Why You Would Go To Morocco

You step out off the plane, but there’s a handle there, positioned ever so appropriately on your left, which is the second thing you notice by grabbing it as the thick oppressive smog belts across your face. Stumbling slightly, you walk down the stairs leading to the airport grounds, all the while joining in on the chorus of, “C'est très chaud,” created by the Parisian passengers. These woman outside the airport walk passed exposing only their beautiful long noses; men in the Souks promise you a special price whilst telling you that you look like a queen; donkeys and monkeys and snakes slowly slur about the main square, Place Jemaa El Fna, and all you can think in this well-practiced-mess, is how could anyone ever live in Marrakech? This city of heat and high temperatures and hot food and…. tagines.

“TouBakal,” he said is traditional and cheap and so we went there and sat down at tables wrapped in plastic, actually incredibly well done crispy bread, and as much cold bottled water as our tummies could contain. A new place of adventure cannot be embraced ignorantly, especially not when you are going to that place to explore their cuisine. And there are some foods you need to know about so you can search for them. Chicken Pstilla; shredded chicken mixed with sweet and almond and cinnamon and wrapped in filo pastry dusted with icing sugar; I think I like thee.

Jemaa El Fna is a place of repetition. In all due respect, Marrakech may maintain a notion of I’ve always done, so I’ll always do. But when you stand on heat radioactive concrete and face the at least twenty stalls all decorated with the exact same pattern of oranges and grapefruits and all selling these thirst quenching juices for 4dh, you do wonder if the lack of entrepreneurial fortitude here is really working out for them.

But then there is the stoppable, the shockable, the worth waking up before six to catch the plane for Lamb Tagine… of… my goodness how did someone think of this magnificent combination of spices and meat and just enough liquid and vegetables and cinnamon, and then came up with the idea of placing it all in this pot shaped like a tepee? And you realize then, in that moment of flavour manifestation, that perhaps tradition is savoured just as it should be here, amongst the prayer cries that frequent the Medina each day; or the Souks that look like themselves all over again when you turn the corner; and even the twenty uniform orange juice stalls all convincing you that your money would be spent best on their 35° oranges.

Frangipane Tart and Curried Egg Salad by the Seine

When someone who hasn’t been to Paris in over TWO DECADES comes to stay with you, you really have to give thought to what each day will contain. There’s this place here in Paris called Shakespeare and Company. It is a bookshop that has been around for over 100 hundred years. It is opposite the Notre Dame and therefore if you stand on the pavement outside the bookshop (a.k.a Shakespeare & Co.), you can see Our Lady through leaves and people riding bicycles across the Seine.




This is a favourite shop in Paris. Books are stacked on every wall. They start sitting on the floor and reach right up to the tips of the ceiling. The tiles in the shop are cracked and don’t match. The staircase becomes an awkward place of maneuvering passed people, apologizing for touching them and at the same time trying to remain quiet, as it is a bookshop after all. The only thing that seems to make noise, a part from the flipping of pages and frequent exclaimations in English from tourists passing by, “Oh my gosh would you look at this!” is the piano which is available for anyone to play. I took Mother here, to this place that compelled me to this city, to a reading from a new book complied with prose pieces by mainly English speakers living in Paris.





Earlier on in the day I had stumbled (as we do through other people’s blogs) on a particular salad that consisted of every thing good, especially when all combined. Egg, nuts of some kind, apple for sweetness, herbs and a much loved experience of mine; curry. This inspired salad amalgamation, plus a few additions drawn from my own taste buds; the recent knowledge I had received about a French ice cream pallor on Île de la Cité, an island in Paris; plus the prose reading that evening at Shakespeare & Co., called for the much loved, and always to be embraced, occurrence of picnicking beside the Seine.




Even earlier on that day, I had experienced that all consuming desire to bake a Frangipane Tart with fresh strawberries. This isn’t uncommon and considering it hadn’t happened yet in Paris, I thought it only appropriate to meet this desire in full capacity by going all out and using real French Butter.





I didn’t have a lemon lying around, which is very strange for my home, so instead a used a large pink grapefruit flatmate had left here after her move to London. The result was something to be responded to with only repetition.






And so I got everything together; cutlery, bowls and plates with flowers on them and I packed my bag and took Mother to the best reading I had been to in Paris. After the nine prose writers and taken us through their exerts, Mother followed me over Pont Neuf, passed Our Lady, and into a small park at the end of Saint Louis, the other Island in Paris, for a picnic by the Seine.





