Sunday market cooking, picnic-ing, night-shooting

After stopping by the corner cafe for a typical Parisian breakfast (cafe and croissants), we went shopping at the local Sunday market on Rue Montmartre. We bought fruits, veggies, and fish, and I went home to make lunch. I filleted the fish (dorade) garnished with tomatoes, onions, and avocado, and made a white wine sauce to go with everything. I'm planning to cook for my parents when they come to Paris next week so I was "practicing."

We crossed another thing off our "to do" list: going to Les Halles for a picnic. We have a park within a 1 minute walk from the apartment, and I thought it would be a shame if we missed out on picnic-ing there so we stopped by Stohrer, picked up some goodies, and brought some wine. I finally got to crack open the book I brought to Paris with me! I also have a new dessert to add to my "must-try making" list: fraisier (pictured on the right). It is layered with chocolate, bavaroise, genoise, glaze, and strawberries... sounds easy enough!

After a couple of drinks and good conversation at our neighborhood cafe, La Pointe St. Eustache (the same place where we had breakfast this morning), Quinn and I went night-shooting along the Seine and at Notre Dame.

Wine & cheese tasting lunch, La Maison du Chocolat, Hippopotamus

O-Chateau offers wine & cheese tasting lunches inside the old wine cellars that were built to store wine during the reign of Louis XV. We were greeted into a long, small, and narrow room by our sommelier, Sebastian and seated ourselves at a u-shaped table among 12 other people. Sebastian went into great detail about how Champagne is made, the effects that the "terroir" has on the wine, how wine is classified in France (AOC's), how to "read" the wine before tasting it (i.e. determining the climate by looking at the color of the wine), and much more. I was impressed by how knowledgeable he was about wine but what impressed me more was how passionate he was about wine. For our tasting, we had a Montmarthe Champagne, a Domaine de la Garenne (Sancerre from Loire), a Domaine Venot (Cote Chalonnaise from Burgundy), a Chateau Lanessan (Haut Medo from Bordeaux), and a Domaine du Grand Veneur (Cotes du Rhone from Rhone) along with a plateful of cheese and a selection of sliced meat.

La Maison du Chocolat is a chocolatier we've heard about over and over again. They have a location inside the Louvre so we picked up some chocolates before heading to a nearby cafe for coffee. The "Zagora" was my favorite; it was a mint-infused chocolate in which you could taste the fresh mint (not like the artificial mint flavor in most candies and choclates).

Being tired of French food, we ventured off to the 13th for Thai... we were too hungry and ended up at Hippopotamus instead. The service was horrible, but the food was good (hunger is the best spice!).

Oysters and beer! A nice walk down Champs Elysees

One thing I love about Paris and living on Montorgueil is that you can just walk downstairs and there is so much to explore. We headed down the street for some oysters and beer at Taverne Karlsbrau where the oysters were humungous (we ordered No. 2's and No. 3's), the beer was refreshing, and the french fries were sinfully delicious. It reminded me a bit of going to Hog Island Oyster Co. in the Ferry Building in San Francisco when Quinn and I would go for happy hour to enjoy oysters and beer.

More turned apples...
I could call this "studying" for my final exam! I've actually started enjoying turning fruits and vegetables. It's therapeutic!

With all of the "not so healthy" food we've been eating, I decided that I needed to go for a walk. Since I don't have classes anymore, I haven't been getting in my daily 6 miles of walking to/from school. I headed towards the Champs Elysees to take some pics and get some exercise. One nice thing about the Champs Elysees is that the sidewalks are so wide that you don't often have to dodge people while you're walking. One thing about Paris that perplexes me is how French people have no regard for other people on the sidewalk. When it's obvious that I'm going to collide with someone else because there just isn't enough room on the sidewalk, I usually contort my body to pass by. However, the other person doesn't. I don't get it! I had a laugh when I was reading David Lebovitz's blog, and he mentioned that one thing he would miss about Paris if he moved away was the brusque-ness of Parisians and how "shoving someone out of the way is far less-effort than contorting yourself to try and move around others." It's sooo true!

Last demo class! Moulin Rouge

I can't believe classes are now officially over. We had our last demo class today and all that's left is our final exam next week.

We had a gala menu theme for our last demo. Chef made racks of lamb, duxelle stuffed tomatoes, braised little gems, rose-colored turned turnips, honey glazed carrots, potato gratin, and baked Alaska.

Potato gratin (my fav!)

The making of baked Alaska (looks like I got a bit snap happy)...

We had our tasting as usual after Chef was done plating everything, but since today was our last day, we got Champagne too!

We headed to Pigalle for dinner since we had tickets to see the Moulin Rouge later that night. On a nondescript side street, we found Chez Toinette, a restaurant that serves traditional French fare. At first, I looked at the menu and nothing seemed appetizing because I'm on French food overload (I didn't know that was possible), but after the food starting coming out, I was very pleasantly surprised. Everything was perfectly cooked, seasoned well, and reminded me of homemade food. It was probably one of my fav meals in Paris! Quinn even stated that their tarte tatin was better than Laduree's!!

With only a couple of weeks left in Paris, we're knocking things off our "to do" list. For one, we got tickets to see the famous Moulin Rouge. Neither of use had any expectations and had no idea what the show would be like. It was entertaining, had good music, and was artistic. It reminded me a bit of the dinner shows on a cruise ship (except for the lack of clothing). The acts consisted of singing (actually lip syncing), dancing, juggling, miming, acrobatics, and a swimming act with snakes. Contrary to what the online sites say about seating, the seats are not preassigned. We arrived at 10:30pm (half an hour before the show), and the line was already really long. We were seated around 11:15pm (showtime was scheduled for 11:00pm) and enjoyed the bottle of champagne that was included in the ticket price.