L'Ourcine

I should probably be posting pictures of things I ate while briefly visiting Tokyo, but I'm behind on my blogging. Way behind. How far behind? Back to Paris... behind. So I'll make this post short and sweet tasty.

Le Bistrot Paul Bert

You'll have to bear with me the next month or so, as I'm a bit disorganized and my blog posts will generally be all over the place spanning from the Bay Area to Paris. Needless to say, I've got some catching up to do and pictures to sort through.

Larnicol's Kouign Amann

After reading a post by David Lebovitz about a new bakery/confisierie/chocolatier in my neighborhood that specialized in kouign amann, or rather kouignettes, tiny ones, I knew I had to stop by and check it out. Kouign amann is a buttery cake that comes from the Brittany region of France. As we know Brittany and Normandy are known for their awesome salted butter. In fact, in Breton, the word kougin means cake and amann means butter. Yep it's one intense buttery, sugary cake.

Paris Je T'aime

The time has come, I guess. In 24 hours, yours truly will be on a plane back to California. Words can hardly express how I feel. Anxious, depressed, and wistfulness for a chapter of my life that feels like it's ending. I really enjoyed the year and a half I had in Paris. It was a life changing experience. It helped me lick my wounds, discover a new language and culture (and cusine!), as well as build life-long friendships that I hope to keep even though now I'll be thousands of miles away.

What dreams are made of

It's been snowing in Paris a lot lately. It hasn't snowed this much in Paris since the 80's and airports are canceling flights left and right. Luckily for me, I'm already tucked away in California reaping temperatures that are at least 10-15 degrees Celsius higher than I'm used to. However, a couple weeks ago one of my former classmates and I decided to trek around in the Parisian blizzard to do a mini pastry crawl. The shop that impressed me the most was Philippe Conticini's Patisserie des Reves.

Maoz

Could Maoz possibly trump the Ace of Falafels? I think so. To be honest, I didn't have high expectations of this chain that has locations all over the world. We ordered our falafels that took less than ten minutes to make. True they're not as fast as the places on Rue des Rosiers, but we could see that our falafel balls were crisping away in the fryer.

Voila...

I think I've found it. What you ask? Anyone who knows me, knows that I've been missing two things in particular from home: In-N-Out burgers and a good burrito. I know there's no way in hell I'll ever convince In-N-Out to open in a chain in Paris, since as it is they're sprinkled on the West coast of the US.

I've made it a personal mission to hunt down Mexican restaurants in Paris. I've traipsed through many arrondissements in search of the perfect burrito, but have generally been disappointed. They usually end up flat, flavorless, and often too simplistic, like a quesadilla with meat. If you're from California, you know what kind of burritos I'm talking about. The burritos I've had in the Bay Area are hearty. Composed of flour tortillas stuffed to the brim with veggies, beans, rice and meat of your choice, they're often wrapped in foil resembling a Mexican torpedo of sorts.

Well I've found a close runner-up to my pined over Californian burritos in the 2nd arrondissement at a small, new restaurant called Rice and Beans. Round? Check. Hearty? Check. Foil? Check. It was even served with tomatillo salsa, to boot. This is definitely a place I'm going to go to get my Mexican food fix.

Rice and Beans 
22 Rue Greneta
75002 PARIS
Tel: 01 73 70 46 09

4th of July

Living in Paris as a stagiaire has its downside when it comes to holidays. I really do miss my family and spending the holidays with them, grilling up meats and chowing down buffet style. I've made efforts with my American friends here to celebrate Thanksgiving (even though we had a chicken instead of a turkey), Halloween, and Fourth of July. Well in Paris its doubly difficult, since as a stagiaire at a large hotel,  I don't get French holidays off either!

This Fourth of July I decided to make something I miss a lot from home: Burgers. I even found 'burger sauce' at the grocery store that pretty much looks like Thousand Island. Yes, I know its a sad attempt to recreate an In-n-Out burger, but you have to give me a little credit for trying.

