Okay, lots to cover this week - but we'll begin with the tale of Matt and me as amateur smugglers. Smugglers....of Christmas gifts!
I have some time on my hands right now, since I'm not working, so I took on a complicated Christmas shopping project. I thought - what can I get people that will really be from Paris, that they won't be able to get in the US? And thus my career as a smuggler began.
I started researching via Chowhound and my immense store of other Parisian blogs (growing larger by the day) which food products people cherished here and then brought back to the US because they couldn't find them there, and I set about trying to acquire and learn about them. I learned A LOT, and I also learned a lot about the import/export of these items - and also rampant confusion about this. Everyone seems to agree that any MEAT item cannot be brought into thethe US legally, and the same with fresh fruits and vegetables. Cheeses seem to be okay, surprisingly, and most other preserved/ canned goods also are fine, when brought in in luggage. There's a lot of disagreement about whether to declare these items or just smuggle them through, since there may be a lot of confusion on the American end about what's okay and what's not; the hitch is, that if you declare things you won't get fined but also might get things taken away from you, but if you don't declare things and they catch you, you'll definitely have to pay a fine AND the stuff will be taken away.
So, cut to me buying prepaid shipping boxes at La Poste, france's very efficiently run postal service (here's something funny - the post office in France sponsors cooking videos - while you wait on line to send your package, you can watch a video and learn how to make a classic French dish like bouillabaisse! ) When I was at La Poste, one of the postal workers wouldn't leave my side, and basically said to me "You can't ship any food to America" - Yikes! This was news to me, and I'd already bought most of the gifts. But then she said "But of course, if you WERE to ship any food, which I wouldn't know anything about, you should make sure to wrap it well and don't declare it on the customs form".
Wait, was this woman telling me how to smuggle? It appeared she was - she seemed to think it was the US who had all the crazy laws about importing/exporting/customs (its amazing how quickly we got to a conversation about frontier Christian extremists - again, a favorite image of Americans rearing its head in the post office)
So Matt and I carefully packed the boxes, wrapping everything and declaring it to be "jouets de bebe, livres, echarpes, gants" - baby toys, books, scarves, and gloves - all things that could reasonably be coming from France, right? Then we had a further scare at the post office when we were told our boxes were over their weight limit, and we had to surreptitiously repack them in a corner, but ultimately they all went out yesterday and now the great smuggling experiment begins - will these things make it to the US or will they be snatched up by some lucky customs official? More news to come -
So, if you are in France, and you want to smuggle some stuff back in your suitcase, once you get beyond cheese and Foie Gras, here are a few other food souvenirs you might consider bringing back:
1. NESTLE CHOCOLATE NOIR DESSERT BARS - These are basically the equivalent in France of Tollhouse Morsels/Tollhouse Cookies, in that they have a famous recipe for chocolate mousse on the back that apparently every french woman knows a how to make, and that often wows Americans because it seems so fancy, but really just involves melting one of these chocolate bars and beating in egg yolks, then folding in beaten egg whites and chilling. I made it for a dinner party this week and it was INSANE.
2. MAILLE CHABLIS MUSTARD "ON TAP" - So we all know Maille, the mustard with crown on top, etc - Good stuff! Well, this week I visited thethe Maille boutique at the Place de la Madeleine, where you can get fresh mustard on tap - they fill a ceramic jar for you just as if you were getting a beer on tap - I had been told that the fresh mustard was very different then the kind you get in jars that is "old" - it didn't taste THAT radically different to me, but it sure tasted good - you can also get CHOCOLATE MUSTARD and MANGO APRICOT MUSTARD there, but I decided to skip these.
3. PIMENT D'ESPELETTE - This is a basque pepper that is sort of in between paprika and cayenne for hotness - its actually great, I've been using it a lot in cooking here because its got a very forgiving heat, you can put in a big pinch of it and not be worried (like with Cayenne) that you may have just ruined things. It's also a fun bright red color like paprika.
4. FONDANT DE VEAU - This stuff is apparently a secret weapon, though I haven't used mine yet - its basically powdered veal stock that's apparently very good. I may have mentioned to you that France is not big on the chicken stock, etc -there are no boxes or cans of liquid broth in the supermarket - but this is apparently their substitute.
5. J.LE BLANC OILS - One of my big discoveries here has been WALNUT OIL, which is used much more frequently in France than in the US for salad dressings - it is DELICIOUS on salads with balsamic - J.Leblanc is an artisan oil presser with a shop in Paris in the very tony neighborhood of Saint Germain de Pres, and they have THE BEST Walnut oil....and also lots of other oils like olive oil with truffles and also ARGAN oil, which I have no idea what it is.
6. SPECULOOS PASTE - This is a sweet spread somewhere between Nutella and crack, and is basically a caramel cookie flavored Nutella that's named after a belgian cookie (the Speculoos). You can get it, like peanut butter, in smooth and crunchy forms, and you're SUPPOSED to spread it on toast for a real sugar high, but I think many people (not me of course) would just eat it from the jar with a spoon.
7. HARISSA- This is a little North African specialty here - a Moroccan spice paste that is in every supermarket and is AMAZING, its my new go-to condiment, kind of like Thai curry paste in the US ...
To close today, I will tell you that American foodstuffs are not represented well in supermarkets of France. theThe two major foreign epiceries, Lafayette Gourmet and Le Grande Epicerie de Paris, both have American sections - but it appears that the only things they want from our country are: microwave popcorn, salad spritzers, Libby's solid pack pumpkin, and Old Elpaso "tex mex" salsas and whatnot. Also, have I mentioned that Paris is currently in an American giant muffin craze? Its actually hilarious -the land of the croissant is really swooning over those giant chocolate chip muffins you would find at a gas station, which they also call "Le Moof-een"
Here is a photo of another American food product that made it in on the latest craze:
Hope everyone had a good week - one more letter to go before we head to Wisconsin for Christmas -
xo CTL
Ps. I am also attaching a pick of one of the Christmas windows from Galleries Lafayette, Bloomingdales of France - did I mention that thethe French version of Mamma Mia just opened here? In its honor, Galleries Lafayette did a series of Xmas windows as scenes from the musical, done with dolls and teddy bears. A little terrifying.
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