Ingredients & Fine Foods

[Crapaudine Beet]

It is a common misconception that the wintertime opposes the hurried cook with a dearth of ready-to-eat vegetables that could be prepped and dressed in under five minutes.

But what of endives and young winter greens, what of radishes and kohlrabi? What of lemon-squeezed mushrooms, what of thinly sliced fennel and cabbage, what of carrots and celeriac, which do require peeling and grating, yes, but perhaps you have a basic food processor gathering dust somewhere and it is time to take it and its assorted grating-slicing attachments out of retirement?

To my arsenal of winter crudités I have a few years ago added the beetroot. While you can simply peel and grate young beets for a raw, crunchy salad — do wear gloves and an apron if you’re heading out to a job interview afterwards and don’t want to appear as if you’ve just slayed someone — I prefer to take an even more leisurely path.

I buy my beets pre-roasted from the market or the produce shop, and all I need to do is peel — the skin strips off like those cool exfoliating masks –, slice — the butter-soft flesh offers a sigh and no resistance –, and eat.

The beets I find at the organic farmers’ market are roasted over a woodfire, which accents their earthy flavor, and you can make that point with even more clarity by adding a pinch of smoked salt or smoked paprika. On my last market run I enquired about the kind of beet they used, and was told with a straight face that it was a variety called “red ass.” I smiled privately, enjoying the cheeky name, until I looked it up and realized that it was merely “red ace” with a French accent.

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Barbie dolls didn’t do much for me when I was little, but I had a passion for plush animals. Each of them had a name and a set of personality traits (often refined by my father, who would improvise bedtime shows for my sister and me, with voices and everything), and they felt more alive than I think grownups can really remember. A direct consequence of this was that, even though I had preferences, naturally — I remember a black crow I’d won at the Jardin d’Acclimatation: it was ugly, it smelled funny, and I couldn’t bring myself to really love it –, I forbid myself to even admit these feelings, for fear of hurting theirs.

But now that I’m more or less an adult and have a pretty strong hunch that inanimate objects can’t get upset, I feel comfortable listing a few of my current edible and drinkable favorites from recent food shopping excursions. (If, however, the rest of my pantry turns sour all of a sudden, I may have to remove the post, I’m sure you’ll understand.)

~ Beurre au sel fumé (smoked salt butter) by Jean-Yves Bordier

Bordier can be described as the butter darling of the French gastronomic scene. His hand-beaten, hand-shaped butter is indeed outstanding, and his latest creation (yes, we now live in a world where the line between the artist and the artisan is blurrier by the day) is unlike anything I’ve tasted before: it is a butter that’s flavored with a mix of salt and spices — I understand this smoked salt follows a Norwegian technique — to give it smoky, almost earthy notes that reveal themselves in the back of your palate, in the aftermath of the rich yet refreshing butter kick.

It is splendid on fish and steamed (or mashed) potatoes, it can be spread on rye bread to eat with oysters, and I had such interesting results using it in a mini-batch of shortbread, that I must try it in salted butter caramels.

I buy my Bordier butter from Les Papilles Gourmandes, a neighborhood shop I’ve mentioned before (they also stock the unsalted, salted, and seaweed varieties), but it can also be found elsewhere in the city (La Grande Epicerie, Da Rose, Fauchon, Pascal Trotté’s cheese shop…) and, of course, right at the source in Saint-Malo.

Jean-Yves Bordier Map it!
9, rue de l’Orme – 35400 Saint-Malo
02 99 40 88 79

Les Papilles Gourmandes Map it!
26 rue des Martyrs – 75009 Paris
01 45 26 42 89

~ Sables blancs, a lightly flavored white tea from Le Parti du Thé

I like Mariage Frères as much as the next girl (though probably not as much as this next girl) but these days I am much more excited about the teas at Le Parti du Thé. This independant tea seller was recommended to me by Valérie Gentil of Beau et Bon (a quirky food shop I just as heartily recommend), and the first time I visited I had to physically restrain myself from buying a bit of each of their varieties — since they have over three hundreds, you can imagine why restraint is important.

The three kinds I’ve liked best so far are the Sables Blancs (“white sands”, a Pai Mu Tan Imperial white tea with discreet notes of coconut and vanilla, pictured above), the Oolong Fleurs d’Oranger (semi-fermented tea from Taiwan with orange blossoms; Beau et Bon carries it), and the Pousse-Pousse (a mix of semi-smoked teas).

Le Parti du Thé / Map it!
34 rue Faidherbe – 75011 Paris
01 43 72 42 04

Beau et Bon / Map it!
81 rue Lecourbe – 75015 Paris
01 43 06 06 53

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Earlier this year, I received an email from an Italian blogger named Massimo, who announced to me that C&Z had been voted Best Non-Italian Food Blog in the awards he’d been hosting on his website, Peperosso* — I’m sure that having an Italian word in the name of my blog helped. And since Massimo puts his mangoes where his mouth is (Lost, season 2:episode 17), there was a prize for each of the winners, and the prize was a 100€ gift certificate from San Lorenzo, an online store that specializes in Italian goods, and ships them in Europe.

You probably all receive those fake “You’ve won the lottery!” emails by the dozen (please tell me I’m not the only one), but this was a bona fide offer (no credit card information was requested) and I was delighted: it’s nice to discover you’ve won something, it’s even nicer when you didn’t even know you were in the running for it, and when the something you’ve won is edible, well, there’s no price tag on that.

Because I am me, it took me a couple of months to log on to the website and make my order. But when I finally did, it felt like writing a list to a foreign-exchange Santa: armed with my Italian-French dictionary (the website is available in other languages now, but wasn’t at the time), I spent quite a while browsing the virtual aisles and agonizing over what to get. It turns out my dictionary isn’t very food-savvy, but I got by, and learned lots of new words that were promptly forgotten the next day. And when I received the package — a rather huge box that I went to collect from my guardienne‘s office — here’s what was inside:

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You know how sometimes, you introduce two of your friends, and later find out they’ve clicked so well that they call and see each other without you? Now, as I understand (and this I gather from reading women’s magazines, so take it with a grain of Maldon salt), some people hate that: it makes them feel left out, or perhaps sligthly cheated. But I’ve never been of a jealous nature, and on the contrary such situations make me glow visibly (a bit freaky when you turn off the lights), thinking that I can take a little credit for the spark that ignited a new friendship.

And this is exactly how I felt last week at the Lafayette Gourmet store: I was browsing the organic aisle (right after bumping into Louisa, Paris is such a small village), when my attention was caught by not one, but two products that featured both chocolate and quinoa, two of my very favorite ingredient-friends.

“Chocolate! Quinoa!”, I exclaimed, “Fancy seeing you here! So, sharing the same package, now, aren’t we?” And indeed, they were, in the form of slim sticks of dark chocolate (by Kaoka), and a quinoa cocoa muesli (by Jardin Bio), both of which I promptly purchased to show how happy I was for them.

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