salmon, cream, tagliatelle

I don’t really do Valentine’s Day. I’m not a hater; I don’t want to celebrate Anti-Valentine’s Day, and even when I was single, I had no desire to unite with single girlfriends on February 14th and be generally angry and/or drunk (I do that on normal days). When I was younger, we were always skiing over the long weekend on which Valentine’s Day often fell; if not, there was always the promise of candy in homeroom.

I saw a quote on Twitter — forgive me, French Tweeter, for forgetting your tag — that said something akin to, A: “It’s St-Valentine’s Day!” B: “Is your name Valentine?” A: “No…” B: “Then what’s the big deal?” It’s not a sentiment that necessarily translates well to English, but here in France, people still celebrate their name day or fête, so I guess the only person I should be wishing a Happy Valentine’s Day is my sister, the Actress, who’s confirmation name is Valentina.

I’m going to jump vaguely on the bandwagon of people who say that every day should be about showing the person/people you love that you care, and a holiday specifically for that purpose serves no good. I don’t talk too much about the Country Boy on here, except in passing, and I don’t intend to start just because it’s February 14th. But I figured that on a day like today, when my Twitter feed might as well be in pink and red, and if I were in the States I’d certainly be eating mass quantities of chocolate of questionable quality, I’d talk a little bit, not about our plans for Valentine’s Day, but about the little things that happen every day.

Living in Paris — widely recognized as one of the most romantic cities in the world — you might think that our day-to-day would be filled with standing on bridges listening to accordion music or walking through the Jardin de Luxembourg or padlocking our names to the Pont des Arts. This isn’t the case; life gets much too busy to have time for lazy walks through the center of Paris like this. TCB hardly makes it to the center at all, as he leaves for work in the north from our apartment in the south early in the morning and comes straight home in the evening. While I spend lots of time near the iconic sites of the 5th arrondissement, I’m usually running past them on my way to class, or perched on a bench in a park, doing research for my thesis.

We’ve started a slow tradition of Sunday walks, though, a tradition I used to share, in the same carefree way, with my father, who is just like me in his mile-a-minute head, and also just like me in his necessity, every once in awhile, to fill it with absolutely nothing. With my siblings and my dad, we would go on intrepid walks across Central Park or into unknown neighborhoods, at least to us, to look at new things and venture a bit out of our comfort zones before the journey home. As for TCB, he and I have taken to exploring our local parks in the 15th, though I imagine as soon as the weather gets warmer, we’ll start journeying further afield; after all, there are hundreds of parks in Paris.

The photos themselves are not of Paris at all, but of Coullons, where TCB’s parents still live and where we occasionally spend our weekends. There aren’t nearly as many parks, but there’s a whole lot of green space, and TCB likes to show me the way to some of his favorite childhood spots, his dog in tow.

For me, today is Tuesday, and I don’t mind. Like every other day, good and bad, I feel loved — by my friends, by my family, by my boy. Really, isn’t that what Valentine’s Day is about?

I actually made this salmon dish on the 13th of February, but it’s the perfect Valentine’s Day main; the color is a dead giveaway, but the cream sauce also lifts it to special occasion dish, while the simplicity means that even if Valentine’s Day falls on a Tuesday — or you want to say “I love you” with dinner on a Thursday — this dish comes together in no time.

Saumon à la crème
Note: I added the cream too early in the cooking, and it thinned out too much for my liking. In the future, I will add the cream closer to the end; this recipe reflects that change.

1 onion, thinly sliced
1 Tbsp. butter
salt, to taste
2 filets of salmon
1/2 cup white wine
3/4 cup crème fraiche

6 oz. uncooked tagliatelle or other pasta

Heat the butter and onion over low heat in a pan with a lid. Add a hefty pinch of salt and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions are translucent and sweet, about 10 minutes.

Add the salmon, serving side down, and immediately add the white wine. Cover and allow to steam.

Meanwhile, cook the pasta according to package directions. The salmon and pasta should finish cooking at about the same time if you begin cooking the pasta soon after you’ve covered the salmon.

Drain the pasta, reserving 1/2 cup of pasta water. Remove the salmon filets from the pan and keep warm. Add the pasta and the cream to the skillet and toss to combine. Add pasta water if needed to adjust the consistency of the sauce.

Transfer the pasta to a serving bowl and place the salmon filets over the top.