I’m excited to announce that this blog has moved to a bigger, better site that celebrates all things French. At the new Frenchophile.com I’ll be posting about French culture, travel, food, wine, people, fashion, books and much more. I hope you’ll join us tout de suite!

~Darla

But since then I’ve had second thoughts.  Paris is making it more difficult for tourists renting apartments in the city—Paris officials want these apartments available for Parisians to rent year round.  According to an article in The New York Times, to legally offer short-term rentals, owners would need to have their residential properties reclassified as commercial sites, a complicated process that involves finding a commercial property in the same neighborhood that can be transformed into residential use.

“It isn’t difficult; it is impossible,” said Fabrice Luzu, a notary who has helped many international clients invest in city real estate. “The owner must apply for a special permit and there is very little chance he would obtain it.”
Without such a permit, any apartment classified as residential in a French city of more than 200,000 must be offered with a minimum one-year lease. The law, passed in 2005, has some exceptions for student housing.

I’m looking for a low stress answer to my Paris vacation and becoming entangled in the Paris apartment rental laws is not in the picture for me.  After investigating hotels on the Ile Saint Louis I found what seems to be a perfect match.  And the bonus of staying in a hotel is air conditioning, an elevator, car service from the airport and complimentary breakfast.

So as much as I’ll miss my Paris pied a terre, I’m looking forward to my pampered month in Paris at a hotel.

Padlock on Pont des Arts

NoLo and I were taking a cruise on the Seine, admiring the architecture along the banks when we came to the Pont des Arts and our guide pointed out hundreds of padlocks on the bridge. Lovers carve their initials on the padlocks and attach them to the side of the bridge, throwing the key in the Seine. Romantic! (The skeptic in me wondered, if you break up do you have a spare key to take down the lock or do you scratch out the old initials?)

Lovers on a Park Bench

Paris is synonymous with romance. The architectural beauty of the city, the park benches, the gardens and museums all inspire the mood for love. As I walked through the Jardin du Luxembourg one Sunday afternoon I passed lovers on a park bench passionately necking. How cute, I thought, a young couple in love—but as I approached I saw that these were not amorous youngsters but a gray-haired couple.

Rodin's The Kiss

Passion is unleashed in Paris’s museums where couples gaze dreamily at the cherubic paintings and nude sculptures. At the Rodin Museum, the sensuality and erotic nature of sculptures like The Lovers or The Kiss inspire imitators. (For an encore, watch the story of Rodin’s torrid love affair with Camille Claudel sold on DVD in the gift shop. Spoiler alert—downer ending.)

Of course, a fabulous meal with wine is romantic—and easy to come by in Paris. Sitting at a café along the Seine listening to an accordion player is romantic. A picnic in Les Tuileries is romantic. But to me the most romantic thing to do in Paris is to walk somewhere, anywhere, holding NoLo’s hand.

Pepe Le Pew

We were standing on Pont Marie, called the Lovers’ Bridge–legend has it that if you kiss under the Pont Marie and wish for eternal love, your wish will come true. As we stand watching the boats float by, two lovers walked up and swoon in an embrace. Not to be outdone, in a scene reminiscent of the corny romantic endeavors of Pepe Le Pew, NoLo swept me backwards into an embrace. We almost fell down. Then we laughed until we couldn’t catch our breath.

After all, what isn’t romantic in Paris? (okay, maybe the Catacombs, graveyards or sewer tours?)

cutting the edges off the cake

The handy level

I place the square on a wire rack for frosting per the video instructions suspended over a baking pan to catch drips.

placing squares on a rack

Voila!

Now I make the frosting:
Petit Four Frosting Ingredients
• 2 cups sugar
• 1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1 cup water
• 1 1/2 cups confectioner’s sugar
• Food coloring (optional)

How to Make Petit Four Frosting
1. Add all ingredients except for the confectioner’s sugar in a saucepan and bring to a boil.
2. Boil without stirring until the mixture reaches 226 degrees and is the consistency of a thin syrup.
3. Remove from heat and cool to 100 degrees (slightly warmer than lukewarm).
4. Sift confectioner’s sugar over the syrup a little at a time, stirring to thoroughly combine after each addition.
5. The icing will have reached the proper consistency when it is just thick enough to coat a spoon.
6. Tint with food coloring, if desired
7. Use while warm; if it gets too thick, reheat in a double boiler until thin enough to pour.

The recipe says to cool the syrup to 100 degrees before adding sugar.

syrup

fondant

Frosted cakes

Allow frosted cakes to sit until they are dry, then remove the cakes from the rack, trimming any excess frosting away from the bottoms with a sharp knife. After the frosting dries, you can add a little holiday decoration—I added an impressionist sprig of holly.

Happy holidays!

In just six months I return to Paris. In honor of this great city, I am making petit fours this holiday season to share with my cookie exchange friends. Each year for the past 15 years we have exchanged cookies during the holidays.

Full Disclosure: I have never made petit fours before. Actually, I have never made a cake from scratch before. But I’m up for the challenge and excited to bake these elegant little cakes. The recipe says you can used pound cake purchased from the store but that seems like cheating . Afterall, how hard can it be?

Professional petit fours

OK first I assemble my ingredients.

My ingredients are neatly assembled

Blender on the floor, quelle disaster!

Light and fluffy

The professional baker says this recipe makes a very dense cake batter—mine is the texture of fudge. So I must be o.k. I try to spread the batter onto the pre-floured jelly roll tray but there isn’t enough batter. I’ll be cutting off the edges so I guess this doesn’t really matter, I just spread it as far as it will go and cross my fingers. While the cake bakes I watch the YouTube video. Comments posted about the video complain that the chef touches the fondant (what I call frosting) but these are germaphobes. So what if I dropped the blender, I washed it thoroughly. I’m sure the chef washes his hands.

