Culture Mulcher

Paris: classique meals 1

W H Chong — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 22:18:45 +0000

Observations and not some haiku from the streets of Paris

Classique, adjectif
Sens 1, Qui fait autorité, qui est considéré comme un modèle. Anglais (auteur) classical author, (oeuvre) classic.

5.1 Steak-frites

According to Anthony Bourdain: “It was onglet, and I was immediately struck by its ropy, not-too-tender but not-too-tough texture and its strong, almost kidneyish flavor.”

Or, Mark Bittman of the NYT: “The steak (entrecôte) frites was perfectly Parisian, the meat cooked saignant (bloody) and therefore a tad chewy — which is appropriate — but super flavorful, and the fries just right.”

I had mine at a little brasserie, the one with the hound. It was saignant, it was chewy, it was very flavoursome, if not quite kidney. Far from the eye fillet/tenderloin we are likely to get in an Australian joint. Chewy as in gum. Tasty as in buds. The frites were excellent — really handcut, wide not shoestring, just crispy outside and airy soft inside, tasting exactly of potato rather than bland starch. (French-style mash, super finely strained, I’m not so fond of.)

5.1 Tarte Tartin

Then I had the Tarte Tatin. I can only say that I make it better, or else, I make it not like the French (I’ll post my experiments later). The pastry base, as I found elsewhere, is rather soggy shortcrust, and the apples here were not the sticky, glossy examples I have enjoyed at home, but matte and flat. It did come with creme fraiche, which is a good tip, nicely undercutting the caramel sugar.

Paris: appetiser, l’amuse bouche

W H Chong — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 21:37:41 +0000

Just a teaser for upcoming food posts.
So many unnecessary calories, so little time.
This is totally froggy boeuf bourguignon.
(But not as Julia Child has recipe’d it; at least it never turned out like this.)
It was ace.

Paris: Metro verse notes

W H Chong — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 21:24:33 +0000

Observations and not very high ku from the streets of Paris

4.1 Le metro, verse notes for previous post

Hausmann, Madeleine, Concorde, Assemblée
Nationale, Rue du Bac.
Voulez-vous?

Saint Germain des-Pres, Odeon, Notre
Dame, Hotel de Ville, Rambuteau.
Qu’est-ce que c’est?

Sont des mots qui vont tres bien ensemble,
Tres bien ensemble.

+ + +

As I enjoy reading about poetry as much, and often more*, than the verse itself, I thought I’d make some notes about the lines above. (I confess, it’s only after sleeping on it that I can offer these explications — I had strung the verses quickly before bed.)

*I call on Ms Moore as my authority.

The names in the first stanza are the metro stations we passed through in the pictures above, on the St-Lazare line (We were on our way to dinner, changing twice to get off at … Victor Hugo! Wouldn’t it be great if, back home, we could get off at Les Murray and Miles Franklin and Brett Whiteley?).

Rue du Bac is our home metro. The other metro close by is St Germain des-Pres, which starts the next stanza, and the names in that are on the Porte de Clignancourt line away from us.

The French phrases become obvious after a sec: Voulez-vous comes from Abba (but also Patti LaBelle’s Lady Marmalade — get your shoes on:“Voulez-vous coucher avec moi (ce soir)?”; Qu’est-ce que c’est? – Talking Heads’ Psycho Killer, of course; and Sont des mots etc is from the Beatles’ Michelle, slightly mysterious detached from the three little words, Michelle, ma belle.

They ended up in there as markers of foreign tributes — whether mocking (Heads) or wistful (Beatles) or entirely pragmatic (ABBA), they recognise a kind of feeling or an entire atmospheric that can be conjured with the barest of means, as one could economically say: Cadillac, Super Bowl and Sarah Lee. Or even just the metro name, Madeleine, with its aromatic Proustian aura.

And as the Beatles’ noted, it all goes together very well. There’s euphony built in — to quote a different musical wit, Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady: “The French don’t care what they do actually, as long as they pronounce it properly.”

