Happy Reformation! - What a Terrific Way to Begin this Festive Year - Sunday, 30 October

It was a happy Reformation Sunday at The American Church in Paris, the beginning of a year-long celebration of the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses on the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, on October 31, 1517.

The America Church is a 200-year-old non-denominational protestant congregation that is the most racially diverse of any I've seen anywhere since it attracts people living in and visiting Paris from all across the globe for whom English is a first or second language. It's very lively and warm and welcoming - it is my favorite Sunday haunt. And the number 63 bus, which runs on Sundays, stops right outside their door!

We sang "Ein feste Burg," of course, there was a very sweet baptism of one Paris Ekuwa Ansah (the infant daughter of one of their long-time, obviously-beloved parishioners who came back from her missionary work in Ghana for the baptism), the choir sang Richard Farrant's anthem "Lord, for thy tender mercy's sake" just beautifully, and their pastor Scott Herr preached a terrific sermon about grace and about Luther's teaching on passive righteousness & works righteousness.

The anthem:
Lord, for thy tender mercy's sake, 
lay not our sins to our charge,
but forgive that is past 
and give us grace to amend our sinful lives;
to decline from sin and incline to virtue, 
that we may walk in a perfect heart 
before thee now and evermore.  

Pastor Herr also pointed out the ecumenical nature of some images in the stained glass windows of this church (built in 1931) - saints Francis, Genevieve, Catherine of Siena and Christopher in one set of panels, and reformers Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and (oops...I've forgotten...if you can tell from the photo, let me know!) in another set.

And he announced that they would be having a communion and prayer service on November 8. election night, remembering all of us in the U.S.! "While politics tend to divide, there is a meal that can bring us together." How thoughtful and appropriate!

The after-service coffee was as strong and tasty as ever! And I even found a swell cookbook for a mere 5€ at their book table! Since they have parishioners from all over the world, it contains recipes from Asia, Brazil, Cameroon, Canada, China, England, France, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Korea, Mexico, Sierra Leone, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, and USA. The illustrations are by the children of the church. So cool.

Check out the church when you're in Paris! You will be warmly welcomed. And besides, most stores are closed on Sundays, so what else are you going to do with your morning?!? Here's their website: http://acparis.org/

I Don't Think Any Fleas Came Home with Us - Saturday, 29 October

This afternoon we hit a couple of the 14 sub-markets and a few of the 1,700 merchants in the Marchés aux Puces at Saint-Ouen, the large flea market just inside the peripherique on the north end of town (the closest Métro stop is Porte de Clignancourt). You could spend weeks just peeking in each of the vendors' stalls and getting lost among the 10 miles of outdoor and indoor alleys and passages. And then there are the temporary, more "junky" market booths just to the south of the official flea market (where you can actually find some fun stuff too, as we did!).

It is really hard to describe this place - the range and variety and quality of the merchandise is mind boggling - whether you want silver, furniture, porcelain, tapestry, toys, ephemera, clothing, garden statues, marble fireplaces, giant mirrors, artwork, glassware, linens, chandeliers, leather, beads, cookware, jewelry, clocks, or pretty much "whatever," you can probably find it here. I did manage to pick up a few little things!

If I owned an apartment in Paris I would go here to find my furnishings. Heck, maybe I should just get rid of all of my furniture at home, come here to buy new stuff, and have it shipped to me!

I only took one photo here, of a couple very cool Ginko-leaf-shaped lamps (the bulbs were behind the leaves) and a very cool chair (sorry for the bad reflection from the shop window).

But you can read more about the market here: http://marcheauxpuces-saintouen.com/3en.aspx

Hands and Feet and Gardens - Rodin Museum - Friday, 28 October

We needed to walk off some of the calories we consumed at David Toutain, so we sauntered a few blocks east of the resto to the Rodin Museum.

