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Big-bash Pot-Luck Tweet-up

June 19th, 2011

Cook 'n with Class
Photo by Discover Paris!

Yetunde Oshodi and Eric Fraudeau’s big-bash pot-luck tweet-up at Eric’s Cook ’n with Class cooking school is now history, and what a bash it was! Participants brought lots of food, including Forrest Collins (52 Martinis), who made some terrific, savory, mushroom caps stuffed with blue cheese and bits of mushroom. Yetunde Oshodi (Feels Like Home in Paris) baked some great cupcakes. Marlys and Michael Schürmann (Paris Movie Walks) brought big red strawberries and luscious, ripe cherries. And after that, I was too busy moving from one delicious serving dish to another to observe what others brought.

Moody Dining Room
Photo by Discover Paris!

Eric’s school is a spacious place with two rooms, one with a large dining room table, a well-stocked wine display, and a large oven, counter space, and a sink. The other room has a serving table, counter space, an oven, and a sink.

When they organized the space for their school five years ago Eric and Yetunde engaged the services of an interior designer. He left a strong mark on the rooms, and they reflect a rather wild imagination, ranging from a spooky chandelier in the grey, moody dining room to a bright, cheery, kitchen-like ambiance in the other. Was this the work of a bipolar personality?

Joyous Kitchen
From left to right:
Jennifer Geraghty, Eric Fraudeau, and Jenny Sundel
Photo by Discover Paris!

In any event, given the spaciousness of the well-equipped school, I could easily imagine how much fun the students who come here to take cooking lessons must have.

Serving Table
Photo by Discover Paris!

Marlys and Michael Schürmann
Photo by Discover Paris!

Milla Msa
Photo by Discover Paris!

Robyn Blaber
Photo by Discover Paris!

Others in attendance were:

Gail Boisclair and her daughter Yasmin: Perfectly Paris
Alexis Niki: Bitchy Witchy the Film
Nikki Bayley (no Web site given)
Jenny Sundel: Jesus Year Project
Robyn Blaber: A Canadian in Paris
Milla Msa: Not Just Another Milla
Kim Laidlaw Adrey: I Heart Paris
Erica Berman: Haven in Paris
Jennifer Geraghty: Jennyphoria
Tom Reeves: Paris Insights

A good time was had by all!

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A Breton Quartet and a Malian Trio Fuse into One Fantastic Group

June 18th, 2011

The organizers of the annual Festival d’Ile de France held a pre-launch concert last Wednesday at a theater and dance hall in Paris named Le Divan du Monde.

The purpose of the event was to communicate the festival’s ambitious musical program to an appreciative public. And indeed, for the five week period between September 3 and October 10, thirty-three concerts will be held in twenty-nine historic venues located in the Ile-de-France region. Top musicians from different parts of the globe will perform, including Tomatito (flamenco guitar) from Spain, Carl Craig (techno) from the United States, Kan’Nida (drums) from Guadeloupe, Goran Bregovic (trumpet) from Bosnia-Herzegovina…the list goes on and on!

N'Diale
From left to right:
Yannick Jory, saxophone - Jacky Molard, violin
Foune Diarra, vocals - Kassim Sidibé, kamele n'goni
Alhassane Sissoko, djembé - Hélène Labarrière, bass
Not pictured: Janick Martin, accordeon
Photo by Discover Paris!

For the pre-launch party, two different groups appeared on stage, and it is the second group, N’Diale, that I want to mention today. N’Diale was formed through the collaboration of a Breton group called the Jacky Morland Quartet, and a Malian group called the Foune Diarra Trio. The music that they play is a fusion of the music of two completely different cultures. And, whereas I have always thought of fusion cuisine as being a nondescript mishmash, the fusion music that N’Diale played on Wednesday night was some of the most marvelous that I have ever heard.

The star of the show was Foune Diarra, a lithe and graceful singer and dancer. A video of the two groups on tour together in Benin and Brittany, France can be viewed below. Although the video is in French, non-Francophones who watch it will get a good idea about how effectively these musicians combine their talents to create some fantastic sounds.

