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Paris is in fact everything they say it is. The city is just as beautiful as they say, the Eiffel Tower is just as impressive, the bike culture is just as awesome, the food is just as good, the waiters are just as surly. It's fantastic. Paris was my first vacation outside of North America, and I would go back again in a second. It's true: seeing places around the world changes your perspective on home, in ways both fantastic and slightly bubble-bursting. (Yes, bubble-bursting: see the afore-mentioned comment on bike culture. And then ponder North American bike culture.)
The highlight of many vacations is the food. And for Paris this is especially true. Yes, you pay through the nose for everything (unless you learn to shoot espresso while standing up) but everything is fantastic. I went to Paris with my mother, and also with a friend who met up with friends of hers who were in Paris at the same time. She came back from their lunch reporting her friends had said they hadn't had any good food since being in Paris. The three of us shook our heads in disbelief: we hadn't had one BAD meal since coming to Paris. Crepes, salads, gorgeous crusty baguette everywhere—these were food memories that would stay with us long after flying back home.
But after becoming vegan, I started to think all those memories of good food would remain memories, since the French load every single meal up with cheese and ham (and sometimes chopped egg for good measure). I was especially sad about losing one of my favourite meal, chèvre chaud. Literally “hot goat's cheese”, chèvre chaud is a simple salad, with some kind of dressing and the simple-yet-delicious toasted bread and goat cheese on top. It's one of those meals that prove the old axiom: a fantastic dish is often made up of simple ingredients, and becomes more than the sum of its parts.
I wasn't even thinking about veganizing this dish, since vegan cheeses are rarely fantastic, and as a vegan, cheese dishes are something I have learned to modify but never replicate. So when I was at work on Friday, thinking about what I could eat as my pre-gym snack, the thought of my cashew “goat cheese” on toast did occur to me as an option. But only when I started craving the greens I had in the fridge did I realize that greens + cashew goat cheese on toast = vegan chèvre chaud.
And yes, it was delicious. It was almost like being back in Paris, except there were no surly waiters in sight!
Recipes for vegan cashew cheese abound: I'm sure google can help you there. I recommend crusty bread or chewy whole-grain bread, with a simple dressing. And please use green greens (not white, limp lettuce), for maximal texture as well as nutrition—baby arugula or spinach would be a wise choice. Slice off a bit off cashew cheese, put on top of toast, and put under the broiler until warmed. At this point, the last step is to dream of Paris.
