How to make a happy hippie in Paris

How do you make a hippie happy in Paris? Just send him/her to Naturalia, Paris's own chain of health food stores! Each store has the feel of a small independent health food store (like Rising Tide, the co-op my mom shopped at when I was a little kid on Long Island - also the site of my infamous "chocolate versus strawberry soy ice cream bar" indecision tantrum), but there are enough of them scattered throughout the city, so you really don't have to go out of your way to find one. For example, there's one right near my apartment, and one right near the CUPA program office!

I visited the latter the other day and picked up some grapefruit eucalyptus bubble bath (since I only have a bathtub here - no shower!), a jar of organic coconut oil (which I use as body lotion - nature's moisturizer, sans chemicals!), and a container of calcium-fortified oat milk (recommended to me by a friend in the States; I found it deliciously nutty and comforting). I was pleasantly surprised at the store to see everything in one would expect from a natural foods store in the States, plus a selection freshly-baked breads - including whole wheat, 5 grain, and even quinoa bread!

OK, confession time...

You knew it would happen sooner or later: I ate an entire baguette today.

All by myself. I even ate part of it during class, which is strictly forbidden at CUPA. Another petit péché mignon.

But hey, it's Couch-to-5K Week 3, Day3 tomorrow - no guilt, no shame!

And you can bet it will happen again, too...

P.S. I promise that there are some upcoming posts that won't necessarily revolve around food.

Ladurée : the original macaron

Now, on va faire un petit anachronisme [we're going to make a small anachronism] to revisit day I went to the Musée Rodin and the Musé d'Orsay. Why? Because looking at all that impressionist and post-impressionist art helped us work up an appetite, and since we weren't too far from St-Germain-des-Prés (where I tasted my first-ever Ladurée macaron in 2009), I suggested we try and find it (since we didn't have the address).

With S.'s uncanny sense of direction and the help of an obliging newspaper kiosk man, we found it: Ladurée, founded 1862, the creator of the original double-decker, ganache-filled macaron cookie.

(You aren't allowed to take photos inside, so this was the best I could do)

E., S., and I moseyed on inside and drooled over the glass cases of pastries for a while before finally reaching a decision and ordering from the quaintly dressed employees (they look like 19th century maids, complete with aprons and chignons). E. opted for Divin, S. chose a St.-Honoré Pistachio Griotte, and carefully selected three small macarons: orange blossom, lemon thyme, and strawberry mint. At 1euro60 each, they're what the French would call a petit péché mignon (cute little sin).

We sat on the steps of the nearby church, took a reverent breath, and dug in. S.'s St.-Honoré was as delicious as it looked...

...and the logistics of eating it (let alone sharing it) without a knife or fork were quite hilarious:

Look at my three little beauties...

S. and I both agreed that the orange blossom didn't really taste like anything in particular, although it wasn't bad. The strawberry mint had sounded gimicky to me at first, but I was surprised by how refreshing and summery the combination turned out to be. However, it was lemon thyme [left, below] that won the award that day - I love the way thyme, which is generally used in savory dishes, can pop in to desserts to add sophistication (basil also does this quite well, as Princeton's The Bent Spoon showed this off quite well this summer with its Lime Purple Basil sorbet).

But guess what, friends! Ladurée has since added a single-origin Malagasy chocolate macaron to its already-impressive lineup. Guess I'll just have to go back...

The best I ever had...

(gelato, that is!)

Alright, you're probably going to think I'm a bit gourmande (a glutton who loves to eat; not to be confused with gourmet, which is someone who loves haute cuisine) when I say that the next stop we made after our divine coffee at La Caféothèque was at a gelato shop.

Pozzetto is in the 4e arrondissement, and is "simply the best gelato in Paris," according to none other than Monsieur Lebovitz. And I have to agree.

I'm a big fan of all things mint-flavored (my mother once had to talk me out of a bottle of peppermint body lotion - she said I would smell like toothpaste and no boys would like me), especially ice cream/gelato/anything sugary and frozen. Messieurs Ben & Jerry have done quite well by me in the past with their Mint Chocolate Chunk - after all, the ice cream is white (not unnatural green dye), and it loaded with huge rectangles of dark chocolate. And let's not forget Mint Chocolate Cookie - the blessed lovechild of mint chocolate chip and cookies 'n' cream.

[By the way, you can get Ben & Jerry's in Paris very easily - they have stand-alone shops, stands, and it's found in some snack shops, too.]

But Pozzetto outdid even my favorite ice cream making men from Vermont. This gelato was flecked with dark green-brown somethings - I realized that these were in fact pieces of actual mint leaves.

My other flavor pick was pistachio, which Pozzetto does just right. The dull green color means they used REAL pistachios, not syrup and dye. What's more, according to David [Lebovitz], Pozzetto uses "Sicilian Bronte pistachios." I don't know exactly what that means, but I'm guessing based on the taste that it is indeed something quite special.

I also appreciated the fact that Pozzetto gave decent portion sizes; often in France even deux boules (two scoops) seems pitifully small to this ice cream lover!

I'll have to go back and try all the other flavors very soon...

~

We wandered with our gelato cones into Le Marais (which I've already for its unrivaled falafel) and came upon this place: a wine cellar/bar/book store. Alcohol and literature - what's a college student not to love? La Belle Hortense came with the seal of approval of a creepy toothless bouquiniste (bookseller) that we met on the banks of the Seine, but has nevertheless been added to our list...

What does a girl have to do to get a decent cup of coffee in Paris?

For those of you who associate the term "French" and "Parisian" with all things sophisticated, refined, and delicious, you're in for a shock: the coffee in Paris is terrible.

