Garden of my dreams

I'm not the only one talking about him these days, but the stuff that comes out of Joel Thiébault's garden is worth mentioning over and over again.

A couple of weekends ago a friend and I decided to check out the President Wilson market in the 16th. We got up early that Saturday morning, met at the Alma-Marceau metro, and woke ourselves up over noisettes* at a table on the sidewalk, just down the block from where the market began.
The sky threatened rain, as it has done every day for the last couple of weeks. What can you do but constantly carry an umbrella and get on with your life?

The market was quiet-- it's August and many of the vendors spots stood empty. We wandered through rather nonchalantly until suddenly it was like the clouds parted and the sun shone down on this one booth, like a spotlight. From a short distance away I stood with my arm extended and my finger pointing.
"Look!"
Our feet propelled us forward in a hurry and our conversation turned into a jumbled flurry of "oh my god", "check this out", "what the heck is that" and a great many oohs and ahhs.
You may think I'm exaggerating, but my heart was a thumpin'.

Let me try to paint a visual picture for you.
Tomatoes, in all shades of red, orange, yellow and green.
Big bundles of yellow carrots, the dirt still clinging to them.
Golden beets resting plump and firm beside crisp bundles of swiss chard with stems of red or orange, or yellow.
Herbs piled so high, and smelling so fragrant--many of them I did not even recognize.
Not to mention the peppers, the eggplant, the leafy greens..

All of this, grown in a garden, just outside of Paris.
It doesn't get much better than that.

With our bags full of vegetables, suddenly the rest of the market held little interest. We both went back to our respective apartments, happy as clams, our minds racing with what we would do with our new treasures. I trudged happily through the metro with a big bundle of lemon verbena poking out of my bag, leaving a trail of lemony scent behind me.
I got home, laid my bounty on my counter and gazed at it with wonder and awe.
That week I ate like a queen.
My heart still thumps just thinking about it.
And yes, I will be going back.
Often.




President Wilson market
on President Wilson avenue between Alma-Marceau metro and Iéna metro
Wednesday and Saturday mornings.
Check Clotilde's post for further info on Joel Thiébault.

*noisette --an espresso with a shot of milk in it.

Life is just a bowl of salad.

Pasta salad with Feta, Yellow Pepper and Snow Peas

The other day G innocently asked me what I would be posting about next.
Here's what he heard:
"Blah blah blah blah salad."
"You always talk about salads." he said.
What I heard, between the lines, was: "Yawn."
Problem is, everything I eat on a regular basis these days falls under the category of a salad.
Whether it has a base of leafy greens, bulghur, couscous, lentils or pasta, in my mind, if its loaded with vegetables, and it's not saucy, it constitutes a salad.

Men.
So difficult.

I mean, sometimes life just IS a bowl of salad.
It's not always about complicated and unusual recipes. Is it?
So here I am, talking about salad because that's what makes me happy.


The story starts something like this: I spotted Martha's recipe for Pasta Salad with Feta and Snow Peas and I could tell it had everything a girl like me could want.
It had pasta for one thing, the all-important feta cheese, and a miscellaneous array of vegetables in attractive and complimentary colours. And, to top it all off, a generous dose of fresh coriander. How could it get any better?

I enjoyed it. I did. There was nary a noodle or vegetable left in that bowl once I had finished with it.
But something about that raw yellow pepper didn't sit right with me. It was like putting an outfit together that is just close to perfect--you are seriously looking your sassiest self-- and then you go and throw on your mother's pearls and suddenly your fab is nothing but drab.

I wanted to love that pasta salad. I really did.

So I tried again.
This time, I swapped the yellow pepper for some sautéed zucchini, tweaked the vinaigrette a bit, and bingo, we had lift off.
I admit, it looks prettier with the yellow pepper, but sometimes a great personality is more important than being pretty. Right?


