paris pâtisseries: pierre hermé, or a eulogy for the macaron

10 Jun

pierre herme celeste millefeuille

Not a picture of a macaron. Because it is no more, or so it is said.

The beauty of the macaron, the good macaron, which Pierre Hermé understood straight away, is not only in their infinite variations of colour, their bijou collectible quality but in the intense shot of flavour suspended between two eggshell thin almond biscuits.

Who was it that said that the first bite is the most important? That subsequent mouthfuls are all ever-decreasing in intensity and novelty? The macaron is only one mouthful, two if you are sharing unwillingly, and so you have continued bursts of different flavours: acidic yoghurt and raspberry, concentrated freshness with cucumber, mint, apple and rocket.

The charming Italian and I tried to pin down the secret to the macaron’s success, concluding that it provides a perfect moment in all its transience, especially because it is fleeting. That Jardin du Potager macaron was like a beautiful gin and cucumber cocktail, a summer’s evening  on an otherwise grey day. More than its diminuitive size belied, it promised a few seconds of relaxation, the smell of fresh-cut grass, the sound of icecubes and the happy anticipation of supper in the garden – without the fading sunburn and impending mosquitos that stalk even the most tranquil holidays. The macaron skips the disappointment of the real experience because it is over so quickly: it goes straight from anticipation to rosy nostalgia. (Can you tell I have been reading Alain de Botton’s ‘The Art of Travel’ recently? That book thoroughly improved the early morning metro ride for me, left me travelling in my own everyday.)

So our discussion of the four coin-sized sweets in front of us was much longer than the few seconds it took for the sugar to dissolve in our mouths, and happily had all the pretention of the amateur philospher-gourmet, or of our old boss at the Louvre with his flights of exaggerated rhetoric:

“But of course the macaron is dead, it is passé! The éclair is king! We are eating an exercise in medievality!” (He often told us not only that was Paris over, buried long since, but that Warsaw was already the new Berlin. And why weren’t we over there forming an artist collective, a publishing house and an avant-garde theatre all at once?)

The macaron may well have been squashed in its delicate shell by the more substantial éclair (there was a brief interlude where the cupcake was a pretender to the crown but the French refused to take it seriously – the choux puff tried but was too similar in shape to its usurped cousin). Indeed, I had tired of the soft yielding sweetness of the macaron and of its exorbitant prices and strayed from its cult worship, seduced by greed for a longer, larger éclair. People, at least Parisians, have moved on, bored of the endless sub-par macarons in every corner bakery. A bad one is sweet, cloying, all food colouring and no essence. But it is impossible for me to pass one of Hermé’s ebony box boutiques without entering, for which I am thankful to no longer be living in the Latin quarter but in the less chic 19th arrondissement, less macarons and more kebabs.

We lingered on the way back from the Tuileries, took our time choosing the perfect parfums. He really knows how to play with the palate, does our Pierre. Not always to everyone’s taste: some adventures in wasabi were apparently short-lived, while the idea of his Christmas editions of foie gras and fig, or white truffle and hazelnut can sound bizarre although they taste divine. (A visiting friend tried the latter and claimed, “Now I can die happy. Really.”) He dreams up his new featured dessert or fétiche range like the recent ‘Céleste’ (passionfruit, rhubarb and strawberry, pictured above) and his team of designers and pastry architects will do the experiments to produce a new capsule collection of haute pâtisserie: a macaron, a millefeuille, an émotion (a layered dessert in a glass verrine). He need only be the ideas man, and the clever business man who has made his name a global empire. He knows how to leave you desperate for more, coming back for that surprised first bite over and over.

