The 15 éme is back from holiday.  Most of the shops are open as usual, that is to say closed on Mondays, and our local restaurants are tempting us with their new menus.  The partially deserted streets are now busy with swarms of motocyclettes weaving in and out of the rush hour traffic, dicing with buses and delivery vans and paying scant regard to any careless pedestrian who might venture onto a meaningless zebra crossing.  Cafés are full of early morning coffee drinking commuters, the lucky ones bronzed from the Med.  The less lucky, who perhaps took advantage of the strong Euro and went to the UK for their vacation, looking as washed out as the rest of us who stayed at home.  Yes, Paris is back and so is Mrs H for her second term at Le Cordon Bleu.

This term Jackie will be learning how to prepare traditional, regional French dishes as well as more standard fare like lesson one’s Roasted Cockerel with Parsley and Spring Vegetables.  She would like to improve on her presentation this time and we have invested in a Sony Cybershot digital camera in order that she can photograph the demonstration dishes, which students are encouraged to do, and have a visual ‘aide memoire’ when she comes to do her revision.  She has also got a little more streetwise in how to cope with some of the niggles of life at the Cordon Bleu. 

The ladies’ locker room is a mini labyrinth of corridors lined with double rows of lockers, one above the other. Students have to change out of their normal clothes into their kitchen uniforms in front of their lockers but as there is only room for one student and there are two lockers this can be a bit stressful.  Plus, last term, Jackie just bagged a locker in the middle of one of the corridors. Consequently as well as fighting for floor space with her neighbour she was also getting barged about by students pushing past, late for class, who hadn’t learnt the ‘excuse me’ words causing a few tense situations.  This term, although her first lesson wasn’t until 15.30, we were at school at 8.00 and she got the pick of the lockers; one niggle less.

September looks like being a busy month for me.  Several friends are coming to see us including David Barklem with his friend Helena, Simon and Jo Ashard, our Swiss friends Beat and Esthi, and David and Svatia Barker.  Plus, for all us Mac freaks, there is the European Apple Expo just down the road later in the month and the second wine course starts on the 15th.  It looks like being a fun month after, I have to admit, a rather dull August.

Jackie picked up a really neat dish at school on Wednesday, ‘Saumon Farci en Feuille de Chou Vert’, cabbage stuffed with salmon and vice a versa.  The cabbage needs to be boiled for about five minutes and then refreshed in cold water.  The salmon should have its skin, bones and dark meat removed and then flattened into escallops.  A brunoise of finely chopped carrots, celery stalks, mushrooms, onion and bacon should also be prepared.  Now here is the clever bit; line a small ladle with a salmon escallop and spoon in some brunoise and chopped cabbage.  Place a cabbage leaf onto a square of cling film and put the stuffed salmon hemisphere onto the middle of the cabbage.  Draw up each corner of the cling film and twist into a knot so that the cabbage leaf now forms an outer layer to the salmon ball. Repeat the process only this time line the ladle with a cabbage leaf and turn out onto a salmon escallop.  Poach the balls still in their cling film and serve with more brunoise and a red wine sauce. They look attractive and taste wonderful.  Expect balls to be on the Pin Mill menu when we get back, hopefully not mine.

David Barklem and his friend Helena came to stay on Tuesday and visited Versailles on Wednesday.  We dined at Thierry Burlot’s “Le Quinze” on Wednesday night.  The food was excellent but we rather over reached ourselves on the wine front.  I ordered an expensively delicious Beaume de Venise to compliment our foie gras starter assuming we would have our usual cheap and cheerful Côte du Rhone Village for afters.  But David asked our friendly waiter to recommend a suitable Bordeaux for the main course.  Having impressed him with our fine taste in sweet wine I am sure that he now placed us in the ‘High Roller’ category and produced an equally expensive red.  The wine was fine if not exceptional but the cost seriously damaged the Harding’s eating out budget.  To make matters worse the waitress charged David’s credit card for the whole amount despite me having paid her half in Euros.  The credit card machine refused to nullify the transaction and as he was going home the next day David, not unreasonably, didn’t want my Euros; an impasse.  The matter was eventually resolved to David’s satisfaction, whether or not to the restaurant’s we shall no doubt find out on our next visit.  Jackie and I had sloped off during the negotiations .

I’ll leave the Lewis Hamilton debacle until the end so that non Formula 1 fans and Ferrari supporters can skip it.  First, the good part of the weekend, the arrival of Simon and Joanna Ashard.

Simon’s company were treating their employees to lunch and a night in Paris so he decided to combine it with a visit to us and bring along Joanna as well.  They were later getting to us from the station then we expected and I was getting a bit twitchy as I had booked a restaurant, new to us, in the centre for lunch.  Jackie filled in the time by turning some carrots to go with our supper.  When they finally got to us Jo waltzed into the kitchen, saw the neatly turned carrots said, “They look good,” and stuffed one in her mouth.  This did not go down too well with my friend the cook, who then insisted on turning another carrot to replace the missing one making us even later.  Simon dashed off to a restaurant near Notre Damme for his boys’ lunch and we caught the number 39 bus to Willi’s Wine Bar after I had phoned and negotiated a delayed start.

It isn’t easy finding a listed restaurant for lunch on a Saturday and I was very interested to see how Willi’s Wine Bar stacked up.  It’s situated on rue des Petits-Champs just north of the Jardin du Palais Royal in the 1st.  It doesn’t have a very imposing frontage and we walked straight past it the first time.  From the street it looks just like it says on the door, a wine bar that would have trouble in serving a Croque Monsieur let alone anything that might interest a Michelin inspector.  Inside, the long, narrow bar opens out into a basic but atmospheric dining area with about ten tables; the atmosphere being provided by moody wine posters that decorate the walls.

There were two, young waiters, good cop and bad cop.  Good cop was French, attentive, pleasant and helpful; he even insisted on taking our photo when he saw my camera.  Bad cop was Antipodean, slightly arrogant and cheeky.  Young, cocky waiters shouldn’t diss mature, Cordon Bleu students and expect to get away with it.  I had to put a restraining order on Jackie to stop her doing him serious damage; as it is he will probably be walking again in a week.

In our bar like surroundings I wasn’t expecting too much from the kitchen but how wrong I was.  The menu read well with a slight Mediterranean slant:  the chef, François Yon, promised a seasonal menu from fresh, market sourced produce.  I had anchovies for a starter, Jackie had quail and Jo sardines; all were excellent.  Lamb, cooked to perfection pleased Jackie whilst I had a fillet of firm white fish which was great but I forgot to write the name down so won’t be able to tell you what it was until we go again.  Jo had a vegetarian dish which I won’t describe so as not to upset any carnivorous readers.  Pleasant confections rounded off a very good lunch which, for €25 for three courses, was extremely good value.  The wine card was a bit pricey but I did manage to find a reasonable Pouilly Fumé for €35.  I later found out that you can buy wine by the glass which would have been a more sensible option.

After a stroll through the gardens we parked ourselves at a café in Place Colette and were entertained by a group of very accomplished street musicians.  Simon phoned to find out where we were as his young colleagues were getting a little the worse for wear and he thought it best to retreat before a tour of the strip joints was organised.  We all travelled back to the flat for a late supper of Jackie’s signature dish, Paupiete de Veau.  Much to Joanna’s amusement she forgot the carrots and burnt them.

The Formula 1 Rant

After the ghastly Valencia Grand Prix, with all the charm of racing round an industrial estate it was sooo nice to be at the World’s finest motor racing circuit, Spa Franchochamps, for the Belgian Grand Prix.  The track, 4.2 miles, used to consist mainly of public roads swooping through the hilly, Ardennes forest.  To drive round quickly in a road car, which I did in 1975, is breathtaking.  To race round it on the limit of adhesion requires a whole level of skills and courage beyond most mortals.

The current, slightly sanitised, closed circuit follows the lines of the original retaining most of the character and providing a unique challenge to sort out the gods from the men.  The drivers love it, the spectators adore it and it makes for dramatic TV.  What could possibly go wrong?  The FIA stewards demoting the legitimate winner after the race to third place, that’s what.

If you are still reading this I assume that you saw or heard about the incident where late in the race Lewis Hamilton cut across a chicane and gained the lead from Kimi Raikkonen.  What the rules state is that in situations where that happens the driver will be penalised unless the gained position is relinquished at the first opportunity.  I have watched the video over and over again and it is perfectly clear that Lewis did gain an advantage by short cutting the chicane.  But move on a few frames and it is equally clear that he immediately backed off and let Kimi retake the lead.  The fact that the Ferrari ran wide at the next corner allowing Lewis to legitimately overtake should give no reason for any penalty to be imposed.  The McLaren team checked on the radio with Charlie Whiting, the clerk of the course, to make sure that Lewis had done enough to comply with the regulations and was assured that he had.  Unfortunately, although holding a powerful post, Mr Whiting does not interpret compliance with the regulations nor impose penalties.  That is done by the FIA stewards, each of which has a close relative being held hostage by the FIA’s mother organisation MA-FIA.  If Ferrari doesn’t win, one of the hostages loses an ear.  I was pleased to hear that McLaren are going to protest about the decision and hope that common sense prevails and the sport doesn’t fall further into disrepute.

Thanks to Anne Henry for putting me onto the excellent “very good taste” food blog via Clotilde Dusoulier’s “Chocolate & Zucchinni” from where the following comes.

The Omnivore's Hundred is an eclectic and entirely subjective list of 100 items that Andrew Wheeler, co-author of the British food blog Very Good Taste, thinks every omnivore should try at least once in his or her life.

He offered this list as the starting point for a game, along the following rules:

1. Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.

2. Bold all the items you’ve eaten (I've used green and red instead, and added an asterisk for the items I'm particularly fond of).

3. Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.

4. Optional extra: post a comment on Very Good Taste, linking to your results.

1. Venison *

2. Nettle tea

3. Huevos rancheros (Mexican Ranch Eggs)

4. Steak tartare *

5. Crocodile - Make the world a safer place, eat a crocodile.

6. Black pudding * - Only the best from Bury in Lancashire

7. Cheese fondue - Boring

8. Carp

9. Borscht

10. Baba ghanoush (Smoked Aubergine Dip)

11. Calamari *

12. Phở (Vietnamese Rice Noodle soup with sliced beef)

13. Peanut Butter & Jam sandwich

14. Aloo gobi

15. Hot dog from a street cart

16. Epoisses * (Yummy French Cheese)

17. Black truffle

18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes  - Elderflower, plum, apple.

