Paul Underwood

Chateaubriand- Chateau Beyond!

2009-08-12T01:30:00.000-07:00

A real culinary find, tucked away north of Republique, and courtesy of watermaker S. Pellegrino's list of best restaurant's in the world. I was skeptical at first, and then fell completely in love. What's with Basque-French chefs in Paris and their uncanny ability to bend French food in mind-bending ways? Number 40 on the list, and only 45Euros for the 5-course menu?

Le Chateaubriand is the kind of spare, masculine, place that you'd at first think might be a great neighborhood restaurant with nothing special on the menu. But all the right clues are there that this is a serious kitchen. A wooden table on the side piled with fresh cut sour dough bread still warm from the oven, and a couple blackboards with tapas and wine specials. The well-chosen and quirky wine list. A wooden box of the freshest herbs sitting on the counter in the kitchen. A staff that knew its food and wine menus, and a clientele of serious and unostentatious foodies.

You eat what the chef cooks - something that always makes me happy. No choices here. It's the pre-set five-course prix-fixe menu, or nothing. But wow, wow, wow will you find yourself in good hands.

The tapas notations on the blackboard were enough to signal that the night was going to be special. Boquerones - small fresh anchovies in olive oil were silky, beautiful and lemony. Thin jewel-colored slices of serrano ham, and paper thin slices of air dried salami got our appetites going, along with a super young 2008 Crozes-Hermitage from Dard Ribo -- "C'est Le Printemps" -- which balanced fruit with minerality and was perfect coming off a hot Paris street.

First course packed a beautiful punch. Beautiful pyramids of raw bluefin tuna, thin slices of raw horseradish and beet, all atop a schmear of puree of herring and beet worthy of a Zen calligrapher. The puree was a stunner. Smoky pink in color, smoky and sweet in flavor, it was the perfect foil for the tuna and the crunch vegetables.

Next up was ceviche of red snapper in its lemon juice liquid that half my friends drank straight from the bowl. Our waiter explained that the vegetables in this dish and throughout the meal came from the garden of an Englishwoman who might as well be best friends with Alice Waters for the perfection of her produce. The snapper was beautifully draped with more paper thin slices of heirloom green and red and yellow tomatoes, small wedges of more heirlooms, and sprinkled with the most beautiful baby herbs and edible flowers. It was a stunner in flavor and in presentation.

Fish course was lemon sole, lightly poached with herb oil. It was almost a palate-cleanser course, his mild fish was meant to be crunched with his sprigs of baby seaweed and greens that were the salt of the dish. Beautiful. Our waiters guided us to another Dard Ribo wine for our fish courses, this one a beautiful buttery white St. Joseph that managed to straddle the acidity of the ceviche and the beautiful mildness of the sole.

Meat was the famous Limousin beef - France's answer to Kobe. Cooked rare, and served with a puree of burnt eggplant that was one of the flavor high points of the evening, and took us into another world of the Mediterranean. The puree had graphite color of huitlacoche, silky velvet in texture, it had the most beautiful deep, soul pleasing smoky eggplant flavor. Alongside, a spoonful of fresh greek yogurt, and beautiful young scallions cooked à la Grecque. Each component adding to the whole of flavor. It was about as perfect a steak dish as I've ever had.

What Chef Inaki Aizpitarte did for dessert blew my socks off. A classic, we thought, dessert of red fruits and meringue. Oh No, No! Everything was flipped on its head and had us nearly singing. Beautiful red currants and raspberries with toasty golden brown croutons of sweet meringue and over the top a true CLOUD of white lemon verbena foam. I'm grinning at the thought. Meringue as croutons; foam as visual meringue - a total play on words and on the tongue.

Le Chateaubriand? Let's just call it Le Chateaubeyond :)

129 Avenue Parmentier, 75011 Paris, France
Tel: +33 (0) 1 4357 4595

Birthday in Paris

2009-04-26T05:22:00.000-07:00

I celebrated an incredibly happy and beautiful birthday in Paris yesterday, starting with a fantastic walk through the shops of the 6th and the 7th arrondissements, and a stroll past Notre Dame and my favorite ice cream shop Berthillon on the Ile St. Louis, and then over to Les Philosophes, a little cafe in the Marais on a pedestrian street lined with azaleas in full bloom with some friends. An amazing little tarte tatin a la tomate with a little salad, and then some simple grilled sword fish with a good early cocktail of vodka and fresh-squeezed pink grapefruit juice.

