Dinner - Plan D

While I am loving the availability of foods like duck (one of my favorites) and rabbit (cooks like chicken but seems more interesting) I am generally feeling quite frustrated with the dinner situation here. Try as I might I am finding it difficult to cook enough at one time to last for 2 meals like I am used to doing at home. If I find rabbit at the store, there is only enough for 1 meal. If I go to the butcher and say I want enough duck to feed 7 people (the kids count as half a person), he tells me he only has enough to feed 4. Then as I am leaving I notice an extra magret in his case! Je ne comprends pas - I don't understand? Is he saving it for someone else?!

On this particular day I was feeling confident that my plan for dinner that night should solve my conundrum, however, and give me a break from cooking the following evening. I saw some trout at the fish market earlier in the week. It's easy to cook, the kids get a kick out of playing with the fish head on their plate, and it always serves more than you think! Problem solved. Or so I thought. I head over to Rue Martyrs (a street of dreams for those who really like food) as that's where the two Poissoneries (fish shops) are. The first one is closed so I head down the street to the second, just in time to see them shut their door for the day (it's really more like a garage door, so pretty obvious).

Ok - time to change gears (Plan B). I know the Boucherie (butcher shop) sometimes has some ready-to-cook things like meat and veggies wrapped up in a little wheel that you just stick in the oven. Easy! As I walk up the street I notice that all of the butcher shops are closed - all of them. I'm not sure what's going on as it isn't Sunday, when everything is closed, or even Monday...when everything is still closed. Not to worry. I'll go to the butcher at the end of our block. So I walk back home and down the other end of the street to find our local guy is closed as well. Sigh

On to Plan C. I decide to make life easy on myself and go to Franprix (grocery store) and get what I need to make carbonara, one of my easy "go to" dinners. Now even though there is supposedly no American style bacon in France, I've found some at the Franprix across the street from our apartment. It's not very good, but it works. Except for today - because there is none. There isn't even any pancetta or any other kind of smoked meat I can fry up in a pan for flavor. It's probably for the best as I would be inclined to go to the Fromagerie for the parmesan cheese and that just might do me in.

I turn around and see what looks like a couple of flank steaks in the case across from me. Theo's favorite meal is flank steak and I remember he said he was missing it - perfect! So Plan D is underway as I pick up what I need for the marinade. I saw some soy sauce and cilantro there earlier so I knew I was set! (yes, I really should have known by now that it couldn't be this easy). I get home, pull out the recipe and realize that I need sake (it's been a while since I made this). No problem - there's a liquor store just a block and a half away. I put my shoes and coat back on and head to Nicololas, which is a chain store in Paris. I wait the 10 minutes it takes for the proprietor to finish discussing the intricacies of champagne with a women who isn't even buying anything and then I ask him if he has sake. He tells me he's out, but the Nicolas in the next arrondissement over should have some. Ugh. I know where there's another liquor store a few blocks away and I head over there. No sake. I go to the Carrefour (the other grocery store in our neighborhood) across the street and while I find every other kind of alcoholic beverage on the shelves, there is no sake.

How important is the sake? I'm not sure, but since I don't exactly know what kind of meat it is that I bought and my kid is missing his favorite meal, I just wanted it to taste as close to what it always tasted like at home. At this point, however,  I had to say "screw it". I begrudgingly grabbed a random bottle of white wine as a substitute and headed home.

By the time I get everything ready to put in the oven, I can't figure out how to turn it on. I've turned this thing on every day for the last few weeks, but every new day I forget how I did it the day before! What can I say? ...it's confusing. I'm exhausted and frustrated and beyond annoyed. In fact I'm so busy being annoyed that I forget about the steak once it's in the oven and it overcooks.

At least we have wine. :)