Des si et des mets, Paris

I was diagnosed with celiac disease about two weeks before leaving for Europe. I was pretty nervous about having to adopt a new diet while traveling in foreign countries, so I did a lot of online research about the foods I could hope to find in Austria and France. I knew we would have access to a kitchen during the entire trip, so we'd find a way to eat good food no matter what. 

I was very happy to discover that David Lebovitz has a gluten-free guide to Paris on his website. David eats gluten, but he was kind enough to compile some information and advice for those of us who can't. Included in his list was the first, and only, gluten-free restaurant in Paris. I knew J and I would have to pay it a visit.

We went there on our first night in Paris, also my birthday. Pretty awesome. Although we had dined sumptuously at Osterreicher im MAK in Vienna the night before, who's going to complain about two birthday dinners? Not this girl. 

Des si et des Mets is on a winding, hilly street in Montmartre, quite near the famous Café des Deux Moulins from Amélie (one of my favourite movies of all time). I had never been to Montmartre and J only once when he lived in Paris. We planned to go back to explore during the day, but never got around to it. I'm glad we got to see it by night.

The name of the restaurant translates as "Ifs and Dishes". It's a play on words because in French it sounds like "Ifs and Buts" (Mais, pronounced like mets, means but). It's a small, cozy place, with a modern and funky style: dark red walls, purple banquette, red beaded pillows. It was about half full when we arrived at 8:30 pm.

I was so excited to be eating in a place where I didn't have to ask any questions about what I could or could not have. There was even a bread basket! The bread was a little crumbly in texture, but tasty. Another plus: much of the menu was also lactose-free. J and I imagined how wonderful it would be to have an apartment nearby and come here once a week.

They had a prix fixe menu for 26€ (About $33 Canadian) so we went for that, plus a bottle of white wine. I started with the smoked salmon and J ordered the melon soup. The salmon was soft and creamy, and was served with spears of cold asparagus and a creamy dill sauce, with bread. I had never tasted anything like the soup before. It was bright pink, cold, sweet and refreshing. 

I often find that appetizers are more impressive than main courses in restaurants. It's always disappointing when the best part of the meal is the first course, because your expectations are raised up high only to be immediately lowered. That's what happened here, although it wasn't extreme. My plat principal was a whole fish called dorade, with carrot-ginger puree. The flesh of the fish was delicious but it was very difficult to eat. Maybe it's a French thing to serve fish whole, but I had no idea how to efficiently remove the bones. The carrot puree was good but I found myself wanting something else on the plate. 

J enjoyed his lamb chops with potatoes, but felt the same way. Maybe it was the way the meals were plated, but it seemed like something was lacking.

For dessert I chose the Crumble aux Pommes (the French don't have a word of their own for crumble) and J the Chèvre Chaud Sur Lit de Salades. The crumble was good, although I've gotta say I think I've made a better gluten-free crumble topping myself. J loved his salad, warm goat cheese on greens. With a sweet soup to start and a salad to finish, it was as though he'd reversed the appetizer and the dessert.

The whole evening at Des si et des mets was lovely. The service was friendly and quick, and the atmosphere was relaxed. Although the food wasn't perfect, it was tasty, and it was a great feeling knowing I could order anything from the menu. What freedom!

Des si et des mets
63 rue Lepic, 18e
Paris
www.dessietdesmets.com

Pumpkin Apple Upside-down Cake

Lately I have been finding lots of inspiration over at La Tartine Gourmande. 

Bea has a really beautiful website. She's a professional photographer and food stylist so her photos are always gorgeous. And I really like her style of food too. Very wholesome, with a focus on fresh fruit and vegetables. Since she's from France there's often a French influence in her food as well. 

Bea definitely has a dessert and baking focus, and it turns out that much of her baking is gluten-free. As far as  I know, she doesn't have celiac disease, but she seems to really enjoy experimenting with gluten-free flours. So far, all of her gluten-free recipes I've tried have been delicious. She uses a lot of nut flours and really likes quinoa and buckwheat.

She also often incorporates fruit and vegetables in her cakes and other baked goods, which I really appreciate. Sometimes it's great to be decadent, but if I want a little treat to nibble on and pack in my lunch, I like it to be somewhat good for me as well. Which is definitely the case with this fantastic pumpkin cake. 

What could be more autumn-like? An incredibly moist cake with a rich pumpkin flavour and hints of quinoa and ginger with a caramelized apple top. I would love to try this as an upside-down cranberry cake as well, and it would probably be awesome with pears. It's also great just like this ... especially with a dollop of thick yogurt.

