David Lebovitz's Blog, page 116

Food Blogger Camp 2011

I'm beginning to think we should have our next Food Blogger Camp in some dark, gray place (like my apartment in the middle of the winter, back in Paris) instead of alongside a gorgeous sunny beach in Mexico. Because as much as we were all having fun learning about food styling and photography, and talking about the nature and intricacies of blogging, there's also a considerable amount of time we are obliged to spend poolside or on the beach, taking a break from the arduous studying everyone is deeply engaged in.

Okay, that's not really true. We're finding a good balance between playing and learning some photos tips, practicing with Mexican fruits, breads, and Kerrygold butter, which was especially good for me because I think there must be a few hundred posts on my site alone that feature butter.

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Cold Noodles with Peanut Sauce

Contrary to popular belief, people who work in restaurant preparing food rarely have time to eat. And even though the line cooks could sit down after they were done feeding everyone their first and main courses, that was the the most hectic time for us pastry folks since all the dessert orders would come tumbling in.

Bakers are known for eating things like butter sandwiches just because bread and butter are readily available and you don't need to sit down to eat it or ask the line cooks if they had time to made you something more nutritious. When I left the restaurant business, I made one promise to myself: I would never again eat standing up or just mindlessly jam food in my craw. So when people ask why so many pastry chefs and professional bakers aren't enormous—well, that's why.

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Why You Should Drink White Wine with Cheese

Some time last year, I pretty much stopped buying red wine. France was always la France, feminine, and I find white wines much more nuanced and interesting, like women. Whereas (depending upon where you live) men are tough and brutal. And in my own special way of reasoning the unreasonable, the longer I lived here the more I found myself gravitating toward the lighter, cleaner flavors of the vins blancs of la France. I also realized that I felt better when I woke up the next day if I stuck to whites. And since I have to wake at least once a day, that's a reasonable consideration.

There's the old adage about "if it grows together it goes together" and keeping in line with the French concept of terroir (roughly: shared territory), something like a Selles-sur-Cher, a tangy, yet delicate goat cheese from the Loire goes quite nicely with brisk Sancerre, Muscadet, or a Sauvignon blanc. Which, by no coincidence, come from the same region. Slightly pungent Langres from Burgundy partners well with bracing Chablis or unoaked French chardonnay. The milky-creamy cheese is rich enough; no need to blast your palate with a full-on red. (Although I'm wondering if my argument reached its first hole since some people are more concerned with the wine rather than the cheese. So I guess I'm not one of them.)

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Meert, Franck Kestener & Epices Roellinger Come to Paris

Three sweet spots have arrived to Paris. I took a bit of time to sample a few of their specialties—although I'm looking forward to going back to explore more of their confections. Here's a few favorite tastes from each…

This outpost of the famed pâtisserie Meert in Lille has opened on a corner, just a few blocks from the bustle of the overly-hectic streets of the Marais. Known for their spiced Speculoos cookies, pain d'épices, and brittle pain d'amande cookies, Meert is most famous for their "gaufres". Quite unique, these dainty, chewy waffles come sandwiched with either vanilla or speculoos cream. The shop is a bit austere, so expect understated elegance rather than opulence, a nice change of pace away from the shoppers crowding the sidewalks a few blocks away.

Meert

16, rue Elzévir (3rd)

Tél: 01 49 96 56 90

(Closed Monday and mid-day Sunday)

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Le Petit Saint Benoit

I was recently following an online kerfuffle about the role that folks who blog about Paris play on the Paris dining scene. On one hand, there's those of us that live and write about the city. On another are newspapers and magazines that do the same thing. I think I might be living under a rocher because although I do follow and read some of the various bloggers that also write about Paris, I don't know if I perceived any problems with what they were doing: like journalists and television hosts, they're simply writing and presenting information about restaurants in Paris.

There was some talk that people who live in Paris were writing up restaurants and people couldn't get in to them. It's an honest assessment as some of the "hot" restaurants in Paris have less than a few dozen seats and many of them only do one seating a night. So those eighteen seats because pretty valuable. In a place like New York City or San Francisco, for example, a restaurant might have fifty or a hundred seats, and do multiple seatings. Even so, reservations at restaurants du moment are often hard to secure in the states. But in Paris, with so many fewer seats, places fill quickly and extra attention can overwhelm a restaurant with a small staff.

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Cranberry Sorbet

Every year at Christmas, I make the dessert. With a bakery on every corner in Paris, there's not a lot of impetus for the locals to make a resplendent dessert for the traditional dinner. It's not that people don't bake, but with the small city kitchens and all the other stuff that limits time around the holidays, it's just as simple to head to the corner bakery and pick up a cake or tart. Or, of course, ask David to do it.

Because of my unique position as the in-house baker, dessert usually falls on my shoulders and if I presented a store-bought dessert, I would likely get run out of town on a rail. (When the trains aren't on strike, that is.) So this year since I got a bit pressed for time as the holidays approached, I decided to make something refreshing which could be made well in advance, and made an ice cream bombe. I always thought that a bombe glacée was a fairly well-known French dessert, but Romain had no idea what I was talking about and got a little frightened when I told him I was going to make a bomb for Christmas. So I didn't push it and just said I was making three different kinds of ice cream in a pan.

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Comté Cheese Ripening and Tasting

After spending a few mornings in the steamy, warm confines of the fruitières, where cheese making begins, I visited several of the fromageries, which are what they call the caves de affinage; the cavernous cellars where the cheeses are ripened.

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Comté Cheese Making

I was recently joking that when I'm forced to wake up very early in the morning I'm not sure if I should feel sorrier for myself, or for the people around me. So when my friend Jean-Louis, who works with the people who make Comté cheese finally gave in to my incessant pestering to join him for a visit, I was excited when after three years, he finally said "Oui". Actually, he speaks very good English. So he said "Yes".

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Le Creuset Holiday Give-Away!

As holiday thanks readers, through the generosity of Le Creuset, I'm giving away a six piece set of classic French cookware in cherry red. This colorful set goes from oven to table effortlessly and includes a large 5 1/2-quart round covered French oven, a 2 1/4-quart covered saucier, a 10-inch square skillet grill, and an 8- x 11-inch rectangular roasting dish.

This time of year traditionally food bloggers get together to raise money for charity.

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Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Admittedly, carrot cake isn't something one normally associates with Paris. (Although if you want to see a Parisian go ecstatic, show them a block of Philadelphia cream cheese.) But when I had a slice of Barbra Austin's carrot cake, I found myself polishing off the whole slice and begging for seconds. I met Barbra a few years back when she was shuttling back and forth between Paris and New York City, where she was baking professionally. I think I might have nudged her in the direction of making Paris her full-time home and I'm happy she's here. Barbra blogs at BarbraAustin.com, updating readers about restaurants and bakeries, and is a terrific storyteller as well. So I asked her not only to share her recipe, but to provide this guest post. Merci, Barbra! -dl

If I had a FAQ page on my blog, "What brought you to Paris?" would surely be the first item. The problem is that I don't yet have a clear answer.

I came to visit a couple of times in my 20s, and as a pastry cook I was surely inspired by Paris. But I didn't start studying French until 2006, and my motivations for doing so, and for embarking on a two-month stay not long after that, remain shrouded in some mystery to me.

(Not the reasons themselves, but how I could have possibly thought they were sound – something best discussed with lots of wine at hand.)

That trip was a bit of a disaster, yet I decided to come back the following year. And with subsequent visits things started to get easier. I used to think it was because I had become familiar with the culture and customs, and because I had made strides with the language and come to understand the rules of etiquette.

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