Just the Tip

Over the weekend, a friend of ours invited us and another couple to his place in northern France. We don't get out of Paris nearly enough, so we jumped at the opportunity to be somewhere with wide open space, tons of greenery, and – hell to the yes – a barbecue grill. I'd promised the Gallic crew some real California barbecue, and we were poised to stuff their mouths with a huge portion of West Coast meat.

Extra-amateur food porn. We only had the iPhone camera
for the pix this time around. d'OH!

NOTE: That sound you just heard was half the population of Texas, Tennessee, Missouri, and the Carolinas collapsing at the thought of left coast "BBQ." And, yes, if you have a Dick Cheney-sized stick up your Texan ass, what we do in California isn't barbecue but "grilling," but to-may-to, to-mah-to, it's still freakin' barbecue as far as we're concerned. What y'all do is "smoking."

Backyard barbecue in France – from what we understand, living in a city that's got tight restriction on grills and very few back yards – is usually limited to grilling merguez and chipolata sausages that are then thrown into a baguette sliced like a Subway sandwich. On the other side of the token, if you get anything "barbecue" in a restaurant, it's usually just whatever meat slathered in something masquerading as "barbecue sauce." The only exception we've found was when we were treated to a massive post-wedding-day grilling of lamb over wood coals near Toulouse. That said, doing "grillades au feu de bois" is not uncommon (though it's almost certainly never marinated or rubbed), but it doesn't seem to ingrain the same ritual or mythical status that a barbecue does in the US. Standing around the fire, swigging beers, poking at the coals... You know, man stuff.

So back to importing California to France... No one knows what the hell a tri-tip is in France. In fact, very few people know what a tri-tip is beyond the West Coast of the US. This triangular cut of bottom sirloin was once dirt cheap (I used to buy entire 3-4 lb. tri-tips for $3-4 when I was in college) but due to increasing popularity has risen stratospherically in price. Especially because there are only two pieces per beast. Some French know this, and thus it's called the "aiguillette baronne" (the baron's tip) whose noble name screams "expensive and rarely ordered." Luckily we have a very good butcher who knew exactly what we were talking about when we placed an advance order for the cut... at €30/kilo.

An entire tri-tip (which, unless you insist upon cutting it into steaks, is the only way to go) typically weights 1.5 to 2 kilos. Our butcher's Salers cow, a breed of longhorn from the Cantal region of France, yielded a 1.5'er that, unfortunately, went down to 1.39 kilos after he kindly trimmed off the fat. I was a bit alarmed by this, as I normally prefer to leave the layer of fat on top as I grill a tri-tip to seal in moisture, but as it often goes with Salers beef, it's one moist, juicy piece of cattle. In fact, Salers is the only European breed that even when grass-fed produces beautifully marbleized flesh.)

As for the preparation of the meat, a proper Santa Maria tri-tip (where this form of BBQ originated), requires nothing more than a healthy rub of salt, pepper, and garlic powder. The magic of Santa Maria tri-tip comes from the wood smoke penetrating the meat to give it a distinct flavor.  The trouble is I knew we'd only have access to "regular" charcoal. So we opted to go the other way, the marinated tri-tip.

There's no rule for marinating a tri-tip other than your own. Mine is to marinate overnight, lest the marinade contain a very softening agent like papaya, in which case I wouldn't marinate for more than a couple of hours unless you like your meat turn to mush in your mouth. Otherwise, you can do what you want with it. We went with a "standard" marinade of soy sauce, sugar, garlic, lemon juice and booze and let it rest in the fridge overnight.

Stupid iPhone 3GS camera... at least
it picked up on the lovely pink flesh.

But you know us, we can't leave well-enough alone. I got up early before we had to catch our morning train from Gare du Nord and drained every drop out of my meat. Then I took the tri-tip out of the marinade. After patting it dry, I rubbed it in ground Penja black pepper and dried elephant garlic I'd grated in a pestle and mortar. No need for salt - the bad boy had already soaked up the soy. "What are you doing?" Alannah asked. "Doubling up," I told her.  The objective was to have the marinade for flavor, but to have a nice Santa Maria-style crust.

