Category: booze or lose

Clarence Beats the Heat Part Deux: Top Five Summer Dinner Ideas

My blog might suggest that I lead a louche life of perpetual dining out, which is hardly the case. In fact, despite the absurd percentage of my monthly budget that I devote to food (and books about psychoanalysis), I actually am living here on a pauper’s salary.  This means that I eat most of my meals at home. I was quite the adventurous cook when I was living in States, probably because I had proper American kitchens at my disposal. While I was thrilled to find my Marais apartment on account of its enviable address and unheard-of wall between bedroom and living area, I was pretty dismayed to discover the pathetic excuse for a kitchen that they’ve installed in this bitch. We’re talking two glorified hotplates that they have disguised as burners (two settings: scorching and off), a mini-fridge, and a sink. All in one crappy, drippy stainless steel unit. Initially I figured that this would be the death of my culinary aspirations, but I’ve actually gotten pretty handy in my miniature kitchen. As the weather has gotten hotter, I’ve been forced to bust out some of my best summer dinners. I’d never presume to be so culinarily skilled as to tell anybody anything about cooking, but both B and M thought that this might make for an interesting entry and I’m nothing if obliging of my two best readers. And as someone who has certainly Googled “dinner ideas please help!” at one point or another, I thought I’d add my voice to the chorus. So here’s what I like to pull together on a hot evening.  While some of these ingredients are rather special, I’ve seen most of them at this point at the City Market in rural Utah, so I don’t think I’m being too much of a Coastal Elite by posting these recipes. Tweak to your taste and enjoy!

1)  Carpaccio-Style Bresaola

There isn’t much I love more than a proper raw beef preparation, be it a steak tartare or a beef carpaccio. But for whatever reason, I’m pretty squeamish about preparing raw beef for myself or my friends. I guess at the end of the day I just don’t want to poison anyone.  Enter bresaola, that lovely wine-colored, air-dried and aged salted beef that you can find in the deli section of your local market or Italian specialty store. In both French and American grocery stores, I usually go for the Citterio brand for Italian cold cuts. They cost more, but they are usually better than whatever your supermarket is shilling. And no, Citterio isn’t paying me to say this, but if they would like to pay me or send me crates of cured meat, I certainly wouldn’t complain.

This “recipe” is stupid easy and I can’t even believe that I would condescend to my dear reader’s intelligence by writing it out, but here we go.

You need:

A package of bresaola (or approximately 4-5 slices per person)

Two large handfuls of baby arugula per person (Is anyone still buying tough bitter adult arugula?  Stop that immediately.)

A wedge of Parmigiano-Reggiano (Don’t worry, you won’t use it all.  Is anyone still buying pre-grated Grana Padano? Stop that immediately.)

A lemon

Some extra-virgin olive oil (I’m not particularly snobbish about this, surprisingly.)

Take a pretty salad or dinner plate.  Lay out the bresaola slices evenly on the surface.  I like to make it look like a flower, though I’m sure nobody has ever noticed this.  Deposit handfuls of baby arugula in the middle.  Leave the edges of your bresaola peeking out for aesthetic interest.  Grate big flakes of parmigiano-reggiano over the top using a proper cheese grating device, or like me, an all-purpose vegetable peeler.  You can do all this even a few hours beforehand.  Then, right before you serve it, drizzle olive oil over the whole thing and salt and pepper to taste.  Serve with lemon wedges and forcefully encourage your guests to squeeze said lemon slices over the top.  If you are feeling fancy or improvisational, you can add all number of things to this dish, including capers, finely sliced red onions, or diced tomatoes.  Don’t be surprised if your friends think you are more sophisticated that you actually are if you serve this on a weekday.

For the summer meal pictured, I served carpaccio-style bresaola with pre-packaged oil-marinated anchovy filets and mini-calamari, demi-sêche tomatoes (have you eaten these yet?  They are revelatory if you always felt, like I did, that fully dried tomatoes were too chewy), ricotta with fresh mint and crusty bread, and Campari spritzers (recipe below).  Everyone seemed unduly impressed despite the totally minimal preparation time on my part.

2) Terry’s Mother’s Tabouleh

One of the more idiosyncratic things about my dad is that he is a big believer in hitchhiking. He hitchhiked across the United States in his younger days and New Zealand in his first year of retirement, and still doesn’t hesitate to throw out a thumb if he finds himself in need.  He’s also pretty unflagging in picking up hitchhikers, which I guess you have to be if you are buying into the whole operation. When I was a kid it wasn’t especially strange for him to bring home someone for dinner who he had picked up along the side of the road. Perhaps more remarkably, he has befriended many of these people over the years and they have stayed in touch over time and distance. One such fellow, a Lebanese guy named Terry, ended up becoming a dear friend of my family and a regular attendee at my mother’s epic Thanksgiving dinners when I was a child. Among the many lovely things he gave my mother over the years is his mother’s tabouleh recipe, which has been a standby at potlucks in our circle ever since. I like to make this at the end of the month when I’m feeling a bit more cash-poor as it filling, cheap, keeps for a couple of days in the fridge, and works well as both a light main course and as a side dish. My mother will probably kill me for sharing this with the world, but it’s really good and worth the ink.

