Lunchtime in Paris

Lunches with dessert

I was really tired last night and so I didn't post. I had my Arabic class and then it is the "Semaine Culturelle " (culture week) here in Paris so at the Syrian Cultural Center where I'm taking my classes they showed a marvelous film by Mustapha Al-Akkad  called Lion of the Desert. This is a sad and tragic story which lasts for three hours so I got home really late (but still an excellent film and I'm glad to finally learn the story of Omar Al-Mokhtar).

So today you get two lunches for the price of one.

The first lunch is chicken and crudité (raw veg) on baguette with a delicious chocolate macaroon cake and a diet coke.

The second lunch is feuillité jambon champignons (feuillité is a kind of pastry dough, feuille is leaf and so since it has so many layers it's like saying "leafy"), an extra special chocolate mousse cake, and a diet coke.

A delicious chicken sandwich French style.

And the feuillité...this is typical of boulangerie food and only cost 2,20 EUR. Flaky pastry dough filled with succulent mushrooms and ham.

I'm experimenting with taking pictures in the sun...anyway, here is the first delicious cake called a craquant (meaning crispy or crunchy or crackling...). It is composed of two macaroons, some rasberries, and some creme patissiere (I really don't like this...it's like butter cream frosting).

And here is the most extraordinary and exquisite "trois mousses" (three chocolate mousse) cake, wow, what can I say, it glows and you should try and get your hands on one of these.

Inside the chocolate rasberry macaroons.

Inside the three chocolate mousse thing, oh please hit me again...

Just another lovely look for my chocolate loving friends out there.

And so, tomorrow's Friday and TGIF. I had originally planned to do something Mexican this weekend but my research has shown that there is a really complicated pepper situation there and so I'm going to need more time to sort that out from Paris.

But do not despair because there is an Eastern European shop in my neighbourhood and I can buy some real true Hungarian Paprika and that means that this weekend I'm going to do my utmost to make a very authentic Chicken Paprikash...

Stay tuned and happy lunching!

Ham and cheese and and Oranais for lunch

After my exciting cooking adventure this weekend, it's back to very normal (but still nice) lunches in the office.

Today I had a jambon (ham), gruyere (swiss cheese), and crudité (tomato and lettuce...although crudité actually means raw vegetables - cru is the French word for raw) sandwich on baguette with an Oranais and a diet coke.

If you are in a boulangerie in France and you want a sandwich like this you order "crudité, jambon, gruyere". The bread was really nice today and that's also one of the strange and marvellous things about buying food from places that make it fresh every day: it's never exactly the same. Some days the baguettes are crispier than others.

The pastry is called an Oranais. Oran is a city in Algeria and perhaps it got its name because of the apricots that grow there.

An Oranais is made from the same sort of dough they use for croissants and pain au chocolat so you could have one of these for breakfast too...or for a mid afternoon snack, or really any time you are in France.

Happy lunching!

Malaysia: Laksa for lunch

First of all, Ramadan Mubarak, a joyous and blessed holiday to all my Moslem friends and visitors!

And now for today's lunch (which was prepared with a halal chicken from my neighborhood Islamic butcher shop...quality meat and reasonable prices). As I stated in my last post, I've decided to do a recipe for every flag that appears on my sidebar. Today's recipe is from Malaysia, a very delicious Laksa.

I got the recipe here at www.soupsong.com. If you want to follow along you can get today's recipe precisely here: soupsong Laksa recipe.  An excellent site and a must for you soup lovers out there. Also, there is an extensive collection of international soup recipes, enough to keep me busy making soup for many weekends to come!

I actually made three trips to the supermarket for this recipe and here are some of the ingredients (the easy ones).

This is where I ran into difficulty. There are just so many Asian herbs...is this Laksa leaf? It's the very essential ingredient and so I did not want to make a mistake.

Or is this Laksa leaf? The recipe calls for "Asian basil"...I live in Paris and everything has a different French name, even Asian herbs. The first herb was labelled rau ram in the Asian grocey store and the second was labelled "Thai basilic" who's to know? In the end I went to www.asiafood.org where the Laksa leaf entry refers to "Vietnamese mint" and I chose the first green herb pictured above...what a lovely smell it has.

