The Best Crepe in Paris

I've set out to make this blog not entirely about food, but mostly about my relationship to cooking and how it affects my life. This next post, for most people, would be about the best crepe they've ever had in their lives. And for me, you will see that some of this post is about the best crepe I've ever had in my life. But additionally, you will see how that crepe lead to the immediate resentment of other people eating inferior crepes. Ok, here we go...

I'd heard of L'Avant Comptoir and the fabulous wine bar spread they have. I'd penciled it in as a place to go after watching it on Anthony Bourdain's special on Paris. However, when I arrived today at around 2 o'clock with a friend, it was packed. It also happened to be about 70 degrees and sunny in Paris on the 31st of October, so drinking at a wine bar inside was not as attractive as immediately thought. But then, boo-yah bitches: L'Avant Comptoir had a crepe take-out window. Now, typically in Paris, at every other one of the 700 crepe stands, you have your basic options of ham, cheese, egg, and maybe some veggies, along with the dessert crepe varieties. But at L'Avant Comptoir, the ingredient choices were off the chain: roasted red pepper, sun dried tomatoes, artichokes, rotisserie chicken, FILET OF BEEF, smoked and cured spanish ham, veal, and on and on. Most crepe places give you the choice of "cheese"... L'Avant Comptoir had 5 different cheese options. So, needless to say, my friend and I bought our crepes (mine filled with rotisserie chicken, artichokes, gruyere cheese, salt and pepper... simply because I was limited to 3 ingredients with the lunch special) and headed to Luxembourg Gardens to walk around for a while soaking in the day.

It was the best crepe I've had in my 8 months in this city... BY FAR. I immediately felt stupid for even telling people where to go to get a good crepe. Now, let's make it clear that I'm not hating on my Bretagne friends on Rue du Montparnasse, who serve up some damn good crepes in their own right. But they're traditional and delicious, which is great, but not the best. These crepes at L'Avant Comptoir, which for 6 euros come with a drink at lunch, make your head spin around. Buckwheat batter (essential for any REAL crepe) combined with actual ingredients make these things absurdly good. Most creperies believe that they can cut corners because they are a cheap take-away food category, but L'Avant elevates the take-away variety into a whole new stratosphere. Ok, you get it, they're good. Now comes the part where eating the best crepe in Paris ruined my afternoon.

After eating this delicious crepe, I found myself walking in a very crepe-heavy part of Paris... the Saint-Germain Saint-Michel HELL corridor where my Social Loathing Disorder is at its peak. To clarify, a friend and I have determined that we share SLD in common - that is, Social Loathing Disorder. SLD can rear its head in many forms, including something as trivial as simple social anxiety, to something as malicious as generally disliking someone you don't even know because they're eating the wrong crepe... and that's what happened today. As I was walking through the Hell corridor, I found myself judging people based on the fact that I knew they were eating an inferior crepe to mine. I was making sly remarks about how much of a jackass a guy was because I heard him mentioning how good the ham was in his crepe... which I knew was the same ham I had eaten countless time at other dogshit crepe stands. Much like the Chorizo incident, I felt like slapping all of the crepes out of everyone's hands like a ferocious game of arcade alligators... you remember, where you held the mallet and you had to whack the alligators on their heads before they got too close to you... ok maybe that was just in Florida. But seriously, the realization that everyone around me was eating a second-rate crepe legitimately ruined my afternoon... ok, not really, but it got me fired up for a little bit. And it led me to 2 reoccurring conclusions:

1. I'm extremely judgmental because just 2 hours previous, I could have very easily stopped for a quick bite of a now-average crepe and been one of those food-illiterate people, and...

2. I need to open up a restaurant or store-front that specializes in doing something simple, but taking it to a whole new unforeseen level.

What today taught me was that there really is nothing better than thinking you have tasted the best of something, only to taste something even better. This is how I feel about cuisine... I constantly think that I've had the best _______ of my life, and then I go somewhere better or make something better. It's why I keep doing it.

Cooking and Movie Scores

So I have realized, through obsessive introspection, that there are a few things that I really love (and I'm not referring to people here... I love you family and Maggie, but no one wants to read that). These are things that really give me an enormous sense of joy, and it's inexplicable, other than the fact that when it's happening it's very obvious to me.

2 of these things are best enjoyed together: Cooking a great meal and listening to film scores. Not many people know this about me, but I really enjoy composing my own scores as a hobby. These aren't for any movies or films in particular, but mostly, I write these and envision the type of scene that they would be a perfect accompaniment for. And it's very easy for me to write these bootleg mini-film scores because it's a truly organic process that happens like anything else organic - that is, they are created naturally. And I really believe the things that make us the happiest are the things that are organic in nature.

