well-vinegared

I'm holding a bottle of vinaigre de Banyuls, a vinegar from the south of France, and savouring its taste on my tongue. It's sweet, but not the way balsamic vinegar is sweet - this has a rough, biting edge to it, as though you wouldn't need much more to make carpaccio than to take a swig and breath on the display in a butcher's shop. I just ate a salad of lettuces, oil, and a drop of this - "the dominican," as its called. I think the vinegar is made from the leavings of the region's wineries, and since Banyuls is typically a dessert or appertif wine, its appropriate that the vinegar maintains that same tone. I actually have hardly frequented specialty food shops in Paris, but with my newfound confidence that I can actually cook even in my tiny kitchen, I will start to.

The latest cheese find: Figue, a chevre from Aquitaine, with a particularly chevre-y taste for a cheese that's actually aged quite a bit, and drier than many french goat's milk cheeses. I hate to admit it but I've been enjoying the cheap mass-produced camambert quite a bit; I now have a collection of the little round cardboard dishes they come in. I think the appeal is something about the relation between camembert's national cred in France - its the country's cheese, after all - and its lowbrow, unsophisticated packaging, the way the packaging gestures weakly at the seriousness with which the French treat cheese. Or we think they do.

This weekend I'm attempting a vegetable curry with winter veg, depending on whats in the market, and plenty of basmati rice. I'm missing rice. And Indian food. While I don't have a reliable source of naan, here, I think that the lebanese bread merchant at the farmer's market has something that will do me, for the sake of appearances.

that's it for now - more later this weekend - ben