La Petite Chinoise : LPC

Fishy fishy in a brook,
Daddy caught him with a hook,
Mommy fried him in a pan,
And Ginny ate it as fast as she can.

My Dad’s an avid fisherman. Any chance he gets, he goes deep-sea fishing with his buddies. And he always comes back with heaps of fish. We help him clean and gut the fish, divide them into portions. We keep a third of the catch for ourselves and deliver the rest to the old folks’ homes in the surrounding neighbourhoods. Only after the delivery, do we sit down and eat some of his catch. One of my favourites is Dad’s fried fish with spicy tomato sauce. I like it because it’s done in a flash and I’m usually famished by then.

Ben and I took a cooking class last week at L'Atelier des Chefs and we learnt an even faster way of preparing fish. Lunch was a “Brandade de Cabillaud”, which is a cod fish paste made with olive oil, milk and garlic. Traditionally, a “brandade” (brawn-dud) is made with salted morue (another type of codfish) and is a specialty from Nîmes in France.

Postscript: My French aunt tells me that the traditional "Brandade de Morue" is not made with potatoes, but with salted cod fish, olive oil, garlic and crème fraîche. You can use the the same quantities in the recipe I listed and mix the fish with 15cl of sour cream or crème fraîche. It would be a thick fish paste.

Posted by lpc at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Food guides have written about Willi’s Wine Bar for years and years. And rightly so. Willi’s Wine Bar is a “legend” in Paris. Mark “Willi” Williamson is one of the early founders of Paris’ bar à vins. Prior to L’ecluse (1978) and Willi’s Wine Bar (1980), wine bars were called comptoirs (counters), which specialized in wines, from a particular region only. Comptoirs served nibble foods like charcuterie and cheeses. Willi took the relationship of food and wine seriously, and started the trend of “bar à vins” as we know today. French people were even using the English term “wine bar” because it was trendy then to say “On dîne ce soir au wine bar”.

Willi also founded Juvéniles which he later sold to Tim Johnstone. He currently owns Macéo, a more up-scale restaurant a few doors down from Willi’s. All three wine bars have wine pairings with food. So, is Willi’s Wine Bar a restaurant or a wine bar? The line is now very blurred for many wine bars. They serve three course meals and have an extensive wine list. I suppose it depends largely on casualness of the service and of course, the ability to order any wine by the glass. In a wine bar, we should be able to try as many Côte de Rhônes as we like without breaking the bank.

As we walked in, I couldn’t help but smile. Willi’s is NON-smoking. Everyone was standing at the wooden bar (not the typical zinc bar top in Paris) sipping their wines and the chitter chatter was mainly English or Franglais. Looks like I’ve found the watering hole for the English in Paris.

As you may know, the French government has placed a smoking ban beginning January 1, 2007. And as you’ve probably guessed, French people are protesting. Tabacs (cigarette stores) and bars are demanding that they be exempt from this ban and are settling for a smoke-free bar after la rentrée in 2007. I got a glimpse of what a Parisian smoke-free bar would be like. I’m no longer gasping for air when I get to dessert. The other diners remained glued to their tables by the time we left at midnight. People seem to stay longer, chattier and drink more wine in smoke-free wine bars… The biggest plus is that we don’t smell like an ashtray after dinner. I read in the IHT this morning that Italy has gone smoke-free for two years… and apparently love to be smoke-free. If Italy can do it…

Willi’s Wine Bar feels like it’s been in Paris depuis toujours (since forever). There are so many retro art posters on the wall commemorating the bar’s many years of existence. I enjoyed the art posters and think it’s a nice touch, but I also found it over-bearing to be surrounded by so many Willi’s Wine Bar posters in a small space. It was on every page of the menu and wine list as well. Take a look at the menu.

My dinner came up to EUR55, which was an appetizer of quail meat with rocket salad and a nectarine vinaigrette, a tuna steak with grilled peppers and a slice of chocolate terrine (like a cake) and 2 glasses of Cabadès 2001 10cl (EUR7.90), 15cl (EUR11.50).

Willi’s Wine Bar
13 rue des Petits Champs
75001, Paris
Tel : 01 42 61 05 09
Metro : Palais Royale, Pyramids

Posted by lpc at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My good friend Hélène and I spent Sunday together. We chatted and knitted and drank tea and dreamed having our own bookstore-café-bakery… and then knitted some more. I had fleeting thoughts of knitting by a fireplace with Hélène when we’re grand old ladies.

I wonder ever so slightly if I will miss having this chunk of down time. Is this a luxury one can afford? If anything, I have slept better (and much longer) and am more patient (but still cannot suffer fools any better) and feel lighter. Surely these are good traits to have.

