From simple picnics of bread and cheese on park benches to Michelin-lauded establishments of the culinary elite, my mother and I ate our way across both the city and the countryside. Through well-laid plans as well as happy coincidences, our meals were shared with old friends from all over the world either living in Paris or happening to travel through the region at the same time.

One of the amazing things about Paris is how easy it is to find incredible food on every corner, from boulangeries to patisseries to shops teeming with foie gras or artisan chocolates.  We started one day at Sainte-Chappelle on Ile de la Cite, a popular tourist destination that was completely worth the wait…

and then proceeded to visit another the spectacular sight of Paris – the fromagerie.

This shop, on Ile-St-Louis, featured a front window display teeming with chevre of all shapes and sizes.  Some looked like moldy grey logs, others like newly hatched dinosaur eggs, others like petrified stones or lumpy balls of grout scraped off your shower tiles.  But the inside…smooth and creamy and bursting with earthy, grassy flavour.

That’s some French chevre, up close and personal. Best to be eaten in a small park behind Notre Dame with some paté from the bucherie, a fresh baguette from the boulangerie, and rhubarb nectar from the gourmet shop round the corner.

Our massive picnic on the Seine unfortunately left us too full to sample the wares of the street market behind the Hotel de Ville. But next time I’m definitely going back for these potatoes, which are probably fried in goose fat or sausage lard or something equally naughty and French.

To contrast with the steaming hot, oil-splattering grease bombs above were gorgeously speckled beans…

…thick stalks of white asparagus and tiny bitty shoots of what I think is wild baby asparagus on the right, like something you’d find in a field and mistake for a weed rather than a perfect little bite of springtime.

I was curious as to how it would taste, and was lucky enough to get a chance to eat some later that evening, at one of the best meals of my life…

More France to come!

It might just be the best bread in the world.  A warm, soft, tantalizingly nutty sesame loaf, fresh from the ovens just after 5pm…

…or one of THREE enormous olive loaves purchased in one go later that weekend.  I want to go olive spelunking in caverns and crevasses of doughiness.

Phenomenal with a large splosh of fresh ricotta cheese, liberally doused with several large gloops of good olive oil, a spritz of freshly ground pepper and a HIYAAAA of kosher salt.

Spectacular with an assortment of cheeses from Cowgirl Creamery…a punchy, saucy blue, the ever-orgasmic ash-striped Humboldt Fog, and a half moon of triple cream.  Because double cream isn’t good enough and single cream is just preposterous.

I can think of fewer recipes for happiness than Tartine bread + Cowgirl Creamery cheese + good friends + bottles of wine.

Just don’t expect to eat any of your delicious dinner afterwards.  Way to go on the triple olive bread and the triple cream, Steph and Lex. The Lawrence sisters, like the Li sisters, most definitely how to eat.

Let’s talk about the menu. Since we’re new at this whole restaurant thing, we haven’t really figured out how to simultaneously serve a secret supper and photodocument it, so bear with us on the pictures!

We started with a red wine oxtail and beef tongue stew, served as chilled, jelly hemispheres, with a layer of homemade Momofuku pickles on a toasted baguette round.

Probably the most challenging dish of the evening, our tongue-and-tail amuse bouche was cast in a mold designed and cut by Amin. Pretty cool, huh? We value the use of all parts of the animals we eat, and wanted our guests to do the same. To our surprise and delight, nobody tried to escape the event while we described this dish, and everyone cleaned their plate! On a side note, those pickles are so addictive and delicious – definitely at the top of my these-are-so-easy-to-make-i’ll-never-buy-them-again list.

For our starter, we served the dish that has been our pride, joy, and near-undoing for the last several months: pork belly with butternut squash polenta. Cured for two days in a mix of brown sugar, sea salt, cinnamon, cloves, star anise and black pepper, and then braised for upwards of three hours in a pot of chicken stock and Delirium Tremens (famed as the best beer in the world), this local pork from Autumn’s Harvest Farm is tender, buttery, and melts in your mouth. The butternut squash polenta is cooked on the stovetop and then baked (or is it fried?) on cast iron with a lot of butter. We made our sauce out of a reduction of the braising liquid and some Cornell Orchards cider. This isn’t actually the pork belly we served, but an earlier incarnation that looks mostly alike:

We also served some cider mulled with the same spice mix that we cured the belly with. Still with us, even through the bad flash photography? Our other three dishes, after the jump…

Our third dish was a palate cleanser: quenelles (a.k.a. football shaped lumps, originally and traditionally made of meats or fish, but now just any mushy substance) of fresh grape sorbet. We seeded, peeled, and pureed the grapes, then added lemon juice and simple syrup, and stirred in crushed dry ice. Voila! Sorbet. Pretty cool. Sadly, no pictures this time around, but we’ll do a recipe post soon enough!

