When my feet and back are sore from sightseeing, it’s a dream of mine that I am carted around in a pram like a child but unlike a child, I get a say into where I go. I am serious about this, if anyone is willing to do this for me, please call me. So after a morning pounding Paris’s cobblestoned streets in thin soled ballet flats, I come across a restaurant that peaked my interest. Ribouldingue, an Offal only restaurant. Offal only? Yes. It’s part of my “only in this country” theme that has me seeking food that I can only get in Paris and not at home. Although if you know me, you’ll say “But you hate offal” I convinced myself that I loved the Duck Liver at Drouant so other types of offal are also welcome on my palate.

It’s charming inside with lots of gorgeous fresh flowers, cream doors and large mirrors. The waitress is efficient and working alone. It’s empty when we walk in but it fills a bit more. At €27 for 3 courses at both lunch and dinner, many may feel that they would want to visit at dinner time while seeking lunch deals that give more savings.

The menu is in French and our waitress does her best to explain what the items are. I can understand the dessert menu but offal, well, I can’t say that I recognise any of those words aside from “tripe” and “veau”. We choose adventurous things, ones that I wouldn’t normally order but I figure if anyone can make these cuts delicious, Ribouldingue can.

Amuse Bouche: Pork Skin terrine

The Amuse Bouche, a pork skin terrine sliced thinly with a side of dressed leaves is interesting, the pork skin gelatinous and soft. It’s not chewy like some pork skin can be as it’s boiled rather than roasted.

Sabodet (commes a Lyon), lentilles vertes tiedes en vinaigrette (pig’s head and skin sausage with lentils)

Our first course, the pork sausage (pig’s head and skin specifically) and lentils is delicious, the sausage are three wide discs on top of some soupy perfectly cooked lentils.

Ravioli des champignons, couers de canard Poetes, pequillos (Mushroom ravioli with duck hearts and capsicum)

The mushroom ravioli with duck hearts and capsicum almost stops my heart but I talk myself into it “Don’t be gutless, be adventurous” (no pun intended). My husband loves this dish and his reaction spurs me on. It’s softer than the heart at the Yurakucho Yakitori Alley but still not quite to my taste. I do try some and it needs the ravioli and strongly flavoured sweet capsicum to help mask it or complete it whichever way you’d like to look at it.

Rognon de veau roti (roasted veal kidney)

Gratin dauphinoise (potatoes with breadcrumbs and cheese)

Thew Veal Kidney with Potato Dauphinoise is certainly an arresting sight. I was expecting something more …conventionally kidney shaped. I take a small bite and it’s that unmistakable kidney taste (yes I realise how stupid that sounds but I was wondering if they would do something to it to reduce the offal flavour) and small bites of this with the Potato Dauphinoise is actually quite good although if I am to be honest, I much prefer the potatoes to the kidney.

Tripes au vin blanc

The tripe soup is getting appreciative murmurs from my husband. I ask him how it is, never intending to try any as I dislike tripe and he says “The soup is great” and I ask him how the tripe is and he repeats “The soup is great”. I try a little tripe with some potato and soup and it’s not bad although the strong smell is too much for me and I pass the plate back.

YAY no offal on the dessert menu!

Cremeux de citron jaune, macarpone, crumble

Our desserts which I gratefully see do not feature offal arrive, the lemon curd and cream layered dessert topped with toasted flaked almonds sprinkled with icing sugar. The lemon curd is just on the right side of tangy and my husband usually fearful of lemon curd readily eats his share.

Blancmange au lait d’amande, salad de framboise et son coulis

The almond blancmange with minted berries is good, the blancmange quivering and mildly flavoured against the ultra thin slivers of mint and fresh berry. It reminds me a bit of Chinese almond jelly.

Petit Fours

The puffy icing sugar dusted homemade marshmallows and glossy dark chocolate coated almonds are delicious. Although it wasn’t exactly my cup of tea, I’m sure to offal lovers, it is Nirvana.

And because this was our last meal in Paris, allow me to offer some tips on Paris.

