Strange Meat

I knew I was going to eat some sort of organ meat, or something strange in Paris. I was ok with that, and so I haven’t been too careful with my menu translations. Finally, my carelessness paid off and I was treated to a strange black sausage tartlet. It was good, tender with a crunchy outside. It had a fairly sweet flavor and nice subtle spice. I knew it was something weird, but at the time, just ate up, acting as if I knew what I was doing. I remembered the name of the thing: Boudin Noir.

Turns out I ate pork blood sausage. John ate some too. We squeeled just a little bit, but were also a bit proud for taking a little culinary adventure. Apparently, it’s one of the oldest known charcuterie traditions in France, having a history of some 2000 years. That made me feel fairly French inside, but I wondered how I would feel the next day so to speak. It’s a bit hard to stomach the idea of it, but actually it was fairly ok. Now knowing that Boudin is blood sausage, I’m not sure it would feel the same going down, but trying something once is a good way to know what it feels like.

Baguettes in Paris

Sitting in our apartment in Paris we started to notice tons and tons of baguette crumbs. We started to think about it and realized that it wasn’t gravel dust that paves the walkways in the parks of Paris, it’s finely crushed baguette and croissant crumbs from the hundreds of baguettes Parisians consume each year. The theory goes that they are swept into small sacs and placed in receptacles in the garbage areas in everybodys courtyards. Each year, a new minister of baguettes is appointed, who carefully monitors and controls the conversion of the thin flakes into dust…if crushed into too thin of a powder, they will be too absorbant and make mud too easily during the unpredictable rainy spring. If crushed too coarse, the papery flakes will be too slippery, and not provide adequate footing for Parisian women with their high heels to tromp over. It’s just a theory…

Paris and Bollywood

We’re in Paris for a much anticipated pastry pilgrimage and to celebrate my 40th. The weather’s beautiful, can you say “Paris in the Springtime!”

We headed over to a chocolate tour with David Leibovitz today. It was a bit tricky being our first time on the metro, and we were still a bit jetlagged from getting up at 5am since the day prior was the big travel day. But we finally figured out “the secret” to the metro, which boiled down to us actually finding the metro station as opposed to trying to use our metro map at the RER station. We’re still not sure how the RER works with the metro, but we’re really happy with how the metro gets us around really quickly. Geez, they need something like that in Seattle. So back to the tour…

Our first stop was Laduree which was actually on my list, but I was happy that we were going to the original store on Rue Royal. I love the way the shop looks on the outside, like a dress boutique. We snapped a couple of pics and headed in. The other thing that’s great about the high end patisseries in Paris is that they have display cases that are topless, which makes viewing the desserts very easy, and very beautiful. Laduree is famous for inventing Parisan Macaroons, and they sell some 5k a day of them (I’m sure mostly through mail order and such). We picked up a few of the more interesting flavors like Rose, Licorice, etc. But what immediately caught my eyes were these really cool pastel balls in pink and green. I had no idea what they would be like, were made out of, but had to get one to try it so got a green one. Turns out they were crunchy meringue sandwiches with chocolate ganache centers enrobed in crème de menthe buttercream. Fabulous and light.

Next we went to about 5 more chocolate shops, each with a unique style or specialty, but most of them were very progressive in their flavor choices for their truffles. I don’t have a list of names,only that most of the shops were in the St. Germain district.

(photo courtesy of Laduree, used without permission)