Chez Michel

Chez Michele is a great little place tucked way in a corner only a few streets away from the Gare du Nord (the major train station of Paris). It is important to understand the way their menu works. Dinner at Chez Michele will cost at least 32 Euro. This includes bread and three courses which you can choose from the printed menu. However, there are also daily specials and dishes with more expensive ingredients which you can select from the chalkboard menu for an additional supplement.


As you can see, the good stuff all has a "+" next to with with the supplement amount in Euros. While I was making up my mind, I was presented with a plate of sea snails served with a nice mayonnaise. These are briney and delicious, tasting very strongly of the sea.


Looking at the appetisers, I'm sure you can already guess which one grabbed my attention.


That's right, Tartine de campagne grilee, foie gras et truffles d'ete. I'm not sure what half of that means, but the words I do understand sound delicious. What's that? You can't see the foie in that picture.....ok let me just move a few of these pesky truffles for you....


Better now? I don't even know how to describe how this tastes, but I'll give it a try. Firstly, the toast is crunchy and crcks when you bite into it, but almost instantly, the smooth richness of the foie gras seems to melt into it and the earthy overtone of truffle comes in to round out the whole mounthful. This was sensational, my tastebuds were having a party.

For the main course, there were several options, but knowing that Pigeon is another French traditional favourite, I decided to give the roasted pigeon a try.


This was served with potatoes, mushrooms and carrots. The pigeon is broken down into two halves, but the ribcage is on the plate too in case you want to nibble on it later I guess. The meat was done to a beautiful rose colour and was juicy and not too strongly flavoured. The vegetables were very nice, especially the mushrooms.

For dessert I selected the classic pastry Paris-Brest which created in honour of the bike race from - strangely enough - Paris to Brest. Apparently that is why it is the shape of a wheel.


Made from a choux pastry and filled with an almond cream, the outside of the pastry was nice a crisp and the inside light and airy. There was also a nut brittle scattered over it which presumable contained almonds.

Dinner here was a great way to finish of my stay in Paris, with an old school Breton bistro meal with amazing tastes and wondeful ingredients.

Perguia - The hills are alive

Driving north through Italy from Rome couldn't have been easier, the roads are clearly marked and the speed limit on the highway is 130 km/hr. I was heading for Perugia, which I had read about as being a beautiful mountain town with great views and good food, especially known for their truffles and the fact that the Baci Chocolates are made there.

Arriving in Perugia, I discovered that it is a warren of tiny streets with almost no parking, but the hotel was able to give me a permit and I basically parked the car as close as I could get to the hotel (about two blocks) and left it there for the one night that I was staying there. Everything in town is within walking distance and it is a gorgeous buzzing town. The centerpiece of the main part of town is a fountain in a piazza with several large sets of stairs nearby. These stairs are the major meeting place in town and every time I walked past them, they were packed with people just sitting and chatting.


Walking past the stairs, I entered the main street, which was full of people enjoying the evening and having appertivo.


Appertivo is a fantastic experience in Italy, it is usually the time between the end of the working day and dinner, when everyone goes out for a couple of drinks. The thing about Italy is that even the drinking is about eating here. During this time, which is their Happy Hour, most bars offer a buffet of finger food to the people who are there having a drink. Even though the idea is to have a little snack to get your appetite going for dinner, you can basically have enough to fill up for the price of one drink. The toughest part is choosing which bar has the best looking selection of foods. Some common ones are cold cuts, parmeggiano reggiano cheese with balsamic vinegar, bread and dips, antipasto, etc.


As the sun had not yet set, I decided to walk to the end of the main street to check out the view. It seems that you can almost see forever and everywhere you turn is a different, spectacular scene.


As the sun started heading down, I headed for a restaurant I had spotted earlier which caught my attention, Caffe Di Perugia. I ordered a Negroni (a bitter cocktail, often served for appertivo) before my meal and was also given a selection from the appertivo buffet which I didn't ask for, but was gladly accepted. I skipped the Antipasto and selected the Tagliatell con Tartufo Nero (Tagliateli with Black Truffles) and was not disappointed by the amount of truffles used as you can see.


This was quite tasty and simple, I really enjoyed it.

The dessert selection didn't really grab my attention, but I decided to try the Semifreddo Nocciola (Hazelnut Semifreddo).