Come grilling time – 15 minutes on either side for medium, followed by 10 minutes to "rest" before slicing – the marinated-then-dry-rubbed bastard tri-tip looked perfect. And the gustatory result? Well, let's just say we've got some converts who'll be begging for more California meat in their mouths in the near future. In fact, one of the guys is ready to talk to his butcher about aiguillette baronne tri-tip for the rest of his cookouts this summer.

One thing we've still got to work on, though, is ritual. The sun hid behind the clouds so we immediately took refuge inside, sipping cocktails and then eating the tri-tip off of proper serving plates with cutlery and vegetables on the side. As veteran San Francisco barbecuers, we can say as charming as this all is, the whole attraction of barbecue is gathering around to the pit/kettle/flame, drinking cold ones, poking at the coals... rain/fog/windchill or shine.

We've got our work cut out for us.

Le Fooding Hype + Video: ...Like a Horse

This last week, Paris foodies have been abuzz about La Semaine du Fooding, one of Le Fooding's events throughout the year that get people to line up, shell out a few euro for a fabulous charity, and indulge in tiny dégustation portions of foods from France's hottest up-and-comers, talents worthy of discovery, and – of course – massive corporate sponsors like Nespresso and S. Pellegrino and the like. Names that normally make us cringe, but when it's all for charity, it helps to have heavy hitters.

Unlike the mass clusterfuck (not the good kind) that was the Paris edition of Le Grand Fooding d'Eté at the sprawling Domaine St-Cloud last summer, which was overcrowded, overhyped and sported an incredibly dull "barbecue" theme, this winter edition seemed much more promising: A limited guest-list (each night's allotment of spots disappeared within minutes), a funky-cool atmosphere at the long-decommissioned swimming complex of la Piscine Molitor, and the titillating theme of "Les Incorrects."

The atmosphere and setting were perfect for an event made for noshing on allegedly "politically incorrect" (or perhaps out of fashion) foods. La Piscine Molitor, in its cavernous urban decay and graffiti-covered surfaces, felt more like an underground San Francisco warehouse party in the mid-90's than some yuppified foodie event – only without DJs or mobs of sweaty kids swallowing pills and each other's tongues. We already felt at home.

The agenda for the night of forbidden foods was as follows: Stinky cheeses (depicted in the program as able to attract flies) unusually paired with Veuve Clicquot champagne; Sardinian chef Tonina Simbula's taboo horse meat dishes; a random creation by a "masked chef" too ashamed for his reputation to be using the ingredient du jour; and cookbook maven Tish Deseine abusing our palates with the now-suspect French staple known as... butter.

Naturally, an event like this brings out not just the food-crazies, but the crazies as well. While no one was throwing paint bombs at us going in (security was tighter than a side-hugger's unsullied slit) the Fondation Brigitte Bardot had a truck outside condemning horse meat. For those unfamiliar with the FBB, it's a more vainglorious version of PETA run by its namesake, either because Ms. Bardot wants all the attention to herself, or because even PETA doesn't want to be associated with a washed up racist who wouldn't look good in their naked protests.

Enough chatter, however, how about some dark, grainy video action?

NOTE: Some pro photog came up and snapped photos of us while I was eating the horse meat. Would love to know if we ended up on some web site or newspaper...

While it was certainly fun to go, we couldn't really reconcile the theme of "Les Incorrects" with what we actually ate.

Not So Stinky Cheese
The stinky cheeses were, of course, of good quality. They just really weren't all that stinky, certainly not enough to draw flies. And while pairing them with champagne may be unusual for the stodgy French connoisseur accustomed only to red wine with a heady cheese, we crazy Californians have been doing all sorts of crazy shit to our cheese boards for years. The only unsettling part of it was being served Veuve Clicquot, which is a fine champagne, but against my just-instated personal boycott of LVMH group products. (Here's why you should boycott the greedy conglomerate and help destroy their cloistered business world.)

Can Horse Meat Be Beat?
Chef Simbula's horse dishes were good. Very good. It was Alannah's first time, but she wasn't put off by the idea of it at all, and she loves animals even more than I do. Frankly, it's nothing special - just very lean, dark and at the same time very tender, not unlike ostrich. Basically it's a healthy red meat. But all the flavor, both in carpaccio and steak form, came from the accompanying garnish. Neither of us would go out of the way to eat a horse dish, but to be frank, nothing would morally stop us.

