A recommendation for this weekend: The New Yorker Food Issue.
With the cold weather outside I suggest staying in all weekend reading the brilliant New Yorker Food Issue.
If you can't find the paper issue I strongly recommend reading this brilliant article "Toques from Underground
The rise of the secret supper club" by Dana Goodyear.
I was well surprised when I came home from Paris and found a big parcel from sooishi on my desk.
In it were the new sooishi granola. To me finding a granola I like has so far been an almost impossible task.
Hard to say why, most of them just taste to "healthy" to me. I usually like other peoples granolas better than the ones I buy but I never asked what they buy. So I basically ended up eating no granola, just berries and greek yogurt.
Sooishi granolas are different and I love them. They come in 3 variations: Peacan nuts, Matcha tea and Pistacio and Kinako ( soybean flour) , cashew nuts and peanuts . The matcha one is my favorite!
I love to eat them with a little bit of greek yogurt and some honey. Perfect start into the day.
She is also selling highly recommendable jams but one has to be very quick to get one - they sell so fast.
The Granolas cost approx. 10.- for the 300 gr package and can be ordered online in the sooishi boutique.
This is the first time I'll blog about restaurants or shops here but I try to get rid of one too many blog and this would mean
recommendations for restaurants and such would have to find a new home here. Probably not the worst idea.
So let's start with le marché des enfants rouges.
I come to paris twice a year to work and I hardly have time to discover new things. Luckily this time kevin came along and he discovered this covered market which I learned id the oldest in paris. Built in 1615 under Louis XIII. The rather strange name is said to come from an orphanage which was next to it where the children wore red uniforms.
We went there on a sunday morning and I immediately fell in love with it. The marché is almost secretly nested in a backyard, in the first part one finds lovely fruit , flowers and fish stands. But the real discovery were the stalls you can find further back in the market. Little food stalls that sell proper menus or a combination of products and take a way food. Theres big tables and benches everywhere and you can also sit down and eat you lunch or dinner right there.
I felt a bit like in an asian street kitchen only that we could choose between moroccan, libyan, japanese italian or french for lunch. The decision was difficult every thing looked so tempting.
Le Marche des Enfants Rouges
39 rue de Bretagne
Hours: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday: 8:30-1PM and 4PM-7: 30PM
Friday, Saturday- 8h30AM-1PM and 4PM-8PM
Sunday: 8:30AM–2PM
Metro: Filles- Calvaire or Temple
I've learnt theres a very nice community garden called " le pottage des oiseaux" next to it if you have time to visit check the website jardinons-ensemble.org
Yesterday my copy of GATHER has arrived and it's as beautiful as I hoped it would be.
Stunning food photography, interesting reads and recipes that sound rather interesting.
I will have to wait to try the shaved asparagus salad with poached egg till next spring and I'm also to late for the grilled bread with ricotta and peas so I'll probably start with the gazpacho water.
Gather Journal, a new bi-annual recipe-driven food publication devoted not just to cooking and eating, but to what those acts inspire: the bringing of people together. You will find lushly imagined photography from some of the country’s most esteemed food photographers and fun, insightful writing. Each issue is divided into chapters, much like a meal—amuse bouches, starters, mains, and desserts—along with regular special features, from studied examinations of ingredients to whimsical essays about memorable eating experiences.
GATHER was launches by ywo former fashion editors . NYLON veterans Fiorella Valdesolo and Michele Outland had long planned on bringing their shared aesthetic to a new style magazine before deciding to tackle something new and unfamiliar. They put together the bi-annual food and recipe journal, called Gather, in less than three months.
We left our favorite cook book shop - "Books for cooks" with this little gem.
A "thesaurus" of different flavour combinations. Former marketing executive Niki Segnit has taken 99 flavours (from potato and cucumber to black pudding and washed-rind cheese) and grouped them into hundreds of pairings, each accompanied by an elegant, and often highly witty, mini-essay.
This book is basically packed inspiration. The sort of book which should always lay on the kitchen table or beside the sofa.
It's funny, interesting full of historical and scientific references, anecdotes and recipes. You can just read it like a novel - but one that will leave you hungry. But you can also pick it up when you lack inspiration or have only a few things left in your fridge and don't know what do do with them.
read the guardian review
Heston at home is the first cook book that I bought in a while and it's totally different from the books I usually buy.