19. Steamed pork buns

20. Pistachio ice cream *

21. Heirloom tomatoes (Open pollinated, rustic looking)

22. Fresh wild berries

23. Foie gras *

24. Rice and beans

25. Brawn, or head cheese

26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper

27. Dulce de leche (Spanish milk candy)

28. Oysters *

29. Baklava *

30. Bagna cauda (Italian hot sauce dip)

31. Wasabi peas (Japanese horseradish)

32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl - I had this in Boston but am not sure about the bowl

33. Salted lassi

34. Sauerkraut

35. Root beer float

36. Cognac with a fat cigar  -Those were the days

37. Clotted cream tea

38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O

39. Gumbo

40. Oxtail

41. Curried goat -Not knowingly but I have eaten in some dodgy ethnic restaurants

42. Whole insects -See above

43. Phaal - Good for cleaning the drains

44. Goat’s milk

45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth < £60  -Thank you Jackie for my wonderful Teananinch

46. Fugu (Poisonous, Japanese Pufferfish) - Why?

47. Chicken tikka masala

48. Eel - Smoked is my favourite

49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut

50. Sea urchin

51. Prickly pear (Cactus family)

52. Umeboshi (Dried, pickled Japanese fruits)

53. Abalone

54. Paneer

55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal - I was a baby-boomer and McDs meal was a big deal

56. Spaetzle

57. Dirty gin martini

58. Beer above 8% ABV - Thank you Brugge

59. Poutine (Canadian comfort dish of French Fries topped with cheese curds and gravy)

60. Carob chips

61. S’mores (USA toasted marshmallow and chocolate cracker)

62. Sweetbreads

63. Kaolin - and morphine for a dodgy tum. see 41.

64. Currywurst - Ski resort special

65. Durian (Southeast Asian fruit)

66. Frogs’ legs - Don’t, frogs are becoming scarce

67. Beignets (French doughnuts)

68. Haggis

69. Fried plantain

70. Chitterlings, or andouillette  -Yuk, they smell like an open drain

71. Gazpacho

72. Caviar and blini *

73. Louche absinthe

74. Gjetost, or brunost (Norwegian brown cheese) - Like eating solid Carnation Cream

75. Roadkill - See 41

76. Baijiu (Chinese White Liquor)

77. Hostess Fruit Pie

78. Snail * - Is it the snail or the yummy garlic oil?

79. Lapsang souchong

80. Bellini (Italian cocktail)

81. Tom yum (Thai soup)

82. Eggs Benedict

83. Pocky (Japanese chocolate biscuit)

84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant

85. Kobe beef

86. Hare

87. Goulash

88. Flowers

89. Horse - See 41

90. Criollo chocolate (?)

91. Spam - Baby boomers got little choice

92. Soft shell crab *

93. Rose harissa (North African hot sauce)

94. Catfish

95. Mole poblano (Mexican/Spanish sauce)

96. Bagel and lox (or lax)

97. Lobster Thermidor

98. Polenta

99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee

100. Snake

69 green 31 red is my current score.  If I try a tasting menu at a Michelin 3 Star I will get into the 70’s, yippee!

I suppose it shouldn’t come as a suprise that Jackie is finding Intermediate Cuisine a lot tougher than the Basic course.  Even Mari, who got a distinction in Basic, is finding it hard going.  The dishes seem to be more fiddly and complicated and the students still only have the same two and a half hours to prepare, cook and present their efforts.  On top of this there are now nine students in Jackie’s group as opposed to seven last term which means less space in the kitchen and more competition for shared resources.

A good example is the dish they had to cook yesterday, Red Mullet served whole with a Green Olive Tapenade Gratin, a Savoury Onion Royal Custard and an Emulsified Star Anis and Parsley Sauce.  The Tapenade had eight ingredients, the custard seven, the sauce ten and four Red Mullet to descale and bone.  It wouldn’t have been so bad if the result had been a spectacular dish but it tasted horrid, a complete waste of four Red Mullet.  This one will not be finding its way onto the Pin Mill menu.

Our Swiss friends, Beat and Esthi travelled to Paris on Friday to celebrate Esthi’s birthday.  Unfortunately for them the Pope also decided to visit Paris at the same time bringing complete chaos to the roads. Beat thought that it would have been more considerate of him if he had walked along the Seine rather than being driven around in his Pope-mobile.  They were staying at the Hotel de Notre Dame in the Latin Quarter, right opposite the venerable cathedral where the Pope was due to perform later that night.  The roads were particularly bad all around them and Jackie and I had to walk from St Germain as the busses couldn’t get through. 

Our dining venue for the evening was Le Buisson Ardent, a Michelin recommended bistro just behind the Jussieu university.  The guide did point out that, although reasonably priced, the adventurously rustic food was more likely to attract professors than students.  Offal did figure prominently on the menu although there were enough conventional dishes to keep us all happy.  Pig’s trotters, veal sweetbreads, foie gras and split peas as a starter pleased Jackie no end whilst I opted for a marinated mackerel tart which was excellent.  Our raclette loving Swiss chums opted for warm goat’s cheese salads followed by well cooked steaks.  Jackie and I both had crepinettes of veal and pork which tasted fine but contained too much fat for me but were just right for Jackie.  Three courses for €32, reasonably priced wine, nice ambience and friendly staff.  Definitely worth a visit if exploring the 5ème.

When we came out the Pope was in full song over on the island at a packed Notre Dame and traffic was worse than ever.  Giant plasma TV screens kept the less favoured faithful in touch with proceedings and helped add to the chaos.  Our taxi took twice as long to get us home and cost twice as much as it should have, no wonder I’m an atheist.  I don’t think that the Cordon Bleu is on his list of places to visit, so Chef Thivet’s offering of Ricotta and Mandarin filled Swiss Roll, although divine will probably remain unblessed.

If the Pope’s visit wasn’t enough to disrupt traffic over the weekend, rue Lecourbe, our local shopping street, held its annual Brocante on Saturday and Sunday.  Basically a cross between an antiques fair and a flea market the whole street was lined with stalls selling paintings, books, furniture, jet fighter pilot suits and oriental statues; correction, I only saw one jet fighter pilot suit.  Traffic was reduced to a single slow lane and passage by foot was even slower as hordes of bargain hunters packed the pavements.

It was Esthi’s birthday on Sunday and they came to the flat for a Cordon Bleu dinner.  I won’t bore you with a detailed description as somebody has already remarked that all we seem to do is talk about shopping for food, cooking food, going out for food and eating food, which is a fair comment.  Needless to say Cordon Bleu’s Basic Cuisine fourth placed student did her best  and was much appreciated by our Swiss chums.

Tuesday saw the start of our second wine course with Monsieur Allix, entitled French Wines & Vineyards.  I was really looking forward to this as we spend so much time cruising through France it will be nice to know more about the different wine regions and which wines to look out for.  Deborah did not translate for us this time as she is staying with the basic group and instead we had the adept, Ben.  English Ben is an excellent translator with a very quick wit.  In cuisine, if he gets a bit bored, he starts to mimic British regional accents. So one moment he sounds like a Welshman, the next a Scotsman then a Geordie.  The students whose first language is not English get very bemused by all this whilst Jackie gets helpless with laughter.  Ben and Monsieur Allix seem to have a very good rapport and it looks as if we are in for a fun time.

The first lesson started with our favourite region, the Loire Valley, if not our favourite wine, Muscadet.  Situated around Nantes there are four appellations, the best of which is Muscadet Sèvres et Maine sur lie which is what Monsieur Allix produced for us.  No matter how many people tell me that Muscadet ‘sur lie’ is fine when it is allowed to sit on its sediment for five months after fermentation to add a little sparkle and reduce the mouth healing astringency, I still can’t get to like it.  Jackie, Ben and I were in complete agreement, Muscadet is not for us.  Maybe with a dozen oysters but not with the bread and cheese that the Cordon Bleu provide.

In complete contrast our next wine was a delicious 2006 Sancerre, Domaine Auchère.  It had everything a good Sancerre ought to have.  A strong, clean, aroma of white fruits, a touch of acidity balanced with a dry, long, warm finish; excellent, we all liked that one.  Some of the young Asian female students seem a bit parsimonious about actually drinking the wine.  One young woman sitting opposite me took a tiny sip of her Sancerre, put her half full glass down and wrote her notes without touching it again.  This seemed to aggravate Ben a bit.  “Do you like it,” he asked her?  “Yes,” she replied. “Well then drink it,” he recommended.

Our first and only red was a 2003 Chinon from the banks of the Vienne river, which I really liked.  It was a feisty wine, high in acidity and alcohol with strong tanins all battling it out for control of one’s palate.  Monsieur Allix though it a bit too rustic and that it would benefit from ageing for another five years.  I find it hard to keep wine for longer than five days; five years, no chance.

Rosé d’Anjou, a children’s wine, was next, so called because it had an aroma of boiled sweets, tasted slightly sweet and would be a perfect drink for someone who doesn’t like wine.

A slightly sweet 2004 Coteaux du Layon finished off the evening.  It was pleasant but lacked sufficient taste to support the sweetness; possible as an aperitif or with blue cheese but would be lost with a rich, sweet desert.

So endeth the first lesson of our second wine term.  The class was slightly larger than the last one and there is only one other male student.  Apart from Jackie, the rest are mostly young Asian women.  I am a little surprised that it hasn’t appealed to male cuisine students but perhaps after school they are more interested in consuming the stuff than analysing it.

A little while back our friends Lee and Elaine asked to see a picture of ‘turned’ vegetables.  Here is a good example of how to turn large vegetables into small ones.

It’s a busy week for me, the start of the new wine class on Tuesday, the Apple EXPO opening at Porte de Versailles on Wednesday, an evening with author David Lodge at the American Library on Wednesday and our friends David and Svatia Barker arriving on Thursday.  But first I needed to purchase two rugby tickets.

In October Peter and Maureen Henry are due to visit us.  Pete had spotted that their visit coincides with Stade Francais playing Toulouse and half suggested that we might watch the match and leave Jackie and Mo free to do ’lady things’.  It’s usually a good battle when the rugby mad southern teams play Les Pinks in Paris so I thought that I would sort out some tickets in plenty of time and get good seats.

The Stade ticket web site didn’t make much sense as the only way to purchase a ticket was through agencies, either Virgin Mega Stores or FNAC shops and they were only offering the Toulouse match as a special offer in a pack of four matches, an even more expensive way to see one match than ‘rip off’ Twickenham.  I decided to get the Metro out to Stade’s home ground, Stadium Jean Bouin, next to Parc des Princes and get some tickets directly from their box office.  It would also enable me to work out the best way to reach the ground and try and find a suitable venue for a spot of lunch.

The site is a shared facility, part of it being occupied by a tennis school.  The rugby stands seemed much smaller than I had imagined.  On the TV, when I had watched Stade playing at home in the Heineken Cup, the stands had appeared to be massive.  It just shows how deceptive TV pictures can be.  I wandered around quite freely, there were no officials to bother me, just a few players in track suits who looked as if they might be gathering for a training session.  There wasn’t an obvious place to buy tickets but there was a decent looking restaurant offering a three course lunch for €25.  This was getting better and better; a nice lunch, a bottle of wine, coffee and calva and then stroll over to our grandstand seats for a cracking game of rugby, I nearly booked a table on the spot.  The only ticket office open was in the tennis complex and they didn’t know anything about rugby matches.  I went back to ask at the restaurant but madam thought that it was only possible to book tickets at the ground on the day of the match.  With thousands of Toulouse fans following their team around we couldn’t afford to wait until the day, I decided to go home and check the web site again.

