The Paris Cookbook Fair, aka Paradise

As I mentioned earlier, this Valentine's Day I had the good fortune to be invited to the Paris Cookbook Fair. And let me tell you, if you're a foodie, then this fair is your heaven.

When you enter the building, you're flanked by cooking demonstrations taking place on your left and right. In the corner, an all day long wine demonstration, or degustation, is taking place. In front of you, a large ramp leads you up towards the mecca of cookbooks, where fittingly bright white lights transform the grey hall into a light flooded paradise, where plates of macarons and glasses of armagnac go floating by, where the white-aproned chefs that mingle through the crowd could easily be mistaken for angles. You can almost hear that 'ahhhhhh' sound that you hear in movies when people walk through the gates of heaven.

One of the really amazing things for me (apart from all the free alcohol tastings) was the chance to see Michael Kalanty, teacher at Le Cordon Bleu in San Francisco, demonstrate how to bake petits pains from his award-winning book, How To Bake Bread: The Five Families of Bread. Needless to say, the little bread rolls that we were served at the end of the demo were tiny slices of heaven. I have never, ever tasted bread that good. And to top it off, Kalanty's style of teaching is not only incredibly clear and concise, but also hilariously funny and interactive. If you have the chance to buy his book, I've heard it reads just like he teaches, which means you're in for a laugh and a damn good loaf of bread.

Indian Dinner at the Slow Food Cafe

It's taken me way too long to get around to writing this post, but alas, I was detained at the Paris Cookbook Fair and was having way too much fun to come home and write.

Last weekend, the teacher of a class I'm auditing (about food in Paris) asked me to help her cook an Indian meal for 60 people at the Slow Food Cafe in Bastille. The theme was Indian, and being the only other Indian person in the class, I obliged. (Not to mention that I love doing this kind of stuff)

So I spent the next 12 hours of my Saturday, from 10 am to 10 pm, chopping, peeling, stirring, frying, currying, tasting and drinking. It was a wonderful learning experience, especially because the professor is South Indian, which means I knew nothing about the food we were going to be cooking.  I met her equally food crazy students, who were all there to help us turn this idea for a meal into something truly delicious. The metro ride home was particularly embarrassing, as I found out what it means to really be perceived as 'a smelly immigrant'. But I don't blame them; I looked dead tired, reeked of onions and ghee, had pieces of food in my hair and on my clothes...

Thanks to Courtney who was the food paparrazi and documented our entire amazing, tiring, onion-smelling day.

The kitchen

First we made the ghee, the basis of all the dishes. You make this by slowly boiling butter, then skimming off the frothy white bits and saving the clarified, golden syrup that is left at the bottom.

Then we made the raita, a garlicky yogurt dip with grated cucumbers. The purpose of this side dish, which is almost always to be found on an Indian table, is to soothe the palate if the curry is too spicy. 

Then we prepped the veggies for the rice pilau, a rice dish made with vegetables that are first sauteed in the ghee along with various spices, and then added and cooked together with the rice.

Then, the dahl, or lentils. These are yellow lentils, called moong dahl. They should be soaked before hand, and then they don't take too long to cook. This particular type is usually fed to children in India when they have a fever or a cold.

Making the turka for the dahl. This is the spice base for the lentils, made with onions, chilies,cloves, cardamom and mustard, cumin and coriander seeds, all fried slowly in ghee until caramelized, then stirred into the lentils at the very end. 

Then came the curry; chicken, sweet potato and tamarind in a tomato sauce, topped with fresh coriander. 

And last but not least, the dessert: halva, or sooji, is basically semolina fried in ghee, then cooked in water with sugar, cardamom, cinnamon and spices until it turns soft and velvety. Topped with cashews fried in more ghee.

All in all, an amazing experience that culminated in an amazing dinner. (Plus a couple of nice additions to my recipe collection)

Parisian Waiters

Just some quick bed time reading on a very interesting topic...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/8500246.stm

Passion Fruit Syrup

Before I left New Caledonia, I went on a little trip to the market to bring back home whatever delicious things I still had space to stuff in my suitcase.

One such thing was a big bag full of yellow and red passion fruit. This was the first time that I'd actually dealt with the fruit...up until now, I've mostly stuck to ordering passion fruit flavored ice cream or drinks, but I've never handled it in its raw state before. Contrary to popular belief, when the fruits look wrinkly, old and soft is when they're actually ripe. So once they start looking like they're rotting, you know they're ready to eat!

I decided to make a syrup out of the passion fruits, which can then be used either as a drink when diluted in water, as a flavoring for natural yoghurt, or better yet, as a way to spice up a traditional margarita. (2 parts tequila, 1 part triple sec, 1 lime and 1 part passion fruit syrup=a slice of tropical paradise in your Parisian living room).

