Last week, my partner and I entered Loutsa Torréfacteur, a coffee roaster and café on rue de Bazeilles, to purchase an espresso coffee. I was curious to see if I could identify the aromas associated with one of the café’s specialty roasts.
Bag of Santa Rosa coffee beans
A coffee roaster sits to the right of the entrance. Next to it, a shelf displays 250g airtight bags of the café’s recently roasted limited edition specialty coffees. The multi-hued colors of a package of Santa Rosa roast from the Tarrazu region of Costa Rica caught my eye. The package label indicated that this roast is characterized by aromas and flavors of clementine, honey, almond, chocolate, and caramel. Could I, I wondered, identify any of these intriguing elements while sipping a freshly-pulled espresso made from this bean? I decided to order one to test my ability to distinguish them.
I ordered the coffee at the counter, found a table at which to sit, and waited while it was being prepared.
Cup of Santa Rosa espresso coffee
After the barista placed the espresso on the table, I took small sips, trying to determine which flavors I could recognize. Alas, the only thing that I could identify was the very strong flavor of…coffee. Try as I might, I could not distinguish any of the characteristics that were indicated on the package. The only thing I could say was that the brew tasted slightly bitter and sour. I was not greatly disappointed, though, because I do enjoy the flavor of coffee. I persuaded my partner, who does not like coffee, to take a sip, but she could go no further in the taste test than I had gone in my experience.
Not ready to abandon my quest, I purchased a 250g bag of Santa Rosa coffee and took it home to try my hand at making espresso with a 9Barista stove-top coffee maker that I had recently purchased. Would I be able to capture those illusive aromas and flavors at home with my new espresso machine?
Santa Rosa Pure Origin Limited Coffee – 16.20€/250g – Loutsa Torréfacteur – 1 rue de Bazeilles – 75005 Paris
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On Saturday, October 12th, I had the occasion to attend an open house at a photo studio located in the Boissière quarter of the Paris suburb of Montreuil.
The studio was founded in 1951 by an Arminian refugee, Varastade Kasparian, and has been operated by his family ever since. One of the sons of the elder Kasparian, Roger, went on to become a celebrated photographer, renowned for his images of popular singers and bands that performed in Paris during the 1960s. Today, the studio is operated by Maccha, the daughter of the second-generation Kasparian, and her daughter, Nelta, who divides her time between Paris and London.
It was fascinating to watch the mother-daughter team work together. Nelta took portrait photographs of open house attendees and Maccha developed the film.
Studio Boissière 265 boulevard Aristide-Briande 93100 Montreuil studioboissiere.com
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View of the Ecole des Mines from the Luxembourg Garden The sculpture commemorating the abolition of slavery stands to the right.
Visitors to the Luxembourg Garden sometimes wonder what the building is that overlooks the edge of the garden near the three-link chain sculpture (on the right in the photo between the path and the sign) that commemorates the abolition of slavery. It is the “Luxembourg” wing of the Ecole des Mines, an engineering school that was founded in 1783 and initially located on quai de Conti.
Since 1816, the school has been located on boulevard Saint-Michel next to the garden. The “Luxembourg” wing that can be viewed from the garden was constructed in 1861-1866 to house laboratories during a period of physical expansion of the school.
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Place Edmond Rostand is a roundabout located at the intersections of four streets in front of the Luxembourg Garden: Rue de Médicis, Boulevard Saint-Michel, Rue Soufflot, and Rue Gay-Lussac. The roundabout was created between 1860 to 1870 during Baron Haussmann’s urban renewal project, a colossal campaign that tore down old Parisian neighborhoods and replaced them with wide streets and boulevards.
To the left in the photograph stands Rue de Médicis. To permit the construction of this street in 1860, a portion of the Luxembourg Garden was appropriated despite resistance from Parisians who wanted to preserve that section of the park.
