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Sep 29

No. 6: Crème fraîche

www.vermontcreamery.com

photo: vermont creamery

Excuse me while I take a moment to pop the top button on my skinning jeans and ask, “What is not to love about crème fraîche?” Bien sûr, it holds a place on the 365-things-I-love-about-France list. And who’d of thunk that before I landed in Paris, I’d never even heard of it.

According to people in the know, all you need is one willing dairy cow, a set of nimble milking hands, a simple means to separate the milk from the cream, and a little time to let the natural lactic bacteria take over, et voilà, before you know it: crème fraîche; the most delicious and divine “sour cream” you can imagine, albeit with a MUCH higher fat content. I shudder to associate American sour cream with French crème fraîche, there really is no comparison, especially when you buy it from the lively M. Laitier at le Marché Saxe in the seventh arrondissement in Paris.

In regards to French cooking, Julia Childs certainly had it right when she said, “If you’re afraid of butter, use cream.” And boy do the Frenchies know how to use cream. Each time I take a French cooking class, at least one, if not all five recipes call for a minimum of one generous tablespoon. Crème fraîche is used in sauces, dressing, pastry, custards, and soups; with, poultry, beef, pork, fish, chocolate, tartes and crêpes. Of course it is exquisite with fresh fruit; or if you are like me, you could always eat it straight from the pot. Its unique sweet and slightly tangy flavor and creamy texture is, as Button would say, “Like heaven popped on a plate!”

Blanquette de Veau

Blanquette de Veau

Velouté d’Oseille

Velouté d’Oseille

Poule-au-Pot Sauce Suprême

Poule-au-Pot Sauce Suprême

Can’t find it in your favorite grocery store back home, try this do-it-yourself recipe from Emeril Lagasse.

Vocabulaire:

bien sûr – of course

crème fraîche –  fresh cream

le laitier – milkman, dairy farmer

Sep 27

No. 5: Annecy, Alpes-Savoie

Ma belle fille, Button

Ma belle fille, Button

The closest I’ve been able to recreate my natural habitat of Colorado was a breathtaking late spring visit to the lakefront city of Annecy (pronounced: ahn-see) in the French Alps. The scenery is drop-dead gorgeous and travel brochure ready. It tops the mountainside towns of Colorado, say Vail or Aspen, because of its romantic canals, enchanting bridges, crystal clear lake, and its fondue savoyarde (Beaufort and Comté melted and mixed with the local Crépy wine, with an added splash of Cognac thrown in for good measure—c’est délicieux).

12th-century Palais de l’Isle, Annecy

12th-century Palais de l’Isle, Annecy

Often referred to as the Venice of France (un peu exagéré), it is actually a mix of several cultures, namely French, Swiss and Italian. The Swiss are represented in those adorable gingerbreadesque chalets—flower boxes and all, chocolate, wheels of cheese, raclette, tartiflettes, and all things cheesy that Switzerland does so well. The Italians make their mark with authentic wood oven pizza, mercifully light on the cheese, and the glut of mouthwatering gelato shops peppering the historic heart of town.

Raclette Fumé

Raclette Fumé

A nod to Italy: colorful and creamy gelato

A nod to Italy: colorful and creamy gelato

Annecy is one of the most popular cities in France both with the French and with les étrangers, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend coming and staying here to get a way from it all. The throngs of tourists come to admire the beauty as well as be admired, and the traffic can be a nightmare. Early mornings are definitely the best and I imagine the off-season is delightful. That said, I would recommend staying just outside of Annecy (at any time of the year), and making day trips in, exploring the countryside, and hoping over to Geneva for a quick visit. We stayed in a gîte in one of the many hamlets that dot the landscape. Our gîte was amazing and cozy and starlit. In the middle of the woods, with quaint mountain roads to cycle through, a hot tub, a barbecue, and a huge yard for Tazzie to feel at home. Ça fait du bien par où ça passe !