While we both appreciate the efforts of animal rights activists around the world, we find it hypocritical of anyone who can condemn one type of meat over another if extinction/over-hunting isn't the issue. Is a cow no more cute and worthy of petting than a horse? Is a pig not smarter than most animals we keep as pets? All animals are to be cherished and treated with respect. So perhaps all the activists out there should be more concerned about the horrendous conditions most of our food animals suffer due to our industrialized farming, rather than what animal, specifically, winds up on our plates.

But I digress...

Stay Masked, Please
On to our next station: The masked chef. We didn't bother sticking around for the unmasking, because quite frankly, we didn't want to be disappointed in yet another glammy Parisian chef, so we're better off not knowing where this guy cooks. In a land where food is sport, there's a lot of hype, in turn meaning a lot of disappointment. (Hence why we cook so much for ourselves!)

And this ill-conceived bit of Asian fusion served up to us was not helping matters.

The "forbidden" ingredient on this Friday night was hot dogs. Specifically, Knacki brand hot dogs, found in hypermarkets, supermarkets and mini-marts all over France. While we may be Slow Food aficionados, we have nothing against the humble hot dog, and have in fact gobbled many a wiener ourselves. One of our favorite non-traditional hot dog treatments is our friend Arnold's, well, traditional Filipino spaghetti which leverages the hot dog's inherent saltiness with tangy and sweet. (Of course, we call it Japanese spaghetti.)

Although our masked chef did go for some of the sucré-salé combination, it was a hell of a lot more salty than anything. The hot dogs were steamed in bamboo steamers atop woks (pointless gimmickery, really), blended coarsely in food processors, mixed with mint, nuoc nam (fish sauce), peanuts, scallions and half the garnish menu of a Thai restaurant, served over a banana leaf and topped with fried garlic. It was basically Thai/Laotian larb, only with hot dog in place of the usual meat (which can be pork, chicken, beef... anything.) We called it "WTF is this mess of salt?"

Between the high salt content from the hot dogs, fish sauce, and fried garlic, it seemed more like the un-PC ingredient we were having was salt, with French health minister Roselyn Bachelot wagging one of her ironically sausage-like fingers at us for exceeding the daily guideline.

There's nothing creative about substituting hot dogs for meat in an Asian dish that is typically made from any meat at hand. No transformation. No flavor sensation. (Unless sucking on a salt lick is exciting to you.) And the upsetting part of all this is that it's really indicative of what passes for fashionable food in Paris these days. It's the second horrendous bit of Asian fusion I've wanted to snowball back into the mouth of the chef this week (Alannah was luckily spared of the other one), a horrendous virus spreading amongst all the wannabes who try to do it simply because Joël Robuchon, William Ledeuil and the like have parlayed it into grand success. But what these masters do is take influence and inspiration from Asian cuisine, not ape it or simply substitute Western ingredients here and there. Someone needs to cockpunch the majority of Parisians and remind them that trendy does not constitute good.

End rant.

More Butter, Please
Somewhat underwhelmed at this point, we weren't expecting much from the fourth "course," the promised butter overdose for dessert. We didn't see Irish-cum-Parisian cookbook star Trish Deseine when we got to the station (her Twitter status said she was on her way), which is a shame because she is the only one we wanted to congratulate for living up to the media hype. (There was a man at the station and I can't recall the name on his chef's whites, but I did give him my compliments...)

At any rate, whomever made it, the Kouign Amman (I have no idea how to pronounce Breton words, sorry) was orgasmic. All thanks to the butter. But as Alannah kept raving about it, it was buttery without being heavy. Light as a feather, yet rich as can be. At one point she called it "butter cotton candy." I wouldn't go that far, because it did have enough heft to it to be substantial and satisfying (candyfloss is too evanescent for my tastes) but she was on to something... A contradictory sensation that was, in fact, a revelation.

That was the shocking, cool, learn-something-new-every-day part. For us, cooking with disproportionate amounts of butter is old hat. But to make what seems like a half kilo of butter weigh in at only a few grams... That's a trick we'd love to turn.

Despite having had the best-for-last surprise, and the satisfaction of knowing that - good or bad - we helped out a very worthy charity, I can't help but feel more and more ambivalent toward Le Fooding. Besides the fact that their web site is a largely unusable, Flash-intro-with-no-non-Flash-skip-button piece of crap, their events have been nowhere near the level of hype they generate. (This could be dead wrong, though - the recent New York edition sounded fabulous by all accounts.) While the word is an amalgamation of "food" and "feeling," there's just no feeling to it. The organization has an interesting mission, but it seems more like it's in the trend business (emphasis on the business) than in showcasing groundbreaking food and its purveyors.

