Now that the weather in Paris has returned to what I've been told is normal fall weather, ie., cool, gray, and always a chance of showers, I have returned to the kitchen. As most of you know, my "furnished" apartment here has everything except an oven (and a dishwasher, garbage disposal, full size fridge, bathtub and room to stand in the kitchen or shower), but the only thing I'm really troubled by is the lack of oven given my love for cooking. When I sounded disappointed to my new landlady about not having an oven, she said innocently, "What do you need an oven for?" To my example of roast chicken, she said the French make the best roast chicken, so don't even try and compete.
I'd been told by many about the joys of Dutch Oven cooking, but I didn't bring one with me, though I had a list of places in Paris where you can buy good French products at discounted prices. So after french class one day, equipped with some research and the words, "Creuset," and "casserole," I ventured into the cooking stores around Les Halles. Some of the prices and displays were over the top, but then I found her, and ok, I found a man who could speak decent English because I was pretty tapped out after my 2 words. She's a lovely oval, red, 5 quart Creuset Dutch Oven, and I couldn't be happier. It was love at first sight with a great price to match, so I took her home, and thank goodness she fit in the basket of my velib basket as that would have been a trying walk otherwise.
This week in my Cordon Bleu French vino class, we got to dive into Burgundy, which surprisingly only constitutes 6% of the French winemaking area, and 1% worldwide. You have your 3 Cotes, with the top 2 being Cote de Nuit and Cote de Beaune. Cote Challonais is the runner up, but then you also have Chablis in the north and Maconnais in the south. The vineyards are pretty spread out across a large area of land, and I'm looking forward to visiting later this month.
Grand Cru is the top dog label to have on your wine and only 3% of wine from this area get this mark of designation, and you will pay for it. The Grand Cru mark has become so competitive that to this day, there are still arranged marriages happening between cousins to keep parcels of land in the family. The teacher also joked that this is also why you'll see some crazy looking people down there because of the in breeding.
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