Paris bites

My hands-down best meal in Paris was a real treat: a quintessentially French home-cooked meal. 

On the night before the Glee Club left Paris, singer and voice teacher Florence invited Ma'am Malou to dinner at her house. Ma'am Malou, not wanting to go by herself, took myself, Mimi and the Glee Club's soprano pint-sized powerhouse Stef with her.

We met up outside the metro station in a... shall we say, less than savory neighborhood. While we clutched our purses tighter and waited nervously for Stef, who was late, to emerge from the metro, Florence's colleague Stefan assured us that the house we were going to have dinner in was very different from the neighborhood. "It's very pretty," he promised. 

And indeed it was. Behind a small wooden gate on a nondescript street lay a secret garden, shared among three families, including Florence and her teenage daughter Manon. All three families are great friends and share this wonderful space. When the lady of the house locked the gate behind us, she effectively shut out all the sounds of the city. It felt as if we weren't even in Paris anymore. They even have a cherry tree!

Then there was the food. 

After starting us off with baguettes, olives in brine and saucisson (sausage) with almonds to nibble on, Florence presented us with two homemade quiches hot from the oven. One had goat's cheese, while the other was made with spinach and mushrooms.

Salads are my favorite thing (in a long list of favorite things) to have in France. They just do them so well over there! Our hostess served the quiches with a simple salad of crisp, fresh greens with a balsamic vinaigrette. 

Of course, it wouldn't be a French meal without cheese. My new discovery was the Saint-Maure, the crinkled log-like cheese on the right. It has a straw stuck down the middle for the cheese to breathe. I guess that's what makes it so deliciously creamy. I liked it so much, I bought my own Saint-Maure to bring home to Amsterdam.

To end the meal on a sweet note, Florence baked not one, but two pies for dessert: a rich chocolate tart and this beautifully light and crisp apple tart.

French women really have this knack for knocking out amazing food with effortless chic, and elevating home-cooked meals into an art form. I've got to hand it to them... and only wish that I could be capable of the same!

Speaking of sweet endings, my last few hours in Paris were spent in a most worthwhile way: in pursuit of my favorite pastry, the tarte citron. Marj, a former colleague of mine from GMA now living in Paris, had blogged about a tarte citron that I absolutely had to have. So we met up at the Place des Vosges and headed together to Le Loir, a quirky little cafe in the Marais...

... where I met the tarte citron that defeated me. I've never, ever given up halfway through a lemon tart, but this insolent tart wielded a knockout weapon known as meringue.

Di ko kinaya! Sa Ingles: I yield! 

I'm pretty sure there are worse ways to leave Paris, than with lingering memories of a home-cooked meal under a cherry tree, and with the sour-sweetness of lemon and meringue still melting on my tongue. Sarap!