tag: winter

It snowed in Paris this weekend and it made the city just that much more charming.

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Posted in: paris | Tags: hotel sully, jardin marie trintignant, paris, place des vosges, snow, snowman, snowmen, travel, winter | 3 COMMENTS

Chestnuts are making their way back to the street vendors. Sometimes, stepping out of a metro stop, I smell the familiar smoky charcoal smell of the roasters and almost stop to buy a handful.

But invariably, whenever I do buy some, they’re nearly impossible to peel. That’s why I’ve taken to roasting them at home — I can cut huge slits in the peels before roasting them, and they nearly fall off after being roasted.

I’ve also found what seems to be the perfect dipping sauce for chestnuts: chestnut honey, or miel de châtaignier, mixed with a good amount of coarse-ground pepper. The tongue-coating quality of the honey helps to mitigate the tendency of fresh-roasted chestnuts of being a little dry, and the pepper cuts through their creaminess with some spice. And I must admit, pairing honey made from chestnut flowers with the nuts that those trees eventually produced is pleasingly recursive.

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Posted in: party food, snacks | Tags: appetizer, autumn, black pepper, black pepper honey, chestnut honey, chestnuts, dipping sauce, fall, food, fresh chestnuts, holidays, honey, miel de chataignier, roasted chestnuts, vegetarian, winter | 6 COMMENTS

We went out to dinner with friends last night, and I discovered on the way home that the evenings are now too chilly for just a blazer. Soon enough, it’ll be that time of year when it will be unthinkable to go out without a sweater, a thick wool coat, and a scarf.

I’m actually kind of looking forward to it. Having lived in LA all my life, I’ve never gotten to experience the change of the seasons. When I visited Paris for a week last Christmas, there was nothing more charming than going out in the morning, our breath making little clouds as we walked, and getting a steaming cup of vin chaud from a street vendor to sip as we walked.

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Posted in: cooking, drinks | Tags: autumn, beaujolais, booze, cardamom pods, change of the seasons, drink, fall, gluhwein, mulled wine, orange zest, red wine, vin chaud, whole nutmeg, wine, winter | 4 COMMENTS