I’m just happy to have a breath of fresh air, however long it lasts. Without meaning to be corny or anything, we made a cheese soufflé for dinner last night from The Cook's Book. “Soufflé” is the past participle of “souffler” which means to breathe or puff up. The soufflé does puff up to 2x its size when baked.

Speaking of serving a soufflé immediately… Hélène shared a French phrase “Un soufflé n'attend pas”, which means “A soufflé doesn’t wait” because a soufflé will most definitely fall when the ambient temperature is lower. I figured that we have about 1 minute max to get the soufflé from the oven to the table and serve before it falls.

*Place the ramekin/ soufflé dish on the lowest rack, if you like it looking just lightly browned on top. I placed mine one rack higher this time, and actually quite like it browned the way it is.

Posted by lpc at 02:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Izräel reminds me of the “ma-ma” stores we have in Singapore. It’s packed from floor to ceiling with jars, bottles, tins, cans, packets of food that only the owners can find and retrieve. There are dried chillies hanging from the ceiling and sacks and sacks of beans, rice, nuts on the floor. There is an old scale that weighs the produce and an even older cash register.

The store has been around for 70 years. The current owners inherited it from their parents. And their son and granddaughter were in the store helping out on Saturday. They were explaining to me that they are not changing anything (I can see that!) and want to keep it “the way it used to be”. I thought they were doing a good job of running the store efficiently, while keeping its romantic history. Izräel is probably one of the last bastions of food stores from the 1930s that have not been bought out or razed to the grounds.

Izräel is a purveyor of delicacies from the Middle East, like rose water, violet flowers, and every spice needed for a good kafta or tangine. You get a brief “smell tour” of what the souks must be like in Dubai or Tehran or Morocco. Lentils de Puy are EUR12 per kilo, blanched almonds are EUR44 per kilo, pine nuts are EUR19 per kilo… Izräel also stocks produce from the United States, which doesn’t come cheap. I found Ocean Spray Cranberry juice and Ocean Spray cranberry jelly* for EUR4.50 each and a small jar of Jif peanut butter is EUR9! That’s 11 US Dollars! I’m sure others might find paying EUR5 for a small bottle of rose water exorbitant, while I consider it to be a small price to pay for something so “exotic”.

Value lies in the eyes of the beholder, doesn’t it?

Izräel
30 rue François Miron
75004, Paris
Métro : Saint Paul
Credit cards accepted above EUR15

*Carrefour supermarket now carries Ocean Spray cranberry products for 70% of the price at Izräel... but not Jif peanut butter.

Posted by lpc at 11:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I think I’m in for trouble – big time trouble. After working ungodly hours non-stop for hmm, let’s see now, 8 years… for the first time in my career, I am able to leave work at 6:30pm. I’m not even sure how I should be describing this new found freedom. My work hours are not normal. When I was working in Hong Kong, I had to stay up till the wee hours to "sonsult" with the US SEC, which is 12 hours behind HK. 18 hour work days are the norm rather than the exception. Investment banking and corporate finance I have realised aren’t all that jazz.

Tired of the rat race, I thought I’d take a “break” and went for an MBA. Getting an MBA is like drinking water from a fire hose in the first year and being a car salesperson in the second year. Besides getting lots of tight deadlines, I also traded in for 4 hour sleep a day and endless group work. Can you see why France and its promise of 35 hour work week seem so enticing?

I’m lucky to be working where I am currently. There’s a lot to like about the company, my colleagues, the flexibility, the benefits etc. I won’t write about my current work (don’t want to get dooced, except that I was managing 3 projects, one of which is the company’s 5th largest client. I thought the company was taking a big gamble to entrust a freshie with a big account, but I wasn’t ready to prove the boss wrong either. So, instead of working “a normal job”, I’m working double, triple, whatever it takes. I worked some weekends and sometimes talked about it in my sleep. Anyway, the frenzy is now over. The projects ended smoothly, like a knife through butter.

Now I have free time, on an epic level.

I’m delighted with the big chunk of time after work. I’m knitting, I’m painting, I’m reading and I’m cooking up a storm. I’m currently cooking from The Cook's Book. The book is arranged by types of ingredients (meats, nuts and fruits), courses (soups, desserts) and also features cuisines, such as Mexican, Japanese and Middle Eastern cooking.

I like the step-by-step instructions that are complimented by step-by-step pictures. The pictures are big and clear. I think I will buy a flat fish from a fishmonger because now, I can gut, trim, skin and bone one… or at least I can see how it should be done. The recipes seem do-able, even the more complex recipes. I figure that if a cookbook can convince an amateur like me to buy a whole fish scales and guts intact, it’s pretty good.

With the extra time I have tonight, I made not one but two stocks for those warm-me-up-in-winter soups.

This beef stock is my adaptation of the chicken stock. The color of the beef stock is darker and smells like licquorice.