You need:

1 cup bulgar wheat, uncooked

2 cups boiling water

1/2 cup vegetable oil (I use extra-virgin olive oil because it’s all I ever have)

1/2 cup fresh-squeezed lemon juice (fresh squeezed)

2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon fresh-ground black pepper

1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley (Italian flat-leaved)

2 teaspoons fresh chopped mint (or you can use dried mint if the fresh stuff costs fifteen dollars at the market and you aren’t savvy enough to have a windowbox herb garden like yours truly)

1 bunch of chopped green onions (including white tops)

3-4 ripe plum tomatoes, diced

Pour the boiling water over bulgar wheat in bowl. Cover with a towel and let stand for one hour.  Drain well if there is any excess liquid. Add tomatoes, onions, herbs, and oil, and stir. Then add lemon juice, salt, and pepper to taste and blend well. Chill for at least four hours before serving. I usually double the recipe because it just gets better over the next few days in the fridge.

3)  My Mother’s Gazpacho (tweaked slightly)

I’m sorry, but I just have to say it:  my mother’s gazpacho is better than your mother’s gazpacho. It just is. I’m sorry. Your gazpacho is runny and sad. My mother’s gazpacho (especially since I tweaked it) is gazpacho for a new generation. I don’t care that you are from Spain. I don’t care what Gwyneth Paltrow says, Spanish food is usually bland city.  This is awesome, and I’ll fight you if you say any differently.

You need:

3 large tomatoes chopped and peeled (or not peeled, if you are lazy like me)

1 chopped yellow or orange bell pepper (My mom’s recipe calls for a green  bell pepper, but let’s be honest here. Yuck! Who eats green bell peppers anymore? They should be reserved solely for convicts and B’s limb-quiveringly good gumbo).

1 English cucumber (these seem to hold up better than the hothouse varieties)

1 cup chopped celery

1/4 cup chopped green onion

1-2 finely diced raw jalapeno peppers (Less if you’re a wimp, more if you agree that Spanish food could use some heat.)

4 cups tomato juice

3-4 tablespoons of good balsamic vinegar

4 tablespoons olive oil

2 teaspoons salt

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

Combine all the veggies and the juice.  Then add vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper to taste. Now, if you’re a purist, puree the whole mess in batches using your food processor or blender. Or, if you’re a renegade like my mom, leave it alone and watch your guest marvel at the delicious crunchiness of the vegetables. Or, if you’re a sad compromise formation like myself, puree half of the soup and then reincorporate it into the chunky half. Either way, let it marinate in the fridge for a few hours before serving. Then, immediately before serving you can add any of the following to the top:

Ripe avocado slices

Cooked shrimp (Aren’t you fancy!  My mom always served small salad shrimp, but anything you can find will do nicely.)

Sautéed Scallops (I like the bay scallops for this, as they are bite sized.  Actually, in my opinion, bay scallops don’t get nearly as much play as they ought to!)

Crab meat (Okay, so you’re really fancy!  You can buy some pretty killer canned crab meats now, especially if you look in the refrigerated section of high-end markets.)

Croutons (Make your own by liberally dousing cubes of nice bread with olive oil, salt and pepper.  Spread them evenly on a cookie sheet and stick sheet under the broiler, shaking every minute so they brown evenly.)

4 and 5) Canned Fish Sandwiches

Are you on the canned fish bandwagon yet? No?! Immediately block out a few hours of your life to browse the website for the Society for the Appreciation of the Lowly Tinned Sardine. In addition to being all things that a good blog should be, this wonderful website is full of recipes and serving ideas for one of the cheapest, healthiest, and yummiest things that you just might not be buying at your local grocery store. I’ve always been a big fan of sardines and have recently become an anchovy fanatic. But I don’t think I ever quite realized how versatile they are and how many different kinds things you can incorporate these omega-3 fatty acid, calcium, protein, and vitamins D and B12 packed foods. And if you’re squeamish about the bones and skin (FYI, that’s where all the nutrients are!), you can buy really lovely sardine filets these days. Spend a few extra bucks on your cans and you’ll be surprised how sweet, tender, and totally delicious these guys can be. They are still one of the cheapest animal protein sources you can buy. The Sardine Society’s website is full of reviews of both American and French brands, so give it browse before you go shopping.

One of the best things that came out of reading the Sardine Society was Alton Brown’s Sardicado Sandwich.  Alton Brown usually annoys me, but I quite enjoyed this clip from his show, probably because I too spend a lot of my time proselytizing about the virtues of sardines to the people I love. I tweaked the recipe a little bit based on what I had in my kitchen. I used a fresh baguette sliced lengthwise instead of sourdough (I’m in France, remember?) and balsamic vinegar instead of red wine vinegar in the dressing.  Finally, I had some dreamy sweet plum tomatoes that I sliced and put over the top, an addition I’d highly recommend.

