We had a couple friends over for dinner two Fridays ago and I made a Mexican themed meal. I knew I'd make the Mexican Black Bean Tart With Cornmeal Crust that people seem to love, and I figured a Cream of Poblano soup (which I'll post later this week) would be a nice soup course, and I went off theme for dessert - Neapolitan Strawberries - but I needed something unusual to start things off.

That's when I remembered that I had sheets of sushi nori I'd purchased for the day I got brave enough to make my own maki rolls. We had one true and two pseudo vegetarians in attendence so fish was out (phew), and the maki would be assorted Vegetarian Mexi-Maki.

Vegetarian Mexi-Maki

Equipment: Small Maki rolling mat. Available in most cooking stores now.

Several sheets of nori, a dried seaweed used for maki.

Assorted vegetables, sliced into long thin strips like rajas.
Suggestions:
Mexican zucchini (looks like a common zucchini, but slightly more pear shaped with a speckled skin)
red bell peppers
roasted red peppers
trimmed green onions sliced lengthwise
strips of nopales (cactus)
hot peppers of your choice (but be nice to your guests)

8 oz. package of seitan, sliced long and thin and marinated in the Marinade from our Meatless Fajitas:
Marinade:
1/3 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup light oil
3 cups water
&frac13 cup tequila
½ cup chopped cilantro
½ cup chopped parsley
1 jalapeno, seeded, white membrane removed, sliced*
2 cloves finely chopped garlic
2-3 thinly sliced scallions.
2 tablespoons cumin
2 teaspoons salt

1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
Shredded Chihuahua cheese - as much as desired

1 1/2 cup short grained rice - I like Nishiki
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar

Dipping Sauce:
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons adobo sauce from a can of chipotle in adobo.

A few hours beforehand, combine the rice with 2 cups of water. Bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer. Cook covered for 20 minutes on a low simmer. Remove from heat and leave covered for 10 minutes. Remove the rice into a bowl and toss with rice wine vinegar. Put bowl in refrigerator.

Marinade the seitan at least for an hour before using in maki. If you wish you can fry it before using, but it tastes fine post marinade without any additional treatment.

Lay a sheet of nori on the rolling mat. Wet your hands with water so you can handle the rice without it sticking. Spread a 1/2" tall and wide block of vinegared rice completely across the furthest end of the current sheet of nori. Pile an assortment of vegetables on top of the rice or just toward you from the rice. When you have "enough" on the sheet of nori (and you'll be way under or way over on the first roll) roll it up:

Using the mat to guide you, tightly roll the far end of the roll over the filling toward you. You'll need to roll the mat back when you get to the bottom of the roll so it doesn't get rolled up in the maki, but continue to use the rest of the mat as an aid and a guide to keeping the roll tight.

When you get to the near end or have a good 1/4"-1/2" overlap, trim any excess nori and using water, wet the nori about to become the end of the sheet. Roll up tight and the water should keep the nori sticking to itself and keep the roll closed.

You'll now have a long roll. Trim the ends for neatest presentation (cook's share!), and cut the roll into approximately equal 1 1/2" segments.

Try using the chichuahua cheese in place of one of the vegetables. Use the marinated seitan as you would use tuna or salmon or yellowtail in the rolls. Mix it up! All you need is nori, rice, and "other" to make a credible roll. I stongly suggest having plenty of nopales and scallions on hand.

Soy and wasabi is the usual maki dip in this country, but that won't do for Mexi-maki. Instead, mix soy sauce and adobo sauce together and serve in small dipping dishes as a Mexican flavored alternative.

If you're feeling adventurous and want an analog to the marvelous fish egg sushi you can get in most Japanese restaurants in the U.S, cook some quinoa with a pinch of salt. Drain through paper towels on top of a strainer (otherwise the grains will go right through the strainer). Mix the cooked quinoa with more adobo sauce so it takes on slightly red/orange color.

Roll up a 3" wide sheet of nori with a plug of rice in the middle and slice into two maki style pieces, leaving an empty space at each end. Set the pieces on the filled ends and fill the tops with the quinoa "fish eggs". Alternately, use pomegranite seeds to fill the empty tops.

Stuck as well. I got hit with the musical meme a while ago by Debbie at Words to Eat By. In fact it's been two weeks. Yow. I'm very Sorry, Debbie - I'm slow to respond, plus we were apartment hunting (successfully as it turns out). So as Meg has posted her stick, I am shamed into FINALLY posting my answers.

What is the total amount of music files on your computer?
19Gb, 6200 files, mostly in Ogg. I wish I'd gone FLAC so I could transcode, but there you are.

What was the last CD you bought?
Jack Johnson, On and On

What was the last song you listened to before receiving this message?
(Drawing) Rings Around the World - Super Furry Animals. If you like big fat postmodern Beach Boys - this is the song for you. I just got back from the gym and it's on my treadmill mix.

Name 5 songs that mean a lot to you and explain why
1.) My Baby Just Cares for Me - Nina Simone - This was the first song I put on a mix CD for my now wife when we first met. It became "our song" and was the first song played (but much too quickly) at our wedding. Sappy, sure, but I guess I'm allowed to love my wife.

2.) Dirty Old Town - The Pogues - I was and am a big Pogues fan. Way back when, I introduced my then girlfriend to the band. A few weeks later, we were listening to the album (you know, flat black thing, hole in the center, spins around at 33 1/3 rpm?) and she said, "You know, that song. I don't know if you realize, but he says bad things about the 'Dirty Old Town', but really he loves the place." Really. Duh. That's only COMPLETELY OBVIOUS! That's when I knew she thought I was an idiot. I only stuck around for three or four more years...

3.) Everybody Knows - Leonard Cohen. Pretty much this explains politics in America.
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
It doesn't mean you don't stop fighting, but you should understand the opposition.

4.) Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer - Jack Johnson. OK, weird choice. But for most of the song it's the old familiar lyrics you're used to that we all grew up with. Rudolph's shunned, big snow comes, Santa asks for his help, Rudolph saves the day. When Johnson gets to the end, where all of the other reindeer love him and invite him to play in their reindeer games, he adds:
Well Rudolph he didn't go for that
he said "I see through your silly games"
How could you look me in the face
when only yesterday you called me names?"

I love that Rudolph stand up for himself after decades of just taking it from those snotty other reindeer.

Well all of the other reindeers man,
well they sure did feel ashamed,
"Rudolph you know we're sorry,
we're truly gonna try to change"

A positive change in the formerly persecutorial reindorks is effected by Rudolph's strength of character and refusal to be taken advantage of. How cool is that? Really?

5.) There Ain't Nobody Here but us Chickens - Louis Jordan. It's fun. I can't defend it but to say that sometimes you just plain have to enjoy a tune for it's own sake.

Which 3 people are you going to pass this stick to and why?
I'm only passing it to one because most of the people I would stick it to have been stuck. And Meg grabbed the few remaining. So, Todd in New Orleans of this very blog - who I know will give us very interesting answers - you're stuck.

Now off to the Ani DiFranco show at the Vic tonight...

I was recently tapped in this musical game by Pascale of C'est Moi Qui l'Ai Fait. My kitchen is a very musical place and the little iPod in the corner is usually the first thing I turn on when I enter the kitchen, whether to do dishes or cook dishes. I love my iPod. Gone are the days of stacks of CD covers cascading into the sink or onto the floor or getting covered with tomato sauce or unidentifiable flying food. Ever since the Critic bought himself a new iPod and handed me down his, I've been a happy singing cook. Since he generously also donated the little travel speakers I have my own little mini-stereo and not a CD or CD case in sight.

What is the total amount of music files on your computer?

2302, but some of them I inherited with the computer when my dear husband upgraded his iBook and gave me the this one.

What was the last CD you bought?

The Very Best of Jim Croce. His song "You don't mess around with Jim" is being used these days for a car ad on TV and it reminded me how much I like his songs.