A long afternoon stroll through St. Germain and down toward Montparnasse took us by the Au Bon Marche, where I was able to pick up a canvas sack of that perfect French handmade sea salt fleur de sel de guerande and a little bottle of white truffle oil, with fantasies of a perfect summer wild mushroom risotto and grilled bronzino on Fire Island this summer.

A late dinner was at a new find, Le Comptoir, Yves Camdeborde's bistro, where reservations are usually completely unattainable. But not when you walk in at 11:00pm! I found this on Patricia Wells's list of beloved Paris bistros. It's often been dubbed the best bistro in Paris, and it's worthy of the designation. Started with thin slices of toasted "pain de mie" covered with even thinner slices of perfect foie gras and a glass of pink champagne. For dinner, the perfect "cocquelet a la moutarde" -- a roast small bird covered with a mustard crust and served in its own jus and little roasted potatoes. We forget how really good the simple things can be! A homemade nougat with fresh pineapple sorbet wrapped up a really perfect, beautiful, extremely happy birthday in Paris.

Not a bad way to begin the last year in my 40s!

Pre-Birthday Lunch at Chez L'Ami Jean

2009-04-24T07:19:00.000-07:00

Just back from a pre-birthday boozy Friday lunch at L'Ami Jean. Pretty damn awesome...

Started with a plate of thin-sliced andouille with a chunk of homemade butter of beurre d'isigny into which had been blended small grains of delicious sea salt and a chewy crusty rye bread that was amazing... then a square of caramelized beef cheeks served with braised beet greens and paper thin slices of bacon, then a cold terrine -- utterly weird and delicious -- of foie gras, smoked eel, granny apples, gelee and bucatini. Bizarro and good.

For main course an incredible Aile de Raie - skate wing -- served sauteed with two purees on the side: one of celeriac that was light as a cloud, the other of potato = the good kind of puree de pommes de terre that is forced through a horse-hair tamis and blended with gobs of good french butter. Robuchon-esque. Heaven.

For dessert, bourguignonne de fraises de bois - wild strawberries poached in vanilla and burgundy, and the BEST rice pudding with homemade salty caramel sauce. A cool paper chinese take-out carton of homemade marshmallows that had been flavored with bergamot (the essential oil used for Earl Grey tea) to top things off.

Spare, simple, chunky and stylish restaurant: Totally simple: wooden tables, wooden boards serving the charcuterie, pieces of slate for coffee service, thick cotton dish towels for napkins. A couple of bottles of really good 2005 Chinon "Les Roches" from the Loire Valley. All in all, well worth it. Chez L'Ami Jean, 27 rue Malar, 75007 Paris.

Puree of Cauliflower Soup

2009-03-17T11:55:00.001-07:00

As the sun gets stronger, yet spring still weeks away, I'm having a last ditch fling at winter soups. This has become a favorite.

Puree of Cauliflower Soup
1 large head cauliflower, diced coarsely
2 large or 3 medium onions, diced
1 apple, peeled, cored, and diced
2 tablespoon unsalted butter
2 tablespoon olive oil
1 32 oz container chicken stock
2 cups water
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 teaspoon Madras curry powder
Big pinch cayenne pepper
Big pinch cumin
2-3 tablespoons heavy cream (optional)

Saute apples and onions in the butter and olive oil 5-10 minutes until tender. stir in curry and add chopped cauliflower, chicken stock and water. Cover and simmer 30-40 minutes until cauliflower and apples are completely soft. Puree until smooth. Add cayenne pepper, cumin, salt and pepper to taste. If desired, stir in 2 tablespoons heavy cream to enrich. Garnish with additional diced apple, a swirl of creme fraiche, or seasoned fresh croutons.