I also am pretty sweet on what I’ll call Cefalù Style Anchovy Sandwiches, the prototype for which I ate while we were staying in Cefalù, Sicily.  It’s a simple combination:  good anchovies (I usually buy the kind in oil, but am curious to try these Ortiz salt-packed one that all the foodie blogs are nuts for), drained half-dried tomatoes, and thin slices of pecorino cheese.  Place the three of these on the inside of a baguette and wrap the whole thing tightly in plastic wrap for an hour or so to marinate.  Then, before serving add some fresh arugula.

As for drinking, my ideal summer cocktail is three things:  fizzy, seriously boozy, and kinda sweet.  There’s nothing better than a whiskey and ginger ale on a hot evening. Or, experiment with making Bavarian Radlers (beer and sparkling lemonade) at home.  If you’ve jumped on the Aperol and Campari bandwagons (judging from my Google results, many of you have!), I’d encourage you to fool around with the basic formula of an Aperol/Campari spritz.  While the basic formula combination is Aperol or Campari, Prosecco, and soda, I like to add citrus juice instead of soda (clementine, tangerine, blood orange, and pink grapefruit are all really nice with these flavors).

Happy Eating!

Clarence on Vacay: Sartène, Corsica

After our hike to the Îles Sanguinaires, we boarded a bus headed inland to a town called Sartène. All of our copious research indicated that one really ought to have a car should one want to tour Corsica outside of the major tourist destinations. Pshaw, we said. We could really only afford a rental car on one island and Sardinia had won the coin toss. So we were stuck with public transportation, which at least from the outside seemed to be much more comprehensive in Corsica than Sardinia.

I suppose you know where this story ends up.

We arrived in the glorious hill town of Sartène after a beautiful, if nauseating, bus ride where we watched two too-cool-for-school Corsican teenagers flirt with one another the entire time. We practically heckled the guy to ask the girl for her number when he had reached his stop. He didn’t, of course. Teenagers. Our bus driver had been kind enough to ask us where we were staying, and seemed impressed by the location of our hotel (the only one I could find with any vacancies on the internet). He dropped us off at the bottom of a hill and told us it was only a short hike up a steep grade to get to our lodgings.

It was at this point that we realized that our grand scheme of renting bikes to tour the local archeological sites and beaches was probably not going to work out, as I could barely drag my suitcase (carry-on regulation size!) up that damn hill. And it appears that all the hills looked just like that one. We checked into the lovely Hotel San Damianu (Quartier St. Damien – BP3 – F – is it just me, or does that not really resemble an address?!), whose rooms all possess dreamy views of the valley and whose pool is a sparkling (if unheated) jewel in their beautiful garden. While the proprietress is lovely and vivacious, her husband is a crusty old crab who apparently hates Americans, even the polite ones who speak French and wax poetic about his beautiful hotel and town. I’m nit-picking here, as we had a really lovely stay there.

After a quick swim and a thorough inspection of my growing collection of mosquito bites (sexy!), we decided to explore the town of Sartène. Our Lonely Planet guidebook had called Sartène a “mysterious medieval village,” the “most Corsican of all Corsican towns,” situated in an area whose people are “more inward looking, more secretive, adamantly steeped in tradition.” I’ll decode this for you: people aren’t especially nice there. With some exceptions, of course. Sartène is in that unfortunate stage of development as a destination where the local economy is dependent upon tourism, but nobody is getting rich off of it. So everyone in town seems to resent the presence of outsiders, but they are also forced to cater to them. We were frustrated, I guess, because we probably imagine ourselves to be those most laughably unrealistic “unintrusive tourists,” you know, the ones who attempt to speak the language, steep themselves in local culture, eat the maggot cheese, etc.

After wandering the admittedly beautiful narrow streets of Sartène for a few hours and procuring me some entirely worthless anti-itch cream, we stumbled on Le jardin de l’échauguette (Place de la Vardiola), a beautiful restaurant with a large outdoor patio with great views. We had a flat-out epic meal accompanied by a bottle of Sartènais red from the Domaine de San Michele (did I mention that we drank an Ajaccian rosé in Ajaccio?  No?  We did. Aren’t we just puke-worthy bougie?).  For our first course, we split a bountiful assiette corse filled with local charcuterie, cheeses, olives, and a killer terrine flavored with myrtle, which grows in great abundance in Corsica and is a significant part of the flavor palate of the cuisine. B had a rack of lamb that he now describes as his Ur-Lamb. It was pretty amazing. I had another round of daube de veau (veal stew) served with yummy polenta. Best of all, we split another Corsican specialty for dessert, the Brocciu-based fiadone, a cheesecake-like dish made with the cheese, eggs, and a hint of lemon. The wine was perfect with our meal – we got our first real taste of the French notion of terroir, that is, the idea that the geography of a particular place infuses itself in the food that is produced there. Drinking a Sartènais wine while eating a Sartènais terrine brings out whole facets of the bouquet that you might not otherwise recognize, in this case, the strong flavor of myrtle. While I’m skeptical of upper-class “locavore” snobbery, I do think this kind of resonance is what Alice Waters has been ranting about for all these years.

