The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World's Most Glorious - and Perplexing - City (18 page)

SERVING:
The red wine liquid will be screaming to be served over noodles like pappardelle, with the parsley as a colorful contrast.

STORAGE:
Like most braised dishes, you can store the turkey with the sauce in the refrigerator for up to three days. Rewarm on the stovetop or in the microwave for serving.

NOTE:
If you wish to use fresh boiling onions instead of the sweet-and-sour ones, add ½ pound (225 g) peeled boiling onions to the braising liquid during the last 45 minutes of cooking.

CARAMEL AU BEURRE SALE
SALTED BUTTER CARAMEL SAUCE
MAKES ABOUT 2 CUPS (500ML)

They say the best way to learn French is simply to speak it without fear. I don’t know if I’m great proof of that theory, but since chefs speak the same language everywhere, I have no problem going up to another cook and striking up a conversation in any language.

On a trip to Brittany, I had the most wonderful
galette de sarrasin
, a
crêpe
made of buckwheat flour that was drenched with a copious puddle of the most sublime caramel sauce, enriched with salted butter.

In yet another quirk of the language, a
crêpe
is made from white flour only. If buckwheat is used, it’s usually called a
galette
, and no one will know what you’re talking about if you order a
crêpe de sarrasin.
Confusingly, sometimes buckwheat (
sarrasin
) is called
blé noir
, so if you ask for a
crêpe de blé noir
, they’ll understand perfectly what you’re talking about.

Got that?

Gérard Cocaign, the crêpe-maker at Les Chardons Bleus in Brittany—which cryptically calls itself a
crêperie
, but offers both
crêpes
and
galettes
—welcomed me in his kitchen to show me how to make this deep-amber sauce, which he finishes with a
noisette
of local butter.
Noisette
means hazelnut, but is closer in size to a walnut—so shouldn’t
that
be a
noix-sette?
Next time
les immortels
meet, I think I should go; I’ve got a bunch of questions for them.

But no questions about how superb this sauce is: when I tasted a spoonful, I swooned. Like Gérard does, use a very large pot, since the caramel will bubble up once you add the cream. Except a pot in French is not called a
pot
, but a
casserole.
Unless it has two handles, in which case it’s a
cocotte.

1. Spread the sugar in an even layer in a large metal Dutch oven or casserole, at least 6 quarts (6 L). Set over moderate heat and cook without stirring, until the sugar near the edges just starts to liquefy.
   

2. Using a wooden spoon or heatproof spatula, begin gently stirring, encouraging the melted sugar around the edges toward the center and delicately stirring up any sugar melting on the bottom as well. The sugar will start to look pebbly as it cooks, but keep going; it will melt completely as it turns amber.
   

3. Continue to cook until the sugar turns deep brown and starts to smoke. (Don’t worry about any large chunks of caramel.) The darker you can cook the sugar without burning it, the better the final sauce will taste. It’s ready when it’s the color of a well-worn centime, or penny, and will smell a bit smoky.
   

4. Remove from heat and quickly stir in about a quarter of the cream. The mixture will bubble up furiously, so you may wish to wear an oven mitt over your stirring hand. Continued to whisk in the cream, stirring as you go to make sure it’s smooth. Stir in the butter and salt. Serve warm. If you like your sauce a bit thinner or less rich, add ¼ cup (60 ml) water.
   

STORAGE:
The sauce can be made up to one month in advance and kept refrigerated. Rewarm the caramel in a small saucepan over low heat or in a microwave.

ASK HIM FOR A CAFE AU LAIT ONLY IF YOU WOKE UP WITH HIM

It’s almost impossible to find a drinkable cup of coffee in Paris: the coffee here is among the worst I’ve ever had.

Before Francophiles race to chime in about how bad American coffee is, yes, I agree with you. There’s a lot of bad coffee in America. The difference is there’s the
possibility
of finding a good cup in the States.

Plus North Americans have an excuse: we don’t share a border with Italy, that magical kingdom of coffee, where each tiny sip is a multisensory explosion of flavor. From the moment the barman puts that little cup under the spigot,
until I polish off the last of the syrupy espresso that trickles out of the tiny cup, my mind can’t concentrate on anything but that intense dose of masterfully extracted coffee. Ah—
il espresso perfetto.

In a country where there’s such an emphasis on fine dining, whose good food is celebrated not just here, but around the world, it’s stupefying why Parisian coffee is so vile that fed-up French food writer Sophie Brissard described it as “donkey piss.” The only good coffee I’ve found in Paris has been in places run by Italians. To them, serving bad coffee would be an insult to their entire culture. When I asked the woman at the Italian tourism office how she was able to live in Paris and subsist on the coffee served here, she looked as if I’d made her queasy just by mentioning it. “I will
not
drink coffee in France,” she responded. “I only drink tea.”

Grasping for some explanation, I did some research. I learned that many of the cafés are forced to buy their beans from the same supplier, described as an Auvergnat Mafia. If that’s the case, I suggest the Italian Mafia take over. I’m sure they’d lean on the cafés to improve the quality of the coffee.

Speaking of beans, I don’t believe for a minute that much of the coffee labeled
pur Arabica
, considered the best, actually is. If that’s Arabica they’re brewing, then I’m Maurice Chevalier and the lady who’s the
guardienne
of my building, the one with the mustache, is Catherine Deneuve.