On closer inspection the web site revealed the disappointing information that the Toulouse match won’t be played at Stadium Jean Bouin but at Stade de France, Paris’s other mega stadium on the north side of the city.  Stadium Jean Bouin is only used when they play minor teams like Brive; so much for my research and our pre match lunch.  Before dashing over to Stade France I visited our nearest FNAC shop and asked if I could  book tickets for just the Toulouse match?  That was not  possible, I was told, I could only buy the special offer of a four match pack.  “Why is it not possible for me to buy tickets for just one match?” I asked as calmly as I could.  “Because it is cheaper for you to buy the four matches together,” was the reply.  “It is not cheaper if I can only see one of the four matches,” I persisted.  This got a response of the Gallic shrug, which is why the French invented it.  When they don’t have a reasonable explanation for a crass policy they just shrug.  It was pointless getting cross with madam. it wasn’t her fault that the greedy Stad Francais lot were stinging their fans.  I thanked her for her time and for conversing with me in English and left.  There is a rugby mad bar close to the flat which specialises in produce from the south west.  It will be full of Toulouse supporters on the day including Peter and I; sod Stade Francais.

The second disappointment was the Apple EXPO, the largest European exhibition devoted to iPods, iPhones and everything Mac:  the only problem was Apple didn’t turn up.  Adobe were there, Hewlett Packard were there even Microsoft for Heavens sake, but no Apple.  Why do they let their adoring, evangelical fans down so badly; they are behaving just like Stade Francais.  I toured the stands, managed to pick up three nice free pens, clocked a really cool looking 250 Gig, USB 2 powered hard drive the size of a hip flask from Iomega, will definitely buy one of those when we get back (at the moment I am using my iPod photo as a portable back up disk, not clever, I hear all you IT types cry); and that was it, an event I had been looking forward to for months, over in an hour.  The Internet is rife with rumours of a new range of laptop Macs to be launched in September. Why oh why didn’t they use the EXPO as the launch vehicle?  They really do treat Europe badly.

My two disappointments were more than compensated for by an evening listening to British author David Lodge, followed by an excellent supper.  The American Library, close to Champs de Mars, invites authors to give talks there to promote their books.  David Lodge, who is an author both Jackie and I enjoy reading, was over in Paris for the launch of his latest novel, Deaf Sentence, which had just been translated into French.  He is himself going deaf and decided to write a novel where the central character suffers from this condition and describes how he copes with it.  Deafness invokes little sympathy from others; whereas blindness is tragic, deafness is comic.  David Lodge read the first two chapters of his book to a packed room.  There was humour and pathos in the writing and, being a little hard of hearing myself, I recognised the tricks that deaf people use to try and hide their condition.  The main one being pretending to understand a conversation whilst not hearing a word and participating by nods and grunts and, hopefully, relevant interjections.  Jackie now spots when I am doing this to her and immediately challenges me by asking me to repeat what she has just said.  The ninety minutes flew by and all too soon David Lodge was answering written questions and then signing copies of his book.

Afterwards we dined at Au Bon Accueil, a Michelin recommended restaurant in an adjoining street.  The place was packed when we got there and, despite having booked, we had to wait outside under the floodlight Eiffel Tower for fifteen minutes for our table.  This wasn’t a good start but the staff recovered the situation by giving us profuse apologies and complementary aperitifs.  Most of the clientele were either English speaking or Asian which put us on our guard.  But, no worries, the food was excellent and good value. I had mackerel tartare with rice and herbs whilst Jackie had a chicken terrine; both were superb.  For our main courses Jackie had confit of shoulder of lamb whilst I had skate in a strong caper and olive sauce; both excellent.  A 2004 Chinon from domain Renée Couly worked well with both dishes.  Despite being rushed off their feet, the staff were friendly, attentive and good fun.  The place didn’t feel very French but excelled in all other departments. 

In November Clotilde Dusoulier will be giving a talk in the American Library and I will definitely book a table at Au Bon Accueil.  The question is, should I book a table for three?

I received an e-mail from Stade Francais Rugby Club the other day offering me the chance to purchase two tickets just for the Toulouse match without any requirement to purchase their four match pack.  It would appear that someone in the club has read my blog and persuaded the management to relax the requirement to buy blocks of four matches so that visiting English rugby fans can enjoy individual games.  The amazing power of the Internet has struck again; one never knows who is reading this stuff.  I would just like to thank my Stade Francais reader who has made two English rugby fans very happy and assure him or her that on the day we will definitely be supporting Les Roses.

Another explanation just might be that during my extensive search for tickets on the Stade web site I inadvertently registered for advance ticket booking information?  Nah, much more likely it was the blog that did it.

David and Svatia Barker arrived on Thursday on their way back to England from their country house in the Czech Republic.  The weather improved dramatically and we had three glorious days of blue skies and sunshine.  On Friday morning the ladies headed off for St Germaine and frock shops whilst David and I took in the Military Museum at Les Invalides.  We all met at Oudino’s for another top lunch and then resumed our separate activities before meeting again in Lecourbe at our local Au Rois du Café where it was warm enough to sit outside.

Jackie had classes all day Saturday leaving the rest of us free to visit the Musée D’Orsay where I opted for the safety of the Impressionists whilst Svatia and David went for the edgier modern stuff.  In the evening we booked a table at Le Troquet a local Michelin recommended restaurant that specialises in Basque food.  We had tried to go their before but it had either been fully booked, a very good sign, or closed for holidays.  Not knowing anything about Basque food we opted for their six course tasting menu, having first ascertained that no lamb dishes would be served.  Quite frankly it was all a bit of a disappointment. The portions were minute and there was no signature dish to culminate the experience; it was all overture and no concert. 

A dribble of Vichy Soisse served in a glass with slivers of Foie Gras lurking under globules of fat started us off.  This was followed by a dollop of pureed aubergine and anchovy on top of a brunoise of vegetables, all served on a flat slate roof tile.  It was OK, I just wished that they hadn’t run out of plates.  For me the fish course was probably the best, a small steak of coley served with warm chopped olives and beans.  Jackie’s favourite was minced pig’s trotters with pureed potatoes and rocket:  the bread was nice.  And that was it, next up a wafer of cheese which must have been cut with a bacon slicer, followed by a splodge of chocolate moose, half a fig, a grape and a ping pong sized ball of chocolate goo, all served on roof tiles, completed our dégustation. The evening wasn’t a complete disaster, we had good wines, a 2003 Pernand-Vergelesses from Burgundy, unknown to me before, was excellent as was the Sancerre.  But €42 was too much for our dining experience.  The place was full so I can only conclude that no one else was having the tasting menu or there is a substantial Basque population around Lecourbe.

Monday was Jackie’s second encounter with a live crustacean when she had to prepare Lobster “américanes”  During the demonstration on Friday the students had been shown how to despatch their lobster.  First grasp the body at the front while pushing the two bound pincers back.  Then plunge the head into a pan of boiling water until it turns red, indicating that the creature is dead.  I am not sure that this method is approved by the RSPCA, or its French equivalent, but according to Cordon Bleu chefs it stops the meat getting tough.

Having David and Svatia for company over the weekend took Jackie’s mind off her ordeal but all to soon it was Monday and she was in her kitchen waiting to collect her quarry, many of which were moving.  The warmth in the kitchen had woken the lobsters from their chilled slumber. They perhaps realised that Cordon Bleu kitchens are not good places for lobsters to hang out and were seeking ways of escape.  Jai Cho, Jackie’s fellow student, turned to ask which of two lobsters Jackie would prefer.  He quickly noticed that he was being regarded through very watery eyes and pointed to the lobsters, then himself and then to his pan of boiling water as if to ask, “Would you like me to do it?”  Jackie nodded her consent and turned away as the deed was done.  She was very grateful to be handed a dead lobster, which she could regard as food.

I suppose it could be every chef’s nightmare that when they get to heaven they find God is a giant lobster sitting in front of a huge vat of boiling water with an evil grin on his face.

David and Svatia left after breakfast on Monday leaving fond memories and a bunch of roses which look as luxurious today as they did a week ago when Svatia bought them.  They also left the fine weather which has been with us all week.  The light, clear blue skies and cool north easterly wind make Paris feel like a Scandinavian city so our next guests, Arve and Birgit from Oslo, should feel very much at home.

Andrew Bagnall, who was passing through, joined us for lunch at Oudino’s on Tuesday.  He had kindly brought our next ration of evenings’ entertainment in the form of boxed DVD sets of Larkrise to Candleford, Scrubs, Spaced and the film Brick Lane which I had ordered from Amazon and got them delivered to his home.  The Sopranos and The (US) Office have long since been consumed and we have been watching too much dross from our local rental shop for comfort; PS, I Love You, yuk! 

Larkrise to Candleford was initially disappointing, cardboard characters, wooden script, chocolate box sets and Dawn French impersonating Robert Newton, (ask your dad).  It is getting better now that Dawn French has been written out, hopefully for good.  Scrubs is fun, a bit like Green Wing which was one of our all time favourite bits of TV.  We haven’t tried Spaced but Brick Lane was good and, Jackie assured me, a fair representation of the book.  My one big addiction at the moment is LOST which has already consumed nearly 12 hours of my life.  I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about when it first came out on TV.  And how can anyone spin out a tale about marooned air crash survivors for three long series?  The local rental shop had the first series in the cheap section and curiosity got the better of me.  I rented the first disc of four episodes and was hooked.  Jackie won’t watch it, the scary bits being too scary for her taste which means that I have to watch it when she is at school.  Sad really, here I am in the cultural capital of the world watching a US scary soap opera during the day time.

Life in Intermediate Cuisine is progressing well with some amazing dishes finding their way back to rue Ernest Renan, my current favourite being Guinea Fowl and Savoy Cabbage Pie which tasted as good as it looked. 

The high spot of the week was a demonstration by guest Chef Roland Durand from the Michelin 1 Star restaurant Passiflore, which is the venue for next Friday’s student dinner.  He prepared three of the dishes from the dinner menu being, Cep Mushroom Royale Custard with Mushroom Cappuccino, Shrimp Ravioli with Mullingatowny (his spelling) Sauce, and Sticky Black Rice and Autumn Pear.  Jackie and her Polish friend both brought me out  samples of the mushroom dish which was divine; can’t wait for next Friday.

We covered Alsace wines this week with Monsieur Allix, which was a treat for us as we adore Gewurtztraminers and he had brought along a particularly good one.  It was however surpassed by a 1998 late harvest Pinot Gris.  In my tasting notes I have written one word to summarise the wine, sumptuous.  But at €37.90 a bottle it’s going to have to go on our very special occasion wine list.

This afternoon sees the first Formula 1 race to be run under flood lights when we have the inaugural Singapore Grand Prix.  To me this is just a gimmick and a way that Mr Ecclestone can sell an Asian race to fit in with European TV schedules. Take away the lights and all you have is a point and squirt street circuit with little overtaking opportunities unless it rains.  And when it rains in Singapore it is a deluge,  which means that the race will have to be stopped anyway.  From his front row grid position Lewis has a good chance of a win but after the wonders of Spa and Monza I am strangely unexcited.

