Magic in La Cordonnerie

If you ever go to Paris, go to La Cordonnerie (20, rue St-Roch, Paris 75001, France ). Here are some tripadvisor reviews - this is where we found out about it, looking for a restaurant close to where we were staying.

In my opinion, La Cordonnerie is outstanding in style, setup, quality, taste, and the art going into each dish. We had a table right next to the chef and his surprisingly tiny kitchen. He told us a little about the daily specials while chopping chives and onions, and when he had more time, came to our table to explain each dish, with emphasis on the specials, and showed the ingredients, and, whenever he had something plated for another table, the final piece.

We decided to try them all - three starters, two entrees:
- Smoked salmon mousse in crispy fried crepes -
- Arugula salad with fried mushrooms (Girolles, similar to chanterelles)
- Pan-fried foie gras with balsamic-cocoa happiness
- Seaered scallops in tarragon sauce with couscous and green beans
- veal stew in mustard sauce with potatoe gratin and pinto beans
All of these dishes had a combination of textures and flavors that made them very exciting and memorable. The most impressive was the crema di balsamico with cocoa surrounding the foie gras - for me the most unexpected combination and amazingly good. The scallops were seared to almost crispy caramelization on one side, much more than we would have thought possible, but tender and perfect inside, and wonderfully tasty with their tarragon sauce.

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The really unusual thing was that although some of the combinations seemed at first thought odd to me (which I definitely go for..) they tasted so well together that it became entirely natural to think of them as made for each other. The combined tastes made perfectly sense.

I found another, really cool food blog telling about La Cordonnerie and chef Hugo - Angela experienced a different special (perch with tarragon) and has more pictures to show (the one on top is linked from that blog, actually..) - we were simply too perplexed and captivated by what we saw and smelled and tasted to even remember taking photos..
Go to Paris! And go have your perfect dinner!

Cheeeeeese...

Cheese is at home here. The best way to taste that is to experience the traditional, deep-rooted specialties Switzerland has to offer, for example in Zuerich. After a day of exploring bridges bridging the Sihl, churches with varying sized clock faces, and brigthly colored glass windows, photographing people and places while roasting in the much hotter sun than we had expected while drinking cool beers, we went to Swiss Chuchi, the "swiss Kitchen", to indulge in Cheese Fondue and Raclette.

The cheese fondue reminded me in flavor very much on what I had tasted 10 years earlier, when my at that time roommate from the swiss canton Wallis made the fondue the way he had eaten it growing up - rubbing the bottom of a clay pot with garlic, mixing starch and kirschwasser (cherry schnaps), grating raclette cheese and appenzeller, if I remember correctly, half and half, and melting the cheese in the clay pot over medium heat, adding starch-schnaps to bind it and stirring patiently, continuously, vigorously, and yes, arm-tiringly. At Swiss Chuchi, you'll be served your clay pot on a little heater full of perfectly molten, creamy cheese happiness, a basket of bread cubes, and a fork to pick up the bread and stir the cheese with it and ... indulge. Yes, I know, I am repeating myself. :)


From what I could find online, I understood that the fondue here, called a traditional Waadtlaender fondue, is made using Greyerzer of various ages. It tasted really good, and like the home-made cheese fondue I knew. There were lots of yummy garlic slices in it as I noticed when finally reaching the pot's bottom, and the "Nonne" was very nice, but just a little crispy as my flame went out a little too early. I could not finish my fondue, the portion is clearly too generous for my stomach (surprising)..
As for the raclette, the restaurant is using the modern raclette approach (here I found a few more options to buy), a little electrical raclette oven with small pans to lay a slice of raclette cheese in and let it melt in the oven - my friend became more and more courageous at extending the cheese melting duration and finally reached a level of bubbliness and light caramelization reminding me of the origins of this dish - imagine the shepherds up on the alm, having a bag of potatoes, and maybe some pickles, and all the dairy they can get from their cattle for the whole summer. They boiled some potatoes, put a quarter cheese round on a stick, held it over the fire and scraped the molten yumminess onto the potatoes. The cheese must have been creamy, maybe lighlty burned at the rinds, dripping of the chunk and smelling just like that raclette cheese from this little raclette oven..
Swiss chuchi serves raclette with a cute Jute-bag of boiled potatoes, pickle slices, pickled little baby corn and mushrooms, and pearl onions. It can be ordered with various meat add-ons - my friend opted for rabbit, that comes in thin slices that can be fried right there at the table on the griddle part of the little raclette oven.
We were, as one would expect, sleepy after this meal and had to take and extended cheese-processing nap...

Kniddelen... Mehlknepp..

The last weeks, and months, have seen me crazy and busy, once more, so cooking was reduced, documentation was little, and writing about food was boiled down to nothing. Now I am sitting, after a cheesy dinner, in my hotel room in Zuerich, enjoying the end of my first day of real VACATION and finally have the time and pleasure to continue what got started by a dinner my parents once had.


A few months ago I promised myself to cook Lea Linster's luxembourgish kniddelen, that are just slightly different from the "Mehlknoedel" of my home of Saarland. And I did cook them!
Here is the procedure step by step as a picture book -

Cut bread into cubes, mix with flour, add vegetable broth and eggs to form a dough.




Form dumplings from the dough and boil them until they do not drow in the water any longer but swim to the top.
Then make a sauce from fried bacon and milk, and add to the dumplings.
As you can see, it is a farily simple dish, as many traditional meals, making the best out of a few ingredients, cheap for not too well to do locals, to feed a family with the little one always has in store..

The wonderful thing about these Knoedel/Kniddelen/Knepp is that they really taste like home to me - a rare thing to find in a cookbook, but maybe not if that cookbook was written by one of the best chefs out there - thank you, Lea Linster, for sharing this little gem!