Pierre Hermé is certainly my explanation in vivid colour of why I do what I do. I like to take people to his shop on rue  Bonaparte and just point. And if I haven’t written a straight review, if I got distracted with a post-mortem of the macaron (that will certainly be a very robust ghost for many years to come) it is because I cannot compress my words to a paragraph the same way Hermé knows how to compress flavour and delight into the smallest treat. Hyperbole maybe. I am not the only guilty party; on leaving the Italian at her office, her last words were;

“Ho ancora la bocca in giubilio.”

~~~

Pierre Hermé – to be found all over the world. Five main boutiques and several concessions in Paris alone. My favourite is on the rue Bonaparte near St-Sulpice, but the rue Vaugirard boutique has much less of a queue on weekends. Store locations and opening times (as well as unfairly appetising pictures).

 

wild garlic

5 Jun

wild garlic in cup

This piece was originally written for the new and shiny Gravity Serpent zine.

Most of my memories are punctuated by something edible, one great meal or a transcendent piece of cake. That weekend in Cornwall will always be linked to wild garlic for me. It fixes the people in my mind more firmly, anchored by the scent of cliff paths and the taste of waxy new potatoes scattered with green.

My granny is lemons, always lemons: her fresh lemonade, her sticky lemon curd on soft white bread and that one time, stitched into family lore, when I had seven helpings of her lemon pudding. Now at the bakery when we have to squeeze hundreds of lemons for our special crème au citron, I think of her. When you zest enough, the little puffs of lemon oil given off form a thin mist that sparks green in the gas-fired hobs. And the smell conjures up my granny instantly.

At the moment, in her letters she is telling me lots of stories about her father, my great-grandfather, who was a psychiatrist as well as the author of several books on plants. According to her, “Wild Foods of Britain” was dashed off in the week before he was called up to be a naval doctor in WWII. It is a thin volume with simple line illustrations, matter of fact descriptions of each foraged herb, fungus or weed, and recipes with now-curious names like frumenty, kissel and caragheen mould. He is erudite with a dry wit. My favourite line so far comes under Pig Nut (Conopodium denudatum):

‘Caliban dug them with his fingernails but most people prefer to use a kitchen fork.’

I never met him, never could have, but through the stories and recipes he belongs to me somehow. He is a solid figure. Now I pay attention to all the food around us for the picking, though I couldn’t identify a pig nut to save my life. On holiday with my university friends in Cornwall, we picked the delicate white flowers whose stems, crushed between our fingers, were reminiscent of chives, a more subtle version of shop garlic. Finely sliced over boiled potatoes, with the bell-shaped flowers as a garnish, they made a perfect accompaniment to my most travelled recipe, mustard chicken. The one that I make to thank my hosts but also, in a selfish act of immortality, to have them remember me. It has made it as far as Australia and even onto a café menu, of its own accord. You need to allow a whole chicken leg and thigh, a big dollop of crème fraiche and a heaping teaspoon of mustard per person. It will certainly be more mustard than you think wise, but persevere. Massage it all into the chicken with salt and pepper, some cumin seeds if there are any lying around, and bake in a very hot oven. The mustard’s bite is tamed by the heat, leaving a crisp skin that is delightfully savoury, full of flavour.

We passed around bowls and plates, spun wine on the lazy Susan, laughing and talking over one another. I listened from the stove, mixing a last minute icing for the fresh banana cake. On just a short weekend in a seaside cottage, I didn’t have all the right bits and pieces, no whisk, no icing sugar. So just a packet of cream cheese, several tablespoons of raspberry jam and a squeeze of lemon juices. Light and sweet, flower-pink, rich but not cloying. The cake too was easy: two mashed ripe bananas, three eggs, some melted butter (about 50g), one small water glass of sugar, two of self-raising flour and a teaspoon of cinnamon. Mixed with a fork, poured into a greased tin and baked at about 180C for about 30 minutes, just enough time to run to the supermarket for chicken and wine and to pick some wild garlic from the path.

Now when I think of that meal, I can conjure all of the faces around the table. I hope they recreate and share the food too, or at least the memory of it. Sending a recipe off into the ether is almost as good as writing a book. It is a tangible piece of the past, the wild captured on our plates. It keeps that moment in the present; it keeps my friends close, and my great-grandfather as close as he will ever be.