N'DIALE Jacky Molard Quartet & Foune Diarra Trio… par innacorrecords

I blogged about three performers that appeared at last year’s festival (Willie Colón, Kahmed, and Baaba Maal), and I look forward to blogging about some of the performers of this year’s festival!

Information (in French) about the festival that was held in 2010 can be found here. I anticipate that the festival organizers will soon be updating the Web site for the 2011 season.

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Tasting Ice-cream (and Sorbet) Sandwiches at Mococha

June 15th, 2011

Chocolate Ice-cream Sandwich with Almond-flavored Macaron Shell
(c) Discover Paris!

The ice-cream sandwich is one of the joys of childhood. I remember carefully peeling off the wrapper of this frozen treat and biting through its chocolate wafers into sweet vanilla ice cream. Sometimes the ice cream at the edges of the sandwich would squeeze out, whereupon I would nibble at the ice cream exposed there. Sometimes, if the ice cream was soft enough, I could lick some of it out from between the wafers, leaving the thick sandwich with a smooth, deep groove around the edges. However I ate it, the sandwich was a scrumptious delight and fun to eat!

Always looking for new products to propose to her customers, Marie at Mococha (89, rue Mouffetard in the 5th arrondissement) has begun selling ice-cream and sorbet sandwiches as a novel feature this year. The refrigerated display case is located right at the front window, where she can scoop out the ice cream (or sorbet) and make the confection on the spot. She offers twelve different frozen dessert flavors. A scoop of any of them can be combined with six different flavors of macaron shells, permitting a wide variety of sandwiches from which to select.

Marie sells two types of sandwiches: open-faced (a scoop of frozen dessert sitting on a single shell) and standard (a scoop of frozen dessert pressed between two shells).

Two Open-faced Sorbet Sandwiches
On left: apricot with strawberry-violet-flavored macaron shell
On right: rose-lychee with almond-flavored macaron shell
(c) Discover Paris!

I stopped by her shop to try her open-faced sorbet sandwiches. Upon hearing that I would not eat the sandwich immediately, she placed the scoops of sorbet in a plastic cup and the macaron shells in a small bag. I was to take them home quickly (before the sorbet softened) and assemble and eat them there. I purchased the fixings for two open-faced sandwiches: one scoop of apricot sorbet to be combined with a strawberry-violet-flavored shell, and one scoop of rose-lychee sorbet to be combined with an almond-flavored shell.

Upon tasting the open-faced sandwiches, my partner and I enjoyed the flavors, especially the delicate rose-lychee sorbet. We found, however, the macaron shells to be rather difficult to bite into. Macaron is normally a tender, fragile cookie. Marie later explained that the macarons that she uses for her sandwiches are specially made to resist the melting frozen dessert. A regular macaron would quickly disintegrate when in contact with ice cream or sorbet.

The following day I was determined to try the standard ice-cream sandwich. I purchased a scoop of salted-caramel ice cream, to be sandwiched between two pistachio-flavored macaron shells; and a scoop of chocolate ice cream, to be sandwiched between two almond-flavored macaron shells. Taking the ingredients home, we immediately assembled them into sandwiches and tasted them.

Salted-caramel Ice-cream Sandwich with Pistachio-flavored Macaron Shell
(c) Discover Paris!

As before, we enjoyed the flavors of the ice cream and the macaron shells, but we found the shells difficult to bite into. During the process of biting, they squeezed together, forcing the ice cream out at the edges of the sandwich, where it fell into the plate. We were not, of course, testing under ideal conditions. The ideal condition would be to have Marie assemble the sandwiches at the shop and for us to begin eating them immediately as we stepped out onto the sidewalk. In that way, the ice cream would still be quite firm, and, theoretically, would not squeeze out so readily at the edges.

The ice-cream sandwich—a dairy treat that can’t be beat!

