May 01

An Afternoon at Le Cordon Bleu

Julian gave me a croissant and brioche class at Le Cordon Bleu for Christmas. Actually, I think it was more a gift for him, expecting me to bake these items on a regular basis. I had to rest my knees for a couple of days so I could participate in the class.

We took the Métro subway to a stop near the campus. The school is not housed in the same place where Julia Child took classes. The campus is southwest of the Eiffel Tower. The building resembles an oversized pizza box with picture windows overlooking the Seine. The first floor has a café, one large classroom, and a small store. We had lunch at the café while waiting for my class to start.

The class was conducted in French and English. Most of the students were American, Canadian, or British, with some French and Asian people mixed in. The doughs were pre-made. The first thing the instructor did was to demonstrate the lamination method of enrobing the butter in dough, then folding it. Temperature is critical at this step, because you don’t want the butter to leak out. We refrigerated the dough, then repeated the process. At this stage, the instructor took our doughs and ran it through a glorified pasta maker to get it to the right thickness. Thereafter, we shaped six croissants and six pains au chocolats. These rose while we shaped six brioche rolls and one brioche loaf.

The finished croissants and pains au chocolats.

Brioche loaf prior to baking.

I was surprised by several features of the school. The instructor, translator, and teaching assistants were all friendly and helpful to those of us who aren’t professionals. All of the stoves were induction, not gas. I asked the translator about this during a break and she said it was for safety reasons. There was probably an environmental reason as well, given gas fumes and the prospect of having ten stovetops going full blast in a classroom during the summer. The instructor also confessed that most bakeries in France do not do the croissant preparation themselves (quelle horreur!). The café on the first floor was reasonably priced. Tuition for a full culinary education is $69,000, so it helps that students can afford to eat there.

Meanwhile, Julian peeked in on a class on the first floor before walking back to Île St. Louis. The lesson of the day was foie gras (fatty goose liver) with a fig sauce. Each student received a whole foie gras and had to dissect out the arteries before cooking. Julian’s comment: “Some were better than others.” It pays to take anatomy; otherwise, you could wind up with a true crise de foie (crisis of the liver – foie gras is very expensive).

At the end of the workshop, we got to take home our recipe booklet, a Cordon Bleu apron, insulated bag, pencil, and our creations. We also had a “graduation ceremony”, where students received their certificates of completion to show their family and friends. I only took back to our apartment the brioche loaf, two brioche rolls, and two each of the croissants and pains au chocolats. The rest found good homes with full-time students and staff. The brioche loaf was sturdy enough to travel to Julian’s cousin’s house outside Amsterdam, where it made some fine French toast.

You need not go all the way to Paris to learn how to make croissants. One friend went to a class at the Chicago Sur La Table a couple of years ago. However, if you’re going to be in Paris and want the full experience (and can afford the fee), I recommend Le Cordon Bleu. It’ll be worth your time.

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May 01

Getting Around in Paris – An Update

We were in Paris last week. We rented an apartment in the same building where we stayed three years ago. Unfortunately, the years have taken a toll on my knees. As a result, moving around the city – and even in and out of the building – has been painful.

One of the original issues with Paris hosting the 2024 Paralympic Games was access. Many of the Métro stations do not have escalators or elevators, and many venues aren’t accessible to wheelchair users. On Île St. Louis, where we’re staying, most restaurants and shops have one or two steep steps by which to enter. Perhaps a few Métro stops have been retrofitted, but very few that we’ve traveled through. Finding ramps is an even bigger challenge. As a result, folks who use wheelchairs or walkers may be shut out of most establishments.

I understand that some of the reluctance to upgrade for access is due to the historic value of the buildings. In addition, cost is a major consideration. However, mobility-impaired people need access to work and recreation. Upgrades are long overdue.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2025/05/01/getting-around-in-paris-an-update/

Mar 16

Covid, Five Years Later

It was Monday March 16, 2020. Our hospital had received seriously ill patients with Covid-19 from the hospital near the rehab facility that was the epicenter of the outbreak. The Friday before, my pool closed due to the outbreak. Around 10 am, my manager went from cubicle to cubicle to send us all to work from home. Five years later, we’re still doing so.

