A Tiger In The Kitchen

Challah: A Lesson Learned

I was never any good at girlish things as a child.

Not jump rope nor dressing up Barbie. (Or myself, for that matter.) And certainly not the braiding of any hair.

So it would be accurate to say that the notion that someday I'd attempt to make challah, the braided bread traditionally eaten on the Sabbath and other Jewish holidays -- no, that never once crossed my mind.

In fact, when I learned last week that challah was on the schedule for the Bread Baker's Apprentice challenge, I instantly planned to sit this one out.

Me? Braiding? Gummy ropes of dough? I was set to say "No thank you" to failure and disappointment and skip ahead to ciabatta, the next bread on the list. But no, my friends wouldn't allow it. "It's easier than ciabatta," said Heather. "Think of the French toast that you can make after," Geri said.

Since "French toast" is high on the list of magic words in my husband's vocabulary, out came the mixing bowls and the challah-making commenced.

Paris: A Lunch With A View

For a first-timer in Paris, the Sister had not done badly.

Sure, we hadn't managed to get into L'Ami Jean or Hidden Kitchen, but the basics had been covered: Berthillon ice-cream, Laduree macarons, cervelas at Brasserie Lipp, a cocktail at the Hemingway Bar.

What was left on the list? Much too much.

Nonetheless, we decided, end with a bang we must. And so we found ourselves packing into a tiny elevator and rocketing into the gray Parisian sky.

The lunch to end our lunches (for now) in Paris would be at a classic -- Le Jules Verne in the Eiffel Tower, which, at more than 400 feet above ground level, offered a sweet spot to sip some bubbly and look out onto the city beneath.

Paris: Putting The "Ohh" in Aligot

Like many good New Yorkers, I had come to regard carbs as the enemy.

I'd accepted that Asian noodles were my Delilah. But with a few exceptions -- any dish of steak frites that crossed my sight being the main one -- I'd been able to stick to this waistline-watching strategy. I would push around (most of my) potatoes on the plate and leave bread (mostly) untouched. 

Paris, however, has ruined me.

There were the perfectly baked breads that just demanded to be devoured. The delightfully salty butters that called to you from the table, insisting on being slathered on said perfectly baked breads and then devoured.

And there was the aligot at L'Ambassade D'Auvergne, a lovely little restaurant that specializes in the super elastic dish of melted Laguiole cheese stirred together with mashed potatoes and garlic.

My breaking point came when I set eyes on the aligot.

Fighting it was futile. I admitted defeat and said, "Just take me."

Shhh ... People Are Eating

Not that I was looking, but I may have found a restaurant that's even quieter than Chanterelle, a place in New York that was so hushed when I dined there a few years ago that you could probably have heard a toothpick drop.

We're not quiet folk, my sister and I. So we knew we were in for it when we stepped into L'Ambroisie in Quimper, France, and the place was so silent that you could almost hear the soft shufflings of proprietor Armelle Guyon as she glided from table to table taking orders.

There's been quite a bit written recently about how noisy U.S. restaurants have gotten -- like crowded train stations filled with shouts and clangs, really. However, when it comes to dinner, my quibble tends to be with places that are on the other end of the sound spectrum.

After all, who wants to feel like they're eating in a stalled elevator sans muzak?

Mont-Saint-Michel: One Ancient Omelette

We had heard about The Omelette, of course.

About how Annette Boutiaut, a late-19th Century innkeeper in Mont-Saint-Michel, had begun keeping eggs in store to whip together quick omelettes for hungry guests waiting for their dinner. We knew it was a key component of the town's history -- one that has thrived over the decades as a big tourist trap draw. 

Even so, as we approached Mont-Saint-Michel and marveled at its imposing medieval abbey on a mount rising from the water and towering over a vast expanse of grayish blue, it seemed like there should be more. 

If this grande dame of a town had to have a gastronomic one-trick pony, shouldn't it be something more than a trifling breakfast dish masqeurading as dinner?

But there it was in every restaurant -- most notably as the main course on a 55 Euro set menu at La Mère Poulard, where Annette's omelettes first appeared. 

What could possibly be so special about a bunch of beaten eggs fried in a pan?

When Brittany Was Our Oyster

The rain was coming down, not hard, not gently -- just with enough of a tap-tap-tap firmness to make us think more than twice of not stopping at all when we spotted the little oyster shacks by the Cancale bay. 

This being June, we knew we were technically in the wrong month for oysters -- if you still believe the "you should only eat oysters in months with 'R' in their names" theory. But we were in Brittany, which reportedly produces a quarter of France's oysters every year.

These oysters, they had to be tried.

Paris: A Roman Behind The Bar

We're sitting at the Hemingway Bar at the Hôtel Ritz Paris, my friend Greg and I.

He leans over and says, soft and deep, "That face, it's beyond the dreams of pornography."

The face would be that of Roman the bartender, the friendliest man behind a bar that we'd met in our Paris jaunts thus far.

Greg and I, we're bar people -- we adore eating at bars, perhaps even more than eating at actual tables.

At bars, you tend to get to know your neighbors well -- even if conversation only starts up because a fork is in your elbow. You have a front-row seat to behind-the-counter action, all the little dramas that aren't meant to permeate through the welcoming smiles of waitresses.

You also get to know some pretty gifted entertainers pouring drinks -- and Roman happened to be one of them.

Paris: The Tried And True

 

The upside to visiting Paris with a first-timer: The excuse to retread paths well worn.

There is the Angelina chocolat chaud yet undrunk, the freshly baked Poilane pains undiscovered. 

The sister, she has come to Paris with guidebooks well-marked and images of Amelie's Montmartre flitting through her head. But first, the basics must be covered; important stops must be made.

La Derniere Goutte (And A Lovely Discovery)

 

When in Paris, we wanted to do as the Parisians do.

Or rather, given our limited French, what some expats in Paris do.

And so we found ourselves wandering the streets of St. Germain in search of La Derniere Goutte, a little wine shop my friend Barbra, a former and soon-to-be-again Parisian, had recommended.

Le Perigord, Je T'Adore

It turns out, my mother was right -- church is good for you.

On day 1.5 in Paris, we feel drawn to Sacre Coeur in Montmartre. It's Sunday and the childhood Catholics in us just won't be silenced. I'm not saying we went to mass -- but we did have a holy experience of another sort.

While leaving the church, there it was -- tent after tent filled with duck rillettes, honeys, chestnut jams and sweet, sweet strawberries from the Perigord region.

We gawped at the decadent spread and then one another. This street fair -- clearly, it had to be a sign. And so we stopped to smell the strawberries.