Holidays Don't Exist Without Friends

November and December were busy in a good way and filled with both good memories and piles of disappointment. As some of you already know, due to recent changes in immigration policy, Charlie was denied the work visa we so looking forward to him receiving. After much research into possible solutions, some of them extreme, we finally resigned ourselves to the fact that we would have to return to the U.S. and purchased tickets to that effect for February 17th (between bouts of tears on my part). Even if you don't know us well personally, you can probably tell from this blog that we love France and were ecstatic about the possibility of remaining here at least for another year, if not longer. But alas, what goes around comes around as far as foreign policy is concerned. But never mind all that for now. We still have several weeks of French living to accomplish.

One thing that became an integral part of our lives during these last couple of months is the foster cat that we took in when our friend encountered a similar problem with his visa and had to leave. Unfortunately, we discovered that the cat, aptly named "Sriracha", has epilepsy. Thanks to a very nice vet, we now have this under control and are in the process of placing her in a new home. Before she could be adoption-worthy, however, she had to undergo spaying and shots, all of which made for a very sad, pathetic kitty.

Post-veterinary depression

This is not funny, you guys.

When she had to wear the cone, 

all she wanted to do was cuddle.

She has since returned to normal and, after wiling a few prospective adoptive parents with her charms, we have found her a new loving home with one of my friends, with whom she'll be moving in this weekend.

Sleeping in a box of hats, gloves and scarves is only logical during winter.

In other non-feline related news, at the beginning of December, Charlie's former teacher, Chef Nicolas Bernardé (MOF), opened a classy confiserie-patisserie just outside of Paris. One morning we hopped the train to go see it and were hard-pressed not to buy up the whole store. We even got a private tour of the impressive and well-equipped kitchen upstairs.

 Chef schmoozes with a client.

 Chocolate and confiture

Caramel... droooool...

A week later, a former co-worker and now good friend of Charlie's, Vera, came to visit us. She is a native of Holland and was visiting family so she and her sister-in-law, Joke, caught a train over to see the sites with us.

Joke and her son, Peter, listen intently to Charlie.

We made it a point to go to the Christmas market (twice) and it was well worth it if only to see the Champs-Élysées lit up at night.

 New and very old

 Sausage oglers

Pork o'plenty

A sign nearby read, "Chocolate: A Natural Anti-Depressant."

Pretty display

Public display

We got up bright and early the next day to go to Bastille market in search of the goodies with which Chef Charlie would make us dinner that evening.

 Spongebob Squarepants' homies

At the horse butcher: "I want that piece of Mr. Ed."

If you speak Mexican Spanish you will know why this is funny. Just know that €2.00 for 6 chichis is a very good price.

'Shroom heaven

Finding the perfect baguette takes a joint effort.

After the market, we went back to our apartment to eat lunch and recoup for a bit. Then we set out up the nearby hill to visit Sacre-Coeur, which in my opinion is one of the must-see sites in Paris.

Hordes

Small Christmas market at the foot of the church.

The touristy plaza nearby had this cleverly-named bookshop: "The Ape Who Reads".

 Vera and Cha

 Why is Charlie so excited?

 Because there are chichis nearby!

Being from Holland, Vera was not at all phased by the red light district.

In need of a pick-me-up, we went into the Buffalo Grill, a decent barbecue chain with offensive cowboy and indian decor.

 The Chief looks over Vera's shoulder.

Then we went back to our place so the Chef could get to work. Meanwhile, Vera and I played a competitive game of Quirkle and later, Charlie joined as we ate. Turns out that our sweet Vera becomes quite the sassy shit-talker when points are at stake.

    

Oysters, nom nom nom...

 Flavor bliss

 2nd course: Risotto

 Main: Steak and beets

Time for serious color/shape coordination.

The following day, Charlie's work week resumed and I was left in charge of taking Vera and Joke around for a look at the city. We started our day with a visit to the Baccarat crystal museum. On the way there we happened upon an open street-level window leading into someone's home office. The room was completely filled with pigeons and bird shit and had us and another camera-wielding passerby completely bewildered.

It occurred to me later that perhaps the inhabitant opened the window and then died somewhere else in the house and/or had been robbed while on vacation and/or just really loved pigeons.

Anyway, we arrived at our destination shortly thereafter, located in  Place des États-Unis (Plaza of the United States), complete with a statue of George Washington and located next to a tiny park called Square Thomas Jefferson.

While the "museum" collection was pretty small and not particularly riveting, the building was an experience all by itself. It was primarily a boutique for people who can afford this sort of thing and absolutely everything sparkled...