Beautiful cake

Pont Marie

As I pack, I’m taking stock of my favorite things in Paris:
The Sold Es
White Burgundy (chardonnay)
French Onion soup, Paysanne salad with quail eggs, roasted goat cheese on toast
Chilled Rose on a hot day
Flower shops that sell buckets of cabbage sized peonies
Bouquinistes along the Seine
Notre Dame Bells
Boats on The Seine
Pont Marie, the most romantic bridge in Paris where you can make a romantic wish and it is guaranteed to come true in the next year
Closerie de Lilas and Au Vieux Paris restaurants
The Orangerie and Musee Orsay
Lovers kissing everywhere
Ile Saint Louis
The petite chiens that remind me of Edward back home
Café society
Triple crème cheeses
Holding hands with NoLo E-hub
The Jardin Luxembourg and the Tuileries
Patisseries
Montmartre and Versaiiles
French children singing on their way to school
Shakespeare and Company

Farewell, Paris. Until next year!

Last night I attended the Wine Tasting Tour of France at O’ Chateau along with about 50 other Americans from Chicago, Colorado, California along with Canadians and Australians.  Our sommelier Olivier Magny toured us around the Champagne, Loire, Burgundy, South West, Bordeaux and Rhone areas in France all from the comfort of a wine cellar near the Louvre.  We learned about the concept of “terroir”—or how the soil contributes to the final grape and how that is one way that America is deficient in grape growing.  In France, grape vines may grow down into the ground 30 meters to obtain nutrients and creating a complex flavor in a grape.  In the US, many vineyards use drip irrigation which causes the vine roots to grown horizontally along the surface instead of vertically into the earth so the flavors are not as complex.

We learned about identifying the many flavors found in wine, like fruit, berries, citrus, or sometimes stranger flavors like dirt, mushroom, or as one woman yelled, “cheese!”

“Um, I think it would be better to say buttery, not cheese,” our French sommelier said gravely.

The French use a much lighter touch when it comes to oak in Chardonnay. As Olivier pointed out:  “Eet keels everything, because eet  is too much.”

Facts that I found amazing:

• 97 percent of wine purchased in the US is consumed within 24 hours
• 3.61 Euros is the average price of a bottle of wine in France
• Since 1980 French wine production has been divided by two—Olivier blames this on French women who do not drink enough wine because they want to be skinny (not that wine would make one fat, but French women just don’t care about wine!)
• Only 45 percent of French women drink wine on a regular basis
• France has 150,000 wineries that produce about 15,000 bottles per year; Gallo however makes 4 million bottles PER DAY.
• 5 percent of all wine is corked, developed from a bacteria in the cork (this is the wine that when the waiter pours it in the glass, you sample and spit on the floor — not really!  You would simply send the bottle back.)
• There are so many wineries in France that it has hard to find the same bottle twice—you could buy a bottle you like in one shop but when you tried to buy the same bottle across town it would be impossible.
• Rosé is the popular choice of wines from May-September in France.  The best rosés are from the Côtes de Provence.
• Yellowtail (Australia) sells 22 percent of the world’s wine, more than all French wines together
• Hangovers are usually caused from dehydration, not the wine itself

Olivier is writing a book about Terroir and he has a blog called Stuff Parisians Like.

His book called “Stuff Parisians Like” will be published in November – as Olivier points out, an excellent Christmas present.

Olivier also points out that we should support the people who produce wines independently.  They are true artists who produce wine because of the tradition and the desire to produce the best wine in the world. I left the wine tasting wondering why anyone would ever buy anything other than French wine!

Dining at the Musee D'Orsay's restaurant with friends from the Left Bank Writers Retreat

The Musée D’Orsay–housed in a former railway station–is known for its magnificent art collection, but I like to visit the museum’s restaurant.

Originally the dining room for the Hôtel d’Orsay, the new construction by the architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte sets off the dazzling chandeliers and the painted and gilded ceilings of this dining room, listed as a Historic Monument. The room–all gold, white, and light–is breathaking. And then there is the food; I had lunch with a group of friends, and we voted it the best lunch on our trip.  My sea bass was grilled to perfection and served in its skin.  Sitting next to me was poet and chef Travis Cebula, who showed me how to catch the skin under my fork and roll it back like a sardine can—voila—leaving a morsel of the most delicious sea bass I’ve ever eaten.  One person in our group didn’t utter a word the entire lunch, so absorbed was she in her salade.  The chef Yann Landureau offers traditional French cuisine, interspersed with original dishes that are linked to the museum’s current events.  And the service was the professional service that we’ve found throughout Paris–with the exception of only one rude maître d’ experience.

This experience occurred at another museum restaurant, Café Marly at the Louvre.  Highly rated, this restaurant looks at the pyramid and frequently lands on the “best of” Paris restaurants list.  When my friends and I approached the maître d’ for a table, he actually laughed.  “Non!” he said. “Absolutement. Non!”  Apparently the problem was that they were no longer seating for lunch but rather than explaining that to us, he laughed an arrogant laugh that implied we were “fous.”

“Pas de grave,” as they say in Paris–not a big deal–we headed across the street from the Louvre, and enjoyed a fabulous meal at the Café Ruc.  I had shrimp risotto with creamy risotto and grilled shrimp served with a tiny taste of lemon. Magnifique!

Another favorite restaurant experience is the garden café at the Musée Rodin.  This little café serves fresh delicious salads and entrees in a shady garden.  It’s always crowded and you must guard you food from the brazen birds that raid tables.  A line can be found at the glacé stand, where I had one of the best caramel glacés served in a cone.  Caramel is my new favorite flavor.