Things I don't understand

Though I've lived in France for almost a year now, there are a lot of things I don't understand here. And I'm not just talking about the language, cultural differences, or why nothing administrative (i.e. health insurance, post office, etc) works in a timely manner.

Living here, I've discovered some things that just don't make any sense. If someone can figure them out, please... enlighten me.

1) Light switches on the outside of bathrooms/toilets.
This just is begging for a practical joke. I see the news headlines now: "Woman slips in tub and dies after 8 year old child turns of light in bathroom."

2) Toilets that are in tiny rooms completely separate from the bathroom with a shower and sink.
Though I've been told its so one person can use the toilet while someone else is taking a shower, it doesn't make sense to me, hygienically. It's not that Americans poop on our hands or anything, but there's just something wrong about not washing your hands before you touch knobs or switches. From a female perspective its even more gross. A friend of mine is a nanny for two kids who says they never wash their hands after using the toilet, and always end up with a tumult of sicknesses (including worms). Perhaps if the sink was in the same room they'd be more likely to wash? Just saying.

3) Doors that lock from the inside with a key.
Another potential practical joke. Maybe I was just a devious child, but by locking yourself inside a place with a key, don't you leave the opportunity wide open for said key to be lost, hidden, or thrown out the window? Fire marshals in the U.S. would have a heyday with this safety hazard.

There are a dozen other things I don't quite get yet, but off the top of my head, these three confuse me the most. Maybe its a European thing and not limited to France. Confused, but not complaining... since at the end of the day, I still live in Paris.

Manifestation and the kid I wanted to kill

On my days off, I like to take the bus around town. It's a nice change from traveling underground all week long. However, today there was a 'manifestation' over by Bastille. What does that mean? To me it meant that all the buses going in that general direction were either canceled or detoured. A normally 30 minute metro ride, or 45 minute bus ride took over 45 minutes 2 buses, a metro ride, and a lot of walking. I did a Google search for what might be going on in the neighborhood, which was useless. I checked the twitter posts of one of my favorite food bloggers and it turns out there's some demonstration going on. A lot of angry people.

Speaking of angry (a perfect segue into my next blog topic), I usually don't get very angry at work. Exhausted, burned, and hungry. Sure. Angry? Not really. I usually don't talk too much about the people I work with either.  This is an exception. Last week marked the return of this 15 year old piece of sh*t stagiaire who came to work with us for a week, about a couple months ago. I'm not sure if he's young, or a bit slow, or just has no respect for anyone. It could be all three. Half the time if he wasn't messing up a recipe he had already attempted twice, he was ignoring his duties and wandering around the lab asking others what they were doing. Also, when cleaning time came around, he'd conveniently disappear or say that he needed to go home.

Catch-up

Bear with me folks, I'm lagging behind a bit on my posting. I do have a very good excuse though. I'm jet-lagged after flying back to the U.S. for 3.5 days. It was a suicide mission, but seeing that I was a bridesmaid in my cousin's wedding, I think she would have flown to Paris to murder me had I not come. So after leaving Paris on a Wednesday, flying back on a Sunday...and then straight to work afterward, I'm a bit tired. I promise I'll have some tasty bites or work drama to write about soon!

Picard 4

I'm starting to appreciate Picard. Not that I don't like cooking, but some days I'm far too tired to cook. Picard is kind of like cooking, and writing a blog post about it justifies stopping by the shop a little bit more than just plain hunger pains. Plus, as I've previously mentioned, Picard isn't your ordinary Celeste frozen pizza or Hungry Man dinner entree. They sell a wide variety of items from frozen breads, to desserts, to veggies, full entrees and frozen meats. If all you had in your home was a huge freezer, Picard would be heaven.

So I picked up Bouche a la reine (puff pastry with a creamy meat filling), sauteed veggies, and chicken fingers.

Asian food in Paris

I've been a bit disappointed by the Asian food in Paris. Like most things, it's alright, but just not the same. Whether its Vietnamese, Korean, or Chinese, I keep comparing to restaurants I frequent in California. The Japanese food here, however, is pretty good. Though once I went to a Japanese restaurant and ordered spicy tuna rolls and to my horror discovered they were made with soy paper instead of seaweed, and with cooked tuna instead of raw. Gross.

