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The Ethnic Paris Cookbook
Charlotte Puckette and Olivia Kiang-Snaiji
By
Published: Jan 01, 2007
Category:
Food and Wine
The Ethnic Paris Cookbook
Charlotte Puckette and Olivia Kiang-Snaiji
If you go to Paris with money in your pocket….well, as I write, with the Euro killing the dollar, the only way that sentence can end is: your pocket will soon be empty.
What I wanted to say: Go to Paris with money, and you will find yourself spending many of your evenings in restaurants. It can’t be avoided. Paris has become Parisland, a theme park for sophisticated adults. And one of the great adult pleasures is what we like to call “fine dining.”
In a previous incarnation, I was married to Money’s No Object, and we worked our way through the three-star list, deigning occasionally to sup at a two-star. The food was flawless, the evenings boring — a steady diet of genius gets old fast.
In a later incarnation, I was married to Go For It, and when we went to Paris, we bounced around lesser-starred restaurants. They too became wearing. So we broke the mold and, taking the advice of many, went to a Vietnamese restaurant called Tan Dinh. It is a venerable place with an exhaustive wine list. It was here that I encountered Magence, an inexpensive white so hallucinogenic that the Mrs. and I outlined an entire movie plot before we’d killed the bottle. Alas, we went back again and again. And as we aged, so did this classic destination.
I am now married to Is That Your Wife? and Paris has taken on a new character. Stuffy is out. Authentic is in. That means French restaurants where everyone but us is in publishing. Bistros with scarred table tops. And, more often than not, an ethnic place no one has heard of — until we tell them. [Pssst. Coin des Gourmets. Cambodian. Just a bit more subtle than Vietnamese. Try the caramalized pork. You’ll see. Shhh.]
Now, at last, comes a cookbook for people like us — that is, people who have tome after tome that teaches us how to cook like the French, and yet, for all our eclectic spirit, own no book that accesses the remarkable variety of food available in Paris. Well, here you will find, neatly separated by nationality — no crazy international goulash of Vietnamese appetizers cheek to jowl with Lebanese tabbouleh — whole dinners of recipes from Morocco/Algeria/Tunisia, Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos/China, Japan, Cameroon/Senegal/The West Indies, Lebanon and Syria.
The illustrations are colorful and cheery as a spring sun in the Atlas Mountains. The pages are cleverly color-coded, so each nationality gets its own design statement. The text offers crisp advice about ingredients — and the recipes happily don’t require you to buy an international spice emporium. And, as a bonus, the authors have cherry-picked ethnic restaurants in Paris and suggested just a few.
The recipes are the ones you want: Algerian lamb stew with turnips and chickpeas, Senegalese curry, Syrian vegetables stuffed with rice — like that. Two recipes will give you an idea of how simple and savory these recipes are.
MOROCCAN CARROT SALAD
Serves 6
3 peeled carrots
juice of one orange
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon orange flower water
1/2 cup blanched almonds, chopped
Grate the carrots into a bowl. Add the orange juice and toss.
Add sugar and cinnamon, sprinkle with the orange flower water.
Transfer to a serving bowl, garnish with chopped almonds and serve.
SHRIMP ROUGAIL
(from the Indian Ocean islands of Reunion and Mauritius)
Serves 6
6 cloves garlic, crushed
2 inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and chopped
1 28-ounce can of whole tomatoes, drained
2 tablespoons canola oil
2 small onions, minced
1 bird’s-eye chili, finely minced
1 tablespoon ground cumin
2 pounds medium shrimp, in the shell
1/2 cup fresh coriander, chopped
salt, freshly ground pepper
Crush the garlic and ginger.
Puree the tomatoes in a blender.
Heat the oil in a heavy saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onions, ginger and chili, and cook until onions are soft. Sprinkle with cumin, salt and pepper to taste and cook 2 minutes. Stir in pureed tomatoes, cover, simmer for 15 minutes.
Remove the cover and add the unpeeled shrimp, stirring to coat. Cook until just done, about 3-5 minutes. (Don’t overcook, or the shrimp get tough and hard to peel.)
Stir in the fresh coriander and serve immediately, with steamed rice. (Helpful hint: finger bowls.)
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