Lunchtime in Paris

Modern lunch

Another gloomy gray January day in Paris,

I can't take pictures at my desk anymore because there is no natural light so I unpacked my lunch on the terrace of the Museum of Modern Art (not the Pompidou center - this museum is run by the city of Paris). It's right down the street from my office. In the background you can see the Seine, the Eifel Tower and a footbridge leading to the Musée de quai Branly.

I had a roastbeef and Roquefort sandwich. Of all the delicious French cheeses Roquefort is my favorite. Someday I will make a weekend getaway to visit the cellars where it is aged.

A close up of this delicious sandwich. I've found an excellent boulangerie and their bread is really good.

I also had a rasberry tart, which unfortunately got a little smushed while I was transporting it to the photo location.

And since the lunch cost 7.60 euros and my lunch tickets are for 8, I made up the difference with two yummy chouquettes (scroll down to the bottom of this excellent link for a recipe in English).

So that was my lunch but I also made this interesting discovery,

See that weird green mobile-home like thing on the top of the building? It's called the Hotel Everland and although it's really complicated and expensive you can make reservations to spend the night in it.

Happy lunching from Paris!

Lunch in my new office

The place that I work for moved to new offices last month and so now every morning when I come out of the metro I see this guy:

Yup, it's George Washington conquering Paris!

And here he is again from a different perspective which is interesting because right behind him you will see the Musée Guimet (the Guimet Museum dedicated to Asian art) - link to the English version of the site.

And here's todays lunch: ham and cheese on a baguette, an apple tart, a diet coke, and a little macaroon that cost .60 euro cents (my restaurant tickets are for 8 euros, the lunch cost 7.50, and they don't give change so I had to get the macaron to make up the difference).

Parma ham and comté cheese on a baguette with some lettuce. (the comté link is in English if you are interested in learning more about this delicious cheese.)

An apple tart. I had to take the pictures outside because my new office doesn't get much natural light (and I'm not real happy about that either - if anybody's looking for a PA/assistant/secretary/translator in Paris please drop me a line, but only if I can have a nice bright office with a window and a mutuelle) -  when the nice weather comes I will eat outside by the Seine which is right close by too.

A chocolat macaron...

And here is the inside. So, that was an ok lunch (with some culture thrown in - who knew there was a giant statue of Geo Washington right in the heart of Paris). I'm still getting used to this new area, on the down side there are no Asian take out places (hence my foray into Belleville this past weekend - I was really missing my Chinese takeout fix) but on the positive side we have an outdoor market on Wednesdays so maybe I will take some pictures of that soon.

Happy lunching!

Quiche and cake for lunch today

After all the horrible salad misadentures let's all breath a collective sigh of relief...ouuuui, no more bizarre Parisian salads (ever again).

Anyway, today's lunch was such a pleasure... and therefore it is a pleasure for me to share it with you. Enjoy!



Two quiches and a lovely cake.



First up is the quiche Lorraine...



and next up is the quiche poireaux...these are traditional favorites.



Here we have a close up on the quiche poireaux...the crust is delightful and the filling is just heavenly.



And here is the quiche Lorraine...



The two delicious quiches were followed by this very interesting cake. At the boulangerie they call it "Caraibes" which means Caribbean..obviously, I was expecting some Caribbean fruits...and so, do grapes and strawberries come from the Caribbean? Perhaps I will do some research.



In any case, this was a very nice cake and since the whole lunch cost less than what I had paid for my various salad fiascos, I'm happy. It's also so much more fun to take photos of food that is good.

This weekend I am going to make a chicken machbous which require lots of spices, oh happy me! Please pray that I get out of bed early enough tomorrow morning to start the whole delightfully complicated process...I'll try to get the results in on Monday but since I also have plans to go and check out "Le Diable s'habille en Prada" Sunday afternoon...who knows? anyway, Tuesday at the latest and big biz de Paris!

Happy lunching toujours!

I give up on salad...

Despite appearances to the contrary I am not French bashing in this post, it's just that...I really, really wanted to find some good and delicious and under 20 EUR  salads for lunch and apparently it's impossible to do this in the 8th arrondisement of Paris.

Check out today's entry:

9,90 EUR for a chicken curry salad, a slice of chicken curry tart, a piece of bread and a diet coke...this is not expensive by Paris standards as the least little sandwich will set you back 3 or 4 EUR, if not more, but it still seems like a lot for what I actually got.

I guess the salad looks ok in the photo but...the chicken was tough, the pineapple was canned and oh...the horror, the horror...it had chewy pieces of canned corn in it, hidden under the chicken. It was also watery because of the carrots or something. And the raisins were all clumped.

The ideas behind this lunch are all good but the execution is just "lamentable". I'm from Massachusetts and we grow good corn there...believe me it's not supposed to be chewy and tough. The French, what can I say...perhaps they like tough, chewy corn.

Moral of the story, Don't order salad in Paris.

and I'm going back to sandwiches even if that means you're going to get 45 consecutive ham and cheese on baguette photos...at least it's good and that is what counts.

So, have a good lunch, please!

ps. if you've ever had a good salad in France (that you didn't make yourself) please let me know, I don't give up so easily and I love to be proven wrong.

Search for the perfect lunch salad

I've  been eating a lot of sandwiches since I came back from vacation...but now I'm bored with ham and cheese and I've decided to look for the perfect lunch salad.

Today's post has two lunches, one for yesterday and one for today. Both have salad and both have tartes (one tarte sucré (sweet) and one tarte salée (savoury)).



Monday's lunch was a salade de terrine de poisson (fish mousse salad) with a tarte tatin (upside down apple tart) and a diet coke. This cost 9,50 EUR and I got it at the boulangerie where I usually buy my sandwiches.



Today's lunch cost 9,90 EUR and included a salade d'endives au Roquefort...my favorite cheese. My first remark about the salad lunches are that they cost more than a sandwich. Eating healthy is expensive.



This salad started off excellent, the fish terrine was really nice and light.



Unfortunately, this is what I found underneath the terrine...cold canned corn and some cold canned bean salad...this is a weird and frequent thing in Paris. I hate it and that was the end of this salad, never again. I couldn't even eat the lettuce underneath because it had a horrible canned vegetable taste although I will admit that people must like this because you see so much of it around. Go figure.



Happily today I had a salad I could live with. Endives, roquefort, walnuts, apple and raisins...delicious! and nothing was from a can.



Tarte tatin, very nice.



This is dessert so I should have saved it for last but it did go with the first salad so here it is in order on the inside.



With the roquefort salad lunch for 9,90 EUR I had a choice of salad, sweet or savory tart and a drink or a yogurt or a fromage blanc (sort of soft cheese  dessert). I chose to have a savory tarte, this one is spinach. I liked the little seeds on top.



A lovely spinach tart. Happy lunching!

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!

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.

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.

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?