Jet lag keeps waking me up early, so I have some time to blog about my incredible week in Paris. Harrison has recently turned 10 and I have always wanted to do something special for him for his milestone birthday. "Paris with my son "has been on the agenda for more than 10 years. On returning from my last trip to Paris, I found out I had been pregnant during the trip, so there was no more fitting place than to take him back to the City of Light.
While the lights were still magnificent, I think it could be renamed the City of Animal Products.
Being a vegan was nearly impossible there, and after four months of very clean eating, I often wondered beforehand how my tastebuds, and my stomach and my cravings would react.
I am a HUGE fan of French writing, french culture and bien sur, french cooking. Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking is really an incredible book on technique, and I have loved reading about one influential woman's literal transformation in Paris after falling in love with the cuisine.
This summer and early fall, I prepared many dishes from this MASTERFUL work of culinary literature - with each result more sumptuous and stunning than the last. Julia Child redefined french cooking - out of an intense curiosity, fuelled by her personality traits of thorough, scientific and exactingly particular high standards, and finally out of an affair of the heart for both her husband and ultimately her self. Vegan or not - this cookbook is a passionate and definitive work of art.
French cooking is also based in art. The attention to detail, technique and correctness is unparalleled in other cuisines. Every detail lends itself to perfecting a dish.
SIZE matters. The first time I read that a carrot NEEDED to be chopped into even 1/8 inch pieces instead of 1/2 inch chunks I laughed. I thought "Oh, come on! a carrot is a carrot". But I was wrong about this. Small pieces impart more robust flavour to a sauce or a dish than an irreverant "chunk". That is how it is done - comme il faut.
Il faut. It means "it must be". In law there are multiple ways of reading legislation and any lawyer worth their fleur de sel knows that the word "shall" means something very different than the word "may". I venture to say that "il faut" is one level above "shall". It means "just do it" with no "si, et, or mais".
And the results blow your mouth and your mind. My previous two trips to Paris, once as a new lawyer and once with my entire family bore this out.
I have a very proficient taste memory, and I know this helps in my cooking. I can "taste-remember" what flavours go together, what textures match up with each other, and how a dish will work together. My tastebuds know instantly what is a match, and are also adventurous enough to try new matches - often with wonderful results.
Taste is like relationships. If, when you are young you like the taste of a purple plum, you could just buy purple plums forever. They could be your favourite fruit, and you could probably remain wedded to purple plum for the rest of your life, without ever trying something new.
Or you could explore, sample, try, test, and experience. Every item of edibility has subtle things to do to your tastebuds. Interplay between sweet, salty, bitter, sour, spicy and umami define our food experiences every single day, and they define who we are and who we become.
Limiting oneself limits ones self.
A palate without limits opens you up to savour variation of the human experience. Obviously I am not a "plums-for-the-rest-of-my-life" kind of person. I want to stretch. I enjoy the new tastes and savour the discoveries.
I wanted to experience veritable cuisine Parisienne again knowing (10 years later) more than I knew 10 years ago. I wanted to plunge my fork in and enjoy.
I also wanted to remain as close as I possibly could to vegan cuisine while doing so. As we prepared, packed, boarded, and flew toward the french coastline, I hoped that there would be dishes I could delight in.
I knew from reading about vegan Paris that this would be a challenge, and that I may have had to settle for some butter, some cream, and some meaty seasoning in my vegetable dishes.
It was impossible.
Unless we had been prepared to seek out vegetarian restaurants with equal intensity as "let's go to the Louvre", or "let's go to the top of the Eiffel Tower", it simply was not doable. It saddened me a bit, but also gave me that tiny bit of cheater's permission to sample foods I no longer eat.
My first meal at Brasserie LIPP was sole meuniere. A buttery filet of sole with parsley and lemon was absoultely marvelous, although the sauce tasted much thicker than anything I have eaten in the last four months. I had a bite of Harrison's salmon poached in a tomato cream sauce, and was struck with the intense salmony taste, and the heavy creamy accompaniment. I enjoyed the lightness of the sole, and immediately set my mind on how I was going to duplicate a vegan version. (I am thinking about something with layered potato, sweet potato, carrot and parsnip...)
At Cafe des Deux Magots, I ventured towards the most vegetarian item I could find : A Tomato and Cucumber tartine on Poilane bread, with a tiny half-ounce of warmed goat's cheese. It was good, but didn't alight my imagination like I thought it would. I was struck with the filmy, slick taste of the goat cheese.
While searching out things to do in Paris, I came across a bed and breakfast five minutes from the Arc de Triomphe, called "The Gentle Gourmet B and B", which specializes in vegan living, (from bedding to breakfasts). Their accommodations were perfect for Harrison and I, and the breakfasts were amazing. They deserve a separate blog entry (maybe tomorrow?), but suffice it to say that if I were ever to go back to Paris or to recommend where to stay to a friend, il faut rester avec the Gentle Gourmet B & B. The best things I ate in Paris were at Deborah's in the morning.
Unless you ultimately take your last breath with the very first person you become really fond of, most of us go through a breakup. Unless your first job is the one you retire from, most of us will begin and end a professional endeavour of some kind. Unless you are born and remain in the same home for your entire life, you will remember what it is like to change residences. The packing and unpacking. The reestablishment of items from one home to their new place in another.
For me, this trip to Paris was like running into someone you used to know well, but know very little about now. It was like remembering what it was like to work at a previous job, but knowing that what you are doing now is much better suited to your personality. It was like revisiting an old apartment with someone else's things set up there... The walls are the same, but it is no longer yours.
People should exit our life if they are not compatible with us. We should move through our careers and change, and adapt, and hopefully find the endeavour that we are most suited to. We should change living situations to live best.
After eight days in the world's most spectacular city, I wanted to get back to the job that fulfills me, the complicated man that I love and the city that is home. And even though I sampled a taste non-vegan cuisine, I wanted to get back to eating plants.
Par ce-qu'il faut.
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