What was the last song you listened to before receiving this message?

"Loves me like a rock" by Paul Simon, which I like to sing to my son. (Somewhat disturbingly, he seems to prefer "50 ways to leave your lover"!)

Name 5 songs that mean a lot to you and explain why

1) "God's Song" by Randy Newman. It's sad and funny and has a sweet kind of talking blues feel to it.

2) "You've got a friend" by Carol King. I've been listening to Carol King since I was about five and I'll never get tired of her. I love the fairy-tale quality of this song.

3) "A Couple of Kooks" by David Bowie. His playful song for his son was one of my favourites even before I had a son to sing it to. "Will you stay in our lover's story/ If you stay you won't be sorry/ 'cause we believe in you..." is a great thing to tell your child every day.

4) "Les Sabots d'Hélène" by Georges Brassens. Again, a tender sad song about finding beauty in unlikely places, a classic Brassens song.

5) "She Fucking Hates Me" by Puddle of Mud. We first heard this song driving around Tennessee after Barrett's wedding last year and the refrain was so unexpected I nearly split myself laughing. It seems so apt for a certain kind of relationship (that I've seen from the outside and the inside) that makes you wonder afterwards if there is any other explanation for why it went ballistic.

Which 3 people are you going to pass this stick to and why?

That's difficult as most of my favourite people seem to have already participated. However, Seattle Bon Vivant doesn't seem to have participated (and if I'm wrong, sorry!) and I love the blog and the descriptions of Seattle and of my beloved city from an outsider's point of view. Foodgoat and Ladygoat are always a good read and deserve an award for the touching frank posts we read after the last US election. And lastly, I'll nominate Meathenge simply because I'm curious to know what kind of music he listens to! (Meatloaf?!?)

So thanks for your indulgence on this silly Sunday post!

Posts of the Week - Waiting at the prison gates for Martha like Elwood for Jake, but with THE most tasteful flower arrangement. Each week we pick three posts from the infinitely expanding blog-o-sphere (tm) and bring them to you!

1. Kate the The Accidental Hedonist toils in relative obscurity. (Never mind she gets something like ten times the traffic we do on an average day. We don't. Really. Sniff.) Well, in any case, you have to check out the Fig and Pine Nut Tart she made this week. To quote from her post on the eventual disposition of the tart - "Mu ha ha ha ha!! This tart is mine, mine all MINE I tells ya'!!" Mu ha ha ha indeed.

I. I'm a bit irked at I've been thinking for a while about investigating Indian cooking and Barbara Fisher of Tigers & Strawberries heads me off at the pass and makes a vary authentic looking channa masala. It looks even better than the channa masala I had from Chicago's Hema's on Friday.

A. Some foodie types are good at inventing recipes from whole cloth. Others of us, like Alice from My Adventures in a Breadbox, usually stick to selecting and making recipes from magazines and cookbooks. Alice ventured outside her comfort zone this week and invented a dish she calls Tuxedo Clams. Snappy name, looks tasty - I think its a winner. I love it when a plan clam comes together.

Many years ago in the Dark Ages before the Internet existed, I worked in the Art Department of Encyclopaedia Britannica. In those Internet-deprived days, Encyclopaedia Britannica staff had access to the greatest and most interesting time-waster of the day: each cubicle had it's own up to date complete set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I blush in shame when I think of the hours I spent browsing through the volumes when I should have been working. I would start off legitimately looking up one item for something work related and in passing another entry would catch my eye. Reading that would make me wonder about some other related topic...and so on and on.

Well, I have just found the foodie's equivalent.

My new Concise Larousse Gastronomique has the same draw I remember from those Encyclopaedia Britannica days. Each entry leads me to another question that I must have answered NOW. Did you know that every pressed duck made at the Tour d'Argent in Paris has been numbered and they have now exceeded 600,000 of them? Fact. Charlie Chaplin ate duck #253,652. If you are interested in the subtleties of French vocabulary in cooking, this book can tell you the difference between effiler (snap the ends off green beans or slice almonds and pistachio nuts in thin strips lengthwise) and effilocher (which is similar but is particularly used to describe cutting leeks into fine threads). In addition to the titbits of information and history, basic recipes on all the great French classics are included, from Hare with Chocolate to Sauce Robert. The cheese entry tells you how many calories your favorite fatty cheeses have and when to buy each one. It's a truly fun book.

The cover of the Concise Larousse Gastronomique has the subtitle "The World's Greatest Cookery Encyclopedia" and a quote from Anthony Bourdain: "The absolutely indispensable bible of cooking." I have to agree with both statements. This is undoubtedly the world's greatest cookery encyclopedia and it's fair enough to describe it as a bible. However, that is not necessarily the compliment you might think.

I think this is probably the best cookery encyclopedia because there aren't that any others out there that are so complete. It's miles more comprehensive than my Barron's Food Companion. BUT (and it's a big but) it's oh so very French. It has a nod in the direction of other mainly European cuisines: Italian and Spanish and even English. But you won't find nachos or sloppy joes in this book. It has Mexican tortillas, but not enchiladas or burritos. This brings me to the second accolade mentioned above: it's the bible of cooking. And what is the bible? Set in stone, conservative. The Larousse has entries on all the great DEAD chefs of Europe. If it has any live ones, I haven't seen them yet.

So it's a classic. Don't turn to it to find out how to cook Australian yabbies. But as a bible of classic European food, with a couple of forays into "exotic" foods, it is supreme. I don't regret a single cent of the monumental 47.50 euros I paid in W.H. Smith's (with a gift certificate) for this book. It's a hoot. Go buy one yourself (or get a friend to buy it for you)!

With the Oscars just days away, even the food sections have caught Hollywood fever. As you might guess, plenty of articles look at Sideways' impact on the wine industry. Food writers also give tips for planning the perfect Oscars party. There's lots of other tasty information this week, so follow us on our weekly stroll through the food news that was.

Zinfandel and Petitie Sirah, two grape varietals that seem to thrive only in California, both have their fans, according to the Napa News.

The Oregonian, getting an early jump on the Oscars, hands out their own awards for the best food scenes in movies this year.

The whole world loves pasta, even the Rio Grande region, where the dish is called fideo. Lynn Brezosky of the AP has the whole story and several tasty recipes.

The New York Times reports that Americans are eating more chicken but cooking it less. No surprise when you can find great roast chickens sold at grocery stores and food marts. Eric Asimov looks at the response to Sideways in the Napa region. Southern France challenges the pizza supremacy of Italy. Next thing you know, the French will be making better boiled beef than the British. The French are also on the march in America, with the first ever Michelin guide to New York will soon be published. The former president of the Red Lobster chain has been named the new head of the James Beard Foundation. Is this a good thing? Angry British chef Gordon Ramsay performs for the press and hawks his new Fox television show. In one of his final acts, music legend Ray Charles endowed a chair of African-American Culinary Studies at Dillard University in New Orleans.

The L.A. Times discovers the joys of winter wild mushrooms. They also think that people throwing Oscar parties should create a theme menu that reflects their favorite film. Sure, I'll get my personal assistant right on that. On a more serious note, a hot group of young chefs is shaking up the kitchens of Mexico City. Columnist David Shaw thinks animal rights activities are going too far when they threaten people.

The Washington Post finds truffles in North Carolina, of all places.

The Chicago Tribune defends merlot from Miles' snide comments in Sideways. The paper also offers some simple tips on how to open oysters.

When the French get their hands on sauerkraut, the humble hot dog codiment becomes a luscious choucroute. San Fracisco get its first taste of dining in bed. I sure hope this trend of restaurants with beds doesn't spread. For Marlena Spieler, nothing says New York like a good pickle.

According to the Denver Post, restaurant in the Mile High City don't follow national trends. Waiters tell the paper that diners should treat them a little better.

The U.S. is fast becoming one of the top wine consumers in the world, according to the Miami Herald. The growing quality of affordable Latin American wines might be one factor for this rise.

