In Tiny Kitchens, Parisiens Keep Weekday Cooking Simple
Victor Coutard shares the secrets of cooking in Paris – a steak, salad, a pasta and an impromptu cake.
In Paris, weeknight meals begin at the neighborhood shop.
I walked out the door of my apartment in the 19th arrondissement and instantly inhaled a snoutful of petrichor, the odor of rain meeting dry soil. For me, it's one of the signatures of Paris, along with how I cook during the week.
That brings me to cooking on a lazy Tuesday. I stop at the cheesemonger, the butcher's deli counter, and the bakery, and I don't cook so much as assemble: ready-made pommes dauphines, a wedge of carré d'Aurillac, a baguette tradition. The one time that changes is when, eventually, I'm having someone over.
Paris is one of the most densely populated in the world, twice as many people per square meter as New York, so a Paris kitchen is about the size of a closet. Since there is nowhere to stock anything, this means frequent shopping trips but a few pantry essentials are essential. Butter first, salted or not depending on whether you're Breton. Then wine vinegar: I use the one from La Guinelle, a small producer in the Roussillon, south of France near the Spanish border, who makes it the old way, in open clay jars left to the air. And of course mustard, not supermarket mustard, but the one from Provins, made from seeds grown just outside Paris, mild enough to use generously and thick enough to make a vinaigrette properly creamy. (My mother crumbled a hard-boiled egg yolk into the dressing.) Then there's bread. My bakery, Pains, on the rue de Meaux, has no decoration except a massive antique wooden cabinet, called an armoire parisienne, that serves as an old proofing chamber where the dough still rises. I buy their small-spelt loaf every two or three days. It keeps well, slices cleanly, and tastes good in the morning with butter and bitter orange marmalade from Corsica. And as for bauguettes, ask for it bien cuite for a crackling crust and crispy croutons. I do keep Farida Bedredine's harissa powder from Épices Roellinger in my pantry, a quiet addition that lifts a salad dressing when it needs a little heat, or on chicken, where it's delicious.
Paris has twenty arrondissements arranged in a spiral from the middle outward: the first eight are essentially tourist zones we've surrendered in exchange for peace in the remaining twelve. The closer you get to the périphérique, the ring road that marks the boundary between Paris and its suburbs, the more you're in the real Paris. My neighborhood is the 19th, in the northeast, far enough from the center that the city feels like it belongs to the people who actually live in it. Up here I have Kilogramme, a small organic grocery hidden inside a housing project, fromagerie Gauthier where the owner hands out yogurt samples, and Pains on the rue de Meaux. No pretentious coffee shops, no overpriced wine bars, no precious marketing. Just Le Petit Rhin, where the beer is good, served fresh, and the owner, a PSG fan, puts the matches on.
As for wine, I stopped going to bars years ago. The natural wine scene that took over Paris in the last decade brought with it a wave of expensive, self-conscious wine shops. I'd rather buy a good bottle from Substrats, a small cave near my apartment with no attitude and a small but excellent selection, and drink it at home with friends.
In Paris, most shops close Monday, so Tuesday is when I go back to my favorites, often a delivery day, meaning newer stock. You have to be first in line, you have to charm your way in, and always remember to ask if there's something good hiding in the back of the store. It flatters the shopkeeper, and French tradespeople respect that. These last few weeks, worn out by the heat wave and the euphoria of my football team's European title, I've been inviting myself to friends' homes for dinner.
Frisée Salad with Bacon, Blue Cheese and Eggs
My Grandma's Frisée Salad
I'm writing this from the maternity ward, my son born last Sunday, which has left me flooded with childhood memories, most of them tied to my grandmother's house an hour north of Paris, just past Charles de Gaulle airport, at the edge of the Senlis forest. Two stories, a front stoop, a wooden staircase, virginia creeper climbing the walls, red in autumn, green the rest of the year. A walled garden where my grandmother had planted a cherry tree, its trunk so tilted I could climb it like a ramp. When I was small, we'd go up to the second floor to watch the Concorde pass by the window on its way to the United States. A storm eventually brought the cherry tree down, and my mother sold the house, which allowed her to buy another one near the sea, just in time for my own children to make new memories there.