Don't let those little cups of espresso that you order in quaint corner cafés fool you - close your eyes, forget you're in the City of Light and romance, take a sip, and admit it. It tastes bad.

And it's not just me and my friends who think so: the New York Times magazine wrote on article on that very subject. Luckily, this article also provides suggestions for where one can in fact find a good cup of coffee (so the title of this blog post isn't as provocative as it might have seemed at first glance). Our main man David Lebovitz also weighed in on the issue, so we decided to check out La Caféothèque (metro stop: Pont Marie).

Upon entering La Caféothèque, our nostrils were met with a scent that we hadn't smelled since we left the states: freshly roasted coffee beans. We wandered to the back of the place, and sat near the coffee bar, and took in the scene. Eclectic chairs and stools. Patrons sitting in groups of two and three, chatting in a variety of languages. Names of the beans' countries of origin on the walls. A shelf well-stocked with books. A piano waiting to be played. Frank Sinatra playing in the background.

We ordered: filter coffees for my friends, a cappucino for me. The fact that each was accompanied by a square of dark chocolate didn't hurt...

Note: When I say "we" I mean two fellow CUPA students who go to Reed College in Portland Oregon - a city with quite the taste for java. So you don't just have to take my word for it - these two coffee conoisseurs (one of them a barista) put their seal of approval (along with mine, for what it's worth!) on La Caféothèque!

As delicious as it was beautiful!

One of my friends had brought along some of her own whole coffee beans from the states, which La Caféothèque was kind enough to grind for her (I told you these friends were quite the coffee connoisseurs!). Plus we learned a new verb: moudre = to grind.

I savored my cup down to the last rich, frothy drop...with classes starting soon and the weather getting colder, you can be sure we'll be back!

No measuring cups or spoons here!

Admittedly, my posts are getting a little out of order. But these recent New York Times article was just too apropos not to share!

First order of business: How to Measure while Cooking in France.

You can imagine my hippie-foodie-healthnut-Californian delight when my first trip to Monoprix yielded this:

Organic, resonably-priced quinoa? Quel surprise!

But then, most of you American readers can imagine my confusion when I went to prepare it and saw this:

Cooking instructions

Serving for 1 person: 60g of quinoa

60 GRAMS of quinoa? How on earth was I going to measure that?

I looked up the conversion from grams to cups (obviously, this was doomed from the start, as grams are mass and cups refer to volume) so that I could then convert from cups to tablespoons - I was thinking I might approximate a tablespoon using the apartment's regular dining cutlery. All right, I gave up.

I asked the professor for his advice last night, and lo and behold, he produced a kitchen scale, on which I was able to weigh a perfect portion of 60 grams of quinoa. The funny part is, the New York times just ran an article on the superiority of cooking with such a scale, in lieu of American measuring cups and spoons. It's a convincing argument, making sense both in terms of the science of cooking and baking, as well as in terms of post-cooking mess clean-up. Mom, you may want to invest in one...

~

Second order of business: "A French Feast from a Political Pot" by Elaine Sciolino

Another apropos article appeared in the trusty Times yesterday, reporting on how one French deputy has compiled a cookbook of recipes from all the members of the French National Assembly. Among my favorite quotes, "It is our national responsibility to cook and eat well," says the deputy. What a breath of fresh air! Would an American congressman or -woman ever compile such a work or make such a statement? (Nah, that would be counter to the interests of the food lobby AND the pharmaceutical companies that make big money on treating health problems, instead of preventing them!)

Furthermore, if the US were to make such a Congressional cookbook, would it even be any good?

More pastry, with David Lebovitz as our guide

You may have noticed by now that I've mentioned David Lebovitz several times already. Well, he's a common hero among Americans studying abroad, and his blog tips about the Paris food scene have yet to fail us. With our confidence bolstered by positive experiences at L'As du Falafel, West Country Girl, and Crêperie de Josselin, four of us set out on Sunday to check out Vandermeersch, a bakery in the 12e arrondissement, dubbed by David (as we fondly call him now) as "King of the Paris Kuglof."

For those of you who don't know (because before this, I sure didn't!), kouglof is the French spelling of the bundt-shaped, yeasty bread-textured pastry of German/Austrian/Swiss/Hungarian/other Eastern European countries origin, known by various spellings in each of these countries.

We arrived at Vandermeersch on a very wet Sunday morning, and joined the line extended beyond the bakery's doors. We peered in the window with anticipation, salivating over the variety of kouglof sizes (the largest was 16 euros; we got the smallest at 4euros and change I believe). Since it was already lunchtime, and I had missed breakfast, I also ordered a quiche printannière, which was chock full of broccoli and carrots and kindly warmed by the bakery employees. A. and I ate our quiches outside while we waited for the others to finish faire la queue.

We decided to walk off the quiches before diving into the kouglof - thereby heightening the anticipation - so we strolled down avenue Daumesnil until we found a café with a few outdoor tables under an awning, opposite this fountain (below). We figured if we all ordered coffees and sat outside, we could surreptitiously consume our kouglof without incurring the wrath of the café proprietors.

Somehow, from the pictures on David's blog, I was expecting the kouglof to have a pound cake-like texture, so I was surprised to find it was much lighter and airier, almost like brioche or challah.

This light airiness is beautifully contrasted by the crunch of large sugar crystals encrusting the outside. When we cut it into four, we discovered that the "hole" of the bundt-like kouglof was filled with candied nuts and raisins!

A few dips of this pastry into our little French coffees seemed only natural. The results of our little outing looked like this:

Finally, since I cannot talk about anything bundt-related without thinking of the classic scene from "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," I'll leave you with this link (start at 1:55):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vxZHU0oijE