The Search for Delicious Part 2: Paris

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 5^th 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.