Of course, being gluttons for punishment, we'll be back at the next event (if they let us in), and hope that Le Fooding can refocus on its mission, instead of being just another Parisian hype machine.

Video: Nice n' Slow

If you've been looking at our stuff regularly, you'll notice that we tend not to use many prepared foods in our cooking, and we tend to prefer stuff from our local markets. The occasional canned tomato might make an appearance, and yeah, a lot of our seasonings – particularly more exotic ones – come from bottles procured at Asian markets and whatnot. While not entirely outside of our comfort zone, we try to avoid it whenever possible. After all, this is all about DIY.

We've taken our commitment to doing things the right way by joining Slow Food, the movement made to counter our hideously spreading fast food culture and its effects.

We did so by going to the EuroGusto expo in Tours, France, to sign up in person. And eat and drink everything in sight.

Held every two years, EuroGusto is a chance for purveyors of Slow Food to get together and show off their stuff to food professionals and enthusiasts alike. As the video attests, we're not the classy pros and industry deciders these events are designed to attract... But the mass-consuming ruffians they're trying to convert.

Click the video above to go to YouTube and watch in HD

If anything, Omid's drunken, bloated face is living proof that being actively concerned about well-sourced, responsibly grown food won't make you some frail little hippie. Slow Food isn't about militant vegetarianism (look how much swine was consumed!) nor is it about being a hardcore locavore (the event covers all of Europe). It's about eating well, but not ignoring the fact that the choices we make affect the whole world. Now that's something anyone can get behind.

Brown Town Three-Way

This is our first bilingual post, based upon a little challenge I threw out on Twitter the other day. You see, ever since Alannah and I moved to France, I can count on one hand how many good brownies we've had: None.

Ceci est notre premier billet bilingue, basé sur un petit defi j'ai lancé sur Twitter il y a quelques jours. Depuis que nous avons démenagé à France, je peux compter sur mes doigts exactement combien de bonne brownie on a mangé : Aucun.

When we arrived, a fellow American transplant at work told me at lunch never to order the brownie. "Here?" I asked, referring to the restaurant. "Anywhere in France," he replied. Ouch!

Lorsque nous sommes arrivés, un collegue aussi muté des États-Unis m'a dit pendant le déjeuner de ne jamais commander une brownie. "Ici ?" je lui ai demandé, au sujet du resto. "Non," il m'a dit. "Nulle part en France." Ai !

He was right, though. Nearly two years later, there's not a good brownie to be found. So imagine my excitement when I saw this tweet announcing that a French person was sharing her recipe for real brownies! Not that I needed such a recipe, but I was excited to see that the French have finally figured out how to make brownies.

Mais il a eu raison. Presque deux ans plus tard, je n'ai jamais trouvé de bon brownie. Donc imaginez mon excitation quand j'ai vu ce tweet, disant qu'une française partage sa recette du vraie brownie! Bah oui, je n'ai pas besoin d'une recette, mais j'étais ravi à voir que les français ont enfin appris comment faire la brownie.

I clicked the link and... Dammit! There's baking powder in there! That's a cake! If there's one hard and fast rule about brownies, it's that they don't contain any leavening.

J'ai cliqué le lien et ... Putain ! Il y a de la levure ! C'est un gâteau ! S'il y a un seul règle pour faire la brownie, c'est qu'elles ne contient pas de levure.

I know the French know what they're doing when they bake. They are undeniably the best bakers in the world. This is because they are steeped in tradition and are not keen on bending rules. And that's the problem. The brownie was born of a mistake. Someone forgot to put in the baking powder when making a chocolate cake and voila! There's your brownie.

Je sais que les français savent bien qu'est-ce qu'ils font avec un four. Ils sont sans doute les meilleurs pâtisseurs du monde - c'est incontournable - parce qu'ils sont trempés dans la tradition et ils ne sont pas accoutumés à casser les règles. Et ça c'est le problème. La brownie était née d'une betisse. Quelqu'un a oublié de mettre de la levure dans la pâte d'un gâteau au chocolat, et voila ! La brownie !

