I flew out to Paris with the wife this past weekend and can't say enough about the trip.
The food, the sights.
The food, the atmosphere.
Did I mention the food...?!
And if I had to sum up Paris in one word... it would be Butter. Or "Beurre" for you Frenchies out there.
Butter is definitely the backbone to all things great in France... and what a backbone it is.
It's just so damn good. I thought I knew what good butter was. I worked for a dairy specialist for about 6 months a few years back and I studied my butter, eggs and cream.
I could sniff out butters that were 80%, 82%, 86% butter fat...
I could also tell you if they were cultured, salted, or even shielded.
But nothing prepared me for what I experienced at Fouget's.
When I sat down, for lunch, I was given a roll and a serving of Echire Butter.OK, I thought... I've seen and heard about this "Echire" before.
This is the stuff they serve in the First Class cabin...
So I took a swig of water and was ready to have a go at it...
I opened up the foil and observed it was tad bit yellow.
I spread it onto my perfectly baked butter roll and took a bite.
WOW! Slightly salty, perfect spreadability (but not oily in any way), a medium amount of high buttery notes to the palate, and very very smooth on the palate.
Needless to say, I'm a very big fan of this butter and will be searching all over Manhattan to get me some more of this AOC protected goodness.
Now to only try 1 type of butter while in France is like only trying 1 slice of pizza in NYC.
So my quest for enlightenment continued through out my short 3 day excursion.
I have 2 other notable butter experiences to share.
My second "WTF" butter experience came during my lunch at Cafe de la Paix.There they served Baratte D'Isigny from Normandy.
Ummm yah...
Extremely pale in color, (again) slightly salty and definitely had the buttery high notes.
I had an extra serving of this butter because I realized my time in Paris was coming towards the end, and I wasn't getting any of this stuff back in the States.
My third notable experience was at an Oyster specialty restaurant about 5 minutes walk from the Arc de Triomphe. Although the butter wasn't individually wrapped, the perfect medallions of smooth white goodness sang in my mouth like an aria from the opera house. It was powerful and emotionally moving. This with some of the best raw oysters money can buy topped off with a wonderful bowl of Soup de Poissons could have been one of the most memorable meals I've ever had.Stay tuned for my next write up on Croissants in Paris.
2 comments:
Nice dude. The dairy in Europe seems so much better over there. I remember being blown away by Danon Yogurt in Luxembourg...seriously! It had almost a cheese like texture and flavor - very intense!
It's undeniable, when you don't cook the crap out of your products (aka pasteurization), you are left with something called FLAVOR!!!
The USDA and the FDA are such Nazis here in the US. Seriously over protective.
If the President is serious about moving forward... he needs to relinquish their powers and let each state regulate their own standards of production methodology. This will create a complete open market economy amongst our 50 states and surely better quality will follow.
Yes, there will be some states what whore themselves out with the cheapest goods, but there will also be others that create top notch goods that will rival world class competition.
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