« October 2007 | Main | December 2007 »
I didn't want to finish the year with just the green quilt, so I looked up in Kumiko Sudo's book on omiyage which had been sitting in my shelf for nearly four years now. The sakura project looked easy so I tackled that and it was great! Enjoyable to make, lots to learn and the result was pretty and functional.
The grève is over, and this week my calendar is full again. A visit to Musée des Années 30, lunch at two very good restaurants; it's about time, the eating's been quite dull lately, hence the non-food image. Our old plastic tree that gave 8 years of service did not survive the move over. We'll keep the decorations simple for now, just a tiny glass tree and a stocking for V. We'll be in Singapore and Malaysia most of December but will spend Christmas in Paris. The city is just getting into the mood, florists are full of pine trees and they've turned on the pretty lights in front of Galeries Lafayette but not the ones along Avenue de Champs Elysee.
The quilting is finally finished and I've sewn on the binding, there's only the blind-stitching of the binding and mummy's present will be ready. I was so buzzed by the completion that I re-organized all my fabrics, threads and notions, maybe I'll have time to make some omiyages before we fly...but first we have to buy some more presents, pack, and and manage a lot of hair. Yes, hair. I have an appointment on Wednesday, but I will trim V's fringe and the dogs' coats myself. Busy, busy, busy.....
The whole of France is under Le Grève. Sounds like a grievance, and in this case, it's the workers who are not happy. We had a little taste of it when the transport workers striked last month, it went on for 1.8 days and was not convenient.
Well, the transport strike restarted last week and there is no end date in sight. It is so not remotely funny. Husband's secretary had to walk 3 hours to get to the office! My planned visits to museums and appointments were all postponed save for my conversation class which is fortunately a mere 25 minute walk away. I cannot find any sympathy for the transport strikers- the government wants them to work more years before they can enjoy their pension, like workers in other sectors, but they refuse; including a few thousand workers whose retirement age is only 50- because what they demand is neither reasonable nor, more importantly, feasible. They already enjoy very good benefits, and to be honest, in this day and age, to be employed for so many years would be an unheard of blessing where I come from. For the past 8 years of my working life I was employed as a contract worker (one to two years usually) and so do many people I know. I've never had a pension plan and neither does my husband, his organisation phased that out eons ago. President Sarkozy is determined not to give in, I hope he can stick it out, if he cannot push it through in his first year I doubt he will be able to in future.
There are also other unhappy people. Students protesting against their universities because they are getting more autonomy. Civil workers protesting because their purchasing power is getting weaker. This morning husband sent V to the halte garderie and found that it was unmanned, because nobody came to work. Mind that this is a private organisation yet they still went on strike! Without informing the parents too, poor Vera was so confused when her daddy drove her home and she realised that she won't be able to 'gai-gai' as we've promised her she actually struggled and screamed to get back onto the street! C'est la vie.
In case anyone is wondering what the image of chocroute has to do with this post, the answer is: nothing. Just a quick note that there is a stall in the market at Porte Vanves near the Sunday fleamarket area that sells very yummy choucroute. The cabbage is cooked a little longer than most and the taste is not sharp or overly mustardy. There is even a hint of meatiness, maybe the scraps from the other meats get thrown into the choucroute pot. These make good Sunday suppers, especially when the weather gets all windy and cold like it did the last few days.
We didn't eat as much pizza as I would have liked; it wasn't because the pizzas were no good, in fact what we had were absolutely yummy, but the stomach couldn't accommodate more. The first pizza I tried was at one of the many casual joints that sells them by the slice, there the quality ranged from stunning (green tomatoes and fresh mozarella) to bleah.
C took me to Pizza Ciro (Via della Mercede, 43/45, T: +39 066786015), she had eaten there before and liked it. From the outside it looked quite ordinary and even a bit like a fast-food place but inside the space is huge and the pizza we shared was very good- see picture above- soft, chewy bread with slightly crisp edges, fresh mozarella, sweet grilled aubergines.
A stone's throw from our B&B is an old-school trattoria which C had managed to eat in every time she visits Rome. Da Sergio is quirky and rustic and though smack in the middle of Campo del Fiori it is popular with the locals.
On my last day I was determined to try tripe, because braised tripe and other dishes made from offal and animal parts make up an important part of the Roman-Jewish cuisine. At Da Sergio I ordered their tripe in tomato sauce. It is typically served as a second course after the antipasto and pasta, but I requested it as an appetiser. It arrived looking innocuous enough, almost like pasta, but upon closer inspection the intestines had been cut into bite-sized wobbly chunks. The texture was chewy but not rubbery, soft and toothsome at the same time, but the tomato sauce, bacon bits and parmesan failed to mask its inherent strong flavours which takes a bit of getting used to. I managed about 5 pieces before giving up.