Gite with Japanese Garden, Annecy

Gite with Japanese Garden, Annecy

Lac d'Annecy

Lac d’Annecy

Vocabulaire:

Ça fait du bien par où ça passe !   Just what the doctor ordered!

les étrangers: the foreigners

un gîte: a holiday home available for rent, fully furnished and equipped for self-catering, usually less expensive than other lodging

raclette:  a Swiss dish consisting of cheese melted over a fire and then scraped onto bread or boiled potatoes; also the cheese used in this dish

tartiflettes: a creamy and comforting oven bake of potatoes, cream and bacon – originating from France’s Haute-Savoie region

un peu exagéré: a little bit exaggerated

 

Sep 26

No. 4: Lady Liberty

lady liberty

Whenever I need a slice of home and reminder that the French and the Americans do actually have a history based in friendship, I grab Superman and Taz and make the short trek to the Pont de Grenelle. Following the stairs down to the allée des Cygnes we make our way onto the Île aux Cygnes (the Isle of the Swans). This artificial island on the Seine besides playing host to a charming tree-lined walking path, benches (a rarity), and doggie leash-free zone (even more rare), is also the home to one of the two miniature models of the Statue of Liberty in Paris. (The other, lately the target of vandals and even smaller, rests among a cluster of trees in the Jardin de Luxembourg.)

 The two “Mini-Mes” were the practice runs for Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi and Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel before they built the full scale Statue of Liberty shipped off to the USA in 1885, and offered as a reminder of our international friendship.

commons.wikimedia.org

commons.wikimedia.org

Sep 25

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No. 3: Picard

Picard Sign

The farmers’ markets may be where the purist buys their ingredients, but the rest of us (Frenchies and expats alike) know the true secret of French cuisine, Picard.

When I first arrived in France with not a lick of French, I used to hesitate when I passed these ultra-white, antiseptic stores, glancing furtively, I’d wonder, “What the heck is going on in there? And who are those workers in the crisp white lab coats?” Hmmm…Picard Surgelés?

With my brilliant grasp on the French language, I decided that “surgelés” obviously had to have something to do with surgery; therefore, these must be stores exclusively for pharmaceutical and surgical supply reps. I imagined, freezer after freezer filled with lifesaving vaccinations and disease curing antibodies, but why were all the women filling huge shopping carts with medicine?

Medical Supplies or TV dinners?

Medical Supplies or TV dinners?

It turns out that Picard Surgelés is the French retailer specializing in frozen food started by M. Picard, a purveyor of ice blocks in the early 1900s in Fontainebleau. Now with over 800 stores in France (100 in Paris alone), and more than 1,000 rotating products, Picard is the sneaky solution to every French woman’s dinner party. While it may feel like cheating sometimes, I’m all for cutting out a few hours of slicing, dicing and sautéing, in exchange for some face time with my family and friends. Not only is Picard a huge time saver, it is also the surest way to assuage a maman’s guilt when she dares to leave the family for her annual girls’ weekend: “They have Picard,” she thinks, “Cassolettes aux noix de Saint-Jacques on Friday night.” (A slight step up from the Totino Pizzas, my folks would offer us on their date-night.)

Saint-Jacques

Saint-Jacques

So heartily have the French embraced Picard, I have yet to attend a dinner party where something from Picard is NOT being served. When pressed even the most traditional French hostess will admit to using les ingrédients congelésis in their delicate creations. Heck, I’ve even been to French cooking lessons, where the chef has clandestinely thrown in a handful of something popped fresh from Picard’s freezer. These sterile stores are a sight to behold, row after row of neatly arranged freezers, humming and glowing, what they lack in market romance and charm, they more than makes up for in convenience. When you spot that shining snowflake in the distance, you know dinner is saved.

Les mamans saving grace

Les mamans saving grace

Zut alors! So much grub to try: Australian wild boar, New Zealand doe, flash frozen ostrich, Burgundy snails, frog legs in creamy walnut pesto, lobster tails from Maine, and scallops floating in a Sancerre wine sauce. Need to spice up your spiceless French fare? Pick up some ethnic vittles: Thai, Japanese, Indian, Mexican, Lebanese, Mediterranean, Latin America and Caribbean, to name a few. By God, François Théron even has his own designer-line of gourmand ice creams and sorbets.