It has been a difficult decision but we have more or less decided to spend most of the six week break between Intermediate Cuisine and Superior Cuisine in Paris. The original plan had been for us to go back to Pin Mill late November and return to Paris for the start of Jackie’s last term at the Cordon Bleu on the 6th of January.  The problem is Superior Cuisine is only taught in French as, after successfully completing the course, most students will be seeking internships with top Parisian restaurants where the language in the kitchens will only be French.  Jackie’s kitchen French is slowly improving as her demonstrations are in French with an English translation.  For her to leave a French environment for six weeks before starting the toughest and by all accounts most enjoyable session would be hugely unproductive.  After a dash back to Pin Mill to exchange summer clothes for winter ones, stock up on DVDs, books and visit friends we will return to Paris for December and a lonely Christmas in the 15ème.

On the plus side I will get to visit the Paris Boat Show which will be held just down the road from us from the 5th - 14th December in case anyone is interested.  Also we have been introduced to Monika, a delightful young Polish woman, who speaks excellent French but wants to improve her English.  She is more than happy to spend an hour or so a week with Jackie teaching her conversational French and then for Jackie to spend an equal time helping her improve her English, une victoire situation de victoire.   Another bit of luck is that Monika works for a company that publishes French food magazines and has promised to bring a selection for Jackie next Sunday.

The weather was glorious all last week and over the weekend. On Sunday, along with hundreds of other Parisians, we went for a walk in Luxembourg Gardens and saw an avenue of trees that we didn’t recognise.  I have posted a picture of the leaves, fruit and shape at the top of the page, if anyone knows the name please type it in the comments bit, ta.

The Singapore Grand Prix was an exciting race but only because young Mr Piquet, who does not seem to have inherited many of his father’s skills, threw his Renault into the wall causing the safety car to be deployed and giving a huge advantage to the drivers with full fuel tanks.  This promoted Giancarlo Fisichella to the front section of the queue and at the restart allowed Rosberg and Alonso to escape into the middle distance, whilst the fast cars were held up trying to overtake Giancarlo’s wide Force India car which was lapping two seconds off the pace.  The Ferrari pit stops are now becoming more tragic than La Boheme; converting first and third starting positions to null points is beyond belief.  I have to stop now as tonight Monsieur Allix is taking us on a tour of Burgundy, my favourite.

I was re-introduced to an old friend on Tuesday evening when Monsieur Allix took us for a tour of Burgundy’s vineyards.  Probably the first posh wine I ever ordered in a restaurant was Nuits St George which was our last dégustation in class.  I think that it was the name and the fact that it was just within the range of affordability that first attracted me to it, plus the air of sophistication it afforded the orderer.  Rather than the safety of Blue Nun, Niersteiner or Bulls Blood, ordering Nuits St George, with a slightly nasal “St” sounded so cool.

As you probably have guessed I was attempting to impress some young female dining companion on that occasion.  The formula was quite simple: Saturday evenings, ‘dîner pour deux’ at the local Berni Inn, don’t laugh they were a big deal in the sixties, then off to Bredbury Hall night club for a smooch on the dance floor.  To dine at a Berni on a Saturday night one had to have a reservation they were that popular; it also felt so very ‘man about town’ to walk in and be told that one’s table was ready. 

First a pint of bitter for me in a glass without a handle, a bit of a novelty that in Manchester, and a Babycham for her.  Two prawn cocktails to start with and then well done grilled steaks, with or without garlic butter; it was vital for the success of the latter part of the evening to only have the garlic butter if she did. The steak came with mushrooms, a baked tomato and a baked potato still in its skin wrapped in silver foil, filled with herby sour cream and a teaspoon stuck in it.  The teaspoon always used to throw me as I could never work out whether one was supposed to spoon the potato out onto the plate or straight into one’s mouth.  A slice of Black Forest Gateaux and an Irish coffee finished off the perfect Berni experience.  My dining companions, though grateful, would rarely appreciate the slightly bitter after taste of the Nuits St George and probably wished that the idiot had ordered a bottle of that nice sweet Blue Nun. Consequently after one sip they would decline any more wine leaving me to finish off the bottle which, on top of the beer, followed by Irish whiskey rendered me slightly incomprehensible for the rest of the evening and probably saved me from many unsuitable relationships.

Our tasting started light and white before proceeding to the heavy duty reds.  The dominant grapes in the region are Chardonay for whites and Pinot Noir in the south for reds.  One wine which has really established itself on my radar this year is Chablis which is the northern most Burgundy appellation.  We tried a 2006 bottle from Christian Morin which was as good as but no better than the Lamblin and Fils produced wine which I buy from our local Monoprix.  The aromatic qualities are very definitely citrus fruits which are borne out by the initial sharp attack on the palate which evolves into a softer warm finish with a hint of vanilla.  It has become my wine of choice to go with shellfish especially oysters rather than the tannic Muscadet preferred by the cognoscenti.  As a general rule Chablis does not age well and is best consumed within five years of bottling.

We went to the Mâconnais region next for a bottle of Pouilly Fuissé which is also made from Chardonnay grapes but being so much further south has a richer quality than the Chablis.  The nose is all tropical fruits and flowers and the taste, despite a slight initial acidity is rich and honey like.  Great with lobster, crab or elegant fish dishes.  Our 2005 Domaine de la Feuillarde came in at €23 a bottle so not an everyday quaffing wine.

Ben, our English translator, perked up when we got to the reds which he much prefers.  A 2002 Mercurey from Clos des Grands Voyens got us going.  It looked innocuous being clear and bright but packed a tannic punch with a long warm finish.  Monsieur Allix thought that it would go well with game and was excellent value at just under €20 a bottle.  Monsieur Allix does have expensive tastes; it impresses Jackie no end.

An unknown to me 2004 Saint Aubin from Côte de Beaune came next which looked as good as it tasted.  A clear, deep, cherry red with strong aromas of dark fruits and oak and a spicy quality to its long, warm finish.  We concluded that it was a powerful, rich, winter wine that would complement strong game dishes very well.  At €16.40 a bottle we were getting towards my end of the market.

The Asian girls were still not drinking much of their samples on the grounds that there were so many: they wouldn’t last a day in Pin Mill.  Ben made sure that not too much of the good stuff was wasted by topping up his glass, mine and Monsieur Allix’s.  Finally the Nuits St Georges from Côte de Nuits, a 2004 example produced at Domaine Petitot.  A clear, bright colour with a hint of orange at the edge of the disc, a complex, intense nose mostly of forest fruits and a good balance between acidity and tannins.  An elegant, classy wine, which is certainly worth saving up €22 to buy, and what a treat to be able to enjoy it without having to make witty conversation or worry about the teaspoon and having made a wise investment.

On Friday evening around thirty five guests and students from Intermediate Cuisine and Patisserie gathered at Chef Roland Durand’s one star Michelin restaurant Le Passiflore in the 16 ème for dinner.  Also present was Cordon Bleu Chef Marc Thivet a long term friend and one time colleague of Roland’s.  Whereas after graduating Chef Thivet stayed in France and worked in some of the top hotels and restaurants including Hôtel Loews in Monaco and the Bristol in Paris, Chef Durand travelled extensively in the Far East, especially Thailand and learnt about Asian cuisine.   This was exemplified by tantalising tastes of lemon grass and other Oriental spices in some of his signature dishes.

Our Norwegian friends, Arve and Birgit accompanied us.  They were on their way back to Oslo from their apartment in Juan Les Pins and had stopped off in Paris to spend the weekend with us.  Luckily Jackie was able to book an extra couple of guest places as the majority of students were on their own.  We had a jolly table which included Tadeusz Kolodziejczyk from Poland, Jose-Antonio from Manila and Cynthia Wagner from Arizona.  Tad and Jackie seemed very friendly.

Our first dish was a bowl of Borsch with cream and a wonderful zing of lemon grass, I could have drunk a litre of it.  This was followed by tiger prawns wrapped in ravioli parcels and served with a lightly spiced sauce; amazing.  Next we had a mousse of lobster and crab with a Royale of cèpes, which was one of the dishes that Chef Durand had demonstrated at the school the previous week; he hadn’t forgotten how to do it.  Jackie was in heaven when the main course arrived which was quail with a fine mousse of champignons and a bouquet of chanterelles.  Bones and skin are not my favourite fare and my discarded quail leg was quickly pounced on by Jackie when she saw that I had finished with it.  Desert was poached pears on sticky black rice with a coulis of quince and pomegranate and a cardamom flavoured ice cream. 

The decor may have lacked the opulence of Le Train Bleu but the food was in a different league.  If this was the standard for the Intermediate student dinner I can’t wait for the Superior one; I just hope that Jackie qualifies.

Apologies to anybody who is waiting for a reply to their e-mail or any kind of electronic communication.  Last Friday our broadband connection ceased to function and has left us without any access to the internet, including our expensive video on demand service.  This latest upload is courtesy of Café Metro’s WiFi on rue de Rennes which is where I started out over three months ago. 

The engineer who installed the thing came round on Saturday to try and fix it, God bless him, it was his day off; after switching our Livebox off and on, which I had already tried several times, he was reduced to telephoning the Orange help desk.  They eventually tested our connection and were mystified by the lack of signal and decided that we must wait for their expert who would be in on Monday.  They telephoned on Monday morning but as the person I spoke to had very little English and my French is still non existent I am not too sure what is happening.  As far as I could gather their expert is coming to the flat on Wednesday afternoon as the wiring in the whole apartment block may be too old to be suitable for broadband.  But as it has worked for three months I don’t understand how we can have worn it out.  I wish Lee was here.

We had a great weekend with Arve and Birgit.  After Friday night’s excellent student dinner, it was off to market on Saturday morning for Jackie’s Cordon Bleu Sunday lunch ingredients, sea bream fillets with fennel.  Arve insisted on treating us to a Thai lunch at Banyan and then later to supper at la Bélisaire.  The chef was having a night off but had sensibly set a fixed menu which his acolytes had no difficulty in preparing and was excellent.  Our usual jolly moustachioed maître de was on form and Arve had a good time joking with him and flirting outrageously with our friendly young waitress.  Just by coincidence they had had some Norwegian friends there the previous week and the place was still decorated with Norwegian flags which made our friends feel very much at home.

I told the French Telecom man that we would be out on Wednesday between 11.00 A.M. and 4.00 P.M.  He came at 3.30 P.M. to find us out, surprise, surprise.  He telephoned at 4.00 P.M. to tell us that we had been out which wasn’t exactly news, but it wasn’t a problem as they had located the fault which was with their central service and it would be fixed at 6.00 P.M. that evening.  It wasn’t but it all worked the following morning, hurrah.

