Thursday, October 04, 2012

Taste of Sweden
One of the first things i discovered in Paris was a small caf in the heart of the noisy Marais neighbourhood. I used to go there pretending i was in Stockholm rather than Paris and i would order my coffee and cake in Swedish, still intimidated by the French language. The caf is actually part of the Swedish cultural center located in the beautiful Htel de Marle.

As every similar place in Paris, this little caf serving cakes, soupes and sandwiches is always packed, but aside the great fruit cakes and cinnamon buns, french people people often make a strange facial expression when someone mentions Swedish gastronomy. This is why i was very pleased when i heard that the M.I.A.M. magazine and the Swedish Institute invited couple of renowned Swedish chefs (Petter Nilsson, Magnus Ek, Ola Rudin, Sebastian Persson, Danyel Couet) to present some of their specialties in the form of a small dish or an appetizer to the public. The event was held in the backyard of the Center and in the small caf in the front. The garden was decorated with colourful lamps and gazebo tents out in the open, while the chefs were preparing the meals on the spot.

I decided to try Petter Nilsson's (a chef who owns a restaurant La Gazzetta in Paris) cabbage and lingonberry salad with a touch of herring powder (what would swedish cuisine be without lingonberry and fish). After the delicious salad, i went for a taste of kanelbulle - cinnamon roll and a small fruit pie with a glass of inevitable elderberry squash.

Today, October 4th, is Kanebullens dag or Cinnamon roll day. So hurry up over to the Caf sudois to celerate this event. At the moment the Center holds a temporary exhibiton of August Strindberg photographes which is, beside of eating a cinnamon roll, one more reason to visit the Center.

Institut sudois 11 rue Payenne 75003 Paris Posted by Lorena 5 comments: Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to Facebook

Sunday, September 23, 2012

What is it about France

When i go home, i tend to forget all the bad things i usually complain about and enjoy everyday life with my family and friends. Specially during summer when i don't need anything except the sun and the sea for a month. But addmittedly even after a few days i usually notice a lack of a thing or two which would really come at handy. Or belly. In the end i consider it inevitable. A man is a creature of habit and given that, man always becomes accustomed to what is better. So what are these things i come to miss when i come home from France? 1. First of all, the bread. A long, crisp, flavourful baguette, preferably aux graines or aux cereales. I can't get this kind of bread anywhere at home. I'm seriously considering opening my own boulangerie in Croatia.

2. Viennoiseries (pain au chocolat, chausson au pommes, croissant...) and all sorts of pastries in a local bakery. Lets admit it, croatian bakeries are rather boring, especially the small locals ones. Eventhough large chains like Pan-Pek or Mlinar do have a big selection, the products have more or less industrial taste. There are exceptions among them however.

3. A large selection of chocolates in the supermarkets (have you noticed the trend here?). I'm not really into going to the biggest Konzum shop or Muller every time I want to eat a good chocolate. I'm talking local stores, and let's face it, Dorina just won't do. (I could also add a huge selection of tea in the cafs or tea rooms, but i'm not that much of a tea drinker so i'll leave it be.)

4. Coffee in a caf. I know most of you will disagree but i do hate the famous croatian coffee with milk everyone is sipping all day long. During my uni days i was ordering it mainly because it was the cheepest thing to order. I quickly turned to Nescaf but when i really needed a dose of good caffeine i'd take a white coffee. Here, there is cafe crme, which is to my taste somewhere between coffee with milk and white coffee and is completely drinkable. No need to mention a sudden burst of great coffee places in Paris where you can enjoy all sorts of coffee prepared by well-trained baristas. 5. Paris is full of bistros, brasseries and caves vin where you can have a meal or a snack if you wish. A plate of cheeses and charcuterie when you sit in a bistro is what i miss the most. What more could you want when you're not in a mood for a restaurant and yet you could use a bite? Or when you just have a desire for something to accompany your glass of wine. Even if you normally don't have that desire, you will most certainly get it in Paris.

On the other hand, when abroad, there is always something from your home country missing and that is completely normal. Even for me. So here are some things i noticed France is missing (except our sea, of course:).

1. Something salty in the bakeries in the morning that is not a sandwich. I'm starting to get used to eating croissants, pain au chocolat, chausson aux pommes, pain au raisin and all other kinds of glucose boosts at 8 am, but i have my days when i want to enter a bakery and scream: lisnato sa sirom !!! (pate feuillete with cheese, salty).

