Well, before Rhino or Ryndex can get to it, let me just inform you that Mia Farrow ate with us last night at Pramil. It would of course had been more fabulous if I had actually recognized her. Hmmm, another reason to wear glasses. But, it takes a lot to distract me from the food there. Foie gras with delicately acidic pig’s ears, ficoides glaciales with shrimp, a stunning cauliflower cake with peppery jam, pumpkin and chestnut soup, rabbit with violet artichokes and figues, pigeon and chard, the menu is simply a merveille and everything is handled with such a deft touch. The menu can accommodate not only vegetarians but gluten-intolerants. The chef is all sweetness and good. Go now before reservations become impossible.

The Superbowl is upon us and looking under Serious Eats, I realized that guacamole is as big as hot dogs, nachos, chicken wings and burgers when it comes to chowing down before the screen. It makes sense. Guacamole is green. Green and sour, like the face I make when my team loses, which almost inevitably happens. Plus, it looks like throw-up thus making it and ideal launching material for the television. Oh, who am I kidding. I just like guacamole and I’ll eat a gallon of it if it was set before me with chips and salsa.

But, damn, I’m in France. Which means that while I’ll be watching the Superbowl, (ironically Frenchies have decided it merits National Television coverage commentated by almost famous french variety singers and porn actresses), it comes on too late for dinner-time. Still, I’m not one to feel left out and decided to whip up some suitable French variation on dogs and guacamole. I present to you, Boudin Blanc with Guacamole!

As local doyenne of food blogging Clothilde Dusoulier will tell you, boudin blanc is made of bits of white meat, fat, onions, white bread and cream, stuffed into a sausage casing. Akin to the difference between reading Vogue and reading Dante, boudin blanc is not to be confused with boudin noir, intense and profound bloody blood sausage. I like them both, but that’s the girl I am. The traditional pairing is some kind of puree but crunchy and crisps are more Superbowl type fare. So there you have it. I paired my boudin blanc, which was already flavoured with death trumpets (! trompettes de mort !), with roasted taters, steamed veggies and a nice healthy dollop of guacamole. Not just any guac, mind you. But, guacamole with pears. Because I think that after four years following the Superbowl in France, something’s gotta give.

so…GO GUACAMOLE! GO SAUSAGE! GO BEARS! If only I could nibble some of that… pass me the truffle shuffle!

Recipe for the Pear Guacamole: Puree 1 avocado with lime, 1/2 shallot, sugar, salt, and 1/2 pear.

I had a craving half an hour ago for hot chocolate. However, I didn’t want just any hot chocolate. I wanted the rich thick sinfully chocolatey hot chocolate that coats the tongue and makes the eyelids quiver. Unfortunately, I had only about half a mug of milk left. So, this is what I came up with and it was so good I just felt I had to tell you all about it!

1. Heat the milk with some water added (to make one mug). Toss in two heaping teaspoons of 100% unsweetend cacao (van Houtens for me!).

2. Whisk it all together and throw in one tiny tiny pinch of salt, heating a little till the milk is steaming.

3. In a mug, plop in an egg yolk and stir in as much sugar as you feel like. Then, spoon in a couple of tablespoons of the hot chocolate milk mixture and stir quickly.

4. Turn off the heat on the milk and whisk the egg yolk mixture in briefly. The hot chocolate is ready when it gets all thick and glossy.

Ahh, how productive is this Sunday!

I guess I’ve graduated in the family to such a level where I can now be responsible for Christmas Eve dinner. It all started out innocently enough, with me volunteering to cook something for Christmas Eve. What a great idea! Why not just make up the rest of the menu while you’re at it. So, there I was, taking a nap in the afternoon when suddenly alarm bells went ringing: YOU are now responsible for CHRISTMAS EVE dinner. OH NO! Bigmouth strikes again.

