You can see me in the reflection.

As 2009 draws to a close, blah blah blah. I have nothing inspirational to write or words of wisdom. I’m just glad the year is over. A chapter in my life is done, complete, locked away never to be repeated. One thing I will repeat is a visit to Bouchon. This year I dined at Bouchon FOUR times. Three of those times were in Las Vegas. Yesterday I visited the new Bouchon outlet in Beverly Hills.

Edited to add this picture. I can’t believe I forgot to add it. Why am I the only one wearing color? I realize it’s winter, but we’re at Bouchon!! Oh well, they all look great.

Me, Aaron, Jen, Michelle

The service was outstanding. The waitstaff was very proactive. We had a long leisurely lunch, mostly discussing the chaos  that is my life (I apologize for being a conversation hog: Jen, Michelle, Aaron!). This time  instead of my usual salad and gnocchi, I had the soup du jour (butternut squash) and the croque madame without the HAM.

My friend Michelle wrote a more in-depth description of our experience.  You can read it HERE.

The dark things in the middle are pomegranate seeds

On brioche!

I can't seem to order anything else for dessert!

Even the bathroom is gorgeous.

I went on a baking binge right before Christmas and thanks to  C & H Sugar who sent me a gift card to use  to purchase ingredients, I added a last-minute item of brownie squares to my cookie plate.  I made this recipe, but with out the nuts–because there are some people in my family who do not like nuts. They may be the same people who like HAM.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

2010 is going to be AWESOME!!

This is for all of my fellow students out there!  As a precursor to finishing my last week of classes this semester, I decided to make some delicious cookies for classmates (teammates, y’all!) and professors.   I invited two girlfriends from Denver to assist in my self-proclaimed Cookie Festival.  The menu consisted of the following: sugar cookies from Thomas Keller’s Bouchon cookbook, snowballs, chocolate-covered peanut butter balls, snickerdoodles, and Mimi’s icebox cookies.  Except for Mimi’s cookies,  everything went off smashingly.  I made my grandmother’s cookies not once but twice and botched them both times…down the sink they went!  However, I think I figured out the problem and will give it a third try in the very near future (and of course post the recipe and photos).

In the meantime, here are some photos and recipes for the cookies that managed to stay out of the sink starting with the sugar cookies:

Thomas Keller’s Sugar Cookies (Biscuits Au Sucre)
Makes around 36 small cookies

• 8 tablesppons (4 ounces) unsalted butter, softened
• 1/4 cup plus 1 teaspoon confectioners’ sugar
• 1 vanilla bean, split
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

The cookie dough can be made in a standard mixer fitted with the paddle attachment or in a large bowl with a handheld mixer.  Combine the butter and confectioners’ sugar and beat until blended.  Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean with a paring knife, and add the seeds to the bowl, and mix until combined.  Continue to add flour until the dough comes together in a smooth mass and no longer sticks to the sides of the bowl.  Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for about an hour to firm up slightly.

Dust a pastry board with flour.  Halve the dough and roll each piece into a log 6 1/2 to 7 inches long and about 1 inch in diameter.  Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate until firm enough to slice.  (Hint: The dough can be frozen up to a month).

Put a rack in the center of the over and preheat the over to 325 degrees.  Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.  If the logs have been frozen, let them stand at room temperature until soft enough to cut without crumbling.
Mix the granulated sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl.  Cut each log into 16 to 18 slices about 3/8 inch thick.  Coat each slice with the cinnamon sugar and place on the baking sheets.  Bake, in two batches, for about 20 minutes, or until light golden. Transfer to racks to cool.  Store in airtight container.

Next we made some snowballs…

Almond Snowballs
Adapted from the Wilton Cookie Exchange cookbook. Makes around 90 balls

• 1 pound (4 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup granulated sugar, divided
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 cups (about 8 oz) ground almonds
• Some confectioners sugar

Preheat over to 325 degrees.  Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, beat butter and granulated sugar with electric mixer until light and fluffy.  Add vanilla and mix well.  Add flour and almonds, mix with electric mixer on low speed until dough forms.  Roll dough into 1 inch balls.  Place them 1 inch apart on cookie sheets.

Bake for 20-25 minutes or until bottoms are golden brown.  Remove to cooling grid, and cool for 5 minutes.  Roll warm cookies in confectioners’ sugar, and cool completely.

Some chocolate-covered peanut butter balls…

Chocolate-Covered Peanut Butter Balls
Adapted from Gourmet Magazine (1991) makes around 36-40 balls

• 3/4 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
• 1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled, plus 6 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 3/4 cup graham cracker crumbs
• 1 cup creamy peanut butter
• a 12-ounce bag semisweet chocolate chips

In a bowl stir together the brown sugar, 1/2 stick of the butter, the graham cracker crumbs, and the peanut butter until the mixture is smooth and chill the mixture, covered, for 1 hour, or until it is firm enough to form into balls. Form teaspoonfuls of the mixture into balls and transfer the balls as they are formed to a baking sheet lined with wax paper. In a metal bowl set over a pan of barely simmering water melt the chocolate chips with the remaining 3/4 stick butter (BTW, I found I had to add more butter in order to make the chocolate loose enough to cover the balls), stirring until the mixture is smooth, and let the chocolate mixture cool. Dip the balls into the chocolate mixture with a fork, coating them well and letting the excess drip off, transfer them as they are coated to the baking sheet, and chill them, covered loosely, for at least 1 hour or overnight. (The balls may be double-dipped if desired.)

And finally, snickerdoodles (before baking and after)

Snickerdoodles
Adapted from Martha Stewart

Makes three dozen 3 to 4-inch cookies. Your mileage will vary by the size scoop you use.

• 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons cream of tartar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 16 tablespoons (2 stick or 8 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1 3/4 cups sugar, plus more if needed
• 2 tablespoons ground cinnamon, plus more if needed
• 2 large eggs

Preheat the oven to 400°, with one rack in top third and one rack in bottom third of oven. Line baking sheets with silicone baking mats or parchment paper; set aside.

Sift together flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt; set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, combine butter and 1 1/2 cups sugar. Beat on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Scrape down sides of bowl. Add eggs, and beat to combine. Add dry ingredients, and beat to combine. At this point, I chilled the dough for an hour (or you can overnight) before scooping it, because I otherwise found it too difficult to scoop into balls and roll but the original recipe doesn’t find this step neccessary.

Once dough has chilled, in a small bowl, combine remaining 1/4 cup sugar and the ground cinnamon. Use a small ice-cream scoop* to form balls of the dough, and roll in cinnamon sugar. Place about two inches apart on the prepared baking sheets. Bake until the cookies are set in center and begin to crack (they will not brown), about 10 minutes, rotating the baking sheets after five minutes. Transfer the sheets to a wire rack to cool about five minutes before transferring the cookies to the rack. In theory, they can be stored in an airtight container up to one week, but I say good luck wtih that.

* Martha recommends a size 30 (1 1/4 ounce) ice cream scoop but I used a size 40 (3/4 ounce) and they came out 3 to 4 inches across, or plenty huge.

As many of you know, Jin’s Patisserie in Venice (Abbot Kinney St), has the best macarons I’ve ever tasted.  Even the ones over at the Ritz in MDR, don’t come close to the exquisite texture and flavor Jin’s has to offer.  I recently had a chance to try a macaron from Bouchon Bakery in Vegas, and was blown away at the texture and taste.  I tried their limited edition egg nog macaron, and it was so heavenly.

You can find a Bouchon Bakery inside of Venetian in Las Vegas.  Enjoy!

Egg Nog flavor macaron

It was a huge macaron, however the flavor and texture was perfect.

Through a series of strange business circumstances I ended up flying from New Orleans to Las Vegas for a quick 24 hours (actually 20 hours to be exact). I had all kinds of plans for maximizing that 20 little hours … very little sleep, a little dining, playing a little craps and blackjack and getting a little bit of shopping done. Most of these plans didn’t materialize because my neck went out on Sunday and I was in terrible pain. So I had to alter my plans to fit my predicament.