The buildings that stand today around Place Edmond Rostand were constructed during this period of massive urban transformation. Called “Haussmannian” buildings, they reflect the architectural style that Baron Haussmann imposed on the city during the demolition and rebuilding that took place in Paris under his authority from 1853 to 1870.
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The French Senate, which is tasked with the maintenance of the Luxembourg Garden, assigns the mission of trimming its tall hedges to a landscaping company.
The trimming is carried out by a specially-designed machine, mounted on a wheeled vehicle, whose cutter can reach a height of 21 meters. Assisted by a laser guidance system, a circular saw placed at the end of a telescopic arm ensures precise cutting. An operator, sitting in a cabin at the top of the aerial lift, guides the trimming process.
Photograph by Entrée to Black Paris
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Just inside the Luxembourg Garden at the entrance called Porte Médicis stands a sculpture of a dancing faun, a half-man, half-goat deity from Roman antiquity. Sculpted by French artist Eugène Louis Lequesne (1815 – 1887), the creature dances stark naked, balancing precariously with one foot on an overfilled wineskin and playing a trumpet. A close look at the subject reveals that its only animal-like feature is a short tail.
During Antiquity, fauns represented inebriated gaiety. They were associated with Bacchus, the god of wine. Here, the intoxicated faun demonstrates his prowess at balancing on a wine-filled animal skin, an unstable surface, while playing a musical instrument.
At the base of the sculpture, one can see the following objects around the wineskin: a tambourine, a bunch of grapes, a wine cup, and a thyrsus (a pine-cone tipped staff tied with ribbon that was carried by devotees of Dionysus and Bacchus).
Lequesne started a career as a jurist, but abandoned the trade and entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1840. He gained acceptance into the Villa Médicis in Rome, where he studied classical art for five years. Inspired by an antique dancing faun that was discovered in Pompei in 1830, he created a plaster sculpture depicting his own rendering of the subject. It was cast in bronze in 1850. This metallic sculpture is the one that we admire today.
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Cook’n with Class, a cooking school in Paris’ 18th arrondissement, is relaunching its Chocolate Class in Paris next week. To celebrate, it invited several bloggers to attend a prelaunch workshop to raise anticipation for what awaits the general public.
Chef Christian Labrosse and Chef Sarah Tyler were the dynamic duo that taught the class, which was held in a room gaily decorated with rose-colored walls and a patchwork of mosaic tiles. There was plenty of table space for working the chocolate, lots of cooking utensils and equipment – including an induction cooking plate and a mixer, and a small refrigerator for chilling the chocolate.
Chef Sarah Tyler and Chef Christian Labrosse
More importantly, there were five enthusiastic students in attendance ready to dip their hands into the gooey and sugary ingredients that were essential to creating decadent chocolate confections.
Our own Monique Y. Wells, co-founder of Entrée to Black Paris, happily accepted Cook’n with Class’ invitation and showed up at 9:00 a.m. on November 8 to begin her chocolate adventure. During the following three-and-one-half hours, she and four other bloggers learned how to make bonbons, truffles, tablets (chocolate bars), and chocolate mousse.
The students learned the critical skill of tempering chocolate for creating tablets and bonbon shells and prepared four types of filling for their bonbons: caramel, coffee, passion fruit, and praline. They crafted dark, dense, satisfying truffles laced with a touch of Grand Marnier and learned how to roll them in cocoa power for an extra touch of texture and flavor. And they learned how to whip up a perfect chocolate mousse (without making too much of a mess).
Chef Christian and Chef Sarah explained that they had premeasured and grouped all ingredients for all recipes prior to the students’ arrival for two reasons: 1) to save time during the lesson, and 2) to prevent accidental overcooking of ingredients while searching for the next ingredient to be added to the pot.
The students watched as Chef Christian prepared the base for the chocolate truffles and put it in the refrigerator so that it would be ready for use at the appropriate time during the class.