At the Village Voice, Nina Lalli steps bravely into the "pizza wars" and tries Pizza Hut's Dippin' Strips. It's because of that kind of bravery that the big city reporters get paid the big bucks.

Last week I complained about a lack of interesting food news. This week, we had a bounty. Maybe the editors were holding back some stories. We're always looking for interesting food sections, so let us know if we're not covering your favorite.

Nigel Slater recently lauded the wonders of his new Aga stove in his column for the UK Observer newspaper. Like an old Franklin stove, an Aga originally had the dual purpose of heating the home and cooking food. It is at its best with food that needs a long slow cook. Given how cold our flat has been lately, I wish we had one in our kitchen. And if we did, cottage pie is the kind of old fashioned country cooking that would work perfectly in it.

As it is, I had to make do with a normal oven. That said, my Critic (who is, after all, English) said "It's the best cottage pie you have ever made, possibly the best I have ever eaten." Praise indeed! When I reminded him that he usually says my pie isn't very authentic, he replied "I didn't say it was authentic. I said it was good." So here you have it: my dubiously authentice but undoubtedly good cottage pie.

Once again, the success of this recipe depended not on finding a good recipe, but in rummaging through my kitchen for appropriate ingredients. I didn't want to drag the baby out into the cold and so relied on ingredients I had to hand. I didn't have any tinned tomatoes or tomato paste, so I found a container of roasted tomato sauce I made last fall in the freezer. I also used the leftover stuffing from my stuffed green pepper. The recipe below does not include the rice that was in that stuffing because a) as I added more meat it only made up a small part of the dish and b) by the time the dish came out of the oven you couldn't find the rice if you tried.

Cottage Pie

For the filling:
400 grams ground beef or beef steaks (I ground half the meat myself in the food processor)
1 cup chopped onions and/or shallots
1 tomato, chopped
1 tsp fresh or frozen basil
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
3 anchovies
1 clove garlic, chopped finely
1 cup roasted tomato sauce (or your favourite tomato sauce)
3-4 Tbs Worcestershire sauce (it's hard to measure)
1/2 cup red wine
4 Tbs ketchup
1 tsp beef Better than Boullion paste
1 Tbs flour
2 Tbs butter
dash of Lawry's salt

For the topping:
400 grams potatoes
1/4 cup milk
4-5 Tbs butter
Salt and pepper to taste

Peel the potatoes and set them to boil in salted water. In the meantime, soften the onions or shallots in a deep frying pan with the garlic and the olive oil. Add the ground beef and turn up the heat under the pan to cook more quickly. Depending on the fat content of the beef, you may want to drain the meat and onions after this step. Then gradually add the rest of the filling ingredients, saving the flour for last. Let the whole mixture simmer for fifteen minutes or so to allow it to thicken.

In the meantime, (providing they are done) drain the potatoes and mash them with the milk and butter. Taste for salt and pepper and be generous with both.

Pour the filling into a deep oven safe dish. If you want, you could make the dish in advance up to this point and just refrigerate the filling and the potatoes separately. In fact, it does make it a little easier, as the cold filling can support the potatoes better. In any case, when your oven is hot (200c/375f) carefully spoon the potatoes over the top and use the back of a spoon to spread it neatly over the whole. Bake for about 35 minutes at 200c or a couple of hours in a slow oven if you are lucky enough to have an Aga!

One of our most popular posts is the one I wrote many moon ago about Giada De Laurentiis. I'm sure most of the popularity of the post has to do with her attractive appearance (In fact, I imagine if I somehow wrote a post that talked about a recipe she and Jamie Oliver worked on and put "Giada de Laurentiis" and "Naked Chef" in close proximity, I might see our traffic increase tenfold. But of course I won't stoop to that). But some people are not interested in this elfin Italian chef. These people are wild for her ceramics.

The bowls and plates Giada uses on "Everyday Italian" are rustic looking in that "Wow, I bet that simple peasant china is really, really expensive" way. They photograph very well. We had a couple of questions and some answers to the comments in that original Giada post about her ceramics. I decided to go straight to the hors d'oeuvres mouth to get the skinny.

Via e-mail, I asked the Everyday Italian producers about the china she uses on the show, and after about three weeks, I got a response back from Food Network Viewer Services. According to the e-mail I received, the dishes used on the show are all from Vietri.

Food Network's terse reply in toto was:

Cucina Fresca Dinnerware, Canisters and Baking Dishes (all the cream, sage, yellow color ceramic ware… the little tasting dishes, oval gratin dishes with the handles, coffee pot, creamer, butter dish, espresso cups, ceramic strainer)
Cioccolata Dinnerware (chocolate colored dishes)
Paesano Dinnerware and Mugs (yellow platters and mugs with design)
Chiaroscuro Dinnerware and Baking Dishes (black and gray baking dishes)
Vietri

(800) 277-5933
www.vietri.com

Nice stuff. So nice that a large dinner plate is $34.95 and that individual pasta bowl that shows up so much on the show is $24.95 at replacements.com. Ouch. Not completely insane, like Limoges, but pricy stuff for everyday dinnerware.

Of course buying a full set for your kitchen will make you just like Giada. And really, how can you put a price on that?

The weather in Paris has been - by Paris standards - incredibly cold. By Chicago standards, it's been, eh, normal. But I've been living here for ten years and we are not used to getting snow more than once every couple of years and it generally melts the next day. Well, not this year. Here we are in the middle of a cold snap, with snow on the ground for the last three days, in a large apartment full of windows. Double glazed, yes, but not sufficient to keep in all of the lukewarm heat our Parisian radiators emit. And so what does a clever mother of a two month baby do? Laundry and lots of it, because the dryer vents directly into the kitchen. And she comes up with something to put in the oven every night. Yes, we are back in the days of the Franklin stove heating up the house.

Normally, I only roast carrots when I'm doing a pork roast and want to fill in the space around the meat. Carrots are not my favorite vegetable and so I tend to see them as more of a filler than an exciting ingredient on their own. I always have a lot of carrots in the fridge, though, because I know the Critic loves them, cooked and raw. So this recipe is the result of necessity (that happy mother of invention) in two ways: I wanted to fire up the oven and I wanted to be able to use ingredients I already had in the apartment, and thus avoid taking the young one out in the cold.

And Necessity gave birth to a gorgeous new dish, one that is definitely going to be made again. Roasting carrots keeps them firm and delightful to bite. The shallots and carrots naturally become sweeter with the roasting, but when a hint of sugar and ginger are added all four combine to make a complex sweet and spicy mixture of flavors. I served them with a cottage pie, but they would be even better next to a roast. Or maybe a nice mushroom risotto for our vegetarian friends?

Ginger glazed roast carrots

5-6 large carrots, cleaned and cut in large chunks
10-12 shallots, outer skins removed and topped and tailed
2 Tbs sunflower oil
1 tsp sugar or brown sugar (I used what they call sucre roux, which is brown crystal sugar)
1 tsp powdered ginger
1/2 tsp salt

Toss all the ingredients in a roasting pan and mix well. Place in a hot oven (200c/375f) for about an hour. Stir the ingredients every 15 minutes or so to make sure they are browning on more than one side.

The useful thing about roasting your vegetables is that they can remain in the hot oven almost indefinitely, while you wait for the rest of the dinner to finish or (more likely in this household) for your spouse to get home from work. They can also heat your chilly apartment and fill it with delectable sweet ginger scents!

You smell it some fifty paces before you get there. Surrounded by run down 19th century Parisian façades, nevertheless an exotic combination of garlic, onion, cardamom and turmeric wafts over your nostrils and you know you are getting close. Passage Brady, the Mecca of lovers of Indian food in Paris.