I stayed at the Palazzo for the first time. It was fantastic. It’s the new hotel attached to the Venetian. The suites are gorgeous, a little more of a modern feel than the Venetian. I love the remote control that works everything in the room … all the lights and even the window shades and drapes … super cool. They also have great bathroom amenities.

I arrived late Monday night after working at the Convention Center in New Orleans all day. Our flight was delayed by about an hour and I ended up going right to bed.

On Tuesday morning I slept in a little bit and decided to go have a sophisticated breakfast at Bouchon. I love this place. It’s one of Thomas Keller’s (of French Laundry’s fame) restaurants. It’s serves upscale French Bistro fare in a classy environment with lots of wood, glass

and frenchie chalk boards with the daily specials written on them.

I ordered the Boudin Blanc. Boudin Blanc is a soft buttery white sausage and it was served with scrambled eggs, a housemade croissant and buerre noisette (browned butter).

I would have never thought about serving browned butter with scrambled eggs, but it was delicious.

The croissant was fantastic too, as are all of the pastries they serve here.

I will definitely go to Bouchon again. I love the authenticity, artistry and quality of the food and the whole experience. Though I will probably not order the boudin blanc again. It was good, but just not my favorite flavor.

After breakfast I wandered around for a while looking at all of the fabulous Christmas decorations that were going up.

These cute little (or should I say gigantic) bear bodies were made entirely of white poinsettias.

I thought this was a very … ummm … interesting Christmas ’sculpture’. But it was very pretty.

Bouchon had a lovely traditional tree.

After breakfast I wasn’t good for much with my neck / pain situation. I went across the street to the Fashion Show Mall and got a little bit of shopping done, then I spent the rest of the day at the Canyon Ranch SpaClub Aquavana. I didn’t get a treatment but just relaxed in the hot tubs and saunas.

By now it was getting close to 3:30 in the afternoon, time to shower and get ready for my last meal in Vegas. I decided to try Sushisamba.

I had been there once before with Deb and my Mom and Dad last summer and decided to go for round two this trip. Sushisamba is an ecclectic (to say the least) blend of Japanese, Brazilian and Peruvian cuisine and design.

Sampling small plates is a great way to go here so that’s what I did.

I started off with the Green Bean Tempura served with Black Truffle Aioli. It really was sublime. I love truffles!

Next course, I ordered the Yellowtail Sashimi Tiradato which had yellowtail sashimi, jalapeno slices and a lemongrass sauce.

Then I had one of their house specialty rolls, the Bobo Brazil roll. It had seared kobe beef, avocado, kalware, shiso, red onion and chimichurri sauce. It was an interesting tasty mix of flavors.

Overall I like Sushisamba, but the food feels a little bit too contrived for it to be one of my favorites.

After my early dinner it was time to pack my bags and head back to the airport. Homeward bound! I’m looking forward to my next trip to Vegas when hopefully I’ll feel better and ready to play Vegas style.

By Greg Bolton

Everybody who’s familiar with The French Laundry Cookbook tends to summarize it with some variation of the following:  “It’s one of my favourite cookbooks of all time. And it’s completely unusable as a cookbook.”

While Thomas Keller’s seminal cookbook is endlessly inspiring, flat-out beautiful, brilliantly written and chock-a-block with technique, only a liar or a masochist would deny that it falls a bit flat in delivering what we tend to expect from a cookbook: a collection of recipes to help you make stuff in your own kitchen.

How so?

On the one hand, if you have the technical prowess and experience to execute the dishes contained in The French Laundry Cookbook, you probably never needed it in the first place.

If, on the other hand, if you don’t have that prowess and experience, you would be wise to avoid attempting almost any recipe in the book, much in the way you might avoid buying a Ferrari to teach yourself how to drive.

The recipes in this book aren’t guidelines for making dishes. For the novice, even if followed studiously – or especially if followed studiously — they’re blueprints for endless frustration, potential humiliation, and near-certain failure.

All this is not to say that Keller is, for lack of a better word, a sadist. There’s a populist side to him, it seems. He really wants us to knock out his dishes, even offering handy microwave shortcuts to the meticulous preparations he employs in his kitchen.

But for all his many skills, Thomas Keller can’t teach just any home cook to recreate the fantastical creations he turns out at The French Laundry. Really, it’s a wonder he even ever tried.

So without disputing that The French Laundry Cookbook is indeed a very good book – one of my all-time favourites, in fact – I’ve always been left with a question that lingers awkwardly, like flatulence in an elevator: “What’s it good for?”

Thomas Keller was in Toronto this week to promote his latest release, Ad Hoc at Home – a visit hosted at the Metro Reference Library by The Cookbook Store.

I didn’t get to speak with him directly. I didn’t manage to join the line of chefs and food lovers who were able to ask him questions at the end of the engaging on-stage one-on-one with The Cookbook Store’s Alison Fryer.

Fortunately, for the polite crowd of 450 or so Torontonians, I didn’t get to ask him my question.

Fortunately for me, I didn’t have to, because he answered it, with no prompting, quite early on in the interview.

So what’s The French Laundry Cookbook good for, then?

In Keller’s own estimation, it’s certainly not a practical tool. So for those of us who’ve been frustrated by our inabilities to execute even the more basic recipes, rest assured that it’s not us, it’s him.

For good or ill – and we may wish we’d been told this earlier – The French Laundry Cookbook is not a manual but a historical record, a document that freezes a culinary moment so that, sometime in the future, we’ll be able to see what in hell Thomas Keller and his team were playing at, circa 1997, in an otherwise undistinguished little town called Yountville, California.

For Keller, the fact that he and his team managed to get it all down – and get it down so right – is of far more importance than the fact that he enabled a bazillion food nerds to try – and invariably fail – to duplicate his 27-ingredient tomato salad. (Who in hell ever heard of a salad recipe that can be found on pages 56, 57, 166, 238 and 271?)

Arriving more than 20 years later, and to similar rave reviews, Ad Hoc at Home is also a historical document, and an equally lovely one.

While it’s definitely of a piece with all of Keller’s work – there are the familiar, somewhat anal, exhortations to use parchment lids instead of regular ones, and to skim your stock almost fanatically – it’s fundamentally different in its focus.

For the home cook, I think this is a very good thing.

The French Laundry Cookbook, you see, was Keller’s answer to the question, “How do you cook?”

Ad Hoc at Home is, at last, the answer to the question, “How do I cook?”

In fact, as it turns out, there’s actually not all that much distance between the baroque creations of the French Laundry and the nice roast chicken and root veg you make at home. It’s really only a question of degree of difficulty.

At the end of the day, Keller’s latest book opens the kimono on something that was staring us in the face all along, but got lost somewhere among the recipes for tomato powder and Crèpinette de Byaldi. Thomas Keller – the mysterious alchemist whose very signature seems to be complexity – owes everything he has to alarmingly simple principles.

The first and most fundamental of these is listed, appropriately enough, on the first page of his new book.

Lest we dismiss it as one of his many idiosyncrasies – his hatred of tongs , for instance – his founding principle is offered up not as a tip, but as a mathematical equation, an iron law.

Here it is: “great product + great execution = great cooking”.

That’s it. Full stop.

While the home cook might never master what’s going on in The French Laundry Cookbook – there are simply so many components to execute well in any given recipe – that same cook can definitely master what’s presented in Ad Hoc at Home.

All that’s required is practice, diligence, and above all, determination, the quality Keller claims to value more than any other in his protégés.

“Passion is good, because it shows you care,” noted Keller. “But passion ebbs and flows. Determination trumps passion.”

That kind of no-nonsense talk permeated Keller’s entire talk. Some anecdotes:

• On the subject of his first expansion – Bouchon, a casual bistro down the street from The French Laundry – Keller noted that it arose from a mundane consideration: “I decided to open Bouchon because I love bistro food, but also because my staff and I needed a place to eat after service at French Laundry.”