Pasta salad with Snow Peas, Zucchini and Feta

Pasta Salad with Snow Peas, Zucchini and Feta inspired by Martha

This serves one very hungry person as a main dish. I added alot of vegetables so the salad could actually serve 2 as a side dish, despite the small amount of pasta in there. It's up to you.

60g orriechette pasta (which is about 1/2 cup of dried pasta)
1 zucchini, chopped (feel free to only use half if you want).
a small handful of snow peas, sliced on the diagonal into 1 cm strips
1 or 2 teaspoons of thinly sliced scallion a.k.a green onion (I used the green part)
a tablespoon or two of chopped fresh coriander (or to taste)
A tablespoon or two of crumbled feta cheese (or more to taste)

Vinaigrette
1 tsp olive oil
1 tsp white wine vinegar
1/2 tsp balsamic vinegar
1/2 of a small clove of garlic, finely chopped (this part is optional, Martha's recipe does not contain garlic, but it adds a slight kick)
salt and pepper to taste

Cook the pasta. Add the snow peas to the pasta water at the last minute or two just to blanch them but keep them slightly crunchy. Drain and rinse pasta and snow peas in cold water. (You can blanch the snow peas in a separate pot of water if you prefer)
Saute the zucchini in one teaspoon of olive oil over a medium high heat until browned.
Add to the pasta with the snow peas.
Mix the vinaigrette ingredients together and add to the pasta.
Finally add the scallion, coriander and feta to the pasta and mix altogether.
Add salt and pepper to taste.

Make ahead and serve cold or eat it right away while it's still slightly warm, whichever you prefer.
If you make it ahead, put the coriander in just before serving.

Not this again..

Bouddha Bleu tea, and my new Mariage Frères tea cup

It's been a while since I waxed poetic about Mariage Frères Teas. Which is probably not a bad thing, since you'd probably roll your eyes at me if I did. And to those of you who are sick of it already, I suggest you divert your eyes now.

The truth is, I haven't been drinking all that much tea lately, despite the fact that my tea cupboard (named so because it holds only tea and tea paraphenalia) is literally overflowing.
But summer killed the tea freak in me. It put my tea-freaky self in cement shoes and dropped me in the river to sleep with the fishes.

But August has been quite a surprise. In the blink of an eye we went from 2 weeks of sweat-drenched t-shirts to whipping out the socks and the long sleeves. It's been a bit of a slap in the face.
It took some time before I started to feel the itch, but suddenly that tea cupboard was open again, and there I was back to my old habit of sniffing and mulling over which flavour to select.

Wedding Imperial, and its heavenly scent of chocolate and caramel, won me over on that first day. A cozy, rainy afternoon was made all that much better for it.
And then soon after, on an early morning, with a bit of a bedhead and very cold feet, Bouddha Bleu, a green tea with blue cornflowers, found its way into my tea cup.

The love affair has started all over again..

-----------
And because you know I had to buy the book that describes all their teas, I can tell you what MF has to say about these two lovelies.

Wedding Imperial
One sniff of this stuff and you will be hooked.

"A paean to love. This glamorous blend is steeped in the passion that weds the malty power of golden Assam tea leaves to the sweetness of notes of chocolate and caramel. Perfect clarity. Evidence of a peerless marriage. "

Bouddha Bleu

"For centuries, Buddhists in the Land of Free Men have perpetuated the custom of making special offerings of flowers, fruit and tea to monks. From this green tea, sprinkled with blue cornflowers, there rises a blend of fragrances recalling the ripe fruit on a tray laden with offerings. A tea steeped in spirituality."

**excerpts are from The French Art of Tea, available at Mariage Frères stores, in many languages, for approximately €12.

Let's be best friends..

And then one day I tried to make a movie..
What?
It's my first one..
Be nice.

Paris in August

My Frankenstein tomato: Expertly stitched by Mother Nature herself.