Premeasured ingredients
The first hands-on lesson was the making of chocolate mousse. Chef Christian talked about the importance of creating a French meringue of just the right consistency before preparing the additional ingredients for this classic chocolate dessert – he said that the meringue should form a peak like a bird’s beak at the end of the beater. He even held the bowl of meringue upside down over Chef Sarah’s head to show that it had attained the proper consistency to receive the sugar and egg yolk mixture, followed by the melted chocolate/butter combination that comprised the remainder of the recipe.
Bird’s beak meringue
Testing the consistency of the meringue
Once the ingredients were mixed (by hand) to the appropriate consistency, Chef Christian demonstrated how to put the mousse into a piping bag and fill the clear glass serving bowls in which it would set. These were popped into the fridge and space was made on the table for the next lesson of the day – making ganaches (fillings).
Astrid piping the chocolate mousse
The passion fruit ganache was the simplest to prepare and was the only one that used white chocolate. The caramel and coffee ganaches were the most challenging because the ingredients required cooking.
Jennifer making caramel for bonbons
When each filling was finished, it was covered with plastic film and allowed to set at room temperature.
Monique with passion fruit ganache
Next, the class turned to chocolate tempering – the heating, cooling, and reheating process that produces chocolate that is smooth and shiny, hardens appropriately, and has a longer shelf life. Chef Sarah and Chef Christian explained that precise temperature control is required for this all-important step for making bonbon shells and chocolate tablets.
Chef Sarah illustrates the tempering process
Having been impressed by the critical nature of this task, the students carefully and dutifully watched numbers rise and fall on digital thermometers they inserted into a bowl of dark chocolate and a bowl of milk chocolate that they were stirring in preparation for making the shells and tablets.
Lily checks the temperature of the chocolate
Several students decorated the molds that would hold the bonbons. A red-orange dot of food coloring was chosen for the dark chocolate-passion fruit variety, while white stripes were chosen for the dark chocolate-hazelnut praline variety. Golden sprinkles were selected for the milk chocolate-caramel bonbons. The dark chocolate-coffee bonbons would go proudly undressed.
Leah prepares to paint the bonbon mold
Painted mold
Once the chocolate was appropriately tempered, Chef Christian showed the students how to ladle it into the molds, tapping the side of the molds to coat each compartment evenly. He then dramatically turned the mold upside down over the bowl of chocolate to allow the excess chocolate to drain. Using a spatula, he scraped the flat surface of the mold tray to remove the last of the excess and turned it upside down on a tray to allow the chocolate to set.
Chef Christian ladles chocolate into a mold
Allowing chocolate to drain from mold
The students then had a turn at doing the same.
The ladling procedure described above was also used to create chocolate tablets, but instead of turning these molds upside down, students were invited to sprinkle the surface of the melted chocolate with one or more toppings. A lovely spread consisting of candied ginger, cranberries, dried lavender flowers, hazelnuts, almonds, pistachios, golden raisins, and minced cherries provided an embarrassment of riches from which to choose.
Chocolate tablet toppings
Preparing a chocolate tablet
Once this task was completed, the tablets were also set aside to harden.
Chef Christian reached for the ganaches and put them into piping bags. Each student tried her hand at piping the ganaches into their pre-prepared chocolate shells. Then, Chef Christian demonstrated how to seal the shells with additional chocolate and gave each student a chance to do the same.
Piping passion fruit ganache
Pouring chocolate on top of ganache
Sealing the bonbon shells
The last lesson of the day was devoted to making truffles.
Chef Christian removed the truffle paste from the refrigerator, placed it into a pastry bag, and demonstrated how to pipe individual truffles onto a sheet of parchment paper. Chef Sarah explained that she prefers to create square truffles cut from a pan.
Each student piped several individual truffles onto the paper and then, wearing latex gloves, had a turn rolling them into balls. To finish, each student coated truffles with cocoa powder using a tiny, three-tined fork.
