieces of lardons. The lamb roasted in the oven is served with wilted chard and three little potatoes. The cabaillaud is grilled simply and served over a potato puree.

We choose two wines: half carafes of both, and both young and organic. A bright Grenache, the other a silkier Rousillon. The young waiter who has come out to save the elder tells us the winemakers of both our wines are sitting next to us at the bar chatting with the barman, or perhaps barman is really just entertaining his guests. As the evening progresses, a block of chocolate fondant arrives along with the comice pear that has been poached in red wine and fanned across the white plate. A confit of pineapple is sweet and without artiface. One winemaker measures the sugar content of the Grenache with an hydrometer to discuss the numbers with the others at the bar. I wish for my camera. The proprietess, our cook, an Argentine who came to this city over twenty years ago, finishes her evening standing at the door to her domain, the small, tight kitchen, drinking a glass of red and smoking a cigarette.


--Deirdre

Sunday, April 5, 2009

wish you were here...






Place Dauphine. Paris. Springtime. The lime trees in the place have leafed out even since yesterday. We have long been coming to this triangular sanctuary, cool and tranquil, in the heart of one of the busiest sections of Paris. We sit at the Cave au Palais where we have always sat to have a glass of wine or a hot chocolate on gray, rainy days in the city. Today, we have lunch. The sun is out, and perhaps our northern skin has gotten a bit too much light and heat this morning when we sat earlier in the open, treeless expanse of the courtyard of the Louvre and drank café crème and watched the people walk by. So we sit now in the cool of the shaded awning. Three men play boules, and an older couple sits on a bench beneath the broad canopy of trees. La Madame wears a pink suit. I am wearing a silk scarf bought years ago in Paris, a gift from my parents when I got married. Sunlight filters through young leaf and branch creating a chiarocscuro on faces, a hand, a fine shoe. We come to Place Dauphine every time we are here., a pilgrimage based on two or three sentences in novel, a French policier written by the formidable George Simenon. We’ve long followed the stories of the irascible Inspector Maigret who sits in the Palais de Justice that fronts on the Place Dauphine, the inspector who always orders sandwiches and beer from the restaurant on the Place during the most intense moments of a case. We should be eating sandwiches and beer, but we cannot reject the salad of grilled shrimp with orange and grapefruit, the block of foie gras, the simply grilled dorade served smoky and with lemon, the entrecote, my favorite cut, cooked rare with a classic pepper sauce, or the rich boudin noir served with fresh greens. How can we say no to perfectly salted and roasted potatoes, and buttered green beans? Impossible to turn down a Bordeaux, with a vintage of nine years ago for a relatively paltry sum. The meal is long and finishes with cheeses and a perfectly torched crème brulée. The sun has moved, the air a bit cooler now, only a small shot of thick coffee to warm us and close the palate and the meal.

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Paris, awaken me





We all arrive at a time in the course of our pursuits when we must look up in search of new horizons and new inspiration. And my mouth has been grousing lately (at least to me) about needing some new data inputs in the flavor department. It’s been saying, ‘hey, it’s been a long winter, and it’s time to wake up again.’

I am a relative late-comer to the pleasures of Vietnamese cuisine, but I find that its simple honesty and vibrancy remind me of other great cuisines that have been slowly born out of an ancient agrarian, peasant tradition. Like the Italian cuisine to which I devote my work, and also the foods of Mexico, the Near East, India, and of countless other places. And since we are here in a great city, I want to take advantage of some of the ethnic food to be found. A brief conference with our friend Denise (who lives in Normandy, but makes regular forays into the city) convinces us that Chinatown is a must, for both a meal and some grocery shopping.

The lunch is a delight at Le Bambou on Rue Beaudricourt, right in among plenty of other worthy establishments. (‘Chinatown, Ave. d’Ivry, the 13th, Paris.’ Write that down.) Light, clean flavors and the kind of exciting spice that makes my mouth insist, ‘do that again.’ I want to keep building up the level of heat and flavor in the mouth. My soul demands it. It feels like I am trying to open up a heavy wooden chest encrusted in layers of weariness and numbness. The chopsticks must serve as my hammer and the spice as my chisel, and I must keep at it until... something is revealed inside me, or I arrive somewhere else.

The shopping is just a short walk from the restaurant, up Ivry. The mission is a Thai-style soup with Coconut and Shrimp, and everything is there at Tang Freres, including chicken bones for fresh soup stock. (It was .65 euro for a single carcass, which was perfect for my purposes. I didn’t want to use a cube and I didn’t really have time to deal with a whole chicken.) There was even a small package of spices specifically for Pho-style soup. Ginger, Galanga, Lemongrass, Lime leaves, chilis, mint, basil, sprouts… I could barely wait to get back to the apartment.

PS. Here’s a thought: I believe that boredom is an invention of the modern world, and that its sufferers are largely the perpetrators of their own condition.

--Caleb