Of course, the museum and gardens are works of art themselves, and Rodin's output of significant sculptures is downright prodigious, but for some reason, hands and feet really appealed to me and jumped out at me (in a good way!) this time.

a wall of hands

a wall of feet

"The Hand of God" - one of my favorites - not a great photo, though

an early version of "The Thinker" - the larger one in the garden was cast some years later 

David Toutain - Friday, 28 October

Chef David Toutain seems to love wood! There are big slices of burl oak on the wall, birch branches in little alcoves, a box of each-unique wood-handled steak knives presented with meat courses, and branches-and-straw "easels" for presenting several of the courses.

they know how to tempt you with intoxicating truffles

Toutain worked with some great chefs (at L'Arpège, Agapé Substance, etc.) before opening his eponymous restaurant in December 2013; he earned his first Michelin star in 2015. This guy can cook, coaxing glorious tastes and essences out of both common and rare ingredients! He offers a somewhat-unusual "no options" prix fixe menu, although your waiter does ask if you have any allergies. And sometimes there's an optional supplement, as we learned when our waiter displayed a big bowl of large white truffles, which could be bountifully shaved over the fourth course! We said "oui oui!"

sticks of salsify (a root vegetable in the dandelion family) to dip into a mound of parsnip cream that's sitting on a rock

tiny muffins containing shrimp purée and diced scallops to dip in peanut/coriander cream 

puff pastry that was rolled and baked in cylindrical molds to make an incredibly flaky dinner roll; fabulous butter

one-bite crispy fried parsnip with parsnip cream, Jerusalem artichokes cooked in brown butter, and hazelnuts

EUPHORIA! - daikon, risotto with roasted celeriac, crispy rice, and a huge portion of shaved white truffle

cod, romanesco broccoli, curry sauce, kale pesto

smoked eel, warm black sesame cream containing hidden diced apple

seared duck breast, smoky cepe mushrooms, onion, veal jus

my fabulous steak knife for the duck - the handle smelled like juniper!

cauliflower-vanilla seed cream, coconut ice cream, white chocolate

warm fig puree in a crispy tube, mascarpone ice cream

parsnip churros

crispy chocolate spheres on a stick

I've started going to Michelin-starred restaurants at lunchtime since you can get the same level of cuisine as in the evening - perhaps fewer courses, but still plenty - and it's a bit less expensive! They don't rush you at all (we were there for about 3 hours), and you still pay dearly, but think of it as a half-day's entertainment in a beautiful relaxing environment with some of the best eatin' you'll ever experience, and it makes the dent in your bank account a bit easier! 

Here's David Toutain's website: http://davidtoutain.com/

Common Ice Plant and Fire-Starting Challenges at LCB - Thursday, 27 October

they passed a few leaves of the
common ice plant around class
for us to get a close look

Hey, have any of you horticulturists out there grown "ficoide glaciale" ("common ice plant")? It was featured in the first course of the class I took at Le Cordon Bleu today. It's an odd-looking salad green, with small clear scale-like projections that look like ice crystals. It tastes somewhat like iceberg lettuce, slightly citrusy/minerally and maybe a little more watery, but its appearance is apparently making it the hip new ingredient with the fancy chefs in town! So let me know when you've grown some! I found a French-based supplier of the seeds: http://www.frenchgardening.com/item.html?pid=SEVE41  (You can click on this picture to get a larger view.)

[Update Feb. 2017 - that supplier's website seems to be down; other options are:
http://www.rareseeds.com/succulent-iceplant/
http://www.cherrygal.com/lettuceiceplantheirloomseeds2015-p-16419.html ]

So for the first course, salmon fillets were lightly cured with salt, sugar, coriander, fennel and dill, and then barely-lightly smoked over beech sawdust. I say barely smoked because Chef Christian Moine had a hecuva time keeping the sawdust lit! He placed it in a aluminum tray but didn't punch any holes in the bottom or scatter the sawdust over some chunks of wood - in other words, he didn't set up his smoking chamber in a way that would allow oxygen to circulate around the sawdust. Apparently he has never been camping! I was dying to make a suggestion, but he wasn't exactly of a temperament that would accept input from the students, much less the rank amateurs (ha ha) in the audience! It was still good, but would have been terrific slightly smoked. This was served with a creamy mustard sauce, a wasabi cream, white wine vinaigrette containing a little honey, cylinders of cooked potatoes, batons of Granny Smith apples, and the ice plant greens.

Next, seared duck breast with orange-glazed braised daikon, apricot chutney (very interesting and intense - he used dried apricots and didn't reconstitute them but rather sweated them in butter), carrot purée, and fabulously buttery potatoes Anna.