• Purchase a carnet of Metro tickets (10 tickets), it’s the easiest way to get around Paris. Sure it smells a bit and is crowded but trains run very frequently and it is very easy to master. The distance between stops is very small too and sometimes walkable.
• Walk everywhere, it will really, truly help counteract the effects of copious pastry and cake consumption
• When you walk into a boutique or store (not a department store) say “Bonjour” or “Bonsoir” and when you leave say “Merci, Au Revoir”. Unlike Australia where you may be met with silence, they’ll always respond.
• You may get the occasional snooty waiter but on the whole the service is good, often friendly and charming (I think we were just lucky). I actually found service in high end/gourmet food stores a bit stiffer and snootier than high end restaurants.
• Department stores are closed on Sundays. Yes, believe it.
• The Dali museum in Montmatre is well worth a visit, and you can buy sculptures and Lithographs there.
• Take advantage of lunch specials and the Plat du Jour. Even Michelin starred restaurants will often have a very well priced lunch deal.

Ribouldingue

10, rue Saint Julien Le Pauvre, 75005 Paris.
Tel.: 01 46 33 98 80.
Métro: Cité, Maubert Mutualité or Saint Michel.
Open Tuesday-Saturday for lunch and dinner.
Fixed-price menu: €27 for lunch and dinner
Cash, Visa and Mastercard only (no American Express)

After an afternoon at the Louvre, the only possible thing we are in any shape to do is walk a little down the road from the hotel for dinner. You see, our eyes were bigger than our brains so we thought that we could see everything that we wanted to although we did see the Mona Lisa (along with it seems half of Paris), Vermeer’s “The Lacemaker”, Michaelangelo’s sculptures and Napoleon III’s apartment (crazy gorgeous, especially the dining room). So we stumbled down the road from our hotel and that’s where we were welcomed warmly at Le Mesturet, a bistro serving traditional French food. It seems they’re used to overseas visitors, they ask us where we’re from and then smiling, hand us English menus. I get the feeling that they have a stash of other menus in a variety of languages.

Menu

For dinner, they have a menu formule: 2 courses for €19.50 or 3 courses for €25.50 and one is allowed to choose any of the dishes from the menu. We ask what is good and they point out what they’re known for. It’s hard to choose but we finally settle on the our selections, one that has our host worried, the Calves’ head. “Have you tried this before?” he asks hesitatingly. “No but we want to” we answer firmly. He laughs and says “Well I love this, it’s very good. It’s a Parisian only dish. Most chefs in Paris come from from all over but this one is originally from Paris itself. Tell me if you don’t like it though”. We promise to.

Amuse Bouche-pork and egg omelette

We pop in some of the complimentary appetisers, a pork and egg omelette. It’s tasty, and we’re glad that we tried this as other tables received olives. The crunchy French bread arrives just before our entrees do.

House specialty: grilled eggplant, tomato and goat’s cheese from Artisanal cheesemaker Lethielleux

The eggplant salad is enormous for a starter and our eyes widen when it approaches the table. The eggplant is soft and the tomato and goat’s cheese good although this is a fairly safe dish and similar to one that we’ve had at home often.

Slowly simmered rabbit terrine

The rabbit terrine is lovely, full of rabbit meat and delicious with the toasted baguette. It doesn’t have that strong rabbit smell which I dislike and I am glad that we ordered this.

Slow cooked duck from the Jeansarthe farm, shredded, topped with a layer of puréed potato

The shredded duck “pie” topped with mashed potato is lovely and heady with a judicious amount of red wine added to it. We often find that red wine is often abused and overused in cooking but this has just the right amount added to it.

Tête de veau (calves’ head)

And of course the dish that you’ve been wanting to know about, the Tête de veau is soft and unctuous, simmered until fall apart soft. The meat and soft jelly like ring of fat is mild tasting and when the cornichon remoulade added, gives it that added extra. It’s said to be a favourite dish of Jacques Chirac and takes about 5 hours to cook and must be fully cooked (never undercooked) and allowed to cool completely once it has finished cooking, otherwise it will explode.