Donc, bravo surgelés. When the French do it, they do it right!

Vocabulaire:

surgelés: frozen food

Sep 25

No. 2: The Colors of France

Macaron

Dyes

Paints

Shades

Washes

Blushes

Flushes

Pigment

Tinge

Tone

Dash

Drop

Streak

Stain

Flash

 

Colors

Coustellet (Avignon) Marché

Coustellet (Avignon) Marché

One of the things I love about France is color.

Aubergine, Provence

Aubergine, Provence

Un bouquet de piments, Provence

Un bouquet de piments, Provence

Which upon reflection seems a bit ironic coming from a girl who calls Paris home—the small town where the natives only wear dark black, medium black, light black, murky black, mournful black, gloomy black, sometimes dreary grey, or, if they are feeling especially adventurous, a reliable navy blue, or peut-être, chocolate brown.

Paris street style by Vogue

Paris street style by Vogue

I guess the reason the colors of France strike me as something to devote a whole post to is because in the City of Light, there is a whole lot of darkness.

Le Centre Pompidou

Le Centre Pompidou

So when you see the flushes and blushes of color among the sea of blackness, you can’t help but beam and sometimes even be bedazzled.

Giverny, Claude Monet's Gardens

Giverny, Claude Monet’s Gardens

Vocabulaire:

peut-être: maybe, perhaps, possibly, perchance

Sep 25

No. 1: France, je t’aime!

IMG_8040So how can France, herself, be the first of the 365-things-I-love-about-France, as she is obviously the focus of this entire blog?  Simply put, there would be no blog if not for my great fortune of having landed in France to begin with.

Paris has been our on-and-off home since the summer of 2009. To be honest, even though we made a conscious effort to quit the US for a while in exchange for an experience abroad, France was not our first choice. In fact, none of us knew much about Paris or France. With the collective knowledge of the countless romantic Hollywood moments we’d watched on the big screen, and the storied love-hate relationship between our two countries, we arrived in Paris excited, apprehensive, and pretty darn green.

Since my husband, Superman, and I had been exposed to all the negative stereotypes about the French and France, we weren’t overly keen to make this leap. One might even say, we were terrified of the French, but nonetheless, as good liberals, willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Unfortunately, in the beginning, our reality in Paris wasn’t so far off from the cauchemars we had secretly and frequently imagined, before we left the States. The postman was cruel, the French teachers abusive, the shopkeepers hardened and smug, the dog poop piled high on the trottoirs, and the average Frenchman more happy to play a game of sidewalk chicken, than break a smile or lend a helping hand. No matter what day you checked on us, one family member was undoubtedly lying in a heap on the bed sobbing uncontrollably.

But thanks to the support of the girls’ bilingual school community and a thimble full of kind French friends, things began to shift. Ever so slowly, happiness began to trickle in. France and all things French seemed to get under our skin and creep into our hearts. We began to fall in love with this complicated country.depositphoto.com

And now, after two years we feel incredibly grateful for this experience and, at least I, feel more at home in France than I ever did in Colorado. Which is not to say that the rose tint has not begun to fade when I look out at my French world. But even though I may no longer be a Polly Anna in regards to the wonders of France, I have begun to panic at the possibility of saying goodbye to this country yet again. En ce moment, I can’t imagine living anywhere but Paris and I am rattled by the possibility of only having a short 365 days left among the French.

This blog is a way for me to fondly share both the things that make living in France so downright astonishing, and the things that drive us expats mad, yet in their own strange way, make this bewildering country a place I feel enormously fortunate to call home. While our Paris life will, by default, be the focus of my writing, I also plan to share the daily marvels and exasperations of as many corners of France as I can.

Thanks for following along as I countdown the 365-things-I-love-about-France.

Alors, ça commence..allons-y!

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