Chef Efren’s description of making a confit was so simple that I had to try it. In France duck is common in all the markets. One can buy duck legs or duck breast easily but here I see only whole frozen ducks in the market and then only occasionally. The duck legs are cooked slowly, […]
Browsing Posts published in June, 2014
The final week of our European trip was spent on a hotel barge on a canal parallel to the Marne River in the Champagne area of France. The Merganser II was built in the 1930s. Its purpose originally would have been carrying freight. There are 5000 miles of navigable waterways in France. At one time […]
Sunday dinner was a special meal in my childhood. During the years of WWII meat was rationed, a pound of hamburger could make two meals for our family of four and meatless meals were a necessity, not something chosen for health or ethical reasons. But Sunday dinner was different, always meat and often chicken from […]
Two years ago when we came to Paris our friend Betsey highly recommended the Brasserie Balzar for a meal. We didn’t make it that trip so decided to have lunch there our one day in the city. It has survived since 1886, undergoing updating over the years. The restaurant is elegantly understated, very simply decorated […]
I ate too much in Germany but it was always different and good. We were a group of 50 so the meals were prearranged with only vegetarians or people with food allergies receiving different foods. We ate Turkish; Italian, three kinds of raviolis, all without meat but delicious; Vietnamese; traditional German meatballs with boiled potatoes […]
It is white asparagus season in Germany. I’d seen it in jars in the US but had no idea exactly what makes white asparagus white and would never have known the reverence of the Germans for this vegetable if I hadn’t been here during the season, April to mid-June. It is featured on many menus, […]
