Une affaire de gout

Last night we watched Une Affiare de Gout, a film by Bernard Rapp which was original and interesting. It was not a masterpiece, but was a good movie and we enjoyed it. Nice to see a few French movies in a row, and bonus for me they all had French subtitles available.

Le bonheur est dans le pre

We watched le bonheur est dans le pre last night - a very enjoyable French film from 1995 which was funny, entertaining and touching all at once. A great film to let go of the stress from the week and cuddle together while laughing.

Highly recommended.

Veal Paprikash

I made veal paprikash tonight and it looked remarkably like this picture. Onions, red peppers, veal, tomatoes and lots of paprika. Creme fraiche and ricotta gave it the creaminess (not much of either).

Delicious, served over spaghetti squash.

It was an easy stew dish and I'd add it to the rotation in a heartbeat if E likes it...

All the President's Men

We watched this 70's classic when we should have been sleeping, but the movie was really good and I hadn't seen it since high school.

Redford was so cute when he was young, and the 70's haircuts and corduroy suits were fun to watch.

Star-studded cast and a good way to relax after a stressful couple of days.

Roasted Garbanzo Beans with Swiss Chard

I made this recipe tonight looking up swiss chard on a foodie website, as many of my culinary adventures begin, having an ingredient on hand and looking up how to use it. I'd actually started looking for swiss chard and ricotta, but found this with good ratings and decided to go for it.

It was good and surprising - even my husband liked it, hard to imagine for a vegetarian dish! I didn't use nearly as much oil as the recipe called for, and I used a cookie sheet to roast the chickpeas instead of an 8x8 pan, which I think ended up with the chickpeas overcooked and chewy - almost crunchy. It wasn't bad, but it was kind of weird, and in the future I'd use a lower temp oven, a deeper dish as they recommended, and pay more attention to the cooking time, as the French garbanzo beans are considerably smaller than the American ones, which might also explain the over-cooked phenomena.

To the swiss chard I added beet greens, and the combo was really good. There was a strange sweet smell in cooking which I didn't like and could taste a little - either the beet greens or the bay leaves. Next time I'll try without bay leaves and see... beet greens are a rare delicacy, hard to predict if they'll be around in the future or not...

I'd make it again!

Richard Serra - Monumenta @ Grand Palais

Yesterday I went to see the Richard Serra exhibit for Monumenta at the Grand Palais.

It was high on my must-do list this season, as I still can't stop thinking about his exhibit at the MoMA last summer, so I was hoping to have another dip into that atmosphere.

I enjoyed the work "promenade" that he did here in Paris, but found it much less powerful than any of the large-scale steel works from the MoMA expo. Clearly there was a huge challenge, and the space is really vast and over-the-top with the curves and curlicues. He did do a decent job of making you feel the height of the building and of changing perspective as you approached and distanced the 5 plates, but I still found it less interesting than I had hoped.

I'd imagined dragging my husband to see it (as I regretted a lot that he did not see the MoMA expo) but it didn't leave me with a need to see it again or share it, as the other had.

Still, a nice hour in the afternoon, and the Grand Palais space is pretty cool overall. And the weather was perfect for it - neither too hot nor too cold, which isn't often the case in that hall.

Roasted Vegetables!

Tonight I went crazy with roasting vegetables (and then eating them).

I started with roasted curried cauliflower which I mixed with 2 onions.

Next was zucchini, also with an onion, but with Greek spices.

Finally, I had a big bunch of celery and was curious, so I did that (but just with salt and a little sugar).

All were good, the cauliflower was best, the celery is interesting. In terms of prep it doesn't take long, the cooking is easy but takes a while. The veggies shrink a lot in roasting - it was easily half the volume you get with steaming, but VERY yummy. Also more calorie-dense, as you add oil to the veggies before roasting, but not huge amounts.

Definitely something I'll keep doing!

Le Dieu du Carnage

Last night we went to the theater with a friend of ours to see Le Dieu du Carnage by Yasmina Reza.

The big success of this play has been the presence of Isabelle Huppert who was indeed superb. The play itself was well acted by all, and although I first left the theater thinking it was "okay" upon reflection it's better than that - and deeper too. I think there is a lot of what she does that takes time to sink in to get the full meaning.

Enjoyable, and not a terribly late night due to the fact that there is no intermission (bonus on a weeknight!)

Julien

Last night before the theater we went to one of the Flo group Brasseries, Julien, which is just around the corner from where we saw the play.

It was a good typically-French brasserie meal, I had a salad w goat cheese followed by monkfish with spinach and green beans. Yummy, probably because it was all bathed in butter.

The best part of the restaurant was the decor - its an art nouveau masterpiece, and the picture doesn't begin to do it justice. Great paintings on the wall (I especially liked the peacocks) and sculpted arches around the hall, and the huge green stained glass ceiling windows.

Weekend in Brittany

We were away for a long weekend since Friday. We spent one night near Dinan, France and visited Saint Malo and Dinan, and then moved further West on the coast.

Dinan is one of the prettiest and most charming towns I've visited - right up there with Avignon and Les Baux de Provence. Really lovely, not so touristy, a world apart in time. I was less impressed with Saint Malo (although there were some charming areas), largely due to the overrun of the international shopping brands and cheap tourist fare as you walk in. Ugh.

The first gite was much nicer and it was a shame we only spent one night there. The second was bigger and better suited to having all the friends and kids with us for the end of our stay, but further from fun things to explore, and not as charming inside.

