Walking around Paris the last few days, I made some observations. Growing up in NYC, one of the things that I took for granted was that cities were filled with trees. Every street and avenue in New York is lined with trees every few feet. Those sidewalks are also lined with something else, but that's another discussion.
As I began to travel, I noticed something about other cities that I found distressing. In cities from Pittsburgh and Tokyo, I found many great cities most unlike my New York. The streets were, like New York, bordered by pedestrian sidewalks and were filled with buildings both big and small, but those cities lacked a high density of trees. Many of their downtown streets had no trees at all. The effect of this was that those streets felt hard and cold, surrounded by nothing but stone, concrete, asphalt, and steel.
Yet Paris is a city that I have always, since my very first visit, found beautiful. The architecture oozes a sense of history and the detailing on the buildings lives as a testament to the craftsfolk that built them. Like New York, the grand avenues of Paris are lined with trees. But, as I just noticed for the first time, many, if not most of the side streets of Paris are virtually or completely treeless. While I'm not thrilled about this, it doesn't change the fact that I still find the city beautiful.
True, I find it feeling a little more "hard" than I had once perceived it, but I do understand. The sidewalks of New York, even on the side streets, are at least 6 feet wide, leaving plenty of room for both trees and pedestrians. For those of you who have had the pleasure of spending any time here, you know that the sidewalks on most Parisian side streets are little more than 3' wide. So I do get it...it would be nearly impossible to line these sidewalks with trees. But still, Paris remains the apple (not the big apple, perhaps, but at least the pomme) of my eye.
The narrow streets speak of history and shops are tucked into spaces most US shops would allocate to the loo. The lovely carved stone embraces the intricate ironwork of balconies and planter boxes outside many of the windows, and every street in the city bustles with life from 10AM to 4AM. Thank yahweh the bedroom in my rental apartment is in the back, away from the street.
CONNECTIONS
Yesterday, we had just a lecture instead of practical kitchen work, reviewing all of the techniques involved in making different sauces, stocks, and jus'. Right after class, I rushed off to catch the Metro out to the 15th Arrondissement. Cousins of our friends Michael and Iana, whom Katy and I had met at Michael and Iana's wedding, live out there and had invited me to lunch. When we met Nicolas and Nadia and Nicolas' brother Pierre and his beau Sophie in the US, we knew that we now had family in Paris.
Taking my tart from the day before as a little "thank you" for having me, out I navigated my way to their stop and walked the couple of blocks to their home. Have I sung the praises of the Metro yet? I've done it before and I'll do it again. This is one amazingly clean and practical public transit system. No matter where you are in the main Arrondissements of Paris, you're never more than 1/2 dozen blocks from a Metro stop. They're everywhere, well marked, and easy and affordable to use. I love walking in this town and do so all the time, but when you're in a rush, the Metro will get you there.
Visiting Nicolas and Nadia at home and going out to their little local corner restaurant/café for lunch felt so comfortable...so natural...that I realized for the first time that I could live in Paris. For me, it felt like visiting my siblings in NYC - from getting around on the subway, to the relaxed comfort of a visit with family rather than the more formal visits between acquaintances or mere casual friends.
I'm sure that I'll see more of them and their rather shy 4-year-old, David, as my visit here unfolds, as well as trips to l'Ami Jean with Pierre and Sophie, but I was fortunate enough to have a similar experience tonight...actually, given the time that I'm writing this, I guess it was last night...but night bridges two days, so it's still tonight. Can you tell that I'm tired? How kind of you to be diplomatic (and no, I wasn't talking to you, Mikey ;^).
Today was the first day of the national holiday, so we were off from l'ecole. I ran around to find a battery charger for my digital camera and...voila! I found one. Bought it. Took it home. Realized that it was the camera itself that was dead, not the battery. UGH!!! Now I need to go find a new camera.
But back to CONNECTIONS...
For our day off, one of my classmates, a lovely native Francaise named Florence, offered to have some of us join her for an evening of food shopping and cooking out at her house in the Paris suburb of Eaubonne. Three of us took her up on the offer and made our way through the Metro and RER regional rail system to head out there this afternoon. Since one of the other students, Suzie, from Thailand, was coming from my neighborhood, we decided to trainpool together.
Meeting at the Etienne-Marcel Metro station, we hopped a boxcar for Saint Michel, where we would change to the RER 3 to Eubonne. Everything was going exactly to plan - a perfect Oceans 11 start to our adventure. When we got to Saint Michel, the signs were clear and lead us right to the tracks. We waited on line to purchase our tickets, then got to the tracks just in time to miss our train. Asking at the ticket office, they told us when the next train would be...so we waited the 15 min or so until the scheduled 1:48 time. At 1:46PM a train shows up and all it says on the front is "SARA". We don't know if this is our train. There are no signs on it anywhere suggesting that it is going in the direction we want or to the stop we want. The woman who had helped us at the ticket booth was off somewhere else, and just as she returned, the doors closed.
