Paris Journal 2012 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com

Find me on Facebook 2011 Paris Journal ← Previous Next →

Who would guess that a couple of the best college-level freshman-English textbooks are regularly updated by an American in Paris? That’s what my husband Tom is doing: working on the 8^th edition of The Norton Sampler: Short Essays for Composition. His other composition textbook is Back to the Lake: A Reader for Writers; the second edition of that one was finished up during last summer’s stay in Paris. Unlike so many textbooks, Tom’s are actually fun to read. We worked away at the computers on a pleasant, drizzly day, finally quitting to watch the day’s stage of the Tour de France on French national TV. Our friend, Babe Vande Velde (a fine jazz saxophone player who is nearly 90 years young), has a great-nephew in the race: Christian Vande Velde. We watch and pray that he does not fall. Here’s a photo of Christian from yesterday. It seems that he will be in the news for the next few weeks. The gray sky was still raining when it was time to find dinner, so we simply walked with our umbrellas open down to the neighborhood brasserie, Le Commerce Café, where they know our names. Well, at least they remember us and our preferences. That’s not bad, considering that we haven’t been there for 10 months and this is a very popular place. (Note: this brasserie is not to be confused with the Café du Commerce restaurant, which is also nearby.) Le Commerce Café is a friendly and casual place: a good spot to dine with family, including children. It has a pub ambiance, but fortunately it does not have British food. Take a look at the blackboard, if you can read it (they really do need to find some sharper chalk). Many of the traditional, simple French standards are there. Allow me to translate Rillette de Thon sur Toast, salade verte: Tuna on toast (yes, the French use the occasional English word, for whatever reason, just as we Americans use the occasional French word, for whatever reason), with green salad. Faux Filet, sauce au Bleu d’Auvergne, gratin dauphinois : A chewy little steak, with blue cheese sauce and au gratin scalloped potatoes. (Note: the beef served at Le Commerce Café generally comes from Holland.) Assiette de viande froide mayonnaise, frites, salade: Cold meat plate with homemade mayonnaise, fries, and green salad. Carpaccio de boeuf, mesclun, frites, olive noire, ?, tomate, ?, artichaut: beef carpaccio with green salad, fries, drizzle of black olive dressing, tomato, artichoke, and two illegible items. In reality, this dish was served with Cantal cheese slices and no tomato or artichoke. Foie de veau, haricot vert au pleurottes: Veal liver with green beans and adorable little teardrop-shaped mushrooms. Magret de canard, sauce poivre vert, gratin dauphinois: duck breast in green peppercorn sauce, with au gratin scalloped potatoes. Tartare de Saumon a l’aneth, frites, salade: salmon tartar with dill, fries, green salad. Salade italienne (mesclun, illegible et tomate, mozzarelle, melon, jambon de pays): Italian salad of mesclun, tomato, mozzarella, melon, and country ham. Salade de Homarde, sauce agrume: lobster salad with citrus dressing. Filet de dorade royale au basilic, riz espagnole: Daurade (a fine Mediterranean fish) filet with basil and Spanish rice. Penne au Homard, sauce americaine : Penne with lobster and something that the French very mysteriously call American sauce, which sometimes is something like what Americans weirdly call French dressing, but sometimes is something else altogether. Pizza du Jour – sauce tomate, mozzarelle, saucisse d’Auvergne, frites, Roquette : Pizza of the day, with tomato sauce, mozzarella, sausage from the Auvergne region, fries, and roquette lettuce. Soupe de fraises: strawberry soup (a dessert). Nougat glacé au fruits rouges : Nougat ice cream with red fruit. Café gourmand: coffee served with an assortment of small dessert items. But in addition to all this, Le Commerce Café has a pizza menu, and the pizza is made by a pizza man who works at a station right out there in the dining room. It is fun to watch him toss that dough around. And more: the regular printed menu has things like hamburgers on it, in addition to more traditional fare. So there is something for everyone, from great-grandchildren all the way up to and including great-grandparents. One of the kid-friendly aspects of Le Commerce Café is that the food arrives quickly. Such speed usually is not good, as far as quality is concerned, but Le Commerce is the exception to that rule. I think the reason the food comes out quickly is that the kitchen is super-organized. Tom, who is still not quite feeling his normal gastronomic self, ordered the beef carpaccio, which comes with a nice green salad, Cantal cheese, and fries. The carpaccio is beautifully presented, and Tom loves the hand-cut steak fries, which are always served piping hot at Le Commerce Café. I had the grilled duck breast slices, which were served in a puddle of delicious green peppercorn sauce. The duck was perfectly cooked – medium rare, and I mean more rare than medium, which is how I like it. I was happily surprised by the gratin dauphinois scalloped potatoes that came with the duck. I’m a cook, and so of course I make my own stock (usually chicken). The sauce on these potatoes was made with a very fine, rich stock in the base, one that I greatly admired and one that made a fine contribution to the dish – really savory. What looked like ordinary scalloped potatoes were not ordinary at all. Tom was feeling better, so he ordered an apple tart for dessert. It arrived, as expected, with very thinly sliced apples arranged neatly on a nice crust, topped off with a scoop of ice cream. Our server, a woman with an amazing memory for customers, was incredibly busy by the time we left. She was handling the tables for about 2/3 of the restaurant, which isn’t small. We marvel at servers like her in cafes and brasseries all over Paris. It is awesome, how much a professional Parisian server can do so efficiently. We strolled home through the light rain, and had a pleasant evening listening to TSF Jazz on the stereo. This was the first day in a very long time that I did not get at least an hour of exercise. That may be good; I have a few muscles that could use a break from those punishing, 6,000-foot swims that I routinely do in Florida. Summer is here, though, and we expect to be doing a lot of walking, and no swimming, for three months in the most beautiful city on Earth. Even though it rained yesterday, the temperatures have been so pleasant here this week: highs in the 70s, Fahrenheit. Looks like we will have more of the same today. Thank heavens, there are no mosquitos (or almost no mosquitos) in Paris. Imagine: no screens on the windows! To a southwest Floridian, this is almost unthinkable. We have managed not to catch any kind of cold or whatever from the flight over here. I meant to mention that the new or refurbished aircraft that we were on did NOT have those little round vents that you can adjust if you want to have air blasting on your face (or not). There were no vents at all. I wonder if these have been eliminated because someone figured out that they were just blowing germs around at higher velocity than normal. Does anyone out there know? Find me on Facebook

Friday, July 6, 2012 The blackboard of daily specials at our neighborhood brasserie, Le Commerce Café. The mirrored ceiling in the brasserie gives one the opportunity to see the plates served at other tables. Grilled duck breast slices in a green peppercorn sauce with gratin dauphinois potatoes. Beef carpaccio with Cantal cheese. Hand-cut steak fries, served piping hot. ← Previous Next →