Paris is full of little passageways running between its main boulevards. Traditionally, they have housed workshops for the artisans. In the area around Bastille, most of the original furniture restorers (vernisseurs, ébenistes, doreurs, etc.) have given way to chic loft apartments. Here in the 10th arrondisement, the Passage Brady is home to the highest concentration of Indian restaurants and costume shops in the city. I don't know why the costume shops ended up next to the Indian food, but there are four of them nestling among the 10 Indian restaurants in this short corridor between the boulevard St. Martin and the boulevard du Faubourg St. Denis

You won't find Passage Brady mentioned in any guide book to Paris. This is logical, as very few tourists come to Paris for its Indian food. It's well known to the teeming expatriate community here: Brits (of course), Americans, Australians and even the Indians themselves! First, of course, are the restaurants. More importantly from my point of view, it has a really good little supermarket with everything you need to make Indian food,

As I sat watching Saturday Morning Kitchen on the BBC this weekend (theme: Indian food) it suddenly occurred to me that it has been a while since I stocked up on Indian food. I also reflected on the fact that most of the spices I use were purchased some seven years ago when I first met the Critic. (In a fit of enthusiasm, he insisted we buy one kilo bags of everything. In some cases, TWO one kilo bags.) I think they may have lost some of their potency.

Accordingly, I took off on Sunday afternoon with a folding canvas grocery trolley and ventured into the 10th arrondisement of Paris. What did I buy? Man oh man, what DIDN'T I buy??

I bought nearly 19 kilos of foodstuff, to wit:

two kinds of Tikka Masala paste
a jar of Vindaloo paste
a jar of Tandoori paste
three kinds of lime pickle
a jar of hot mango chutney
a jar of aubergine chutney
four little boxes of coconut milk
a box of creamed coconut (in powder form)
one kilo of Gram (chickpea) flour
a large can of mango pulp
three kinds of papadams
a bottle of orange water
a bottle of rose syrup
mung dhal (split yellow lentils)
pistachios
Dosai mix (Indian pancakes)

moving to the spices...

dalchini Indian cinnamon
cumin powder
black cardamoms
green cardamoms
coriander seeds
cumin seeds
fenugreek
fennel seeds
black mustard seeds

and a few fresh items...

limes
curry leaves
okra
tiny red onions
a handful of hot peppers
fresh ginger

And seeing as I was spending some 69 euros in his shop, the fellow threw in a packet of "aperitif Indien" for free, a dry mix of chick peas, cumin, salt, curry leaves, pepper and fennel!

So it was a very successful shopping trip. I am looking forward to using all these exotic ingredients. If you red this blog frequently, you'll notice a sudden increase in the number of Indian recipes. I hope you enjoy them as much as we will!

(Drat. And I've just realized I forgot to get rice!)

Velan (SARL)
83, passage Brady
75010 Paris
Tel: 01 42 46 06 06
Metro: Château d'eau or Stasbourg St. Denis

A few months ago, I was honored to be approached by the folks at TasteEverything to ask if I would be willing to participate in a new kind of food award. Their idea for the 2005 Independent Food Festival and Awards was that the jury (comprised of a selection of individuals like yours truly) would select a quirky original category and nominate a winner in that category. Instead of the usual "Best cheese producer in Britain" or "Best Fish Restaurant in Paris", they wanted us to seek out small categories, the kind of producers who don't usually get an award.

For more information on the event, you can read their much more eloquent press release here.

And so I spent a long time trying to come up with a fitting award. It was difficult as there are so very many good food producers in Paris. Having lived in Paris for over ten years and being very opinionated to boot, I of course know the "best" for everything - source for American foods, for English tea, for freshly shucked oysters, where the staff is most annoying and how to get into the Louvre without queuing up. (Okay, those last two aren't food related, but they are very useful!)

I'm drawing out the suspense here. To find out who finally won and why, read on!

In the end, I decided I could do no better than to honor the fine producer of my favorite honey in all of Paris, France and the world. So the award for Best Sunflower Honey in Paris (and believe me, I've tried them all!) goes to M. Guy Allart of the Ruchers du Bel Air in St. Maur des Fossées. The honey is creamy and nutty and very thick. Its wonderful flavor comest through best on a simple piece of buttered toast, but it also stands up well to a herb vinaigrette or a gravy for duck. It's the only honey I'll use when making corn bread. I've offered jars of his honey to friends and family for years and they in turn have asked for more jars to give to their friends. Congratulations, M. Allart: you are conquering the world one jar at a time with your wonderful honey!

If you are interested in sampling M. Allart's sunflower honey, you can find him every other weekend at the outdoor market in front of the Michel-Ange Auteuil metro in Paris. For more information on the stand and the other fine products he sells, you can consult my earlier post about him.

And now that you know who I've nominated, check out the rest of the winners at TasteEverything!

One of the all-time great quickie appetizers, and a hit and run post for the day.

Get a good green Haas avocado. Make sure it's ripe. Slice it in half. Remove the pit. While the avocado is still in the skin, slice each half's contents lengthwise into 6 or 8 long thin slices.

Use a spoon to scoop out the slices. If you're careful, they should come out intact.

Sprinkle lime juice (a teaspoon or so) and chili powder (a 1/2 teaspoon or so) over the mix. Serve as is with a fork or transfer onto corn chips for easier eating.

If you're a salt addict you can sprinkle a pinch of kosher salt over the whole plate, too.

The lime should prevent browning, and the chili gives it a nice little kick. Yum.

I had initially planned on using my ever-patient spouse as a guinea pig for this edition of Is My Blog Burning? (You are what you don't eat), hosted by My Latest Supper. Unfortunately, he proved less than patient at the idea of being forced to try something he doesn't like eating. In fact, he was quite peevish. "Why don't you make something YOU don't like?" he queried. "Like what?" I answered smugly, assured in my open-mindedness over exotic foods. "Well, what about those stuffed green peppers you're always going on about?"

Oh dear. He's right: there is one food I hate and have resolutely refused to eat for the last thirty years. Stuffed green peppers. Sigh.

My poor mother. Apparently I went all through babyhood and toddler years perfectly willing to eat stuffed green peppers. And then somewhere around the age of five or six, I decided I hated green peppers. Everything about them: the slime, the smell, the taste, the fact that my mother was insisting I liked them (probably). And so my poor working mother who had gone to the trouble to make something tasty for dinner was saddled with a stubborn little girl who would not eat her dinner. "Just eat the stuffing," she pleaded. "It's just added flavor to it." (Did she think it was something other than the flavor I didn't like?)

And so for years I avoided green peppers like the plague. In early adulthood someone convinced me to try cooked red peppers and I grudgingly admitted they were all right. I even eventually came to love them. And I could almost see that raw green peppers might be satisfying and crunchy to some. But the cooked green pepper taboo remained. Not me, not ever. Not on MY pizza, thank you very much.

I tried to call my mother tonight for the recipe for her stuffed green peppers, but unfortunately she was out. So I turned to the old standard of my childhood, the Fanny Farmer Cookbook. Sure enough, there was a recipe. I don't think it was quite the same as my mom's (which I'm pretty sure involved some kind of tomato sauce). But it would do. It still involved cooked green peppers.

Stuffed Green Peppers

I based this recipe on the Fanny Farmer one, with a few minor modifications. I used shallots instead of onions as I was out of the latter. I added some garlic and used Lawry's salt for seasoning.

4-5 shallots, chopped
2 cloves of garlic
2 Tbs olive oil
3/4 cup cooked rice
2 tomatoes, chopped
1 lb ground beef
1/2 cup chopped parsley
1 Tbs chopped frozen basil
green peppers

This recipe made enough stuffing for at least four peppers, or six if they are not very large. I had one large green pepper and one medium red. I have leftover stuffing.

Preheat the oven to 375F/180C. Sauté the shallots and the pressed garlic cloves in the olive oil until they are soft. Add the ground beef and turn up the heat to cook the beef quickly. When it is just about done, turn off the heat and drain the meat of any fat that may have collected in the bottom of the pan. Stir in the rest of the ingredients.