@ParisLovesMe said that I, then, should give her a recipe. And I said I'd make some this weekend and even take pictures. The only trouble is... I don't bake, and I rarely use recipes.

@ParisLovesMe m'a dit, donc, que je doit lui donner une recette. Et j'ai dit que je vais faire des brownies ce week-end, et je même prendrais des photos. Le seul problème est ... Je ne fais pas la pâtisserie, et j'utilise rarement les recettes.

So I turned to a couple of my go-to cooks for inspiration: Alton Brown for his scientific, purist approach to American classics, and Thomas Keller for his refined technique. Both offer what I would call an "ultimate" brownie recipe, so I would take the best of both and create my even more ultimate recipe. The figures below are extrapolated for use with an 8.5" round cake pan (because that's what Alannah brought from the US), from Brown and Keller's original recipes for 8" and 9" square cake pans, respectively.

Alors, j'ai cherché l'inspiration de deux cuisiniers : Alton Brown pour sa méthode américaine puriste et scientifique et Thomas Keller pour sa technique raffinée. Les deux proposent ce que j'appelle les recettes "ultimes", et je combinerais toutes les deux dans notre propre recette plus ultime. Les chiffres ci-dessous ont été extrapolés pour utiliser un moule de gateau rond de 8.5"/22cm (car c'est ce qu'Alannah a apporté des USA), contre les recettes originales de Brown et Keller pour les moules carrés de 8"/20cm et 9"/20cm respectivement.

	Brown	Keller	Tavallai
eggs/oeufs	215g	125g	170g
sugar/sucre en poudre	190g	260g	150g
brown sugar/ sucre foncé	130g	–	140g
butter/beurre	200g	240g	220g
cocoa powder/ cacao en poudre	125g	80g	100g
chocolate/chocolate (60% cacao)	–	120g	100g
vanilla extract/ extrait de vanille	6.5g	1.5g	4.5g
flour/farine	70g	75g	70g
salt/sel	2.5g	4g	3g
cooking/cuisson	45 min @ 300ºF/ 150ºC/th. 5	40-45 min @ 350ºF/ 180ºC/th. 6	40 min @ 325ºF/ 160ºC/th. 5.5

All three recipes ways require that you beat the hell out of the eggs and fully integrate with the sugar until creamy.	Toutes les trois recettes demandent que vous fouttez les oeufs vigoureusement, et les integrer compètement avec le sucre, jusqu'à il soit crémeux.
Alton Brown's recipe is incredibly simple: Melt the butter and mix in with all of the wet ingredients. Sift together all the dry ingredients, then fold in all of the wet.	La recette d'Alton Brown est incroyablement simple : Fondez le beurre et mélangez-le avec les autres ingrédients humides. Tamisez ensemble les ingrédients secs, puis ajoutez tous les humides.
Thomas Keller's approach calls for melting half the butter, then pouring the melted butter over the solid butter and working it into a mostly consistent, creamy mixture, with lumps of solid butter throughout. The butter mixture is then added - alternating with the sifted dry ingredients - into the egg/sugar/vanilla bowl. Chopped up chocolate chunks are added at the very end.	La méthode de Thomas Keller exige que vous fondez la moitié du beurre, et mélangez-le avec le beurre solide à faire une crème assez consistent, mais avec des petites morceaux de beurre partout. Le mélange est puis ajouté - alterné avec les ingrédients secs - dedans le bol des oeufs/sucre/vanille. Le chocolat - haché en morceaux - est ajouté à la fin.
For the Tavallai version, we went with Keller's more professional technique of folding dry goods and butter into the egg/sugar/vanila mixture. However, I used a whisk to cream the melted and solid butter together - almost whipped - for a smoother butter that marbled into the bowl. Again, the chocolate chunks are added at the end.	Pour la version Tavallai, nous avons suivi la technique plus professionelle de Keller, en mettre les ingrédients secs alterné avec le beurre dans le melange oeuf/sucre/vanille. Cependent, j'ai fouetté le beurre fondu et le beurre solide, comme une crème presque montée, pour un effet marbré dans le bol. Encore, les morceaux du chocolat sont ajoutés à la fin.

As expected with its cocoa-heavy recipe, the Brown version came out very dark, and was difficult to set in the pan because of its concrete-like thickness. The Keller batter was much more fluid, and in every step of the way, much lighter in color. Our version was exactly in the middle.

Comme prévu avec sa recette pleine du cacao, la version Brown était très foncée, et c'était un peu dificile à mettre carrement dans le moule à cause de son épaisseur bétonesque. La pâte lisse Keller était bien plus fluide, et à chaque etape, plus claire en couleur. Notre version restait precisement au milieu.

After cooking, the Brown version was expectedly dark and dense, the Keller version lighter in both color and consistency with a beautiful craquelure, and ours again in between with a mild craquelure but a beautiful two-tone coloring. The chocolate chunks remain solid and visible.

Après la cuisson, la version Brown était foncée et dense comme prevue, la version Keller plus légère et plus claire avec une belle craquelure, et le nôtre encore au milieu avec un effet craquelure bien plus doux, mais avec un effet marbré. Les morceaux de chocolat restent solides et visibles.

I "fileted" each brownie round, and we filed the rest into plastic tubs with labels. This way, we can share each kind of brownie with our friends this week to get their opinions. Don't you wish you were in Paris?

J'ai fait des "filets" avec chaque rond de brownie, et puis nous avoins classé les restes dans des boites en plastique avec des étiquettes. Comme ça, nous pouvons partager chaque genre de brownie avec nos amis cette semaine pour prendre leurs avis. Souhaitez-vous que vous étiez sur Paris ?

For the tasting, we had all three of the brownies presented in each of the ways typical of the respective chef. The Alton Brownies plain, the Thomas Keller brownies dusted with powdered sugar as they are at his Ad Hoc restaurant (and in the Ad Hoc at Home cookbook) and ours with Alannah's trademark dark chocolate ganache, which has already been titillating Parisians with its few public appearances... A total of nine different brownies!

Pour la dégustation nous avons présenté tous les trois recettes à la façon de son chef respectif. Les Alton Brownies nature, les brownies Thomas Keller époussetées du sucre glace comme servie à son resto Ad Hoc (et dans son bouquin Ad Hoc at Home) et le nôtre avec sa fameuse ganache au chocolat noir, qui a déjà titillé plein des parisiens pendant quelques apparitions au public ... un total de neuf brownies différentes !

The Alton Brownies were a dense chocolate bomb. Like having your mouth raped by a giant chocolate wang... Only you can't rape the willing. Delicious, but overwhelming.

Les Alton Brownies étaient une bombe de chocolat. Comme faire violer ta bouche par une grosse bite à chocolat ... Seulement c'est impossile de violer les disposés. Delicieux, mais saissisants.

Keller's brownies are near perfect, as you'd expect from a 3-Michelin starred chef, reminiscent of the amazing chocolate Bouchon from his bakery of the same name. However, Alannah found the powdered sugar to simply get in the way of the chocolate, and we both thought the chocolate chunks were a bit too much. Otherwise, the texture is perfection.

Les brownies de Keller sont presque parfaites, comme prevu pour un chef étoilé (3x), réminiscent de son Bouchon de chocolat de sa boulangerie-pâtisserie éponyme. Cependant Alannah a trouvé le sucre glace interférant du goût de chocolat, et nous avons pensé que les morceaux de chocolat étaient un peux trop. Autrement, la texture est la perfection.

And our version? Let's say this is the first and only time that you will hear of Tavallai trumping Keller. Our recipe truly combines the best of both, delivering the dark chocolate punch of Alton Brown's recipe, and nearly matching the excellent texture of the Thomas Keller recipe. And Alannah's ganache just puts it over the top, though it's a wholly unnecessary luxury. The flavor and level of chocolate are perfect, and a dozen grams of tweaking the butter (more) and brown sugar (less) should yield the velvety texture of the Keller brownies.

Et notre version ? Disons que c'est la première et seule fois que vous entendez que Tavallai a battu Keller. Notre recette combine le meilleur des deux autres recettes, livrant le coup de chocolat de la version Brown, et presque appariant l'excellente texture de la recette Thomas Keller. Et la ganache d'Alannah est vraiement extra, mais c'est un luxe complètement inutile. Le goût et le niveau de chocolat sont parfait, et un dizaine de grams de bidouille du beurre (plus) et sucre foncé (moins) devrait rapporter la texture veloutée des brownies Keller.