Shaping truffles
Rolling truffles in cocoa powder
Cocoa powder-covered truffles
Chef Christian took the last of the milk chocolate, spread it paper thin, and dusted it with gold powder to create a decoration for the chocolate mousse. Students took turns breaking the “chocolate paper” into irregular shards and placing them into the bowls of mousse.
Decorating the chocolate mousse with shards of chocolate
The chocolate tablets and bonbons were turned out of their molds with no resistance, and the students began organizing the table for the tasting.
Lily arranging chocolates
Everyone was amazed at the beautiful work produced during the class. Chef Sarah, who has mastered the art of food styling, arranged all the students’ creations on the worktable for a photo op. Then everyone got to eat a bowl of chocolate mousse and take home a box of bonbons and truffles along with their personal, custom-made chocolate tablet.
Photo op with beautiful chocolates
The class was fast-paced, super informative with lots of opportunities for hands-on experience, and FUN!
Cook’n with Class has been in operation since 2007. It held its last chocolate workshop in 2017.Up to seven participants will be welcome to participate in upcoming workshops.
The first time Usually I do not pay much attention when someone stops me on the street to ask for directions: I offer what information I can muster and then I continue on my way. But on this particular day, as I was making my way up Avenue des Gobelins toward Place d’Italie, someone approached me from behind and tapped me on the left forearm. I turned to look, and a young man asked me where the metro was located. I replied that it was back in the direction from which we were walking. He turned to walk in that direction and at that moment I was aware that another young man had been on my right during the encounter. I realized that the second man had probably tried to unzip the bag that I carry, bandolier-style, over my right hip. I thought that he probably failed, and, when I inspected the bag, I was right.
I put the incident out of my mind.
The second time The second time occurred a day or two later as I was making my way up Passage des Postes, a walkway that links two parallel streets. Just as I reached the end of the passageway, a man approached me from behind on my left and asked me where the metro was. I turned to him and replied that it was in the direction from which he came. He thanked me and turned to walk in that direction. This time, there was no one with him, so I imagined that his inquiry was sincere, although I began wondering if there was some new phenomenon occurring that was inciting people to begin asking for directions so frequently.
The third time The third time occurred just one or two days later when my wife and I were making our way up a narrow stairway that leads from one platform to another in the Ecole Militaire metro station. This time a young man tapped me on the left forearm and asked me if I could tell him the time. I thought that it should have been obvious to him that I was not wearing a watch, and replied that I did not know. When my wife and I arrived at the upper platform, I realized that another young man, who was associated with the one who asked the question, had been behind us and to our right. For some reason I did not attribute any malicious intent to this encounter.
The fourth time The fourth time occurred the same day as we were making our way up Passage des Postes. Just as we got to the end of the walkway, a young man, approaching from behind, tapped me on the left forearm and asked me where the metro was located. I turned to him and indicated that it was in the direction from which he was walking. Then he asked again, and my wife repeated what I had said. At that point I saw that there was a second young man who had been following us on our right. We watched them walk away.
Just five minutes later, arriving in our apartment, my wife realized that her wallet was missing from her small, zipped purse, which she was carrying over her shoulder along with a second, larger bag. We concluded that it must have been the man on the right who stole the wallet while we were distracted by the first man in the Passage des Postes.
My wife quickly called all her credit card companies to alert them to the theft.
About an hour later, a woman who lives in the Passage des Postes contacted my wife to tell her that she found the wallet in front of her door. My wife rushed to retrieve it and found that the small amount of cash in the wallet had been stolen as well as two local credit cards.
The conclusions that I draw from this I think that a group of thieves has swept into Paris and will pull this stunt for as long as they can get away with it. And then they will move on to another town.
Whether I am right or not, I write this to alert people about what is happening on the streets of Paris. It is not sufficient to carry a zipped purse or zipped bag to prevent pick pocketing. The bag that I carry also has a clasp, which, until now, I never used, because it requires so much fumbling to secure it to the pull of the zipper. But that is now the point: if is difficult for me to secure, then it will be difficult for a pickpocket to open quickly while his partner tries to engage me in brief conversation.