This recipe has several steps to it:

First you must have cooked chicken and four cups of stock (I suggest you make your own it's so much nicer),

Secondly you must make a spice paste for the flavor,

Thirdly you must cook some noodles and prepare everything for the final soup, and

Finally you put the soup together and make the garnish plate.

Since I would be needing cooked chicken and stock, the first thing to do was make both. I decided to follow my instincts on this one and so I made my stock using some of my green herbs (I bought lots of different kinds), fresh ginger slices and scallions.

This is the start of the spice paste: lemon grass (only the tender hearts), galangal (like ginger but milder), shrimp paste, garlic, scallions, and some red hot peppers.

This goes into the food processor and the recipe says it should look like "a speckled mush" well, perhaps.

Then once that is done, you add some chopped coriander, some tamarind paste, some sugar and some tumeric.

And I put the food processor back in the cupboard and get out my trusty morter and pestle...the food processor makes everything just too watery and this is supposed to be a "paste".

Here is the cooked chicken (from the chicken I used to make the stock with)  and the cooked rice noodles.

Here is the sauce that I made by frying the spice paste in two tablespoons of peanut oil until lightly colored, then adding four cups of my homeade stock plus a mix of 1/4 cup chopped coriander and 1/4 cup chopped laksa leaf and then adding  a can of coconut milk.

And here is the final Laksa lunch. First I put some of the noodles into a bowl, then I added some chicken, and then I ladled some of the sauce on top. Serve with a plate of various greenery and condimets...really delicious and your kitchen will indeed smell wonderful if you make this.

Just a bowl of Laksa.

Wow, what an adventure but I still have so many questions. I liked this dish and my daughters liked it too but...was this really Laksa and did I pick the right leaves? I would really appreciate any comments, criticism, or suggestions on how to make an even better Laksa! What a fun afternoon cooking.

So, next weekend I think we will head to Mexico and I am going to spend the week searching for a most traditional Mexican dish. In the meantime I will be posting my usual sandwiches and various other things from the office...

Thanks for stopping by and Happy Lunching!

Where do we lunch from here?

Hi everyone,

Today I had a very average lunch:



It started off being a fabulous idea: a tomato and mozzarella sandwich on good bread with a quetsch tart for desert...and of course a diet coke!



Unfortunately and, as you can see, the woman at the boulangerie did not heat the sandwich properly and so...the cheese was just not melty. I don't know about you but I would either have it hot or cold...I really hate it when some parts are melted and warm and the rest is sort of cool, yuck with a capital Y...guess next time I will have to be more insistent...



Quetsch are like really small yellow plums and are really delicious, the tart was lovely.



Here's another one, just yummy

And so that's it for today and here are some thoughts for the weekend...I just installed the new and v v cool noecounter thing on my sidebar. I really like this because it has flags! they are so cute. And so now I've decided that I must make a recipe for every flag that appears...starting with Malaysia.

I don't know why I picked Malaysia to start with, other than I have met some really friendly and pleasant people from this country but in any case, I am going to be making Laksa and since I've never actually eaten this before but just found it on an internet site I am having an Asian green herb crisis...Laksa leaf...what is it really? In any case I hope I pick the right one...

stay tuned for the Laksa lunch and I am counting on your input.

Lunch in Tunisia

Last weekend I made a lovely Tunisian speciality, brik à l'oeuf.  I hesitated before posting this entry because I was not really thrilled with the results. But, since Ramadan is just around the corner and I probably won't be making these again for a while, here goes.

First of all, the ingredients:

Sheets of brick (or brik)...more about that later

Oil for cooking

Canned tuna (packed in water is better)

Capers

Parsley (finely chopped, flat leaf only)

Shallots (or finely chopped onion, as you wish)

Fresh eggs (and I do stress FRESH...the whole problem for me today was old eggs...)

Here are the briks. And so what is a brik? Check out this link www.ochef.com. I can buy brik in the supermarket in Paris, you may have to substitute phyllo dough or Chinese spring roll skins...you get the idea.