The reason for our absence on Wednesday was a drive out to Senlis to have lunch with our friends Don ‘Sandy” Sanders, Peter ‘Woody” Woods, both ex rugby internationals and their batman, young Dickie Mainwaring, retired landlord of Pin Mill’s most famous landmark the Butt and Oyster.  Their combined age  is close to 250 and Sandy gleefully calls their annual excursions, ‘the Incontinents’ trip to the Continent’.  He had picked our lunch venue from the Logis de France guide book and it turned out to be an inspired choice.  The Hostillerie de la Porte Bellon, (www.portebellon.fr) had a charming dinning room, friendly staff and provided us with an excellent lunch.  Dickie pronounced that it was the best meal he had had since they arrived.  Sandy generously looked after the bill.  Shortly after the transaction Woody lent over to Jackie and whispered, “Has Sandy just paid?”  “Yes,” replied Jackie.  “Thank God for that,” he exclaimed, “now I can relax.”  I relate that exchange in an attempt to convey the friendly banter that we enjoyed for the all too short lunch session.

The previous evening Monsieur Allix had taken us for a tour down the Rhone Valley which is split into two wine regions, the Upper Rhone from where the more accomplished reds emanate and the Lower Rhone which produces the world class Chateauneuf du Pape.  Translator Ben was in his element as it was a predominantly red evening although the Pope’s favourite tipple was the harder to find white example. 

A rather ordinary 2002 Côte du Rhone from Didier Charavin started us off which was OK but at €14.50 a bottle grossly overpriced.  Monsieur Allix agreed that the wine was possibly not the best value but that the cost of six years storage had to be paid for.  I think that I would rather drink a young Chinon at half the price and sod the storage.

The better Côtes du Rhone wines have a ‘Village’ suffix which denotes that they have been made to a more rigourous AOC standard than the basic appellation.  There are seventeen villages which produce these superior wines.  One village, which had been on the list but decided that its wine was so superior that they could go it alone and drop the Côtes du Rhone prefix and just trade on their village name, was Gigondas, Latin for joy.  On a sample of one, a 2003 bottle from domaine Bouscatère, they were probably right.  The wine is made from Grenache Noir, maximum 80%, Syrah, Mourvédre, minimum 15%, plus other grape varieties.  It was a rich, fruity wine with a hint of spice, typical of the Syrah grape and strong in alcohol, 14% no less.  A stunning wine that would go well with strong meats, especially game.  At €16.70 a bottle it could well find a place on our Christmas wine list.

Monsieur Allix usually likes to start with light and white and progress to heavier reds.  But this evening he had his eye firmly on quality and after cleansing our palates with bread, cheese and water we were invited to sample a rare white Chateauneuf du Pape.  The reason that the white variety is uncommon is because the AOC insist that between 5% to 20% of the grapes, predominantley Grenache, Picpoul and Marsin, are removed from the harvest before production.  This helps focus the producer on only using grapes in the best condition.  Our 2004 example from Domaine Nalys was a fine example.  A highly developed nose promised white fruits and blossom and didn’t disappoint.  The taste was fat, buttery, rich, a hint of sweetness with a long, warm finish.  As Ben pointed out these are just words but they are all we have to convey an impression of a sensory pleasure.  An elegant wine that would go well with lobster which will have to be pre-killed to find a place in rue Ernest Renan; good value at €18 a bottle.

After more bread, cheese and water a fine 2006 Côte Rôtie red was produced.  Made from a minimum of 80% Syrah and a 20% maximum of Viognier, it had an extraordinarily intense nose of dark fruits, cherries and the Syrah spice.  A strong, rich wine which at €34 a bottle will probably stay the preserve of the rich.

The finalé was a white 2007 Condrieu from the Upper Rhone, a wine I had never heard of let alone tasted.  The €35 a bottle price tag probably has something to do with that.  Apricots figure prominently in my notes, together with a fine wine that would complement seafood cooked in a cream sauce.  But why bother when one can pick up a great Chateauneuf du Pape for half the price?  Monsieur Allix is taking us to Bordeaux next, his favourite region, so we should be in for a treat.

Lewis mustn’t let the pressure get to him.  I can get away from traffic lights faster than he got off the Japanese starting grid.  It was a disastrous race for McLaren who had a Ferrari like time of it.  Luckily Felipe Massa’s impatience at the chicane minimised his points gain.  But the last Grand Prix is at Sâo Paulo where local people power will certainly be an advantage.  Lewis needs a good result in China to combat the boy from Brazil.

Judy Terry came to stay last Thursday and brought some amazing weather with her.  Blue skies and temperatures in the low to mid twenties all weekend.  She had expressed a wish to take a river trip which was no hardship for me.  Dorabella has sailed through Paris three times   in previous years during so called summer months but never enjoyed such good weather as we had on our Batobus trip in October.  Steering Dorabella through Paris was never a relaxing experience with all the tripper boats charging about plus having to keep an eye out for commercial barges.  It was therefore especially nice for me to let some other skipper worry about the traffic whilst I finally enjoyed the sights. 

Batobus is quite a good deal. €12 buys you a day ticket, €14 for two days, and you can get on and off as many times as you like.  The boats stop at eight notable landmarks from the Eiffel Tower to the Jardin des Plantes opposite the Arsenal.  We alighted at the Hotel de Ville to take a simple, rustic lunch at Le Trumilou, steak and proper chips with a bottle of chilled Chinon.  Jackie complained about the chips being overcooked but it didn’t stop her eating them, good job they count as one of your five vegetables.  Chips are a bit of a rarity at the Cordon Bleu.

We dined at Oudino’s on Friday night and had another wonderful experience.  They are just so friendly without being patronising, seem genuinely interested in Jackie’s progress at the Cordon Bleu and serve wonderful food at reasonable prices.  Judy was knocked out by it and will probably return to Paris just to go there.  What did we eat?  I can’t remember, but the wine was good.

Our Saturday routine means market in the morning to purchase ingredients for Jackie to practice a Cordon Bleu dish on the Sunday.  Judy had been given the list of intermediate dishes and chose ‘Pan Roasted Guinea Fowl with Calvados Sauce’, clever lady.  Strolling round the market, bathed in sunshine, really was like being on holiday.  Everyone was in a good humour and seeing all the fruit and veg glistening in the sun with Mr Eiffel’s tower in the background made us feel very French, which was a bit of a worry.

In the afternoon a number 39 bus took us only part way into town.  They do that, for no explicable reason they stop well before their advertised destination, the driver gets up, turns round and announces that the bus is going no further.  Now being English I always assumed that I had missed some vital bit of information about that particular bus.  But the rest of the passengers were French and they seemed equally bewildered by his peremptory action.  Our destination, A Simon’s professional kitchenware shop, was not too far away and allowed us to stroll through the gardens of the Palais Royale which looked particularly attractive in the sunshine.

Cordon Bleu’s Chef Clergue was demonstrating knives at A Simon’s.  He was taking pieces of fruit and sculpting them into works of art that would grace any banqueting table.  It all looked pretty easy but Chef Clergue is a very skilful chap and if I had taken a knife set home I would have just murdered an innocent orange and probably cut a finger off.  He spotted Jackie and stopped what he was doing to talk to her, which was nice as he is one of her favourites.

Judy insisted on treating us to dinner on Saturday night.  We had hoped to impress her even further by recommending Le Bélisaire but Chef Mathieu Garrel was having another Saturday night off.  His acolytes do an excellent job but it never feels quite as good when you know he isn’t in the kitchen.  Rather than waste eating out on a less than perfect experience we decided to try another local restaurant Le Dirigeable for the first time.  It was a great success, a very French dining room full of locals, friendly service and good, reasonably priced food.  I tried a bottle of Cheverny from the Loire valley which Judy and I really liked but Jackie was not too keen until it had breathed a bit longer.  Le Dirigeable can certainly take its place up there with Oudino and Le Bélisaire and I am sure we will return.

I got up early on Sunday morning to watch the Japanese Grand Prix and rather wished I hadn’t.  Lewis Hamilton dropped the ball again, converting pole position to null points.  Felipe Massa did little better and one wonders if these young hot heads have what it takes to be World Champion.  If they are not careful they will let Mr Kubica through to give Poland their first ever Grand Prix World Champion.  I don’t seem to remember Mr Schumacher having quite so many problems.

Judy left on Monday for the Gare du Nord with plenty of time to spare, which was lucky as her train was cancelled but she was able to catch the one before.  After carrying Jackie’s books to school, I took the metro two stops to Porte de Versailles and the Paris Motor Show.  It was huge.  Altogether there were eight halls filled with cars, accessories, racing cars and even a Go- Kart track.  Luckily the queue was too long to tempt me back behind the wheel.  I have never been to such a large exhibition, all quite breath taking.  Driving used to be one of my great joys; no longer, I would rather take the train.  But one car which did give me a twinge of nostalgia to get back behind a real wheel and head for the wide open spaces, was the new Alfa Romeo 8C Sports.  Classic Alfa style, modern with a hint of retro, seductive and aggressive in the same breath, it oozed enough raw performance to get you into serious trouble with the boys in blue.  The Ferrari looked nice too.

Our last wine class before next week’s exam was devoted to the Bordeaux Vineyards, which I knew little about apart from the famous and expensive Chateau Latour and Chateau Margaux.  Some of the finest wines I have ever drunk have been from Bordeaux, St Julien and St Emillion but I have also had some big disappointments and never really understood the area.  Monsieur Allix put all that right.

The reason that Bordeaux produces some of the world’s finest wines is of course its location.  Situated on the 45th parallel it has the perfect temperate climate which, coupled with the terrain and proximity of the Garonne and Gironde estuary, make this ideal grape growing country.  There are many varieties of grapes grown there and a feature of most Bordeaux wines is that they are produced from a mix of grapes to achieve a complex and unique tasting experience.  When they get it right it is sublime but when they get it wrong you rather wish that you had gone for the Shiraz or the Chardonnay.

There are five Bordeaux wine producing regions, Côte de Blaye/Bourg, Libournais, Entre de Mers, Graves and Medoc.  The Graves region only produces AOC white wines whilst in upper Medoc there are six villages that produce top quality wines.  These are St Estèphe, Paulliac, St Julien, Listrac, Moulis and Margaux, not to be confused with Chateau Margaux.

Prompted by our translator Ben, Monsieur Allix finally got round to our dégustation and I have copied a summary of my notes below for anyone who is interested.  The St Emilion was yummy.

Entre-Deux Mers, 2007, Chateau Haut Rian, Michel Dietrich Earl.  Clear, bright , light gold with a clean nose of grapefruit, grass and peach.  Fresh attack with strong acidity and sour but warming finish.  Hint of gooseberries, a pleasant, simple wine.

Food:  Fried fish, poultry, simple dishes, perhaps oysters.  €5.10 excellent value

Premières Côtes de Bordeaux, 2005, Chateau Lenormand.  Clear, bright, deep cherry red with strong legs.  Clean, jammy nose, of red berries and cassis.  Good structure with a strong attack.  Spicy acidity dominates silky tannins; a rich, elegant, full bodied wine.