Take the top off the peppers and knock out any seeds that may have fallen into them. If the ridges on the interior are white, slice them off too. Stuff the peppers with the meat and rice mixture. Bake in the oven for 50 minutes or until the peppers are tender but not soggy.

As mentioned, in addition to the green pepper I had a red pepper. This was insurance in case the green one was as disgusting as I remembered; I figured the red one would at least be edible. In fact, I added one more touch to the red pepper by layering anchovies into the stuffing. I thought that with the garlic and the peppers and the beef a little anchovy would go down well.

And the result? Astonishingly edible is all I can say. It's not a dish I'm going to add to our favorites, but I did eat both peppers. And I liked them. The green pepper flavor wasn't as strong as I remembered and so I wonder if it isn't one of those things that has a stronger smell than taste? Or did I just luck out and get a particularly sweet green pepper? Whatever the reason, I wasn't put off by the flavor. Also, unlike the green peppers of my memory, this one wasn't slimy at all. It still had a bit of bite in it, enough to hold the whole dish together in fact. So I ate my first stuffed green pepper in at least 30 years. And then I ate the red one. (I was right about the anchovies, by the way - very tasty!)

And so, for this edition of Is My Blog Burning? I have conquered a food phobia. I suppose I'll be thankful for being forced to confront this old enemy at some point; at the moment I'm slightly bemused and confused...

Maybe we weren't hungry while reading the papers, but our nation's food sections seemed a little thin this week. Could it be the new government health guidelines that caused the loss of content? There were several stories about French women not getting fat, but we figured you had heard enough about that topic.

R.W. Apple, Jr., globe trotting reporter and, reputedly, the only staff member at the New York Times to have an unlimited expense account, explores the culinary contradictions of Puerto Rico. Frank Bruni tries the burger at Peter Lugar, the famed Brooklyn steak house, and decides that they use good meat but can't cook it correctly. Bittman cooks with frozen vegetables and finds that good things can come from the freezer case.

Russ Parsons at the Los Angeles Times shows he's secure with his masculinity and declares that quiche is cool again. Personally, I've always loved quiche, but I never claimed to be a real man. The paper also feels that the best vegetable soups are the simpliest.

Some cooks gain their skills from eGullet's online classes, according to the Chicago Tribune. Next week, I predict that their food section will discover blogs.

In Maine, it's the season for tiny sweet shrimp, reports the Boston Globe. I wonder if Texas if raising tiny cows these days.

The Miami Herald travels south of the border to eat superior junk food in Mexico. Fred Tasker defends the wine geek after a column in USA Today attacked people who share his passion for vino. Come on Fred, no one reads USA Today, do they?

Is the French Laundry dirty? The world famous restaurant refused to show the Napa News their latest health inspection, as required by law.

Let's hope for extra food news next week. We're always looking for new food sections to read. If you know of a good one, leave us a comment.

Posts of the week has never, ever been invited the White House Briefing room. Each week we pick three posts from the infinitely expanding blog-o-sphere (tm) and bring them to you!

This week in no particular order:

A. Call the cops! The problem of roving gangs of celebrity chefs pinching sweets from innocent bystanders is getting out of hand. While at innovative chef Homaro Cantu's Moto in Chicago, deepfry of Yum! had her cookie stolen by none other than Homaro Cantu himself! All that was left behind was a 10 course extravaganza of food-as-science-fair-project that Cantu is becoming famous for.

1. So a monkey and Lassie and a Limey walk into a bar and... I mean, actually that the Kitchen Monkey upon learning that he's headed to France makes up a Lassi drink with lime and coconut and uses it to toast to his own departure. Coconut Lime Lassi sounds like a pretty good way to toast to a trip. I'm thinking Captain Morgan might want to tag along for the ride...

I. In general, I am an anti-corn syrupist. The stuff is too sweet and gets processed by your body differently from other sugars to the detriment of your waist line and body chemistry. However, The Accidental Hedonist this week used dark corn syrup to great effect, formulating, at the same time, Kate's Law of Walnut Pie Goodness, which states, in toto "Dark Corn Syrup is your friend."

Well my friend is the guy at the produce department at the local market, and I'm off to see him now. See you next week.

I'm not particularly religious, but I do respect those who are.

However, I'm not sure what to make of this site that uses cooking to teach Bible stories to children. In fact, I'm convinced this site is the work of that sinister (as in left-handed) deacon of delicacies, Ned Flanders. Imagine his voice when you read the recipes.

There's a note on a recipe for cookies made to simulate (shudder) candy corn - "I use these candy corn cookies in relation to the parable in Matthew 13:1-8 The sower and the seed." Really? Candy corn style cookies? Matthew? I would have thought it was more at home in Exodus with the Plagues of Egypt.

Jesus Walks on Water sounds kind of cute, if disturbing. ("Now, Timmy, bite off Jesus's head!");
Unleavened Bread and Tuna was probably inevitable for the miracle of the loaves and fishes;
Resurrection Cake is just freaky and more like a magic trick than a dessert;
And the Moses Parts the Red Sea Snack involving blue jello and Goldfish crackers slays me (I must be part of Pharoh's army).

I can't even talk about the Baby Jesus Haystacks recipe which ends, " Add a marshmallow to represent baby Jesus."

Oddly, there's no "Land of Milk and Honey" recipe or anything involving one of the most important foods in the Bible - wine. Where's your marsala now, myah?

The strangest entry goes to the "OBEY" donuts. I quote:

The donut represents the letter "O" in obey. Let them know every time they have a donut, they are reminded to OBEY!

Insert cops and donuts joke here...

Roast duck is a dish that I will never ever toy with. I don't do it à l'orange, I won't toss in exotic spices such as star anise or Chinese five spice powder. The most exotic I will ever get with my roast duck is to pop an apple and maybe an onion in its belly. It's a shame, but I just can't. This is because the only reason I ever roast a duck is in order to have a duck carcass for making duck soup.

My Austrian grandmother made the best soups I have ever tasted. And of these soups, her best was cream of mushroom soup made with a duck base. It was sublime. Something about the duck broth brought out the delicate flavour of mushrooms like no other liquid. Salty and creamy and savory and delicious. You can judge how delicious the soup was by the fact that even as a child, I recognized this was pure genius.

And so when I roast a duck it's because I intend to try my best to reproduce my grandmother's best dish. Exotic spices might carry over to the broth and so they are off the menu.

It's a roundabout way to make a soup but it's the best way. I've seen a lot of cookbooks (my beloved Fanny Farmer, for one) and many cooking programs counsel boiling a raw bird with a load of vegetables in order to make a bouillon. Well, if you want watery, bland broth and a lot of soggy meat, please do. I did. Once. And then I remembered my grandmother saving the bones from roast birds and realized that the thrifty way to make chicken or duck broth is also the tasty way. Why don't any cookbooks tell you this?? Is it for fear that no one will ever make soup because it sounds like too much work? Who knows. All I know is that it's worthwhile roasting a duck (which is a nice dish on its own, too) in order to get duck broth.

So, first buy your duck. Rinse it and pat it dry. Cut up an apple and an onion in large chunks and toss them in the cavity of the bird. Sprinkle a little Lawry's salt on the outside of the bird. Prick the skin all over so that the fat will run off more easily. (There will be a lot.) Toss a glass of white wine or sherry over the bird and put it in a very hot oven for 20 minutes (Around 220C/450f). Reduce the heat and continue to roast until a meat thermometer tells you it's done. For a small bird, this will be about an hour and a half, the same as a chicken.

The duck will be fragrant and juicy from all the fat, albeit a pain to carve because of the same. I am always surprised how little meat there is on one bird; it's really only enough for two.