Ok, getting back to the cooking and film scores together. While I love writing film scores, listening to amazing musicians who score films for a living is just as much of a pleasure. Unlike any other sort of music, when I listen to a film score, it makes me lose my mind (literally). Again, difficult to explain, but it's the same feeling I get when I'm skiing in Montana, golfing alone, laying down with Maggie watching a movie, or drinking a great cup of coffee really early in the morning. On the contrary, when I'm cooking, my brain is on complete overload and I'm a bit of a maniac (think a quiet Gordon Ramsay). And I realized tonight why I think I love mixing those two worlds together.

Like with anything interesting in life, ups and downs and uncertainty make everything worthwhile. Listening to a great film score while moving around in the kitchen constantly brings me up and down... and I love it. One minute I'm frantically chopping some onions and the next minute I step back and I lose 2 minutes watching a steak sizzle in a pan while I'm lost in a great Rolfe Kent melody (Wedding Crashers - actually a great score, Up in the Air). One minute I can't remember what else to put in my bolognese sauce and then it's 4 minutes later and I've been leaning back on the counter drinking beer to a Rachel Portman tune.

If you're still confused about what I'm talking about, listen to the score in the background of this trailer. Ignore the trailer, listen to the music (except for One Republic at the end... don't listen to that). LISTEN TO THE SCORE... especially starting at 44seconds when it hits really hard... I get chills. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU4qLmIXbOE

I don't know why I felt the need to write about cooking and listening to a specific genre of music. I think it's because I hope that other people lose time because they are startled and overcome by something simple. I know that I try and make myself feel this way pretty often, and it doesn't require anything more than some music or a good cup of coffee.

Beer and Spicy Peppers... Not Always a Great Combo

I think one of the reasons I like cooking so much is that I get to drink while I'm cooking, and it's completely ok because it's part of the whole act. So what if it is a beer at 9 in the morning while I'm frying some bacon. If you look down on me for that, I'll splash a little beer in the pan and boom: I can shove your judgments back into your face with a nice handful of my now famous beer bacon. Anywho, getting back to my original point, one of the small pleasures of cooking is taking a long time to prepare my food so that I can slowly sip on a tasty beverage and enjoy the process. That brings us to tonight.

I was making something very simple with some leftover ingredients - fried rice with eggs, scallions, shrimp, jalapenos, leftover ground lamb meat (which ended up being a genius idea accidentally), soy sauce, and some spices and whatnot. While I was preparing this little Lisa Ling meets George Stephanopoulos meal (please tell me you get that... just think a little bit if you don't... it's not a good joke but my fingers already typed it), I was drinking some ice cold 1664 beer. 1664 is a French beer, and it's not great, but when it's ice cold with the smell of soy sauce and jalapenos in the air, it tastes pretty damn good. So, I finished a few of those 1664s, munched on a little of my fried rice dish for dinner, and then found myself in a very common situation after having had a few beers: I had to pee.

So, because I pee all the time, I walked to the bathroom and relieved myself with great satisfaction... that satisfaction lasted all of about 45 seconds. As some of you have probably already guessed, what happened next was horrible. As I was zipping up and walking away from the bathroom, I started feeling a light stinging sensation. Now, if any other guys are like me, any sort of oddity other than the norm when it comes to your junk is extremely alarming and unwelcome. I tried to mentally discredit the stinging by convincing myself I must have nicked some skin with the zipper on the way up. But then, as paranoia set in, I realized what I'd done. In all my cooking and beer drinking glory, I had forgotten to wash my hands before I ate dinner... the same hands that had been handling the jalapeno. Just so you know, I'm a righty, so when I chop things for cooking, I hold the food in my left hand and chop with my right hand. Similarly, I'm a righty when it comes to peeing as well. But for some reason, tonight, I felt the need to be ambidextrous at the toilet. Well, that jalapeno I had cut just a short while before really taught me not to be so cocky when it comes to my urination technique. What followed for the next 30 minutes or so was just sheer hell. I've never been victim to an STD, and I'm glad because stinging on your junk aint no joke. About 15 minutes in, I even resorted to pouring milk on myself to stop the horror. Let me tell you, when you step back 2 minutes after pouring milk on your man parts, it makes the situation a little bit better for the second that you are laughing at yourself for doing such a thing. And it didn't work by the way... thanks milk for trying, but you don't always "do a body good."

Now, as I write this blog post, the stinging has subsided. I have leftover fried rice in the fridge and the experience almost made me want to just throw it all away if it weren't so damn delicious. And there's a little window into my brain; Even after this horrible stinging shenanigans of a situation, my heart still lies with the fried rice. I'll be eating it with a very long fork though.