We desperately wanted to order the Baked Apricot and lavender dessert with violet ice cream but they’re out of Violet ice cream which was the component that really intrigued me. No matter anyway, we’re both stuffed from the delicious meal and hearty serves. We’re given a friendly farewell, if only we lived locally (we don’t!) this would be our local restaurant.

Le Mesturet

77 Rue de Richileu, 2nd arrondisement Paris
Open: Monday - Saturday 12pm-3pm, 7-10.30pm

Someone stop me. Stop me from using these heart cake pans again. I am addicted to using these tins and even though the recipe below specifies to use round springforms, I took them out, then took out my heart pans and well you can see which ones I chose to use. I did warn you that I was obsessed with hearts so I feel that did pre-warn you of my sickness

They were shallower than regular springforms so I had to make sure to put some high barrier baking paper on he sides and of course, removing them was not as easy requiring a delicate touch, which I almost certainly don’t have. Strawberries and cream is a wonderful combination, I could easily every day for dessert (or lunch or afternoon tea). I confess though, that I liked the meringue, strawberries and cream best and the sponge, whilst nice and vanilla-ey, was more an easy and decorous way of transporting this combination to my hungry mouth.

Strawberry meringue layer cake

Ingredients

• 125g plain flour
• 25g cornflour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 100g very soft unsalted butter
• 300g caster sugar
• 4 eggs
• 2 tsps pure vanilla extract
• 2 tblspns milk
• 50g flaked almonds
• 375ml double cream (I added 2 tablespoons of sugar as sometimes strawberries aren’t as sweet as you want them to be)
• 250g strawberries

Method

1. Preheat oven to 200C. Line, butter and flour two 22cm springform tins.|

2. Weigh out the flour, cornflour and baking powder into a bowl.

3. Cream the butter and 100g of the caster sugar in another bowl until light and fluffy.
Separate the eggs and beat the yolks into the butter and sugar, saving the whites to whisk later. Gently fold in the weighed-out dry ingredients, add the vanilla, then sir in the milk to thin the batter. Divide the mixture between the two prepared springform tins.

4. Whisk the egg whites until soft peaks form, then gradually add the remaining 200g caster sugar. Spread a layer of meringue on top of the sponge batter in each tin and sprinkle the almonds evenly over.

5. Bake for 30-35 mins, by which time the top of the almond-scattered meringues will be a dark gold. (I turned down the temperate to 180C as my oven is fan forced and the top was a little too cooked so perhaps turning it down even further would be better)

6. Let the cakes cool in their tins, then spring them open at the last minute when you are ready to assemble the cake.

7. Whip the double cream, and hull and slice the strawberries; that’s to say, the bigger ones can be sliced lengthways and the smaller ones halved.

8. Invert one of the cakes on to a plate or cakestand so that the sponge is uppermost. Pile on the cream and stud with the strawberries, letting some of the berries subside into the whipped whiteness. (I should have added more strawberries as I had a lot leftover). Place the second cake on top, meringue upwards, and press down gently, just to secure it.

9. If you’ve got any more strawberries in the house, hull and halve them and serve them in a dish to eat alongside; it gives the cake a more after-lunch, less afternoon-tea kind of a feel, but it’s hardly obligatory.

Serves 8.

By Nigella Lawson from Forever Summer

My husband says that I can shop for almost anything, and it’s true. Even supermarket shopping holds joy and excitement for me. I could stroll the aisles of a supermarket, especially in overseas countries, picking up item after item and not get bored. So when I came upon a tractor selling restaurant I was immediately intrigued. My husband was relieved in that he knew that I wouldn’t be interested in a tractor because a) it’s a tractor and b) a tractor would exceed our baggage allowance. In the city centre, Zetor is said to be a slice of what the Finnish countryside was like a few decades ago. Indeed my husband’s Finnish born and bred uncle confirms this fact.

No hidden bottles please!

There’s a sign at the front, asking us to leave our bags, coats and any hidden bottles of alcohol behind. Hmm I get the sense that this isn’t your usual sort of place. My husband’s cousin said that it was more a “quantity over quality” place which pleased my husband to no end. Yes folks, no matter how hard I’ve tried to persuade him, he still prefers a larger meal to a quality meal.

