frumiousb

venice

( more )

drinking champagne at Robuchon

For value for money in Paris, I wanted to mention Cafe Constant. This is the bistro run by Christian Constant-- where reportedly he wanted to be able to serve the people in the neighborhood and cook his grandmother's recipes. B. and I are in disagreement on this, but I thought that it was the best meal we had when you considered that the price was less than 30 euros for three courses. Everything was delicious. If we go back, I really want to try Le Violon D’ingres-- Constant's upscale restaurant. We weren't able to get reservations before 10 this trip, and I'm too much of a morning person to survive that. No reservations are possible at Cafe Constant, so arrive early.

We also went back to L'Atelier which was, to my mind a mistake. While it still had its high points (fois gras with baked cherries! gazpacho with parsnip and mustard ice cream!) it was not the same restaurant as it was when we had gone closer to the opening. Robuchon's business case relied on high turnover to supply three star food at the prices, and there just weren't the Parisians waiting around the block to come in that night (Saturday!). There were only tourists, either French or otherwise. Too bad. (The food was still great, but I just think that for the money, it's passed its sell-by date.)

Restaurant a la Petite Chaise is highly recommended by food bloggers and web sites alike. Our Parisian friend remarked that they're all talking in the past. It used to be a good neighborhood restaurant (and is, incidentally, the oldest restaurant in Paris-- supposedly) and well used by locals, but when we were there it was nearly completely empty. Again, the food was good-- traditional French classics cooked well, but I don't know how they can survive on the groups that they had when we were there. (And yes, we were there before the vacation.)

For lunch, I want to positively mention Coco & Co. We ate here on our first day in Paris after we arrived on the Thalys. Their specialty is eggs of all kinds-- complete with egg-shaped decor. Sounds goofy, but actually very tasty and good price/value. The waiter claimed that Alain Ducasse asked to use their hamburger recipe because he liked it so much, but we didn't try it. :)

This year we want to plan a trip back to Paris (perhaps with nikkyb?) to take a trip to The Hidden Kitchen. See if we manage.

( food porn )


carnival drinks!

15 mile hike followed by a bbq.

( more )

On the menu tonight:

Black Rabbit (rabbit cooked in a wine & unsweetened chocolate sauce)
homemade rosti
spinach with garlic and salt

Christmas had gotten busy so quickly that I hadn't had a chance to post pictures of our fabulous cookie baking day. Thanks to bezigebij, nikkyb, coco_keesses, and T.

( more pictures )

champagne
caramelized cauliflower soup with foie gras
chablis for with the main course
roasted chicken with nutmeg served with turnip gratin
cheese and port for dessert

we're expecting the lovely miss nikkyb to join us

house is warm, and smells nice.

Merry Christmas to all! If you don't celebrate Christmas, then I wish you a wonderful seasonal holiday of choice. If this is just a Wednesday for you, then I hope that it is the best damned Wednesday of the year.

I'm not wild about posting pictures of people in an unlocked way, but I thought that I'd share the foodie side of the party prep. All of this was from three weeks ago, by the way. Just getting around to posting. Posting now since back from vacation and trying to avoid going to sleep from the jet lag.





black beans and roasted red peppers.

( more )

Thankful for rainbows from a train.



( more )


(another little fugitive glimpse of my rainbow)

B. and his father at the restaurant.

( more )

These amazing little marzipan-based sweeties are among the traditional delicacies of the island. They tasted just as nice as they looked.

Our favorite time of year to cook together. Big comfort food stews and heavy red wines. Very pleasant. This month we've been experimenting with new recipes a fair amount as well:



( more )

I'm afraid that you may be in for some entry volume today. It's the second Christmas day in Holland. B. is sick in bed with a bad cold. I still am having serious hip/back problems (doctor isn't open until tomorrow). So it seems a good day to process my pictures from Rome and catch up on book reviewing.

Very happy to have our cats back. They were at their grandhumans' house. Somehow they've come back home with the notion that it is okay to sleep under the covers of the bed, something that they never did before.

Getting back to my original purpose of Counting My Blessings, I wanted to note this Poule au Pot (chicken in a pot) dinner that I made before we went to rome. I used the Delia Smith recipe, but there are many many lovely versions of same out there. The photograph isn't very elegant, but this recipe is confirmed as an integral part of our winter repertoire.



Je veux qu'il n'y ait si pauvre paysan en mon royaume qu'il n'ait tous les dimanches sa poule au pot.

