Gastronomy
Noun
The art or science of good eating
Origin: Greek gastronómia
à French gastronomie
1805-1815
Just as there is an
ars moriendi (art of dying) and an ars vivendi (art of living), there is an art
of cooking and eating, an art that the French have done much to advance. While French cuisine has long been held up as
the apogee of Western gastronomy, the classiest of the classy, I was more
impressed with the caliber of the simple things. A loaf of bread. A bit of cheese. A glass of wine.
This being said, the
first thing I ate in Paris was McDo, an 8,50 € chicken wrap with potato wedges,
and a Sprite. I got into Paris around 9, and since I was in
France and not Spain, dinner time had passed already. It was an ignominious start to my
stay, but once you’re at rock bottom, you can only go up.
And up I went. My first morning I made myself an omlette du
fromage with farm fresh eggs, a little bit of cheese, and ate it with a subtle
French white wine. Later that afternoon,
I had a cup of French onion soup, topped with a big chunk of bread smothered in
Gruyere cheese. A secret to greatness
that the French have thoroughly adopted is that cheese and butter make
everything better.
The next morning, my
friend that I was staying with picked up a fresh baguette from the corner
boulangerie and made us tartines,
which are more or less open faced little sandwiches. The glory that is a really fine piece of
bread is hard to equal; the crispy and flaky outside that promises the soft,
chewy, spongy, interior. We spread real,
honest to God butter on our slices and topped them with confiture, or jam or preserves.
Combined with black coffee, it was a delightful breakfast, if not the
healthiest (no surprise that the word decadent also comes to us from the
French).
And what could be
more decadent than cheese? Lots and lots of smooth, creamy, slightly smelly
cheese? I shared a cheese plate with a
couple of friends, while sipping on vin rouge and spreading it on bread with a
smile spread right across my face.
Camembert. Brie. Rocquefort. Boursin.
Although I always maintain that red wine
goes well with most everything, I’ve since found out that the majority of
cheeses, especially fresher, creamier cheeses, are better paired with white
wines. Red wines should be saved for
more robust and denser cheeses, like cheddars or more cured cheeses like
Manchego. Of course this always resolves
itself for me into an and/both situation rather than an either/or situation, so
red and white, the best of both worlds.
For those of you in Madrid, I found this
out and more by visiting Quesería Conde Duque (Conde Duque 15). They have an astounding assortment of
cheeses, both Spanish and otherwise, for reasonable prices. I bought three different cheeses, enough to
supply 8 or so people, for a little over 5 €, and an extremely nice and
knowledgeable member of the staff recommended cheese to me.
Thus, you can’t
really have cheese without wine, or vice versa, and if the French know cheese,
they sure as hell know wine as well.
While I didn’t necessarily drink as much wine as I would have wanted, I
got a fair taste. Besides the white I
had, I stuck to Bordeaux. The first
glass I had was from a wine bar right across the street from Hemingway’s
apartment in the 5th arrondissement.
I love the Spanish wines for sure, but the Bordeaux was very on point,
kind of like drinking a tangy liquid blossom, if that makes sense.
The other Bordeaux I had was with my last
meal in Paris, cuisse du canard, or
roasted duck thigh. My friend promised
to take me to her and her friends’ “spot,” which I knew boded very well for
me. Whenever there’s a “spot,” the odds
are in favor of deliciousness. I'm not sure of the name or its exact location, but it was a smallish restaurant with kind of a hipped-up classic vibe, somewhere around metro Belleville.
The duck
thigh was cooked to perfection, crispy on the outside, almost fall off the bone
tender on the inside, and accompanied by garlic roasted potatoes and a small
arugula salad. I was drinking a bacchus
of wine, slightly larger than your average glass. With the food, the wine, the red and white
checked table-cloth, I felt très
français.