Be aware and alert!
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On 17 December 2019, the Café de la Danse theater in Paris’s Bastille district was transformed into a magical space where the Paris Jazz Repertory Septet (PJR7) and singer Joseph Langley invited the public to focus on climate change through the lens of jazz.
Pianist/trombonist Joe Makholm of PJR7 is the composer of Concert Climat, a musical trilogy dedicated to this environmental crisis. After reading three books on the topic – This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein, Eaarth by Bill McKibben, and Storms of My Grandchildren by James Hansen – Makholm set about adapting them into music. Read his account of how he approached this by clicking HERE.
After Makholm finished the first two parts of the trilogy, the septet performed them at the Sunside/Sunset jazz club in Paris on December 1, 2015. Makholm completed the third part of the trilogy a few months later and PJR7 performed the entire trilogy on May 29, 2016 in a 4-hour concert at the 45° Jazz Club in Paris’ 10tharrondissement.
For the December 17 concert, the septet regaled a practically full house by performing This Changes Everything, the second suite of the trilogy, in its entirety for the first time since a January 2017 rendition at the Sunside. It is composed of five sections: “The Extractivists: Hot Money – Laughing at the Science”; “Blocadia”; “In the Sacrifice Zones”; “Magical Thinking”; and “Extraction to Renewal.”
After the intermission, the septet performed excerpts from Eaarth,
the first suite, and Storms of My Grandchildren, the third suite.
Makholm conducted the group from the piano bench as he
played, just as Duke Ellington used to direct his orchestra.
Each member of the group had the opportunity to showcase his unique talent.
Vocalist Joseph Langley closed each set with a song – “Breaking the Rules” for This Changes Everything and “Leave It in the Ground” for Storms of My Grandchildren.
Gumbo is a soul-satisfying, deeply flavorful dish that originates from southern Louisiana. It is a cross between a soup and a stew, and Creole and Cajun varieties abound. Monique included her family’s Creole recipe for it in her cookbook, Food for the Soul.
I knew that making gumbo requires great effort because of the time-consuming process of making the roux (stirring flour in fat until it gets the right color). But that was before I met Monique’s cousin, Rozetta Kaufman, who invented a gumbo mix that makes “almost instant gumbo with perfect homemade flavor every time.”
Here’s how you do it: boil water, add the seasoning mix, meat, and okra, and voilà! Easy-peasy.
To make it even easier for me, I asked my wife Monique to make it while I sat back and watched. Here’s how she proceeded:
Gumbo Ingredients Photograph by Entrée to Black Paris
First, she sat the ingredients out on the kitchen table. From left to right: okra, chicken wings, gumbo seasoning, Morteau (a smoked sausage from the Franche-Comté region of France), and okra.
Making the Roux Photograph by Entrée to Black Paris
Then, she made the roux by simply adding Rozetta Kaufman’s magic gumbo seasoning to a pitcher of cold water and stirring. Easy-peasy!
Adding Roux to Boiling Water Photograph by Entrée to Black Paris
Then, she added the mix to boiling water.
Sliced Sausage and Chicken Wings in Roux Photograph by Entrée to Black Paris
Then, she added the chicken wings and sliced sausage to the roux.
Gumbo and Okra Photograph by Entrée to Black Paris
Then, she added sliced okra to the chicken, sausage, and roux mix.
Ladling Roux into Bowl Photograph by Entrée to Black Paris
Then, she took a chicken wing and two slices of sausage from the pot, placed them into a bowl containing cooked white rice and ladled roux onto it. And voilà! A delicious bowl of gumbo.
Rozetta Kaufman with her Gumbo Mix Photograph by Entrée to Black Paris
We thank Rozetta Kaufman for bringing her wonderful Gumbo Everyday Seasoning Mix to our attention. Information about her product can be found at the following link: gumboeveryday.com.
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