Boudin On A Barge and Ski Jumping In Paris

It was one of those weekends, where there was too much I wanted to do, so it came down to pick and choose. Boudin on a barge, ski jumping, photo exhibit and a flea market.

A blessing to me to be pulled out by all these events, who with shorter daylight  and rainy cold weather would rather hibernate than face the elements.

I love going to Saint Germain des Neiges to see the ski jumping in front of majestic Saint Sulpice church, captured better in a photo from last year.  A really very strange sight to behold, far from the Alps, but exciting to watch!

The piped out snow on the kiddy slope had melted somewhat, but that didn’t stop the young ones from valiantly trying to stay upright strapped onto skis for the first time.

Proud parents were urging them along, snapping photos of this fun  event in central Paris. For more adventurous ones was the baby slope to glide down on a rubber disc, caught in the end by volunteer mountain men.

A crowd had started to form around two ladies dipping and swirling speared bread cubes in the steaming fondue pot.  Not easy getting the dangling cheese strands out of the pot other than rolling them up.

The melted Alpine cheeses of Reblochon, Emmental, and Beaufort, along with  white wine from the Savoie region of France gives the special flavour to this mountain treat.

Frankly, I enjoyed feeling the warmth of the hot cheese in my hand as much as I did the taste.

I occasionally do a cheese fondue at home, but prefer an easier way of melting a whole Mont D’Or cheese, after filling the insides with some white wine and garlic.

Contained in its wooden box, it is even more creamier and less stringy than the traditional way. Vegetables, as well as bread taste marvellous dipped in the melted golden cheese, a specialty of the Jura mountains, just north of the Alps.

You have to be pretty brave and a good skier to swoosh down a ski jump, risking fractures or worse if you fall.  These guys were doing flips and turns mid air with crisscrossed skis, before getting them straighten out in a split second before landing upright!

I could have stayed more for the jumping and just the happy ambiance, but wanted to get in another event before it closed, putting off the boudin and flea market till Sunday.

I thought we might as well treat ourselves to some warm tea samples as we walked up Rue Bonaparte at the Kusmi Russian tea shop.  They had two different ones to try as we milled about the store.

La Mere de Famille  Chocolate beckoned us in as well and we bought 3 praline filled roches(rocks) and was offered some more samples of their newly created truffle logs.

Crossing over Blvd Saint Germain pass the Deux Magot cafe terrace, we waited for the bus to carry us up to the 10th arrondissement.

We took in another  photographic exhibit in front of the park where the ancient abbey was located.

The 10 th arrondissement of Paris is one of the most colourful and ethnically diverse of  Parisian districts.  Gare de L’Est became the first stop of Eastern Europeans escaping Nazi occupation and wars, as well as Alsace Lorraine residents leaving behind their war ravages cities.

It later became a haven for Turkish Kurds,  Ivory Coast immigrants, and even more recently the Balkans.  There you will find many good Turkish Kebab places and some Balkan  groceries, mixed in amongst African wig and hair salons.

The prostitutes on Rue Saint Denis are still there come rain or shine, and I feel sorry for them standing around in their skimpy outfits in frigid temperatures.

Recently there has been a surge of “gentrification” with new upscale restaurants for the emerging youthful residents drawn there by lower rents and property prices.

The exhibit was being held at a former Bain Douches, which are public bath houses, catering to those who do not have bathing facilities either at home or for indigents.

There are still 17 such public bath houses open freely to those in need, spread mostly in the northern and eastern Parisian arrondissements.

They serve about 7,500 people a month, the majority of which are the Roma populations and street people.

The exhibit was photographs taken by two American photographers, Berenice Abbott and Vivian maier.   They were all shot in the latter half of the thirties, the majority in New York City, where surprisingly for me, there were images of some horse drawn delivery carriages.

The big apple was impressive back then, with its tall skyscrapers already dotting the landscape. The photo that wowed me though was of the prices in a butcher’s market.  Hard to believe!

Even though the exhibit was small , the whole neighborhood is always interesting to walk around.

Sunday the rain returned with blustery winds, and you had to be a devoted foodies type, like me, to haul yourself out for boudin noir, rillettes and prunes.

As I walked down the cobblestone path to the banks of the Seine, the earthiness of decaying autumn leaves, along with the humid smell of the river permeated the air.  Some residential barges were lined up with plants decorating their outdoor decks.

One of the best charcuteries of France from the Loire valley comes to Paris once a year to sell their variety of boudins, patés, rillettes and pork products on a barge parked by the Eiffel Tower.

It’s an annual event where you can buy wines, foie gras, and regional specialties such as  the best prunes in France. Top deck you could sit savoring oysters while admiring the view of passing bateau mouches.

Paris has a several great charcuteries too of course, but I am very fond of Hardouin’s boudin noir with onions and the pork rillettes with vouvray are wonderful as well.

For those of you not familiar with boudin noir, it is a blood sausage made with pork blood, spices and onions or apples stuffed in natural casings and it is really delicious.

The white boudins are a favorite to serve for either Christmas eve or New Years. They are not made with blood, but with either veal, pork or rabbit.

I serve the boudin noir tatin style, layering it with sautéed apples, sometimes topped with browned chestnuts, or pomegranate seeds served with a port sauce.

Prunes Mi Cuit are more difficult to find for sale in Paris, except online, so I make it point to get them here.  Basically they are a prune that is dried only 35%, therefore keeping a more juicy  texture and lemony flavour.

Simple prunes d’Agen are totally dehydrated and then plumped up again with water, whereas these prunes are not. A kilo costs me about 9 euros and lasts a year.

I use them mostly to make a pastry that is a speciality of Southeastern France, going by several names; croustades, tortières or pastis.  It is a mixture of Armagnac doused apples and or with the addition of prunes encased in a layers of super crispy thin pastry dough like philo; cut and twisted on top.

Making the dough yourself is messy and time consuming as it has to be stretched very thin enough to cover a dining room table, much like the Hungarian strudel dough.  Using philo is an acceptable substitution.

The marvelous crunchy crispy sound from cutting into it paves the way for your taste buds to take notice.  The juicy apple and prunes are only lightly sugared in my rendition and are redolent of Armagnac.

In Brittany, prunes are used a lot to make the famous Far, which is basically a vanilla flan like cake studded with prunes.

Afterwards, I walked around to the other barges in the towering shadow of La Tour Eiffel to snap more photos, when a lone lovely white swan swam up tilting his/her head as if to say hello and seemed to follow my path, perhaps in hopes for a morsel to eat.

Having just published my treatise on Aphrodite/Venus, I choose to find this graceful symbol of the goddess as a reminder to keep the innocence and purity of heart and soul, and continue gently gliding over the waters of life.