While remote working may have protected us from getting the virus in the office, it has produced a plethora of other consequences. Isolation from coworkers has been the major one. Instead of just walking down the aisle to ask a question, you have to email or text to set up a virtual meeting. There’s no such thing as a chance encounter in the elevator or an impromptu conversation in the break room or bathroom. People get married, have babies, leave jobs, retire, or even die without much acknowledgment. This lack of recognition contributes to the decline in company culture and cohesion.

Along with isolation, technical glitches can disrupt workflow. The remote login may not work. Upgrades to hardware or software may be slow or non-existent. If there’s a problem with hardware, no computer person will make a house call to swap out a monitor or mouse that’s not functioning. You either have to drive somewhere to pick up the new item or wait on a delivery.

Will we go back to working in the office, at least part time? Probably not. There had been talk after a year or two of “hotel spaces”, where employees sign up to occupy desks for two-hour stretches. That time limit was impractical for our purposes; in addition, there was no space available to set up these desks. This runs counter to many private companies that are forcing employees to return to the office for at least three days a week or risk losing their jobs. So we’ll be working from home until we retire.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2025/03/16/covid-five-years-later/

Mar 05

Bean There, Done That

For Valentine’s Day 2025, we skipped the crowds at local restaurants. Instead, Julian and I stayed at home and joined forces to prepare a French-themed dinner. For several years, he had been wanting to try his hand at making cassoulet. We had even bought the imported dried tarbais beans (traditional for this dish), and they were waiting patiently in the back of the cupboard. We decided to make a tourtière for dessert. Both items got our usual mix of improvisations and shortcuts. More on this below.

In Paula Wolfert’s book, The Cooking of South-West France, she devoted an entire chapter to cassoulet, describing her travels through the region to taste and compare local variations of this dish. The common features are simple: a baked casserole of beans and meats: pork, sausage, and confit (duck or goose, preserved in its own fat).

A traditional preparation of cassoulet can take many hours, or even several days. To simplify the project, we vamped on a recipe from the latest edition of Joy of Cooking. We used preserved duck legs (confit de canard) from a local grocery, cans of low-sodium chicken broth, lean pork chops, bacon, and andouille sausage. We soaked the beans overnight and parboiled them the next morning with a pinch of baking soda. After draining the beans, we added broth, garlic, onion, tomato paste, parsley and thyme. While the beans cooked, we fried the bacon and browned the meats in the rendered fat. The beans and meats were layered in a Dutch oven, topped with breadcrumbs, and baked for several hours. Below is the final product.

Our first encounter with cassoulet was at a Seattle restaurant that prides itself on authentic French cuisine. Their version was not impressive. I think ours was better – not as overwhelmingly fatty and salty as the one from that restaurant.

It’s interesting to compare cassoulet with an American classic: Boston baked beans. We use the authentic 19th century recipe from the now-defunct Durgin Park restaurant in Boston. That recipe is quite simple, consisting only of navy beans, salt pork, molasses, sugar, onion, dry mustard, salt and pepper. The American style of baked beans usually has a strong sugary flavor note that competes with the saltiness of the pork. You may or may not prefer that to a rich meat-forward cassoulet. We also like other variants of the baked beans and meat theme. One is feijoada, the national dish of Brazil. See this blog post for details. There’s also Cajun red beans and rice.