Find information about the zine at gravityserpent.wordpress.com - or email gravityserpent@gmail.com to get your hands on a real paper copy.

green & black’s chicken mole

4 May

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The only saving grace in drastically screwing up my holiday dates and arriving in England a week early for a planned holiday with friends was the book I had ordered, with the idea of savouring it on the beach in Cornwall. Luckily, I suppose, I didn’t make it out of London before I realised my mistake. My brother made me a cup of tea – “because I understand that’s what you do in these sorts of situations” –  I cried hysterically, bought three more Eurostar tickets and went back to Paris, and to the bakery for another week.

My colleagues teased me only a little, having waved goodbye to me and my overstuffed suitcase only 24 hours previously. The book went in my work bag along with neatly rolled apron, chef jacket and trousers.  It was Anne Lamott’s latest journal, about her grandson’s birth and her trip to India, ‘Some Assembly Required.’ On the way home after work I became so lost in her words I missed my metro stop and had to walk back, blinking at the bright sunlight.

Her honest open writing, her willingness and skill in describing her vulnerability, paranoia and love always amaze me, constantly make me laugh. Searching for a quote to read to a friend, I found a good one on every page. Liked a throwaway line about spring:

‘a few cool blue skies, new grass, wildflowers and I’m in love. You’re going to fall for that old magic trick again? Oh, yeah.’

Paris has welcomed me back with a scrubbed-clean spring face. She can be such a tease, playing it cold and distant for months, then just when you think you can cope without her, she magicks up some blossoms, begs for forgiveness. And I fall for it every time.

The sunshine makes all the difference, of course. Suddenly the words are unspooling in my head again, finally my desire to cook for myself has come back, long dormant. I love cooking for friends, guests, presents – but alone, tired, grumpy? Not so much. Rather like a good night’s sleep after a week at work, everything seems shinier in the spring. People seem more attractive. Or maybe the Parisians finally have smiles on their faces as they drink beer by the canal and swing their legs over the water.

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So I come home with energy and compassion, and fall on the recipe for Chicken Mole. Inspired by another book I received from a dear friend, ‘Like Water for Chocolate’  - a Mexican tale of magical realism, emotion poured into cooking – the casserole of chicken, tomatoes, paprika and chocolate transmitted all the love and warmth I had been missing over the winter.

Simple enough – you brown the chicken, cook some onions and garlic, add tins of tomatoes and beans and the final touch of chocolate and smoky chilis or paprika. (I snuck in a roasted red pepper and a little extra chocolate as well.)  Then stick the pot in the oven for the flavours to bind and deepen for at least an hour and a half. Today I served it over a plain accompaniment of brown rice and devoured half of it standing up by the window. It tasted earthy and wholesome, not specifically of chocolate so much as a complex blend of savoury flavour.  Tomorrow I will hunt for ripe avocados and corn tortillas as the recipe suggests, and I cannot wait. I am properly hungry again. It is a good feeling.

Next week I will be on holiday again, for real. The total cost of the aborted trip twists my insides a little, and it may well rain in Cornwall. But if I can hold onto the spring feeling regardless, and listen to the words and recipes growing … if I can weave half as good a story out of it – my seemingly endless screw-ups, my relationship with this tricky city – as Lamott does, then I will be extremely grateful.

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Chicken Mole

from the Green & Black’s ‘Unwrapped’ chocolate recipe book, as inspired by Laura Esquivel’s ’Like Water for Chocolate‘ - they advise serving with avocado salad and corn tortillas, or, if for vegetarians, replacing the chicken with an extra tin of kidney beans 

should serve 4 

1 large red pepper

4 chicken legs (thigh and drumstick)

2 tbs olive oil

2 large onions

2 garlic cloves

2 smoked, dried Jalapeno chili peppers, soaked in water

OR 2 tsp smoked sweet paprika

400g tin red kidney beans

400g tin chopped tomatoes

100g dark chocolate, min 60% cocoa solids

salt