* Bouquet Garni is a bundle of herbs used to flavour “wet” dishes such as soups and stews where we remove the herbs after the dish has finished cooking. The classic combination of herbs is bay leave, thyme and parsley. You can tie the herbs together using string or put them in a muslin bag. I did not have fresh parsley. I used bay leaves, thyme and rosemary in this beef stock.

Things I Learnt about Stocks:
Making our own stock is easy.
A good stock takes time to make. Don’t rush it.
All the good stuff in the ingredients is in the stock. Don’t bother tasting the ingredients: they’ve become bland.
When making stock, make a lot of it. In this day and age, we can freeze the stock in portions.“Stock up for a rainy day”.
Use a “chinoise” (type of funnel for stocks: looks like a Vietnamese cone hat) and a ladle that fits to squeeze out as much stock as we can. Every bit of stock counts.
A good stock makes a good soup.

Posted by lpc at 12:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

“Ding Dongggg…”

By now, we are not surprised to see Mr Postman at 7am in our PJs. For the past two weeks, the doorbell has rung three times at 7am to present us with surprise packages from around the world. Our surprise packages always start us off on a good foot for the day. This time, the package comes from Down Under, a long long way from La France. Cin at A Few of My Favourite Things and I exchanged a parcel of 5 things from our adopted home countries.

The first thing I saw was Tim Tams! I LOVE Tim Tams… the first thing I reached for after a long day at uni (college is uni in Australia). Tim Tams are really good eaten chilled. But today, we couldn’t wait and I wanted to share it with Ben. So, we had half of the packet for breakfast and chilled the rest for dessert tonight. And the macadamia nuts on the way to work.

Cin and I must be telepathic… because we sent each other similar things. In my Aussie parcel, I have:

A packet of Australian Sea Salt – packaging looks so slick.

Tim Tams: Not just any Tim Tams – a special edition pack with strawberry flavour

Wasabi coated macadamia nuts from a farmer’s market in Sdyney

A small jar of ground wattleseed that smell like hazelnuts and cocoa nibs…hmmm- divine! This is the most delicious smelling herb!

A small jar of desert flakes, which is a mixture of desert raisins, lemon myrtle, garlic and saltbush leaves… perfect for a winter casserole!

VOG Olive Oil: from a well-known chef named Stefano de Pieri. The olive groves are grown in the Victorian range close to the Murray River in the North.

I am so happy with all my packages from around the world. All the immediate edible goodies are now in my stomach and I can’t wait to use the local produce from Australia… Cin’s gift of Tim Tams made me nostalgic and had me reminiscing to Ben of my surfing afternoons at Cotesloe in Perth and my Tim Tam booster afterwards, to the crazy footy games and lotsa beers. I’ll have to visit Oz someday with DH.

Thanks Cin! You hit the spot!

Posted by lpc at 10:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I was so happy to see my reading group this Sunday. It’s been 2 months (too long!) since we last met. We yakked and yakked about our lives and the book even though “time was up”. I realise that I always look forward to Sunday reading group sessions. I am so lucky to have a group of good friends in Paris. Life is so much more pleasurable, so much more fun with these women.

The book spotlight this month is Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi. In a nutshell, the book is a memoir by Nafisi, the daughter of a former mayor of pre-revolutionary Tehran. Nafisi returned to Iran in 1979 after her studies in the USA, months before the Iranian revolution began. Nafisi taught English literature for several years until she refused to wear the veil and resigned from a teaching post at the University of Tehran. The book chronicles the personal stories and lives of a hand-picked group of 7 female students between 1995 and 1997. They attended secret literature classes every Thursday at Nafisi’s house and read Lolita by Nabokov, The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald, Daisy Miller by Henry James and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

I can’t say that I “enjoyed” reading this book. The story is well written and well-documented, but it left me with a feeling of despair and hopelessness. It wasn’t easy to get through the parts in the Lolita section, where the legal age for marriage for an Iranian girl then was nine to men old enough to be her father. How can one justify robbing a young girl of life, of hope? It wasn’t easy reading about the lives of the women, especially about “having sex with [men] you loathe”, nor the boy who set himself on fire. As someone who has fought hard to get out of the traditional Chinese “mould” of what is expected of me, I felt really trapped by their situation.

I couldn’t help but wonder if “the magician” is real or imagined… is he one person or many persons combined? How did these women live? What were their daily lives like? I tried so hard not to imagine what I would have done in their shoes. I think I will go mad.

What I did enjoy is coming closer to the women in my group, while we talked about the other women in “Reading Tehran”. It was a real pleasure to get to know each one of my woman friends. And I am thankful I am in Paris. There are worse places to be in.

Our next book for November is Lo-lee-ta by Nabokov.

Posted by lpc at 11:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Spotted on Rue Lamarck at 11pm.