... even the stairs.

Tryin to figure out how to use the sink in the ridiculously lavish ladies room.

After the museum, we walked down to Pont de l'Alma (next to the tunnel where Princess Diana died) to check out the view and find somewhere to eat.

A Dutch discussion

During our flavorless lunch, served to us by a stereotypically rude waitress, we decided to head out to the southeast side of the city to  Bercy to check out the Cour Saint-Émilion,  what used to be a row of old wine warehouses. Sadly, whatever charm this place may have had in the past has been replaced by upscale boutiques with a strip mall feel. The highlight for me was the olive oil store, where we got to taste a few things, and of course, the pet store.

Bundles of joy

We were quickly finished so we went back to the Champs-Élysées for another stroll through the Christmas market. Once that was accomplished, we took the metro to the Notre Dame neighborhood for a rest and a cup of coffee.

Sun setting over the Seine

Then I dragged these poor ladies to a Mass dedicated to the Virgin of Guadalupe at Notre Dame Cathedral for what I thought would be an awesome Mariachi-filled evening. It had the potential for being a lovely celebration but was unfortunately dull, thanks to the usual heavy-handed ceremoniousness that is Catholicism combined with more stereotypical Parisian coldness (or perhaps boredom) on the part of the clergy. Despite the majority of the congregation being made up of Paris' Spanish speaking Latino community, the Mass was primarily in French and the mariachis were only allowed to play two songs. The rest was medieval chanting in a dark, drafty gothic cathedral, which is fine if you're into that sort of thing. We were not. It felt more like punishment than celebration.

After a decent Italian dinner in the Latin Quarter, I escorted the ladies back to their hotel and we said our goodbyes, as they would be leaving the next day.

A week later it was Christmas and of course, the chef went all out for dinner. We invited over a couple of his friends from the east coast, Stephen and Amy, who were in town for the holidays.

First, as per tradition in my family, I started the day by making sugar cookies with butter cream frosting. 

Lots of cookies

Unfortunately, I didn't have cookie cutters or food coloring to make things like colorful, edible snowmen or Christmas stockings. White and round would have to do.

Now for Christmas dinner:

 Curried pumpkin soup

Risotto with seared scallops, coral and fondant beards  

 The chef at work

Hazelnut crusted duck breast, glazed root vegetables and artichokes, and duck confit

Dessert preparation

 Wine-poached pears with crème anglaise

 Dialogue and digestion

Stephen had graciously brought cigars to share, so after dinner we set out for a walk up the hill to Sacre-Coeur.

When we arrived, we found the church steps littered with empty beer bottles and groups of rowdy young men from the neighborhood cheering the street performer who was singing American rock classics. In stark contrast to the exterior scene, inside the church nuns were chanting before a small congregation of worshippers. Just before we exited, I also saw a drug deal go down.

Then we popped over to the adjacent plaza for a coffee under the heat lamps that so characterize Parisian cafes in the winter.

 Stephen lights, Charlie thinks.

Nudge nudge

In order to uphold Charlie's family Christmas tradition, I had made a special trip to the British Grocery to acquire Christmas crackers, colorful cardboard tubes that pop when you pull them apart and contain paper crowns, a corny joke and a small toy. Unfortunately, we totally forgot about them until after Stephen and Amy had already gone home. Instead, we opened ours just before calling Charlie's family via Skype.

We are not amused.

The following evening we had dinner with Stephen and Amy again at our favorite falafel joint in the Marais, Chez H'anna. After that we said our goodbyes, as they would be returning to the U.S. the next day.

Finally, the event of the year rolled around: I turned thirty. Last year I had resolved that I would spend my thirtieth birthday in Mexico since I haven't been there yet. This didn't work out because I'm in Paris (which is nothing to complain about), so I looked into hiring a mariachi band instead. Given that most of my friends were out of town for the holidays, it didn't seem like a good use of my financial resources to hire a band just to entertain little old me. Instead, I found an actual decent Mexican restaurant in Paris called Casa Palenque, run by a family from Mexico City. I invited my good friends (and the only ones left in the city that day), the Arrouf sisters, to join me for a meal.

 Mole poblano = heaven

 Cochinita Pibil = delicious pulled pork

 My fave guy

Okay, bear with me, we're almost done here. So the rest of 2011 was spent in the following manner:

We visited the archeological crypt of Sacre-Coeur which was mostly just dark and empty. There was one photo-worthy display for our beloved tog queen, Tony Hutchinson.

 Priestly tools

Then we went out for dinner with one of my grad school colleagues, Christine, who was back in town for a quick visit over the holidays.