Our main was a wilted arugula salad with walnuts and figs, surrounded by brined, pan-fried chicken breast, graced by a quenelle of goat cheese whipped with shallots. I’m never eating normal, non-whipped, no-shallot goat cheese again.

That green puree you see is a mixture of spinach and arugula, and has a wonderful, tangy bite. Did we competitively squeezee-bottle it into our mouths in the kitchen after the dinner was over? Maybe. Here’s a closeup of the entree.

Finally, we served a dessert of chocolate torte over crisp madeleine biscuit with chocolate ganache, raspberry coulis, and earl grey-infused whipped cream. Best at room temperature, torte is flourless and crazy-rich. The photos speak for themselves.

All in all, it was a beautiful two nights. Our guests were gracious and generous, we didn’t have any major disasters in the kitchen, we didn’t break any dishes, and dinner-table conversation didn’t lull once (lulz). Thank you to everyone who joined us. Here are some final action shots!

Irene, interrupted while considering a bed of very green and flavorful arugula while trying to pretend she’s not drinking a milkshake during dinner preparations.

Daniel and Amin, straining cider through a cheesecloth.

Max, performing some classic gesticulations while describing a dish.

Daniel, laughing at the sheer volume of dishes to be done.

Can’t wait for the next event!

here are the highlights of this lovely saturday market trip, plus a few reasons why i am falling in love with london.

highlight# 1: the biggest vat of thai green curry with mussels ever seen.

if this isn’t a category in the guinness book of world records, it should be. then i could compete to be the person who consumed the most thai green curry with mussels ever. super stardom, here i come.

highlight #2: this stack of seriously delicious comte cheese wheels.

you can see how high this stack of cheese wheels is because they could CRUSH EAMON TO DEATH if they fell on him in a cheese avalanche. well, almost.   borough cheese company hands out these samples of this incredible comte cheese that i ADORE (there are cool photos about cheesemaking on their site too). i kind of want to buy a whole wheel of comte and take it home to be my friend. it will live in my kitchen and i will care for it by slowly slicing it into pieces. it will grow smaller while my belly grows bigger. i bet eamon is imagining the very same thing.

reason #1 why london is great – notice anything missing from the bottom of this photo? american marketgoers may notice that there isn’t a huge stack of unnecessary and useless toothpicks by the cheese. they don’t use toothpicks here and it’s great. toothpicks are such a pain in the ass because they are just another annoying step slowing down the convergence of sample item and mouth. perhaps you might find this ‘unsanitary’, in which case you should go drink a  convenient travel-size bottle of hand sanitizer.

highlight #3: glasses of white wine and snacks outside the cathedral:

the back of borough market abuts this church so you can wander out from the maze of stalls with a toasted cheese or pizza sandwich in your hands, plop down on some old stones or this tiny grassy knoll and enjoy your meal. but even better, check out what those ladies on the right have in their hands, which brings me to:

reason #2 why london is great – YOU CAN DRINK OUTSIDE! like ANYWHERE. no brown bagging and trying to hide from the cops, you can just buy alcohol from an off-license and drink in the park if you like. it’s amazing!

i’d like to state for the record that i do not have a drinking problem, despite your possible belief to the contrary.  in fact, i am actively trying to protect my liver from the brits who are constantly trying pickle it by inviting us out to the pub all the time.  but while we’re on the subject of alcohol…

highlight #4: how good does this fresh sangria look?

so cute! fresh fruit and hand-lettered signs and baskets of lavender and checked tablecloths and all things that call out to me, if only i weren’t already hungover. seriously, no drinking problem. i blame you, england. but i still love you because..

reason #3 why london is great – i am particularly entertained by the variations in language, especially as related to food. i mean, bacon  bubble bap? is this a tv show for children? are you doing this on purpose?

now that i am an avid learner of brit foodspeak, i will translate that for you as sandwich roll with bacon, cheese, and leftover potato-vegetable hash thingie.  you can read about fun times with bubble and squeak here.

highlight #5: super nice guys who want to give me lots of samples of expensive ham.

check out that massive hoof in your face. yeesh. kind of weird, but not weird enough that i don’t want to eat delicious cured spanish ham from brindisa.

the guy on the right was in the middle of carefully carving up a big pig leg and noticed me peering at the massive hams. he  proceeded to shave off a thin slice of four different varieties ranging in color from a dusky rose to a dark red wine stain and explain them all to me. he is my new best friend.  i tried the jamón de monroyo  (a white pig fed on cereal), an ibérico pig fed on acorn, and several other variations. all were intensely, pungently  flavored morsels of silky smooth cured ham with variations in saltiness, sharpness, muskiness. delicious.

highlight #6: coconut drops and meringues YUM.

disappointingly, i was insanely full by the time we encountered both these monstrously ginormous softballs of joy. but don’t worry my pretties, i’ll be back for you. until next weekend…let’s just hope i’m not too hungover for sangria.