There aren’t any pictures of that meal. Why? I have no idea. I suspect that the reason might be that we had quickly discovered that there was not much else to do in town besides get drunk, so we did, and had an amusing stagger back to our hilltop-perched dwellings. We awoke a bit hungover but psyched to see our amazing view.  We went into town still clinging to the idea that we could rent bikes or figure out public transportation to the major archeological sites of Corsica. We were aggravated to discover that it is essentially impossible to visit Cauria, the home of three megalithic sites filled with menhirs and dolmens, without a private car. I don’t care very much about such things, but if there was one thing about B that I discovered on this trip is that there is nothing this boy likes more than piles of old rocks.  Well, actually, these are the things he likes best:

1)    Rocks, especially big ones, piled on top of one another by human hands, a long time ago.

2)    Finding said piles of old rocks using unreliable highway maps designed for car trips, not archeological expeditions.

3)    Coming up with vaguely crackpot theories about the function of said piles of old rocks in prehistoric times.

4)    Climbing on said piles of old rocks like a feral child.

5)    Jumping off said piles of old rocks, preferably into the sea.

For brevity in future entries about our trip, I will refer to our various “pile of old rocks” adventures using this handy numerical system. Sartène was a wicked disappointment for B because he didn’t get to experience any of the above listed primal joys. We asked the “tourist office” if there was a place we could rent bikes to visit Cauria and the supposedly dreamy Tizzano beach, but the woman laughed at the idea. I tried to soothe him with a visit to The Museum of the Prehistory (their English, not mine). It worked for me – the museum was airconditioned and I was cranky and itchy from the ever-increasing constellation of mosquito bites that now covered both of my legs. B got to exercise a bit of number 3 in the museum, arguing that the archeologists who had curated the exhibition had placed the beginning of the Bronze Age far too late in the chronology. I resisted the urge to make snoring noises. I figured that since he had listened to me kvetch about my itchy legs for 48 hours or so, it was the least I could do. Relationships are about give and take, people. We both got to experience the lovely view from the museum, which is by far the poshest place in town.

By midafternoon, we were totally out of attractions in Sartène and still had a few hours to kill before the bus to Bonifaccio arrived. We had a totally dissatisfying lunch cobbled together from a local deli consisting of a chestnut terrine (yucky and the consistency of catfood), a charcuterie plate, and cannelloni au Brocciu. At this point, we realized that cured meats were the likely culprits for our gastrointestinal distress and that we needed to lay off the lonzu for a little while. We also realized that there was little left to do in the heat besides get a cold beer, so we settled in at Idéal Bar (8 Place de la Liberation) on the main square in town. While it’s a pretty run-of-the-mill bar (with decidedly extraordinary spicy olives that they liberally distribute with drinks), it’s worth a shout-out for two reasons. Number one, the bartender/server was the first genuinely friendly person we met in Sartène.  Number two, I was able to sample my second type Corsican beer:

Colomba is an easy-to-drink blonde that is infused ever-so-subtlety with myrtle. It’s good, but not Pietra good. It’s worth a try, however, especially if you like a good blonde. That’s what she said, right?

Next stop: We get to work in Bonifacio eating cephalapods of all shapes and sizes!

Clarence on Vacay: Ajaccio, Corsica

We’re back!  Our vacation was kind of beyond decadent and awesome.  We ate ourselves stupid, saw lots of amazing stuff, and got along rather famously. Let’s be honest here: B and I are a new couple. I think both of us thoughts of this trip as a bit of a litmus test of our relationship. We totally passed with flying colors. By the end of the trip we had an arsenal of inside jokes that I suspect couples who have been together for years would envy. I can safely say I like him even better than when we left, which I didn’t even think was possible. For your benefit, he patiently photographed his food and spent hours carefully recapping our meals in his perfect script in my food log when I got too lazy and bloated to do so. I’ve been a bit lax about blogging about our trip because of this heat wave (which I’m sure all you Americans have been experiencing in much more stark terms than I have, so I’ll shut up about it pretty soon). B bought me a oscillating fan, filled a bucket of ice water for my feet, and told me to get my ass to work. So thanks, B! You’re the best, really.

Starting from the beginning, let’s just say that nothing gets me hotter than packing for a vacation.  There’s something creating this perfect object-world in which all my clothes match and all of my cosmetics can be housed in identical, 100-milliliter Muji containers that makes me feel as though entropy can be staved off after all. I was especially obsessive about packing for this trip because I was bound and determined to conform to easyJet’s barbaric carry-on policy of one bag – not one suitcase and a “personal item” (a semantic evasion that I take considerable liberty with when flying) – just one bag. I “mock packed” several times in the week before we left, much to the bemusement of both B and our friend BC, who seemed especially horrified by this particular OCD flare-up. But B is a sucker for saving money, so he seemed pretty pleased when we waltzed through security without having to pay an extra fifty euro to check our bags. While I do think we packed really well, this does mean that we were both sporting some pretty smelly threads by the end of our two week trip.