Paris Hyperku: le metro

W H Chong — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 23:39:25 +0000

Observations and not very high ku from the streets of Paris

4. Le metro

There’s something always a bit futuristic about le metro in Paris. It’s no more efficient than, say, Singapore’s or Hong Kong’s or Tokyo’s, but it has a style, a je ne sais quoi. It reminds me of that 31 year old arthouse dessert, Diva, when sleek chic ruled — that is, Paris as a fantasy of a kind of present future, as, a year later, Blade Runner‘s LA/Tokyo presented a wildly disparate vision. (And the French movie showcased the only time Wally named something sublime.)

Hausmann, Madeleine, Concorde, Assemblée
Nationale, Rue du Bac.
Voulez-vous?

Saint Germain des-Pres, Odeon, Notre
Dame, Hotel de Ville, Rambuteau.
Qu’est-ce que c’est?

Sont des mots qui vont tres bien ensemble,
Tres bien ensemble.

Update, verse notes:

As I enjoy reading about poetry as much, and often more, than the verse it self, I thought I’d offer some notes about the lines above. (I confess, it’s only after sleeping on it that I can make these explications — I had dashed the verses off before bed.) … See next post.

Paris: Mona Lisa epicentre

W H Chong — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 22:02:07 +0000

The room housing La Jaconde, Leonardo’s alter ego, and we crowds who flock to proximity with celebrity.

I confess, she looks much less alluring than when I saw her a long time ago.

Too well lit, too banally displayed, too hermetically sealed in her glass coffin.

Paris: blanc

W H Chong — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 22:01:55 +0000

Paris, 5 February 2012, -6C, en blanc.

Paris Hyperku: dans les rues de Paris

W H Chong — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:20:27 +0000

Observations and not very high ku from the streets of Paris

3. Dans les rues de Paris

3.1) I love Paris . . . in sub-zero

Ah, the opposite
of tropics: snow flaking
like dessicated
coconut.

Constant Gardener and I were scurrying to the Galeries Lafeyette to do a spot of shopping, when we started seeing spots: a sudden, exquisite snow shower. The toasty Galeries is vast, a Louvre for clothing. Loooking up the atrium in the ladies’ wing, we admired the glorious dome of Belle Epoque glasswork. It’s not the Louvre, it’s a cathedral, for Notre dames. And imagine if it was a gigantic snowdome. I have:

3.2)The streets of Paris

So how can you tell me you’re lonely,
and say for you that the sun don’t shine,
Let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of London
I’ll show you something to make you change your mind.

I’ve always found Ralph McTell’s song patronising, its pity faintly smug; still, it’s unforgettably a classic, hitting its mark with unsubtle force. But as he has confessed, it was inspired by les rues de Paris.

In this weather there are not many homeless around; we’ve seen a dozen or so — there was one in rue Buci on a bustling sunny Sunday, getting in everyone’s face and and gibbering in lingo.

The one who was absent, a metre pile of material marking hisher bed. A Cartesian display of a wheelie case, boxes and a check laundry bag was snugly fitted into the niche in the wall above.

The one with a mattress on the sidewalk, its bottom lined with a cardboard box, two corners and a flat end serving as a bed head. Apart from exposed pantlegs, the recumbent was smothered under a single thin blanket. The bundle was shivering.

The fella lying in the sunshine over a pavement grate.

One night we saw a figure sitting on some steps, legs swathed in blankets, torso bulbous in a puffer jacket so that he looked like a Michelin Man down on his luck, treads gone full bald; the only protusion from the tubular fiolds was the promontory of his grand gallic nose. Flapping above him two large banners advertised an Andy Warhol exhibition within: “Making Money Is Art.” If true, the poor man wasn’t even a Sunday painter.

3.3) Hot cop

Lost in the freezing twilight, map and iCompass offering no succour, arguing about directions, I finally approached a young cop standing at the corner.

– Excuse moi, sil vous plait, parlez vous anglais.
– Ay, non, désolé, la-yada, le-yada, ya da da da…

Evidently fresh from the provinces because he didn’t comprendre l’anglais, a rare condition in the centre; and he couldn’t point us to the Seine; ie north. In fact, as we discovered, he sent us in the opposite direction.