"Bankers Offer 'Profound and Unreserved' Apologies"

2009-02-10T07:55:00.000-08:00

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

What?! Contrition and regret from the "masters of the universe"?!

Wait -- those are British bankers, not our own Wall Street darlings. What a shock to read that the heads of two of Britains biggest banks offering an APOLOGY to the British Treasury Select Committee investigating their own banking crisis for their actions that led to their banks being taken largely into public ownership. Doesn't it seem that our US bankers are more irked than anything about their current state of affairs, insistent on retaining free reign over bonuses in order to keep the "quality" people that put is in this crisis? They continue to ignore the essential connection between greed and the incessant drive toward short-term results and the bonus system that seems for them to be the raison d'etre for their existence.

Why isn't our own Congress and the PUBLIC, after 8 years of across-the-board policy arrogance from the Bush Administration, not demanding more examination of conscience by our financial leaders? After investing the first half of TARP already in bailing out Wall Street's biggest institutions, and making plans for the disposition of the remainder, we are still not using the dirty "N" word -- nationalization. It's too hot a designation for anyone to touch, but are we not at least acknowledging that public investment in the bailout equals, at least in some measure, public ownership and the accountability and transparency and some measure of control that normally attends actual ownership?

Our House of Representatives is calling in Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Citi to discuss how they are using federal bailout money. I love the 12 Questions That Bank Bosses Must Answer Today by The Guardian's Dan Roberts. It will be interesting to see how deeply our Representatives drill down for answers and press for accountability and -- just maybe? -- some expression of regret.

Bank Bailouts Round 2 and Washington's Challenge

2009-01-16T03:07:00.000-08:00

Image via Wikipedia With Bank of America set now to receive a second wave of bailout funds -- $20billion in cash and another $118billion in loan guarantees, I'm struck with the lack of details in the "announcement" that a deal had been struck. Apparently we have to wait until today to find out. A contributor to one of my favorite blogsites, Angry Bear, suggests we may learn details today. It's still notable that the spate of articles everywhere about the beginning of this second round of handouts to institutions too big to fail make little to no note of why such an announcement could be made without knowing that measures to ensure accountability and transparency will be in place.

The New York Times correctly calls a spade a spade in noting that we are seeing the nationalization of our major banks, a political and economic truth which few in Washington would like to admit. As a friend of mine likes to point out, Wall Street has moved to Washington, yet I wonder if we -- citizens and those on the Hill and the White House -- are fully prepared to stomach that reality. I'm not much consoled by the Senate Hearings for Obama's choice for new SEC Chief, Mary Schapiro, which hint at the real challenges of coordinating our regulatory structure in this country. Nor by Ben Bernanke's remarks Tuesday at the London School of Economics that "we need stronger supervisory and regulatory schemes" while backpedalling for those in Wall Street and Washington who still believe in a perfect market that we must take care not to take actions that forfeit the economic benefits of financial innovation and market discipline." I love the comment of one contributor to Angry Bear who tartly observes that this is "an interesting viewpoint, since just about everybody would give their eyeteeth right now if they could indeed 'forfeit the … benefits of financial innovation'”! See a nice summary there of the GAO's recent report on regulation deficiencies of financial markets by rdan with this excellent comments and others.

Enter our hero Paul Volcker -- consistent truthsayer -- riding again to the rescue with the beginnings of a plan to harmonize our own fragment financial regulatory structure both domestically and within the context of the global economy. Towering in stature and viewpoint, and having reached the stage in life where he can afford by reason of age, experience, and accomplishment to say what needs to be done, we begin to see that a two-track domestic and global response to this crisis will be sorely needed in the months ahead.

Time for Warming Split Pea Soup

2009-01-14T11:23:00.001-08:00

Image via Wikipedia I've been playing around with split pea soup recipes for several years, and think I've finally got it down. Perfect for the frigid week ahead.