For those of you who are Sunday Salon readers and looking for something literary, I can only direct you to my unwise thoughts and citations from A Grief Observed, by C.S. Lewis. Alas for the rules, I made that post yesterday. And as there is no such thing as a Saturday Salon, I fear that it does not count.

Today, I had every intention of continuing to read Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. I have been sipping through it for several days now, and had imagined that there would be pithy things to say. I could have related it to the kinds of memories that I have left from my own family. I could have commented on the generation differences that are studied and even highlighted. I could have talked about the disabled and (slighly) unreliable narrator. I could have mused about what the book has to say about marriage and couples. Instead, I will confess to you that the my thoughts were rather less lofty today. Although I did make it through several pages of the novel, I was busier with domestic things than is usual for me.

Meatloaf was the result. I can't claim all the credit. I can't actually claim most of the credit, since I mostly helped B. do the cooking. But when it was done, it was good. And I have to confess that I didn't really miss books at all.



So goodnight, dear reader. I'm going to grapple with a few pages of the Stegner in silence in bed. Unobserved and unnarrated, and the public none the wiser.

Finally something to show. Now it looks like a big muddy hole in the ground. But it hasn't even looked like that until now.

( more )

We're pretending that it is summer, even if the weather doesn't agree.

( recipes in dutch )

The purpose of our dinner extravagance was to celebrate the fact that our mortgage and the paperwork have all gone through (Thursday) and we are now the proud owners of what is currently a large muddy hole in the ground.

Anyhow, Comme Chez Soi has been on our list for a very long time. We haven't gone before, partially because of the normal weeks long wait for reservations (Frommer's remarks that it is easier to get a table in the kingdom of heaven), and partially because of the pretty huge price that goes with the pretty huge reputation. (Example of the reputation, The New York Times listed it as one of the restaurants worth the airfare just to eat there.)

The restaurant has had three michelin stars since 1979. It lost its third star in 2006 when Pierre Wynant retired-- apparently a normal thing, since the third star is generally a tribute to a great chef. His son-in-law, Lionel Rigolet, is now in charge and he's going to have to earn that star back in his own right.

The big question when you spend money like this on food is whether it is worth the admittedly astronomical price. I'll spare you the suspense, and say that I think that it was-- although it will be another few years before I can say that I feel like we could splurge like that again.

The restaurant is very small and the interior is warm Art Nouveau in style. You sit very close to your neighbors and thankfully there did not seem to be any smokers. Cozy would quickly turn to claustrophobic with too many smokers. And it was clearly very full. I'm not sure who died and allowed us to get a reservation with such short notice, but I'm thankful to them-- whoever they are.

B. didn't wear a tie (although he did wear a jacket), which clearly put him in the minority. However, some local celebrities came in later with tee-shirts and blue jeans, so it wasn't that stuffy. We took the five-course menu, which was...well, expensive. But they do have a small set menu wich also looked lovely for just 68 euros per person.

We started with champagne, and decided to keep drinking champagne-- Moet & Chandon Millesime Rose 1999. It was delicious by itself, and went well with all the courses.

We started with an amuse that featured a mousse of smoked ham, a small cake of raw tuna, and a shellfish with a hint of what I'm fairly sure was lemongrass. The rest of the menu was as follows:

• Langoustine and carpaccio of sole with sweet spices, lukewarm wok of vegetables with tarragon. The langoustine was amazing-- I've never tasted anything like that. There were spices seared into it that I couldn't identify and it was almost worth the price of the menu just to taste that first bite.
  
  
• Fried sea bass fillet and razor shells with fenel seeds and chardonnay vinegar.
  
  
• Grilled John Dory with thyme, mixed king crab and crustacean coulis with coriander. I'd like to say that I normally don't really like fish, but I loved this.
  
  
• Suckling pig with fresh morels and broadbeans, light juice with savory. The combination of the meat with the morels was spectacular. When the waiters saw how much we enjoyed it, they reappeared with more meat slices and sauce. (The service was perfect, by the way. Friendly, attentive, and they never made you feel awkward for any reason.)
  