• What about Bouchon Bakery, opened a little later? “We wanted to improve the quality of our bread. I mean, what else do you do?”

• Worried about maintaining quality in Yountville while he went through the process of opening his New York outpost, Per Se, he decided, on the advice of a friend, to simply close The French Laundry for six months so that he could devote his full attention to the new venture.“It cost my partners at French Laundry about $4 million,” he noted. “But it’s only money.”

• When asked to elaborate on the “culture” of French Laundry – something he’d mentioned a few times in passing – Keller spoke only of an organizational structure that he considers essential to all successful restaurants: a “tripod” consisting of dining room management, a good accountant, and a chef. (And for the record, that’s the order in which he mentioned them)

Towards the end of the talk, Keller’s steady stream of matter-of-fact, confident (but never quite cocky) patter was abruptly brought down to earth by a somewhat poignant personal anecdote. In opening Per Se, Keller had suddenly become a bi-coastal gastro-emperor, and this brought about an unexpected change in his job description:

“Once Per Se was open, I suddenly realized that I was out of a job. I’m most comfortable behind a stove – it’s warm – and I don’t really have that anymore. At 50-something years old, I’ve been working towards being a better cook my whole life. And now I’ve put myself out of a job.”

That confession floated around the room for a moment. But then Keller’s practicality muscled its way back in: the stove is great and all, he noted, but he’s already had two arthroscopic surgeries on his knees. Hustling in the kitchen is a young man’s game. It was time for him to slow things down.

And then, not quite content with what he was putting out there, he added another element: there’s a point, he said, at which you owe it to the development of the industry as a whole to take a step back, to become a manager and a mentor, to pass the torch – in Keller’s case, a powerful one of the butane variety – to the next generation of cooks.

I left the room thinking that unless I had just been completely hoodwinked, Keller’s reputation as a solitary culinary auteur – a pedantic if not entirely humourless Iron John of the stove – is largely undeserved.

By all appearances, the man is deeply collaborative and keenly aware that he’s learning as much from his team as they are from him.

His technique and skill are the envy of so many chefs. And my goodness, there were a lot of them among the faithful at the Reference Library on Monday. But humility and a genuine sense of obligation to the wider service industry – and to a broader culinary tradition – seemed even more striking than his vaunted ability to turn out plate after plate of awesome.

Trumping everything, of course, is that quiet determination.

Greg Bolton is a propietor of Pantry, Toronto’s Kitchen Cupboard: www.pantry.to.

For anyone that knows me fairly well, they know that I’m sort of..umm, well, obsessed with Thomas Keller. My first meal at French Laundry is still probably the most anxious I’ve ever been for a meal. In addition, Bouchon is one of my favorite casual restaurant picks in Las Vegas for simple, comforting food that hits the spot every time. And so when I found out Chef Keller was opening up a branch of Bouchon in LA over a year ago, I’ve been waiting for it ever since. I had been monitoring the food blogs and news for any bits of information that came out – expected opening date, the design of the restaurant, when they got their liquor license, when the reservation lines would open, etc. So when the reservation lines were set to open at 11am on Nov. 2, naturally, I was on the phone calling at 10:55am and was lucky enough to score two reservations on opening weekend!

I thought that the food  seemed to be pretty consistent with the other Bouchons (in Yountville and Las Vegas) where I’ve eaten. To start out with on both nights were the bread (baked in-house, slightly still warm) and white bean puree with crostini. I love the bread (Bouchon Bakery is one of my favorite bakeries) and the white bean puree was a nice touch, and good start to the meal.

Over the course of the two nights, we tried a variety of dishes. Appetizers first:

Celery root puree soup

The soup was tasty. Now, I don’t think ‘celery root puree’ is on the top of anyone’s lists of soups to try, and maybe that’s what made this a pleasant surprise. It had an earthy flavor with a little bit of cinnamon – my friend remarked that “it tasted like Thanksgiving.” How fitting!

Florentine quiche – There is a daily quiche each day, and it was a simple Florentine quiche on Sunday, which has spinach, eggs and cheese as the primary ingredients. The custard filling was very smooth and creamy, and the spinach was not overbearing. Overall, a very nice quiche.

Another of the daily appetizer specials was escargot covered in puff pastry.

I can’t say I’ve had a ton of experience with escargot, so I thought this was a great opportunity to broaden my escargot horizon. The puff pastry was interesting, but I don’t think it was necessary. The size of the pastry was larger than the escargot itself, and made fitting the whole piece in your mouth a little troublesome. The escargot was cooked in a pesto-like sauce with a lot of olive oil.  Pretty tasty.

Mussels and Oysters – Bouchon has an extensive seafood bar consisting of lobster, crab, shrimp, mussels, clams and oysters. There’s nothing exactly special with the seafood here – it’s quality seafood presented in a very simple manner. We decided to try some of the mussels and oysters. They were both good; however, there wasn’t anything that stood out about these over any reputable seafood restaurant’s offerings.

Next, on to the entrees:

Braised lamb shank

The presentation here is beautiful. The lamb shank was quite good, although it may have been a little dry compared to what I remember it being in Las Vegas. There was a lot of meat (which I like) and a knife was not really even necessary. Also, the lamb was not gamey at all.

Short rib

As can be seen, the short rib was a large square, a little different preparation that I’m accustomed to. However, it was rich and delicious. The accompanying Savoy cabbage was nice as well, soaking up the juices of the meat.

Steak frites

I think Bouchon has some of the best steak frites in the land. This is partially because I think these are some of the best french fries. They’re cut and shaped similar to McDonalds’ with a good ratio of crispy outside to fluffy inside, and seasoned with just salt. Just like that. Good stuff. The steak is a flatiron with a caramelized onion topping and a compound herb butter.

Sauteed gnocchi – This is the only vegetarian entree on the menu (though, there are various vegetarian options elsewhere on the menu), and there’s nothing really special about this. It’s served with various vegetables and a butter sauce. Simply made, but I can see someone getting tired of it after a few bites.

Roasted chicken

The roast chicken here is really good. I don’t really order chicken very often, but it was probably the most surprising dish.  It was moist, juicy and flavorful, and the jus adds an extra flavor boost. I’m not totally sure how this is prepared, but it’s a great example of a successful roasted chicken.

Finally, dessert. Always save room for dessert when coming to Bouchon – it’s not to be missed!

Pistachio Pot de Creme – There is a daily custard, which was pistachio on this night. The custard was nice and smooth, sweet with a good pistachio flavor.

Profiteroles

These are basically “cream puffs” stuffed with homemade vanilla ice cream and topped with a Valrhona chocolate  sauce.  Each of these parts are executed perfectly, and the resulting dish is just delicious. My favorite dessert here.

Bouchons

The bouchons are a signature dish (cork-sized brownies, essentially) with homemade vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce (the same ice cream and sauce used in the profiteroles). For some reason, the bouchons seem to taste better alone, when purchased from the bakery. I’m not sure why, but even though this is a tasty dish in itself, it seems to be less than the sum of its parts. I recommend trying to get the bouchons alone to snack on later.

The service was professional and on-point – quick but not hurried. Impressive for a brand new restaurant – the service was without a glitch. The staff really seems to genuinely be happy to be there..and hey, who can blame them – the TK Restaurant Group is really a special group to be a part of.

I was lucky enough to get a kitchen tour which was just incredible. Love it. The staff was open to any questions one may have about the kitchen, and it was an experience witnessing the whole kitchen in motion. There’s a live camera feed to the Bouchon Yountville, similar to the Per Se – French Laundry setup. It was a really nice treat to a great meal.

The kitchen looking straight ahead – notice the Bouchon live feed in the background, and Chef de Cuisine Rory Hermann on the right in the middle.

The kitchen looking to the left.

The kitchen looking to the right.

Overall I had a great experience here. I would say Bouchon is probably my favorite casual-ish dining place in LA, and I will be back.

