Parisian Pitfalls

Paris dining is full of pitfalls. The guidebooks warn you, your best friend who just got back from a Provence tour with a quick weekend stop in Paris warns you, and even your distant college backpacking memories remind you: Paris is very pricey compared to the rest of France, it’s surprisingly easy to eat badly if you’re not careful, and Parisians are not necessarily the world’s most courteous or servile people. This isn’t a good thing or a bad thing, of course, it just…is.

I grew up in Paris, I can fully con Parisians into thinking I’m one of them—and still, during my short vacation here this past week, I’ve experienced some of those dining pitfalls. So, in the interest of helping others avoid the same mistakes that I’ve made this week, please find below a short list of the some of the eating and drinking experiences that can go terribly awry in this tough town.

French Women Eat Milk Fat

In the Department of Fatty and Caloric Foods the French Seem Magically to Metabolize and Yet Neither Get Fat Nor Die Young, I would have to add sweetened condensed milk. I know, jaws are dropping, the mind boggles: the French? Canned cloying milkstuff?

When you think sweetened condensed milk you picture little cans of that Eagle Brand goo that’s invariably called for in “dessert bars” and “no-bake pies”—those classic American assembly line desserts that usually include whipped topping and butterscotch chips, as well. Or, since the mainstreaming of dulce de leche (which is just caramelized sweetened condensed milk) in Haagen Dazs ice cream and Cheesecake Factory cafés—it’s now their fifth most-popular cheesecake—you might even think of gooey Latin American treats. Or you might just think of fudge, which can be made quite simply by nuking a package of chocolate chips with a can of the condensed stuff, stirring, and then proceeding to have a very excellent time.

The Golden Egg

Why does free food always taste better? In college, free food—generally mediocre, cold-upon-arrival pizza—was the required lure to get people to come to any meeting. As a journalist just arrived in New York, I made whole dinners of free food at promotional events and book parties, stalking trays of tuna tartare and stuffed mushrooms until I was full. I was 25 and these were exquisite meals. And even now, for some reason that is neither greed nor stinginess, but has more to do with a feeling of ceremony, a meal tends to taste particularly wonderful when someone treats you.

But there is another free-food ritual that tastes better than even a whole free meal: the amuse-bouche. An amuse-bouche is that complimentary hors d’oeuvre served before the first course, a surprise treat sent out by the chef. It’s allegedly to distract you from the wait before the appetizer, but really to impress you with his ingenuity. It must be something that even in a small quantity makes a memorable impact, that leaves you with a flash of flavor or richness in just one swallow. It’s a free thrill—always the best kind!

In Search of Fluffy White

I love frosting. Love frosting. Which—I know—in these days of cupcake mania, is pretty run of the mill. Every time I turn around there’s another new retro bakery peddling little cakes with a big dollop of pastel goo. But what I really love, specifically, is cheap frosting. I actually dislike real buttercream. I can’t stand the density of powdered sugar and butter icing (e.g. Magnolia Bakery’s), or the hardened-butter texture of a shiny—slimy! —buttercream frosting, the real kind made with sugar syrup and eggs (e.g. the Cupcake Café’s).

I admit it: I prefer fake frosting. Canned ready-to-spread frosting. And since I’m telling it all, what I especially enjoy is Betty Crocker’s Whipped Frosting in that brilliant artificial flavor General Mills has dubbed "Fluffy White." Who knew fluffy white had a taste? But it does, and it’s delicious.

Salade Macédoine

I was invited to go to Macedonia recently, but I realized that I had only the vaguest idea of where Macedonia is actually located on a map. I suspected that it was one of the many little countries that spun off from the former Yugoslavia, and I did recall some distant association with Alexander the Great. But the only immediate association I could make to Macedonia was…salad.

In Italian, a macedonia is a fruit salad, and in French, a salade macédoine is a vegetable salad. In fact, in France, it’s a classic institutional appetizer, served in the finest school cafeterias and consisting of cooked peas, carrots, green beans and turnips in a heavy mayonnaise dressing that looks like white sludge and, as I recall from my elementary school days in France, tastes just as good (here's a commercial version, minus the sludge).

So where the hell is Macedonia? And how it is that chopped carrots and peas and pears and peaches can all somehow claim to be Macedonian? It turns out Macedonia is actually wedged way down in Southeastern Europe between Serbia, Albania and Greece, that the national diet tends massively toward barbecued meat, and that there wasn’t a single Macedonian salad on any of the menus in the many restaurants I sampled there.