I've taken to cooking a lot of my favorite dishes at home. One of them is pho. When its cold outside there's nothing quite like a hot bowl of noodle soup. I fill mine with brisket, steak, meatballs, and tons of fresh veggies.

When I was last in California, I also picked up some seaweed, Japanese mayo, bonito flakes, okonomiyaki sauce, and okonomiyaki mix. Making the batter is a just a matter of mixing in water, egg, and julienned cabbage. I like to make mine with bacon or shrimp.

Another Vietnamese dish I really love is banh cuon. It's the Vietnamese version of filled crepes. The batter is made with a mix of cornstarch, rice flour and potato starch, but you can just buy it in a mix at any large Asian store. You mix the powder with water to form a very liquidy batter.

For the filling, I mix about 500 grams of pork, a good handful of re-hydrated black wood wear mushroom, onions, pepper, and a bit of fish sauce. Of course you could probably fill it with anything you like, but mushroom and pork are the traditional filling.

The crepes are cooked quickly in a skillet, flipped out onto a cutting board covered with greased aluminum foil (they're VERY sticky), and while still hot, filled with the pork/mushroom mixture and rolled up into little packages.

Banh cuon is served with bean sprouts, basil, fried shallots, fish dipping sauce (nuoc mam), and sometimes cha lua, which is Vietnamese pork sausage, or what I call Vietnamese "SPAM".

Picard round 3

So this week's Picard venture required even less cooking. The two entrees went into the microwave and the veggie dish cooked in the oven for 20 minutes.

Tasty bites and not so tasty andouillette

So I had a couple friends visiting from the states recently. I can't imagine a better reason to dine out than to show my friends tasty treats around Paris.

Tons of buns

So lately I've got tons of buns in the oven. Literally speaking of course, otherwise yours truly would be really freaking out. There's something to be said about eating something fresh and warm out of the oven, and even more so when its sweet, gooey, or stuffed with some delicious filling.

I made some ooey-gooey cinnamon buns, though I tweaked the recipe a little since the original has far too much butter and sugar to my liking. Plus I added maybe three times as much cinnamon as called for.

Seafood massacre

I was finally able to find some bigorneau aka periwinkles at the market. They were kind of expensive at 15 euros a kilo, considering you can easily hunt for them yourself if you happen to live along the coast of France. I guess the 15 euros goes to transporting these little suckers.

Pain perdu & moules frites

French toast aka pain perdu, as with French fries, isn't necessarily French, but it's unarguably tasty. Though traditionally made with day old brioche, I've found that it's even better if you use a day old buttery croissant. The sous-chef at work also advised me to toast the brioche/croissant first so its sure to soak up extra egg and milk batter, and thus allowing you to 'reclaim' the 'lost' bread. Unfortunately I was out of croissants this past weekend, so brioche had to suffice. I like my pain perdu with cinnamon, a sprinkling of powdered sugar, and maple syrup.

Picard encore!

So last week I sampled some Picard frozen pizza at a friend's place, and forgot to take pictures. In fact I didn't know it was from Picard until after the meal was done.

On this week's Picard menu: xiu mai, sweedish meetbals, eggplant gratin, and salted butter caramel ice cream.

Hello Kitty!

Did I ever mention that I like Hello Kitty? Not in an insane obsessed fanatical way some people are, as seen here. I think it's because Hello Kitty reminds me of my childhood going to Sanrio stores and convincing my mom to buy me a surprise grab bag that usually ended up having some crap in it, like a pencil.

Well there's plenty of Hello Kitty in Paris. Probably not as 1/10,000th times as in Japan, but hey... this is France. I've got my keen eye out for the pink feline especially since I have a friend who seems to be allergic to Hello Kitty, which of course makes me want to snatch up Hello Kitty pink sandwich cookies or Hello Kitty jelly beans as quickly as I can. Of course I'll spare you all the pain of posting pictures of all the things I find around Paris, but I couldn't help but snap a photo of the most awesomest Vespa ever!