Of course, the reason he had been at the corner all that time was to stand over the pavement grating which was issuing great gouts of hot air; the city’s extravagant ducted heating.

3.4) Paris, 2001

“Unrelenting elegance” — Constant Gardener’s pinpoint description of the Paris streetscape is predicated on the French rage for order — the consistency of the quality in design and construction (beautiful, excellent) and height, buildings in agreement at 5 or 7 or 9 stories high for the length of a street. A consistency almost an affront to an Anglocultural — British eccentricity, American individualism, Australian perversity et al. Which is why, one grey afternoon, crossing rue de Rennes I was startled to see a giant grey shaft on the horizon at the vanishing point. Seeing that, like a manifestation of the monolith from 2001, made me believe for a moment.

When the Montparnasse Tower — the only skyscraping competition to the Eiffel — was built, it resulted in a ban on future skyscrapers in the city centre; its serene isolation is assured. The Eiffel is a friendly marker in comparison; we saw it from across the Seine one night — for ten minutes every hour it goes into a random fury of flashing lights — a chaotic frenzy that made me think of an epileptic seizure.

Paris Hyperku: L’homme’s best friend

W H Chong — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 22:12:58 +0000

Observations and not very high ku from the streets of Paris

2. Waiting for Dogot

2.1) All over Paris, signs of dog lovers getting away with merde.

2.2) Scene 1: Stylish young woman, her black jacket projecting a half-metre prow: a baby, rugged and tucked.
Scene 2: Stylish young man, stubble, swoosh of big hair, hipster frames, his zipper jacket distended in a frontal bulge. He fondles and pokes and coos at the parcel: a terrier puppy.

2.3) Chien-oiserie: looking cute in shops:

2.4) Woman at the next table in Aux Lyonnais, an Alain Ducasse restaurant, carefully swaddling a shitzu into the shopping bag on a seat beside her. Steak frites?

2.5) Where are the hounds?
Send in the hounds.
Don’t bother, they’re here.

In the little brasserie, Les Racines, we met the owners’ grave and friendly Pointer, Vita. So civilised, really.

Paris Hyperku: Notre Dame

W H Chong — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:43:48 +0000

Observations and not very high ku from the streets of Paris

1. NoDa

1.1) On January 30, we found that “probably the most famous image in French Gothic art” was obscured by a huge, bebaubled Christmas tree, now shabby after months of weather. The church fathers collaborating with tourism authorities.

1.2) The sun explodes
through the rose
window, darkly,
glass stained deep
by endless prayers
of hope and fear.

1.3) A tale of two churches: St Peter’s is a bullying hulk, a palace fortress bestrode with marble colossi of saints and popes. Notre Dame is a vast theatre of dark and light, designed to bring you face to face with the sublime, and thence to Christ, a figure no larger than yourself.

1.4) Winter: when it’s chillier outside the cathedral.

+ + +

Above: Notre Dame’s south rose window over the transept, January 2012.

Summer: beach, bbq, shaggy dog

W H Chong — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 00:26:17 +0000

Early one morning, a neighbour who has been summering down the coast was telling Constant Gardener — the dog leash community — the news about her labrador.

She’d been walking on the beach and pooch had gone exploring. She found it further on, chewing on something near what had been obviously been a bbq site from the night before, strewn with the usual youthful detritus.

Back at the beach house she noticed that Pooch (not its real name) had become very quiet, indeed, paralytic. Extremely alarmed she rushed to the nearest vet. What’s wrong with Pooch? she cried.

While inspecting, the vet inquired her where they had been that morning and if there had been unusual circumstances. She recounted their route; beach, bbq, home. Oh, and chewing on something.

Vet: Hmm. I think your dog’s high.

She: What!

Vet: Yes. Pooch is stoned, probably ingested marijuana.

Pooch recovered later in the day, no harm done.

(Update: I wuz wrong. Pooch was actually very sick, had toxicity tests and was put on a drip; but has evidently recovered. So, pooch people, please: no chocolate, and no grass.)

Image by Pokstad.