Throwing Chorizo in Some Dude's Pasta Bowl

Bizarre example of generosity from me tonight... and I'm still trying to figure out why I did such a thing. I was whipping up a bit of chorizo, pickled (and then cooked) red onions, anaheim chili, and crushed grape tomatoes (higher sugar content and a good neutralizer to a chili) to top off a chicken sandwich I was making tonight. While I was whipping up this concoction, I wanted to utilize the community oven in my building for the half-cooked baguette I bought from the store earlier. Side note: half-cooked baguettes are genius because you buy them from someone who knows what they're doing, then all you have to do is fire them up for 8 minutes and you have almost-freshly made bread. So, I walked down the hall to fire up my baguette for the sandwich. As I was painfully waiting for 8 minutes, I saw a guy take a pre-cooked bowl of penne pasta, splash a little water on the noodles, and throw them in the microwave. He then proceeded to open up a room temperature jar of pasta sauce and poured it over the noodles. Now I really don't consider myself a food snob by any means, but the effort shown here was embarrassing. In my mind, it was like watching someone defecate in public, and then continue to shock the world by wiping their ass with their bare hand.

To clarify, I really don't think there is that much wrong with eating pasta and canned pasta sauce. But the combination of old plain pasta, canned pasta sauce (without any additives like mushrooms or onions... which you can buy in the can) and the fact that this all took place in Paris, France of all places, was too much for me to handle. For the love of God, couldn't this barbarian just saute up some garlic, onions, and carrots and throw those bad boys in there to spice it up a little... throw a dash of herbes de provence on top... you get the point. However, this guy didn't do that, so I felt the need to stop him.

Without saying a word to him during this entire observation, I intervened as he was walking out the door with his bowl of tasteless betrayal. I said, "Wait here... I'll be back."

He said, "Why?"

I said, "Because, just trust me." He didn't look convinced, and I was scared if I exited right then, he would actually go back to his room and eat the steaming bowl. I said, "I promise if you wait for one minute, it will be worth it."

He said, "Ok." I ran down the hall to my room, grabbed my simmering pan of slow cooking chorizo, onions, chili, and FRESH tomatoes, and even managed to snatch my shaker of oregano as it caught my eye on the way out. I walked back into the room to find the guy still standing there with his bowl, and without asking, I poured the mixture into his pasta bowl. Then I shook some oregano over the top, grabbed the bowl from his hands, and tossed it around a little bit (with some impressive flair for effect). Then I smiled and said, "Chorizo. That's the sausage that you are going to taste. You can buy it anywhere. Bon Appetit." I grabbed my bread (which was now done) and then I left. Not kidding.

I'm pretty sure that I changed that guy's life. Even if the pasta wasn't as epic as the dramatic pretenses under which is was created, he'll at least always remember the psychopath who felt the bizarre need to chorizo his pasta. And still, as I'm writing this, I really don't know why I did that. I've seen these sorts of things before... people boiling vegetables to oblivion, not searing meat on high enough heat, blah blah other culinary nightmares blah. But never have I felt such a need to throw chorizo in some dude's pasta bowl. And I'm still trying to figure out why tonight? Maybe starting this blog has something to do with it...

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Chorizo is a term encompassing several types of pork sausages originating from the Iberian Peninsula. Spanish Chorizo is seasoned with smoked pimenton (paprika) and salt.

Only Good Cooks Can Make Eggs

I know, right? The title of this post sounds sarcastic, but I'm completely serious. I think back to when I first started cooking, and I used to make eggs all the time. I thought I could make a pretty good omelette, and I even enjoyed making them for people to show off my new found talent. Wow. I really wish I could take back those first displays of my culinary prowess. Now I can really cook eggs, and I am ashamed that I thought I knew how to before.

If you think that scrambled eggs are scrambled eggs, and if you think the stuffings make a good omelette, then you are clearly naive, like I once was. Scrambled eggs done properly make you feel like you're eating a delicacy prepared carefully for a king, and a legit French omelette makes you never want to defile such a thing with stuffings of any kind, except maybe some parsley, chives, and chervil. Here are some of my personal notes on scrambled eggs, omelettes, and hard-boiled eggs, picked up from much better cooks than me.

Scrambled Eggs - You can't let scrambled eggs cook without touching them for even a second. Scrambled eggs are like risotto - they need constant stirring and painful attention to the amount of heat that's hitting them. Tip: when you think you've cooked the eggs enough, you're probably 30 seconds or 1 minute too late. The residual heat from the pan will continue cooking the eggs after they're off the heat, so prepare for that. And yes, you should get used to eating your eggs with a velvety finish... not watery, that's gross, velvety. To prevent watery eggs, don't add salt until the end... the salt tends to catalyze the breaking down of the egg enzymes. For extra velvet finish, add a dollop of creme fraiche at the end, or a huge nob of butter at the very beginning... or both.