When you are done with the duck, toss all the bones, bits of fat and skin and juices in a large pot and cover with water. If you like, you can add a couple of potatoes and carrots and onions too. I usually do if I have any that are getting towards the end of their shelf life. I don't bother with celery. (Another mystery in my life is why most traditional cookbooks in the US tell you to add celery to soup broth.) Bring the mixture to a boil and then turn down to a slow bubble. Let it simmer for several hours, stirring it and breaking up the bones with a wooden spoon every half hour or so. When the broth has gone nice and brown and nutty and it smells delicious, pour the mixture into a colander or strainer held over a large bowl. Put the strained broth in the refrigerator for several hours, preferably overnight. Once the broth has cooled completely, the fat will rise to the top and you can skim it off with a large spoon.

You can do anything with this nectar, but my favourite thing is to combine it with cream and mushrooms. One bird will probably give you enough broth for four to six bowls of soup. So take about two pounds of mushrooms (either plain white ones or a mix of exotic ones) and sauté them in a knob of butter with a finely chopped onion or six chopped shallots. When they are soft and tasty, add the duck broth. Add a couple of generous spoonfuls of crème fraîche or, if you are in the US, a mixture of cream and sour cream. You want the tang from the sour cream or crème fraîche as it compliments the duck deliciously. Taste for salt and pepper; it will be the better for a generous helping of each.

It really is my favourite soup. It's not overly pretty (cream soups rarely are) but when you smell it you'll understand why it's my favourite soup. Even my Critic, who theoretically doesn't like mushrooms, loves this soup. Quack!

(Does anyone out there have any idea why the Marx brothers called their film Duck Soup??)

"D.O.C." in Italian is Denominazione di Origine Controllata. Similar to the French Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée or "A.O.C.", D.O.C. certifies the region a wine is from and generally can be taken by a wine ignoramus like myself as a good indicator that the wine is a full step up from a Vin de Pays or a box of Gallo.

On West Lawrence Avenue in Chicago, Pizza D.O.C. can be taken as an indicator of a restaurant that takes the quality of its pizza and its wines seriously.

Pizza D.O.C. is located at 2251 W. Lawrence Avenue in Chicago near the Western Avenue Brown Line stop in the Lincoln Square neighborhood. Lincoln Square is the home of young marrieds and new families, and the gaggle of families with young children at the restaurant one Friday night made that quite obvious.

The space itself is nondesript from the outside, but the owners have done a nice job of decorating the inside to get maximum table space with minimal table crowding. The bar area where we sampled good but not great Italian wines by the glass is a little small, and it does feel cramped, but I believe the space was sacificed for more tables.

On our first visit to Pizza D.O.C., we took a table near the door on a busy Friday night. Service didn't suffer, despite our tucked away location on the floor, and we were able to get prompt attention whenever it was necessary.

There are non-pizza entrees available, but why bother when the pizza here is among the best in the city. In Chicago, pizza is known as a deep multilayer pie that sits heavily on your belly. That's decidedly NOT the type of pizza they serve at Pizza D.O.C.

Rather, the owners have installed an Italian-style wood burning oven to bake authentically Italian pizzas. The ingredients are simple, the pies have a crispy thin crust, and the flavors are outstanding. I've had samples of the tuna pizza, the Neapolitan anchovy pie, and the fabulous porcini mushroom pizza and they were uniformly excellent.

When the individually sized pizza first arrives at your table, the torture begins. Your first instinct will be to dive right in, but the sauce made from authentic Italian full flavor low acid San Marzano tomatoes and the thin pasting of cheese on top are so hot from the showpiece oven that you essentially have a thin soup on a crust until the pizza cools a bit. Once that period passes, you are in for pizza unlike any you have sampled in America before.

My recommendation, once you become addicted, is to bring friends, order a bunch of pies, and share slices. You really can't go wrong no matter which pizzas you order.

In my praise for the pizza pies I don't want to short the rest of Pizza D.O.C.'s menu. We enjoyed a celery, apple, Parmesan, olive oil, and lemon juice salad on our first trip that surprised me with a light complexity of flavors. Lightly battered fried calamari is better than at most restaurants, but not quite up to the standards of the rest of the menu - though the marinara for dipping the calamari is excellent and seems to be made from the same amazing San Marzano tomatoes as the sauce for the pizza.

The desserts at Pizza D.O.C. are fully as outstanding as the pizza. I thought I'd found the best dessert on the menu when I sampled the croccantino, which I can only describe as tasting like a cross between sweetened light cold butter and vanilla ice cream with a ribbon of crisp carmel and walnuts running through it. I'm sure it requires scientific notation to poperly document the caloric content. I was floored when we went back and I sampled what I was sure to be an ordinary dessert - the tiramisu. I had appaently never had real tiramisu until I had this tiramisu. The alcohol, espresso, marscapone, and cocoa mixed perfectly with the moist lady fingers, accusing all the previous "tiramisu's" I'd had in the past as pale imposters. We also enjoyed on one trip a vanilla panna cotta that would be a star attraction at other restaurants.

Convince your group to share a bunch of desserts, but engineer it so the croccantino and the tiramisu end up next to you.

As for drinks, the wines by the glass at Pizza D.O.C. are pretty good if a bit expensive at $6-12 apiece. Instead, get a bottle from the wine menu for the best wines in the house at a reasonable price. We had a Torrefazione Rosso Conero 2002 from the Marche region of Italy for $36, a bargain when you consider we easily could have spent $9 each on vastly inferior wine by the glass.

I intend to make Pizza D.O.C. a regular stop on the restauant circuit in Chicago and encourage you to do the same. The food here has always been excellent, with the only knock on the place being the service, which in our experience seems to have improved quite a bit. Tip well and keep the good times rolling. Highly recommended.

Pizza D.O.C.
2251 W. Lawrence Avenue,
Chicago, Illinois
Tel: (773) 784-8777

There is nothing Italian about this dessert that I made for us on Valentine's Day. The Neapolitan in the name of the dish refers to Neapolitan ice cream. When I was young, my dad would buy half-gallons of Neapolitan ice cream. This was a brick of ice cream divided into three stripes of flavor. On the left was chocolate, on the right vanilla, and in the middle strawberry.

I never understood why this was paticularly Neapolitan. My father asserted it was because the ice cream resembled the flag of Naples. I bought it, not wondering why a region would have a brown, pink, and white flag until later when I found out the flag of Naples is half yellow, half red. I think the presence of layers are the important bit, not the actual flavors or colors. I'd still love to know the origins of the name and how Neapolitan came to embody a carton of three flavored ice cream with the chocolate all dug out (that's how it worked in my house).

In any case, here's a simple dessert that's both romantic and delicious. You can prepare a tray of these strawberries ahead of time and keep them in the refrigerator until you're ready to serve them. If you keep them in plastic bags, the berries will start to leak a bit. I think this is a consequence of their exposure to heat from the chocolate.

Neapolitan Strawberries

16-20 Large strawberries

4 oz. mascarpone cheese
3 tablespoons sugar (adjust to suit your sweet tooth)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 teaspoon dark rum
2 tablespoons heavy cream

1 bar semi-sweet chocolate (2 oz.)
1 bar bittersweet chocolate (2 oz.)

Mega-short instructions - hull the berries, stuff with a sweetened mascapone cream, then dip them in melted chocolate and cool.

The longer set of instuctions:

Remove the tops from the strawberries and with a small sharp paring knife cut out the whiter centers from the berries. Leave each strawberry with a significant v-shaped cavity, but be careful not to cut through the bottom of the strawberry.

Mix cheese, sugar, rum, and vanilla together in a bowl with a fork. Mix together with a fork until the graininess of the sugar is gone and the mix is smooth.

Using a small spoon, stuff each berry with the creamy mascapone mixture. Put berries on a sheet pan in the freezer for five minutes before next step. While waiting, place some parchment paper on another sheet pan.

In a double boiler over medium heat melt the semi-sweet and bittersweet chocolate, stirring the chocolates together. If you don't have an actual double boiler, place a metal bowl over a saucepan filled with boiling water, but not so much water that the bowl touches it. The steam from the boiling water will heat the bottom of the bowl evenly so you can melt the chocolate without burning it.

