Chateaubriand- Chateau Beyond!

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

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

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

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"

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

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

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.