Food:  Thick steaks, rare meat.  €10.00 Great value

Graves, 2005, Clos du Pape.  Clear, bright, ruby red with some evolution to orange and strong legs.  Clean, well developed nose of strawberries, smoke and red fruits.  Good attack, nice progression and longish finish.  Not too aggressive acidity balanced with soft tannins and strong alcohol.  A rich elegant wine which could age further.

Food:  Minor game, anything with cranberries.  €14.90

Saint Emilion, 2000, Chateau Tour de Bardes, Prop Bailly.  Clear red with hints of orange and strong legs.  Highly developed nose of spice, cooked red fruits and liquorice.  Strong attack, rich progression and a long, dry, warm finish.  Pronounced acidity balanced by strong tannins and alcohol.  A well made wine that could age for another two years.

Food:  Feathered game, spare ribs, roast lamb, salmon, sauerkraut.  €18

Our last wine was a much anticipated 2000 Moulis from Upper Medoc.  Sadly it had died in the bottle.  The aroma was appalling, the sort you associate with a bathroom when you warn friends to leave it a few minutes before going in; the taste was somewhat similar.  Monsieur Allix was mildly apoplectic.  The bottle had been stored by the school and he had apparently told them that their cellar was too warm to store wine.  I doubt that we will be getting that to taste in the exam.

Friday night’s second student party was again held at The Frog and British Library out near Bibliothèque Francois Mitterand.  Jackie had a French session with Monique earlier in the evening and was too tired for the party.  She kindly let me have her ticket so that I could go and meet her Polish classmate Tad who is a big Robert Kubica fan.  I enjoy talking to Tad but get little opportunity at the school.

He was a little late getting to the venue which gave me  chance to sample all their seven, home brewed beers ranging from their light, Natural Blonde through to a heavy, dark, stout like beer.  This beer degustation I hasten to add was served in shot size glasses not pints.  One which tasted especially nice was their Twist of Ginger, a seemingly innocuous, refreshing drink that tasted like a harmless ginger beer but packed a 4.7° punch, probably best left alone.  I stayed with The Natural Blonde.

When Tad arrived the conversation quickly turned to the Formula 1 World Championship and the merits of the leading contenders.   It ended up with us betting a bottle of wine on the outcome of the Chinese Grand Prix.  I reckoned that Lewis and Felipe would be so intent on their own battle that they would let Mr Raikkonen disappear into the distance.  Tad disagreed and put his money firmly on Lewis.  I am writing this before I watch the race and so don’t know whether I am a bottle of wine richer or poorer.  I rather hope the latter.

I got home almost at the same time as Susie Bishop arrived from Pin Mill complete with post and good cheer.  She was going to stay with us until Wednesday and planned to visit her French friends on Sunday, Beatrice and Marc, who live just outside Paris at Maisons-Laffitte.

Despite brilliant weather Saturday was a little slow in getting started.  Possibly something to do with The Natural Blonde and celebrating Susie’s arrival.  After our usual trip to the Avenue de Saxe market, where Susie found the handbag of her dreams, and lunch at Au Roi du Café, I escorted the ladies to rue de Commerce for frock shopping and then high tailed it back to the flat to watch my recording of Mr Hamilton clinching pole position for the Chinese Grand Prix.

Dinner was a bit disappointing; after singing the praises of Le Dirigeable, which Judy had taken us to the previous Saturday, it rather let us down this time.  We booked a table for 9.0 P.M. which was perhaps a mistake as it turned out to be rush hour and I suspect the kitchen was swamped.  My main course, lieu jaune, pollack, was almost raw in the middle and Jackie’s duck dish was poorly served, I have seen better looking school dinners. As Jackie remarked, if she had presented a dish like that at school she would have lost marks and had a telling off.  The evening was fun but we will probably give Le Dirigeable a rest for a while.

Susie took the metro and RER to visit her chums on Sunday and after I had finished my chores, it’s a tough life here I tell you, I was able to watch Lewis drive the perfect race, win the Chinese Grand Prix and cost me a bottle of St Emilion which I shall gladly give to Tad next time I see him.  A seven point lead with just the Brazillian Grand Prix to go should be a done job.  But in the immortal words of Murray Walker, “In Formula 1 anything can happen and probably will.”

Jackie managed to get permission for Susie to attend the Monday morning Cordon Bleu demonstration, which she was really thrilled about.  Expect to see a rather fine cassoulet on the Spring Cottage menu soon.  Another pleasing lunch at la Bélisaire for Susie and I, a smart Parisian haircut for her and then back to the flat with Jackie where the ladies supped on Cordon Bleu cassoulet, which I was excused as Chef Thivet’s version was stuffed full of lamb, baaaah.

It rained on Tuesday, real, heavy wet stuff.  Jackie decided to have a quiet morning’s relax and meet us for lunch at Oudino’s, whilst Susie and I visited the Rodin Museum.  I still cannot get my head around sculpting.  I can understand how artists paint, how composers write music, actors act, singers sing but I cannot understand how a sculptor can look at a block of marble and transform it into an object of such transcendent beauty that it transfixes the onlooker into a state of unbelieving awe.

Our next bit of awe was served up at Oudino’s where we met Jackie for another stunning lunch.  Susie commented that it was the best meal of her visit but she did say that before my Norwegian smoked salmon and scrambled egg breakfast.  Oudino is a very special place and, if he is reading this, I have to once again thank Chris Peeke for tipping us off about it as we would never have found the place otherwise.

Tonight is the Intermediate Wine exam.  On Friday Pete and Mo Henry arrive and, on Saturday, Pete and I get to go to a top class rugby match, hurrah!!  It’s all go at the moment, I am pleased to say.

I think that I have managed to kick the LOST habit.  As you may recall, I have been renting my way through the second series on days when the weather has not been suitable for sitting in the park reading my book and I haven’t felt like doing another museum.  I was half way through when welcome visitors to the flat helped occupy my days.  Two weeks have now passed since my last fix and I am losing the desire to know what happens to Jack, Kate, Sawyer, John Locke and the Korean Babe.  The first real test happened last night when I was despatched to the video store to rent a film for our evening’s entertainment.  We watched ‘Even Money’, a well made if slightly worthy film about gambling addiction.  Having selected the DVD I couldn’t help poking my nose round the corner into the TV section and there it was sitting on the shelf, begging me to take it, LOST, Season 2, episodes 13-16.  Today would have been an ideal day to watch it as the weather forecast isn’t brilliant and Jackie will be at school from 8.00 A.M. until 6.30 P.M.  But I resisted and walked away.  One contributing factor was certainly my stumbling across an announcement on the Internet that LOST Season 5 would be released early in 2009.  That’s 84 more episodes I would have to watch, assuming there isn’t a Season 6, 63 hours of compulsive viewing which I really don’t need.  Plus I remembered that the complete first series of Battlestar Galactica had just arrived at the flat from Amazon.

Trying to memorise grape varieties, wine types, terrain conditions and appellations for one French region is bad enough.  Trying to do it for five proved extremely difficult.  Plus to complete our Intermediate Wine exam we would have to taste a white and red wine and, without knowing which region they came from, write tasting notes including food pairings.  The written part wasn’t quiet so hard as I thought it might be and whilst I know I made several mistakes I am confident that I could be up in the low 70%.  Jackie wasn’t quite so confident but then she has had less time than I have for study.

The white was the first tasting test. Over the duration of the course we had sampled some fine white wines.  A delightful Sancerre, a stunning Pouilly Fuissé and an elegant and unusual Chateauneuf du Pape.  This wasn’t one of them, it was light, extremely dry with a sour, horrid finish.  Jackie was convinced that it was an awful, mouth healing Muscadet and wrote her evaluation accordingly, i.e. only to be used for cleaning lavatories.  I wasn’t convinced that it was a Muscadet but was at a complete loss as to where to place it.  Perhaps a poorly made Petit Chablis which, as the grapes are grown at the top of the slopes, tends to be a thinner wine.  Bullshit seemed the best option and I wrote a generalised description commenting on its lemon zest aromatic qualities, strong attack and long warm finish with a refreshing hint of bitterness which would complement oysters very well:  good eh?  I am impressing myself just reading this stuff again.  Whether or not Monsieur Allix will be taken in, we will not know for a few more days.

The red was a completely different kettle of fish.  A slight hint of orange at the rim and a complex, intense aroma meant that it was no youngster and either a Bordeaux or a classy Burgundy.  Knowing Monsieur Allix’s love of Bordeaux wines I opted for the former and based my tasting on that assumption.  By pure chance, we had consumed a very fine St Emilion over the weekend and this wine had similarities, pronounced acidity balanced with strong tannins and a long warm finish.  Excellent with game, rich meat stews and roast red meats.

Our papers were handed in and voila, the bottles we had sampled blind were revealed.  The awful white was a Macon-Uchizy, from La Martine, avoid like the plague.  This was a complete swizz, as the only white Burgundies we had sampled during the course were an excellent Chablis and a ‘to die for’ Pouilly Fuissé.  Springing a complete outsider on us was most unfair but the more we protested the more it amused Monsieur Allix.  I expect in his books all is fair in love and wine tasting competitions.  The red was a St Emilion which Jackie had edged towards in her appreciation, so perhaps that will get us through.

As if to celebrate the end of the term we finished with four bottles of champagne.  A cheap and cheerful, everyday, cooking example from Damery in the Marne valley.  A correct, simple champagne which came in at €21.50 a bottle.  This was followed by a Vintage Champagne which had been produced in 1996 and was sadly two years past its drink by date.  In complete contrast was a Blanc de Blanc complete with tiny bubbles which apparently are best.  “We are not drinking Perrier,” was Monsieur Allix’s comment when questioned about bubbles.  The Henriot made from pure Chardonnay was great, a nice structure and a buttery taste of brioche.  A bottle can be purchased for €30.  To finish, a Rosé Champagne was produced which Monsieur Allix thought most appropriate to celebrate special occasions, “Especially,” he said with a twinkle in his eye, “St Valentine’s Day.”

Peter and Maureen Henry left at the crack of dawn today to catch the Eurostar back to London and then start their long haul back to Cornwall, leaving us orphaned once more until our next guests arrive on Friday week.

It has been an eventful weekend starting with my attendance at the Cordon Bleu demonstration early Friday afternoon.  Chef Thivet showed us how to prepare pan fried duck foie gras with roasted apples, cider and walnut sauce: sautéed rump steak, celery flan, truffle sauce and potatoes cooked in goose fat, followed by caramelised walnut and pine nut tart.  I suspect that you have guessed by now why I chose this particular session.  Ben was the English translator, complete with North Country accent when it suited him, which made the session entertaining as well as informative.

One thing I was keen to see was how to stop steaks smoking and splattering fat all over the place when they are dropped into an extremely hot frying pan.  The answer is you don’t.  Chef Thivet’s steaks, when introduced to his red hot frying pan, spat and sizzled and filled the demonstration room with acrid smoke.  Ben remarked that if he had done that at home he would have got into serious trouble.  When frying steaks don’t wear your best clothes and be prepared to wash your hair afterwards.