Take the strawberries out of the freezer. Using tongs, dip each berry in the chocolate and roll the bottom of the berry until it is well coated. Remove to the parchment covered sheet pan and repeat with the next berry. Although you could certainly dip the stawberries using your hand, I do not recommend it. Chocolate is filled with fat and sugar, and loves to cling to things like unprotected fingers, causing bad burns.

As the reservoir of chocolate is used up, your berries may become more difficult to coat. You also may need to rinse the tongs off from time to time as they get inevitably crusted with chocolate.

When the strawberries have all been dipped, place the tray in the refrigerator for at least ten minutes to give the chocolate a chance to firm up on the berry. Serve with a port wine or a glass of champagne.

Leftover strawberries should last until someone realizes they're in there.

Leftover mascapone and chocolate can be mixed together for a quick and easy dessert.

On Saturday I hosted a small party in honor of the first birthday of TMC. Barrett and Todd were invited, but strangely they did not show up. Perhaps the 2000km trip put them off, I don't know. I do know that the people who did come were disappointed not to meet these mysterious figures and I have promised that if either of them ever does make it to Paris we will be having another, grander party!

The party we did have, though select, was perfectly satisfactory and I hope everyone had a great time. I know I did! Not only was it a great chance to gossip, trade foodie tips and grill our friend Clotilde on the secrets behind the success of Chocolate and Zucchini, but I even got a couple of presents (pictured here). And I'm not sharing them!

Well, okay, I might share the delicious peppery Rowallan Olives oil from trees owned by my friend Sam. I was honored to receive one of the first bottles produced and it will feature in all my favourite dishes. The chocolates from Alisa are mine, all mine, though...

As the party was in honor of a food blog, it's only right that I run through the dishes on hand. For the ones I prepared, I tried to keep to recipes posted on our site in the last year, though there was one I was certain had been mentioned but was inexplicably not found by our search engine.

However, before passing to the recipes I used, let me thank my friend Alisa for making the delicious Polenta sticks with Mexican pesto and Blue Cheese sauce (pictured in the photo above). I wasn't able to get the recipe from her in time for this post, but I'll be publishing it soon. A fantastic flavor combination, these babies went fast!

Brie and onion tartlets. Nigel Slater's brie and onion tart (as modified by me) was in the first set of recipes I posted on TooManyChefs. This is not chance: it's probably my favorite recipe. Ever. For the party, I tried something I've always meant to do. I used cutters to make tartlets, making it easier for party guests to eat them. (Use a large round cutter to create the tartlet, and then gently press a slightly smaller one in the center to trace the crust in the dough.) My advice to anyone who wants to do the same is to make sure you do not let the puff pastry dough get warm at all before cutting it, as it makes it very difficult to cut. Otherwise, it worked a treat.

Herbed Hot Goat's Cheese and Tomato Tartine. This one came from the Is My Blog Burning event hosted by Clotilde. It was the first IMBB? we participated in and I have a soft spot for the recipes.

Barrett's Mexican Black Bean Tarts. The cornmeal crust on these turned out a little crumbly on me, but it is a testament to my inability to follow directions and not the quality of the recipe. This is a truly original dish and was a big hit at the party. Again, I modified the form of the recipe in making little tartlets in tiny mince pie pans to make it easier to serve in a party. Try it!

Quail's eggs with Sesame salt. As mentioned in my Easter post, the recipe came from Epicurious. Fun and surprisingly tasty; I think the yolk-to-white ratio is perfect in these little babies and they are something new for many people. I also served them with the same variety of mushroom salt that RisaG finally received in the mail as a prize for the TooManyChefs Quiz. RisaG if you are reading this, it was very nice with eggs!

Todd's Spanish Tortilla. I became a huge fan of tortilla the first time I visited Spain (with Barrett and another friend, in fact) mainly because I found it next to impossible to remember that a Spanish tortilla is not the same thing as a Mexican tortilla. Luckily it's also really tasty and so eventually I started to order it intentionally. Todd's instructions were very clear and easy to follow and amazingly enough my tortilla tasted just like the ones I remembered from Spain. Thanks Todd!

Chicken fingers with mustard sauce. I could have sworn I mentioned this in one of my posts about grilling on the terrace last summer but couldn't find any evidence of it when I came to write this. In the end, the dish wasn't grilled anyway, so it's a new one but very, very simple. Take six free range skinless chicken breasts and poach them in a pan of boiling water to which you have added a glass of white wine, a little salt and a teaspoon of dried tarragon. After ten minutes or so, check if they are done by cutting a slit in one (no pink center, obviously!) and if so let them cool down. Once they are cool, cut them in lengths about the thickness of a finger and wrap them with a bit of Parma or other similar ham. Up to this point, you can cover them and keep them in the fridge until the party starts. For the sauce, mix two tablespoons (heaping) of crème fraîche with a heaping tablespoon of Dijon grain mustard and a heaping tablespoon of Dijon smooth mustard and a teaspoon of dried tarragon. Put the fingers under the broiler or the grill element in your oven for about seven minutes, or until the ham is crisp but not burnt. (Thank you, Clotilde, for stopping me from burning the last batch!)

Mini smoked eel salads on endive leaves. I tried smoked eel for the first time recently and posted the recipe for a delicious salad with it. In order to make it user-friendly for party guests, I adopted a trick recommended by all American cookbooks from the fifties to the eighties: take a leaf of Belgian endive and place your nibbly bits (in this case, eel, potato, tomato and sauce) on the end of it.

Purple Potato Salad. A mixture of roasted garlic, olive oil, salt and earthy potato goodness. My friend Owen exclaimed, "But I'm Irish and I've never heard of them!?!!"

And now on to the photos of the guests. Click on the images to see them enlarged.

Two fine ladies' men: Sam and young Kieran.

Kieran showing his magnetic personality works even from a cot on the floor.

Yes, it was one year ago today that Meg in Paris jumped out in front of all of us and posted the first item to this collaborative cooking extravaganza. She'll have her own post about our anniversary, but I thought I'd put my two cents in first.

Since Feb 15, 2004, we've put up 435 entries, and logged almost 1300 comments that weren't ads for porn, poker, or refinancing your house. As of Feb 14th at about 3:30pm Central, we've had over 100,000 visitors to the site. That's twice the population of the town I grew up in.

Over the last year, we've endured a switch in hosting providers, faced a possible loss of our domain name, added a baby to Meg in Paris's family, redesigned the look of the site, and even tried Marmite.

I want to thank everyone who has helped us get this far especially our friends and family, particularly in my case Paul Goyette who got me into blogging in the first place, Meg Hainer, and Corrie Cook for their contributions to the site, Todd Price for his continuing contributions (I'm pretty sure we'll lose him eventually to the for-pay food writing circuit), and of course Meg in Paris who will always be the best of friends, and without whom this site would consist mainly of me making jokes about Beano and asparagus.

Of course, I have to most of all thank my very patient wife Rebecca for putting up with smoky kitchens, late night typing, sinks full of dishes, strange foods in the pantry, and the occasional stink of a dish gone horribly wrong. She doesn't complain much when I mess up, and she's always appreciative when a dish somehow turns out right (though she does question the butter content). You can't ask for anything more.

Finally, thanks to everyone out there who reads our recipes and ramblings and the ever-supportive food blog community. I hope that over the last year we've given you an idea or two for a good dish to feed you friends and family, or just a link to an interesting story you wouldn't have found otherwise.

I'm retiring at 67, so this is one year down, 28 to go.

Last November, the Critic took me out for a very romantic dinner in the provincial town of Vichy. At the time (thinking of our loyal readers) I took note of the whole experience so that I could review it here. Well, it's been a busy couple of months, with Christmas and a new baby and I'm only now getting around to writing. In a way, though, this is appropriate, as I joked at the time that it would be one of our last chances for a romantic dinner...and so it was. (We ordered a delivery of Indian food to the apartment for our anniversary at the end of December!)

