Dinner Chez Moi: 50 French Secrets to Joyful Eating and Entertaining

Elizabeth Bard grew up eating macaroni and cheese from a box. But she grew up to marry a Frenchman and that sort of thing just won't do over there. Fifteen years later Bard knows all the secrets.

Dinner Chez Moi is Bard's guide to French tips, tricks, and recipes that add flair to your kitchen. Bard includes recipes for Cherry Clafoutis, Madeleines, Broiled Sea Bream with Lemon and Herbs, and many more classic dishes. 

But some of the best parts of the book are the simplest. A steaming pot of Moroccan mint tea, for example:

"It was a rainy afternoon in December the first time Gwendal lured me to his apartment in Paris with the promise of a steaming pot of Moroccan mint tea. He served it in his grandfather's teapot, beaten tin with a graceful spout and an ivory bead at the top so he wouldn't burn his fingers. The rest is history.

To re-create that afternoon, all I need is 2 teaspoons of gunpowder green tea, several springs of fresh mint, and 2 or 3 sugar cubes. Put everything in a teapot, cover with boiling water, and let steep for 5 to 7 minutes. Stir, remove the tea and mint, serve."

In Paris, When the Pandemic Is Over...

...I shall have a big party. All the writers who lived in Paris or wrote about France are coming...along with a few artists...and objets d'art...

Here are a few photos from the celebration. Look carefully. Do you recognize anyone? Come on over to the party and join us. 

Santé!

Left to right: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Erasmus, the Mona Lisa, Victor Hugo, Albert Camus, Oscar Wilde, and The Thinker

Left to right: Richard Wright, Georges Seurat, Alexandre Dumas, Marcel Proust, Colette, Anatole France, and Julia Child

Left to right: Ernest Hemingway, Vincent Van Gogh, Gustave Flaubert, James Baldwin, Emile Zola, M.F.K. Fisher, Ezra Pound

Left to Right: Gertrude Stein, Laurent de Brunhoff, Charles Perrault, Ludwig Bemelmans, Moliere, Paul Gauguin, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, James Joyce, Stendhal, Georges Simemon, Honore de Balzac, and Francois Rabelais.

Left to right: Claude Monet, Jules Verne, Mo Willems & Pigeon, Adam Gopnik, and A.J. Liebling.

Left to right: Paul Cezanne, Jean de la Fontaine, Pablo Picasso, John Baxter, Dali, Milan Kundera, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henry James, Maira Kalman, George Orwell, Patrick Modiano, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Guy de Maupassant, The Boating Party, and Voltaire.

Left to right: Madeline, Henri de Toulouse Lautrec, Irene Nemirovsky, Gaston Leroux, Charles Baudelaire, George Sand, Henri Matisse, and The Little Prince.

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each Tuesday That Artsy Reader Girl assigns a topic and then post her top ten list that fits that topic. You’re more than welcome to join her and create your own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list as well. Feel free to put a unique spin on the topic to make it work for you! Please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own post so that others know where to find more information.

Hurricane Hanna Is On Its Way to Texas

And the days just get stranger....now a hurricane is on its way....

I finished three good books last week.

And the movies were even better.

Look at this amazing dance sequence from An American in Paris:

I'm making good progress on Rosetta Stone in French. I know and use these phrases:

à bientôt - see you later

désolé - sorry

d'accord - sure

bonne nuit - good night

joie de vivre - zest for life

je ne sais pas - I don't know

I even had a dream in French last week. 

One more week of Paris in July....

I posted: French Cooking for Beginners: 75+ Classic Recipes to Cook Like a Parisian, and I made a quiche.

And I shared Some Bookish Places in Paris I Have Visited.

Here's a story my husband ran across this week and passed on to me. A library book was returned, seventy-three years late.

 

Good Thing #1.  A hurricane is coming our way. Why, you say, is that a good thing? Well, at least it's not coming directly for us. Winds are expected to be 35-45 mph with 4-12 inches of rain. 

Good Thing #2. Many book festivals this fall are going online: Book Festivals from The Classics Club Blog. Would you go to an online book festival? I'm especially interested in the National Book Festival in Washington DC.

Good Thing #3.  During one of our daily walks this week, we saw a cloud rainbow. I didn't have my camera with me, but I found a photo online so you can see how awesome it was. Have you ever seen anything like that?

Á bientôt!

I'm very happy you found your way to the Sunday Salon. There are no requirements for linking up at Sunday Salon. Sunday Salon is simply a place for us to link up and to share what we have been doing during the week. Sunday Salon is a great way to visit other blogs and join in the conversations going on there. 

Some of the things we often talk about at the Sunday Salon:

• What was your week like?
• Read any good books? Tell us about them.
• What other bookish things did you do? 
• What else is going on in your life?

Other places where you may like to link up over the weekend are below. Click on the picture to visit the site.

My linkup for Sunday Salon is below.

French Cooking for Beginners: 75+ Classic Recipes to Cook Like a Parisian

BASIC QUICHE

For the Flaky Pastry Crust

2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 cup cold unsalted butter, diced into small pieces

1/2 cup water

For the Basic Quiche Filling

3 large eggs

3 large egg yolks

2 cups heavy cream

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1. To make the flaky pastry crust, in a food processor, combine the flour, salt, and baking powder. Pulse for a few seconds, just enough to combine well. Add the butter and pulse several times, until the flour resembles coarse cornmeal. Slowly add the water with the motor running. Stop as soon as you have added the last drop of water. Don't worry; the dough will not be fully mixed at this point.

2. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and mix it by hand until it comes together into a ball. Place in a large zip-top bag and refrigerate for at least 2 hours or overnight.