2. First thing that will caught your eye in a french supermarket is not the selection of cheese, you'll be expecting that and therefore won't be surprised. What might startle you are two (usually) big aisles packed with yoghurts. One with plain yoghurts, fromage blanc and yoghurts with flavours (sugar, coco, vanilla) and the other with fruit yoghurts. And yoghurty chocolate desserts. And special yoghurts for kids. (Oh since i'm mentioning, there is a special aisle with compots - not the pieces of fruit in cans, rather small tubes or pots of creamy compot that reminds on baby food. But there's a special aisle for baby food, too.) Now what is wrong with that? First, there are not so many plain liquid yoghurts and there are almost no liquid fruit yoghurts. Actually there are some: a superb food brand called Michel et Augustin which sell among other things all liquid yoghurts (i love the one with blueberries). The problem is that not all of their products can be found in every store. 3. Fresh cheese. Some of you may think, ok, she lives in a land of cheese and yet she's complaining about the lack of it!? Fresh cheese is a commonly used ingredient in Croatia. Eaten fresh or with cream, used as a filling for different cakes or strudels, you name it.

In France, i noticed two kinds of fresh cheese products. Fromage blanc, a soft cremy cheese usually eaten with fresh fruit as a desert. It's a bit sour by itself, but wonderful with strawberry sauce poured over it. Or vice versa, it can be served as a topping for desserts, such as warm fruit crumbles. Then there is fromage frais, which i've hoped i will be able to use with pate feuilete to make a strudel only to discover it is basically what we in Croatia call "sir i vrhnje". In other words, cream is added to the cheese to make it softer and more flavourful. Not to mention useless for my strudel. Until i've found what i was looking for. An english product, Cottage cheese from Longley farm, a beautiful, flavourful, salty, light cheese which is the best fresh cheese i've had in my life. I cannot really stand fresh cheese unless in a pastry but this baby i eat solo, with a spoon. 4. Bread crumbs. I even asked some French people about them since i couldn't find them easily. They haven't even heard that they exist on the market. It's not that they don't exist, but they're not very popular. Why would they be when you can buy already breaded filets. Well for one thing i would like to prepare fritters every now and then and i don't mind breading the chicken filets by myself. I bought a package some time ago but they don't seem to look like the bread crumbs i'm used to. I still haven't used them but hopefully they'll do the job fine. 5. One of the things which is most often found on the plates of croatian tables is pickled cabbage

(sauerkraut). I miss it very much during winter times since it's not easy to get it here. It can be found in some deli stores and i will definitely do more effort to find it this year.

6. In Croatia you can find ice cream in the box but also a diversity of cones or ice creme on the stick. I absolutely love the famous croatian brand, Ledo (see the video here) which offer all sorts of flavours and packages. I miss it a lot in Paris. There is a big choice of shamelessly good italian gelatos here (Pozzetto, Grom...) and delicious Haagen Dazs boxes, big and small which you can find anywhere. But cornet's are rare in the stores, not to mention ice cream on the stick. During summer you can buy them at ice cream vendors in the parks. Magnum and Cornetto are the most popular that i've seen. I had them once

and that was enough. They are overly creamy and almost impossible to finish and a Cornetto has a horrible taste. Better go with the italians. In the end, the list is not that extensive and it goes equally both ways. Do you have certain food you can't go without when somewhere abroad?

Posted by Lorena 10 comments: Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to Facebook

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Sunday in Paris
The weather was sunny and warm and there wasn't a better way to spend a sunday morning than on the market.. I came home couple of kilos heavier. The fruit and vegetables were so fresh and colourful they were screeming to photograph them. Here they are, enjoy the game of colours and flavours.

Posted by Lorena 6 comments: Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to Facebook

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Vienna in Paris
Quite a while now i've been craving for sachertorte. Then i heard from a friend about this place, just around the corner from the busy Odon. Ptisserie Viennoise it is called and it has been there since 1920s selling viennese pastries such as strudels, kifli, linzer cookies... It happens also to be a perfect location for lunch, not far away from my workplace. And an opportunity to eat that long desired piece of cake. It is a tiny place with an entrance you would most likely fail to notice if it weren't for all the pastries displayed in the window. Yet as everywhere in Paris, no matter how small it is, there will always be a place to sit down and have a bite sur place. The interior of this small eatery is old, with wooden tables and old framed posters on the wall. Rustic and cozy. It is absolutely packed during lunch hour, mostly by locals and students from the nearby universities (Paris Descartes and Sorbonne). Not surprisingly since having lunch there is probably the cheapest option in the neighbourhood.

As in every bakery or eatery of this kind it is popular to take a formule, an offer which includes main meal, drink and dessert for a fixed price. So i opted for a 12 euros formule, choosing a bowl of tagliatelle with zucchini, lemon and basil creme, which came to me literally without a pinch of salt. Luckily, the lemon gave a good cut on the otherwise tasteless bowl of what could have been a good portion of fine homemade tagliatelle (you simply have to put salt in pasta, ask italians). In austrian spirit my juice happened to be Rauch (quite a nice surprise). Desserts can be chosen from the window display so i went out for a quick look althought already knowing that the sacher was there somewhere lurking to seduce me with its shiny chocolate icing. I took a glance to make sure it was there and ordered a piece. As it came to me on the plate, a suspicious feeling came to me of a worst thing that can happen to a cake - that it is dry. And it was. The good thing about the cake were the balanced flavours of not overly sweet chocolate icing and apricot jam. My already deflated enthusiasm was gone in an instant after having tried the poppy seed kifli. Coming from a country where these kind of pastries are extremely popular i was fairly dissapointed. It was probably a day old.