It was a nice weekend and left me hungry to explore this part of France some more...

Le Grand Alibi

We went to see Le Grand Alibi this afternoon. It's a modern-day adaptation of an Agatha Christie story, and we chose it to start to introduce A to mystery movies. It was well-played but lacking in intrigue. At no moment did we think we knew whodunit only to find out we were wrong. But a fun way to spend a few hours.

Roasted zucchini, spring onions & peppers

Last night I also made one of my first roasted veggie dishes. I went to the epicerie across the street (as we have empty veggie bins right now) and grabbed the few things that looked decent - 2 zucchinis, a big green pepper and a bunch of the spring onions (like scallions but with big round bulbs at the bottom).

Cut them all up, threw on a few spices and popped them in the oven. An hour later I stirred them up and added some olive oil as they were drying out. Back in a lower oven until we were ready to eat - and they were DELICIOUS.

It seemed like a really elaborate dish when in fact it was totally simple. And good for dinner parties I suspect because the timing is pretty flexible.

I'll definitely be doing more roasted veggie dishes - and looking into ways to do them on the BBQ too.

Mushroom risotto

Last night I made mushroom risotto to accompany E's fish on the BBQ. I was trying to work out a side dish and nothing looked very inspiring.

I saw the aborito rice in the cupboard and decided to try to make risotto - a first for me. I'd read a few recipes in recent months, in particular after E had made an attempt a few months back that was really not good (he just put the truffle rice pack in a huge pot of boiling water like it was pasta... uck).

It took some time because you have to stand at the stove and stir constantly, but it wasn't hard and it was VERY good. Everyone loved it, and I'm looking forward to finding new risotto recipes!

London

We were in London for the long holiday weekend. For a terribly expensive city it wasn't terribly expensive, as I'd won a travel voucher at work for the train tickets, and we have a friend who lent us his apartment on Great James Street in Holborn. We spent plenty of money on shopping and eating out however...

The highlights of our trip were probably the New Globe Theatre show of King Lear, shopping at Fortnum and Mason, and my quick expedition to see Peter Doig at the Tate Britain.

We walked all over the place, and that was fabulous. We had some rain the first few days, but it was still nice to walk around. I don't know how many miles I walked in total, but it was a lot, most days I was on my feet from morning til night only sitting down for lunch and dinner... It felt good.

We found a great coffee place just near the apartment - Caffe Nero (which has outposts all over London). One of the best coffees I've had in my life, though - it stands out along with a memory from a cafe in Madrid... Yum.

On our first evening we walked around in need of a late-closing grocery store and ended up buying a bunch of stuff at Sainsbury. We then wandered around until we found a pub not too far from home, and E enjoyed a beer there.

On Tuesday we walked across town to get to Nahm for our lunch reservation. Nahm was the Thai restaurant recommended to us, and we really liked it even if we were one of 2 sets of customers... it was a rainy Thursday and apparently most of the lunch crowd had canceled.

From there we walked around in an arc and circled over to Harrods, which was fun and expensive, not just for the food halls, but also for the stops at the perfume counters and at Molton Brown... A quick cab ride home to drop off the packages and then we headed to see Shakespeare at the Globe. We walked home which was fun, but were so surprised to find no restaurants or pubs still serving - we ended up eating hot dogs on the street as we walked by Covent Garden.

Friday we had lunch reservations at St John, which we'd been really looking forward to, especially as E likes offal (I do NOT, but to each his own) and it was supposed to be great both according to our friend and also everything we'd seen in books and online. But we were really disappointed, nothing was that good and what I ordered was actually pretty bland. Friday afternoon I went walking around hitting some old favorite stores of housewares before losing myself for a while in an English-language bookstore with a great selection, something I can't do in Paris and I seem to have little time for on my trips to America. I'd spent the morning shoe shopping, picking up a few pairs of Clark's as they are comfortable and not terrible-looking...

Saturday we walked again all over town and had lunch at Fortnum and Mason, having shopped our way there and then shopped all over the store. E took a cab home loaded down with our purchases and I was torn between going to the Tate Modern for a quick tour (I didn't have much time before closing) or trying to get another shopping errand done - unfortunately I chose the shopping, which was a mistake as the area of Oxford Circus is ugly and unpleasant in the best of times, but on a Saturday afternoon was a huge zoo and in addition I didn't even find what I was looking for. I did not make the good choice - I definitely should have gone for the Tate Modern.

I raced home to meet E and head out again for dinner, this time we'd reserved at what was supposed to be one of London's top Indian restaurants, the Red Fort, but unfortunately we again were disappointed. I actually was pretty happy with it - it's better Indian food than we find in Paris, and although it was expensive and not Fabulous I was happy with it - but E was not, and it put a damper on the evening.

This morning I ran around like a crazy woman crossing London in 45 minutes to spend 45 minutes at Peter Doig and then run back to the apartment for another 45 minutes before racing to the train -- but it was such a great exhibit that it was worth it.

I left as I came - Loving London. Next trip there - more time in museums, much less time shopping.

Peter Doig at the Tate Britain

I saw a fabulous exhibit today at the Tate Britain. I really had to boogie to do get there and back in time for our departure from London, but it was worth it, even if I didn't have time to see anything else at the museum.

Peter Doig is a contemporary painter who has a magical complex and beautiful style. Pure joy to see, it was really terrific.