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In This Month’s Paris Insights Newsletter: The UN’s Art Treasures

June 12th, 2011

Tania Fernandez de Toledo
Chief of UNESCO’s Works of Art and Special Projects Unit
Photograph by Alecia McKenzie

To prepare this month’s Paris Insights newsletter, our guest writer Alecia McKenzie met with Tania Fernandez de Toledo, Chief of UNESCO’s Works of Art and Special Projects Unit, to learn about the works that the agency shelters and exhibits at its headquarter in Paris. For art lovers who plan to visit Paris over the next year, a trip to UNESCO might be nearly as exciting as going to the Louvre museum!

Access to the newsletter is by paid subscription. Click here to view the newsletter announcement. Click here to enter a subscription.

Bonne lecture!

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It Could Have Fooled Me

June 10th, 2011

For all of the years that I have known of the existence of the 1/16 execution model of the Statue of Liberty that stands proudly in the former priory of Saint-Martin-des-Champs in Paris (now the Musée des Arts et Métiers), the idea that it was made of plaster never entered my mind. I always thought that it was bronze.

Execution Model of the Statue of Liberty
Photograph by Discover Paris!

The statue, in fact, is the “execution model” that its originator, Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, and his workers used to create enlargements of the different elements of the statue that was assembled on Liberty Island and now stands in New York Harbor. That great statue is made out of molded sheets of copper affixed to a metal framework.

A few years ago the French art dealer, Guillaume Duhamel, approached the administrators of the museum with the idea of making cast-bronze statues from the plaster one. The administrators were initially reluctant to do so because of the fragility of the plaster statue. However the problem was eventually solved by using a process that scans the sculpture without touching it and creates a digital model. An identical reproduction was then made for casting, and the first bronze to be cast was installed in the courtyard of the entryway to the museum.

First Bronze Cast from the Execution Model
Photograph by Discover Paris!

Last night a reception was held at the museum to honor the realization of this great project and to celebrate French-American friendship. Following a speech by Jean-Claude Ziv, professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, about the birth of the idea for the Statue of Liberty, American ambassador Charles H. Rivkin gave a speech evoking the symbolism associated with the statue and the singularity of the United States as a nation of immigrants.

United States Ambassador Rivkin
Photograph by Discover Paris!

Following Rivkin’s speech, attendees were invited to join guides for tours through the museum or to explore it on their own. The reception cocktail took place in the courtyard in front of the newly-installed bronze Statue of Liberty.

A good time was had by all!

For a virtual tour of the Saint-Martin-des-Champs church, click here.

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We have written about the Statue of Liberty on two other occasions in our newsletter Paris Insights. Our first article, published in October 2000, was entitled “Is There a Black Statue of Liberty in Paris?” and addresses the rumor that circulated on the Internet at that time.

The other article was published in July 2006. Entitled “Three Ladies and a Flame,” it discusses the three Statues of Liberty that one could find in Paris at that time.

To gain access to these articles and, at the same time, gain access to our monthly newsletter, enter a subscription at the following link: http://www.discoverparis.net/newsletter-signup.html. After signing up, you will receive an access code.

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Tasting Single-origin Coffee at Cafés Estrella

June 8th, 2011

Jean-Claude Lesage, Proprietor
Cafés Estrella
(c) Discover Paris!

Cafés Estrella is a coffee-roasting facility located at 34, rue Saint-Sulpice, right across the street from Saint-Sulpice church. I have often passed it by without paying too much attention until, just recently, I noticed that the store received a mention in the book Les Meilleurs Commerces de Bouche de Paris (Impalla Editions, 2011). And so, I decided to drop in and purchase some fresh-roasted coffee.

The proprietor, Jean-Claude Lesage, was busy filling orders when I walked into the store. At the same time, the blade in the cooling tray of his coffee-roasting machine was churning freshly-roasted beans to bring them down to room temperature.

I spotted Rwanda coffee among the coffees that he was selling and purchased a 250-gram bag of the medium-roast, whole-bean product for 6€. After taking it home, grinding it, and brewing it in my French press, I tasted it and imagined that its rich flavor was similar to bitter chocolate. So, on the very next occasion I went by the Michel Cluizel chocolate shop on rue Saint-Honoré and purchased a 30-gram tablet of “Noir Infini 99%” chocolate. Back home again, I brewed another batch of Rwanda coffee and compared its taste to the dark chocolate from Michel Cluizel. To my mind, they have a similar bitter, robust taste. Though neither of these products will please those who require sweetness in their coffee and chocolate, I find their flavors quite agreeable.