But having seen his show Heston's Mission Impossible on Channel 4 I'm a bit of a fan. Particularly the episode where he goes onboard HMS Turbulent, a nuclear-powered Royal Navy attack submarine where he plans to shake up the crew’s diet.
I'm still only reading the book but there are plenty of very interesting recipes and I'll love to try cooking the blumenthal way.
I'll keep you posted.
I was in Paris in January - job wise. I like Paris but I'm really not lucky when it comes to restaurants. I usually work late and don't have time ( and am to tired ) to go to one of the "must go" restaurants where you need to book days in advance. So I try smaller places with not much success. The food french restaurants serve seems so outdated and always way to heavy. Since I go twice a year I would be very grateful for some tips.
But I love the french products, my suitcase is always stuffed with cheese, sweets ( finally made my way to Pierre Herme) and Wine.
This time I finally made it to Dehillerin again. Since years I'm dreaming of a iron pan like nigel slater uses it - I always new Dehillerin is the place to buy one but I did not find time. So after certainly more than 6 years it just blew my mind again this is just THE shop for cooks. Love it!
The family run business exists since 1820. They stock everything a cook needs.
E. DEHILLERIN
18 et 20, rue Coquillière - 51, rue Jean- Jacques Rousseau - 75001 PARIS
Tél. : 01 42 36 53 13 - Fax : 01 42 36 54 80
http://www.e-dehillerin.fr
Open monday from 9h to 12h30 and from 14h to 18h
tuesday till saturday from 9h à 18h.
Closed on sunday
A good friend of mine showed me the Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi cookbook back in December and I immediately ordered it . It arrived before christmas, I had a short look through it and wondered why I ordered it - didn't speak to me at all.
Months later, when the days were getting longer and warmer, I picked it up again and had the immediate urge to start cooking. This is the sort of cook book that inspires me , I only have to look at the pictures and my brain starts cooking. For several weeks I was cooking Ottolenghi style with out ever reading a recipe - only looking at the pictures.
Plenty is Yotam Ottolenghis second vegetarian cook book and it's a must have !
www.ottolenghi.co.uk/
Ottolenghi's Guardian "the new vegetarian" column is always a good read too.
For a long time I wanted to share this with you. When every I fell totally guilty again for our boys eating habits I read it.
It's just from A-Z how our culinary life with our son is like. Only for Alex Rentons son it's not the pasta but the cheese.
I strongly recommend you read this extremly funny article from Alex Renton in the food monthly June 2006 ( when I read this first I did not know what was waiting for me).
"What do you give the boy who doesn't like anything - except cheese?
Even the children of foodies need to be coaxed into trying something new, but how do you whet young appetites? Alex Renton takes seven-year-old Adam to the supermarket with his own basket and the pick of the aisles"
read the full article here
or if your to busy here are my 3 favorite quotes:
"But when Adam and I first sat down with a plate of boiled lobster that we'd caught and cooked together, he said 'Yuk!' without even trying it. I thought I might cry. If he'd come home with Black Sabbath tattoos, newly baptised into the Church of Beelzebub, it could hardly have been worse."
"While we were there, though, I managed to lose his trust in me, forever, as far as food is concerned. One day at a Thai restaurant table, when he was four or five, I offered him money if he'd just try something Thai and tasty. He remembers the event well - 'the day you made me drink the fish sauce'. Stupid Dad. His reaction was spectacular - he threw up all over the table. Who wouldn't? Now, if I offer him an olive or an anchovy, a macadamia nut or a piece of 70 per cent cocoa chocolate, and tell him it's just delicious, he'll go: 'Oh, no, I don't think so! Nice try, Dad.' I'm not catching him out again. "
"Or, as happened last winter, when the narrow list of foodstuffs he will eat with enthusiasm actually contracts. That was a bad time. Fish fingers, chicken breast and scrambled eggs all departed the menu in the space of a few weeks, and the only meat or fish protein left was little Piglet-pink Richmond sausages. But we bounced back, with Marks & Spencer's breaded chicken goujons (that's posh nuggets), boiled eggs (yolks only) and canned tuna. You keep trying, you don't give up, you're positive, encouraging and you offer variety without pressure. You keep your temper, you try to get off his case. But how we miss those fish fingers - and I never thought I'd find myself saying that."
Tender vol 2 - a cooks guide to the fruit garden.
A must have, as beautiful and inspiring as Tender vol 1 - a cooks and his vegetable patch.
