Au Pied De Cochon (Paris 2.3)

So after staying up slightly too late last night reading, I had a bit of a sleep-in this morning. When I finally got out of bed, I pulled open the curtains to reveal a grey and rainy day. Blech. I promptly made some tea and some porridge, plopped myself down on the couch, draped myself in a quilt and focused on building up some motivation to head out into the world. It took until 1:00pm. Interesting to note here, at noon the sky was pierced by the shriek of air raid sirens. Apparently on the first Wednesday of each month they test the sirens to make sure they are in working order. The sirens are sounded for a few minutes at 12:00 sharp, and then again at 12:10. Scary if you don't know what's going on I guess~ luckily (?) for me, I had experienced air raid sirens in San Francisco. They test theirs every Tuesday.
Anyhow, two things were on my agenda today:
1) Tracking down a couple more Christmas present things
2) Eating pig foot
The Christmas stuff was mildly irritating. Christmas always seems to make me painfully aware of how much I hate shopping for anything other than shoes, knives, or groceries. I concentrated on the task as long as I could, and then had to look for a shoe store to calm my nerves. I found one. It was called "Shoestore". That made me laugh pretty hard. At that point, I decided I was sick of being out in the rain and the wind, so I decided it was time for pig foot at Au Pied De Cochon.
When I went to this restaurant with my sister, we had soup, marrow, and tarte tatine~ these were all good solid choices, but I wanted to be a little more adventurous this time around. I seriously considered ordering their plan, which is a fairly decent deal at 23.50 euros for an entree, plat, dessert and 1/2L of water. Choices for the plan aren't regular menu items, and you have three or four items in each category to choose from. Had I gotten this, I would have chosen the pig foot terrine with grainy mustard vinaigrette for my entree, confit pork belly with bernaise sauce and frites (minus the frites, damn allergies!) for my plat, and warm rhubarb clafoutis for dessert. I wasn't hungry enough to deal with that much food though, so I decided to just have an item off of their regular entree list, Croustillant De Pied De Cochon (crispy pig foot) and a beer to wash it down.

Pig foot?

When my crispy pig foot arrived at the table, I was surprised. It looked nothing like what I expected, which was a whole crispy fried foot on my plate. Instead it was basically disks of a terrine made with pig foot (done similar to a head cheese), coated in breading, and fried until golden brown. On the side, I had expected to find frisee salad and balsamic reduction because that's what the menu said it came with. I got lightly dressed frisee with some red onion. There wasn't a drop of balsamic in sight.

Porky goodness

Overall, the dish was pretty killer. The terrine was perfectly seasoned, the breading was evenly fried and crispy. The frisee added freshness. A few things would have really elevated the dish:
1) It needed to be hotter. In my opinion, the combination of fat and gelatin which basically holds a terrine like this together has to be either really cold or really hot. When it's lukewarm, it sits heavily on the palate.
2) It needed more acid. Fried things need acid. Fat needs acid. Pork needs acid. Acid. The vinaigrette on the frisee was sharp and mustardy, and even a little more of that would have done the trick.
Once I was finished with the foot, I decided to have a little dessert. I was in a state of chocolate withdrawal following my heavy dose yesterday at Angelina's, so I chose the Moelleux au Chocolat (molten chocolate cake).

Moelleux means softness

This was also pretty damn good. There's a reason why people love the molten chocolate cake: warm oozing chocolate. I don't care if it's totally 80's. I don't care if it has become a cliche dessert all over the world. It's amazing.

Liquid chocolate middle

The cake parts of the dessert were soft and souffle-like, with a melt-in-your-mouth texture. The liquid chocolate part of the dessert was slightly richer and thicker than my hot chocolate yesterday. The vanilla bean ice cream on the side was a perfect accompaniment, and the crushed wafer which was holding the ice cream in place on the plate was a nice touch adding just a little crunch to the plate (I'll have to remember it in the future).
With my belly full and my chocolate levels replenished, I bundled up and stepped back out into the chilly afternoon, umbrella open and thoughts of napping laying heavily on my mind.