In any case, making brik à l'oeuf is not an exact science, everyone has their own special filling, I chose to fill mine with:

Tuna, chopped parsley, minced shallots, and capers as well as the egg.

The technique for making brik à l'oeuf  involves placing the sheet of brik into a shallow bowl, and then putting  some small amounts of  tuna, minced shallot, minced parsley, capers and then a whole egg in the middle. Then you must somehow move the whole thing to the frying pan where the hot oil awaits...

Into the frying pan...

The sides of the sheet of brik will stick together naturally, but as you can see if you don't have really fresh eggs the yolk will break and your brik won't be so much fun...

Spoon some oil over to cook fast but once again with these worthless old eggs...the yolk is supposed to stay runny but when they break they cook too fast...

This is what it will look like in the end. A lovely golden brown color.

If only the eggs had been fresh....please scroll all the way down to the bottom of this next link and you will see what happens when fresh eggs are used www.davidgreer.ca The yolk is still a little runny and the whole thing is gorgeous. You can use lots of other things to fill the brik as well, potatos, minced meat with spices...it's only a question of imagination...

And, keep reading if you're still interested in Tunisian food because my kids brought me back this excellent vacation photo...

What else but a magnificent Tunisian couscous with peppers on top. Taking this step by step and from the top down we start with the peppers

They look like this when they are raw and  in French they are called "corne de boeuf": beef horn.

Just cut a slit in the side and pour in some salt

Then shake the pepper to get the salt all over,  put them into some hot oil and cook until tender...and then put them on top of your couscous...which I will make another day...

til then, happy lunching!

A sandwich and two cakes for lunch

Well no, I didn't actually have two cakes for lunch today. What has happened is that I've fallen in love with the wonderful Bayonne/Reblochon sandwich from the boulangerie and so I had it two days in a row...FYI Bayonne is a kind of ham and Reblochon is a wonderful French cheese.

The first lunch started like this: a bayonne and reblochon sandwich with a chocolate religieuse (a sort of cake, keep reading...)

Melty cheese and salty ham on fresh bread...great sandwich

Actually, a really great sandwich so it gets another photo

This is the religieuse (religieuse means "nun" in French and it is also the name of  a very typical cake that you can find in all the boulangeries), very delicious too. And this whole lunch cost 8 EUR.

The bottom layer of the religieuse

And the top

So, the next day I went back to the very same boulangerie and got the very same sandwich because it is so extra delicious but, I got a different kind of cake. This one is a millefeullle (thousand leaves...because of the flaky crust).

A fabulous millfeuille for 2.20 EUR, the religieuse is about the same price.

Once again, I do suggest that you look into the boulangeries in Paris for your lunching needs.

Wenzhou lunch in Belleville

I'm just home from my Arabic class (hopefully we'll be going to Syria for summer vacation next year) and my head is exploding...Arabic is not easy. But anyway, I've got photos to post from last weekend so here goes.

On Sunday, Aisha and I went to "Maison de Wenzhou" in Belleville. We've been there before and as I mentioned in a recent post this is my new favorite Chinese place.

And as you may be able to guess we ordered the barbecue. This was so fun because I'd never done Chinese barbecue before, wow, what a blast!

Barbecue is on the Chinese menu only. The  first time we went to Maison de Wenzhou I saw Asian people eating things that did not seem to be on the menu (and they looked really delicious too),  so I asked the waiter what these things were and he explained that they did indeed have a special Chinese only menu...

This time we were smart.

Maison de Wenzhou is not a fancy place but the waiter who works there on Sunday afternoons is really helpful and friendly, after all he did let us in on the secret Chinese menu... he explained that we had to start with the cabbage.

And then we should add the beef.

And even some onions. There was lots of good sauce too. One for the cabbage and another one with peanuts to dip the beef in. yum!

It was all really delicious. The beef barbecue at Maison de Wenzhou  costs 35 EUR but it is easily enough for three people and so much fun. Considering Paris prices it's an excellent deal, there is really a lot of meat and very fresh too.