For some strange reason Jackie had a practical starting at 6.30 P.M. which meant that she wouldn’t be finished until just after 9.00 P.M.  Peter and Maureen arrived whilst Jackie was at school but it wasn’t a problem.  After a couple of glasses of beverage we walked to the Cordon Bleu, met Jackie and then wandered round the corner for another great supper at La Bélisaire.  We are now definitely getting accepted as locals because for the first time we were given complimentary aperitifs.

Saturday was the big one for Pete and I as we were going to Stade de France to watch Paris Stade Francais, then top of the table in French rugby, play Toulouse who were third.  First we had a swift visit to the market and then off to Willy’s Wine Bar for lunch. Despite the poor front of house, I have to confess having a soft spot for Willy’s Wine Bar.  I love the room with its atmospheric posters and the kitchen is top class.  They don’t change their menu often enough to be up there with Oudino and La Bélisaire but it’s still quality fare.  But oh boy, the front of house is still dire.

I had taken the trouble to visit the restaurant the previous week to book a table and was relieved to see that the cocky Australian boy who had got up Jacky’s nose so comprehensively on our last visit was nowhere in evidence.  This time we were greeted by a young Oriental man who acknowledged my booking and passed us onto his girl child colleague.  She lead us over to a circular table in the corner next to which a sat a couple with two infants and a large pram.  The presence of the pram made it difficult to seat three models round the table let alone four robust adults.  The couple did try and manoeuvre their pram to make room but this then blocked any access to the table which meant we wouldn’t get any food.  The restaurant was less than half full and there were plenty of free spaces.  I suggested that a couple of nearby tables laid for two be pushed together.  The girl child looked over to Mr Woo for guidance, his frown indicated no chance.  She translated that it was not possible to push two tables 20 cm apart together and pointed firmly towards our designated table.  It looked like one of us was going to have to sit in the pram.  Then Jackie spotted another circular table laid for four and in a tone that brooked no contradiction suggested that we be seated there.  Girl child got a nod of approval from Mr Woo and acquiesced leaving us with the menus and nothing else.

Now I am not in the restaurant business.  Actually cancel that statement, I am in the restaurant business, in fact I am the most important part of the whole show, I am a customer.  And I know that once you have got the punters seated, provided they have a drink, the menu and a basket of bread you don’t need to go near them for half an hour and they won’t feel neglected.  Leave them without any sustenance for ten minutes and they get angry and feel slighted.  Mr Woo and his novice had not learnt this simple truism.

Maureen insisted that lunch was their treat but asked me to choose the wine.  As you may imagine, Willy’s Wine Bar has a comprehensive wine card running into many pages.  Some of their bottles are priced at €300 plus which makes their €60 a bottle stuff look reasonable.  But back in the real, recession hit world, I was more interested in bargain basement €25 a bottle products whose quality wouldn’t blow my Cordon Bleu wine student credentials.  After a lot of searching I finally found a Côte de Rhone Village and a Sancerre which looked reasonable and within budget.  Girl child smiled when I ordered them, then she explained that the dots next to my chosen wines indicated to all but the simple that they were out of stock and then flounced off.  Rather than panic and move the goal posts past the €40 barrier I picked a Sancerre-like Touraine and a Corbierre from the Languedoc, purely because I like the area.  By a stroke of good fortune they were excellent and complemented our fine food really well.  François Yon is a very talented chef.  If only he changed his menu a little more often - I had cepes, foie gras, palenta, and two poached eggs, followed by fillet of Rascasse last time - and trained his front of house staff more, his restaurant would be on the ‘not to be missed’ list. 

Leaving the ladies to dally over their coffees, Pete and I legged it via RER to Stade de France, the capital’s largest sporting stadium.  The seating capacity is around 80,000 but as it was only a club match we were going to see I fully expected half the stands to be blocked off, but not a bit of it.  The whole stadium was in use and it was a sell out.  There were even ticket touts out in force braving the restrained police presence.  The French certainly love their rugby.  There is many an English Premier League Soccer team that can only dream of such support.

After a civilised beer we entered the stands to soak up the atmosphere of which there was plenty.  Paris Stade Francais play in pink and blue and the whole arena was a sea of pink flags and hats.  Pete decided that blending in was probably the best move and gratefully accepted the offer of a hat from his young neighbour.  I decided to stay neutral on the grounds that the match was to be televised and I didn’t think that the world was ready for Macho Malc to be caught on camera looking pretty in pink. 

In the middle of the pitch a stage had been erected on which a team of energetic young singers and dancer were performing.  Then we had a parade of sponsors’ floats and old cars, more music, dancing cheer leaders and finally rocket man with a jet pack on his back zoomed out of the player’s tunnel, lapped the pitch and landed in the centre to present Snow White, (where did she come from?) with something special.

A mild explosion, smoke and a hail of gold ticker tape announced the arrival of the two teams. I had quite forgotten about the rugby. The solid block of black and red Toulouse supporters now started their drumming, a loud, insistent rhythm that echoed around the stands.  The locals responded with more drums and a chant, “Allez, allez; allez, allez; allez, allez le Stade Francais!  It was all a bit much for us mild mannered Brits.  Oh the match?  Well it wasn’t a classic encounter.  Stade Francais made too many mistakes, missed four penalties in the first half and gave the ball away too many times to have a chance of winning.  They did score a try and there was an epic handbag battle in the second half to keep the locals happy. 

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgN1o747V4Q)  But it was the spectacle that was truly amazing and I have already booked my ticket for December the 5th when Harlequins play Stade Francais in the Heiniken Cup.  “You ain’t seen nothing like the mighty Quins.”   Perhaps I should borrow Pete’s hat.

November already and we are still waiting for the summer.  Unbelievably it is also the start of the Cordon Bleu exams, where has all the time gone?  As in Basic Cuisine, the Intermediate students had to complete a written exercise which they did last Thursday and next Friday have a practical test.  Jackie has been studying hard and thinks that she did quite well in the written part which, like Basic, requires a shopping list to be completed for one of six dishes.  Unlike Basic the dishes are more complex with garnishes, sauces, stuffings plus the principal ingredient.  Jackie’s dish was stuffed sea bream fillet wrapped in lettuce leaves, which sounds simple but when I tell you that the stuffing alone had ten ingredients you will get some idea of the complexity, see photo above.

The weather has turned decidedly cold and wet.  Unlike last Sunday when we were able to enjoy a glorious walk in the Luxembourg Gardens with Pete and Mo and have a semi al fresco lunch on rue de Rennes, today has rain forecast for the duration and temperatures peaking at 10°-12°.  But all is not doom and gloom because tomorrow, thanks to a generous leaving gift from our friends and part time neighbours in Pin Mill, Ian and Nadia, we are going to the Opera to see The Bartered Bride by Smetana.  Not just any old Opera house but the Palais Garnier, completed in 1875 by Charles Garnier and regarded as a masterpiece of neo Baroque architecture.  Tourists queue up and pay just to look inside the building and we’ve got box seats there!

It’s a shame one cannot ration out treats as after Sunday’s matinée performance of the opera I have got the Brazilian Grand Prix to look forward to.  Actually I am not so sure about that being as much a treat as an agonising, nail biting and gut wrenching endurance test.  With a lead of seven points over Felipe Massa I expect every racing driver on the planet would swap places with Lewis Hamilton.  But turning the calendar back one year and going into the Brazilian Grand Prix when Mr Hamilton had a seven point lead over Kimi Raikkonen, look who won the championship, spooky eh?

Our DVD viewing repertoire has been extended by the discovery that several French films are available with English sub titles.  Consequently we were able to watch the much lauded comedy “Ch’tis” which is the derisory name given to anyone from the north of France.  It’s a one joke film but very nicely done and well worth seeing. 

Another week has gone by without LOST which possibly means I am cured.  The original Battlestar Galactica has helped, it’s so cheesy with its comic costumes, cardboard scenery, low tech monitors and bad hairdos, all reminiscent of the swinging seventies when I was a complete SciFi fanatic, except for Startrek which I never got into.  Perhaps I should try and get hold of Blake’s 7?

When I first got interested in opera I read as much as I could about it.  At first glance I understood Smetana’s little masterpiece to be ‘The Battered Bride”, another opera tragedy I assumed.  Blood stained bride’s body found in the Red Barn, jilted suitor main suspect, when all the time it was her father, who had killed her by mistake; a bit Rigoletto like.  It was quite a surprise therefore when I saw a production from Saddler’s Wells on the television and realised that ‘The Bartered Bride’ is a jolly bit of nonsense with some pretty music.  This was our Sunday afternoon treat, ‘La Fiancée Vendue” at the amazing Paris Opera.

The Palais Garnier is all spectacle, full of sweeping marble staircases, mirrors, chandeliers, gilt and frescos, the ones on the ceiling of the theatre by Marc Chagall.  It feels like being in the Phantom of the Opera, which is of course where it was.  By contrast the set for our opera was a little dull for such a colourful piece but the singing by and large was excellent and the acrobats and dancers energetic and entertaining.  It was a memorable experience which will stay with us for a long time.  It is worth visiting the Opera Garnier even, if you don’t see a performance.  I have published more photos on Facebook.

What about the Grand Prix?  Well going to the opera meant that I would miss the start and so set our Orange Livebox to record the whole thing, no worries it had never let me down all season.  Whilst Jackie turned some innocent vegetables in the kitchen, I stocked the fridge with beers and settled down in front of the box.  All was going well until there were just 18 laps to go, I had clocked that Timo Glock was fuelled until the end and ear marked him as a potential threat to Lewis’s fifth place when the stupid Livebox went phut and threw me back to normal, live TV.  By pure chance it was Sky News and they were reporting that Lewis had just become World Champion.  The most nail biting finish to a Grand Prix ever and I missed it. I have since been able to watch it via ITV’s internet catch up service, and perhaps it was a good job that I did miss it live.  My blood pressure and whisky consumption would have gone through the roof.

We will have three World Champions on the grid next year, Alonso, Raikkonen and Hamilton with plenty of young guns like Kubica, Vettel and Massa to keep them honest, can’t wait.

Summer returned on Tuesday with a bright blue sky and balmy temperature that begged one to go for a long country walk.  Jackie had a Cordon Bleu fish soup demo at 12.30 P.M. followed by a practical which meant that I had the whole of the afternoon free.  The countryside was out of the question but exploring a new park seemed a good idea and I chose the Jardin des Plantes between the eastern end of the Latin Quarter and the Seine.

The number 89 bus dropped me off at the Arab Institute where a large poster advertised an exhibition of Napoleon in Egypt.  I was sorely tempted to abandon my herb garden venture and view Napoleon’s conquest but the weather was just too nice to be indoors: another day perhaps when we have real winter.  It seemed a bit strange having Napoleon at the Arab Institute.  Rather like the French Maritime Museum having an exhibition about Trafalgar.