Split Pea Soup Recipe
3 T olive oil
1 large yellow onion, or two medium sized, 1/4" diced.
1 very large fat carrot , or three-four smaller ones, 1/4" diced
4 stalks celery, including leafy tops, 1/4" dice.
3-4 garlic cloves, minced
2 whole star anise
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
10-12 stalks of fresh thyme
3 large bay leaves
1 32-oz container chicken stock
1 bottle of beer
3/4 cup dry white wine
2 large smoked ham hocks
6 cups water, more as needed
1 package dried green split peas
salt and black pepper to taste

Sweat onion, carrot, celery, bay leaves, thyme, star anise, red pepper and cayenne pepper over medium heat until translucent. ~10 minutes. Be careful not to brown the vegetables.

Add ham hocks, beer, chicken stock and water and bring to a boil over high heat, stirring occasionally. Reduce to a simmer and partially cover.

Simmer four hours, stirring occasionally and watching bottom of pot doesn't scorch, adding water as necessary.

Remove ham hocks, and pull out usable meat, dice. Remove star anise, thyme stems and bay leaves. Add ham to soup. Season with salt and black pepper to taste. Add white wine and bring soup to simmer for 5 minutes longer.

Makes approximately 6 pints of soup. Soup will last one week in refrigerator, or three months in freezer.

Wrestling with Chicken Little

2008-11-21T04:13:00.000-08:00

Image via Wikipedia
U.S. Automakers currently sent home to re-think their requests for a bailout package from Congress have run into two major problems bode poorly for the U.S. and the global economy.

First, the policy drift in Washington that's taking place as we all hold our breath for the Bush Administration to pack its bags couldn't have come at a worse time: the speed at which the economic fallout is now coming back to depress the stock markets has been a matter of weeks, not months, and I really shudder to think how much worse it can get between now and January 20, 2009. And, frankly, our Congress just doesn't seem up to making a decision, whether for pure fright at the enormity of the consequences, or because we're just in the political doldrums until Obama's inauguration.

The second problem is a kind of "Chicken Little" problem. Our American automobile manufacturers have been back to Washington over and again for help to "stay competitive", "to retool" or otherwise to stay in business. Patience among taxpayers and their reps in Washington is wearing understandably thin, but all signs actually point to the sky falling this time. At a time when we have shudders at hearing of over 200,00 layoffs on Wall Street alone, imagine the tsunami effect if Detroit, the poster child for supply chain economics, fails: best estimates are millions of 2.5 million to 3 million jobs lost -- in the heart of the country.

In the broader contest of the debate between conservatives and liberals over how much intervention, how much regulation, how much government should be involved -- and over the fundamental soundness of our financial system, the reality of an entire industry sector poised for failure is sobering for its fear factor alone: witness yesterday's stock market plunge. The ripple effect that will be quickly seen spreading out among Detroit's supply chain will have a corollary effect among all industries. Will others follow Detroit? The last thing we need is for Washington to go numb in the brain at a time when action alone has a psychological calming effect. The less of Chicken Little is that his call is so disturbing that people just shut down and tune out, and while no one is tuning out, fear of action in the face of the enormity of the consequences is the equivalent.

January 20th can't come soon enough, but I really worry about what's in store for us over the next 8 weeks.

Taxes, the Election and the National Self Interest

2008-11-01T08:03:00.000-07:00

Image via Wikipedia
I have to credit the McCain campaign for making lemonade out of lemons. At a time when the economy is tanking and Americans are truly and justifiably fearful for the economic future, when it becomes commonplace for our government to speak of figures in excess of many hundreds of millions of dollars being committed to this bailout and that rescue, and the national debt be damned, they have managed yet again and at just the right time to twist the minds of lower and middle-class Americans away from anger at those in power who have brought us to economic disaster, and flipped it into a powerful fear that the Obama administration would preside over a massive and universal tax increase. Can you see the total disconnect in thinking?

Clever. And ironic, given that so much of our country's financial problems are the direct result of a mindset among our current corporate and government elite is that government must cede its fiduciary responsibility to Americans to the gods of profit and growth. Where would we be if the SEC hadn't handed over to the five largest Wall Street investment banks control over their own risk? Where would we be if we weren't in Iraq and Afghanistan, where it now looks like we will go down as the Russians and the Brits before us? At a time when government spending is skyrocketing as fast as the stock market tanked in October, the McCain camp would like us to overlook a basic question. Where will all the money come from?

