Back in Paris

Which, I just noticed, was also the title of my last post, which included an unfulfilled promise to blog about our visit last summer.  Oh well.  

Anyway we are here, with everyone in the family plus cousing Alexandre.  We arrived-- when?  I'm in that stage when I have no sense of time-- yesterday noontime, met Alexandre off his plane, coped with the usual lost luggage (Eden's, finally delivered today, and good for 100 euros in shopping money), napped, and headed out.

First stop was the Village de Noel, what they call a Christmas Market, at Trocadero, across the bridge from the Eiffel Tower.  It's a liitle craft market, basically, the usual scarves and producteurs of local food of one kind or another, hot mulled wine and hot chocolate.  At the top of Trocadero there is what was advertised as a skating rink, but it was actually a little pathetic, maybe a thirty foot oval that had turned to slush, but people were dutifully pushing themselves around it.  We don't like to skate much anyway.

After the walk we headed to dinner at what has become our favoritie bistro in the neighborhood, Le Casse Noix, or nutcracker.  It is a typical tiny Parisian bistro, maybe 10 tables, an unbelievably small kitchen, and a chalkboard.  We were the only Americans in there.  The fixed price menu came supplemented with items on the chalkboard, most of all of which were an extra five euros or so over the fixed price.  I don't usually feel the need.  They start you with a chicken liver pate, soft and mild, served in a little long dish like one of those things you see in the US for serving olives all lined up.  Great bread.  Then most of the kids had scallops sauteed with pumpkin, pieces of bacon, and salad.  Carol and Alexandre had the house pate de campagne (with a jar of amazing cornichons), and I had tete de veau.  Tete de veau is the kind of thing you see a lot in France, made from the fattier parts of meat, in fact the parts where the meat has turned halfway to buttery fat.  Pigs feet are the same way.  Anyway it is what it sounds like, meat from the head, mixed in with fat, pressed into a soft patty, dipped in bread crombs and fried until it is crisp on the outside.  I know, but I love it, it's decadent.  For dessert CAM had tarte tatin, there were those little chocalate cakes with the runny centers, their amazing rice pudding that comes with a little crock of hot caramel to pour over it.  I had the cheese plate, a robluchon, a chevre and a brebis, the latter is always served with a little jam, in this case black cherry,  Amazing.  Went home and conked out.

It rained all night, and it is dark here in the morning anyway.  At 730 it was still pitch black and people woke up slowly.  We had planned to run but it was just to cold and rainy so we hung around, drank coffee, and finally by 1030 or so everyone was ready to head out to the market, which is Wednesday and Sunday morning.  Our friends Sandy, Philippe, Steve and Moulane are coming for dinner tonight.  As usual I paid too much for the meat, two big chickens, but it was worth it for the show.  They sat in the case with their heads hanging down, and once I chose them the butcher made a big production of chopping off the heads and feet (I saved the feet for soup), pulling out the gizzard and livers and carefully trimming them, tying everything up, all the while joking and asking whether I wanted things done this way or that.  In the long run it is too expensive to actually buy meat in the market, it is 20% less in a butcher on the street, and half that in a supermarket, but I say that every time.  I got potatoes to roast, a huge bag of fresh spinach, stuff to make soup with the chicken trimmings, so other than the chickens it wasn't too much.  I have to start cooking soon, come to think of it.

Then it was on to lunch, at a place we have been trying to get to for a while:  The Cabane a Huitres, the Oyster Cabin, over by the Tour Montparnasse.  It was closed the last couple of times we tried.  This place is really tiny, maybe four tables, and the menu, in its entirety, is:  first a dozen oysters or foie gras, followed by duck pate, smoked salmon, or foie gras if you got the oysters to start.  Four of us got the oysters, little tiny ones served with lemon and bread and butter, which is apparently how the French eat them, butter on bread plus an oyster.  Pretty amazing.  Manning and Alexandre looked a little horrified by soldiered through their platters.  They served the kids wine, without comment.  Great foie gras, wonderful bread, the smoked salmon that the non-oyster people had was great too.  Nice people, too.  The table of businessmen next to us, in suits, were there when we arrived and there when we left, working on their third bottle of wine.  

On the way home we stopped at the Museum of the French Resistance, which didn't amount to too much, mostly a bunch of old posters and photographs.  More than anything it was a little depressing to see all the documentation of the occupation and the Vichy collaboration.  It is in one of those ugly 70's buildings that seem to be left over from the French flirtation with the Soviets back then.  Big concrete plazas with no one on them, buildings that must have been designed to look sleek but don't age well.  It's good that the Parisians have gotten over the impulse to "modernize" the city.

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