Then there’s the term “French roast,” which means the coffee is roasted until it’s burnt beyond recognition. It’s a process designed to cover up the awful flavors of bad beans. I avoid anything labeled “French roast.”

I pulled up an online interview with a café waiter, who said if you’re not looking, they’ll often reuse coffee grounds. If anyone in Italy did that, they’d be tossed to the real Mafia. It’s not because I’m cheap that I stand at the bar for my coffee (where it’s indeed cheaper); it’s because I’m distrustful. I watch the barmen like a hawk, and although I’ve never seen anyone reuse grounds, I’ve also never once seen anyone flush the funky, spent grounds out of the machine afterward, something you’re supposed to do
after each and every cup. From the taste of things, I doubt they even do it after each and every month.

And Parisian barmen must think the tamper is there for decoration, since they rarely use it. Every time they dump some coffee into the filter holder and twist it closed under the opening of the machine, I want to leap over the counter, waving my arms, “Stop! Stop! Press that coffee down first! Thirteen kilos worth of pressure! That’s what that little round metal thing is for!”

But I keep quiet, drop a sugar cube in the murky black sludge, and sip it while grimacing, wondering if maybe donkey piss might be an improvement. If you’ve ever wondered what all those pensive thinkers are pondering in the cafés, that might be it, too.

Frustrated, I got myself a bulky Italian-made espresso machine and enrolled in the Università del Caffè espresso-making school at Illy Caffè in Italy. There I learned all the components for pulling a perfect espresso: how to grind the beans to a fine powder, fill the filter holder with just the right amount of ground coffee, then tamp it down with proper pressure. Each extraction that came dribbling out of the machine was chocolate-brown manna from heaven. It was so exciting I couldn’t sleep at night thinking about all I’d learned. (Or, more likely, it was the nine or ten shots of espresso I downed each day.) I came home with a suitcase packed with coffee, and every time I go to Italy, I bring an empty one to restock my larder.

However, I was finding it difficult to sustain my coffee-running operation across the border. Fed up, and armed with my newly acquired knowledge—and a professional espresso maker at home—I headed up to the twentieth arrondissement, to the highly regarded Brûlerie Jordain. (I needed little encouragement to go there, since it’s conveniently located just next door to Boulangerie 140, whose brick oven turns out some of the best bread in Paris.)

I told the owner, who was also the coffee roaster, my plight. “I’m looking for a coffee that’s roasted and ground for espresso. I have a new, professional-quality Italian espresso machine and want to make coffee that
tastes just like Italian coffee.” The owner of the shop, considered one of the best places in Paris to buy coffee, wrinkled up his nose and replied—Warning: If you’re Italian, please don’t read the next sentence—“Why would you want your coffee to taste like
Italian
coffee?”

Good Lord. I’m not even a single bit Italian, and I’m offended. Imagine if an expert on chocolate sniffed at you, “Why would you want chocolates that taste like
Parisian
chocolates?”

So I stick with coffee imported from Italy as much as possible and try to drink my brew at home, since I don’t think many Parisian waiters would look very kindly upon me if I plunked a thermos down on the table and started pouring. But maybe I should: they might get the message.

But let’s say you don’t have a coffee machine, or don’t want to risk the wrath of an unsympathetic waiter: how do you order coffee in Paris? If you just say, “I’ll have a coffee,” the waiter’s going to bring you a small cup of
express.
And don’t correct me. In France, it’s spelled with an
x.
I know, I know. They can’t even get the spelling right.

It’s usually the moment the waiter sets down that tiny cup of brown sludge and dashes away that most visitors recoil in surprise. Then they spend the next ten minutes trying to flag the waiter down for milk. I can see not understanding that they don’t automatically bring milk the first few times, but after a while, you’d think tourists would get with the program. I mean, doesn’t it sink in that milk isn’t brought with coffee and you have to ask when you order it in France after it happens the tenth time? No one’s keeping a master list around here of how each visitor takes his coffee.

Sharp minds figure it out eventually, though, and most people who want to down a hefty mug of milky coffee will order a café au lait, which literally translates as “coffee with milk.” Just so you know, café au lait is served only at breakfast—at home—sipped with people you’ve spent the night with. Cafés don’t serve café au lait, except trendy French-style cafés in New York and Berkeley.

An honest-to-goodness café au lait is a large, steaming-hot coffee with warm milk, and it’s not served in a mug, but in a footed bowl. It’s commonplace for waiters to get requests for café au lait, especially in touristy areas,
so you’re not likely to get any raised eyebrows the way you once might have. But what you really want to ask your waiter for is a
café crème.
Unless you’re waking up next to him, which is entirely possible given their reputation.

If that happens, I can’t give you much guidance—that’s out of my range of expertise, but unlike making coffee, it is one skill that the French do excel at.

A few more caveats: After a meal, think of coffee as a deft punctuation mark that signals the close of a meal, not an open-ended invitation to stay with refill after refill. A
café crème
is never served after lunch or dinner, although it’s becoming more commonplace as an afternoon drink, since it’s linger-friendly. Coffee is served only after a meal, never during, and only after dessert. You’ll never get it at the same time since it’s not considered
correct.
And you always want to be correct,
non?