 Île Saint-Louis on the Seine. 

I will miss this.

I tried frog's legs for the first time that night. They really do taste just like chicken.

Julien, Charlie and Christine chat over dinner.

On New Year's Eve, Charlie and I stayed in playing Quirkle, listening to music and smoking cigars. At midnight we drank fake champagne, kissed and yelled "Bonne Année!" out the window along with the other partying neighbors.

In summary, 2011 basically kicked ass. If I do things right, 2012 will too.

Taillevent

It is strange sitting down to write a blog you have been planning for two months. On the other side of sleep deprivation and exhaustion and heat stroke the perfectly formed phrases that so wonderfully encapsulated the experience of 16 hour days in one of Paris' most famous restaurants really don't seem to do it justice. Two exchanges I had while at Taillevent come pretty close, however.

The first, uttered by a very sleepy, very slurry, very orange haired young Cordon Blue stagiaire from Colombia named Daniel, about a week into his time working Entremets: "I feel like a pirate. We sleep. We work. We fight. We drink." It was clear by fight he meant the seeming chaos of service.

The second, said around a Marlboro red during our half hour lunch break by fish gut encrusted Jullian, a Holland-born, Italian-raised former death metalist who listens to jazz now to relax and only half-jokingly extols the virtues of genocide as a form of population control in a dying world: "We work ourselves into the ground, burning the hell out of ourselves, we get two or three hours of sleep a night. We're miserable during the week. We can't wait for Saturdays to sleep and Sundays to party. And by Sunday afternoon, we can't wait for Monday morning so we can be exhausted and burn ourselves again. Thinking about it, that's pretty fucked up."

While there is definitely a pathology that goes hand in hand with the production of haute cuisine, it is a fun and rewarding pathology, and in many ways a much more personally genuine pathology than any you'll come across in any office job I've worked. Between the pressure to get it perfect every time, the amount of work, the constant threat of injury to body or ego, not much room is left for disingenuously polite confrontations that contribute to the stereotypical passive-aggression of the office. From the second you close the front door in the morning, the only thing on your mind is getting the next task accomplished the best, the fastest and the most efficiently as possible, from getting to work to peeling 30 pounds of shallots and onions to straining 300 pounds of stock and jus base to cleaning the carbon and grease grime off the stainless steel above the stove. In order to do so, a tunnel vision develops at the expense of common courtesy. For instance, on the metro, crowded as it is, and without the magical word of "Chaud" to part your path, sometimes you rely on body checking to achieve your goal. Just sayin'.

Standard day: On the way to work, exit Metro George V on Champs Elysse, turn onto Rue Washington (singing this song), avoiding the early bird tourists and various workers taking a coffee in the middle of the side walk before their shift, all the while getting one last dose of music to get the heart rate up for what's to come. The first 20 minutes of the day is bringing in and arranging the day's deliveries of veg and fish. Next, the day's mise en place, usually peeling veg for aromatics for the various sauces. I was lucky to be placed on sauce, the station I am most interested in working on in my career, responsible for meat, sauce, and stock. After the garnishes, my tasks varied greatly. Alex, my Chef de Partie, usually sent me over to Grant, our Sous Chef, to help with meat prep, ranging from the simple tying of meat for service:

 Whole beef filet

 Tied up

Venison Gigot

To the more interesting baby partridge:

 15 Christmas' worth

 Flaming the boid.

Detritus: wings, head, and damaged feet. At this point, I should mention that a pastime of one of my buds at the resto, an anomaly in herself for being a girl in a French kitchen, Isa, is placing the birds' heads on her fingers and making marionettes out of them. Particularly around the squeamish plethora of teenage technical school stagiaires that come through the restaurant for month-long tours. She was unwilling to have photographic evidence of goofing off at work, however.

As I will go in to detail later, all things culinary can be talked about in sexual innuendo. As such, some kinky-ass boids, all bound and tied up.

The traditional meat fabrication of feet-on birds: getting in the last word.

Flippin' the bird.

Filleting chickens. Legs for staff food, breasts for a plat du jour: in this case, a presse of chicken, foie gras, and artichokes.

Rolling foie gras en torchon

Taillevent is known for its traditional haute French gastronomy, and as such, the art of forcemeats is heavily practiced. As the stagiaire, grinding and mixing by hand the medley of fat, meat, offal, and seasonings usually fell to me. However, Alex took the responsibility as his own on picture day:

The magical meat fridge. Hanging ducks, veal rack, untrimmed beef mignons. And what are those furry friends down there at the bottom?

I see paws!