Oh my, my. This morning I braved a prodigious line at La Brea Bakery and managed to secure the very last loaf of brioche. I had George behind the counter (he is the BEST) slice half of it, and leave the remaining half intact so as not to dry out. Tonight we’ll be having sliced brioche with a pot of foie gras that my parents brought down from Bouchon Napa Valley. The rest of the brioche will be hosting turkey/stuffing sandwiches on Friday. That is, if little Sabine (my parents’ new puppy) doesn’t make off with the brioche first…

Between school and work(s), things have been pretty hectic lately. Since my last update, I’ve picked up jobs at Bouchon, Del Dotto, and the Rudd Center for Professional Wine Studies. I’ve also completed 2 more classes, but more on all that later. First, Fall is here and it’s time for giving thanks. So, I give you all a recipe for the holidays thanks to Chef Briwa at Greystone during our lil’ field trip to Bellwether Farms. I must say, these turned out pretty kick-ass.

First, soften the cold butter by pounding with a rolling pin. The butter should be used cold as you want to keep it relatively firm.

Next, knead in the sugar and flavorings until homogeneous. Add the two flours and mix until smooth. Shape dough into logs and chill to firm.

Preheat the oven to 325° F. Cut the logs into ¼” slices and place slices onto a greased sheet pan. Bake at 325° until lightly golden and crisp — about 20 minutes. Cool before serving.

And there you have it! They go great with some ice cream or coffee/tea and lavender can easily be subbed out with other herbs Happy Thanksgiving!

la bonne chère : good food

So in all my philosophizing about bibliothèques, misprononciations, and Mac Do, I realized that j’ai complètement oublié to talk about my trip to Lyon!  Lyon, “ville de la bonne chère” (city of good food), according to every gastronomic text I’ve laid my hands on, did not disappoint me in terms of la bouffe- and thankfully, my over-stuffed bide has lived to tell about it.

If I described every morsel that I ate in Lyon, I think I might start to feel ill (or ashamed), so instead, I’ll raconter the most memorable edible moment of the trip (and the most typically lyonnais), my visit to a bouchon.

For starters, what is a bouchon?  Well literally, it means “a cork” (as in tire-bouchon).  However, during the time when people traveled from city to city on horseback, a bouquet de paille would be placed outside the auberges where you could drink wine, and another word for this little bundle of hay was a “bouche”, later known as a “bouchon”.  So essentially, a bouchon, is a cozy, rustic little restaurant in Lyon where you can (and should!) drink wine.

They say you’ll never eat a bad meal in Lyon, that it’s the town to go all-out and faire la bonne chère, but I wasn’t expecting to encounter one of the most outstanding (and filling) meals of my life when I walked into Café des Fédérations.  With its simple red and white checked nappes and kitchsy-memorabilia decor, it almost reminded me of an old-school diner à la française, with a dash of my grandmother’s kitchen thrown in.  And in fact- right next to our table was a photo of la bonne dame herself, the grandmother of the owner- and creator of the original recettes, still used by the chef at Café des Féds.

We were immediately asked if we would like an apéritif, and were served a basket of gratons-a lyonnais specialty- which resemble walnuts, but are actually fried pork skin/fat (and terrifyingly delicious–I actually bought a tin of these to bring home to my family for Christmas because they were so good).  We then waited for the serveuse to provide us with a menu, but she never did, which made us a bit suspicious.

Suddenly, an appetizer course arrived at the table across the room, and then at the four-top just to our left.  A bit confused, we continued to guiltily grignoter on our gratons, as an intriguing and rich scent filled the room.  Finally, it arrived- oeufs meurette- and what a specimen it was!  A perfectly poached egg in a complex, heavenly wine sauce (complete with onions, bacon and the house secret- fond de veau).  I literally would have licked my plate if I wasn’t in a restaurant.

Maison Fondé ici depuis bien longtemps = "Restaurant Founded A Really Long Time Ago"

But that was only the beginning – We ordered a bottle of red wine (you had the choice of the house red- Beaujolais or Côtes du Rhône- or white wine), which arrived with the second course : a salade frisée aux lardons, charcuterie, et une salade des lentilles verts (frisée salad with bacon, a sliced-meat plate, and a green lentil salad).  By this point, I knew for certain the restaurant was exceptional, but when the owner, himself, walked over and placed a terrine de sanglier (wild boar terrine) on the table, as a preface to taking our order for the main course- I almost keeled over with joy.  (Have I mentioned I love all things sanglier?  Gamey-meats are my favorite!)

J’ai commandé the quenelle lyonnaise and Robert, my travel buddy, sprang for the joues du porc (pork cheeks).  It was a difficult decision for me, as the other option I was considering was boudin aux pommes (blood sausage with apples), but as the quenelle is a famous lyonnais dish, I decided the boudin could wait.  To be honest, I didn’t know what a quenelle was, but just that it was local and the chef said it was one of his grandmother’s most famous recipes.

It arrived steaming hot, a beautiful baked mound of flour, butter, eggs, and milk, surrounded with a creamy langoustine (crayfish) sauce.  The only thing I’ve eaten with a texture even similar to this was my father’s pop-overs on Sunday mornings or my mother’s yorkshire pudding.  It was crusty, and then inside, moist and doughy and fluffy – all at the same time.  The sauce was extremely rich, with a lobster-bisque-ish flavor, and I literally can still remember the taste of it now, as I write this.  Sadly, I could really only fit half of the quenelle in my stomach.  Robert ate all his joue du porc, which was tender and succulent in a brown flour-and-meat-drippings sauce, and I really thought we might die.

And then came the cheese.

Oh, as only the French can do- just when I’m ready to mourir, s’evanouir because I have totally overeaten- they bring me fromage and suddenly it’s as if I forget the past five courses…
We had fromage blanc avec ciboulettes (a yogurt-like cheese with chives), Saint-Marcellin (a famous semi-soft goat cheese from lyon), Picodon (a firmer goat cheese), and last-but-not-least, a cheese concoction I cannot even being to describe.  The trucmuche (atleast, I think that is what it was called- literally “thingamajig”)- it was a super-fragrant, almost putrid mixture of all the cheeses we had eaten separately.  The first bite was a shock.  But the second and third bite were incredible.  It was spicy and salty and assertive- almost like goat cheese and good parmesan cheese mixed with anchovies and cracked black pepper.

Anyway, eventually they took away the fromage and the trucmuche.  And then we had to eat dessert.  For which I felt ironically revived (thank you cheese plate!), but Robert was fading fast.  I had a tarte praliné (a pink almond and sugar tart -lyonnais specialty) and he had a gateau du chocolat fondant (like a gourmet chocolate lava cake…bad idea when you’re already more than répu).  I don’t think I could really even appreciate at that point what dessert tasted like, and was definitely happy when the coffee came to burn a hole in my stomach.

Speaking of (not) burning (a hole in my pocket)…that entire meal, wine included, cost just around 30 euros per person.  Which is absolutely incomprehensible.  If bouchons existed in Paris, I would be in real trouble.  Thankfully, the food in Paris is a bit more expensive (or the portions are smaller…that feast would have been at least 60 or 70 euros in Paris)- which prevents me eating the way we did in Lyon on a regular basis.

All jokes about the fact that we trop bouffé aside, that meal was easily one of the top 5 I’ve ever had in my life.  The partially preset menu actually reminded me of one of my favorite meals ever–a jaunt to a tiny hole-in-the-wall in Ravello, Italy where a little old lady told me- “you no choose what you eat, I choose what you eat”– because sometimes if you just let chefs cook what they want, you’ll eat so much better than if you had chosen each course yourself.  And in comparison with the big-city, busy feel of many Paris restaurants (where waiters have a tendency to be either too polite or not enough by my standards)- this chaleureux trip into the gastronomic heart of France, where the owner and his family teased you incessantly while serving you plate after plate of incredible food- was just what I was hoping for.