It was really cute because not only did the waiter patiently explain exactly how to do the barbecue (and also did not complain when I managed to send several pieces of cabbage and onion off the table and on to the floor, sorry gotta work on chopstick dexterity...) he also spontaneously offered to take our photo when he saw that I was taking photos of the lunch (I didn't look particularly fab but I think Aisha looks radiant).

So, what a lovely lunch and we gave our chopstick skills a good workout too. They also do a seafood barbecue so perhaps we'll have to go back and try that someday soon...

September Guest Luncher: Armelle

September's guest luncher is my workmate Armelle who went to Portugal on her summer vacation this August. Armelle has her own blog here at www.djerbaetmoi.com dedicated to the charming island of Djerba off the coast of Tunisia. Of course it is in French but she's got lots of lovely photos so please make sure to stop by and visit Armelle. She'll be happy to hear from you.

Anyway, Armelle has been telling me for months about the special flat chicken they cook in Portugal and she finally sent me the photos:

They flatten the chicken before putting it on the grill.

Looks fabulous and Armelle says that it should be served with hot sauce and that it's delicious.

Here is a typical plate of yummy Portuguese food including cabrito, bacalhau a braz, green salad, rice, braised cabbage, potatoes and and tomato and onion salad in the middle.

Close up on the bacalhau. Armelle tells me that: "À Lisbonne, la morue est servie "a Braz", du nom d'un tavernier du quartier du Bairro Alto qui avait eu la brillante idée de mélanger de la morue déchiquetée avec des pommes de terre frites et des oeufs brouillés." In English: "In Lisbon, cod is served "a Braz" named for a famous innkeeper from the Bairro Alto neighborhood who had the brilliant idea to mix the the shredded cod with fried potatoes and scrambled eggs". I'm going to have to try this.



Potatoes, I've just eaten lunch but this is making me hungry all over again.



Some delicious refreshing tomato and onion salad.

And since I'm a meat eater, my favorite photo of them all, cabrito (goat). This just looks so good.

Thanks to Armelle for sharing her delicious vacation photos and of course, if you've been somewhere delicious lately and you would like to share please let me know, I'm always happy to feature a new guest luncher.

Shrimp and avocado sandwich for lunch

Today's lunch was particularly delicious. A shrimp and avocado sandwich on pain suedois (Swedish bread) and an orange tart.

This lunch cost 7.50 EUR at the boulangerie near  my office. The tart was 2.20, the diet coke was 1.30 and the sandwich was 4.00.

Close up on the sandwich, you can see the texture of the "pain suedois". I'm not sure this is really Swedish but that's what they call it here. It looks like a pita but it's much softer.

And here is the magnifique and very delicious orange tart.

I've been thinking that I don't eat enough desserts so I'm going to try and make up for that and post some more...how about a chocolate eclair tomorrow?

Quiche for lunch

So, les vacances sont terminées (vacation is over) and its back to the office and whatever I can find within walking distance. Today it was quiche.

These are the little individual quiches from the nearby boulangerie. One is a quiche lorraine (on the left) and the other is a quiche provencal (on the right).

Close up on the quiche lorraine. A classic.

And even closer up. The crust was particularly nice on this one.

This is the quiche provencal with red peppers and zucchini (courgette).

And here is a close up. To my taste it was not quite so good as the quiche lorraine, the provencal has veg in so the crust on top just wasn't the same, too watery for me.

Anyway, you can find these little quiches in lots of boulangeries in Paris and they are inexpensive (relatively speaking). These two quiches with a diet coke cost 6.90 EUR (each quiche was under 3 EUR). My advice is to find a boulangerie near a park where you can sit on the grass,  the parc Monceau  is just lovely in this respect. Also, quiche is filling and in this way you can perhaps save your money for that fabulous dinner splurge you're going to do at Plaza Athenée...

Anyway, back from vacation and searching for ideas I've got two projects for this weekend. One is the traditional Tunisian brik à l'oeuf and the other is Wenzhou in Belleville....my new favorite Chinese place with the extra cool, friendly waiter.