Obvious answer, of course: us. There's not much debate that we cannot leave our economy to its own travails, although there is considerable debate about the impact of us digging our hole quite so deep. James Kenneth Galbraith spoke about this in a recent Bill Moyers interview which makes fascinating and enlightening reading. He says, rightly, that the failure of government regulation of the banking system has created a crisis of trust and confidence, and goes on to say that it is appropriate and necesary that the US Government borrow whatever funds necessary to provide the capital to provide a bailout on the national, state and local levels. http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10242008/transcript4.html I'm not sure I agree with Galbraith that the US dollar is and will remain the one solid go-to currency in the global economy. And he ignores the ultimate question: what are the long term consequences for our nation to have effectively mortgaged an entire generation's wealth. Remember that the Chinese government is the single largest holder of U.S. debt, and for now, it remains in their interest not to call that in. But back to taxes and the election.

Are we so averse to individual pain in the face of national crisis that we cannot see the plain necessity of taxes being raised to pay the costs of our mistakes -- our individual mistakes in arriving at a national economy that relies on soft goods and credit card debt, as well as the mistakes of policy and leadership that have put us in this place? Again, the Republicans play the fear card, only this time they've managed to twist our gaze away from reality and layer it on our own deep national unease at our individual and collective economic futures. The Democrats, in the interest of winning this election, don't do much better in truth-telling grounded in real economic reality. Maybe it's just too much to deal with now. Our problems are much deeper than our leaders will let on, and politics will prevail.

I only hope the only saying holds true for Americans: you can fool some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time.

Watching America Vote

2008-10-23T05:07:00.000-07:00

Image via WikipediaFor a quick snapshot at what the rest of the world is thinking about our upcoming presidential election, you'll find a fascinating array of articles on msnbc.com's "World Blog" that reflect the hopes, fears, frustrations, selfish wishes, and altruistic dreams for a better world that make me pause to reflect. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26716509 The headlines themselves are telling, surprising, even eye-popping: "Germans Hoping to Get Past 'Bush-fatigue'," "Vietnamese Back McCain," "Neither Candidate Will Be Good for Pakistan," "For China, US Election is Entertaining" (entertaining??!), "Iraqis Say Vote Smells of 'Honey-Promises'" (one of those weird translations, no doubt), "Egyptians Looking for 'Good Side' of America."

We can be certain this will be, as it is among Americans themselves, the most closely-watched of elections. I've been in Washington, DC this week on meetings and it is as fascinating to hear the array of views inside and outside the beltway, as it is to see the America's reflection both inside and outside the country. We've seen very little substantive discussion among Obama and McCain of a broader concept of "the national interest." We get snippets here and there: their views of our national interest in the global financial crisis, Israel, Iraq, Iran, energy policy, mostly talking points and poorly articulated boilerplate designed to enable them to skate over the tough questions. I wonder if, as we as Americans become more embattled economically, socially, politically, a greater sense of the national interest will emerge that can provide us some kind of beacon in troubled times.

But the outcome of the elections in two weeks is only part of what the world is watching. Today's papers note that in Florida, almost a third of the electorate will have voted early in this new kind of in-person absentee voting. And yet there are same problems with our faulty physical voting structure. I hope these problems won't blow up into a new national electoral crisis a la Bush/Gore. My friend in DC -- a high level technology policy expert -- had a clipping of a letter to the editor to a national magazine taped to the back of her kitchen cabinet expressing her view of what happened: two or three highly technologically savvy people monitored the computerized election returns in Ohio. When it became clear Bush would not win a key county, one of these techno-burglars quickly, anonymously, and remotely hacked into the computerized voting system and switched the vote to favor Bush. Of course, my friend the writer went on to point out, this could never be proved, but concluded with optimism that our newly computerized voting systems would be changed to restore our faith in democracy.