Bref, Robert kind of summed it up when he told me : “I’m going to make my parents take the 2 hour train-ride both ways, just so they can eat at this restaurant”.

—vocabulaire—

bibliothèques > libraries

j’ai complètement oublié > I completely forgot

la bouffe > the grub

bide > belly

raconter > to tell a story

lyonnais > typical of lyon, coming from lyon

tire-bouchon > bottle opener

bouquet de paille > bundle of hay

auberges > hostels or hotels

faire la bonne chère > eat well

nappes > tablecloths

la bonne dame > the good woman

recettes > recipes

apéritif > before dinner drink

serveuse > waitress

grignoter > nibble

fond de veau > dried/powdered veal stock

J’ai commandé > I ordered

mourir > to die

s’evanouir > to faint

fromage > cheese

répu > full

trop bouffé > ate too much

chaleureux > warm, welcoming

Bref > In short

After lunch in Geyserville, we started a slow drive into the Napa Valley. If you have been here before, you know that it is completely exciting and overwhelming to drive past so many vineyards whose wine you have tried or want to try. It is tempting to stop at every single one! We were tired and wanted to check into our hotel though, so we went straight to Yountville and the Yountville Inn. Check in was smooth, and before we knew it we were chillin in our massive hotel room.

It was so beautiful and big. The fireplace was not that necessary as it was around 65 degrees out, but we put it on anyway. After getting a bit of rest, we decided to walk over to Domaine Chandon. Yep, Domaine Chandon was within walking distance of our hotel. That’s how we roll

As you can see the property is absolutely stunning. It is beautifully landscaped and grand. The on site restaurant just received a Michelin star. We each enjoyed a glass of bubbly, and while it was of course lovely, I have to say that the vibe at this winery was perhaps my least favorite. Most likely because it is such a large and well known label, the tasting room was PACKED and a little chaotic. It was not like the other wineries where we were able to chat with the staff about terroir as we sipped. It was worth a visit just to see the space and because it was so close to our hotel, but I probably wouldn’t rush back. What can I say? Give me a dusty farm road dotted with tasting rooms in old houses or even warehouses, and I am a happy girl. I love it to be about the wine and the people!

After Domaine Chandon, it was the moment we had been waiting for.

Trying to get reservations at any of Thomas Keller’s Yountville restaurants is a pretty big job. We gave up on The French Laundry and moved on to Bouchon. To my great surprise, I was able to book a reservation about a month before our trip on Open Table. Love that site.

We were obviously very excited to eat at Bouchon. Upon being seated, we were brought a little dish of pistachios along with fresh baguettes from the Bouchon bakery and mouthwatering creamy butter.

Our first course was a half dozen oysters. Hoping for some more Hog Island or Kumamoto oysters from the West coast, I was more than a little disappointed when our server brought us Island Creek oysters from Duxbury, Massachusetts. I LOVE Island Creek oysters, but being on the completely other side of the country, I really wanted to eat local varieties. They were still good though Served with a spicy cocktail sauce and mignonette, which went perfectly with the baguette.

For my entree I ordered Gnocchi a la Parisienne sautéed with garden vegetables and beurre noisette.

The gnocchi was very unique as it had an extremely slight crispiness to the outside of it, and soft fluffy centers. The gnocchi dough was made with mustard which came through delicately and gave the whole dish a subtle mustard flavor. The vegetables were very fresh and cooked just enough to be softened but still had a bit of bite in them.

We were still a bit hungry after the entrees, so we perused the dessert menu and opted for the special, Bouchon brownies on valhrona chocolate with vanilla bean ice cream.

Yesssss. . . this was worth the trip to Yountville alone. The chocolate was such high quality, the brownies were crisp on the outside and gooey on the inside, and the ice cream created that perfect cold, creamy contrast to the richness of the chocolate.

Overall our experience at Bouchon was good, and I am happy we were able to have the experience of eating at one of Thomas Keller’s restaurant. Next time in San Francisco, we need to hit up another Keller’s (Hubert) place- Fleur de Lys. Can’t wait to go back. . .

The December issue of Esquire has a great article (sorry, not online), p. 102: “The night Thomas Keller came to my kitchen” documents how the magazine writer cooked in his apartment kitchen from Keller’s new book, “Ad Hoc at Home,’ with Keller in tow. Seems like an obvious bit of PR, but Keller says no one’s ever invited him to their home to cook from one of his books. That initially sounds like an odd bit of pathos given his rich pageant of a life… but on second thought, if you write books like this, you have no one to blame but yourself. As a nonpro home cook, even a very good one, you are either an unflappable optimist or a small-time masochist if you expect to cook a whole meal from “The French Laundry;” if you also think it might be fun to invite Keller over as a witness, I might suggest that you don’t need an apron, but a hairshirt.

How cookbooks say, "Do not touch."

Anyway. Ad Hoc is not the French Laundry. Ad Hoc, however, is the only restaurant where I read its menu every day (mailing list here). My dinner at Ad Hoc was everything I hoped for/expected; I haven’t eaten at FL (yet), but it’s food executed at the very highest level — and most of us don’t live there, or even want to. Ad Hoc, however, is something like how I would cook every day given the time/money/garden/opportunity, which is another kind of highest level, which means it’s a book I am going to buy.

[ Another New York Trip ] : Day 3

So as we rode our bikes around Central Park, we found this cute little area by the water to have our picnic. The food was from Bouchon Bakery, and we ate a tasty butternut squash sandwich, an ahi tuna salad and a ton of pastries. yum.

If you haven’t already baked these cookies that have taken the food blog world by storm, you must drop everything and make them NOW. Seriously, they caused an existential crisis in me. They are that GOOD.

At first, you take a bite and think: “it’s a chocolate chip cookie. it’s good” and then the flavor hits. AMAZING. It’s like an EVIL TWIN of the standard chocolate chip cookie. A little darker, a little mysterious, and very irresistible. And I’ve always been drawn to the bad boys. The recipe uses special dark (molasses) brown sugar, no vanilla, and makes you sift your chopped chocolate (two kinds: I used 41% milk and 70%)  to make sure there is no chocolate dust in the cookie.

In celebration of the opening of Bouchon Beverly Hills this month, I made Thomas Keller’s Chocolate Chip Cookies from his new cookbook Ad Hoc.

If you don’t know by now, I am a big fan of Bouchon. And that’s putting it mildly. I’ve been counting down the days for the local branch of Bouchon to open…but because of my travel and the holidays I probably won’t make it to the restaurant until after the New Year.

Of course, now that I’ve tried the cookies I really want to go to Ad Hoc the restaurant.

You can find the recipe for these bad boys HERE. The recipe says to place 8 per sheet, I baked six per sheet and would suggest that number because they do spread.

We took CB’s Mom to see Wicked at the Gershwin theatre on Saturday. I’m not a big Broadway musical fan, so I was surprised to find it quite entertaining. It’s not common to find a Broadway play with two female leads, and the two ladies who played Glinda and Elphaba were delightful and very talented in their own ways. After the show, we had a light dinner at Bouchon in the Time Warner Center. We had tomato soup and grilled cheese (fontina and gruyere) with a simple mesclun salad. To top off the night, we headed over to the bakery counter for TKO (which tastes like a grown up version of an Oreo) and Linzer Tart cookies.

The culinary highlight of my weekend was going to the Brooklyn Flea on Sunday. Brooklyn Flea is a mishmash of a craft fair and garage sale, and takes place every weekend in two locations (Fort Greene and Dumbo, under the Brooklyn Bridge). It has the usual grandma tchotchkes, wobbly side tables, vintage clothing and sour-smelling melamine jewelry. Not to disparage them because I love an old flea bargain as much as any Park Slope hipster.

But what’s unexpected and delightful were the food vendors! I think I died a lard-induced heart-attack and went to diabetic heaven!!