  
• The sweet trilogy. The name doesn't do justice to the dessert. Everything was wonderful about the food, but the dessert was indescribably good. The first course of the dessert (it was three courses!) was a pineapple and mango mille feuille. As I write about it, I can still taste it. The second dessert course was a strawberry ice cream with a hint of carmel and some other fruit I wish I could identify and a grapefruit sorbet with a lemon cream topping. The third dessert course was chocolate-based, and even though I am not a big fan of chocolate, I loved this. I'm going to commit heresy by describing the central piece this way, but the chocolate course featured what I can only describe as a hand-made incredibly expensive Ho Ho. It was layers of chocolate cake and cream with a smooth chocolate exterior and topped with gold flakes.

The dessert didn't actually stop with the dessert, by the way. With the coffee they brought us a plate of little sweet things that were nearly as delicious as the formal dessert. I finished with mint tea.

Really wonderful food experience. Recommended highly, with the obligatory warning about the price.

This is actually from a week or so ago-- fake healthy food and homemade cookies (the lemon crinkles). I thought about it last night because I made non-healthy Betty Crocker chocolate chip cookies. The idea was for B. to bring them to his father, but he forgot, so now we have a whole plate of them in house.

Speaking of comfort food, I finally saw Serenity last night. B. is not a Whedon fan, so I took advantage of his absence to see it.

I was expecting to love it, but was disappointed. Whedon works much better on the small screen than he does on the large, I think.

First of all, the character arc of Mal struck me as hackneyed. It's like someone told Whedon: "No, no, it's film. You *need* restorative three act structure." The idea was that he had to surrender his cynicism and rediscover the roots that made him fight against the alliance in the first place. One of the nicest thing about his character on the series was precisely his mixture of cynicism and idealism. He was a beautiful example of an idealist forced by life and circumstances into being a cynic. It felt like it dumbed down the complexity of the show to hang the story around his Need To Believe Again and accept River into his family.

Secondly, some of the actors just plain old didn't translate well to the big screen. Morena Baccarin is a case in point. She was moving to look at on the small screen, but felt wrong in the large. Now, I'll admit that may because she didn't seem to have much of a part in Serenity. I have no idea what she was supposed to be doing in the film, besides humanizing Mal. It would have been better to either leave Inara out or to include her from the beginning. And was it me, or were they purposely dumbing down what she does for a living? Is that a mass appeal thing?

Thirdly, I just recoiled from the whole Deep Dark Sekret thing. I won't spoil and indicate what it is, but it seems to me that River was secret enough by herself without the whole Miranda thing. Restorative three-act structure rearing its ugly head again, I guess. The alliance is more interesting as a villain when it is more complex. They make this huge point that the villain in this piece is so dangerous because he is an intelligent believer. But his belief hangs on being ignorant. It would have been much more interesting if he had been an educated believer who was the darker side of Mal-- believing that he is forced by circumstances to do what is wrong in favor of what is right. It was the quality of his own actions that should have made him doubt, not finding out the Gweat Sekwet.

Finally, it just wasn't a film. It was a long television show. There was nothing particularly interesting about the lighting or the cinematography or even the sound that gave me the feeling that Whedon knows what to do with the big screen. The special effects were kind of irritating, actually. I'm very curious to see what he's going to do with Wonder Woman.

Anyhow, I think that I'm going to hope that someone gives Whedon another television show. No shame in working to your strength, true?

This is the recipe that I made a few days ago, when I was a bit more mobile:



I used a Rioja in the recipe instead of the Beaujolais that we usually use. It was not at all subtle, and the sauce was as dark and deep as chocolate. Fall and winter are a nice time, since we can cook these nice stews. I may not be as good of a cook as B., but I can manage something nice from time to time.

If I could stand up more regularly, then I could devote my energy to improving my cooking skills.

( the great coq au vin thief )

State of the Belly Address

I slept pretty well last night, woke up for a few hours, but definitely an improvement. Baby is quieter today, which gave me something new to worry about, until I realized that I was being silly and just enjoyed being quiet myself. I still stayed pretty close to the bed. Given how painful the last few days have been, it seemed wise not to run around like a chicken just yet.

B. and I had a date night, and watched Brokeback Mountain. It was a nice film, beautifully shot. Made me nostalgic for things that I never saw. I wasn't very moved by it, however. Perhaps I'm just difficult to move these days. But their disconnection was complete enough that I never felt emotionally involved. Michelle Williams has surprising hidden depths.

A better day.

Very busy at work lately. It makes me a poor counter of blessings. Two things keep me going:

Good food from my sweetie:



and gratuitous cat blogging:

With a Quincy 2005 (may be my favorite wine of the summer) to wash it down.

Girls, girls-- if you do nothing else, find a man who can cook.