We’re shown to a booth, past enormous tractors with flames painted on them and a gigantic cow. My husband’s uncle also explains that the name Zetor actually refers to a Russian tractor that was notoriously unreliable and thought to have been a poor quality one so the name is a joke.

Zetor’s menu-printed as a newpaper with pages in several languages

And their menu, designed in the style of a newspaper with a menu page in Finnish, English, Swedish, German and Russian certainly has a sense of humour to it with dishes such as “2. Plastic Blinnery: Now, it is finally possible to acquire a DD cup by a safe, natural method. The orally ingested filling includes a blini fried in clarified butter, served with herring caviar, salmon roe mousse and boiled egg. No danger of rejection.” as well as desserts such as “34. This Is Your Captain Speaking: Welcome to this chartered flight to Torremolinos! In order for you to be able to achieve the requisite holiday spirit, we will be serving chocolate cake and strawberries in brandy. And don’t forget to give a hearty applause when we land.”

Booths

The waitress comes to take our order and we order the Cliche Soup, ZETOR C2007I and the fawn reindeer roast (”Slip into something more comfortable”) and for dessert the “Hidden Agenda”-oven baked cheese with caramel sauce and brandy marinated arctic cloudberries.

Cliche soup (large) €12.90

All three dishes arrive at once and they smell fantastic, particularly the Cliche soup which I have chosen. Described as: “It’s a deja vú all over again, said the man, and didn’t skin his bear, because on the same token, he went back to business: Smoked reindeer and cheese soup, vegetable butter and crispbread. The portion took the feet right out of his mouth. Available also without reindeer” A spoonful into it and it’s creamy and velvety and the flavour much like a cheese and bacon roll in a liquid form. The tiny smoked reindeer pieces taste just like bacon and it’s gorgeously voluptuous although you get the feeling that you are eating for Everest and that the calories in this bowl could sustain you for a trek to the summit and back. The crispbread is much like a Pringle shaped Finncrisp with some carrot puree butter on it.

Zetor C2007I €11.70 little tinned fish

I next try the “ZETOR C2007I An updated version of our best-selling product. The components are smoked Pielinen vendace in tin can and bread. Optional extras include a schnapps (4 cl), and you can also get take-away vendace components from the hat check girl. Suitable for two. This product will not be outsourced to Asia” which arrives in a tin with one of those little openers that you try and master in order to reach your food. The smoked fish are interesting and the bread very dry and crispy. We find this best when you spoon the fish on and let the oil from the fish permeate the bread somewhat-and even then it’s a n earth shattering crunch when you bite into it. The fish are much like an oily smoked fish-not bad at all.

Slip Into Something More Comfortable €27.80

The last savoury dish is the “Slip Into Something More Comfortable: The reindeer fawn roast slipped into a potato hash and poured cranberry red wine sauce all over itself.  Then it burned the midnight oil so that the country cheese got warm. This caused the sauerkraut to stew in its sour cream, and the mood was set for the evening. ” This dish, a little more expensive than the rest of the menu, which is mostly less than €20, but it is rewardingly good, the reindeer fawn is gloriously soft and the perfect companion to the sweet and mild sauerkraut and potatoes. The cranberry red wine sauce and country cheese also complements the reindeer and we are in unison impressed with this dish. My sister particularly loves the cheese, called Leipäjuusto, literally translated into Bread Cheese which is like a less salty version of Halloumi. Said to be made from rich milk from a cow that has recently calved it is used in both sweet and savoury dishes.

Hidden Agenda €9.20 Caramelised cheese

Hidden Agenda €9.20 Cloudberries marinated in brandy

Which brings us to our dessert featuring Leipäjuusto with caramel sauce and brandy soaked arctic cloudberries. It comes in a baking dish and looks like a gratin but a spoonful in and we are all nodding our heads in agreement. There is the caramel squeaky cheese on top but underneath is a milky caramel flavoured sauce. The brandy cloudberries are gorgeous alongside this creamy cheesy spoonsful and although it’s unusual, it most certainly works.