I've tried better pastries of this type back home so better for me to stick to more local kind of sweets. That shouldn't be difficult. And sachertorte? I'm considering an apricot jam topping on a moelleux au chocolat for my local bakery. That should do the trick.

Ptisserie Viennoise 8 Rue de l'cole de Mdicine 75006 Paris M Odon

Posted by Lorena 13 comments: Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to Facebook

Sunday, September 09, 2012

Eating good food in Paris
A wave of young and inovative chefs came to rule the gastronomical scene of Paris. Produce obtained from the small local producers, natural, organic wines and memorable meals ranging from typical french food de campagne to even more inventive and interesting eats. Le verre vol is one of these places, small bistro and cave vin in the 10th, near Canal St.Martin. Warm and hearty place for people in search for good and hearty meal for more than a reasonable price. The atmosphere is lovely and just as cave vin should be - with shelves filled with wine bottles taking up every centimeter of the wall. The menu is read from the chalkboards and it changes frequently, making every trip to this bistro a trip to the unknown. Of course, always with good expectations. The staff is friendly, happy to explain every detail of the meal and to recommend a perfect wine

to accompany it. There is a heavenly smell coming from the kitchen just behind, a dominion of a lady chef (don't worry, you won't smell like french fries after dinner). We payed around 40 euros per person for a three course meal (shared entre), together with two glasses of an extraordinary good wine. The price is far from expensive taking into consideration just what kind of food you can get elsewhere for the same amount of money. This is not a classical restaurant so you are not obliged to take the entre, you won't get any mean looks if you wish to share it, or skip a dessert or coffee after the main dish. In regular bistros and brasseries you will get a portion of greasy french fries and a piece of meat for almost the same price you would pay for a main dish in Le verre vol. It's up to you to make a choice where to eat. I made mine already. Think of reservation in advance.

Our shared entre was kind of a dive in the unknown for me - coeur d'agneau (lamb's heart), divinely marinated and grilled, accompanied by the culinary discovery of the month - corn pure.

The main dish was also an extraordinary turn for me. Poitrine de cochon fermier (i usually avoid eating pork), pork breast which were cooked for 12 hours resulting in the tenderest piece of meat i have ever tried. It literally melted in the mouth.

The wine was excelent, reminded me a bit of the homemade wine we get every year from our relatives on the coast, so crisp and refreshing.

My company chose white chocolate soup with mint for dessert, a rather interesting combination. Not being a fan of mint, i was mildly smitten by how good it tasted. But the crumble was a perfect pick by far. Warm crumbs mixed with huge blackberries and raspberries with a touch of gentle cream and a generous amount of chopped pistachio and whole almonds. Spread the word.

Le verre vol 67 Rue de Lancry 75010 Paris Posted by Lorena 2 comments: Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to Facebook

Saturday, September 08, 2012

Croatian summer story, final
Summer is coming to an end. I'm trying not to think about it because it makes me melancholic. I'm summer's child and there is something special for me about this season, about the long days, warm nights. Something that reminds me of the sea, of family, of childhood. I could not imagine summer without going back home. But all things come to an end, leaving us with precious memories, some of which i will share with you today. Let this be a summer farewell post. The summer had been dry but olives have persisted. I brought to Paris a bottle of last year's homemade olive oil, thick and green, just as it's suppossed to be.

Part of the old olive stone mill.

Late summer is time to pick pomegranat fruit. There are a couple of pomegranate trees in our uncle's house just across the street. They're usually not ripe enough in the beginning of August. Years ago, in September, already back in the capital we used to wait for a package from the island with one or two ripe pomegranate fruits lying in the bottom of the opened box.

Sometimes a "package" like this one still awaits us on our table in the morning.

Before leaving the coastal region, a wise thing to do is to take some of the herbes and spices typical for the region and the climate. Our fence is made part of rosemary, part of lauriel leaves which is in some places mistakenly called javor instead of lovor (croatian for maple and lauriel). These small bushes of rosemary reward us with delicate little lilac flowers in August.

An old gnarled almond tree in the yard is a favourite of mine. Its big trunk rises high, holding a wide crown ending with the tiniest twigs. The leaves are falling down even during the calmest summer days, rustling as we step on them. Almonds are also hrvested during late summer. People hit the branches with a long stick so that the nuts fall from the tree.

See, September isn't that bad after all. There is as much beauty as there is melancholy in this season and we are to use it for the best. It's time to end our croatian story and go back to Paris, in both food and photography. Farewell to the summer, or how the french would say, la prochaine!

Posted by Lorena 5 comments: