Le mais frais

I had been bemoaning the lack of corn on the cob in Paris to a friend before we went to Sweden, but since we’ve been back it seems like corn is everywhere I turn.  I’ve seen it at the market, my friend mentioned that it was all over her market, and we received a few ears in our panier this past Friday.

I used our two ears of corn in a zucchini, corn and basil risotto and in a salad with the greens, tomatoes and the red pepper from our panier as well as chicken (cooked in this sauce), black beans, jalapeños (from Stockholm) and a chili-spiked cheese (also from Stockholm).  

Though I've found fresh jalapeños in London and Stockholm, I have yet to find any of the fresh chili peppers typically used in Mexican food (habañeros, jalapeños, poblanos, serranos, etc.) in Paris.  I also have been unable to find fresh tomatillos here and resisted the temptation of buying one of the dusty 7-euro cans of tomatillos that I saw in a shop one time. Needless to say, one of the reasons I am excited about our upcoming trip to Chicago is having access to ingredients that I've missed.  Until then, I’ll keep using the dried chiles that my sister gave me for my birthday and enjoying the fresh corn while I can find it.

Things I learned in Stockholm

People drink a lot of coffee and there are a lot of good coffee shops.

7-11 stores are everywhere.  They sell bus tickets, postage stamps and bulk candy.

7-11 on the street where we were staying

There really are Swedish fish candies in Sweden, but they are just called pastellfiskar (pastel fish).

It’s not the pickling of pickled herring that I object to, it’s the herring.

Temperature is relative.  People were dressed in shorts and tank tops in Stockholm’s 70-degree weather and in jeans and long-sleeved shirts in Paris’s 99-degree weather.

As delicious as lingonsylt (lingonberry jam) is, rårörda lingon (fresh lingonberries stirred with a little sugar) is even better.

Everyone speaks English beautifully.  I know about 100 words of Swedish, but the only ones I used were hej and tack (hello and thank you). On the other hand, J frequently spoke Swedish with people and I found it highly entertaining to see him speaking Swedish with people other than his family.

Stockholm (in pictures)

We were in Stockholm for a week and it is a gorgeous city of islands, so we ended up taking a lot of pictures.  I’ve tried to pull out a few of the pictures to show some of the places we visited and things we did on our vacation.

Södermalm (one of the islands)

Nystekt Strömming, a fried fish stand in Södermalm

Gamla Stan (the old town, another of the islands)

Kungliga Slottet (Stockholm Palace)

Vaktparaden (changing of the Royal Guard)

Central Stockholm

Skeppsholmen (another of the islands)

Kastellholmen (another of the islands) with a cruise ship in the background

Östermalm (the neighborhood where we stayed)

Stadshuset (Stockholm City Hall) on Kungsholmen (another of the islands)

Lunch at Blå Porten on Djurgården, an island with Gröna Lund (an amusement park), Skansen (a Colonial Williamsburg sort of place) and other parks and museums

Riddarholmen (another of the islands) 

 Fjäderholmarna (an island a short ferry ride from central Stockholm)

Celebratory aquavit at the smörgåsbord at the lovely Grand Hotel where J's parents treated us to a wonderful dinner in honor of J's father's birthday

Stockholm at night

La rentrée

In Paris, the return of people from their annual August holiday is referred to as la rentrée.  Like the rest of the city, we were on vacation last week and had our rentrée on Saturday.  We spent our morning enjoying one last cup of good Swedish coffee in crisp 65-degree weather before taking the impeccably clean and quick Arlanda Express from central Stockholm to the airport.  After making our way through the pleasant and efficient airport, we watched the Swedish landscape of lakes and pine forests fall away as our plane took off.

When we landed in France we were immediately hit by a wave of heat.  It was a steamy 99 degrees.  Bags in tow, we made our way to the platform of the train to Paris and settled in to wait.  I tried to buy a bottle of water only to have the vending machine take all of my change, refuse to give me any water, and pinch one of my fingertips so badly that I was not only hot and waterless but also dripping blood.  Luckily, sweating on the un-air-conditioned train for 45 minutes took my mind off the pain in my hand.  We had to transfer trains at the Gare de Nord (a huge train station in northern Paris) due to construction.  Fighting our way through the crowds in the station, we discovered that all of the down escalators were inexplicably out of order.  After awkwardly hauling our bags down the endless flights of stairs to the subway, we were subjected to dueling accordions and the smell of a crowded subway train filled with people who had been sweating all day.

The streets of Paris seemed so hot and gray and grubby and smelly after a week in cool, clean, uncrowded, pastel-colored Stockholm.  After coming home to discover our dishwasher was broken and our washer/dryer had mysteriously leaked all over the bathroom, we dragged ourselves out to dinner at a neighborhood café and settled in at an outdoor table.  As night fell over the city the temperature dropped to a more reasonable 90 degrees.  The buzz of people at the busy café washed over us while we enjoyed salads and cold rosé wine.  Sitting in the soft heat of the summer evening, Paris started to feel like home again.    

On vacation

I’ve always heard about how people in European countries will take the month of August off.  I’ve been in France or Italy on vacation during August in the past and noticed that things were closed here and there, but it was always just a restaurant or a bakery.  Now when I see things are closed it is my restaurant and my bakery, so it feels very different.  We were out of town at the end of July and when I went to faire mes courses (run errands) for the first time after we returned, it seemed like the whole world had closed.  My favorite fish shop, poultry shop, butcher, bakery, cheese shop, coffee shop, and wine shop are all closed until the end of the month.  I tried using the closures as an opportunity to try out new places in the neighborhood, but ended up spending a frustrating day or two visiting 4 different bakeries to find one that was open or stopping by 3 different fish shops only to end up settling for frozen fish from the grocery store because they were all closed.

I finally threw up my hands and gave up when I went to make a reservation for dinner at a place by our house.  This may have been poor planning, but we had invited some friends over for an apero (pre-dinner drink) of champagne and gougères with the intention of introducing them to our favorite neighborhood restaurant.  When I called to make a reservation the restaurant was closed.  After consulting a list of restaurant closures, I called our second favorite place within walking distance.  Also closed.  And the third favorite?  Totally booked up (I guess because of all of the closures).  Finally, I hit the jackpot with the fourth place that I tried calling for a reservation.  I guess the only silver lining is that now my French is good enough that calling up so many different restaurants wasn’t a problem.

Reblochon

On our first night in Paris (a Friday) we sat out on the balcony of our temporary apartment drinking wine and eating cheese and bread.  We decided to make it a tradition, and now most Fridays are wine, cheese, and bread night.  We both tend to pick the same sort of cheeses -- blue cheese for J and Brie, Camembert, or some sort of hard, nutty cheese like Comté for me.  I’ve started trying to pick some new cheeses for us to have on Fridays, especially since becoming friendly with the woman that works at my favorite fromagerie.  One of our new favorites is Reblochon, a raw cow’s milk cheese.

Reblochon is from the Savoy region of France.  Historically, the landowners in that region would tax the peasant farmers who worked the land according to the amount of milk produced by the farmers’ cows.  To reduce the amount they owed, the farmers would not fully milk the cows on the day when the landowners calculated the tax.  They would covertly finish milking the cows later, yielding richer milk that was used for making cheese.  The resulting cheese was called Reblochon because blocher was local slang for milking a cow and the cheese was the result of re-blocher or re-milking.  This story dates back to the 13th century, but Reblochon is still a rich, creamy and delicious cheese even when it is not part of a conspiracy to evade taxes!