I never knew an omelette could be like this. The middle arrived soft and gooey, somehow underdone yet perfectly done. Cheesey, tiny strands, of simply, fromage. I have no French so I couldn’t figure out exactly the type of cheese, but I will tell you that the French basic cheese cannot compare to our baseline cheese: American.
Cafe du Rililoux, Paris
As I stood in the butcher shop, or macelleria, in San Cassiano, Italy, staring at the meats hanging along the wall and what looked like a family working behind the counter, I wondered, why is the food here so good?
Back in America, I live in a place where the ground is fertile. Things can grow. It’s Nebraska for goodness sakes. If you drive through the state, you will be tired of corn after the fourth hour of looking at the continuous rows. You also might be nauseous from the smell of the cattle feedlots as you drive through Ogalalla, NE. The food tastes different in Europe. The yogurt is better. The cheese is better. The meat is better. What is different about the land on which the cows graze and the vegetables grow?
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I just returned from 10 days in Paris and Brittany, France, where my girlfriend and I had a highly delicious time combining refined French cuisine with old-fashioned American overindulgence. They may say French women don’t get fat, but Americans on vacation in France most decidedly do. I mean, there’s a cheese course option at every meal. What can you do?
While desserts aren’t generally my favorite, it was food in that category that we found the most to write home about.
There were plenty of traditional sweets options at Mathray and Robert’s Pain de Sucre in the Marais, but we were most intrigued by their nouveau marshmallows, heavily infused with flavors like saffron (left) and whiskey (right).
Their classic macaroons also have a new school twist, with flavors like cool mint, salted caramel, and passion fruit-chocolate.
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That cartoon light bulb sometimes appears over my head when I eat certain things; food is strongly connected with my memories. Ask me anything about high school calculus and I will probably stare at you blankly. But let me eat my way through Little Italy in NYC to find that amazing, hole-in-the-wall joint where I had that lasagna on our high school trip to the city, and I am sure I could tell you (or I would at least have fun looking for it).
Most of my memories of eating studying around Europe are connected with food. It was not only the food itself, but what was happening around us, the weather, how we were feeling, the people we were with, whether we were upset or happy or sick or drunk. Cantaloupe gelato in Bergamo, Italy. Proscuitto wrapped melon in Venice. And I can’t forget the bus ride out of Venice and the urgency with which I asked the bus driver to stop at the next exit. Too much vino and partying the night before? Of course not. I just needed some air. Ah-em.
I remember the potato soup and “mean green bean salad” (as I called it) that I cooked at a friend’s apartment while her French host parents were on vacation. American girls shopping for ingredients and cooking in a French kitchen. Yep, dream. What I learned in school that day? I couldn’t tell you. But every time I make potato soup, I think about that French apartment. It’s a memory so clear, it was like it happened yesterday.
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Crêpes will always be one of my everlasting French food memories. I had been addicted to stopping at the Strasbourg Marché de Noël after school to get a crêpe filled with Nutella and some vin chaud. To be sure, it’s quite difficult to avoid the Christmas market as it has taken over the entire city of Strasbourg in November and December since the year 1570 with miles of gifts, drinks, and gosh darn delicious food. Um, French women don’t get fat, right?
Despite stuffing crêpes, eclairs, croissants, chocolates, and cream sauces into my face (stopping just short of bathing in butter), I somehow returned home to America from my studies abroad lighter than when I had left. Think about that for a moment.
Given all of the crêpe gorging studying that I had done in France, I thought I would be as qualified as anyone to review a crêpe pan.
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Image Courtesy of Nestor Cerami
We couldn’t let soccer’s 2010 FIFA World Cup go by without throwing in our two cents — which as you might expect, has less to do with our feet than with our mouths. So while serious sports fans spend this week debating which squads got the crap draw and which teams are most likely to make the second round, foodies can put all that aside and take a look at our 2010 World Cup Food and Drink Rankings, in which we’ve ranked the 32 participating nations from worst to best, based not on soccer skills but on the appeal of each country’s most iconic dish.
For the record, I offer no apologies for the dishes or the order in which they are ranked—I had many discussions with my international friends when researching these and they have disagreed with me on many—for that, you can leave your opinions in the comments.
Usually when there is a petition on Facebook in support of something, you know it’s a desperate plea, and Vegemite on Toast is no exception. This isn’t one of those love-it-or-hate-it kind of foods, this is simply a hate it kind of food. Yes, there are nearly 111,000 facebook users on the record as supporting it, but I’m pretty sure that’s roughly the population of Australia, right? Let’s hope for their sake that the Aussie lads find something better to chow on before their matches in South Africa.
Factoid: the current coach of the Ivory Coast team is former England coach Sven-Goran Eriksson. I’m sure old Sven has some tricks up his sleeves planned for the field, but you’ve got to admire the Ivory Coast’s cooking tricks, too. Kedjenou, like many other West African dishes, starts with some tough old chickens and basically cooks the shit out of them ’til they’re edible. It may not be the quickest way to make a meal taste good, but it sure as hell beats Vegemite.
I task you with something — Google “Slovenia” and “food.” Whatever the result is it’ll surely include buckwheat. Buckwheat, buckwheat and more buckwheat. Could you be any more boring, Slovenian cooks? If you must have a Slovenian soccer dish, I sifted through the ES archives and stumbled upon this tasty dish, vegetarian too — Wilted Greens with Buckwheat Noodles (and an egg).
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