Frangipane Tart with Strawberries and Grapefruit

1 sheet of sweet short crust pastry
250g softened butter
1cup caster sugar
250g almond meal
4 eggs
3 Tbsp flour
zest of one grapefruit
7 strawberries pureed/ 4 Tbsp of a berry jam

Pre heat oven till 200° You always do this when working with pastry.
Butter and paper proof your tart tray. Roll out your pastry and line your tart tray with the pastry, carefully leaving the edges in the state you would want them to look like once baked.
Refrigerate for half an hour (very important to chill the butter in the pastry again before cooking. Otherwise you will cause the butter to melt in the pastry before the flour is cooked and your pastry will be soft).
Place in the oven for five or so minutes until your pastry shell is par-baked.
Puree strawberries (or use jam) and spread a layer on the bottom of the pastry.




Then you want to beat your softened butter with your sugar until it is white, nice and fluffy. Add everything else, except the berries, and mix well.
Pour the mixture over your jam and level the frangipane with your spatula. Top with fresh berries, not pressing them in too far as they will sink on their own.





Place in the oven and bake for half an hour (perhaps more) until the tart is golden and firm to the touch. If the frangipane is browning too quickly, wrap foil around the tart while it cooks.
Leave to cool on a wire rack.





Curried Egg and Sweetened Raisin Salad
Adapted from 100 Cookbooks Recipe

2 tsp of good curry powder
¼ cup natural yoghurt
¼ sp salt
4 eggs
¼ cup raisins
½ and apple, diced
¼ red onion, diced
half a bunch of chives, chopped
¼ cup hazelnuts, roughly chopped

Place your eggs in boiling water for ten minutes. Once cooked, remove and run under cold water while you peal them. Roughly chop and add to a bowl.
Meanwhile, place your curry powder, salt and yogurt in a small bowl and mix well. Set aside.
Add everything to the big bowl and mix well in ensure the curry mixture has coated everything in the salad.
You can eat this as is, or if you want it to seem a little fresher, place a big spoonful on top of a bed of different coloured lettuce leaves and enjoy.

An Occasion for Roasted Peaches

There can be an occasion for food but food can also make an occasion out of anything.

Mother. She came to stay. Filled up my apartment with the perfume she has worn all my life, commentaries about what she is doing in certain moments of the day, and her swaying to my music while we made dinner together.





The week started with me not here much. Food begs you to nurture it before 7am when you work in a restaurant. So every morning she would cut fruit from the fruit bowl and pour a small jar of yoghurt over it. It was only natural that I wanted to introduce her to how we do things here, at my place, considering she has never come to stay in a place of my own before.





Before she woke up on a day when the markets had filled the pavements along side the canal, I walked down to them and bought fresh fromage blanc, hazelnuts, pecans, almonds, fresh dates and peaches. The oven was turned to 200° when I got home, the peaches were halved and sprinkled with a little brown sugar (don’t be too generous as the fruit has enough sugar to caramelize itself) and cinnamon and then the halves were placed in the oven for half an hour. Towards the end of the peaches cooking time, my homemade granola was whipped up in a few seconds and placed in there with them to golden for about 8 minutes. And then I plated everything and called mum to a breakfast of granola made from scratch, slow roasted peaches and real French fromage blanc.





I left the music on, specifically Angus and Julia Stone’s Another Day, for her to sway to as she cleaned the dishes and sing to a song she had never heard before.

Food Industry in Paris: Cafes

There are only a few cafes in Paris that are genuine quality. I know that may be hard to believe, I have already been through the grieving process and have come out the other side. And the other side drew my attention to the five or so cafes in Paris that can actually stand unmoved in their deemed genre; the cafe. I work at one of them. And it is filled with some pretty amazing chefs who should each be renown, except that beyond their customer’s praise and the café’s visor, they’re not.




And then there is this other one, and it makes the best coffee in Paris. As I’m sure you are well aware, that is quite an achievement. So if you come here, you must ask me for their name. And his weekend I am filling-in for an absentee in their kitchen. All I can think is that I am seriously getting around these genuine cafes in Paris. I can’t explain through worthy-enough words, how settling it feels to finally have connections in a city you have only lived in for five months. Connections that make you a part of the network that makes up the food industry in Paris.




New Zealand is up-up-and-away in the world when it comes to authentic and trustworthy café food. We’ve got the quiche filled with onions, ham, spinach, Edam cheese and it comes with a salad on the side, to which France would respond; “Why would you put salad greens on a plate!?”




