Flashback: Echine du porc

I mentioned echine du porc (pork loin chops) in a post earlier this week. This cut is one of my fondest memories of Paris.

When I was renovating a loft in Paris -- a project that took years -- I was able to go to the wholesale butcher across the way from me. The loft was in what the French call a "passage" and what we call an alley. The butcher did not actually butcher but broke down sides for restaurants.

We had a lot of black market labor working on the loft, including some Americans. One of them, whose avocation was metal sculpture, made us a grill by cutting open an oil drum and fashioning an ironwork stand to support a half-drum.

So all of us working on the loft would break for lunch, buy a ton of echine from the butcher and grill it in the courtyard formed by the U-shaped industrial building our loft was located in. We would grill the chops and accompany them with chunks of onion, baguette and quantities of cheap red wine. Heaven.

Taco test

Surfside wins. We had a really great carnitas taco -- juicy, slow-cooked shredded pork bursting with flavor -- when we just beat the crowd there Saturday night. Grilled fish taco was also very good, though not a match for the fried fish taco at General Store.

Taqueria Nacional, on the other hand, was a bit of a disappointment given that a lot of people rate it highly. Grabbed a couple of tacos there after a quick appearance on FBN -- again pork and fish. But they were somewhat bland and dry. I was actually disappointed that there was no juice leaking through the bag.

La vie en rose

We had the great good fortune earlier this month to spend a few days visiting some American friends at their fabulous house in southern France, near Uzes, a market town in Languedoc.

We timed our arrival for a Friday so that we could go to the Uzes market on Saturday, and it was worth the effort. Uzes is a well-preserved medieval city and the market fills the winding streets of the historic center.

I lived in France for 11 years and always loved the markets. I lived near Nation in Paris and generally went to the Saturday morning market in the Cours de Vincennes or the quirkier Marche d'Aligre (which was written up in the recent Gourmet issue on Paris as part of their discovery of the eastern part of the city).

Probably the most spectacular market I visited was the one in Perigeux, in the heart of truffle and foie gras country.

The Uzes market was also terrific, though. There were at least a dozen cheese vendors and we bought several nice goat cheeses. We guessed wrong on a baker who sold us some croissants that were not great. The most exotic stands were those with huge porcelain bowls of olives and tapenade and spices.

My goal at the market was to get a real gigot d'agneau to fix for our hosts. We found a butcher stand where he cut the gigot from the back half of a lamb, trimmed and wrapped it up for us.

I also wanted to find cocos blancs, which I had read about in a cookbook. These are fresh white beans in season in early summer, so they were available in great abundance. So we had our meal with the roast gigot -- you only have to insert slivers of garlic into it and pop it in the oven -- and the beans, which I shelled and cooked only about 10 minutes. We dressed them with oil and gremolata and served them at room temperature with the medium-rare lamb. Delicious.

We continued to live off the fat of the land, so to speak. On Monday, we found a store open to buy echine de porc, the chops cut from the loin rather than the rib, which have much more marbling and are great for grilling. A neighbor in the little village brought by some eggplant and squash from the community garden, so we grilled everything for dinner, getting a nice char on the vegetables and drizzling with balsamic vinegar.

It was part of a wonderful time that started with a welcome dinner from our hosts of grilled salmon paired with a fragrant ratatouille that was great the first night and even better when we had it again with the lamb. We consumed gallons of rose wine from the local vineyard, an organic producer who sold wine in bottles and in boxes. So we had a great time.

Mt. Pleasant Market

After reading about it in Dean Gold's weekly email for Dino, we went to the Mt. Pleasant farmer's market last Saturday to check it out.

It had a good spread of vegetables, a couple of meat stands, and one cheese vendor. Like most farmer's markets in the city, it was way overpriced. A pound of green beans was $5, and a little carton of fingerling potatoes (potatoes!) was also $5.

The meat was, of course, frozen and packed in translucent cellophane to make it as unattractive as humanly possible. I bought a ham hock with a label so crumpled and smeared it could have been months old.

I also bought the green beans and cooked them together with the ham hock on Monday. The proportions were out of whack. I had twice as much ham hock and half as many green beans as the simple recipe I found on Epicurious called for, but it resulted in a substantial main dish that we built a meal around, complementing it with a salad and toasted slices of six-grain bread from the co-op.

But we didn't see any reason to traipse across town to return to this market, even though it is really just a pleasant ride through the park. We like our New Morning Farm market at the Sheridan School just fine, even though it is only vegetables. Prices are not quite as outrageous as the Dupont Circle market and generally compare to Wholefoods. Can't beat the freshness.

Love to support farmer's markets and local producers but will not hesitate to go backe to the supermarket if I start to feel like I'm getting gouged on prices.

New purpose

Starting today, I'm repurposing my blog to write about food. I'm a professional writer, so I don't find myself blogging about serious things. I thought if I devoted my blog to something fun, like food, I might post more often.

Last night, I attended a mediabistro course on food writing, with Jane Black of the Washington Post as instructor. She said a blog can be a great showcase for your food writing when you try to get it published elsewhere.

Not that I intend to publish anything from this blog, but at least it will get me used to writing about food.

I lived in Paris for 11 years, took courses there at Cordon Bleu and La Varenne, and have always enjoyed cooking and eating out. Food is a kind of hobby for me -- and drink. I'm interested in wine and took a bartending course a few years ago because I like bars.