Pail of cutlery

We leave and of course it is bright and sunny. We see some people toting beers - they don’t come in 6 packs here, they come in 12 packs for the serious drinker. And the colloquial term for these is “Dachshund” for the shape as they resemble the sausage dog. And no, I didn’t buy a tractor!

Restaurant Zetor

Mannerheimintie 3-5, Kaivopiha, 00100 Helsinki - tel. 010 76 64450
Table reservations: S-groups sales service 020 1234 800 (mon-fri 8-18) -
Open: mon 11-24, tue 11-03, wed-sat 11-04 sun 13-23
http://www.ravintolazetor.fi/etusivu_en.html

Yes Dear Reader, I know I promised to write about my overseas travels. This was delayed somewhat with  intermittent internet acces. Tokyo is a city that has a firm place in my heart. I lived there for a couple of years and found myself at times, bewildered, curious, enchanted and exasperated by this fantastically weird city. It’s a city I enjoy now as a tourist which allows me to weave in and out of the areas with a familiar assuredness whilst remaining detached and appreciative of the idiosyncracies that may have niggled at me before.

So without further ado, I give you my adventures starting in the weird and wonderful city of Tokyo, followed later by Finland, Paris and London.

I love the story of Alice in wonderland as my babbling and cupcakes will attest. So it was with excitement that I found a “Fantasy Dining” restaurant in Ginza called “Alice” where waitresses, dressed in cute little alice outfits served Alice in Wonderland themed food, all in a setting fitting the eccentric little tale. We asked the Hotel concierge to book for us (I cannot live without a good concierge in Tokyo)  but even then it was busy and we couldn’t get the exact time we wanted. It seemed promising, most places are only full if they are good as the Japanese really queue and wait for things that are worthwhile.

Two of the Alice waitresses

Arriving at our destination, we head up to the 5th floor in the elevator along with 6 other people also headed to Alice and are led through narrow blue velvet curtained mirrored halls, past a large oversized clock and into our blue curtained private booth. All of the rooms are blue curtained booths in varying sizes to accommodate different sized parties. It’s not for the claustrophobic although I find it cozy and quite Alice rabbit burrow-like. There are silhouetted mirror images of Alice and the Hare at  the tea party and a vertical mirror image of it. We can see the people in the other booths somewhat through these but not clearly.

Our first waitress is a scream. She’s completely batty and I’m sure has no idea that she isn’t in Wonderland. She’s confused and confusing us to no end but doing it with a big smile and enthusiasm. We do place our order despite this and it is correct so perhaps it’s all part of the experience (although the later waitresses show no sign of the “altitude sickness”).

The drinks menu

Playing cards open to reveal pictures of the drinks

There is a minimum order of 1 drink and 1 meal per person which she tries to explain to us. She shows us each menu like revealing a big storybook and the drinks menu is particularly cute with the cocktails hidden inside playing cards. The coasters are Alice playing cards and should you want service, you simply press the bell on the table and a waitress will come within seconds. There is even a section at the back of the menu that tells you where you can buy the outfits from.

Amuse Bouch Y600 (yes, seriously)

As we are waiting they give us the Amuse Bouche course, curiously a tiny cup of dried banana chips and dried apricots with a little sign saying “Eat Me”. I didn’t like either given how parched we were and the waitress was a little batty so it took a while to get our drinks and water. Again, we learn that we are charged for our Amuse Bouches under the heading “charm” and the price of these little unwanted morsels? Y600 each, yep $12AUD for two of us for some bits of dried fruit.

Left “Lolita” drink Y750 Right Milkshake Y850

Our drinks finally arrive, the Lolita drink (orange and cranberry) is not off to a great start. The orange juice is not particularly fresh (you know, the point where Orange juice in your fridge is starting to go off but hasn’t yet) but the milkshake isn’t bad, although it is more just milk mixed with fruit, no ice cream.

Cheshire Cat croquette Y750

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