It's really simple to make and a very nice way to get multiple uses out of your fruit.

The first thing you do is cut up the passion fruit (I had about 10 fruits total)

Then you scoop out all the pulp with a spoon, into a medium size saucepan. Add sugar (according to how sweet you want it, I put about 3/4 cup) and water, about 3/4 cup.

Bring to the boil and then turn the heat down to medium, so that it slowly simmers.

Simmer until it has reduced by about half, approximately 30 minutes. Then pass through a sieve to get rid of all the crunchy seeds (which ruin the velvety texture of syrup).

Add to a margarita and enjoy!!

New Caledonia and her Food

I'm going to take a small interlude here and step away from my usual location for a moment.

Having left Paris behind, I ventured East for 24 hours in a plane, until I arrived in luscious, tropical New Caledonia.

The cuisine there is very interesting. It's not so much that I tried new dishes that I had never heard of before, as it is about fresh, local ingredients. Like yellow fin tuna that has been fished 10 km away, prepared in a myriad of different ways (half cooked, sashimi, poelee with shrimps, grilled etc etc etc) Personally I had never eaten 'local' tuna before, because until now I had never been in a country where it was the local fish.

New Caledonian shrimps, (which you can actually find at Carrefour in France) are incredibly special. It was like it was the first time I had really tasted shrimp. I think we must have eaten shrimps almost every day, either bbq-ed, grilled, flambeed in pastis, in coconut curry, in chinese style beignets and the list goes on.

Of course there is also lobster, or langouste.  Rock lobster specifically, not the American kind, so it doesnt have any claws. This was the first time I tried lobster, and I had it just like youre supposed to: with you feet in the sand, a beer in your hand, lazily watching the turquoise waves lap against the white sand beach, while the coconut trees sway in the cool pacific breeze. (As per the cooking of the lobster, it was grilled and brushed with butter, garlic and parsley). In another place, they served the lobster cold, and decorated it with beautiful frangipanier flowers.

Then there are all the amazing fruits, like mangos, passion fruit, papayas, guavas, pineapples and green oranges! In the vegetable spectrum however, things were not really inspiring. Im not a big fan of taro, yams, sweet potatoes, potatoes and inyam, usually all served together in the same dish. Its a little too much starch for me.

I tried my best to document all these culinary wonders.
Here are my pictorial efforts.

The cold lobster decorated with frangipanier flowers

The shrimps flambeed in pastis, with curry and creme fraiche

Chou chou, a local vegetable

Red Papaya

Grilled Lobster on the beach

Green baby bananas, yellow baby bananas and mangoes

The most delicious fresh coriander aka persil chinois

Yam and Sweet Potatoes

Shrimps at the Market

Huge langouste at the Market

Local fish called Becs de Cane

Fresh herbs at the Market

Spring onions at the Market

Sprouting coconuts

Confit de canard

This is now the second time that I've had confit de canard, and I have to say, it just gets better and better.

By now I'm sure that my obsession with duck fat is pretty clear. But imagine this: a piece of duck leg, cured with salt, rubbed with garlic and then poached in its own fat for anywhere between 2 and 10 hours. Naturally it's always served with my favorite potatoes, which are roasted with garlic in the fat the leg has been poaching in.

Normally I'm not the kind of person who particularly digs fat. I generally tend to pick it off and leave it somewhere on the side of my plate. But there is something about duck fat that is just so delicious, and it seems to be so characteristic of French cuisine. Now I know that that smell I have been smelling on the streets of Paris when I walk by a bistro, that's duck fat. Just throw some in a pan at home along with a clove of garlic and voila, you too can smell Paris at home.

Nesting, aka how to make tomato sauce

"Dream a little dream of me" by Louis Armstrong is playing in the background while I slowly chop shallots, carrots and parsley. I only pause to take the occasional sip of cheap red wine I originally bought just for my sauce.

I'm nesting, or trying to win my never ending battle with tomato sauce.

For some reason, basic tomato pasta sauce is the one thing that I never manage to get right. But recently, during a discussion with my cousin on the major do's and dont's of pasta sauce, I was inspired to give it another try.

So here I am, after researching the topic for a good two hours, attempting to make a good, clean, simple but deep tomato sauce for pasta.

Step 1: Slowly brown a carrot, a shallot (bought in the French countryside on one of the many roadtrips) and 2 tablespoons of fresh parsley for 15-20 min, covered.

Step 2: Add 2 cloves of minced violet garlic (purchased from the same farmer in the country) Add tomato pulp or full tomatoes (canned), a splash of balsamic vinegar (apparently the acidity helps bring out the flavors), the rind of a piece of parmesan, a lot of red wine. Cover and simmer for at least one hour, adding chicken stock when it gets too thick.

Hopefully this one will finally be a good one!