Omelette - Like scrambled eggs, omelettes need constant attention. To be clear, omelette's are not frittatas, which can be left alone. Take this hint: start your omelette with a big hunk of butter in the pan fully melted... it prevents the egg from sticking and really makes the thing taste better... and you're eating eggs so it's healthy. By adding the butter and leaving out the unnecessary stuffings, you'll most likely be making something better for your health even with the added lard. To make sure the omelette evenly cooks without over cooking, shake the hell out of the pan so that every square centimeter of uncooked egg directly hits the surface of the pan for no more than 5-10 seconds. That's the key to a smooth omelette. Once every part of uncooked egg gets the 10 second heat rush, start maneuvering the omelette to its final shape. Best. Omelette. Ever.

Hard-Boiled Eggs - Simple 5-step process

1. Prick a tiny hole (like the smallest pin you can find) in the fat end of the egg (there is an air pocket there).

2. Drop the eggs in just under boiling water (a kind of low-roll/simmer-ishness)

3. Leave them for 10 minutes.

4. Transfer them to an ice bath... and let them chill in the ice bath (literally) for a while... don't be over eager.

5. Peel them and use them... the yolk should be darker in the very center and lighter as you move outwards... no sulfur or green should be seen in these eggs.

If you don't think about eggs this much, then now you know why you aren't writing a food blog... and now you know why you'll be asking me to cook for you soon.

Sauces... A few you should know

I got side-tracked reading the daily NY Times Dining & Wine section while I was drinking my morning coffee, so I decided to hold off on the breakfast. I'm making Steak Diane for lunch because it's quick and easy, and it has reminded me of something really important about what I think is essential for people to know about cooking: Sauces make your life easy and delicious. If you know how to make a few sauces, you can cook almost anything (vegetables, meat, fish, etc.) and make it more delicious by adding your choice of sauce. Here are a few of my favorites:

- Steak Diane pan sauce --> Onions, mushrooms, garlic, worcestershire, butter, dijon mustard, cognac, cream.

- Tikka Masala --> Onions, chili (your choice of spicy), ginger, garlic, chili powder, turmeric, garam masala, sugar, tomato puree, crushed tomatoes, mild yogurt

- Classic white --> butter, flower, milk... then add cheese if you want to make it really good

- Classic red --> onions, carrots, celery, tomato puree, crushed tomatoes, garlic, and really anything else you want... add some cream or yogurt to give it a little more richness... add some red wine if you want to make it bolder.

- White wine --> onions/mushrooms, butter, garlic, white wine, chicken stock

There are more, but I could make these 5 sauces different days of the week for every week of my life. Change them, add other things, omit other things, try different wines, different cheeses, different cook times, whatever. Put them on different meats, pastas, seafoods, vegetables, sandwiches, whatever. Always make sure you have a hunky basket of bread too because the best part of the meal will be after you're done and you use the bread to clean your plate of the sauce.

Exactly 2.5 Hours of Jacques Pepin

So... it only took 2.5 hours of Jacques PEPIN after my first ever "Mange" blog post to inspire me to write another one. No, this is not virgin-esque enthusiasm rearing its head in the form of an eager blogger... No, this is EXACTLY what happens to me daily (and apparently nightly). I was busy minding my business of finishing up my nightly emails, fresh off the inspiration of a newly-created blog, when I began to think about breakfast tomorrow morning. I've spent a ridiculous amount of money lately on eating out in Paris, so I quickly came to the conclusion that I wanted to make an in-house specialty. Would it be Gordon RAMSAY scrambled eggs with mushrooms and vined cherry tomatoes? My old friend Richard's Eggs Benny? Nope, I googled "french omelette preparation" to brush up on the technique and stumbled upon a quick video of Jacques PEPIN preparing a French omelette at the age of 75.

This guy is a beast. He cooks like I do, like only someone can who gets excited to beat an egg. He beats the shit out of the egg too. And then he pours it in the pan, shakes the pan like a maniac, carefully observing the edges of the cooking egg, and 45 seconds later produces an amazing omelette with no added color from improper cooking. Newsflash: If your omelettes have brown on them, the cook (or you) screwed it up.

Watching this guy cook at the age of 75 really proves to me that cooking is something that never gets old. People think it's so simple, and so mindless. But how could Jacques PEPIN grow up in a kitchen (his parents owned a restaurant), cook his whole life, master the art of cooking like few others, and continue to enjoy it well into his age of supposed retirement? Because cooking isn't simple, and it's not mindless. People who think that are lost to the craft of food preparation. To me, it's obvious that most people don't really "get" cooking. I'm just glad that I do... but I'm not glad that watching 75 year old men on my computer keeps me up until almost 3 in the morning.

12:07 a.m. 21-Oct-2011

The time I created the first of many Parisian-inspired food rantings. I know. It's been done before. But hopefully mine will be more interesting... and really, I don't care if it's not. I just want to have something to read later on when I carelessly forget my experience living in France.