On the surface, Vichy might not strike you as the best place to find an awe-inspiring meal. Yes, it is in the center of the Auvergne region, reknowned for its wonderful cheeses and special beef. But the city itself reminds you of an aging Edwardian beauty, all faded chintz and dirty lace. Walking through the streets, you have the distinct impression that this place saw its heyday some time around the time of the Great War.

However, this is just the place to find an awe-inspiring meal.

If you read foodie magazines, you'll no doubt be familiar with the names of the best-known chefs and restaurants of the Paris area: Rostand, Taillevent, etc. However, if you arm yourself with a Michelin red guide and seek out provincial one-star restaurants you'll find yourself amazed with the result. For half the price of a Michelin starred Paris meal, you'll get something that is fresh, innovative, classy and well worth the trip. Jacques Decoret in Vichy is just such a restaurant.

Oddly enough, both the Critic and I came to the same idea of trying this restaurant by different means. Before joining him in Vichy (where he was on a training course) I looked up the town in the red Michelin at work and found that there was a one-star restaurant. I noted the address and resolved to talk the Critic into trying it. At the same time, HE wandered around the town looking for a nice restaurant to try with me and decided on the same one. It goes to show that the two best methods of finding good restaurants often turn up the same results.

From the outside, the restaurant is fairly discreet. It's on a side street near the train station, which is not usually the classiest part of a provincial town. However, once you enter you realize it's a relaxed elegant temple to food. The decor is very modern with clean lines: simple flower arrangements and large panels of art glass on the walls, immaculate white tablecloths and subdued jazz music. We reserved a table on the second night of my stay because the night I arrived they were fully booked.

In the end, the night we were there was a quiet one in terms of the number of clients. It was not quiet at our table, though, as we giggled and chatted our way through what was the most extraordinary meal of my life so far.

When the menus arrived we decided to sample the house champagne cocktail while perusing. This boded well from the start as it was a slightly nutty, not too sweet cocktail, unlike anything I had ever tasted and absolutely delicious. (We were later told what local liqueur went into the making of it but I am ashamed to say I forgot to note it down.) The menu was full of interesting sounding dishes, based on French classics and local specialities. In the end, unable to decide which sounded really truly best, we both plumped for the chef's tasting menu (Confiance du chef). The heavy responsibility of choosing just one or two dishes (and possibly finding they were not as delicious or interesting as we hoped) was too much for us. We had to try them all.

The first dish arrived on a miniature plastic TV tray. Brightly colored, silly, fun, but it left me concerned that M. Decoret would be more concerned with appearances than with substance. On the platter were chips (crisps to you Brits) of various exotic types, manioc and turnip with spices. Actually, it was pretty nice and so I mentally set aside my reservations for the moment.

Next up was a "deconstruction of gratin de courgettes", which was a lovely miniature soup of courgettes. However, the originality was more in the appearance than the taste.

The next dish introduced a combination of flavors I wouldn't have expected: foie gras with a beetroot sauce. I don't know why this isn't a more common treatment for foie gras; it's not uncommon to serve it with a sweet compote (fig, for example) and beetroot is certainly sweet. It was delicious, savoury and sweet and of course extremely colorful with the bright red sauce.

When we ordered the tasting menu, we mentioned to the waiter that the Critic had a "thing" about snails. That is to say he doesn't like eating them. So next up for him was a dish of gambas with a sangria of pink grapefruit. The sharp grapefruit added a new element to the sweet shrimp, definitely worth trying.

For myself, the snails arrived. A large shell made of breadcrumbs surrounded a small handful of the chewy little fellows in a pool of garlic butter. Again, the presentation was dramatic (not to say puzzling) and though the taste was a classic treatment it was a lot of fun. We spend the entire course discussing how on earth the thin hollow shell of breadcrumbs could have been constructed.

With the next dish, the fun really begain. We were served "21st Century Oysters", which consisted of a rubbery almost opaque ball perched on an oyster shell. Unsure how to tackle these babies, we looked to the waiter. "Put the whole thing in your mouth, pop it and pull the end out, you'll see what I mean," he said mysteriously as he glided away. What the?!? But we did see what he meant when we picked them up: they were little balloons with knotted tails underneath. Feeling extremely foolish and giggly, we popped them in our mouths and with one motion popped the balloons and pulled the balloons out by the tail. An explosion of iodine, salt and oyster made this one of the funnest and funniest dishes I've tasted. The giggles increased and the rather uptight group of seniors at nearby table started sending us glares.

Things calmed down a bit with the next two dishes, sea bass with pineapple sauce (lovely) and an emulsion of vieux cantal cheese with root vegetables. Both had interesting flavor combinations and went down nicely.

These were followed with Pigeons aux deux façons which were fashionably undercooked and savoury.

And then things got silly again with the next dish. We were each served a little wooden platter with a tiny cup of clear liquid, a straw and a linen of red powder. Yes, a line of powder, looking like red cocaine with crystals in it. We raised our eyebrows at the waiter. He smiled and advised us to take a tiny sip of the liquid (the clear juice of a fresh tomato), hold it on our tongues and use the straw to suck in some of the powder. He told us to hold the powder on our tongues to get teh full effect of the dish. We did and...pow! Do any of you out there remember Hot Rocks? The candy that exploded on your tongue? That is what the tomatoes did. Pop, pop, crackle! Hooting with laughter we finished up our lines of crack tomato. Now the table with the well-behaved children on our right was staring at these Bad Examples of how to act in a nice restaurant.

From here it was hard to get more exciting. We were served a cheese platter of formidable age, but I was sadly unable to eat any but the most boring cheeses. (I was pregnant at the time, you see.) For dessert, we were served a very respectable Ile flottante with fleur d'oranger sauce and an interesting sweet potato dish with parsley ice cream and passion fruit coulis. By then (have you counted the dishes?!?) we were past appreciating fine cuisine, especially the Critic who had ordered the tasting menu with wine included. (He told me the wines were all excellent, but in my swollen state I didn't taste them myself.)

The waiter and the female maitre d' had obviously warmed to us by now. They thought we were a little odd to be quite so loud in a Temple of Food, but as obvious foreigners all was forgiven. They asked if we would like to meet the chef and we agreed with great enthusiasm.

So we trailed back to the kitchen and shook hands with M. Decoret himself, who was a charming and (to me) shockingly young chef. Well, young to have his first Michelin star, as he looked to be around thirty. We congratulated him on his star and the fantastic meal. I asked him if he had constructed the breadcrumbs shell by covering a balloon of some sort and then pulling it out of the finished product and he looked extremely smug and said no and he wouldn't tell me how it was done. (I worked it out later - can you?) He said that he had thought of moving up to Paris but that his great friend Michel (Rostand?) counselled staying in the provinces for a bit longer to build up his reputation. Better to be a big fish in a little pond, initially. I wondered if Michel's reasons for urging him to stay put were as biased as our own: we love having the opportunity to try such innovative and delightful food at a reasonable price and Michel no doubt was happy to see the competition rest safely in the boondocks.

So there you have it: a fun food experience in Vichy. The food demonstrated a complete mastery of all the classic French dishes, but each had a little spash of originality. The service was impeccable and if the atmosphere was a little stodgy it was probably more to do with the clientèle more than anything else. If you are ever in the Auvergne region, it is well worth the trip. And when travelling through the rest of France bear in mind that the one-star Michelin in the provinces is often better value and more interesting than the two or three starred Paris restaurant. For one thing, these young chefs are still trying to prove they have something to say. And they are usually right!

Jaques Decoret
7, avenue Gramont
03200 Vichy
Tel: 04 70 97 65 06
Menu Confiance du chef: 109 euros (without wine) or 130 euors (including wine). The cost of a meal à la carte was only slightly less, but with much less excitement!