My first food memory from that house is her composed salad: protein, greens, umami, infinitely adjustable. Bitter leaves I was responsible for picking myself from her garden, cheese for sweetness that came from the supermarket, grilled meat bought from the traveling butcher, a man who drove his truck through the village and a hard-boiled egg to hold it together. I call for Roquefort in the recipe because you'll know the name, though I personally find it too salty and prefer Fourme d'Ambert, Carré d'Aurillac, or Bleu du Vercors. This salad is about balance: the bitterness of the frisée met by the sweetness of the honey mustard, the sweetness checked by the salt of the lardons, the salt softened by the milkiness of the cheese, the egg binding it all together, and the garlic delivering the kick that wakes everything up.
On a Tuesday night in Paris, dinner could be any one of these, depending on whose kitchen you end up in. As it happens, the four recipes that follow complement each other rather neatly: the salad as a starter, the bavette or the pasta as a main, and the cake for nights worth celebrating. After all, we did win the match.
Nina's Bavette with Pepper Sauce
Nina is twenty-three, short t-shirt, low-rise jeans, oval glasses, every bit a woman of her generation. Chef de partie at Le Petit Panisse, a bistro in the 11th known for its daily-changing three-course menu, starter, main, dessert, at 24 euros. I know her through Léonie, my partner's young cousin and Nina's friend since childhood. Nina's kitchen is just one meter fifty by one meter, a single induction burner, knives lined up on a magnetic strip because there's no drawer to spare. She has a microwave wedged above the fridge which she tries to keep a secret. Her old battered sauté pans haven't been thrown out, they've been demoted to trivets. For our steak dinner, Nina shopped at Terroirs d'Avenir, the best grocer in Paris, built around saving old breeds and varieties from disappearing, and they sold her two pieces of bavette d'aloyau from a Pirenaika, a hardy Basque mountain breed most people have never heard of. Bavette is a common French cut on bistro menus such as Paris's temple of steak frites, Le Severo, but in the USA it would be closest to flank steak. Both bavette cuts come from the flank, the long flat muscles running along the underside of the animal; the flanchet sits lower, closer to the belly, with a wider grain and a looser texture, while the d'aloyau sits higher, nearer the sirloin, which gives it a tighter grain, deeper flavor, and better marbling. Bavette demands to be eaten rare, there's no other acceptable doneness. At Nina's, the smell of seared meat took over the whole apartment within minutes. "Everything I own ends up smelling like grease," she said, knife clattering against the cutting board in that uneven rhythm of someone whose technique is good but not yet automatic, fast through the shallots, then slow, careful, through the herbs.
There's no good way to take a flattering photo of a steak au poivre, sauce pooling brown around the meat, everything slightly grayish under the poor kitchen light. It's also, eaten straight off the pan, one of the best things I had all week. We drank a bottle of Soif du Mal (Touch of Evil, like the Orson Welles movie) by Les Foulards Rouges, a light, joyful wine from the Pyrénées-Orientales, bought at Délicatessen, a wine shop on the rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud. The meat is tender at the center but holds its bite, the fibrous grain absorbing the pepper sauce beautifully. The best part, though, is mopping up what's left in the pan with baguette or fries. We were always told that was bad manners. No matter.
Bavette with Pepper Sauce (Serves 2) by Nina
Ingredients
2 bavette steaks (bavette d'aloyau or flank steak), about ¾ inch thick
Kosher salt
1 tablespoon mixed peppercorns (black, white, and a few Sichuan), coarsely crushed
2 large shallots, thinly sliced
Neutral oil, for searing
2–3 tablespoons salted butter
1 splash of cognac, whiskey, or cider vinegar (elderflower vinegar if you can find it)
3 tablespoons meat juices or good beef stock, mixed with 1 tablespoon water
1 teaspoon white miso (optional, if using stock instead of meat juices)
⅓ cup crème fraîche
Instructions
Remove the steaks from the refrigerator 1 hour before cooking. Salt generously and let sit at room temperature for the remaining 30 minutes.
Crush the peppercorns with the flat of a knife blade or in a mortar. Thinly slice the shallots. Set both aside in separate bowls.
Heat a skillet over the highest possible heat. Add a drizzle of neutral oil and sear the steaks for 1 minute per side, no more. Transfer to a rack and let rest.
