A bunch of unrelated items about food.

Of visiting Americans with little knowledge of the French language, the one advantage I have is that I know a lot of words for animal parts and vegetables. When I don't know what something is, I buy it and we eat it. It's how I show my mastery over nature. Last week, while looking at duck bits, we found manchons de canard. Luckily, I had Lia to inform me that manchon means sleeve. So these are duck wings. They are good, but not great when stewed in red wine. I found them at the store the next day preserved in jars of fat as confit. Probably better that way. Probably even better on the menu of the chicken wing franchise Jeff D. and I would like to open here.

A much more rousing success was the dish below. Shoulder of lamb, braised with lemon, garlic, tomato and Banyuls- a fortified, sweet dessert wine from Catalan, kind of like ruby port. Best thing we've made since arriving in Paris.

Last weekend we visited La Grande Epicerie de Paris. It's a gigantic grocery store, with fresh and packaged goods from everywhere. I especially enjoyed the TexMex/Spain/Germany section. This is a great place to go if you want ketchup, peanut butter, fish sauce, maple syrup, English canned beans, horrible salsa, wild rice, rare artisanal Spanish ham, marshmallow fluff and you want it all at one beautiful store. Of course, you pay more. €3 for a shot glass-sized bottle of fish sauce is crazy when there are Asian markets selling liters of it for that price. Anyway, it's fun to see all the hard-to-find and luxury items in one place. If it were open all night you would find drunken tourists and ex-pats from all over the world satisfying their midnight food cravings together.

I have what I think of as a Midwesterner's relationship with seafood. I'm kind of ignorant and a little unsure what to do with most of it. It makes me anxious- I wash my hands more than usual when preparing it. How do I cook this? When is it done? Which part do I eat? How do I get to that part? Which part is poison? I just don't like being that neurotic at the dinner table. I figure France is a great place to get over this problem.

To start, we decided to hit the open-air market, buy a bunch of seafood and make a stew. It sounded so simple and then ended up being one of the most time consuming things I've ever cooked. Luckily, it was delicious and fun. We bought langoustines(little lobstery things from the North Sea), mussels and rouget(red mullet).

Langoustines and Mussels

Rouget fillets and their former home.

shells, fish racks, leeks and carrots

Lia particularly enjoyed the little langoustine claws.
Here she is eating them while impersonating a Vermeer painting.


The table.