If there is one dish we ate a lot of in Rome, it was pasta. Yes we were aware that they are other dishes in the menu, but well, pasta has its irresistable lure. On our first day we walked into Ditirambo, also within walking distance of Campo del Fiori, and all I could smell was black truffles. Unfortunately my dish of pasta with bolleto mushrooms sprinkled with the grated truffles, in spite of its beautiful perfume, was rather stodgy and bland. C fared better with fresh pasta sheets cooked in a sauce of salted cod, it too looked a mess, but was adequate enough. The rest of our pasta meals were much better, such as linguine tossed with a sauce of baby squids in La Campana, a hearty agnolotti at Piperno and a wickedly rich spaghetti carbonara at da Sergio- all shiny with an eggy, olive-oily, bacony sauce and crowned with a mountain of shaved parmesan.
The best pasta, for me, was the papardelle with a ragout of wild boar meat and duck sausage at Al Bric, tender broad noodles with springy bite tossed with the long simmered meat sauce. If food has the power to move one to tears, this dish would stand a pretty good chance, I was in raptures, absolutely adoring it willing myself to eat each mouthful slowly to draw out the pleasures.
And what better pairing for such a magnificient dish than an equally magnificient wine. The wine list at Al Bric, when it appeared, impressed with its weight and heft. It is almost 3 inches in height and is bound in thick worn red leather, the pages yellowed and feathery. C has a friend who gave her the name of 2 wines she absolutely must have while she was in Rome. We looked in the section for half bottles and the names were not in the page. But I saw a Barolo, surprisingly it was one of the less expensive options at about 32 euros, the price is for half a bottle so it was not exactly a bargain. The sommelier whisked away the wine glasses on the table and came back with more grown-up looking glasses (deeper rounder bowl, smaller rim). It was only my second time drinking Barolo but it is so easy to love, so full bodied for a single-varietal wine, so smooth and so sophisticated even for such a young wine. Before we knew it, we had drunk up the last drops.
Feeling slightly bereft, and enjoying our happiness with the wine and food, we asked for the wine tome again. This time we ordered another half-bottle of Tignanello 2003 which cost slightly more than the Barolo but was not quite as seductive, I think it is hard to measure up anyway so we just sat back and enjoyed the wine and our conversation.
The next day, at Piperno, C saw one of the names and ordered us a half-bottle of Amarone 2004. Drier and more tannic, it more than matched the fried yummies and hearty pastas with its rich raisiny perfumes.
Onto the final course. Desserts. We didn't manage to eat a lot of it. The pastas do occupy a lot of space in the tummy, but at Piperno they lay out all the desserts at the entrance so one can mentally prepare and make appropriate room for the tiny sweet strawberries with ice cream.
Or fruit tarts served on its own. Bitter sweet orange marmaladey tart with tender pastry and the other a cherry filling with a nuttier crumbly crust. The orange tart won by a small margin but only just. To me, these tarts embody the spirit of the food we enjoyed throughout our holiday- traditional, unpretentious food with bold yet comforting flavours using simple, quality, local ingredients. It's food that is good enough that they don't need, or have, many 'ethnic' restaurants. It is also seemingly so facile that there are Italian restaurants all over the world, just that after this, for better or for worse, I know better.
It may not surprise anyone that I've signed up for a lunching club in Paris. Once a month, the members of mostly foreign wives attend a lunch at a place chosen by the organisers who are French and very warm, hospitable (cheese tarts that serves 12 anyone?) and very spritely in spite of their age. The theme run from regional to Parisien to celebrating the launch of the new Beaujolais, for the month of October it was a restaurant of 'sure value' which quite aptly fitted the description for the bustling restaurant that is the Auberge du Mouton Blanc in the 16th arrondissement.
Lunchtime crowd: the middle-aged, middle-class denizens of the neighbourhood. Also some working suits. And a gaggle of ladies with varying ability in speaking French.
Decor: Safe. Serviceable chairs and tables, bright but not harsh lighting, cheesy paintings and etched glass room dividers did not help but provide assurance that customers come here for the decent food and not to see or be seen.
Menu: For our group, a special 30 euro menu that includes appetiser, main dish, dessert, wine, coffee. Dishes are traditional and no-nonsense. Usual menus are cheaper.
My appetiser of gratinated spinach and river prawns was hearty and a little dull but it was not their fault, I wanted to try the prawns because it's name 'ecrivasse' sounded cute.
For dessert I chose the very traditional Blanquette de Veau, or veal braised in a white sauce. In its most purists state it should be served as white as possible- the meat, the sauce, the rice- but that's only what I read in the books. As veal goes, it's delicate meatiness made a good pairing with the simple white creamy sauce and the whole lot went well with rice. Probably a bit too rich for everyday eating and really needed to be accompanied by some white wine to alleviate some of the guilt.
I don't remember dessert, but was probably too full to enjoy it. The conversation was fun though, ranging from the latest gossips about Cecilia Sarkozy to women's rights in the middle east to, a very hotly debated topic this, whether the next lunch would be in the famous Aux Lyonnaise or a more cosy but not lesser restaurant in the relative boondocks of the outer edges beyond the 13th arrondissement.