In the same pan, still over high heat, toast the crushed pepper for 30 seconds. Reduce the heat to medium and add the butter, letting it melt and foam. Add the shallots and cook, stirring, until softened, about 2 minutes. If using cognac or whiskey, add a splash now and let it reduce for 30 seconds.
Deglaze with the vinegar, scraping up any browned bits. Add the meat juices (or stock with miso) and stir to combine. Add the crème fraîche and simmer over low heat, stirring occasionally, until the sauce thickens to a consistency that coats the back of a spoon, about 3–4 minutes.
Return the steaks to the pan and warm through for 2 minutes, turning once, so they absorb the sauce. (Alternatively, warm in a 350°F oven for 2 minutes.)
Serve immediately, with a sharply dressed green salad and pommes dauphines if you can find them.
Ginger and Pear Yogurt Cake
Rebecca's French Yogurt Cake
Rebecca, thirty-nine, all freckles and red curls, dressed in nothing but bright color, hot pink, mustard, apple green, always natural fabric, built a cake from whatever was around: a little flour, two eggs, a pear, some Greek yogurt, assembled with natural enthusiasm. The apartment filled with the scent of cardamom and hot sugar as it baked. Her kitchen opens onto the living room, walls lined to the ceiling with small glass jars of spices. It feels like stepping into a Mediterranean corner shop that sells a bit of everything. Just an oven, a small sink, two cheap electric burners.
Halfway through, she realized the yogurt container was only half full. She shrugged and kept going anyway, then spotted a jar of cassonade (brown sugar) and tipped in a handful for a crunchy topping. That's Rebecca's whole approach to cooking: improvise, commit, don't overthink it. A food photographer with an unmistakable eye, her real signature is the beautiful mess, a plate half-eaten, a spilled glass, a stain on the tablecloth, and she cooks the same way she shoots. "The only thing about cooking," she told me, folding the pear into the batter, "is to start with a clean counter and end with a clean counter," which struck me as either very wise or completely meaningless. "We could have added a glaze," she said once the cake was in the oven. "A glaze is always cute." Single, always smiling, she hates coffee. During the thirty minutes it took to bake, I talked and she listened, the way you do with a good therapist, except that instead of paying I walked out with half a cake.
Florent's Pasta with Breadcrumbs, Parsley and Anchovies
Local writers call Florent the serial bistro-opener, more than a dozen restaurants behind him. He carries himself with that Corsican mix of warmth and a temper kept just barely in check, pale blue eyes that are soft but challenging. He left Paris for Montreuil, the Brooklyn of Paris, to build himself a proper kitchen, light wood, glass walls, a long counter, and a central island. Tonight it's European Cup football night. Somewhere behind the pasta and the clatter of the pan, the television announces Celta Vigo's goal, the one that knocks his beloved Olympique Lyonnais out of the competition. I don't mention it; some moments call for diplomacy.
Florent lives with his partner and their eight-year-old son, Maurice, who doesn't eat fish, like most Americans if I understand correctly. Trust me on the anchovies. They don't dominate but provide a precious umami base that holds the dish together, less a fish flavor than a depth of taste you can't quite name. Go easy on the salt. Serve with a light red.
Pasta with Breadcrumbs, Parsley and Anchovies
Ingredients
400 g pasta (spaghetti or bigoli)
100 g stale bread (or day-old bread)
3 tablespoons olive oil (plus a drizzle for finishing)
1 garlic clove
Zest of 1 lemon
1 bunch fresh parsley
3 or 4 large anchovies (plus 1 fresh anchovy per plate, optional)
Salt
Timut pepper or coriander seeds (your choice)
Method
Toast the bread in a pan with a little olive oil until lightly golden. Season with salt and add a pinch of timut pepper or lightly crushed coriander seeds. Let it cool completely.
Crush the garlic clove and mix it with the lemon zest and finely chopped parsley. Combine with the toasted bread to create a coarse breadcrumb mixture.
Cook the pasta al dente. Drain, then transfer it to the pan with the breadcrumbs. Add the anchovies and let them melt gently over low heat, stirring to coat the pasta evenly.
Serve in deep plates, optionally topping each serving with a fresh anchovy for those who like it, and finish with a drizzle of olive oil.
