Last Christmas, I spent a few days in the South of France with my family. We started in Marseille, where my mother was born and where she grew up, then made our way to Gould to spend the holidays with my uncle Philippe who lives there with his family. Afterwards, we made our way to Nice, on the French Riveria. France's fifth largest city gets a pretty bad rep. It's like the Florida of France, where grandparents retire (my grandmother herself considered moving there for a while) and older Brits winter. It's no Cannes and it's no Monaco. But it's got a lot to offer: stunning Art Deco architecture, great museums (Chagall and Matisse both used to call Nice their home), the promenade des ...
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Travel Highlights from 2014
2014 was a great year for me travel-wise. I made it home to France not once, but twice. I made the most out of a few work trips in New York, Chicago, Raleigh, Boca Raton and Austin, Texas. I even tested out Icelandair's "the best part of a trip to Paris is Iceland" advertisement by doing a stop-over in Reyjkavik on my way back from Paris. The highlight of last year, though, was traveling to Brazil to cheer on my beloved Bleus during the World Cup, a trip I had been planning for and looking forward to for the past 3 years. MAKING THE MOST OUT OF WORK TRIPS Chicago (and New York before that) happened in the dead of winter. For Chicago, I think I got to go because none of my colleagues were ...
A Taste of South of France: Pissaladière
I've been looking to the food of South of France lately in my attempt to prolong summer as much as possible. In particular, I've recently rediscovered a dish I used to love: the pissaladière. Pissaladière is a classic dish from Nice. It's basically Southern France's answer to pizza. One of the key ingredients in pissaladière, anchovies, are unfortunately not the most popular in the United States. But I personally love the intense flavours and saltiness of the pissaladière and it's actually very easy to make at home. Only a few ingredients are needed to make a pissaladière: Caramelized onions (use 2-3 sliced yellow onions) Niçoise olives (use other black, preferably oil-cured olives if ...