Yep, on my road to discovering good cuisine, from the simple (mushrooms) to the surprising (cabbage salad…probably not unlike coleslaw, but I’m not sure) to the nothing-to-do-with-French-cuisine-at-all: sashimi. Yep, I ate at a Japanese restaurant last weekend (or the weekend before now, I guess) and wouldn’t have if it hadn’t been the restaurant chosen to celebrate a friend’s birthday. I was relieved to see a good selection of cooked items: most notable a plate of various skewered meats (being a meat-a-tarian, it worked out well). First came the cabbage salad. I only tasted it because, well, it was sitting in front of me, and it was really good! Then was soup, then my skewers (and rice). Nico and Baptiste both ordered the full dinner, which as everything we had, plus sashimi and sushi. I didn’t try the sushi (still reticent about the whole eating seaweed thing), but I did try the sashimi and it was really really good. I’m quite looking forward to my next opportunity; which I plan to complete by eating at the traditional places (i.e. on the floor). Who knew going to France would open my eyes to Asian cooking? I developed my rather limited tastes for Chinese/Vietnamese food here (helped along by the Vietnamese restaurant a block from my apartment) and now I’ve added Japanese to the list.
In a more traditional light, I also discovered some Alsatian cuisine (basically a mix between German and French) that I had not yet tried, when my dad, came for a visit in January. We discovered mostly villages and restaurants during his stay here, plus a couple of museums, and some of the bigger towns/cities (Strasbourg, Colmar, Mulhouse) and some nifty castles and ruins (some of which I had visited, and others that were new to me). All in all a good, if short, visit!
And in the realm of North American cuisine, I continue my mission to prove that Anglo and/or North American cuisine is not as bad as Frenchies think. Failures in my mission include Rice Krispies squares (opinions ranged from “it’s not as bad as i thought it would be” to “this is disgusting, how can you people eat this stuff”). In my defense, if French marshmallows weren’t half pink, they wouldn’t have looked quite so strange. Cookies have been generally successful (peanut butter…chocolate chip…butterscotch chip and the like) as have a couple of good family recipes (oven barbecued chicken). I don’t even bother trying to share my coveted (rare) box of KD, because I know French stomachs would turn at the thought. My latest success: Baileys Chocolate Cheesecake…a particularly key success since when Manu heard what I planned to make, his comments were less than positive (not surprising, since he was the one that threw his Rice Krispies square in the garbage finding it inedible). He only somewhat reluctantly admitted that the cheesecake was really good! Funny, since I thought that it could have been better…
And with all that talk of food…I think a little dessert is in order before bed!