I had grand plans that of getting a good night’s sleep before our flight, but that was thrown out the window when I noticed that Raidd Bar had erected a giant soundsystem and rack of spotlights, strobelights, and confetti-expelling machines on the street by mid-afternoon the day before we left.  I gradually realized that it was Fête de la Musique, a day in Paris where music is played outside everywhere. While this originally meant that there would be various kinds of pleasant folk music played in the streets, Raidd Bar has apparently turned it into an annual, pre-Pride street block party extravaganza.  By 8 p.m. or so the street beneath my apartment looked like this:

The Live Hot Shower Show dancers were given truckbeds to flaunt their exceptionally well-honed bodies and ass-jiggling skills.  My favorite dancers were these guys, who rhythmically faux-fucked the windshield of the truck for the better part of the evening:

I witnessed this collective hedonistic outbreak with BC, with whom I had gone to dinner and retreated to my place when we realized that the best view would be from my living room windows. I realized that it was a pretty great party when the entire Marais began to sing along to Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance and I looked over and saw anti-establishment, South-Dakota raised, no-pop-culture-nonsense BC hitting the chorus at the top of his lungs. B arrived after fighting his way through the crowd for nearly an hour, and the three of us got drunk and threw several hundred paper cranes that I had compulsively made in the past six months into the crowd.  It was a pretty amazing night, and I’m now convinced that for better or worse, I live across the street from the most happening bar in Paris.  Or at least the one that can throw the best party.

Exhausted after only a few hours sleep (let’s just say that nobody wanted the party to end on my block that night), we arrived in Ajaccio after an exceptionally unstressful flight from Paris. We only spent 24 hours there, but we managed to cram in lots–a pretty comprehensive survey of Corsican cuisine. We passed the first travel-compatibility test admirably when we both took one look at the long line of hot and haggard tourists waiting outside of the Napoleon Bonaparte’s house of birth, shook our heads, and decided to get lunch instead.  The destination:  U Stazzu (1 rue Bonaparte), a shop that sells award-winning charcuterie, cheese, and other Corsican delights.  Here is a furtively shot picture of their vaguely cavernous interior:

I was particularly excited about the Lalique Prize-winning sausages produced by A Bucugnanesa, a charcutier that distributes their products exclusively through U Stazzu.  This is the real deal, people.  A Bucugnanesa has been raising pigs locally for five generations.  Their heirloom hogs (is there such a thing?) are born and romp through their short lives in the high mountain forests of Corsica, eating chestnuts and acorns.  At the ripe young age of 25 months, they are dispatched and transformés into a variety of amazing dry sausages, all of which are aged in natural rock caves.

After sampling their glorious products, all of which were explained by a very helpful saleswoman, we purchased a smallish salamu (6€) and a round of Bastelicaccia cheese (12€), a slightly sharp, slightly crumbly, altogether perfect sheep’s milk cheese.  Next stop was Boulangerie Galeani (3 rue du Cardinal Fesch), a four-generation old artisinal bread and pastry shop that specializes in Corsican baked goods (more to come on that subject). We picked up a baguette and made a mental note to return there for breakfast the next day.  A quick dash into a souvenir shop for a pocket-knife adorned with the Moor’s head that is the symbol of Corsica and we were ready to sit on the sea wall and eat our feast.  B proved himself to be an able knife-wielder:

It doesn’t look like much in that shot, but oh man was it good.  As a first meal went, it was a wonderful introduction to Corsican food, which as far as I can tell runs rather under the radar in the United States.  Sated and tired from our trip, we hit the beach underneath the citadel. I got a taste of how delightfully New Wave and louche he looks while sunning himself in black Wayfarers, cigarette in hand.

After a lazy afternoon, we wandered over to the Le Grandval (2 cours Grandval), a great little bar mostly populated by locals. The owner appears to be a kind of unofficial historian of Ajaccio and his collection of vintage photographs of the town make for an interesting browse.  Even better:  our first taste of Corsican beer for our first aperitif on our trip:

Pietra is a chestnut-tinged, medium brown ale.  It’s not just drinkable in the “Oh, hey, we happen to be in this place and this is their local beer, isn’t that fun?!” kind of way.  It’s drinkable in an “Oh man, this is really good!  Do they import this outside of Corsica?” kind of way.  I’ve since seen it in Paris, so you Frenchies can get your fix. I don’t know if they import it to the States, but you ‘mericans should really look for it with at your local booze megastore (god, I miss those places). Pair it with some dry salami and some olives and you’ve got yourself one hell of a way to while away the early evening.

We then headed to the much-lauded (and rightfully so) U Pampasgiolu (15 rue de la Porta).  The name means “The Poppy” in Corsican, a language that made my Indo-European-languages-obsessed boyfriend scratch his head in etymological bewilderment with every sign.  It’s a great stop if you are unfamiliar with Corsican cuisine, as the specialty of the house are these huge tasting platters that allow you to sample lots of different dishes in small portions.