Posted by lpc at 11:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

It comes once a year... and there is no escaping it. This time it's a bit more special, because it's my big Three-Oh. Please say, Oh-Yes. Not Oh-no. ’Cos life gets better after this, right? There is even a blog called “Life Begins at Thirty”.Thankfully, there isn’t one called “Wrinkles Begin at Thirty”.

I calculated my life expectancy using this tool. I’m expected to live to a ripe ole age of 90, which means I’m at my one-third mark today. Many of my friends take stock of their lives on their big Three-Oh, and many regret their lives. Some have started yoga lessons; one has opened her own business, two decided to get divorced. I guess there could be a lot to regret if we dig deep. But that’s no fun. It depresses me that I can’t change what happened. Either I couldn’t or I was plain stupid back then. So, I’ll just look forward.

“Just looking forward” you say. Yes, I’m looking forward to more fun: baking that divine cheesecake, making new friends, enjoying Paris, achieving at work, travelling, skiing, and having fun at something every single day. I can’t change anything in the past, so I’ll just look forward to the future and do the things I love.

This year I decided to celebrate my birthday and DH asked what I wanted. Lots of ideas raced through my head: see the Aurora Borealis in Norway, the set of carving knife and fork I’ve been saving for, a piece of nice jewellery, diving lessons, heli-ski the Tian-Shan mountains… but none of them stuck. I just wanted to be with my friends. So, the party was at L’entredgeu, a little cosy restaurant tucked away in the 17th arrondissement in Paris. It is a husband-wife team with a cute story to the name. Their family name is Tredgeu (tread-jer). He runs the kitchen and she mans the dining room... so, the bistro is entre-tredgeu, between the Tredgeus, but it also sounds like between-games.

We had an entrée and plat each. Everyone was really pleased with their food: the portions were just right and there was enough room for dessert, which was a chocolate mousse cake that Chef Tredgeu made especially for the occasion that had all of us “Oh-ing and Ah-ing”. I was on Cloud 9 when every one of my friends, including my DH had a big smile on their faces and broke into “Joyeux Anniversaire” with the rest of the restaurant. What a lucky gal!

Here’s a toast also to Melinda, Jacelyn, Stef and my brother-in-law, Benjamin, cos it’s your birthdays too! Wish you were here too.

L’entredgeu
83 rue Laugier
75017, Paris
Tél : 01 40 54 97 24
Métro : Porte de Champeret (ligne 3)
Reservations are a must, at least a week in advance.
Set menu of an entrée, plat and dessert costs EUR30/person, drinks not included.

Posted by lpc at 11:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

“Ding Dongggg…”

Ah-ha! “C’est sûrement un colis pour moi!” I yelled out to Ben and dashed to the door to greet Mr Postman at 7am this morning.

True enough.

The package was a bit banged up and looked like something I would have ordered from Amazon… it even had a white envelope attached and a ticket description that said “books”. Except that I didn’t order any books. *nudge nudge* *wink wink*

I’m very pleased to receive my surprise package from one of the few men food bloggers, Bill Roberts from “Bill Please”. I received 5 things in my package, all of which I’ve never had before.

I’ve always liked the internet for speed of communication and elimination of boundaries but also feared that e-lectronic everything would cut off human contact and the sense of “realness”. So, it’s nice to receive a package put together by someone miles and miles away whom I’ve never met. Without reading too much into things, I get a sense of what Bill likes and he seems like a thoughtful person.

Thanks also to Johanna, The Passionate Cook for making this connection happen.

Posted by lpc at 07:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

And just when I thought the Fete des Vendanges de Montmarte was all for the day… we also had “La Nuit Blanche”! La Nuit Blanche means white night, which is an all-night party in Paris. In practically every other street, there is music, theatre, light shows, poetry reading, dancing – everything - you name it. La Nuit Blanche is Paris’ defiance to cold dark winter nights.

I saw a light show at the BNF (Bibliotheaue Nationale de France) and came home to a nude installation on Rue des Frigos* (Frigo is colloquial for fridge). It was a pleasant surprise when I turned the corner and saw 7 blond nude women step out of 7 black Mercedes-Benz E Class… Close by, there were 7 white “frigo” and a woman in a white wedding gown running back and forth between them, while the 7 women were getting in and out of the Mercedes.

I like the city-wide activities that the city organizes because there’s art, there’s music and it’s modern. It makes me appreciate the space and place where I live. It’s also a clever use of urban space to create that moment of conviviality in the neighborhoods. And I can’t say “No” to any celebration.

* Rue des Frigos is located in the 13th arrondissement where the flour mills, meat packaging, food distribution and warehouses used to be. The barges used to go up and down the Seine from this area to transport food. There is also a building called “Le Frigo” because it used to be a freezer/ warehouse for meat packages. Artists are currently squatting in it to prevent the government or developers from running it to the ground.

Posted by lpc at 10:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)