As you can see in the photo up there, I really like using my scale to weigh flours when I bake. I think it will really help me experiment more with different kinds of gluten-free flours as well. Some of Bea's recipes have weights and some don't. This pumpkin cake doesn't, so the last time I made it I figured out what they should be. If you like baking with a scale (it is a much more accurate way to measure flours, plus you don't have to get any measuring cups dirty!), here are the flour measurements for this cake:

1/2 cup quinoa flour: 2 oz.
1/2 cup brown rice flour: 2.5 oz
1/4 cup tapioca flour: 1 oz.
1/4 cup sweet rice flour: 1.25 oz

Here are a few other recipes from La Tartine Gourmande that I've enjoyed. Go peruse Bea's site yourself, I'm sure you'll love it.

Apple and Olive Oil Cake
Multi-purpose almond crumble topping
Cinnamon tea cakes

(This cake also looks amazing!)

Osterreicher im MAK - Vienna

On August 18, I turned 26. I began my birthday in Vienna and ended it in Paris. This vacation was pretty much the best birthday present ever.

And since we flew to Paris on my birthday I ended up getting two birthday suppers out of it. Even better! The first one in Vienna was at Osterreicher im MAK. Its named after the chef, a famous guy named Helmut Osterreicher, and it's inside a museum called the Museum fur angewandte Kunst (MAK),  or Museum for Applied Arts. We didn't get a chance to visit the museum but they have an amazing shop full of super cool houseware items, books and games.

I searched for a really nice restaurant to celebrate, and this one got great reviews in our travel guide and online. It ended up being a fantastic night out, although there was a close call when it came to gluten, which made me think the kitchen wasn't really being as careful as they could be.

The space is elegant, funky and eclectic all at the same time, although you really shouldn't expect much less from a restaurant in an art museum. It's all one room with soaring ceilings covered in a beautiful flower pattern. There are mirrors and black chalk-boards everywhere. The room is divided by a kind of half-wall between the bar/lounge area and the actual dining room. Big, beautiful wood-framed windows line the walls and a massive bottle chandelier hangs over the bar.

The menu is divided between classical Austrian dishes and modern Austrian dishes, with a page for each. Among the classical dishes is, of course, wiener schnitzel, plus beef goulash and beef in aspic (shudder). Actually, it's pretty much all meat. The menu clearly changes with the seasons, since when I just checked it online the modern section looked completely unfamiliar.

One thing I noticed right away is only two pages of the menu are accorded to food - the rest of the eight go to drinks: wine, beer, spirits, cocktails and non-alcoholic choices. We enjoyed two lovely bottles of white wine and managed to get rather tipsy ... I mean, what else are birthdays for?

It was fairly easy to navigate the menu even with our limitations - only a few things would cause problems. I started with a fantastic salad with Serrano ham and cream cheese, on arugula with fresh raspberries and an aged balsamic reduction. It was the perfect combination of textures and flavours. The cheese was nothing like what we call cream cheese in North America, as you can see from the photo. It was more like soft goat's cheese but with a subtle cow's milk taste.The balsamic reduction had a deep, rounded sweetness and earthiness that added an amazing element to the whole plate.

For my main I ordered some kind of boiled beef, I can't remember exactly what it was called. The meat itself was good, nothing spectacular, but I really liked all the little side dishes and how it was presented almost TV-dinner style. It was very old-fashioned, with creamed green beans and sort-of smashed, soft yet caramelized potatoes.

This was where I did, however, discover a dumpling in amongst my meat and vegetables. It's pretty obvious in the photo, there in the top left-hand corner. I'm just happy I realized what it was before I bit into it, and quickly moved it to J's plate. It was my birthday dinner and I wasn't going to freak out about it. Maybe once I've been gluten-free for years and I know exactly what happens when I eat it by accident, I will take these things a little more seriously.

J's main was also beef - a minute steak with onions and homefries. The fried onions looked fantastic.

There were fewer dessert options for us but what we ate was great. J had what I recall as some kind of fritter with sauteed apples on the side. Mine was a frozen chocolate mousse with a few blackberries and a fruit sauce. It was a delicious texture - cold and firm and custard-like.

There was more of the restaurant to explore. When I went downstairs to use the bathroom I snuck a peek into the kitchen. I find the hustle and energy of restaurant kitchens fascinating, and I wished I could have stood and stared for hours, but of course I didn't. I also noticed a dark, swank outdoor terrace off the lower level.

Our meal at Osterreicher was long and lingering. We spent a lot of money (although we are cheap when it comes to wine), but it was totally worth it. Afterwards we looked around the fabulous design shop in MAK and then wandered the streets, through the main Viennese square, Stephansplatz, and past Stephansdom, the cathedral. Finally we made it across the bridge of the Danube canal and home to our little apartment.

The next day we got up and flew to Paris. Incredible. Coming up: my second birthday meal, at Paris' only gluten-free restaurant. No chance of stray dumplings in their food. 