3. Lightly flour your work surface. Roll the dough out into a giant circle, about 15 inches round and 1/8 inch thick. To transfer it to a 9-inch springform pan, coil it around your rolling pin. Unwind the dough loosely over the pan. Gently push the dough down into the corners, leaving at least 1 inch of dough hanging over the top edge. The outer-upper lip of the springform pan has a curled edge facing outward. Pinch the excess dough tightly around the edge, leaving any excess dough hanging down the outside. It is important to pinch as firm as possible without tearing the dough. This will prevent the crust from shrinking. Refrigerate the crust for 2 hours or more.

4. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Transfer the pan to a baking sheet. Situate the baking sheet in the lower third of the oven. Bake for 10 minutes. Pull the baking sheet out of the oven and use a serrated knife to cut along the top edge of the pan. All the scraggly pastry pieces that were pinched into place will fall 

off.

5. To make the basic quiche filling, in a large bowl, whisk the eggs, yolks, cream, salt, pepper, and nutmeg together. When the crust is done, increase the oven temperature to 375 degrees F. 

6. Pour the filling into the prebaked crust and bake until the filling is firm, about 50 minutes. Let it cool about 30 minutes before cutting it. It needs time to set. You will notice the difference resting makes when you slice it.

Thoughts: Prebaking the crust kept the crust from getting soggy. I didn't have a springform pan or a food processor so I made do without these. I added bacon to make a version of this recipe called Quiche Lorraine. The quiche was delicious!

Some Bookish Places in Paris I Have Visited

The first time I visited Paris, in 2010, I went first thing to Shakespeare and Company. I loved all the shelves, and the rooms, and the nooks and crannies. It was hard to get me to leave this shop. This is a photo from that visit, with me on the right and my two nieces on the left. I have visited Shakespeare and Company three times now, one each time I've come to Paris. 

I always spend time at Les Bouquinistes, the enormous open-air booksellers along the Seine. 

I met up with Louise on my first trip to Paris. We visited a few French bookstores in Paris. 

On my trip last winter, I was surprised to see a woman carrying books out of her apartment and leaving them on the bench near the street. What was the story there? She even had a French-English dictionary in the pile. Was she giving up on Paris?

I spent an afternoon when I was in Paris last winter exploring English-language bookstores.

My first stop was The Abbey Bookshop. It is owned by a former Canadian (note the flags). The Abbey Bookshop is located on Rue de la Parcheminerie, originally named Rue des Escrivains for the scribes and scriveners who were important to the book profession before they were replaced by parchmentmakers in the late Middle Ages.

I wasn't surprised to learn that it was a bit of a jumble; all good used bookstores are a bit of a jumble.

I didn't take a picture of the front of the second shop I visited. It was a jumble, too.

The third stop was the San Francisco Book Company. I was on the hunt for English versions of French children's classics. There were not any children's books (that I saw) there; this store seemed to stock mainly books about politics. 

I did an entire post on this bookstore: A Visit to the Red Wheelbarrow in Paris.

I never did find the children's books I was looking for. Oh well. Next time.

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each Tuesday That Artsy Reader Girl assigns a topic and then post her top ten list that fits that topic. You’re more than welcome to join her and create your own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list as well. Feel free to put a unique spin on the topic to make it work for you! Please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own post so that others know where to find more information.

Drawing with Paul Klee, Creativebug, On Being with Krista Tippett, and Les Mis

Last winter I visited Paris with my sister. One of the places we went was the Centre Pompidou. My sister, her daughter-in-law, her two grandchildren, and I had fun painting in the children's area. 

One of my favorite paintings at the Centre Pompidou was Near to the Wild Heart by Paul Klee. This week I illustrated Marge Piercy's poem, "The Visible and the In-",  in my journal, with people modeled after Klee's painting. I don't think Paul Klee will mind.

I read a book a day last week (I'm trying to do that all summer) but these were my favorites. 

I also watched these movies.

More Paris in July books from the library....

The Texas Library Association came through with a Virtual Summer of Learning after the conference last April was cancelled in Houston. Stephen Harrigan spoke about his recent history of Texas, Big Wonderful Thing. There are some awfully nice things about virtual events....

Good Thing #1 

Our public library now has Creativebug. Creativebug has inspiration and lessons for knitting, crocheting, jewelry making, sewing, drawing, and lots of other crafts and art. I like it very much. Do you have Creativebug at your library?

Good Thing #2

I found Krista Tippett's podcast, On Being. I found the podcast after reading Tippett's book, Becoming Wise, composed of conversations Tippett has had since 2003 on the podcast with wise people. Everything on the On Being Project is guided by six guiding virtues: words that matter, hospitality, humility, patience, generous listening, and adventurous civility. Here's a little from the website: 'We explore the intersection of spiritual inquiry, science, social healing, community, poetry, and the arts. We’re offering ongoing special content for this moment, including “care packages” for care givers and uncertain times, and a starting point for the exhausted and overwhelmed.' Sound like anyone you know?

Good Thing #3

We got to see our grandkids! We had a wonderful time with the grandkids. When they got ready to leave, Annie said, "I miss you, Nana." Oh my goodness. I miss them so much. 

One of my sweet comadres (Do you know that term? My comadres are the mothers of my daughter-in-laws) brought me this lovely photo of Annie and Wyatt to look at every day. 

I'm very happy you found your way to the Sunday Salon. There are no real requirements to linking up at Sunday Salon. Sunday Salon is simply a place for us to link up and to share what we have been doing during the week. Sunday Salon is a great way to visit other blogs and join in the conversations going on there. 

Some of the things we often talk about at the Sunday Salon:

• What was your week like?
• Read any good books? Tell us about them.
• What other bookish things did you do? 
• What else is going on in your life?

Other places where you may like to link up over the weekend are below. Click on the picture to visit the site.

My linkup for Sunday Salon is below.