So, I peeled myself off the air mattress and went down to get in battle mode. I put on some G’n'R and Led Zeppelin (more…)

…it’s autumn and everyone including yours truly is dropping like a pencil in a puddle from the flu. Terribly weak, sore, achy. Nothing else will do. It was chicken soup tonight… and enough for tomorrow as well. In fact, it made me feel so much better right away that I smoked a cigarette, and then felt properly sick enough for another bowl. Tonight’s version was pretty much similar to the usual recipe except I omitted the pork and used the carcass from an amazing roasted farm chicken I had two days ago from my poultry guys. Everyone should have poultry guys, with reddish hands and a handy way with a blowtorch. I love it when they wiggle dead birds in my face and wink at me lewdly. It’s such a mixed message. Am I supposed to take up fowl fondling, or did they fuck a duck?

Going forwards, today’s edition of the soup also included a small pot full of cocos (white beans) that I had simmered with port, goose fat, and one clove studded onion just a couple of hours before… and a nob of miso stirred directly into the bowl. Why miso? Oh miso yummy, oh oh miso yummy, oh miso yummy, me love you long time! (Cold medicine now touching delicate part in the brain that controls… ahem… BYE!)

The best experience I’ve ever had in outdoor eating has got to be the time we ate crabs against the sunset in Delaware. Following a small strand of roads against the cliffside, all of the family packed pell-mell into a Toyota hatchback, we stopped at a shack hugging a cliff off the sea. Just a sign for coleslaw and crabs handpainted on wood. Oddly, I don’t remember too much about the shack. Maybe it was open-faced against the ocean, maybe it was just a trailer, or maybe it was a giant timber house.

I am eleven, maybe more, maybe less. There is a rolling smell of the ocean, the sea, coming in from the bay. The colour of the sky was tawny golden but would drop to a deep elegant purple navy by the time we were done. All these picnic tables are spread out over a meadow, like so many happy couples at a dance, each open to the sky and the feasting mosquitoes which come out at dusk.

What’s truly great about the change of light and the chill in the air is the knowledge that fall, in all its foodie glory, is winking in my direction, or at least the direction of my stomach. There are grouse, plump squashes, fresh nuts, darkish moody grapes, dusky plums, crisp apples, and most importantly, mushrooms. This year, thanks to the changeable weather of August, the mushrooms have come early and plentiful. Cepes and girolles have dropped to a ridiculously low price of 16EU/kg. You’d have to a parapelegic dinkus not to get your ass to the market now.

Just some notes: 

Hazelnuts

Fresh hazelnuts are positively Rossetti-esque. Their wispy curled leaves, soft green in colour, are a kind of sacred grail, hiding the timid white nut inside. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to get to a hazelnut without a hammer.

Last night I had dinner at the Radio G’s, a man who had fearlessly turned fois gras into shaving-cream like mousse on the last occasion, a man who thinks nothing of putting an equal weight of butter into his potatoes for mash. Tonight was supposed to be some kind of indoor picnic and, in response, I came up with that most picnic like of all foods - beans.

Good God girl! You’ve lost your watusi! Nobody should bring beans, let along Boston Baked Beans, to a picnic. That’s like bringing some fat guy to your highschool reunion! (more…)

Having just come back from a week long vacation in food paradise Brittany, I am too bloated and sated to write. Needless to say, hundreds of little critters met their doom in that sunny sandy paradise and I will never be able to eat oysters happily in Paris again. Actually, I ate so much everyday that I had nightmares almost everynight, from whelks whinging to clams screaming. Oh, just thinking about that lobster punching its claw repeatedly against the lid while I held it down in pure sadistic glory makes me smile. All the hot saunas and all the nipple-erecting waters in the world won’t change the fact I put an inch on the waistline.

It’s raining outside and we have just finished lunch. I like it when it rains on Sunday. The market is quieter and under the coloured tarps the vegetables sleepily glow in the grey. The peppers are obscenely red and the roast chicken aroma drifts lazily our way.

I never know what I’m going to buy besides tomatoes. At least two kilograms of tomatoes, every week. They go in everything: sauces, sandwiches, salads, snuck in between fruits and cheeses. There are tiny electric cherry tomatoes, some with a little lick of a point at the end, for less than two euros at this time of year. The man with a ponytail and grey eyes is also selling fresh petit pois and firm leeks. Shelling petit pois can be better than taking yoga.
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