I wonder. The problem, of course, is not the computerization, but the lack of a means to double-check results. Basically, the lack of a paper trail. http://www.securityfocus.com/news/6530. Just last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled with Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner on Friday, October 17, granting her a stay to a temporary restraining order from a federal appeals court that ordered her to provide a system for implementing voter fraud prevention methods. It's a striking case of the Republicans manipulating the issue for their gain, with the Ohio Republican Party filing the initial suit challenging the state's compliance with the Help America Vote Act, alleging that the state has no system to deal with mismatched voter records.

I suppose we might get through Obama v. McCain without the system blowing up in our faces and into the arms of the Supremes again. But as we watch, and the world watches how American votes, and how America votes, I can only hope that our newly re-engaged electorate will care passionately enough about both results to move forward to a fuller expression of what really works for America.

Leadership and Critical Thinking in the Global Financial Crisis.

2008-10-15T06:34:00.000-07:00

Many will already have seen or read Bill Moyers's October 10 interview with George Soros on his "Journal" program/blog. http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10102008/watch.html What's striking about Soros is how he observes the groupthink grounded in basic human nature that has driven this crisis to the brink. "[O]ur ability to govern ourselves doesn't keep pace with our ability to exercise power over nature, control over nature."

This is especially striking when looking at the role of the SEC in permitting the five major investment banks to self-regulate. As Soros put it so well in his interview, the major flaw in Wall Street thinking as developed since the demise of Glass-Steagall is the belief that by distributing the risk, you reduce the risk. The real question is: at what point does blindness to reality set in?

What happened at the SEC in 2004 is succinctly put together by the New York Times's Stephen Labaton in his multi-media presentation on the subject. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/09/28/business/20080928-SEC-multimedia/index.html http://www.blogrunner.com/snapshot/D/0/9/stephen_labaton/

It's a powerful example of how quickly the belief in the all-powerful, self-correcting, invisible hand of the market always making things right became arrogance combined with pure greed. Who was worse? The SEC, for essentially rubberstamping a fundamental change in how risk is accounted for, or the firms and their lobbyists for squeezing out the last major run up this super bubble of a market these past 25 years? These human blindspots are curious. I'm struck by how stupid and mute we've become today, numbed by the "good" times to the point of some weird lethargy that's both blind hope and apathy. Which brings us to the psychology of leadership of the governments we now look to for "bailout" and "rescue".

How caught up are the world's finance ministers in clinging to their belief in the Market as the ultimate expression of Mammon? The Brits have, again, shown a capacity for both critical thinking and leadership that gives cause for hope. I wonder if, as Labaton suggests, it isn't strange that we have Henry Paulson leading the way in this crisis, and if we can't possibly crack the mold of our group think about what's possible and what's right to move out of this mess.

Greed, Greed, and more Greed

2008-10-13T08:30:00.000-07:00

I can't help but consider the root causes of our current economic state of affairs, and it comes down to unbridled greed. The necessity felt by all in business to do better, to do more, to make more money - quarter after quarter, year after year. The insatiable NEED for profits has created a house of cards that we've seen flattened in very short order.

In looking through my collection of news sources this morning, I was struck by the comment in one piece that banks and investments banks, collapsed together by the now discredited abandonment of Glass-Steagall, were driven to find new sources of profit at the time of the collapses of the dot.coms in 2000 and 2001. We'd heard of derivatives long before this, of course, but the "sophistication" of these instruments -- such a malapropism -- has now gone way beyond what even my most "sophisticated" friends on Wall Street could easily describe in lay terms.

I can't but wonder now what this human drive for ever-higher standards of living by our wealthiest citizens will create out of the chaos of a global financial meltdown. Much is being said now about a return to a slow growth economy -- a weird nostalgia for the values that came out of the depression that for a short time made America the wealthiest and most powerful nation known in history. See Jim Cramer's September 29 piece in New York magazine and his comparisons with today's situation with that in the movie, It's a Wonderful Life. (http://nymag.com/news/businessfinance/50520/) Are we craving for a break from the pressures of quarterly earnings reports, workaholism, and total lack of balance between a healthy standard of living and the basic demands of capitalism, even as we are in utter terror about a global financial meltdown the likes of which no one has ever seen?