This was class #23 (out of 90) for the students, thus part of the "basic" semester, and apparently the dessert portion of the lesson came after a break. Chef Moine spent a lot of the 2.5 hours of class joking with the students. So it was about 1.5 hours of instruction crammed into 2.5 hours of class! As I said in Tuesday's post, these classes used to include a dessert, making them richer in more ways than one and more rigorous and satisfying! But I guess that today's students just don't have the stamina or attention span of those in previous years.

Hey, Frenchie! - Thursday, 27 October

Chef Gregory Marchand opened his tiny restaurant "Frenchie" in the nondescript and almost scary off-the-beaten-path rue du Nil in the 2nd arrondissement in 2009. It was an immediate hit with the public and the critics alike - it became next to impossible to get a reservation. In the past couple years he has transformed this street, adding a wine bar and a sandwich shop; in addition, one of his suppliers, called Terroirs d’Avenir, has opened an épicerie, a fishmonger, and a butcher on the same street.

Just recently Frenchie has opened for lunch Thursdays and Fridays - great news since it''s slightly cheaper and there is a chance that you can actually get in, like we did today!

Our little "welcome" bites were fabulous maple syrup bacon scones - tender, more grainy than flaky, containing little batons of terrific fried bacon, glazed with maple syrup and sprinkled with a bit of fleur de sel. I'm not sure what kind of flour they used - perhaps very finely ground whole wheat, but there was also a malty character to the scones. And they were served with very high quality salted butter. We were making such a fuss over them that our waiter insisted that we have two more (and admitted that they were his favorite snack as well)!

Next came our amuse bouche - Basque lake trout that had been cured, cooked sous vide, lightly smoked and then sprinkled with tobacco-y seaweed dust, fleur de sel, lemon zest and chives - fabulously tender and delicious!!!

Roasted carrots etc...very sweet and beautifully balanced

Tenderest possible pollock with three mushrooms prepared three ways, pasta and perfectly scented fish stock

Barb's chicken

According to our waiter, this lovely cheese knife has a pretty terrifying history. It was made by the Coutellerie Ceccaldi in Corsica and is modeled after a knife that rival gangs used to stab an opponent and then twist so that it could not be removed. Eeewww! This use is much more pleasant!

Cheesecake, the Frenchie way!

Happily, just as we were finishing our meal, chef Marchand entered the resto from one of his other establishments on the street. I had a chance to say hello and tell him that I had been there a few other times, including shortly after he opened in 2009. And I even pulled up this blog post from my first visit and showed it to him on my phone: http://mariellen-musing.blogspot.fr/2009/11/frenchie-saturday-14-november.html  He seemed to be genuinely delighted. Or maybe he was just amused. Or perhaps he was trying to bravely mask his fear of the weird stalker!  5, rue du Nil  http://www.frenchie-restaurant.com/en/home-restaurant-en

What Went Down at Sequana Today? - Wednesday, 26 October

Near the western tip of the Ile de la Cite sits a beautiful small restaurant "hidden in full sight," as resto blogger John Talbott says. It's called Sequana, and we had a terrific lunch there today.

The place is comfortable, welcoming and lovely - mostly wood, greys and burgundies, with a great splash of turquoise in the banquettes.

our beautiful amuse bouche - braised leeks with a thin slice of radish and little turnovers stuffed with lentils

first course - leeks, carrots, scallions, and a tiny taste of fabulous Colonnata lardo

a substantial portion of veal with little cubes of butternut squash, mushrooms, celeriac puree

fig tarte tatin with rosemary ice cream (WOW!) and honey 

coffee with tiny house-made white chocolate and verbena macarons

In addition to the food and beverages going down, there was some kind of police SWAT team action going down just outside the resto. Yikes! It's not unusual to hear a lot of sirens in the center of Paris, but there were suddely more than usual while we were eating, and traffic stopped on Pont Neuf, and several police cars drove right past the resto window, and then several policemen in hoods and partial masks carrying rifles started looking around the cars parked just outside. In a couple minutes they were gone and things returned to normal. We never learned what this was all about - didn't see anything in the news - happily, it must have been some empty threat.  C'est la vie! Life in the big city!

72, quai des Orfèvres http://sequana.paris/en/

Thanks to Wikipedia, I learned that in Gallo-Roman religion, Sequana was the goddess of the river Seine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequana  Hey, maybe she was watching over us today!