B took advantage of Corisca’s great reputation for seafood and ordered the planche de la mer in an effort to scratch a deep culinary itch he’d been having for a while. His meal contained–among other things–a rouget cooked in a creamy fennel sauce, stockfish cooked in a highly acidic balsamic-vinegar sauce, a swordfish carpaccio, and a seafood soup that made him make a series of rather inappropriate but rapturous noises. I had the planche spuntinu, which was comprised of old-school Corsican classic dishes. Despite the killer fishing off of Corsica’s coasts, just a few generations ago the perpetually-invaded and beleaguered Corsicans (like the Sardinians) were forced to live inland for safety. This means that classic Corsican cuisine is mostly pork, lamb, and sheep-based.  The Planche spuntinu had a classic meat-stock soup, a veal daube served with creamy polenta, eggplant à la bonifacciène (basically a hybrid of ratatouille and eggplant parmesan, but better), a selection of charcuterie (including Corsican lonzu, a dreamy salted and cured filet of pork), a Tomme Corse with local fig jam, and a slice of savory tart with Brocciu and wild mint.

What, may you ask is Brocciu? Only the best thing ever. Brocciu is the national cheese of Corsica and was kind of a religious discovery for me.  I guess you could liken it to ricotta, though it’s so much more delicious and versatile I’m rather loathe to make that comparison. It’s made from the whey of goat milk, and is available from December to June (the season in which goats are lactating). Serving or selling fake Brocciu is a serious offense in Corsica and can result in your restaurant or shop being shut down. I’d actually go so far as to say that you shouldn’t visit Corsica any other time of year than during Broucciu season. It’s that good and they put it in everything. After our huge meal at U Pampasgiolu, we wandered to a small gelato shop and ate Brocciu ice cream. The following morning, we went back to Boulangerie Galeani for the best breakfast ever:  beignets de Brocciu (tender doughnut holes pumped full of melted creamy cheese and rolled in sugar).

Some of our favorite lunches while we were hiking and traveling in Corsica consisted of bastelle filled with Brocciu, spinach, and wild mint.  Think of this as my Ur-Hot Pocket:

One such hike brought us to Pointe de la Parata and the Îles Sanguinaires.  The view the islands from this Genoese tower was probably one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen:

Next stop:  the doldrums of inland Corsica!

In which I somehow artfully segue from a rant about American Apparel into a tender farewell

Is anybody else following these Gawker-led assaults on American Apparel?  To be honest, I’m kinda conflicted about the whole thing.  I shop there on a regular basis, as do most of my friends. I even recently encouraged a reluctant B to shop there for the first time when he needed some new t-shirts. None of us would be considered particularly “on-brand” from the perspective of AA corporate style. Most of us take serious issue with how material consumption structures life in contemporary society. Not to generalize for the people I’m close to, but I think the logic that we all share is that AA produces logo-free, decent-quality, sweatshop-free basics. I guess the last part is the most important to me on some level, as I’ve certainly encountered the occasional lapse in quality in AA products and find their aesthetic to be increasingly visible in its branding, if not to my parent’s generation certainly to people in my own peer group. But I’ve felt somewhat better about buying from AA based on their well-publicized mode of semi-ethical production. I’ve at least felt like it isn’t the worst place to buy an article of clothing if you have some sense of remorse about your object world being brought to you on the backs of the poor.

While I’ve certainly heard accounts of the snobbishness that goes on toward customers at AA stores, I’ve never felt particularly ill-treated while shopping there. That said, I tend to like being ignored when I’m buying things, so if you wanted legitimate help from a sales clerk I probably would steer you elsewhere. Some of the clothes have felt frustratingly ill-sized and I’ll admit it’s maddening to be a size 4 and feel like everything is too small. My local AA’s in Southern California seemed relatively diverse in their staffing, so I was surprised to read in these tell-all forums about the seemingly rampant discrimination that takes place behind the scenes. I have found AA employees to be uniformly good-looking and hyper-conformist to the brand aesthetic, which seems to support the accounts of a horrifying staffing process that involves constant photographing of both potential and current employees. I was under the impression that this sort of thing was illegal. However, I just watched a woman on a reality show on national television ask a potential assistant during a job interview if he slept around a lot, so apparently I’m just out of touch with how worker’s rights have devolved in the past decade or so. I guess I’m rather curious if AA is really an exceptional case, or if the lookism that they perpetuate part of most clothing stores’s modus operandi at this point in time.  That is to say, I don’t see any unattractive, off-brand employees at most high-end retailers. Is the issue here that AA brands itself as an ethical company in its advertising while resorting to retrograde hiring practices behind the scenes? I see scores of angry commenters on Gawker calling for the end of American Apparel – is it better to shop somewhere with better retail hiring practices and more ethically problematic ones at the level of production? I’m genuinely asking this question, in part because I don’t see any other retailers at the level of mass production and  distribution that sell domestically-produced, sweatshop-free clothing, manufactured by factory workers who are given access to low-cost meal programs and medical care. Is it an incredibly ugly truth that these standards are a radical departure from the manufacturing protocols of most other major US clothing retailers? Yes. Should the AA retail employees unionize (or at least organize) and disrupt the chain of distribution until they are afforded the basic rights of all taxpaying workers in the US? Absolutely. Are the anonymous Gawker forums the place to do such a thing? I kinda doubt it. If you are seeing chronic sexism, lookism, and other kinds of discrimination in your workplace as high as the corporate level, get legal representation and put your name on your complaint. While the US system isn’t designed to help, speak for, or even acknowledge the existence of the people who work in those clothing factories, it has become incredibly adept at addressing the issues of middle-class and upper-middle class workers suffering from discrimination in the past few decades, especially in a context this photogenic and media-friendly. I’m a little burnt out on news stories about the banker who was fired because she was too pretty (and also posting sexy photographs of herself on the internet).  Or the online plaints of the AA employee who was fired because her nail polish was chipped. I’ll bet you that’s nothing compared to the labor practices at your friendly neighborhood Chinese megafactory that produces the 3 dollar t-shirts that fill your local Wal-Mart (or, for that matter, the labor practices at your friendly neighborhood Wal-Mart).