As well as a dozen varieties of coffee, Cafés Estrella also sells tea, honey, confections, artisanal spice bread, and cookies. The store is open Tuesday to Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and from 2:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

Bonne dégustation!

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Discover Paris! Goes a-Drumming

June 7th, 2011

Last Tuesday, Discover Paris! participated in a communal drumming session in the beautiful auditorium of the Dapper Museum.

The organization that led the session is called Drum Planet. They were there to demonstrate how their program of interactive drumming promotes team building among staff and management of corporations. The program helps employees release stress, lift their spirits, and improve relationships so that they work more efficiently together.

After the session, we were convinced that the program really works!

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Moussa l’Africain

June 1st, 2011

Tiep bou dienn and Riz Wolof
(c) Discover Paris!

To prepare our monthly restaurant review for this month’s newsletter, we dined at the restaurant Moussa l’Africain, where we enjoyed Tiep bou dienn, riz wolof and Poulet directeur général. We returned on another day to meet Chef Madi Niakaté and talk with him about his restaurant and the food that he serves there.

Learn about these delicious dishes and read about Chef Niakaté in our extensive review, “Le Bon Goût.” It appears today in the June issue of our newsletter Paris Insights. Access to the newsletter is by paid subscription.

Click here to read brief summary of the June issue, and here to enter a subscription.

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Parade!

May 31st, 2011

On Sunday, I blogged about the carnival that was held at Square de la République in the city of Montreuil. From 10:00 a.m. until noon, children and adults were arranging their costumes and painting their faces in preparation for the big parade that would follow. From noon until 2:30 p.m. they enjoyed yassa (chicken cooked with onions) prepared by Moussa Doucoura and Fatou Ba and played carnival games.

At precisely 2:30 p.m., people began moving out of the park and into the street where, under police escort, they followed a circuitous route through the city, returning to the park. I recorded two videos: the first shows them moving out of the park, and the second shows them marching about midway through the course.

I hope that you enjoy watching these videos as much as I did in taking them!

A Lady Named Hawa Walking Alongside the Parade Route
(c) Discover Paris!

The Parade Route

Girl in Costume
(c) Discover Paris!

The marchers returned to the park, where the party and concerts continued into the evening!

I mentioned in the post on Sunday that the festival was organized by Sacamalices 93. This is a community association founded just a few months ago in the memory of Jean Acamas, a community organizer and activist who passed away in 2007.

The goals of the association are fourfold:

To create a network of solidarity between the residents and people who frequent the neighborhood.

To promote social and cultural diversity.

To empower the residents so that they can improve their living environment.

To develop the exchange of acquired knowledge.

The association sees the carnival as one way of bringing residents, business owners, neighbors, and visitors together to achieve its objectives and simply to have a day of fun. They hope that their efforts in spreading conviviality and joy will endure, and they are looking forward to holding another festival in 2012.

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Carnaval! Carnival!

May 29th, 2011

Carnival and parade were themes for a marvelous party held under sunny skies at a shady park called Square de la République in the city of Montreuil today. I first learned of the event when I was searching the Internet for the performance dates of a fanfare funk band called Tarace Boulba, and learned that it would be performing at the parade.

I arrived at the square at around 1:00 p.m. and entered into a beehive of activity. There were little kids running around in face paint and costume and playing old-fashioned arcade games whose names I didn’t know. There was a table set up where yassa (chicken cooked in onions) was served with white rice. And there was a stage where musicians were setting up for an evening performance.

All of this was organized by an association called Sacamalices 93. One of the adults present told me that the carnival had not been held for several years because of lack of funding. But they made up for it this year!

At 2:30 p.m., kids and their parents, most in colorful costume, lined up, ready to march into the street under police escort. The fanfare funk band took its place at the head of the line and the parade started off through the streets of Montreuil. A second brass band followed at the rear of the parade.

What fun!