A lot of people who have been to Paris like to dismiss it as overrated. A lot of people think that they don’t really see what the big deal is if they’ve gone through The Louvre, seen the Eiffel Tower, and checked out the River Seine. Some people even think that seeing the great Notre Dame Cathedral isn’t really that big of a deal. In their minds, it’s not really something to write home about.
They just see Paris as pretty much all hype. A lot of people claim that it really fails to deliver. Well, we can argue until the cows come home whether that pair of tickets to Paris is worth getting but let me tell you, you can recreate some of that Parisian charm right on your table top and it doesn’t have to involve you buying tickets worth several thousand dollars to go to the other side of the planet.
I am of course talking about French cuisine. A big art of tour trip to Paris or Nice or any other place in France will really turn on food. Because if there’s anything that you will bring back, it’s the great memory of the amazing food French cuisine has contributed to modern civilization. If you’re looking for creamy rich stews, as well as multi layered tastes, you can’t go wrong with French cuisine.
In fact, that was kind of my sources of disappointment because when I went to France, a lot of the places that I stayed at were basically just tourist traps. It’s like going to France but being served up a postcard of France that the tour operator thinks you came for. It’s not much different than going to France and seeing a Disneyland recreation of France within France itself. I hope you can see the irony there. I also hope you can see the dark humor.
I mean, if I didn’t have to pay those thousands of dollars for my plane tickets, I probably would laugh. But since it cost me quite a large chunk of cash, I wasn’t laughing. I guess, chalk it up to bad planning, chalk it up to experience, whatever the case may be, it wasn’t as awesome as I thought it was going to be. Thankfully, there was a saving grace there. Me and my wife hung out at the French West Bank and really soaked up the ambiance. And the great thing about this is that it didn’t really cost that much money.
You’re just on an outdoor café. People there are smoking cigarettes and puffing away like chimneys and you were served some really black coffee. To me that summed up the Parisian experience. You know, just hanging out in a café where people are just talking in that amazing French accent and just looking out over the River Seine. I’m hardly alone because the whole French West Bank experience has been written about quite extensively.
There are many stories of broke college students vacationing in France just basically hanging out at the West Bank living off a meager budget. There’s something hopeful about the experience that it’s not really the money, but really your ability to just hang out, live day by day, and just enjoy the scenery. I mean, Paris makes that philosophy easy to follow because regardless of where you look, it seems like there’s just a distinct French touch to the view to the atmosphere and the overall attitude in the air.
If there is any one word that I could use to summarize France, it really is attitude. There is such a thing as French attitude. That regardless of where you are on this planet, if you have that French attitude, you have a bit of authentic France within you. So after my trip, me and my wife decided to bring back a little bit of France with us in the form of the meals that we prepared. I like to keep it basic and simple so to me, ratatouille was the name of the game.
This simple vegetable dish actually packs quite a bit of flavor if you prepare it right. And there’s nothing that goes better with ratatouille and other French dishes for that matter, especially ones that have a lot of cream, than freshly baked bread, as well as round French breads with a thick crust. This is why I bought the best bread cloche. The first time I used it, it was really a show stopper.
I put my bread dough in the inner chamber and then I put the lid on it, baked it, and I did not open it before serving the bread. There was quite a bit of a fanfare as my guests kind of looked at me all puzzled why I’m lugging around this clay pot. It looked so old world it’s almost like Medieval. It has these charcoal stains on it and when I took off the lid and this heat grows out of it with a little tiny trace of steam, people eyes just popped open.
And that was the half of it because once everybody dug into the bread, they couldn’t stop talking about the bread especially after they used to soak up some of the stew and the dishes that my wife and I prepared. Again, if you’re looking for a little bit of French attitude in your meals, use a bread cloche. It’s really an amazing device because it doesn’t cost all that much, but it definitely packs quite a bit of an impact. If you’re looking to make a great impression, you really can’t go wrong with a bread cloche.
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