What sayeth ye, dearest reader? I’m totally ready to face the accusation that I’m merely providing a palliative rationale for my own consumption to appease the gnawing worry that buying anything makes me part of the problem. I’ll say it upfront: I’m probably providing a palliative rationale for my own consumption to appease the gnawing worry that by buying anything, I’m already a part of the problem.  I’m also ready to face the music on the fact that while I complain about the reality-television-ification of our culture that extends to the way in which our news is framed and delivered, I’m also one of it’s greediest consumers. Is this an impasse? Am I always-already a hypocrite?

My friends BC and S would probably say yes, if I can put words in their mouths.  BC, S, B and I have been hanging out a lot in the past two weeks, as we’ve been trying to jam in quality time before S’s departure from Paris today (sob). The four of us gotten into a lot of heated debates, eaten some delicious meals at Rouammit and Le Hangar, watched some football and aired some ugly patriotism, prepared and consumed a gumbo feast, drank several bottles of French-branded tequila and whiskey, and reviewed our respective coming-of-age via hip-hop music for hours and hours on end (well, that was the boys, not me). It’s been pretty great and I’ve been in my sweet spot of being the girl who gets to hang out with all the cool guys, something that my inner geeky seventh grader never fails to enjoy. I’m so happy to know these guys and to be even remotely hip enough to roll with them.

As for S:  Man, are we sad to see you go! I know you are returning to your überlovely girlfriend in the second (or third, depending on how you count) best city in the world, but we sure wish you could have stuck around here for a bit longer. I’m so pleased that somehow in the last few months we went from being exceedingly polite strangers to ragging on one another like old friends. Please feel free to think of this blog as a surrogate for Facebook whenever you like.  We here at Keeping the Bear Garden in the Background should be so lucky. Vaya con dios, brah. You will be missed.

This is how we do it in America

So I guess it all started yesterday morning, when I awoke to an e-mail from my dear friend J, who sadly left Paris last week to return to Southern California.  The e-mail announced that she and her longtime boyfriend BC (who is still here in Paris for a few more weeks) got engaged last week an hour or so before her plane took off. I couldn’t be more delighted about this news, as I can’t really imagine a more awesome couple than this one. They wanted to keep the news on the down low until they informed everyone in their (large) families, so BC has been pokerfaced all week during numerous hangouts. I decided that a celebration was in order, so I enlisted the help of B and S.  S is staying with me for a few days before he too leaves Paris for the States, so there is a definite end-times vibe in the air. We decided that there was no better celebratory meal for a bunch of expats in the Paris than a huge Tex-Mex feast. B’s visiting friends from Indiana recently brought him a suitcase full of Old El Paso delights, including pickled jalapeños and escabèche, dubious-looking “mild taco” and “cheesy burrito” seasoning packets, and mysteriously shelf-stable flour tortillas. These, coupled with a bottle of Tapatio that S had from birthday care package from the States and a few Haas avocados that surfaced at my local vegetable market last week, formed the basis of our fajita blowout.

It’s a trick to make anything Mexican in France, as this country wholly eschews spicy food. S and I went to three or four different markets yesterday in an attempt to purchase something vaguely resembling a fresh jalapeño or serrano or even poblano chile. We ended up with the equivalent of bell peppers shaped like poblanos, the appeal of which is completely lost on me.   We improvised, and I concocted a pretty killer (if I do say so myself) steak marinade by food processing together some garlic cloves, cilantro, Bermuda onions, lime juice, “mild taco” seasoning, smuggled-in chile powder, and olive oil.  We got most of the heat in our pico de gallo and guacamole from the aforementioned can of pickled jalapeños and escabèche that was hand-carried to us from South Bend, Indiana. France appears to be the place where avocados come to die, but the ones I picked up last week were pretty decently textured, if totally bland. I coaxed a mediocre guacamole to life, using copious amounts of lime juice, cilantro, and a spoonful of Maille mayonnaise. The mayo is trick my mother taught me. In a pinch, it gives your guacamole that fatty taste that good avocados have when, well, you don’t have good avocados. It sounds gross, but it works. S whipped up a gallon or so of pico de gallo, which he kicked into action with the vinegar from the canned jalapeños. Finally, we found some Colby cheese masquerading as “imported Cheddar” at Monoprix.

The result:

As it was a celebration, we kicked off the evening with a shots of tequila and a bottle of champagne, followed by two carafes full of my splendid homemade margaritas (equal parts lime juice, Cointreau, and tequila, with simple syrup to taste). You can see B pouring the first round from what looks like a bottle of Muscadet. At this point in the evening, we were actually reusing glassware! Organic champagne and recycling! How far we had to fall!