The Jardin des Plantes was originally a medicinal herb garden planted by Louis XIII’s physicians in 1626.  It was greatly expanded in the eighteenth century by the natural historian Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon whose writings greatly influenced Darwin.  The gardens now include a Natural History Museum which I will visit on the next convenient rainy day, (an absolute promise Claire), a Zoo which I won’t visit:  love animals but can’t stand zoos, and a Geological Museum which I will also probably give a miss; a rock’s a rock, n’est pas?

The herb gardens, whilst not a blaze of colour, were certainly a pleasant assault of the olfactory senses.  A good exercise for our wine tasting skills.  There were also some amazing Prunus Serulata trees:  Barbara will know what they are.  Half term is probably not the best time to view gardens on a nice day if one seeks tranquility and inner peace.  One annoying child repeatedly ran in front of me as I was trying to photograph a statue of Comte de Buffon; he should be out of hospital soon, the child that is not Monsieur Buffon, he’s been dead for three hundred years.

Outside the gardens, away from the river, I was confronted by the oldest mosque in Paris which also houses Le Café Maure tea shop.  I remembered reading about it in Clotilde’s ‘Edible Adventures in Paris’ and decided to treat myself to a tea de menthe and baklava.  Once through the Moorish entrance gate one enters a terraced court yard with trees, fountains, mosaics and a sense of such tranquility that it is like stepping into another dimension.  The only elements to disturb this peace were gangs of marauding sparrows that could spot a baklava at fifty paces and would then mob the table demanding crumbs; very Alfred Hitchcock like.

Jackie had a free day on Wednesday and with just two days to her final exam decided to do some serious revision and practice a potential exam dish, Poulet Sauté Basquaise, that’s fried chicken with tomatoes and peppers to you.  We had planned to attend a discussion at the American Library that evening, the premis of which was, ‘Is French Cuisine worthy of UNESCO Heritage Status?’  Amongst the panel of experts was Clotilde Dusoulier, whose guide to eating and shopping in Paris we find so useful, and we were both looking forward to listening to her. But it was not to be, Jackie decided reluctantly that she desperately needed more practice turning vegetables before Friday’s test and left me as the sole representative from the Harding household.

It was an interesting evening although the discussions often drifted away from the core subject, which only Clotilde seemed qualified to talk about with any real passion.  The other panelists were Charlotte Puckette and Olivia Kiang-Snaije, who together have written The Ethnic Paris Cookbook, which in itself would have made a fascinating topic for discussion but to me seemed to have little relevance to preserving traditional, classic French cooking.  The final panelist was Meritxell Falgueras, a writer and wine expert from Barcelona whose English wasn’t too good making it difficult to understand what points she was trying to make.  The evening was moderated by Joe Ray, an American photo journalist who specialises in food writing.

I have been immersed in the subject of French cuisine for the last six months as of course the classic techniques of preparation are enshrined at the Cordon Bleu Academy and Jackie has been practising them, usually by cooking our suppers.  To listen to experts talking at length about the subject was fascinating and the whole evening went by far too quickly.

Clotilde is a charming young woman who graciously signed my copy of her book and agreed to be photographed with me.  It would have been nice to have a proper discussion with her but with a queue of adoring fans clamouring for their books to be signed it wasn’t possible.  Jackie would love to meet her to.  Perhaps we can tempt her out to lunch at Oudino, which isn’t in her guide.

This second term at the Cordon Bleu Academy has gone by so quickly that we both checked the schedule to see if there were less sessions than the first term.  But no, just as many demonstrations, the same number of practical sessions and the same duration.  It has just seemed shorter because we are now more used to living in Paris and to the way that the academy operates.

Friday was the big day when Jackie, along with her fellow students, had to prepare and cook one dish out of a possible ten completely from memory.  The Intermediate dishes were based on regional cooking done in a traditional way and were a step up in complexity compared to Basic Cuisine. 

Stress levels were running high on Friday morning when Jackie enrolled me to help in her final preparation before the exam which for her was to start at 15.10.  Armed with the recipes, I had to check that Jackie’s verbal description of how she was going to prepare each dish was correct.  Trying to remember one was bad enough, ten seemed impossible.  She did exceptionally well except for “Tian d’agneau cuit rosé, jus à la menthe poivvrée’,  Lamb fillet with vegetable “tian” and a peppermint jus.  Due to my aversion to lamb this was the one dish which she has not practised at home.  I had to remind her that she must start with preparing the tomatoes as they needed time to dry, then the mushrooms and then the meat.  Oh, and as well as preparing the main dish she also had to find time to prepare a Bernaise sauce and present that to the examining chef before the end of her two and a half hour time limit.  Normally her emulsion sauces have been excellent but the last one done in class had been a complete disaster, which was not helping with her confidence.

I felt as nervous as Jackie as we walked along rue de Vaugirard to the school that afternoon  and was relieved that it wasn’t me having to do the exam.  Just after 17.30 I returned to help carry all her equipment and uniform home and to see how she thought she had done.  She emerged from the exam kitchen, flushed with adrenaline but more importantly with the hint of a smile.  Her exam dish had of course been ‘Tian d’agneau cuit rosé, jus à la menthe poivvrée’.

She told me that her mind had gone completely blank when she walked over to her work station and found a rack of lamb.  She had looked around to see another student getting stuck into boning out a fillet from the rack and was about to follow suit when she remembered my voice telling her to start with the tomatoes, because they needed time to dry, and then the mushrooms - after that the whole dish flooded back into her mind and she was off.  Her Bernaise sauce, she said, had been as good she had ever done and altogether she was very satisfied with her performance and more importantly the chef had seemed pleased.  The results won’t be announced until the graduation ceremony next Thursday which will be held at the President of the Cordon Bleu, Monsieur André Cointreau’s club, (yes that Cointreau), Cercle de l’Union Interalliée.

We hurried back home to greet our friends from Pin Mill, Lee and Elaine, who were staying with us for the weekend.  After a celebratory bottle of champers and a change into our glad rags we returned along Vaugirard to continue the celebrations with supper at la bélisaire.  The front of house staff are now so comfortable with us as to be on cheek kissing terms, which, in the case of the delightfully flirtatious young waitress, Aurelia, is certainly no hardship.  I am not quite ready for her moustachioed colleague though.  It was yet another great bélisaire evening.   Aurelia told me that she was 25 and I had to admit to being somewhat older.  But hey, inside we are all 25, it’s just our crumbling exteriors that let us down.

The weekend weather whilst not brilliant was at least dry when we wanted to be out and about.  It was Lee and Elaine’s first visit to Paris, which encouraged us to provide a lightning tour of as many iconic locations that we could fit in.  These included our Saturday market, Notre Dame and a river trip courtesy of ‘Les Vedettes du Pont-Neuf’.  Elaine fell in love with the Eiffel Tower, which does look extra impressive from the river.  I still remember the buzz I got the first time we cruised past in Dorabella in 1999.

Our guests insisted on taking us out for dinner on Saturday and we choose our other favourite restaurant, Oudino.  No Aurelia or cheek kissing but great food and a most convivial atmosphere.  I find it very hard to resist their baked black pudding with apple and pureed chestnuts and didn’t.  I asked Nicholas, their extremely friendly maître d’, to insist that I don’t have it again next time so that I can expand my knowledge of their excellent menu.

Whilst Jackie prepared our Sunday Cordon Bleu dinner, I took our guests to Champ de Mars where Elaine could stand under Mr Eiffel’s amazing creation and then go and buy the T-shirt.  The problem was there were several styles of Tee shirt and dear Elaine kept changing her mind.  Lee took the initiative, grabbed the current favoured garment and encouraged me to hustle Elaine out of the shop whilst he paid for it before she could change her mind again.

The Saturday market had yielded a fine haul of Coquille St Jacques, which Jackie invented a recipe for as our Sunday starter.  It included ginger, orange zest and piment d’esplette (a Basque chilli powder) and was as good as anything we had eaten all weekend.  It rather overshadowed the Cordon Bleu pork medallions, good as they were.

Our friends were most impressed with their first visit to Paris which was probably helped by staying in someone’s home.  As well as being fast tracked round the major sights they also got the full, local shopping experience which helps enormously to bring a place to life.

I e-mailed a lunch invitation to Clotilde but so far have not had a reply.  She is doing a book reading and signing at W H Smith’s English book shop on the 18th November but our friends David and Svatia arrive that evening and we will not be able to attend.  Perhaps she is just so busy she cannot spare the time to humour ageing Anglais.  Anyway all is not lost, Aurelia from la bélisaire has just become my friend on Facebook, swoon, swoon.

PS from Jackie

Aurelia told me to “fait attention à lui” - I couldn’t think how to say “he’s harmless really” in French

We got our wine exam results the other day and this time Jackie beat me 81% to my 79%; damn.  And this despite my superb dégustation marks where I managed to busk my way successfully through a white wine description when I hadn’t got a clue what it was. My downfall was in the written section where I failed to read two questions properly and had a complete mental aberration over a third.  We drink Chablis every week. Dorabella has cruised along the Loire valley three times, it’s where we buy Sancerre and Pouilly Fumé.  So why did I state that Chablis is a Loire valley wine when I know full well that it is from Burgundy - what an idiot?  Still, every cloud etc.  The next time Jackie berates me for my alcohol consumption I shall simply remind her that she’s now the top wino around here.

The serious part of the week was the graduation ceremony and presentation of Cordon Bleu diplomas to superior and intermediate students at the rather swanky social and dining club Cercle de l’Union Interailliée, rue de Faubourg Saint-Honoré.  Famous past members include Alain Juppé, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and André Citroen.  The current chairman, the French don’t go in for this nonsense of calling ‘chairmen’ ‘chairs’, is Pierre Christian Taittinger of sparkly drink fame of which there was an abundant supply fizzing around the place.  It was a glittering affair and the students didn’t let the academy down, all were in their Sunday best.

Such was the occasion that just being there seemed enough but once again to cap it all Jackie got fourth place.  This was both a relief and a disappointment.  Only the top five get placed so to be on the leader board at all is an achievement but Jackie felt that she could have done better.  The chefs however were full of praise for the Pin Mill housewife who is only doing this for a hobby and is up there battling with young, would be professionals.

The champagne flowed and flowed.  I have to say that Mr Taittinger does brew a very decent drop of bubbles, and it was hard to tear ourselves away from what was turning out to be an excellent party.  The chefs were certainly taking full advantage of their boss, Monsieur Cointreau’s, hospitality.  But the food, of which there was precious little, ran out and we needed to eat.  Rather than go home and be on our own we decided to eat out.  Oudino was on the way but for a party atmosphere I decided that la bélisaire would be best and what an inspired choice it turned out to be.  Our chums greeted us like long lost friends and when they heard about Jackie’s result insisted on opening a bottle of champagne for us, just what we needed.  It was a very jolly evening and to be included in la bélisaire’s milieu made us feel extremely privileged and glad to be living in Paris.

Next week we will return to Pin Mill briefly to stock up on winter clothes, books and DVDs,  We shall be back in Paris on the 1st of December when Jackie is going to have some serious French language tuition ready for the last term.  I will pause the blog until she starts her Superior course which will be around the 6th of January.  Have a great Christmas; see you in 2009.