This was way too sweet for me, but I'm sure all you chocaholics out there would like it since it had a chocolate center.

I loved this town and if I were to come here again I would definitely stay longer, but since the next day was Monday the many of the better restaurants are closed on Mondays, I decided to move on to Bologna.

Trufflicious

What do you do when you are offered a chance to use a product that you rarely get to work with? In my case I was asked if I wanted to cook for a dinner party using truffles. Of course I said yes and honestly any chance to cook with the produce I had seen at the market in the last few days would have been great, but the truffles were an added bonus.

What do I know about truffles? Not a huge amount. They are a fungus that grows under oak trees, have a strong earthy taste and are usually used in very small quantities (just a few grams per serve). Traditionally they were hunted with pigs who are specially trained to be able to smell them underground, but dogs are used quite a bit now and gave the benefit of not eating the truffles like the pigs sometimes do.

My first thoughts were to do something that really showed off the truffles and something I knew how to do reasonably well. I narrowed it down to pasta or risotto.

Next I had to think about what other ingredients would support the truffles without overpowering them. I decided on bacon as part of the risotto flavour base and pan-seared duck breast which would be sliced and just a few slices used to top each dish – something rich and flavourful to match the earthy taste of the fungus.

I also decided to do a risotto and that I would not prepare a dessert, but would make an appetiser. Thinking back to the market I remembered that there were some great looking zucchini available and decided on an antipasto recipe from Gordon Ramsay, cheese-filled zucchini rolls with pine nuts and basil.

Shopping list in hand, we headed off to the market and my first mission was to find two cheeses, parmesan (for the risotto) and ricotta (for the zucchini rolls). After our third delicatessen we found some Grano Padano parmesan cheese, but ricotta proved impossible so we found a local fresh cheese with a very similar texture and flavour. One thing we couldn’t find was pre-made stock, so I opted for powdered chicken stock rather than making it from scratch (don’t tell anyone though, it’s our little secret).

The next hurdle was the duck; there was none at the market at all. There had definitely been some on our last trip, but they were all out this time. I quickly tried to think of a replacement ingredient, but decided to go with just the bacon risotto instead until we stumbled across these:

Absolutely amazing! Fresh Chanterelle mushrooms! I don’t even know if we can get these in Australia, but I’ve seen them on TV and love their colour. There were also fresh Porcchini and other mushrooms I had never seen before. I bought some of the chanterelles and the main ingredients of the night were complete. Finishing off the shopping trip, we grabbed the rest of the ingredients: Some amazing fresh garlic, onions, thyme, basil, parsley, zucchinis, pine nuts, short grain rice, and lemons.

Let’s move on to the dinner. The first thing I prepared was the zucchini rolls, follow this link to Gordon Ramsay's recipe.

It is important to note that I had several eager (and not-so eager) helpers and my thanks go out to them, it made the whole night go much smoother.

For the risotto, I brought approximately two liters of stock to the boil and turned the heat down to low to keep the stock hot. While this was happening the chanterelles, herbs, garlic, onions and bacon were being chopped.

In a hot pan, I sauteed the chanterrelles in butter with thyme leaves, salt and pepper. The next thing I did was get the bacon into another pot with a little butter and olive oil. I like to leave the bacon in slightly larger pieces because it tends to shrink quite a bit as the fat renders. After the bacon was nice and brown and the kitchen got that amazing fried bacon smell, I added the dices onions and garlic and let them sweat for a while.

Once the onions were nice and soft, I added approximately 2 cups of the rice and stirred until the grains started to become transparent. At this point, I added a cup of dry white wine and let the rice absorb it, stirring all the time. Next I began adding the stock a ladle or two at a time and stirring until the liquid is absorbed.

I added the chanterelles for the last few minutes before the rice was done. Once the risotto was nice and creamy with just a little bite left in the rice, I turned off the heat and added the thinly sliced truffle.

One was enough for six people, so I didn't use both. Once the truffles had time to heat through, I added the grated Parmesan and chopped parsley. Here is the final product.

The result, even if I do say so myself was delicious and if the feedback from the guests was any indication, this was a definite success. If you'd like to try this but don't have access to truffles or chanterelles, you can substitute other mushrooms and I would suggest trying two or three different types.

Next update will be two more Belgrade restaurant reviews, stay tuned to see if they were better than the last one.