In case you didn’t get the memo, smoking kills:

Frying up those huge plates of peppers, onions, and steak was no small feat in my miniature kitchen on my glorified hot plates. By the time I was finished the entire apartment was filled with smoke and the floors were slicked down with grease. Thank goodness smoke detectors are something that only paranoid Americans have. The dinner was a wild success, if somewhat a disappointment as the guys seemed way more amped to about talk about the World Cup (go Côte d’Ivoire!) than the wedding. I wished that J was here to celebrate with us so that she and I could have geeked out on the romantic stuff. Oh well. She was missed.

I don’t know whether to attribute the events that followed to the two six packs of beer we somehow consumed, or the rather toxic (if strangely delicious!) French tequila we were drinking. It might also have been the two dusty Desperados (tequila-flavored beer!) that our British friends had brought to a party a few months back that I inexplicably decided to drink. All I know is that by 10 p.m. or so I was out for the count and had crawled into bed to pass out. I vaguely remember that the boys were going down to the river to finish off another round of margaritas (classy!). I also recall B patting my head saying in a soothing voice that he would take care of cleaning up the mess.

At two a.m. I awoke to the feeling that my brain was caving in on itself. Finding myself alone in the apartment, I surveyed the damage. Every single surface of my apartment seemed to be coated in congealed grease. Somehow the bowl of pico de gallo had been upended and there were chunks of tomato and vinegary juice covering the table and dripping onto the floor. As I stared dismayed at the carnage, S and B stumbled in. That they even made it back to my apartment was a miracle, as neither of them could enunciate or even walk very well. I quickly realized that they were going to be no help and sent them to bed. I was now decidedly in the hangover phase of my evening, so I pushed up my sleeves and got to work cleaning.

Around this time it became clear that B wasn’t kidding when he said the tequila really doesn’t agree with him. He ran into the kitchen needing to barf, but S was in the bathroom attempting to drunkenly extricate his contact lenses from his eyes. I yelled at S to get the hell out of the bathroom and passed B the trashcan, which he eschewed for some reason much to my bewilderment. He somehow made it to the toilet that time, but wasn’t quite as lucky in one of his six or seven subsequent trips, as I discovered when I slipped and nearly fell on a puddle of vomit in my living room. S wandered into the kitchen and carefully washed a single spoon, sighing with the sheer magnitude of his effort as he placed it on the dishrack and declaring that he felt dizzy. Realizing he was worthless in this state, I shooed him out of the kitchen and back to bed. I cleaned for an hour or so, breaking two wine glasses in the process. After I finally managed to mop up all the grease, pico de gallo, barf, and glass shards, I placed Advil and glasses of water near their S and B’s heads, and fell asleep muttering about how somebody better be buying me brunch tomorrow.

The three of us awoke midmorning with terrible hangovers and a lingering concern about what had happened to our friend BC along the way. S and B gradually pieced together the Seine portion of the evening. S said that he knew B was in trouble when eight or nine of his comments began with “Well, you know, where I’m from in Indiana…” followed by a total conversational non sequitur. Apparently the guys had decided it was appropriate to bring glassware down to the banks of river to drink their margaritas, some of which ended up broken and tossed in the Seine for emphasis. Let’s just say it wasn’t a banner night for Americans in Paris.

In light of this, we decided to do as hungover Americans do and get a big, greasy breakfast, paid for by the guy who barfed on the floor. None of us had yet been to the much-hyped Breakfast in America, which leads us to the following installment of Clarence in Paris.

Breakfast in America is a rather gimmicky establishment that was founded by some dude from Connecticut who missed proper American breakfasts when he moved to Paris to become a screenwriter. They’ve expanded the whole concept and the two branches of BIA (puke) are more or less simulacra of a generic American diners, complete with bottomless cups of drip coffee, Elvis on the stereo, and red Naugahyde booths.  In addition to a variety of Denny’s-style breakfast offerings available throughout the day, they also have a wide selection of sandwiches and burgers in the afternoons.

All that said, I resolved early on in this whole blarg experiment that I would only write reviews of restaurants I actually like and could say nice things about. I find myself conflicted as I don’t have too many nice things to say about Breakfast in America. The burgers were overcooked and tasteless, the bacon was limp, the pancakes were cold, and the coffee was sour and totally toxic (I suspect that this is their way of cutting back on the demand for refills). What kind of American diner doesn’t serve ice in their Coke? What kind of American diner doesn’t stock Tabasco? What kind of American diner doesn’t have air conditioning? Look, I’m all about a restaurant built around a stupid shtick (in fact, I’m cultivating a pretty serious fantasy about opening the first build-your-own burrito joint in Paris). There was just so much wrong with this place and I can’t imagine why it is so popular both with Parisians and Americans living abroad. If I ever find myself in this unfortunate condition again in the future, I plan to skip BIA and get a decent burger or omelet at any of the neighboring French restaurants.

Details:  If you find yourself wildly hungover in Paris and think that Breakfast in America might just be the stomach-coating ticket, well, you’re wrong.  Avoid it.