Saturday afternoon in Paris

As it’s another Saturday afternoon with not much to do I’ve decided to take myself to The Little Paris Kitchen. In an ideal world it would be a trip to a small, intimate space in Montmartre where a long leisurely lunch is followed by coffee and maybe a glass of Calvados. Unfortunately as the world is far from ideal at the moment it means a browse through one of my all time favourite cookbooks.  

Apologies if I’ve told you this tale before but buying Little Paris Kitchen by Rachel Khoo after watching the accompanying show on BBC2 really was a turning point for me. I’d enjoyed and appreciated good food for as long as I can remember but always as a recipient rather than someone who actually got involved and produced it in the kitchen. it was watching Rachel turn simple ingredients into such mouthwatering food that suddenly made me think ‘I’d like to try’. So I did , I made Croque Madame Muffins and I’ve never stopped since. The recipe in the book which I go back to time after time is a savoury loaf filled with sausage, pistachios and prunes. It’s wonderfully versatile and you can play around with the ingredients to your hearts content

As much as I love the food it has to be said that the Paris setting was also a huge attraction. At the time of writing the book Rachel was living in a small Parisian apartment with a quite minuscule kitchen but still managing to produce food for the supper clubs she hosted. When the world finally gets back to some sort of normal and we can invite people into our homes again I’d like to try doing that.

I fell in love with Paris on my first visit, I find it hard to imagine that anyone wouldn’t, and the idea of living there one day is a dream which never goes away. The enjoyment and savouring of good food always feels central to French life in a way quite unlike any other country I’ve visited and in Paris all the more so. 

On our first trip we stayed in a small hotel in the Latin Quarter. It was room only and as our French wasn’t very good we were quite nervous when we ventured out for breakfast on the first day, full of the stories we’d been told about supposedly surly Parisians and how they would never make you feel welcome. All it took as was ten minutes in the nearest boulangerie to tell us that our fears were unfounded and that we may just have stumbled into baking heaven. After that we were off and the whole trip became an endless stream of cafes, bistros and bars. If we weren’t eating or drinking we were browsing markets and food shops. Since then Paris has always felt like a place where it’s not the time between meals or cups of coffee that matters, it’s the distance.

At the moment social media is full of people asking others where they would like to go once the lockdowns are over. For me it’s definitely Saturday lunch in Montmartre.