~~~

Stab the red pepper all over with a fork and bake in a 200C oven until soft and blackened.

Brown the chicken in the olive oil in a large oven proof casserole. After a few minutes, when the chicken has a little colour, add the onions and garlic. When they are translucent, add the beans (with all the liquid in the tin), the tomatoes, 50g of the chocolate. Either chop the dried and soaked chilis and add them in along with the soaking water, or use the smoked paprika. Bring to a simmer.

By this time the pepper should be done. Lower oven temperature to 150C. Remove pepper stalk and seeds, then roughly chop it and add to pot. Cover and place in the oven for at least 90 minutes.

Skim off any fat. Taste and add the rest of chocolate if needed, as well as some salt.

strawberries and shortbread

22 Apr

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Making fun of the French is all too easy. It has become a bad habit that I wear as easily as my shapeless duffel coat. What can I say? Their typically closed-off rule-following ways make for good anecdotes.

There was the time I went to the department store BHV and needed to ask five (famously snooty) shop assistants before one would deign to point me in the right direction for a cake stand. There are the continual awkward encounters with neighbours, who have made small talk about the weather with me for two years, who have all accepted free cakes from my bakery – but will never introduce themselves. I know that the couple on the 6th floor has a cat named Carlos. They have given me flowers to thank me for said cake. But they still don’t feel obliged to share their names.

Then there is the insistence on correct grammar, a reverence for words that I totally understand but still find amusing when upside in a hot yoga class and a student takes the time and breath to correct the American instructor: it’s la cheville not le. 

My first year in Paris, my year abroad, I wanted to integrate. I actively avoided anglophones. However this led to living and working with only Italians, a pleasant and unexpected consequence. I learned how to salt pasta water (heavily) and that una forchettata (a forkful) means a good 150g portion. I practiced some French, tangentially, with friends of friends or as a stilted common language with the rare German or Polish colleague, all confused and a little annoyed to find themselves in the crossfire of Italian chatter in that most French of institutions in the very heart of the city, in the Louvre.

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The second time around, a year later, I tried again. Granted, I was living with another Italian girl, the charming flatmate. But we made an effort to meet Frenchies, joined capoeira class, made small talk at soirees. Slowly slowly though, I started meeting English-speaking friends, an American, a couple of nice Canadians. Several girls from my tiny hometown of Hereford, all escaped to France in search of adventure. And I got to be myself a little more – my voice is squeakier and much more prissy in French, whereas in English (I hope) I am funnier, more relaxed.

Maybe my frog-mocking is just self-protection: it’s hard to fit in with the French. To break the ice without asking what someone does for a living, to slip in the subjunctive like it’s no big deal, to know how the latest thoughtful and depressing movie fits into the director’s back catalogue. It’s a little like tagging along with a sophisticated older sibling, trying to keep up. Just like brothers and sisters, the French and the English seem to be endlessly in competition, always making fun of each other more or less affectionately. That’s my excuse anyway, for pandering to stereotypes, which do nonetheless have a small grain of truth in them. And they do it too; how many times have I admitted to being English only to hear an often misinformed diatribe about how terrible our food/weather/national character is. (Oh dear, I am being a bratty little sister: ‘He does it too! He started it!’)

In the end though, the fact that I am still here has to count for something. I like all of the other cliched ideas about France, that its people take art and aesthetics, fine food and wine so seriously. I have become the Parisian who wouldn’t live anywhere else, wouldn’t give up all the city’s expos and vernissages, its street theatre, but still relishes a weekend in the French countryside with its rustic charm and simple meals. I love going to market and peering at the heaping mounds of produce, asking for that one to be ripe for tonight’s supper and another for three days time. Their care and attention when it comes to food is a kind of open-house hospitality, welcoming you in for the best they have to offer. You taste the cassoulet and mi-cuit foie gras from the farm next door and you notice immediately their pride in their culinary heritage.

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All the eating is part of a larger whole, the expectation that having followed those rules, paid one’s dues – the reward is rest and relaxation. Though the two hour wine-soaked lunch is becoming less common, the French have three bank holidays in May alone (in the sunshine of course) and still make the most of their five weeks holiday a year, preferably for a long August vacation. The state is very generous with unemployment benefits – which includes free entry into museums and cultural institutions – with health insurance and with help towards paying the rent for students and those on a low wage, even for foreigners like me. Provided you fill in all the forms of course, that is the classic stumbling block. Once you have cleared that hurdle, you are free to wander the streets and markets, pretending to be French, hoping that your charming accent will go unnoticed for two more minutes.

On the subject of fresh ripe fruit from the market, the gariguette strawberries are finally in season. I rather bossily ordered a friend coming to dinner to pick me up a punnet or two for dessert “and definitely not any of those Spanish monstrosities.” Gariguettes are small and delicate and sweet, a more translucent red than the aggresively farmed ruby berries from Spain that are available all year around. These ones come out around March to June, and are extremely sensitive. They must be handled with care for they bruise easily. (Here I could make an unflattering parallel with a prissy Parisian, but I won’t.) They collapse in a puddle of juice when bitten into, releasing a sweet perfumed flavour that I had forgotten over the winter. Like having Italian sun-ripened tomatoes after months of those tough supermarket orbs, you remember when eating gariguettes what strawberries are supposed to taste like.

