The minimal kitchen

When on travel, eating out for every meal has always been a problem for me. Too much food, too rich, too many ingredients, too much preparation, too far… not enough simple food, not enough traceability… there are so many reasons why I love homemade food… I have been used now for a long long time to making my own food even with the simplest ustensiles and in the most rudimentary kitchens, but for long stays cooking with a kettle, a plate and a knife used for eating, that would be a little too constraining. So when we decided to travel to Paris I had one strong requirement: our hotel room should have a kitchen. We found a place that checked all the boxes finally: the Majestic hotel. The kitchen wasn’t even tiny, with a great opening on the terrace, but minimally equipped: a frypan and a pan. I bought a kitchen knife, a wooden spoon and a bottle of olive oil, and I was ready to cook for 10 days. I need nothing more than that.

The farmers market down the street on President Wilson Avenue on Wednesdays and Saturdays provided us with all the basic, local and seasonal ingredients we would need. The fish mongers, the cheeses and the organic stalls are really great. For breads there is also a nice stall. You can also find there beautiful flowers, kitchen knives, and a few Italian food stalls, perfect for ravioli and others stuffed pasta. We didn’t test the meat stalls, as I barely cook meat, but there are a few with a nice selection.

May in France is the season for strawberries, the very first cherries, green peas, asparagus, artichokes, new potatoes, new carrots etc… I focused my shopping on products I would usually not eat in Japan. Artichokes and white asparagus definitely were on the top of my list.

Nearby you can also find one of the trending patissier-boulanger shop: Cyril Lignac, which is the first one to open in the area: 7:00AM. With the jet-lag it’s almost too late, but we could manage to postpone breakfast until then and eat fresh pastries for breakfast. I would particularly recommend their pain aux raisins. Extremely delicious.

As a result, I tested some classic recipes and also created a super simple white asparagus recipe that I’d like to share with you.

White asparagus in tomato sauce

5 white asparagus/person
2 ripe and large tomatoes/person
1tbs of olive oil
A pinch of salt and pepper

Wash and peel the asparagus. Cut in 3cm long chunks. Blanche them. Drain, let cool down and pat dry. In a pan add the olive oil and the diced tomatoes. Cook until it has reduced enough and it becomes a thick tomato sauce. add the cooked asparagus. Stir well and serve. That’s it!!!

May 13, 2022

Paris

Going to Paris in August is always a feast! The city is empty of angry Parisian and everything is smooth and nice. Of course there is no theatre show nor opera to see, little exhibitions and some shops and restaurants are closed for the summer holiday, but who cares? It’s the best time to visit Paris to me. The parks are beautifully refreshing and quiet, no little brats to disturb the quietness, the terraces of cafe are less busy, and everything seems to move at a slower pace or in a foggy heat.

I particularly love to walk in the Luxembourg Gardens, stop here and there and look at people, those playing chess, those playing tennis, those seating and lazying, those running frantically… it was perfect because I was working at ENS and we stayed at the newly reopened Lutecia, and the best way to travel back and forth is by crossing the garden!

So one word about the Lutecia… it has always been for me a landmark on the left bank and a place I wanted to stay at. After years of renovation, it finally reopened in July and I was happy A. booked there for this trip. The renovation is in fact not fully finished and it feels like it will be better in a year or so once they will really have finished it.

One thing that I love when traveling is to do a kitchen take over if I don’t have my own kitchen, and after 3 days in Paris I was longing for cooking and took over my best friend’s kitchen for one evening. She picked a recipe she wanted me to prepare and I picked the dessert.

We ended with some gnocchi with jus d’herbe as proposed in Passedat’s book, snd a mirabelles tart. Two simple and delicious recipes.

Mirabelle tart:

– 1.5 kg of mirabelle

– flour and butter for the dough

– a little bit of sugar to sprinkle on top

Prepare the sablé dough with the flour and butter. Roll it, not too thin (mine was and couldn’t absorb all the juice) to the size of your pie dish. Wash the mirabelle and pit them. Set a thick layer of mirabelle in the dough (they will reduce, so really pack them). Sprinkle a bit of sugar. Cook in the oven for 40min at 180deg.

August 26, 2018

Parisian addresses for travelers

Our hotel life in Paris is continuing with a few nice discoveries and rediscoveries that I really want to share for those away from home in Paris. First of all the hotel. Finding a good hotel in Paris with all the services and the quietness is nit an easy task.

Hotel:

After trying many many hotels in many different places, left bank, right bank, I think we’ve finally found our home in Paris: La Reserve. I wanted to stay at the Mandarin oriental again, because I liked the swimming pool and the large rooms, but A. didn’t like it that much (sloppy room service and poor attitude of the security staff and bellmen at the door) so he convinced me to try La Reserve, and there has been no disappointment from start to end. The pool is nice, little used, the hotel is sizable and the staff super nice, the rooms are very quiet and well furnished. The service is very personalized and all is about smiles and freshness. The location is also great (nearby many galleries and in the midst of green) and the little things like the courtesy chauffeur are just nice surprises.

