After spending a few mornings in the steamy, warm confines of the fruitières, where cheese making begins, I visited several of the fromageries, which are what they call the caves de affinage; the cavernous cellars where the cheeses are ripened.
I was recently joking that when I’m forced to wake up very early in the morning I’m not sure if I should feel sorrier for myself, or for the people around me. So when my friend Jean-Louis, who works with the people who make Comté cheese finally gave in to my incessant pestering to join him for a visit, I was excited when after three…
I wasn’t expecting to find a great chocolate shop in the Jura, a region of France known best for its exceptional cheeses, namely Mont d’Or, Comté, and Bleu de Gex. But a friend had arranged a visit for me since he knew I loved chocolate, and I was surprised (yet happy) to see such a sleek store run by a master chocolatier in a lesser-known…
Cocktail culture has landed in Paris. It took a while, though. France has always been known for its wine and beer, rather than Torontos, Cosmopolitans, and Martinis. And many of us have memories of trying to explain to a very confused café waiter how to make a martini, when they want to serve you a glass of Martini & Rossi (vermouth).
Everyone has a story about the Swiss, which sometimes ends up with them getting reprimanded for moving something out of the exact place where it belongs. Or arriving 12.5 seconds too late and missing a train. So I was freaking out when I was en route there because I filled out the blank spaces myself on my railpass that asked for my name and passport…
I’d been planning for this trip for years, ever since I first laid my hands on a copy of Baked, the cookbook. Quite a few baking books come out and a lot are really good, but this one spoke to me. I mean, each and every dessert sounded like something I not only wanted to bake, but wanted to eat. As in right away. As…
Sometimes you wonder if people do eat all the stuff we think they eat in other countries. Do Russian people really eat blini and follow them up with shots of iced vodka? In Hawaii, are people sitting around dipping their fingers into bowls of poi? Do Americans actually eat the skins of potatoes? How many Parisians actually nibble on macarons? And is it so that…
I’ve never really had fondue. Well, I am sure that at some point in my life someone dusted off their never-used fondue pot from the back of their kitchen cabinet and melted some stringy cheese in it. But it must not have been memorable because I can’t recall it at all. (Or perhaps a few shots of kirsch took care of that.) Swiss fondue is…
Like most men (and it seems from my previous post, quite a few women, married or otherwise), have a crush on Sophia Loren. My passion was aroused when I walked by the Librairie Gastéréa and saw her beaming face as she lovingly rolled out sheets of pasta on the book jacket parked enticingly in their window. So I was happy to have a chance to…
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