We understand the combinations of sauces, fruits and varying poultry in salads.




Sometimes, when all you want is portobello mushrooms, pesto and cream cheese on a slice of toast, we get that and we wouldn’t make a fool out of you for it.




And we even offer Gorgonzola soufflés! I haven’t even seen a soufflé on a menu in France. We have focaccia bread filled with garlic aioli, sautéed vegetables, shredded roast chicken with slices of emmental from Farro; gourmet pies filled with creamy mushrooms and baked chicken dow at The Chiller; and thick steaming pumpkin soups with coriander and crispy brown seeded bread. I think we can all come to an agreement and write here, that as a nation we understand lunch food.




France, you only have a few places who see what we see.




Like Sesame down on the canal who thought about duck and goats cheese, apple, balsamic and almonds and then put it all on one plate.




Or Coutume, who with brilliance mixed chicken with basil and cream cheese and placed it on a velvety black bun.




France you may not understand lunch like we do.
But then you did give us galettes and filled them with herring and potato and crème fraiche.




And then there are your bistros with chicken caesar salads that rely on their understanding that cheese should always, always come in large quantities, even when it is parmesan.




And so I will not be that hard on you, even if you don’t see food how it should be eaten, in a form that is light, explosively flavoursome and nutritiously filling. I promise I will not be that unfair, except that I will remain amongst these five or so cafes here...

Well at least most of the time.

Corn and Carrot Soup, Minus the Coriander

I didn’t really expect it to end like this. “Don’t forget me. I have your tea towels ready to hang in my kitchen,” implying I wouldn’t forget her. I had already made it my kitchen even though our photos and letters still covered the walls. She smiled and then I leaned forward and she hugged me on the side, nuzzling into my arm and stomach. “I love you,” she said and I knew this. Even when she said it, it wasn’t new or something I needed to know right then. It was confirmation of something that wouldn’t go away. And so I replied, “I know.”




We ate in bed. Even though she wasn’t going to be sleeping over that night. Because it was going to end like this in only a few hours. It was the usual; corn, rocket, tomato, avocado and a hard-boiled egg with cider vinegar and olive oil. And then I walked her to the train station at Gare Du Nord, in the dodgy part of Paris, and all I could think was that we had made a home together so well.

Sometimes it can be easier to live when you list the things you know:

• A home is only home when those who live inside the house choose to love each other.

• Different people feel and know they are loved in different ways.

• Therefore it is only natural that a home takes a while to become established as we learn these things.

• But it works really well. It is a really good place to live in.

It hadn’t poured in Paris since March. But that night my feet and hair were saturated in dirty Parisian rain. My blue silk skirt clung to my legs in what seemed like a forlorn fear. I squelched up five flights of stairs and spent the evening cleaning and scrubbing my apartment. The light turned out and everything sparkled in the green luminescent Hotel sign from across the canal.




When it was morning I remembered that on a blazing hot summer day in the used-to-be summer here, which has become disguised by all the fallen brown leaves on the streets left over from the diseased chestnut trees, flatmate had made a carrot and coriander soup. I didn’t want coriander and it was too cold to walk to the markets, and so for lunch I used up last night’s corn and made a carrot and corn soup instead.




And here is something else to know and to list to help you live a little easier:
Corn and Carrot Soup goes exceptionally well with goats cheese. And it is incredibly simple to make for those meals when there is only you to feed.



Corn and Carrot Soup (for one)

2 carrots, pealed and cut in 1 cm rounds
1/3 cup of corn kernels
2 cups water
1 tsp salt
1 bay leaf
2 Tbsp cream
pinch pepper
goats cheese diced or crumbled
decoration: corn kernels and rocket




Place your corn, carrot, water, bay leaf and salt in a pot and bring to boil. Cover and boil until the carrot pieces are easily pierced with a knife. Take off the heat, and remove the bay leaf and leave only about ¼ cup of liquid in the pot. If all your liquid has been used up, pour ¼ cup of boiled water into the pot. With a hand-held processor, or normal processor, blend the vegetables to a pulp. Add the cream and pepper. Mix well and add any extra hot water necessary to get it to your desired soup consistency.
Pour in a bowl, sprinkle over goat cheese and anything else you want to decorate your soup with. Toast a piece of brown bread and as my friend Jonathan would say, “you’re away laughing.”