Wild hare are huge. These guys weighed six kilos apiece (that's 13 pounds....)

Now, when I say traditional, that means quite a few things. None of the food is old; Taillevent stays with the times. But it does have one dish that is about as old-school as you can get. Lievre à la Royale is a dish that takes a week to prepare. They do a ballotine of hare, filled with hare forcemeat around a core of foie gras ringed with a mosaic of truffle and barding fat.

Taking his p.j.s off.

My chef de partie, Alex, an England raised Versaillean was a treasure trove of kitchen knowledge and clearly one of the leaders in the kitchen. He and Grant, a native of England and somewhat of a novelty being head of a French kitchen, were remarkable teachers to whom I am indebted. A lot of the things I learned at LCB and passed off as antiquated and unlikely to ever show up professionally, actually showed up: cockscombs, for example. Again, no pic, but I will let all you in on a little secret: blanch them to skin them; don't try to salt rub them. It's much faster and much cleaner.

The atmosphere of the kitchen, between the internally imposed and externally applied stresses, is quite jovial. As alluded to (and as can be expected with 15 men in their early 20's), all things culinary can be referenced in sexual innuendo. With complete exposure to American porn at this point in our history, most of the guys, even when using innuendo, use english words. Anything involving putting one's hand in anything, such as a bowl of farce or emptying a bird of its entrails, is ingloriously called fist-fucking. Trussing birds? Making it your bitch, or some reference to "EhsEhm." Adding liquid, especially a creamy liquid, to anything? You get the idea. Not doing your job, doing it poorly, or taking too long to do it? Il se branler! (He's jerking himself!).

Spending so much time together, particularly such stressful time, develops a camaraderie that, quite honestly, borders on homoerotic. An inexplicable phenomenon in the kitchen is the finger-butt wiggle. Yeah. You read that right. It's not uncommon to be focussed on your veg chopping, or what have you, and suddenly, you feel the stealthy beginnings of the loving ordeal. You feel the creeping tip of a co-workers fingers gently worming their way into your butt crack. No one can explain it, or the attraction to getting that personal with someone you do not intend to bed, but there you have it, the finger-butt wiggle. It is done with fraternity and respect, but unfortunately, they happen so fast I couldn't get an action shot, so I had to retain some volunteers. Well, one volunteer, at least:

Nicknames were also a big deal. If you were lucky (or unlucky, depending) to get one, that was your lot in the kitchen. That was your name. From Fish's chef de partie, Dangereuse (Dangerous) to Entremet's Marteau (Sledgehammer), alternatively know as Rocco, (after this guy), due to a few performances in some Japanese school-girl videos in his earlier days, most were said with gentle ribbing. Others, however, were not so lucky. Dumbfuck, a Portugese guy who lasted two and half weeks, got the name from Grant on his second day, and honestly I can't remember his real name. I had two: Big Balls (never really got a good explanation of that one) and Passe Partout, after a character known for his (ahem) diminutive stature on a long-running and beloved French reality show, Fort Boyard.

Where the magic happens:

 The piano, all cleaned and ready to go for next shift.

Keeping out of the shit.

During service, I was one of the lucky stagiares who got to come forward and take part in it; most stayed behind and worked on the mise en place for the next service. I didn't fire any food, but kept the station clean, ran food to the passe and dirty dishes to the washers, helped with plating and generally tried to make myself useful while staying out of the way of the cooks. Towards the end, if we were getting in to the shit, with a million things going in all different directions, I could step in and turn and baste the meat that was being fired.

Of the 16 hours of each day, at least 4 were spent cleaning. Twice a day, the entire space, prep areas and hallways and walls were washed down. If you are in Paris and want to know for sure your food is being prepped in a sanitary place, go to Taillevent.

Proctology jokes are transnational, apparently.

Friday night tradition: clear out all leftovers that won't keep, take ten minutes, and relax with 2 star food (foie gras, jamon iberico, and quince coulis) before going our separate ways for the weekend. 

Finally, after two months, recent legislation has made it impractical and too expensive for the restaurant to sponsor me for a work visa, so with well-wishes and incredibly fond memories, I had to take my leave. Chef Soliveres (second from left) was apologetic and sweetly told me that if my situation changed, to give him a call ASAP. If it does, I most certainly will.

Grant, Chef, Alex, myself, and the kitchen's second Sous Chef, Koni.

