These past few months Sandra and I, together with a few friends, have been trying to diversify our blogging CVs to include ‘food blogger,’ except that this refashioning hasn’t exactly been working well.
For one thing, it’s been a little bit of a challenge to gather all of us together—each one of us, after all, has a life outside of blogging. (Yes, that includes me; it may strike you as a claim bordering on fiction, but I do have an actual life. Its quality, of course, is debatable.) For another thing, in the few instances that we could gather our respective asses together for a meal, we become too caught up in enjoying the food and the conversation that we usually end up abandoning, neither deliberately nor willfully, to be sure, all plans to transform the meal into words that could be posted to our respective sites. For yet another thing—at least as far as I’m concerned—I’m not too crazy to believe that there are people who hold their breaths and suspend their daily activities just so they could find out what I have to say about this particular meal, this particular book, what I did at this particular time. I mean, come on—I’d be very lucky to get about five visitors a day, most of whom are people looking for the lyrics to that classic song ‘Larawang Kupas.’ So I have no great compulsion to update this blog.
But screw all those: Today, I’m hanging the ‘Blogger is in’ sign at the door (or whatever passes for a door in a blog writer’s dubious non-office) and writing about the Morning We Spent At The Salcedo Weekend Market.
As soon as Sandra and I arrived at Salcedo Park (officially called Velazquez Park) at some minutes past nine last Saturday, we gave the place the once-over—there was a wide variety of stalls that sold stuff ranging from organic fruits and vegetables, to fresh seafood and poultry, to prepared food, even plants. If you lived there, you could even get a cedula. But something caught our eye—and within five minutes of our arrival, we already spent over six hundred bucks at one particular stall.
The stall was La Cuisine Française, run by Michele and Jean D’Orival.
We had high hopes for it, because a Japanese friend of Sandra’s who’d lived in Salcedo Village had told us to check it out. I myself am always on the lookout for good French food—not high-church, high-priced haute cuisine, although that’s fine too, depending on the well-being of my wallet. What I’m looking for is the casual, unpretentious French bistrot*or café, or better yet good French home cooking, for which we don’t have to feel like we had to pawn our ancestors’ farm land just so we could afford to eat there.
The stuff La Cuisine Française had on display was impressively diverse. They had canard confit à l’orange, bouillabaisse (which I want to try next time), some pasta dishes that I’m sure were Frenchified. They had sausages and pâtés, a good selection of breads (which Mme. D’Orival called ‘artisanal’), different kids of quiches, and several selections of pastries, such as the humongous macarons.
We got a long baguette-like country bread, two kinds of quiche (one with basil and tomato, another with blue cheese), and two kinds of macarons.
First, the bread. We hesitate to call it a baguette because it was surprisingly heavier and more substantial than a regular baguette. It had a fresh, pleasantly yeasty odor, which would’ve been amazing if it had just come out of the oven. The texture was okay—chewy on the inside, maybe partly due to the unevenly spaced and sized holes (what baguette snoots would probably call good aveolage); the crust, however, could be a little crustier, maybe baked a couple of minutes longer. David Lebovitz wrote that many Parisians want their baguettes ‘pas trop cuite,’ or ‘not too baked,’ but I’m not French, which gives me the license to demand that my baguette be crustier. As for taste, I liked the delicate saltiness of the bread, with a very tiny hint of sweetness. We finished the entire loaf, which we ate with our baon—Italian Gorgonzola and ultra-thin slices of jamón serrano that had become crispy like bacon. It was fairly satisfying bread, although the best baguette we’ve had in the Philippines is still Chef Aklay’s demi-baguette in Sagada.
Next, the quiches. The crust was disappointing—it was pretty soggy, the kind that you find in bad buko pie. The filling of the basil and tomato quiche was fairly interesting, however—the thinly sliced tomatoes were perfectly blushed, its shiny surface and texture almost like candied fruit. The basil was fresh without being too assertive; Sandra said that perhaps spinach was used as an extender. It was decent quiche, except that other layers of flavor could’ve lifted it up; maybe some onion or a tiny hint of garlic, or some strongish cheese. The blue-cheese quiche, meanwhile, was not very good. It tasted a little too eggy and creamy for us, and had a too smooth consistency, like a custard. The blue cheese was there, we could smell and taste it, but it could use a little more. I would also like some texture in it—maybe if the crust were flakier that would’ve been good enough. We ended up crumbling over it bits of the Gorgonzola we had brought, to strengthen the flavor, and to add some texture.
Then we shared an orange macaron. As noted, M. and Mme. D’Orival’s macarons were huge (about the size of a saucer), and they crumbled nicely. It was sweet, but not cloyingly so. It had some chocolate (I think; this time I wasn’t paying close attention to it anymore) in the middle, which was a nice surprise. Sandra said that the Cuisine Française macarons tasted tame compared with those at Bizu, whose macarons are tiny discs of intense flavor.
I wish we’d tried more of their stuff, if only to know exactly what La Cuisine Française’s specialty is. But considering how much we had to spend on only a few items, I guess we may need to wait another day to try some more of their food. We didn’t get to talk to M. and Mme. D’Orival. They were accommodating and approachable, to be sure, but they were always intent on listening to their customers’ questions, and giving them adequate answers—which means that they never ran out of people wanting to talk to them. I don’t mind: In my book, this is simply what any good food-business owner should be.
I wanted to love La Cuisine Française, if only for the fact that I would like to see more places that serve relatively inexpensive French food.** But we must’ve caught them on a less-than-great day. Still, I want to eat there another time.
Next: The search for the perfect laksa.
* Admittedly, however, as more and more bistrots are getting their Michelin stars, they are becoming more and more upscale and forbidding as well. (See, for instance, Jeffrey Steingarten’s ‘The Man Who Ate Everything’ for an excellent essay on the matter.) I really wish I’d made notes on the meals I’d had in Paris, but I was just too amazed at the idea that someone as shabby as I am could actually have the chance to go there—proof of which is that I’m still talking about it, almost two years after the fact. Still, if you’re interested to know, of the cafés that I remember going to, the ones I enjoyed the most were Les Deux Magots at place Saint Germain des Prés, and the open-faced-sandwich stall at La Grande Épicerie, whose entrance faces rue du Bac, I think.
** Attention, L’Eau Vive in Asia: Please, please, please, finish your renovation soon. We totally want to go.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 ang humirit:
Post a Comment