le sauce

caramelized red onion and blue cheese quiche

this should have been a tale of two quiches. i was planning to bring two different quiches to a baby shower i was helping to throw today. so a few weeks ago, i started to play with quiche recipes--for fillings that is. i should make it clear that pasties and baked goods scare me, regardless of how easy people say they are to make from scratch. i buy good, frozen crusts so you won't find any recipes for that here today, just what goes in them. quiche custards are pretty standard: 3 eggs and 1 1/2 cups of milk and/or cream for a 9" shell. the fillings were where i wanted to get creative. but what i didn't want to get was fat from recipe testing this. so i tested two at once...

on one side, caramelized red onion and blue cheese, and on the other roasted tomato and ramps. aside from being an efficient way to work on both recipes at once, this also appealed to the "why choose when you eat everything" side of me.

the quiche(s) came out great, so i felt with a few tweaks, i'd have two winners on my hands. little did i know that that night was the last time i would get to cook with ramps this year. (well almost...i'd saved some ramp bulbs and threw them raw into a basil pesto in the place of garlic and it worked fantastically.) so rather than get into the detail of roasting grape tomatoes and ramp bulbs for that quiche now, i think i'll sit on that recipe until next may. sure, there could be substitutions for those lovely wild leeks, but how well the leaves on top worked was half the reason i was so happy with the result that i just don't have the heart to swap them out right now. 

ok, enough of mourning ramps. there are other things to live for, like creamy, sharp blue cheese...

paris day 9: full on french

seeing 4 different vats of good olives sitting side by side stops me dead in my tracks. this is a picture taken through the window of a random store in the 2nd arrondisment. i was in too much of a rush to write down the name or enter the store which also sold all kinds of nuts, oils and spices. it's hard to believe all i managed to take in this day, while also spending about 6 hours at the louvre. and speaking of which, when visiting the louvre, i highly recommended taking a break to lunch around the corner...

le louvre ripaille

having to wait to be handed a larger than you blackboard in order to read the menu isn't very efficient. but it's still the norm in paris and i know i'm going to miss it. i read about the beautiful makeover of le louvre ripaille on design sponge, and i also read that i must go there in their paris guide. it was a good recommendation. i loved the design and the food was delicious--just good french food. the betteraves et chevre "mille feuille" (below as it came and cut open to reveal the many layers) would have been sort of predictable if not for the whisper thin fried crepe, basil oil, balsamic reduction and what i think was a spicy paprika oil that it was served with. the foam-covered salmon had a tail of perfectly made couscous and the mushrooms in my omelette were well seasoned and seared before added to the eggs. i enjoyed a red sancerre again--another one of the wines i ended up bringing back because i liked it every glass i tried.

e. dehillerin

if you've read julia child's biographies or about french chefs, you know about e. dehillerin (julia's picture hangs above the cash register there). if you didn't and you liked cooking at all, and stumbled into this place, you just might scream at discovering it. i almost screamed and i knew what i was getting into. imagine a store selling every type of cooking utensil and vessel of real use (in western cooking) without any of the crap or brand names. then imagine every single one of those items in every single size and variation needed. i only had about 20 minutes to shop there before they closed, which was a very good thing. after walking around the maze of the store, i started grabbing things i never thought i would buy (3 of the same rectangular 3 x 12 tart pans and a 12" pie pan...i don't bake...) and only one thing i actually need which is a good big whisk. i was about to grab a few chef knives when my shopping buddy tried to calm me down and remind me of weight restrictions on planes and other rational things. whatever. i'm totally excited to make 3 different tarts this weekend. and he can't have any...

le jour a peyrassol

i don't know exactly how this restaurant stays open since we were the only diners there, or why we were the only diners there. about the latter, i can only assume that it's really not that rare to have a dish made with good truffles in paris, so a whole restaurant specializing in them is not as exciting to parisians as it was to us. but we had a great time being spoiled at un jour a peyrassol, which is also a stunning restaurant. totally old and restored, the walls, staircase and basement private rooms and washrooms are entirely stone. the coziest, tastiest cave you'll ever visit. above, some of their cotes de provence rose from their affiliated producer commanderie and truffle pate courtesy of the restaurant, to enjoy while we perused the menu. we settled on 4 creamy, rich, generously truffled dishes including eggs en cocotte and a salad with the creamiest, fresh chevre pictured here. 

paris day 3: bread & roses and la famille!

after a visit to the luxembourg gardens, a quick lunch at bread & roses which i'd read a lot of good things about. mostly organic but really popular for their amazing baked goods. beautiful bread and beautiful roses upon being seated.

once we saw the 2-inch high quiche pies in the display case, the only question was which one to have. pictured above was part of our lunch: a slice of the mushroom quiche, spinach and smoked salmon quiche and a glass of chablis.

 

if i could visit this restaurant often, i would try the many breads and spreads and defintely the fresh tarts and salads. the two men beside us had simple plates of fresh oysters on the half shell with lemons, so even though the menu was little more than piece of paper, the options managed to be pretty extensive. 

how is it that this is the 3rd time so far that a light lunch in paris has left me too full for gorgeous desserts like these in the display cases at b&r? i guess it's just responsible eating on my part. i mean, one has to think ahead to dinner...especially when that dinner is at la famille. 

 

our reservation was at 9 but we showed up early since we were in the area already and looking for a place to have a drink. at 8.20, no one was there. at 9.20 the place looked as it does in the picture above. full swing. first up: cocktails. click to read more or the bear gets it!

mushroom + farro pie

(and other stories)

i intended to write about the delicious mushroom and farro pie that i made days ago, but smitten kitchen beat me to it. it almost never happened, me making this pie. then it happened that i made it twice in two weeks.

what was supposed to happen was, i was to create a complete sri lankan dinner party spread for 6 of my partner's friends and their others, at our first big dinner party in our new house. what actually happened was that i totally chickened out before i even thought about that idea for too long, and opted to make something from a recipe instead. that says something about how spooked i was. aside from my family's recipes, which i follow with a mix of equal parts insecurity and distrust, i hardly ever use a recipe when cooking. don't get me wrong, i have nothing against recipes or cooking from them. in fact, i cherish published recipes in tv, book or magazine form like an addict. but even if inspired by what i've seen or read, i hardly turn to recipes to create a dish.

those recipes of my mother's and my aunt's are for my favourite sri lankan dishes that i know i can make. i know because i've made them alongside them, during steph-by-step tutorials. but my familiarity with the spices is weak and i don't know how to tweak them to get just the right flavour. and rather than fail, i run.

i ran to gourmet magazine's november issue, and the coverline promising "the ultimate vegetarian thanksgiving" received me like a warm, embrace of avoidance. here, in this fabulous mushroom pie, was the answer. a vegetarian entree that looked worthy of a dinner party, that required a recipe in my mind, since it involved dough, and the only thing that scares me more than cooking my family's recipes is baking. 

but of course i had to make the thing once before serving to my guests, lest it not be as yummy as it looked. plus what if it was too hard? i had never made this recipe before. see? stressful to cook with recipes...