Restaurants:

Flora Danica, is a real classic Danish restaurant in the Maison du Danemark on the Champs Élysées, that has been there forever in Paris. We used to go when we lived in Paris. It has changed many times but the quality of the food is steady and the dishes are simple and delicious. The nordic Scandinave interior is beautiful and cosy. The dishes, mainly salmon and mackerel are really nice. Ingredients come first, no fancy arrangements.

Haï Kaï is a restaurant in the 10eme by the Canal Saint Martin. A hipster area of Paris. The place interiror is very simple and the dishes really great. The discovery menu is mking some ambitious and provocative combinations, the a la carte menu is more considerate and has some beautiful dishes like the merlan au beurre or the Parisian gaspacho. A nice new address in Paris with a cheffe (woman chef!).

April 16, 2017

Parisian walks

So, here am I in Paris just for one day before heading to Aix-en-Provence for work. Spring is turning heads here as much as sakura and hanami were in Tokyo and the beautiful warm weather and the jetlag invite for random walks and terraces farniente. With the Paris marathon raging on the right bank we decided to stay on the left bank and enjoy the fresh green of spring with a walk in the hospital La Salpetriere that has a beautiful park nearby the central church, before heading to the classic chic jardins du Luxembourg and finish on the Seine bank after browsing the art galleries in the 6eme. Paris is definitely a city to visit on foot, selecting random streets and seating here and there randomly to have a drink and a break. I personally love to seat at the jardin du Luxembourg drink stands at les Editeurs, place Saint Sulpice or place de l’Odeon. My favorite drinks when jetlagged and in France are some childhood drinks: diabolo menthe (mint syrup and sparkling soda) or straight freshly squeezed lemon juice. Have a beautiful week ahead!

Fontaine Medicis in the jardins du Luxembourg

April 9, 2017

Saturday morning

After our long and busy week we were happy to go to the country and enjoy a peaceful week-end. After a nice breakfast, I decided to check my device and discovered a message from my old friend Debbie from the USA that was mentioning something that has happened in France which surprised me. I checked right away the news and discovered what was happening in Paris.

I think there’s nothing to say about it.

It has shadowed our day and made us talked a lot, and I guess it has also limited my ability to write today.

November 12, 2015

Maison Plisson

While in Paris last month I was curious about going to Maison Plisson since I read so many fantastic reviews about it in magazines, blogs etc… Maison Plisson http://www.lamaisonplisson.com, for those who don’t know, this is a Parisian grocery select store that has opened last May. It offers selected products from a variety of places mainly French but also from Europe.

As they also have a cafe and a restaurant we first went for lunch there before checking the adjacent shop. It was an awfully rainy day so eating outside was not an option, so we had a tiny table squeezed between other tables and it felt quite exiguous. Like the whole place was designed as a cafetaria for 10 year old kids. Luckily the food was really nice, simple, home-made like.

My main disappoinment was the grocery shop. I was expecting a huge store but it’s rather ridiculously tiny supermarket on the ground floor, with low ceiling, and a basement that is even tinier and lower. Passed the disappointment of the entire space, what about the products? The cheeses and charcuterie looked nice but it was not an option for us since we couldn’t cook or bring back any to Japan. The fruits and veggies were scarse and not too appaling, bad timing maybe. And I was hopping a treasure trove grocery shop, but it didn’t impressed me at all, in the basement it is super tiny, a few shelves only, mainly foreign products and processed bins and sweets, it looked rather like a gift shop… I was hoping to find some delicious lentil from Auvergne, big white kidney beans from Toulouse, buckwheat flour from Brittany, and other wonderful things… But I didn’t. The wine shop is also a small corner in the basement…

So unless you can bring back fresh products home or live in Paris, for me Maison Plisson’s shop = Non!

The pictures of this post come from Maison Plisson Instagram account.

October 5, 2015

Who are the Tokyo-Paris sisters?

We are two real sisters Prunellia, the eldest and Gentiane (me!).

We’re both French and we were raised in the South of France at the foot of Paul Cezanne most famous mountain: the Sainte Victoire. We both like interior design, cooking and fooding and beautiful things,

Prunellia is an architect-interior designer-web designer based in Paris. She has been interested in Japanese architecture and Japanese culture for more than 25 years now and visiting Japan quite often since the early 1990’s.

Gentiane is a roboticist in Tokyo. Being much younger she has been introduced to Japan as a teenager when Prunellia was meeting Japanese students studying in Aix. (I really enjoyed our parties with our Japanese friends Shotaro, Tomoko, Kotomi etc…)

Though being completely different we do share a lot, probably from our upbringings. That’s how the idea of a journal four-hand started.

January 23, 2015