We recently welcomed our friend Alexis home from Paris. He spends a lot of time abroad, touring and playing drums with bands like Paramount Styles, Bellini, Girls Against Boys, and most recently the Obits. During his travels he often gets to experience incredible meals, some of which he’ll document and relay to me over email, like this one:
spaghetti with celery and some kind of fish that was really spicy and great
He also brings me home gourmet ingredients from places like Italy and France. What a pal. I asked Alexis if he’d maybe like to be a guest blogger and share some of his own culinary tales and trials in a new series called, “I made that! (and it wasn’t that good)”.
Croque Monsieur pour les Cons
While abroad in Paris, I thought it wise to show off my worldly side by pulling out one of my old standbys… the sandwich. Parisians do the sandwich pretty well, but I tend to think of this as a more American invention: bread with something in between to give it taste. While the Parisians have the bread thing down pretty well, what they don’t have is the American creativity of adding more and more. Quantity=Quality, that’s the American motto. I thought it was time to put in my 2 cents.
Sometimes when you are in another country and are not familiar with the customs and trends, Americans tend to revert to the old standbys: McDonalds, Starbucks and Coca Cola. This is lazy and unadventurous. With so many delicious things in Paris, for example, why not branch out and try something new like Quick Burger, Nescafé and Orangina? The French pride themselves on having the highest quality, freshest ingredients and rightfully so! Chez Quick is almost as fresh as McDonald’s.
Now, as a gourmand, I thought it would behoove me to show off my sandwich making abilities as a start, before I tackle the full on meal. After all, while getting ready for a full on meal using indecipherable ingredients, why not give yourself a bit of sustenance? I put on my chef apron and hat and look to see what magic I can stir up in my girlfriend’s kitchen while she’s off doing something called work. A quick scan of her placard and I find Pur Cacoa en Poudre, Haricots Cuisinés, Oddibil Phytothérapie Digestive, Farine de Blé, Doliprane Paracétamol, Lessive Concentrée Au Savon Végétal and Coulis de Tomates… lots of good stuff. These ingredients could probably add zip to any recipe but for me I see some old dried out bread and some cheese with a funny name and a green vegetable at the bottom of the fridge: I believe it is a cucumber. Perfect! Let the cooking class commence…
Ingredients for Sandwich Jambon du Fromage:
- 1 thing of bread
- 2 or whatever slices of some kind of cheese-found something called Emmental-looks like Swiss, smells like it too
- 13 slices of some kind of vegetable or something to give it a dash of color and taste
- 2 slices of Jambon de Paris – that’s ham from Paris, which is better than ham from Lille, for example
- 1 Scratchy Recording of Serge Gainsbourg
- 1 Picture of the Eiffel Tower somewhere in the room or on a bag or something
I added a garnish of a color on the side (this didn’t look edible – I think it’s a bracelet). Feel free to add anything you can find to add some dynamics and texture to your dish. I also used cucumber because that was at the bottom of the refrigerator and though it is fairly tasteless, I was starving so I didn’t care. Enjoy!
Alexis Fleisig knows a lot about a lot of things. He pretends to speak French and likes to eat chips and salsa.
You can read more blog posts by him here.
Daughter Fish says:
“Coffee and radishes, a terrible combination.” I almost fell off my chair, laughing so hard.
Heather says:
Unlike “spaghetti with celery and some kind of fish that was really spicy” – a really great combination!