There was Pizza Moto, a mobile wood-burning oven pizzeria where I wolfed down a Margherita pizza with spicy pepperoni. Then it was onto Choncho’s Tacos for fish tacos of deep-fried cod in a light batter with all the fixings: green onions and cream sauce, tomatillo salsa, red onions and cabbage with a twist of lime. Then there were the pickle duos–Rick’s Picks and McClure’s Pickles. I’ve been a long time fan of Rick’s Picks. My favorites are his Caul of the Wild (Cauliflower pickled in a golden curry brine) and Smokra (Okra smothered in paprika with a kick of cayanne pepper).

CB scored a 2 lb. jar of Garlic and Dill Spears from McClure’s Pickles. We were informed that you can make more pickles by adding fresh cukes to the brine, or if booze is your inclination, add the brine to kick up your Bloody Mary.

So what else was there that was good to eat? There were two chocolate vendors (Nunu Chocolates which had delicious caramel truffles and a vegan, non-diary chocolatier, Fine + Raw Chocolate). There were beautiful and tasty apple turnovers, plum tarts, and cookies the size of flying saucers. I couldn’t resist getting one of the huge chocolate chip cookies that a perfect ratio of walnuts and semi-sweet and dark chocolates in every nibble. Also there were lobster rolls, pappusas which were corn tortillas stuffed with meat and cheese, and kimchi hot dogs from Asia Dog.

It wasn’t all about food though. I scored a framed 1950’s Baby Ruth ad for five buckaroos: “Candy enriched with Dextrose!”

toujours en galére avec ma base à 4 gardenas (6 ou 7 éme modifs)

comme on peu le voir sur la dernière séquence de la vidéo, j’ai plusieurs petit problèmes :

-il faut que je refasse un bouchon, car il y en as un qui reste coincé

-que je fasse des réglage de synchronisation, les bouteilles partent pas toutes ne même temps il y a de leger décallage

-que je trouve une valve pour le tuyau de la fusée

à suivre …..

Yop tout le monde !!

cette semaine je me suis lancé dans la construction de la base, aprés 3 désassemblages et 3 remontages

c’est pas encore fini, problème de tuyaux trop petits, et mes raccords gardena trop différents les un des autres.

voila le résultat un peu différent du croquis (la planche rouge N°3 est passé en 4 éme position)

Base normal

Base actionnée

Les gardenas sont pas encore fixés à la planche supérieur.

Le systeme d’actionnage :

Reste encore du taf, du coup je mettrais le tuto (bien que compliquer a mettre en ligne car j’ai fait et refait la base), une fois la base terminée

Le croquis des tuyaux :

A suivre ….

On my recent trip to France, I went to Lyon to visit my friend Guillaume, a fellow doctor, cook and gourmand.  It was my first time in Lyon and I was looking forward to the culinary adventures that he would take me on.  For our first dinner in Lyon, he chose Café des Fédérations, a most fitting and appropriate introduction to the gastronomic capital of France.

Café des Fédérations is one of, if not the most famous bouchon in Lyon.  A bouchon is a type of restaurant in Lyon that serves traditional Lyonnaise cuisine which is heavy on offals, sausages, pâtés and all things oozing with animal essence.  There’s an emphasis on hearty meat dishes, and it’s certainly not a place for vegetarians or the faint hearted (or the cholesterol plaque-hearted).

With sawdust on the floor, red and white checkered tablecloths and sausages hanging from the ceiling, this famous bouchon that has been in business for more than 80 years is casual, lively and festive.  Bouchons were born in the 17th and 18th centuries from the traditional inns that silk merchants stayed at while traveling through Lyon.  There are around 20 officially certified authentic bouchons in Lyon according to Les Authentiques Bouchons Lyonnais. All others are imitations and wanna-bes.  Meals in a real bouchon are cheap, the meals are hearty, and the people are loud, obtrusive and garish  (but they’ve got a heart of gold and are always wanting to share a laugh with you).  Our server’s tie says it all.

The 36 Euro prix fixe menu comes with tons of appetizers, cheese and desserts, as well as bottles of Macon and Côtes du Rhône wine, and about 8 choices of entrées.  Along for the ride at the adjacent table was Bill Buford, amateur chef and author of Heat, who was being filmed for a BBC documentary.  I was impressed that my travel partner Shirley recognized him right away.

We knew that we were in for a hearty experience when they placed a basket of freshly fried pork skins on our table with a bottle of Macon.  Pork cracklins and white wine…the proper way to start a bouchon meal.

A large plate of the most beautiful and succulent saucisson de Lyon with cornichons came with a huge bowl of lentil salad, or caviar de la croix rousse.  It’s a lentil salad in a cream sauce that is named after a region in Lyon called La Croix Rousse, a hilltop neighborhood that was once populated by silk workers. As the name suggests, it’s a ’poor man’s caviar’, although they use high quality French green lentils, or lentilles du Puy.

Oeufs en meurette, a classic Burgundy dish, is poached egg in dark and concentrated red wine sauce.  The brown sauce was very rich and had the salty intense flavor of a broth that had been cooking on the stove for days.  The egg was perfectly poached, and its thick yellow yolk carefully enveloped the full-bodied sauce.

Frisée aux croûtons et lardons, or salade Lyonnaise, is a classic Lyonnaise salad with frisée, bacon, croutons and eggs in a Dijon vinaigrette.  Little did I know that this was the only fresh vegetable dish we were going to get before a full-on meat fest bonanza.

The terrine du chef that day was a terrine de canard, a wonderfully rich duck liver terrine that we lapped up very quickly with our bread.

Poulet au vinaigre, or chicken cooked in vinegar sauce, couldn’t be more Lyonnaise.  Farm raised chicken braised in a vinegar, wine and tomato sauce that was really flavorful and nice.

The joues de porc bourguignonnes , or pork jowl with red wine sauce, was a no-nonsense simple dish of meat, potatoes and gravy- nothing less, nothing more.  The sauce had a really basic robust pork-y flavor to it that I almost couldn’t handle.

Tête de veau with sauce ravigote was my favorite.  The braised calf’s head was extremely tender and luscious, and the tantalizing richness of the soft collagenous exterior was enhanced by the acidity and tartness of the ravigote sauce.  Ravigote is made with white wine vinegar, mustard, shallots, capers and herbs.  The word ravigoté means ‘reinvigorated’ or ‘freshened up’, and this sauce did just that.  In true bouchon style, this calf’s head came with small fine black facial hairs on the skin.

Quenelle de brochet sauce nantua et ses écrevisses, pike quenelle with creamy crawfish sauce, is also a typical Lyonnaise dish.  Quenelles are made by combining panade (milk, butter, egg and flour mixture) with diced pike fish fillets, eggs and butter which is then molded into its characteristic torpedo shape and poached to a light fluff.

Andouillette sauce moutarde is perhaps the most unique and intimidating of all Lyonnaise dishes.  You will either love it or hate it.  I’m not even sure if it’s an acquired taste, something that one can actually learn to love.  It’s pig tripe rolled up into a sausage shape, served with a grainy mustard sauce which isn’t powerful enough to mask the shockingly putrid smell of pig shit.  I am a huge fan and lover of offals (organ meats), and nicely fried or braised tripe is in my top 10 favorite foods of all time, but even I couldn’t stomach the tripe (ha ha).  It tasted and smelled like a dirty urinal, and I couldn’t handle more than a nibble.  As somebody who prides herself in being able to eat any part of an animal, this andouillette put me to shame.  My friend Gregory, on the other hand,  was loving every bite.

Tarte aux pralines roses is a pink praline tart, much different from dark chocolate pralines that we are used to here in the US.  You can see pink praline desserts everywhere in Lyon, as I did in a praline stand in Les Halles.

Gateau au chocolat with creamy custard sauce was rich and decadent.

Raisin ice cream with berry sauce was delicious.