What I did find in Macedonia, however, is an unbelievable hodge-podge of ethnicities. The country that calls itself Macedonia today is actually populated by one quarter ethnic Albanians, two-thirds ethnic Macedonians, equal sprinklings of Serbs, Bulgarians and Roma, and a substantial serving of Turks. Add to that a seasoning of intense religious diversity—one-third Muslims, two-thirds Macedonian Orthodox, and a potent dash of Albanian Catholics—and suddenly you begin to understand why the term macédoine in diplomatic history is synonymous with “complicated mixture.” If, over its many centuries of ethnic conflict, Macedonia has come be known as the “tinderbox of the Balkans,” it’s because no amount of mayonnaise dressing could ever make the ethnic peas identify with the ethnic carrots, or make the green beans speak the turnips’ language.

So a Macedonian salad, in the end, is just a mixed salad. A salad with a diversity of similar ingredients—fruits, veggies, warring ethnicities, whatever. And it also turns out that the sludgy mayonnaise dressing part of the salade macédoine is just some French lunch-lady’s idea that everything tastes better with mayonnaise.

Below, a recipe for a seasonal macédoine of spring vegetables. Hold the mayo.

Introducing Renée Kaplan

I am pleased to welcome Renée Kaplan as a guest editor who will be contributing a series of guest posts to The Food Section.

Ms. Kaplan is a writer and television producer in New York. Her first novel, Shaking Her Assets (Berkley Trade), came out in May 2005, and her most recent writing appears in the just-released anthology Half/Life: Jewish Tales from Interfaith Homes (Soft Skull Press). She is currently a news producer for CNN, previously produced for “60 Minutes II,” and before working in television journalism was a writer and editor for the New York Observer.

Born in upstate New York, Ms. Kaplan grew up between Ithaca and Paris, France, which probably made her the only kid in midde school who knew more about Michelin stars than the teen ones. She says it wasn't good for her popularity, but it fostered a life-long passion for thinking, writing, and reading about food. In addition, as the daughter of an expert of French bread, she has been talking about the mouthfeel of crust and the alveolage of the crumb since her mother started her on solids.

Look for her first post -- on a curious French salad -- to appear later today.

The Rings of Saturn

The Ninth Ward neighborhood in New Orleans has been on the tip of many tongues over the course of the past two weeks. This area, also known as the Bywater, is the part of the city that has been under the most water since Katrina hit and the levee broke.  Just down-river from the French Quarter, this is an historical neighborhood that many famous residents have called home: trumpeter Kermit Ruffins, the musical Lastie family, poet and author Kalamu ya Salaam, and rock-and-roll legend Fats Domino, who was rescued from his house in the Ninth Ward just last week. But on the corner of Saint Claude Avenue and Clouet Street, there is another star in this neighborhood’s galaxy.

In Her Own Words

“Because, as I say again, [when you make a drink,] if you don’t put the love and tenderness in there with that, it’s not going to taste good.” – Floria Woodard

Originally from Mississippi, Floria Woodard headed to New Orleans seeking opportunity. She found it as server at The Court of Two Sisters (the first African-American server at that), but she eventually set her sights on the bar. Thirty-eight years later, Miss Flo is still behind that bar, serving cocktails to the locals and returning tourists who seek her out at this well-known French Quarter restaurant.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Miss Flo’s story resonates. Hers is the story of an African-American woman from Mississippi, who set out on her own to find a job and make a new life for herself. She ended up in New Orleans, and the service industry answered her call. The state she left—the state of Mississippi—is where I live today. It might also be the state that Miss Flo returned to in order to escape New Orleans and Katrina. We can only hope.

Basilica Casamento and The Patron Saint of Oysters

The city of New Orleans has long been compared to the Italian city of Venice. Both places were built on watery slabs, defying common sense, yet stimulating our imaginations. Still reeling from the storm, I am forced to think of New Orleans’ sister city and of the power of water meeting stone.

The Basilica San Marco is the jewel of Venice, but its arches and domes weigh heavily on the piazza, tons of marble and bronze slowly sinking into the canals. Inside the basilica, hundreds of years of floods and high tides have left their mark. Watery forces have pushed on these floors so regularly and for so long that you feel drunk just walking through the door, solid waves of marbled mosaic fooling your eyes and feet with each step. Perhaps the waves have tired of Venice, and they have finally come to push against New Orleans.