Sunday mornings are my favourite day of the week, and I like to move slowly. I usually get up early but there's something I like about puttering around the house without an agenda on Sundays while G sleeps in. If it's raining, so much the better. For whatever reason, this Sunday, I left G dozing in bed and headed to the Raspail market in the 6th. It's organic on Sundays and because it was after 9am, I was expecting it to be bustling. But then I remembered: it's August, and nothing is bustling in Paris right now. The city is, comparatively at least, a ghost town.

My concierge informed me that every apartment in my building but 2 is currently empty. It seems everyone in France has a summer house and they high tail it out of here as soon as they can.

Needless to say, it has been very, very quiet.

It is a great time to be in the city-- to watch it sleep, so to speak, and to experience it in this rare sense of calm. There are tourists, but not many. Many of the shops are closed and you may have to find a new bakery to keep you stocked with baguettes until yours reopens at the end of the month. Sometimes you find yourself cursing at the inconvenience, but then you quickly realize that this temporary silence is well worth it.

I took a long walk after I'd filled my bags with strange tomatoes at the market. I stopped at a health food store to replenish my bulghur supply, headed for the best baguette in Paris only to find that the bakery was closed, and then headed to Alléosse to gaze at their world of cheeses and marvel still at how at this time of year I can walk in there and find the store empty of customers. I said hello and took my sweet, sweet time.


Cheese from Alléosse
front: Cabris Gors (goat cheese)
middle: Manchego
back: Cheddar fermier

I finally had to call it quits when I could feel a blister forming on the bottom of my foot and my watch told me that I had been walking for over 2 hours. I came home, kicked off my shoes and promptly took a nap. It was not even 11:30am, and I still had the whole quiet day to kill.
Without a doubt, Paris in August is so much better than Paris in July..


Raspail Market
Boulevard Raspail between rue du Cherche-Midi and rue de Rennes
Metro: Rennes
Tuesday and Friday, 7 am to 2.30 pm
Sunday mornings--organic.

Re: your email

Dear Trailblazer,

I got your email this morning. It was so touching--you really showered me with compliments. I'm not saying this to be mean but are you sure you weren't drunk? I know how you like to get your groove on on Friday nights, and I'm thinking that might have affected the tone of your email. Which brings me to this : don't you dare jump on that one-piece shortset bandwagon. Where does Jessica Simpson get off wearing one in her new video when it's clear that she totally stole that whole disco thing from Madonna. If I ever catch you wearing some of those short shorts then I might have to stage an intervention. I had a blue velour one-piece when I was 7 and I think it should just remain in my memories.

But anyway, you said you liked my blog and that is music to my ears. You said you wished that I posted more often and that made me feel kind of bad so I decided to take a picture of my breakfast and post something just for you.

You said you don't remember me being a foodie when we used to hang out together in high school. Hello? We were both a pair of foodies, you and me.

Remember how much we loved dry toast and tomatoes? And they couldn't be just any tomatoes, they had to be the hardest, most unripe ones at the grocery store, picked way too early for their own good, not a single ounce of juice to be squeezed from them? Your brother used to say "Those aren't even tomatoes." and we used to think how uninformed he was because well, back then, anything an older brother said was bollocks anyway, right?

And don't you remember how we used to go out for dinner together every thursday night after hanging out with the skaters (sk8ters) in the Zellers parking lot? And we didn't just go to McDonald's or Burger King like all the other rednecks. Dude, we went to Swiss Chalet for a quarter chicken dinner with fries and sometimes, when we were feeling frou-frou, we had a baked potato instead.

Remember how I used to eat my alpha-ghetti one letter at a time? Remember how we hated those no-name cookies and gave them a really politically incorrect nickname just to express our dislike for anything that was not Nabisco? If that is not a foodie in the making then I don't know what is.

Anyway, the point is, your email sure was a breath of fresh air. Drunk or not. So I hope you like my berries up there, because I took that picture just for you so that you might wake up this Saturday morning and think to yourself, gee that Michèle sure is nice. Because I sure do think you're swell.

Ta ta and happy eating,
Michèle aka Chicken Legs.

P.S. And don't forget that awesome fruit salad you used to make with a wide variety of canned fruits.