We were also presented with a humongous cheese assortment, as if we could eat anymore after our carnivorous banquet.  The cheese plate included St. Marcellin, a beautiful creamy soft cheese, and cervelle de canut, a soft cheese paste of sorts with fromage blanc, white wine, garlic and herbs that literally translates to ’silkworker’s brain’.  I think they should also be serving cheese crusted with aspirin and Lipitor.

My Lyonnaise bouchon experience at the lively Café des Fédérations was incredibly fun and memorable.  Although a lot of the meat dishes were a bit too heavy and hardcore for me, I loved the concept of no-nonsense country cooking that warms you to the bones.  The staff were all so friendly, I almost felt like they were family by the end of the night.  It’s not a graceful, dainty or upscale restaurant where you can find white linen tableclothes, let alone even a menu, but they’ll still treat you like royalty and make it an unforgettable evening.

With large full bellies bursting at the seams, we laughed and skipped our way back home along the beautiful Saône river.

http://www.lesfedeslyon.com/

10, Rue du Major Martin
69001 Lyon, France
+33 4 78 28 26 00

Closed on Sundays, last seating for dinner at 9:30pm

Random trivia:  Did you know that the optical ‘lens’ is named after the food ‘lentil‘ because it has the same shape?

Une façon plus littéraire de dire “embouteillages”

Huit mois ! Huit longs mois sans ma prose extatique ! Huit interminables mois sans mes mots doux ! Huit mois vides de ma verve rédactionnelle ! Comment as-tu fait lecteur ? Comment as-tu pu tenir le coup ? Comment as-tu pu continuer à voyager dans la blogosphère sans ta dose hebdomadaire (ou moins, hein, parce que je suis pas une machine à verbiage quand même, faut pas pousser) de… moi ?

Bon, ne t’inquiète plus lecteur, tout doux, pose-toi, là, comme ça, je suis là. Si, si, tu peux y croire, je vais te pondre un billet à rallonges comme j’aime les faire dans cette rubrique, un billet sans queue ni tête la plupart du temps (parce que pour la queue, faut attendre un article étiqueté “culture administrative” et pour la tête, un “impromptu” serait pas mal je pense) mais avec beaucoup de morceaux de moi, de ma vie qu’est trop trop passionnante tellement que tu en es super jaloux et j’oubliais, de top belles photos de la mort qui tue.

Tu vois lecteur, ce week-end promet d’être juste “énorme”. Oué. Prends quarante cinq minutes, je te raconte. Tout a commencé un froid jeudi d’octobre (non parce que j’ai beau habiter le Sud, fait une de ces tempiotes de daube en ce moment !), merci monsieur Mistral. Alors que votre serviteuse ouvrait son tiroir à bordel (savez, celui qui récolte tout ce qu’on veut avoir sous la main + tout ce qu’on sait pas où mettre + tout ce qu’on veut pas jeter + tout le reste… je vais faire un article sur le sujet d’ailleurs, genre tag), voilà qu’elle tombe (pour de vrai, ma main s’est cognée dessus, saloperie) sur une smartbox offerte pour son anniversaire il y a presque pile poil un an tout juste.

Curieuse de me remémorer ce que mes topines avaient jugé bon de m’offrir, je jette un oeil. Et là, sur quoi tombe-t-il mon oeil ? Sur la date limite de validité… fixée au 31.10.09. Enfer et putréfaction ! Je calcule vite fait bien fait, reste plus que 15 jours. La boite mentionne “valable tous les jours de la semaine, week-end inclus”. Je calcule encore plus vite et là, effroi. Terreur. Vide intersidéral. Néant, trou noir et nébuleuse (cherchez l’intrus). Il n’y a pas UN jour pendant lequel nous serons, mon homme et moi, sans enfant(s). Pas UN ! Aaahhh les familles recomposées, vacances partagées et résidence 1/3/5, c’est le pied !

Pas grave, on va en emmener. Alors, on a le choix : quatre, trois ou un (rire jaune). Ok, on a pas le choix : c’est ce week-end ou une nuit entre le 28 et le 31 octobre, et encore, pour la deuxième partie des vacances, en ce qui me concerne, même pas sûr que mes loupiots soient chez leur père (je lui laisse le bénéfice de craquer avant (rire démoniaque – je ferme la double parenthèse. Donc, c’est… ce week-end ou jamais si on veut être sûrs de le faire. Ok, j’ouvre le bouquin, je regarde ce qui se passe dans ma région parce que tant qu’à faire, autant essayer de limiter les trajets voiture pour se taper une nuit et le petit déj’ aux frais de la princesse (enfin, d’une nounou et d’une biologiste en l’occurrence, mais c’est pas le sujet).

Une demi-douzaine d’hôtels, tous plus standings et modernes les uns que les autres. Je regarde le thème de la box et je me dis, normal (sourire désabusé), allez, coup de coeur au feeling, j’opte pour un hôtel luxe au coeur d’un petit village d’une presqu’ile qui n’a jamais eu l’honneur de recevoir ma visite.

J’appelle, mais sans trop d’espoir. Et là, je tombe des nues : une super nana très sympa, arrangeante pour le gamin en plus, qui nous file une chambre “supérieure” pour qu’on ait plus de place, qui nous propose d’arriver dès 11 heures et qui en plus, a un charmant sourire dans la voix. Le pied. J’organise vite fait tout ça auprès de mon homme et nous voilà décidés à visiter Cogolin, Grimaud et Saint Tropez le temps d’un week-end de deux jours.

Programme du vendredi : début du week-end à 14h05, heure du départ du train qui emmène mon chéri vers son fils encore parisien (puis retour des deux dans notre contrée pour le début de soirée). Et c’est là que commencent nos emmerdes. Oui, emmerdes, et le mot est faible, tu peux me croire lecteur. On arrive à cette gare TGV bien connue de nos petits pieds et déjà, en garant la voiture, on constate qu’il y a un peuple assez dense. Qu’importe, on se dirige vers le quai que l’on connait par coeur. Et là, grosse frayeur (oui, encore une) : le train affiché l’est avec un retard annoncé de 2 heures et des brouettes. Mais ce n’est pas encore le pire ! Le pire, c’est que ce train n’était pas le nôtre, mais un qui devait partir dans le sens inverse (soit, vers Marseille).

Voici la raison. Un caténaire explosé vers Marseille. TOUS les trains sont retardés de deux heures. On imagine déjà notre petit week-end remis en question, car impossible dans ces conditions de récupérer le bouchon à l’heure dite et de reprendre un train dans la foulée, mission impossible. Quand soudain, une lueur d’espoir jaillit en même temps qu’un contrôleur plutôt rigolo “vous pouvez grimper dans celui de 12h38, mais pas de garantie de place assise”. Qu’est ce que je m’en fous qu’on s’en fout de la place assise ?! Let’s go, c’est parti mon kiki, si le train rattrape un chouïa de retard, on peut même espérer que l’homme et son bouchon attrapent le train de retour prévu.

Avec la SNCF, tout est possible

Il l’a fait. Ils l’ont fait. Mon homme m’appelle son bouchon récupéré et le train initialement prévu pour le retour attrapé. La vie est belle, keep cool, be human, stay funky (ou un truc dans ce goût là). Je me prépare aux vingt minutes de voiture qui m’emmèneront jusqu’à la gare TGV pour récupérer le duo de choc et sur la route, je m’exclame joyeusement que c’est la fête dans mon pays parce que dis donc, qu’est ce qu’il y a comme voitures ! Et à environ, quoi, disons, 4 mn 30 d’arriver, juste un putain de petit Pont de L’Europe à choper, les flics en bloquent l’accès. Le temps d’un regard sur le pont suivant et je suis désespérée : l’accès est tout aussi bloqué. Demi-tour à la Starsky et Hutch, je m’arrête devant un agent de la police nationale qui confirme ma crainte, je dois me retaper le chemin dans l’autre sens, puis tenter une incursion dans la ville par un autre côté, non garanti d’accès. Gé-nial. La raison de ce bordel ? (nan parce que fallait voir, mais sur cette grande route, sous ce fameux pont et tout autour, des dizaines et des dizaines de voitures garées, des gens qui grimpaient les talus, des klaxons et appels de phare dans tous les sens, une vraie scène de fin du monde), ceci :

Les agriculteurs en colère, qui le disent, le montrent, le hurlent et bloquent les ponts. Je ne commenterai pas l’évènement. Juste que pile le soir où je dois aller chercher mon homme et son fils dans un mistral à décorner les boeufs et encore plus dans une gare TGV, ça craint. Mais, si c’était terminé… à peine ai-je fait demi-tour que mon chéri m’appelle et me dit d’une voix désemparée “inutile de te presser, nous sommes à cinq minutes de l’arrivée, mais… ils prévoient un retard d’une à deux heures” (rire irrépressible). La cause ? La même que l’après midi : caténaire pété. Bon, ben… on verra qui arrivera en premier !