Though I was planned to make a fancy mousse cake with a jelly middle, iced and beribboned, in the end I left the strawberries whole and fresh in all their glory. We ate the shortbread base plain with some icing sugar, perfectly crumbly from the subtle addition of rice flour. The fruit was dipped in melted chocolate and honeyed cream. I should be promoting the extravagant cake, but really there is nothing nicer after a big meal than sharing big bowls of fruit, reaching across the table to grab at chocolate, making a pile of strawberry, shortbread and mascarpone for each bite. It was very companionable. In fact, this improvised pudding has the best of France, England and even Italy in all its basic ingredients.

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Strawberries and shortbread

technically feeds six polite people at a dinner party, but I like the shortbread so much I can eat most of it in one sitting (full disclosure, it comes from my mother’s book Seasonal Secrets)

125g butter, room temperature

50g caster sugar

125g plain flour

50g rice flour

1/2 tsp salt

zest of 1 lemon

to serve:

500g fresh ripe gariguette strawberries

more sliced fruit – kiwis or mangoes are good for colour contrast

200g dark chocolate, melted

250g mascarpone (or clotted cream)

3 tbs milk

1 tbs honey

Heat oven to 175C. Cream the butter and sugar, stir in flours, zest and salt until it just starts to come together. Line a tin with baking paper – I used a 22cm ring on a baking sheet to make  it easy to emove when baked – and press the dough firmly into it. Bake for 15-18 minutes until golden and just brown around the edges. Let cool.

When ready to eat, melt the chocolate gently over a pan of simmering water. Mix the mascarpone with the milk and honey to make a smooth dipping consistency. Cut the shortbread into diamonds and dust with icing sugar. Slice any other fruit neatly, serve the strawberries as they are. Plonk everything in the middle of the table and hand your guests skewers or fondue forks, let them help themselves.

kitchen rhythm

7 Mar

strawberry half 2

While googling wildly, I just came across Yumeiro Patishiēru, a manga and anime about a girl named Strawberry, but known as Dream-Coloured Pastry Chef.

I can rest easy – there is already an animated series about a clumsy girl who dreams of opening her own bakery in London and thinks there is a second stomach just for dessert.

On an unrelated note – but one that makes me almost as happy as this discovery - my essay about a year as an apprentice patissière is now online. Do let me know what you think?

an oaty biscuit or two

24 Feb

digestive biscuits

The same question every time, asked with confusion or with a sneer:

But is there any traditional English pâtisserie? What is this pooding? 

I sigh.

The heavy fruit thing? You must be thinking of Christmas pudding – which we only eat once a year, if that. 

They think that pooding is the epitome of our backward cuisine.

For the British, pudding just means dessert. It’s true that the word itself resonates comfort, evokes steamed sponges with thick custard – rather than the insubstantial wisp of a French dessert. But we have all kinds, not just Christmas: a sticky toffee replete with syrup, lemon self-saucing, a summer one bursting with red fruits. And not just pooding, the British really can bake: chelsea buns, scones, biscuits, all kinds of rich layer cakes.

Usually I am too lazy to properly defend our heritage. We have a terrible reputation for food after all. Sometimes I have to admit that these things are personal, vestiges of a childhood that do not necessarily cross cultures. (See also, the northern French habit of dipping smelly cheese in coffee in the mornings.)

When I made last week’s cheesecake, I ran out to buy plain biscuits and found some digestives in Monoprix. They had been renamed sablées anglaises, and had little British guards on the red packet. I couldn’t help but think that the French must be very disappointed in our rendering of a sablée - normally a flaky buttery biscuit – with its plain dry crunch. Ideal for dipping in tea, digestives are sturdy and reliable, a ready vehicle for cheese and chutney, or chocolate spread. I had them for school break time, sandwiched with a generous layer of cold butter. But they win no prizes for prettiness, certainly cannot compete with the class of the macaron or the indulgence of a warm, melting chocolate chip cookie. To foreigners, they are probably as lacklustre as they believe our climate to be.