She looks at me. She looks at the train, still sitting there with the closed doors. In French, she asks "Alors - why didn't you get on the train? That's your train!". I stumbled through my awkward complaint that the clock still showed 1:47 and there was nothing on the train to suggest it was our train. It would be another 15 min until there would be another train to our stop. Over the course of that time, each train to some other destination would pull in with a 4-letter word in front "VICK", "DORS"...whatever. Slowly Suzie and I came to realize that for some peculiar reason, RER decided it would be fun to name their trains rather than specify their destination in their signs. Josh switches to annoyed Frenchman tone "ALORS! Qu'est-que-c'est la? C'est stupide! Fou! C'est dinge! Idiots!". OK, got that off my chest.
So we finally get on a train to Eubonne, where Florence was to pick us up...only to get there 40 minutes late, with neither me nor Suzie having a cell phone, and neither of us having Florence' address were we to even find a taxi should we not find Florence. We circumnavigated the station, looking for a pay phone high and low when...zut alors! There was Florence. She had patiently waited for us there at the station. Becky showed up a few minutes later and off we went in Florence' huge Pontiac minivan. No joke.
On our trip to the super-marché, Florence was our tour guide. She gave us regions, qualities, and histories of les fromages et les vins, discussed the cuts of meat that we just don't see in l'Etats Unis, and bought dozens of cheeses and half a dozen bottles of wine for us to taste. As we got to the checkout, we all reached for our wallets and Florence dismissed us all with a wave, insisting that we were her guests. Mais non!, we said. Mais OUI!, she said. To avoid an international crisis that might draw the attention of the Bush White House, we conceded.
Back at Florence' home, we got to meet her relatively-fresh young bébé, Emma and her chats, Milou and Bill (interestingly enough named after the film Kill Bill...don't ask. I could tell you, but...). Emma was a most gracious hostess. Not a scream left her lips and she smiled and laughed her way through the entire visit. I would definitely have to say that this was the mostly smiley and happy baby I have ever met. Warmed mon petite coeur.
Florence put out the spread of fromages, saucissons (sausage), and cornichons, as well as some local farm butter, raisin bread, walnut bread, and pain Poilâne (from the well known Poilâne bakery) and continued our cheese lesson, labeling each of the cheeses with a slip of paper.I suppose that Becky, Suzie, and I (wow - doesn't that sound like a bunch of folks in a booth at a diner in American Graffiti?) all thought that we would be joining in for the cooking of the dinner, but Florence was determined to be our host and only let us help her prep a little while she prepared us a salad of baby greens with smoked duck breast, tomatoes, and raisins in a light raspberry vinaigrette. I seared some fresh foie gras and made a lingonberry reduction while she took the rest of the foie and showed us how to de-vein it and prepare a terrine de foie gras. Always learning. Yep. That's us.
Once the seared foie and the salad was consumed, Florence set about preparing one of her favorite dishes - magret de canard (moulard duck breast), cooked in a pan, then sliced and served with a crème fraiche, cognac, and pepper sauce. It was truly amazing. No. Really. It was just great. All the while, we're drinking Sauternes and Saint Emilion wines (not Chateau d'Yquem or premier grand crus, mind you) and sharing our life stories and why we're doing what we're doing.
Suzie (taking the picture of the fromages in what I have to note is an AWFUL photo I took with my crappy phone camera - all three of them look inconceivably better in person!!!) went to college in LA, has her mom and sister there, and has worked at the Four Seasons in Thailand. She came to Paris to attend the full program at Ritz Escoffier - 6 full months of classes, leading up to a master chef designation. Her goal? Move with her partner to Vietnam and get a job at a 5-star hotel. What hotel? Hey Katy? Remember where we had our most elegant dinner in Hanoi? Yep. There.Oh. The rest of you weren't there with us, were you? Good thing, too. That was OUR honeymoon, dammit.
Anyway - she's thinking about the Sofitel in Hanoi - a gorgeous structure in the heart of Hanoi with elegant colonial architecture and a set of luxury goods shops that would be right at home on the Riviera. I have to say that I love working with Suzie. She's open and friendly and sharp as a pin. I have not a single doubt that she'll achieve anything she aims for.
Becky (standing on the right w/the camera) has been a chief purser and chef on mega-yachts for many years. Putting up with super egos and living all over the world, we learned tonight that Becky made her first expat move from Australia to Mexico, not knowing what she'd do or where she'd do it. She worked in an art gallery (sound familiar, Iana?), stayed for a while with Doctor Who, and ended up several months ago working as an intern at a fabulous restaurant up in Mont Tremblant opened by a friend of hers. That experience convinced her to get more real cuisine schooling under her belt so that she could apply that to her business as a free agent for yachts and hopefully earn enough to buy herself some land to build a home on the lake at Mont Tremblant. Boo-ya!
How do I read that? Katy and I will have a place on the lake at Mont Tremblant to visit!
Finally, but most certainly not leastly, our hostess Florence. Florence has this beautiful new baby and wants to work close to home. She owned a restaurant, working 18 hour days, for many years, often as the sole person in the kitchen, serving as many as 200 people a night, but it became too much, so she sold it. Now, the grand plan is to convert her home into a cooking school and the Certificate in Cuisine from the Ritz is her ticket to credibility with students...and possibly even with the Food Network, with whom she has discussed a show!
That was a lot of great food and information to pack into one evening. Now...to bed.
Bonne nuit, mes amis!
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