Il devait être 20 heures quand j’ai fait demi-tour sous le pont d’Avignon (qu’est pas LE pont d’Avignon, mais un des plus importants quand même), soit déjà une bonne demie-heure de trajet… il était 21 heures passées quand j’ai commencé à tourner autour de la gare à la recherche d’une place qui m’éviterait de payer des mille et des cents à la caisse de la dépose minute. Leur train n’avait toujours pas bougé, alors un repas express fut commandé, en partie pour faire patienter le petit. Et le temps pour moi d’aller faire de même chez ceux qui font une histoire du goût, ben ils étaient enfin repartis,, heure d’arrivée ? 21h30… à peine une petite heure et demie de retard pour eux, et la même durée pour faire 16 km pour moi, une paille !

On en est là du week-end… pour le moment, bouchon dort, chéri joue à Boom Blox et moi je rédige, je rédige, je rédige… je vous préviens, tous, là, tous autant que vous êtes : le premier qui a l’idée de mettre une vache sur l’autoroute pour protester contre le prix de la chapelure ou celui qui voudrait faire le blocus de la station service où nous ferons le plein pour lutter contre la discrimination des voitures essence, je m’occupe de son cas ! (non, n’insiste pas Ros’, pas comme tu l’imagines, en plus douloureux et  laaaaaaargement moins sexuel)

On a décidé de passer un week-end tranquille, pétard, c’est pas la Seuneusseufeu ni les paysans provençaux qui vont nous en empêcher, non mais ! Parait même que la météo est de notre côté pour une fois, crotte quoi !

Ils sont six.  Ils sont dix.  Ils sont des milliers.
Ils sont un troupeau.
Ils sont tous jumeaux.
Ils sont blêmes avec les yeux pochés.

Ils sont las et blafards,
Ils sont vidés et meurtris,
Ils écoutent les rails qui crient,
Ils sont coincés.  De l’espace ils sont avares.

Carnivores des minutes matinales,
Monstres des sous-terrains,
Aveugles et sans fanal :
Il faut gagner son pain avec son train-train quotidien.

Spectres aux oreilles pleines
Ils sont tous reliés par ce qu’elles contiennent,
Par ce fil blanc,
Et ces bouchons déments.

Le Ipod et la cité.
Rite sacré.

©Madeleine Royere-Koonings

Vous avez besoin d’un cadre, de la colle (le mieux est d’utiliser un pistolet à colle), et des bouchons usages (des vrais en liège, pas ceux en plastique). Ouvrez le cadre et enlevez le verre, puis refermez-le. Retournez-le et disposez les bouchons en alternance sur le fond du cadre, en faisant attention car ils sont tous différents en longueur ou épaisseur. Lorsque vous êtes satisfait de la disposition, collez-les. Voila, votre dessous de plat est prêt !

PS : j’ai utilise ici un cadre de petite dimension, mais cela peut être fait avec un plus grand, il est par exemple possible d’en faire un tableau pense-bête comme ceux présentés ci-dessous.

©Madeleine Royere-Koonings

My idea for turning this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe–Split Level Pudding–into frozen pudding pops was a bust. I made 1/3rd of the vanilla pudding and the full-recipe of the chocolate ganache and decided to make frozen pudding pops.  I had enough to make 3 popsicles, but I could only successfully release one from the mold.

But that’s okay because I had a fun weekend in Las Vegas with friends from high school. And I ate at Bouchon twice. Once for dinner and once for breakfast.

At Bouchon with friends

I will always *heart* the bread, but the sourdough waffles for breakfast were so amazing. I will never ever be able to make waffles as good as Bouchon’s. They were so perfectly light and crispy. And they were served with Tahitian vanilla butter.

The Bread and Me

And by the end of the weekend, my friends were all taking pictures of their food. In addition to eating at Bouchon, we ate at Tao and as luck would have it, the nightclub portion of Tao was celebrating their 4th anniversary and we got in VIP. Jennifer Love Hewitt was the host and also in attendance were P. Diddy and Tiger Woods.

P. Diddy at Tao

We also ate at Tom Colicchio’s craftsteak. Where they gave us free Muscato with dessert because we were celebrating a friend’s birthday (and they customized our dessert choice, monkey bread, with a birthday message).

At craftsteak with friends

Thank you to Garrett of Flavor of Vanilla for selecting this week’s recipe. If you would like the recipe, vist his blog or buy the book.

I knew it would come to this. It was unavoidable.

In the course of planning a trip to San Francisco followed closely by a trip to Yountville, I immediately thought “chicken” — a perfectly logical connection.

Well, it is if you connect the dots: San Francisco is the home of Zuni Cafe and Yountville is the home of Bouchon.

Within the span of three days, I had the rare opportunity to sample arguably two of the world’s best roast chickens.

Who could pass that up? Certainly not me.

First, Zuni’s roast chicken. It takes an hour from order-to-table. Normally, waiting an hour for food in a restaurant would be insane, but Chef Judy Rodgers has been serving her roast chicken for more than two decades, and no one seems to mind the wait.

Partly because the rest of the Zuni menu is full delicious distractions. Like an heirloom tomato and cucumber salad surrounding a pile of creamy burrata or a plate of whisper-thin Serrano ham slices paired with garden-fresh black-eyed peas and paprika oil.

Thomas Keller is fanatic about chicken, too. His Bouchon bird sports gorgeous mahogany skin and a chicken jus that would go over just as well if served in a glass — to drink.

But Zuni’s chicken comes with an outrageous bread salad studded with currants and pine nuts. The bread is buttery and crisp when it arrives at the table, but by the time we get to the last piece, it’s soft and chewy from soaking in savory chicken jus.

Bouchon has killer bread, too, but it comes before the meal.

Pain d’Epi (“ear of wheat”) baguettes are placed on the white butcher paper tabletop along with a saucer holding salted butter, white bean puree drizzled with extra virgin olive oil and two toasted baguette slices.

Zuni’s chicken serves two and costs $48. Bouchon’s chicken serves one and costs $26.

Both chickens have been brined, resulting in juicy, moist birds. Both birds are high-heat roasted with lots of herbs.

Bouchon’s chicken has crispy skin; Zuni’s does not.

But Zuni Cafe has a secret weapon — one that tries desperately to sway my opinion about who has the best roast chicken.

Smack dab in the center of Zuni Cafe sits a wood-fired, brick oven. I guess it’s not really a “secret.” You’d know it’s there even if you didn’t see it, although it’s impossible to miss. Smoke permeates the room, even wafting out onto the street.

So is it really fair to declare one bird over the other? Given the opportunity, I’d ecstatically sit down to another plate from either restaurant.

Both restaurants have cookbooks with pages that painfully, minutely, spell out the detail the making of the chickens. My own roast chicken recipe borrows the Bouchon technique of high heat.

Now that I’ve sampled Zuni’s smoky version, I’m contemplating a date with the smoker box on my grill. But it won’t be the same.

Sometimes the best way — perhaps the only way — to experience the real deal is to go straight to the source. The Zuni Cafe roasted chicken wins by a log.

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