The tourtière recipe had an apple-date filling. Instead of the phyllo dough, I used a conventional all-butter pie pastry. I cut the filling recipe down by a third, fearing that it wouldn’t fit in the pie pan. I should have used the whole recipe, as the ratio of filling to crust was too small. I also added some cinnamon to turn up the taste volume. If I make this again, I’ll do the phyllo crust

.Maybe next year we’ll do steak and baked potatoes for Valentine’s Day. They’ll take less time to prepare and won’t cost an arm and six legs. (Duck confit and tarbais beans aren’t cheap.) However, a little experimentation in the kitchen is good  to sharpen one’s skills.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2025/03/05/bean-there-done-that/

Mar 04

Bonjour Encore

Work has lightened up a little, so I’m back to blogging. Expect more content in the next few days. Coming attractions:

The closing of a beloved eatery near the University of Washington;

A southwestern French meal;

How many of my work conversations somehow wind up on the topic of food.

Watch this blog.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2025/03/04/bonjour-encore/

Feb 04

Adieu for Now

You may have noticed a lack of new content in the last seven months. I’ve been swamped with work and other issues to add new posts. Therefore, edible thoughts.com is being put on hiatus. It may be resurrected in the future. Thanks for reading.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2025/02/04/adieu-for-now/

Jul 15

Gastronomic Surprises in Switzerland

Many of the restaurants that cater to tourists in Switzerland have similar menus, consisting of raclette, cheese fondue, rösti (the Swiss equivalent of hash browns), schnitzel, pizza, pasta, and burgers. We were fortunate to find places that broke the mold on our travels. Here’s what we found, town by town.

Mürren. Our hotel served burritos and curry in addition to the usual suspects. Julian discovered that the Jungfrau Hotel had a Malaysian restaurant. We went there on our last night, and it was excellent. The restaurant served halal meat and vegetarian items as well. We had beef and chicken satays and a noodle dish.

Morcote. Most of the restaurants in town were Italian. One restaurant served a mixed grain polenta with corn and buckwheat. I didn’t expect to see buckwheat in any form in Europe.

Lucerne. My blood fish sauce level was getting perilously low after a week and a half. Fortunately, Julian found a Southeast Asian restaurant near our hotel, Khoua Vientiane (the website doesn’t work, alas). The proprietor was a character. The restaurant was doing great business, both takeout and eat in. The following night we went to a Japanese restaurant in the train station and were disappointed. The yakisoba noodles we ordered were far too salty.

With luck, we’ll find more interesting places on the last legs of our trip.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2024/07/15/gastronomic-surprises-in-switzerland/

Jul 15

Ciao di Morcote

Stop #3 on the Swiss tour was Morcote, a small town hugging Lake Lugano in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland. Unlike our earlier stop, the town wasn’t mobbed with tourists. We rented an apartment above the downtown strip. The number of stairs to reach the front door with our luggage, then the flight up to the apartment, nearly sent me running out of town screaming. Fortunately, the apartment and our host more than made up for the inconvenience to my knees.

Morcote is exhibit A on why not to rent a car in Switzerland. Parking spaces are limited. If you think you’re going to drive up in front of the hotel and leave your car there, think again. The main drag through Morcote is one lane wide in spots, which makes getting a bus or large vehicle through town challenging. In addition, the sidewalk ends shortly after the main downtown arcade does.

Julian did some uphill walks without me. First he went to Scherren Park, which contains numerous sculptures and gardens. The night after he went there, a thunderstorm caused heavy damage to the plantings. We were unable to go in the next day. He also went up to visit two churches on the hill near the park.

On our last full day in Morcote we took the boat to Lugano, the largest city on the lake. It was also more crowded with tourists. We went into a department store to cool down, and I wound up buying a sweater and a pair of pants. Needless to say, I probably won’t wear the former until October.

We’d go back to Morcote again. It has most of the attributes we like in a European village: Not overrun with tourists, friendly people, and good food. Maybe next time we’ll stay longer and explore more of the nearby villages.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2024/07/15/ciao-di-morcote/

Jul 12

Mingling with the Masses in Mürren

Mürren was our second stop in Switzerland. We walked around town briefly on our last trip to Switzerland 13 years ago. I didn’t think it was a huge town at the time. I didn’t detect that many tourists. Times have changed. As with Venice last year, I heard more English spoken. We also saw many Asians and observant Muslims (judging by the number of hijab-clad women) in town.