40 rue d'Auteuil, 75016 Paris T: 01 42 88 02 21
On another note, our V is taking to French food well. She goes to the halte garderie (childcare) full days on Tuesdays and Fridays and half days on Wednesdays. On the full days they feed the children lunch. The weekly menu is viewable here. The dishes are colour-coded according to their food groups but are mostly French dishes like hachis parmentier, roast meats, endive salad and always a cheese and either compotes, fruits or pastry for dessert. The childcare assistants will monitor the child's intake and indicate whether the child only tasted (G), ate a little (+), more (++) or a lot (+++). In the beginning V's log showed mostly Gs, poor girl, coming from congees, meat-and-vegetable soups and hot lunches to salads, omelettes, hams and especially cheeses must have been weird but she has adapted. These days she gets more +++s than Gs and is even speaking some French words like 'au revoir' 'merci' 'oolala' and even ''ça va' when she answers the phone.
When I typed in the post title I was also thinking of "Rome" the TV miniseries. C, who doesn't have a TV in her London flat, had brought it over and we spent the weekend watching the first season, as a sort of prelude to our trip. It's a HBO/BBC production therefore has both glamour, flash and solid acting, and of course a sumptuous line up of male characters; my top three favourites are "woah, yummy" Lucius Vorenus, passionate and oh-so-manly Titus Pullo and of course the powerful Julius Caesar.
The second season is available in the shops but I am happy to wait for a while. Because now I have figured out (better late than never) that French TV prime time starts from 8.40 pm and in the two hours that follow there is usually something watchable on telly. Tuesday nights poses a big problem: would it be Brothers and Sisters or War and Peace? The former I had been following against my better judgement because the combination of three attention-seeking divas (Sally Field, Calista Flockhart and Rachel Griffiths) irks me but Rob Lowe is in it though not as often as I would like. War and Peace, or Guerre et Paix as it is known here, is a major European production- 6 countries involved in the production including France of course, filmed in St Petersburg plus various beautiful locations. Natasha is played by very up-and-coming French actress Clémence Poésy. They'll show it on local TV in four weekly installment. I had actually watched my first episode in Rome, it was subtitled in Italian but I could figure some words out and the plot develops quite fluidly, so for this week we're OK, but how about next week? I could watch War and Peace and follow the repeat of Brothers and Sisters on Sundays but sometimes they transmit the Sunday version in French which is a bit of a pain. Decisions decisions.
That's the problem with too many choices. When we saw the antipasto spread at La Campana (Vicolo della Campana, 18 T: 06 686 7820) C and I decided we were going to share a plate, and I was tasked to do the selection. In my younger days I would have tried to pile my plate high but now I am a bit more self-conscious, boy it was difficult to choose, everything looked and smelled so appetizing and tasted mamma-mia delicious. Grilled okras, spiky green cauliflower, aubergines, peppers, sardines, runny omelets, all bathed in herbs and olive oil yet each item held their own interest and no two tastes were alike. My friends, if you are ever in the same situation don't go all prissy like me, just abandon yourself and fill the plate to the brim.
For this trip I was in charge of food and shopping. C for the sight-seeing. Food was easy for me, I asked the legendary Chaxiubao for advice and he came through with a list. From the list I made reservations for four meals and e-mailed C with the news who was mighty impressed. The second night we went to Al Bric (Via Del Pellegrino, 51 T:06 6879533). This was an intimate and secluded place, the signboard is hardly visible and from the outside it looks like a dusty wine shop. The food was impeccable, the wines most excellent and I'll elaborate more on what we eat in later posts. Here it suffices to say that I enjoyed my appetiser of three items. A croquette of salmon and potatoes, fresh tasting and expertly fried. A mille-feuille of hand cooked potato chops with special bacon. Polenta cakes with a film of something white, most likely lard as C suggested, and topped with a pesto of spicy green peppers and lemon zest, unexpected combination that excited the palate.
Piperno was another winning recommendation. By the third day we have figured out the style of Italian cooking in Rome is actually quite rustic and heavily influenced by Jewish cuisine, the guide book even called it Roman-Jewish. I am sure Rome has its share of nouvelle fashion restaurants with dainty presentation and elegant plating but what we ate were mostly of the old fashioned basics which are satisfying but may not win any points on presentation. And none came more old-school than Piperno. Located deep inside the Jewish quartier, it was not easy to find without a map and the external experience belies the fact that once we push through the door, inside is a world of gentlemanly waiters in waistcoats and white aprons, glittering chandeliers, lush paintings, thick linens everywhere and where Italian old-moneyed families hang out especially on the Sunday afternoon that we visited. Very atmospheric, definitely.
Their specialty is, as chaxiubao noted, fried (fritto) foods. C and I ordered the vegetable version because she was intent on eating artichokes and me on zucchini blossoms. The artichokes were absolutely delicious, now that artichokes are everywhere I wished I ate more of it that day. The fried balls looked alike, but they are not the same, one had rice and the other had potatoes. Everything was delicious, the batter bound the ingredients loosely and lightly and the frying was so expertly done you'd think they didn't use oil.
Antipastos are meant to be delicious little morsels to excite the palate for the meal proper but which in themselves make great meals. Do you think the Italians have a separate stomach for antipastos? I think they do, their digestive system must surely have evolved to that level.
Recent Comments