THE PARIS LETTER: Paris, Rabbits, and Mexican Food

Hi Everyone -

It's ANOTHER rainy Sunday here in Paris (Paris's secret is that it's actually just as rainy as London), and I'm taking a stab at writing another letter, maybe making this a weekly thing since people seemed to respond well to it last week. If for any reason you DON'T want to get these updates, just email me - I know we all get a lot of email.

But anyway, assuming you want to hear more about Life in France, here we go -

It seems like no American can move to France without talking about food. A Lot. And, since most of you know that I am a big cook, I'll probably be no exception. However, I'm sort of an ambivalent French cook - I enjoy a lot about French food, but I also really like cooking food from around the world - Middle Eastern, Southeast Asian, North African, Mexican, etc - So part of what I'll be writing about is all the cool food options here, but part of it will also be about my various food frustrations - while France has far better and more readily available ingredients, they just don't have the variety of different cuisines that we're used to having in the US. I need to note that these are fighting words for most Parisians, who will dismiss the idea and tell you that Paris is as diverse as any other city and that French food is the most diverse in the world. Do not argue with them (they will get really pissy about it), but also, don't believe it for a second.

Witness my experience at Mexi & Co, one of Paris's only Mexican restaurants. Now, I know I know, why was I trying to eat Mexican food in Paris, where it was probably going to be bad? Well, I needed to know what I was dealing with in case I ever got a serious burrito craving - and also, I had heard that Mexi and Co was the only place in town to buy staple mexican ingredients I was used to getting in the states - chipotles in a can, tortilla chips, corn tortillas, etc. This was correct - though the products were expensive - but lets discuss the burrito.

Now, here is how the burrito was described on the version of Parisian Yelp: Vous pouvez gouter un "Burrito", une galette avec fromage, haricots rouge, et le guacomole!
This sounds so weird in French, right? It basically translates as "You can taste a "burrito", a crepe (a galette is a savory crepe) with cheese, red beans and guacomole! -
The burrito came in a flour tortilla with a reasonable chicken/rice/beans combo inside, and salsa on the top with creme fraiche, which actually can be like sour cream. It was served with a weird little salad of cucumbers, tomatoes, and onions, sort of like French salsa fresca, and guacamole that definitely came from some kind of tube, which is odd because avocados are pretty plentiful in Paris (they are imported largely from Israel and North Africa). But the real killer was the fact that the cheese in the burrito was shredded Emmental, what we know as Swiss cheese. Which destroyed the burrito taste for me - imagine delicious burrito flavors with swiss cheese melted on them. Sigh.

So, I thought - I will make mexican food at home! Which you can KIND OF do - they have black beans, cilantro, harissa that can stand in for chilis a bit - but the cheese turned out to be a problem. French supermarkets DO have an aisle of "ready to use" cheeses, like we have in most American supermarkets - bags of shredded cheese for pizzas, cubes and slices for melting onto sandwiches and burgers. But guess what 99% of that cheese is? Emmental! Yes! Swiss cheese is the only meltable cheese you can get! Or you can get pre-wrapped slices of "Burger Cheese", just like Kraft Singles - but No cheddar, no monterey jack, not even shredded mozzarella. Everything we made with cheese on it ended up tasting like a crepe.

Okay, so I haven't yet abandoned my dreams of Mexican food, but lets say it is a challenge here. But, on the flip side, I just bought a whole rabbit to cook today into a rabbit ragu. Yes, rabbit is a pretty common meat here, and France is the land of excellent butchers, which has been fun since I mostly spent my days in the US browsing the prewrapped meats in the Fairway cold room. Now, within a kilometer of my house there are at least five butchers, two of which are amazing, as well as three Poissonnieres, or fish markets. What this does require, however, is bringing your dictionary to the market, as many of the cuts of meat are different, and all the fish have different names - And there's no way, of course, to ask the fishmonger "Which of these is halibut?" in French because he will not call it halibut anyway and will just look at you in confusion. Also, you have to be ready to have a real conversation with the butcher, which can be intimidating if you don't know the language - I saw an American couple trying to get short ribs at the meat counter the other day and just looking stumped because they didn't know the phrase for "short ribs" in French and couldn't explain in french to the butcher what they needed the meat to be. I did in fact bring my dictionary to the fish market, and discovered that halibut is "Fletan" and cod is "Cabillaud", but everything is also slightly different because it comes from different parts of ocean than what we're used to in thethe US.

Wow, this didn't go where I was expecting it to go! I had this plan that I was going to explain different kinds of markets here, starting with Monoprix, which is thethe supermarket next to my house and which is sort of like a combination of Whole Foods and Kmart - in that it has a fish counter and decent vegetables, but also sells housewares, makeup and clothes (Matt bought two sweaters there when we first arrived) - But I'll save that for another letter. I thought I would close with some "Faux Amis", or French words and phrases that SOUND the same as English words, but mean something totally different - always a fun way to be tripped up here.

Some Faux Amis:

Attention - Doesn't mean "attention" quite, but more like " Watch Out" or "Pay Attention"

Juste - Means right or correct, but not "just" as in "I just did that" - when I first got here I kept saying "J'ai juste demenage ici",which I thought meant "I just moved here" but really means "I rightly and correctly moved here". Whoops.

Actuellement - Doesn't mean actually, means "right now" or "currently"

Avertissement - Not an advertisement, actually a Warning. An ad is a promotion or "publicite"

Finalement - Means more like "In the end" as opposed to "finally".

Rester - Means "to stay" as in "Je suis reste chez moi aujourd'hui", meaning "I stayed at home today", as opposed to I rested or took a nap or something.

Librairie - Bookstore

Raisin - Grape

Robe - Dress

I will sign off here, hope everyone has had a good week - More about food next week as we will be planning for American Thanksgiving in Paris, which Matt and I are hosting this year and will be an Expat Extravaganza. Liz Gately already smuggled cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie filling to me in her suitcase when she visited two weeks ago, so we are ready.

Lots of love, and would love to hear from you and how you are all doing!

xo Claire