Waves of immigration have brought scores of Italians to the Crescent City and other parts of the South for generations, and New Orleans was where a good many of them decided to put down roots. The Casamento family was one of those families. In the early part of the twentieth century, Joe Casamento arrived in New Orleans and opened a restaurant on Magazine Street, putting his family name above the door. Serving fresh seafood and above all, fresh oysters, Mr. Casamento quickly established a reputation for serving some of the best seafood in town.

No Money, No Eggs

Each day as I walk out my front door, my gaze is forced upon a small painting that proclaims "NO MONEY, NO EGGS." Between the words is an amoebic blob of white paint, holding a round yellow center: a perfect egg, sunny-side up. The artist, seventy-one-year-old Alfred "Big Al" Taplet, is a native of New Orleans. Or was. The wrath that Hurricane Katrina wrought on the Crescent City has left behind so much heartbreak; I can only hope that Big Al is not among the many human casualties left in Katrina's wake. What’s certain, though, is while we mourn the lives of so many, we are also beginning to realize the cultural casualties washed away by the storm. For me, this one painting is a symbol of so much—so much that we are only beginning to let ourselves acknowledge.

As a documentarian, it is my job to seek people out and listen to their stories. As a documentarian of the foodways of the American South, it is my job to visit with the people of this region who grow, cook, and serve food and drink. Big Al's painting is a reminder of how food is so relevant to the culture of New Orleans—in art, in music, in daily life—and of the continued heartbreak the world will experience as these losses are laid bare. Of course, as the citizens of New Orleans try to find shelter across this great country, they are seeking shelter for their culture as well, bringing New Orleans to all of us. In this we can certainly celebrate. But for now, we are forced to consider the losses.

There is never any time like the present in the life of a documentarian; stories are everywhere, and they are always relevant, no matter what the time or place or circumstance. But how was I to know that the ten days I spent in New Orleans four months ago would ring with such consequence today. I went in search of beverages and bartenders, hot on the trail of the city's long history with the cocktail. But now, what has become of the man who made the best Sazerac in town? Or the woman who put everyone else’s Ramos Gin Fizz to shame (a drink which happens to be made using the white of an egg)? Right now, there is a displaced population of survivors without homes, without jobs, with no money and no eggs.

In honor of some of the people and places of New Orleans, The Food Section is featuring profiles of the bartenders and bar owners who were interviewed for the Southern Foodways Alliance's Bartenders of New Orleans Oral History Project.

MARTIN SAWYER, bartender
The Rib Room, Omni Royal Orleans Hotel
New Orleans, LA

With almost fifty years of bartending under his belt and thirty-four years working at the Rib Room alone, eighty-four-year-old Martin Sawyer has seen it all. He got his first job as a barback at the infamous 500 Club. A bartender friend recruited him for the job so Martin could help him make out drink orders, as Martin was one of the few young men in his circle of friends who could read. With the nickname "Professor," Martin studied up on cocktails and quickly became a fixture on the French Quarter bar scene. He had his picture taken with Louis Armstrong and served champagne to General De Gaul. With all that time tending bar, it is easy to believe that he would have had a few brushes with celebrity. What's hard to believe, though, is the number of cocktails this man has mixed over the years. With time, care, and a painstaking attention to detail, he has made mixing drinks a high art. All of these years later, Martin still makes his famous Mint Julep with the care and attention he did when he first mixed the drink almost five decades ago.

Each fall, the Southern Foodways Alliance (with support from the Fertel Foundation) honors an unsung hero or heroine, a foodways tradition bearer of note, with the Ruth Fertel Keeper of the Flame Award. The SFA pays homage in two ways: we commission a documentary film and we make a monetary contribution. Months before Hurricane Katrina made landfall, Martin Sawyer knew he was this year's recipient, and the documentary film about his life and work is now in post-production. While we are not aware of Mr. Sawyer's fate at present, our thoughts and prayers are with him and the countless others who are part of the service industry in New Orleans.

Find out how the Southern Foodways Alliance and other organizations are reaching out to service industry workers in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Many thanks to Josh Friedland for the invitation to contribute to The Food Section.

Amy Evans, acevans@olemiss.edu
Oral Historian, Southern Foodways Alliance
Oxford, Mississippi