Osterreicher im MAK
Stubenring 5
1010 Wien, Austria
www.oesterreicherimmak.at

Meierei - Vienna, Austria

We ate some fantastic food on our European holiday. Most of it we cooked ourselves, like quinoa with sausages and chanterelles, potatoes with lardons, creme fraiche and red peppers, and pasta with mushrooms, fresh soft cheese and more lardons. There were also so many amazing things to eat straight up. Thick, Greek natural yogurt, creamy with an amazing tang. Fresh sheep's cheese slathered on bread. The best pistachio gelato I've ever had in Paris. Fresh-smoked soft cheese in Denmark. Spicy, chewy, fatty and highly addictive sausages that we munched while walking around the streets of Vienna.

We only ate out a few times, and in the next few posts I'm going to tell you about some of those places. Let's start with Meierei.

Meierei is a cafe and milk bar in Vienna. (Meierei is the German word for dairy.) There are lots of great things about this place, but one of the best? Definitely its location. 

Meierei is inside the Vienna Stadtpark (city park). You can take the U-bahn line (subway) right into the park, although we walked here. Meierei is right below another, fancier restaurant called Steirereck im Stadtpark. The park is gorgeous, a long green rectangle with a canal running through it, big old trees, benches and statues. The restaurant sits overlooking the canal and the park. We didn't see where the entrance to Steirereck is, but we were beckoned down the stairs to Meierei by a big milk bottle. 

Once inside, the theme is definitely milk. Lots of milk. In fact, the walls of the foyer are covered with floor-to-ceiling photos of milk, all froth and bubbles. Inside the restaurant, there are milk bottles lining the wall behind the bar and white everywhere.  

We sat outside on the deck. It was beautiful out there, with a little shade from the awning. 

With J's lactose allergy, a restaurant specializing in milk might not seem like a natural choice. But I read about this place online and I knew they offered all different kinds of milk he could drink. They have cow's milk, goat's milk, soy milk, rice milk, coconut milk, and even horse milk! That last one kind of freaked us out. On top of the plain milk they have all kinds of flavoured milks, warm or cold. J ordered strawberry goat's milk and I ordered warm cow's milk with cardamom.

We enjoyed them both, although the cardamom milk was very sweet. But of course we couldn't stop there. On top of milk, Meierei offers a full cafe menu, but one of their specialties is, of course, cheese. We are not ones to turn down a good cheese plate. Because of J's limitations, we went for the cow-goat-sheep plate, although I would have loved to try the selection of Austrian cheeses or raw milk cheeses as well. 

The presentation of the cheese plate was outstanding. I really loved the way they did it at Farm in Calgary, but this plate had so much elegance and panache. The smear of apricot preserves, the pumpkin seeds tossed haphazardly, and all the tiny labels on the flat porcelain made it very luxe.

Of course the cheese was fantastic. I don't remember how they all tasted and I definitely didn't take any notes, but we loved all of them but one. You see the little dish with the runny cheese in it? That one was vile. It was the consistency of gluey cheese fondue and tasted like strong, moldy garbage. We could barely smell it.  

But everything else was delightful. Of course the plate came with a basket of bread that I couldn't eat, but we had just bought some gluten-free bread, so I discreetly slid it out of my bag and into my lap, and ripped chunks off the slices to eat my cheese with. Very convenient.

While we were eating I felt the urge to try another kind of milk, so I ordered the milk with chocolate, orange and ginger. This concoction is something I can't get out of my head, and if I ever open a restaurant (not likely!) it is going on the menu. The concept is brilliant. A glass of warm milk arrives at the table accompanied by a frozen chocolate popsicle. You dip the popsicle into your milk and swirl it around until it tastes the way you like it. You can leave it in there to melt or eat it right off the stick. Amazing! And it tasted fabulous - rich chocolate spiced with orange and ginger. The most original hot chocolate I ever drank. 

We had already eaten a lot that day and I could barely finish the three cow's cheeses on the plate (of course I tasted all the others as well). It doesn't look like much, but with all that milk in me I was full to bursting. J decided to try one of the desserts, Rhubarb Snow with Violets. I was intrigued as to what this would be, and it looked gorgeous. It was basically a granita - shaved ice with sugar and flavourings. Despite the bright pink colour it didn't taste all that much like rhubarb. The highlight was the sugared violets. They were crunchy, sweet and like nothing we'd eaten before.   

Although we didn't sample the other food at Meierei, given the cheese and milk offerings I'm sure it's good. When we are next in Vienna I hope we can visit this place again. The temptation of amazing cheese and milk plus a beautiful location is a winner. 

Meierei im Stadtpark
Am Heumarkt 2A, A-1030 Wien
http://steirereck.at/wien/meierei/