Our hotel in Mürren was the Alpina, five minutes from the train station. Our room was small and on the second floor. (In Europe, the ground floor is designated as floor zero.) This did not make my knees very happy. The hotel employees were friendly and helpful. Many of them were from Portugal. The food was excellent. We took a walk around town and found the gondola station to Schilthorn, our first side trip.

Schilthorn has a rotating restaurant and visitor center. Its main claim to fame is that a James Bond film, “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service“, was filmed here. (Don’t remember it? It was the only film that starred George Lazenby as 007. Telly Savalas was the villain, and Diana Rigg was Bond’s love interest.) We had the breakfast buffet in the restaurant – excellent. Julian walked around the observation deck and took photos. The visitor center has an exhibit devoted to the movie.

After we got back to Mürren, we took a gondola to Allmendhubel for lunch, We started out on a hike on the Mountain View Trail from Allmendhubel, which was billed in the guidebooks as an easy walk. My knees thought otherwise. Root- and rock-hopping aren’t as easy as they used to be. We had to proceed very slowly, and managed to catch the last train to Mürren from Grutschalp.

The next two days were spent recuperating and visiting Gimmelwald and Lauterbrunnen. The former is a tiny town just below Mürren. The locals sell homemade cheeses, eggs, and other farmstead items on the honor system. The latter is the main access point to Mürren, Wengen, and other cities in the Bernese Oberland. As you can imagine, it was clogged with tourists. The following day we went to Bern, the Swiss capital. Bern has arcades of shops large and small. I bought some tea at one store and had a nice conversation with its clerk, a Vietnamese woman.

Our last attempt at hiking was the Panorama Walk from Männlichen to Kleine Scheidegg. We learned before we were about to board the gondola that the trail was closed due to landslide risk. We wandered around Männlichen. On this day it was Julian’s turn to suffer an injury. He fell while taking pictures and sprained his dominant wrist. We were able to get ice for him to put on the wrist at the Männlichen cafeteria and when we got back to the hotel.

Will we return to Mürren again? Probably not until my knees are made of titanium.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2024/07/12/mingling-with-the-masses-in-murren/

Jul 11

Riding the Rails in Switzerland

We’ve been to Switzerland three times over the years. We rented a car the first time, for the “if it’s Tuesday, it must be Belgium” grand tour of western Europe. The second time, we stayed in a car-less town and bought train tickets as needed. This time we invested in Swiss Travel Passes. These get us on trains, buses, gondolas, funiculars, and boats all over the country. For some privately-run attractions, we get discounts. We have two reasons for riding the rails.

The Swiss mass transit system is superb. It puts Amtrak and local transit systems in the US to shame. Trains, gondolas, or funiculars serve even small towns in the mountains. The trains leave on schedule. If you have to transfer from one train to another, you often don’t have to wait long for your connection. Train stations and the infrastructure are well maintained. It’s easy to plan our trip itineraries on the Swiss Rail website. Not only does it give times, it gives you maps to get to your transfer.

Renting a car doesn’t always make sense in Switzerland. Many of the picturesque towns in the Bernese Oberland don’t allow cars except for official vehicles. In addition, you’ll pay extra for a rental car that has automatic transmission. The thought of driving a manual transmission car on steep mountain roads could give anyone pause. I never learned to drive manual transmission, which meant that Julian was stuck driving on most of our trips. You may have a hard time finding a rental car that will accommodate your luggage AND can negotiate the narrow mountain roads. (See two earlier posts, Ciao d’Italia and The Purple People Eater.)

So far we’ve had an easy time getting from point to point. With luck, this will continue.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2024/07/11/riding-the-rails-in-switzerland/

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