And, a relic from the very beginning of my time there, A "Smoking in the park," shot the first weekend of my stage:

Amigas en Barcelona (The Sequel)

Nearly five years ago, on my way out of living in Spain for the second time, I spent my last few days in the country visiting my friend Kate in Barcelona. (Here's the old post, if you want to take a look) She had just moved there, was working and didn't really know the city yet so what time we did have together we spent exploring or hanging out our hostel balcony watching the world's oldest profession take place en masse on the shady street below.

Since then we have both lived in a few different places, but recently we both ended up in Europe again. So, having successfully defended my thesis, I decided to book a quick trip to go see her.

My first night there we were to attend a bilingual pub quiz at an Irish bar in her neighborhood. She was busy giving an English lesson when the quiz was to begin, so she sent her neighbor, Fernando, to collect me. When I answered the door he said, "I think you are my date" and we headed to the bar to meet up with half a dozen other folks from Kate's circle of friends. This pub quiz was one of the funnest things I have ever done! Despite our team doing very well, we didn't manage to take home a prize (the competition was stiff!), but we had a lot of good laughs anyway. Unfortunately, I forgot to take my camera.

The next day we managed to get up by about noon and headed around the corner for some coffee and breakfast. As would become my habit for every single day while I was there, I had a chorizo sandwich. Spanish chorizo is amazing.

 Pretty sleepyhead

We started the day off by buying a few bottles of wine for me to take to some of my translation clients who have an office in the city. It was nice to finally put faces to names and even nicer to hear them say that I was their "number one". Hooray!

That afternoon, while wandering around we happened to wander by the 15th century Barcelona Cathedral. Much to our surprise, it had an elevator that would take you to the top of the cathedral. This was a nice change from the usual killer stair climbs required for visiting the top of anything in Paris.

Gorgeous day in a gorgeous city!

Afterward we meandered toward the beach front and stopped on the way to have a delicious lunch at a little unassuming cafe. Eventually, we ended up at the marina.

 Boats: They float.

 Amigas in the sand

That night we went to have dinner with Kate's friend and former roommate, Laia, in her beautiful apartment. We had a feast of salad, croquettes, paté and bread.

Kate rolls a cig while Laia buzzes around the kitchen.

The next day, out of morbid curiosity, we tried to go visit the funeral carriage museum but it was closed for siesta when we got there. So we walked a little way down the road to a nice park.

 Superfluously large fountain

 Serenity

There we completely lost our motivation to walk all the way back once it had reopened (we are lazy tourists). Instead, we walked to the nearby chocolate museum. On the way over there, I discovered the Barcelona also has an Arc de Triomf.

 L'arc en rouge

The chocolate museum was pretty corny for the most part, consisting mainly of googly-eyed caricatures of cartoon characters and animals. I do, however, give them props for our tickets being chocolate bars.

 Dramatic googley-eyed horses

 Chocolate book

 This was about as fancy as it got.

Behind the school was a fully transparent patisserie school, which I rudely ogled and photographed because I love chefs.

 I seeee you.

At the museum's exit was a café where we quickly found ourselves interrogating two ladies about the apparent cup of whipped cream they were sharing. We discovered that it was called a "Suiza" ("Swiss" - hot chocolate with whipped cream) and ordered two.

 We weren't about to share.

Then we attempted to regulate our insulin by zig-zagging through the narrow streets of the Gothic Quarter.

 A-maze-ing!

A plaza with a Spanish guitarist playing flamenco. Doesn't get much more picturesque than that.

 Smushed living spaces

While here we also took a quick stroll through the Basílica de Santa Maria del Mar, a pretty little 14th century gothic church.

My third and last half day there we didn't have too much time to spare, so we didn't make any special plans. We started the day by attempting to visit the opera house. But when we arrived we were told the only way to see it was to pay €10 for an hour-long guided tour and frankly, we were just not that interested. 

Instead, we decided to walk around until we found somewhere to have coffee, which we chose to do in a less-than-ideal neighborhood. When we sat down at a table in the plaza our waitress even warned us not to leave our bags on the table in case someone were to run by and snatch them up. So we sat there drinking our coffee for a while, speculating on the elaborately-doored building adjacent to it. Since our communication had long descended into a ridiculous Spanglish, I told her that it was probably a "pequeño churcho" (a small church). Her response was to sing an ode to it:

 "Pequeño churcho, pequeño churcho;

¡Olé, olé, olé, olé!"

Next we took a long stroll down La Rambla, the main tourist strip of the city, stopping to take a look at this palm-filled plaza.

 Sunny

On our way to Plaça de Catalunya, where I had to catch my bus to the airport, we happened to spot one of the coolest street performers I have ever seen.

This guy's a goner.

We reached our destination and sat people watching until I had to get on the bus. All in all, it was a great little quick trip!