So I tried to make some of my own, to convert the new French flatmate immediately to my cause. (Start small and work up to the full-blown sticky pudding.) It was the perfect excuse to use my tiny alphabet stamps for cookies, to spell out ‘welcome.’

They turned out beautifully – borderline oatcakes, with a craggy rough texture more like Duchy Originals (la di da) than proper digestives. Like my Granny’s old-fashioned oaty biscuits that are made with lard, no less. Mine had a little golden caster sugar for sweetness, but were still delicious with goat’s cheese. Those that weren’t slathered in butter were dipped in milk chocolate with marbled stripes of dark chocolate, for a very comforting and nostalgic snack. Most importantly, they stand up extremely well to dunking in tea. How can you be rude about a country that bakes such gems – better still, whose prince and heir makes the biscuits?

In the end,  I am happy if no-one believes the English really do know their way around an oven – all the more for me.

~~~

Oaty biscuits

adapted from Peyton and Byrne’s British Baking – if you use oatmeal as they suggest the biscuits will have a fine texture like digestives, or grind rolled oats as I did for more bite, like hobnobs

150g rolled oats

150g wholemeal flour

50g golden caster sugar

1/4 tsp salt

1/8 tsp bicarbonate of soda

90g cold butter (I like salted)

1 egg, beaten

for decoration: 200g milk chocolate + 50g dark chocolate

Blend rolled oats in the food processor to a breadcrumb texture. Add flour, sugar, salt and bicarbonate of soda, then butter cut into cubes. Pulse until butter is lentil-sized bits. (This can be done by hand, but in that case you need to use a  fine oatmeal instead of rolled oats.)

Add egg and blend to form a dough. Tip out onto a floured surface and bring into a ball. If a little dry, add a tablespoon of water. Roll out with a little flour to 3mm thick, cut out rounds (I made 20 x 6cm biscuits) and stamp a message if you have alphabet stamps.

Bake at 200C for 12-15 minutes, until crisp and brown. Let cool, then dip one side in melted ilk chocolate. If you want to be extra fancy, pipe (or drizzle with the tines of a fork) the dark chocolate in horizontal lines before the milk chocolate has set, then draw the point of a knife back and forth in vertical lines to make a beautiful marble pattern.

endive, blue cheese and pear salad

20 Feb

pear and endive salad

My February kitchen has not been much to write home about. Though I resolved to try 10 new recipes from neglected cookbooks, I often end up eating leftover cake for supper (hurrah for being a grown-up) or a plain salad to balance out the cake (curses on adult responsability).

There was a whole mackerel roasted with lemon and a particularly nice dinner among girlfriends with beef, apricot and spinach meatballs simmered in tomato sauce – but that is all self-explanatory.

I can only offer this salad, in imitation of a wonderful Lyonnais bistro in St-Germain, whose address I will be not sharing (bribes notwithstanding) because it was too full and their seven-hour lamb was too delicious.

Endives can be jarring – too bitter, too teeth-squeakingly watery. But here, sliced as finely as coleslaw, they are the the star of the plate, crunchy but delicate, spotlit by a mustard dressing. Its subtle colours – cream, pale green. mottled blue – hide a wallop of flavour: bitter endive, sweet pear, sharp cheese. It is a wintery salad full of promise, for crunch and light and better things to come.

~~~

Pear, endive and blue cheese salad

serves 4 as a starter

4 large endives

2 crisp, slightly unripe conference pears

200g blue cheese

3 tbs olive oil

2 tbs lemon juice

1 tsp dijon mustard

1/2 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp salt

a pinch of pepper

Halve and core the pears. Slice them and the endives as thinly as possible. Shake the dressing ingredients in a jar, toss most of it with the salad, add more to taste. Crumble the blue cheese over the top.

raspberry and poppy seed cheesecake

12 Feb

raspberry poppy cheesecake

At supper with the charming Italian flatmate and her equally charming boyfriend (I am a welcome extra wheel because I always bring dessert) we discussed the decor of their future apartment (or, they politely argued, I concentrated on the saffron risotto).

He likes black and white with just a touch of colour. He is French, of course. She is a walking rainbow. He has been known to scold her gently for wearing purple and red together. Her room mirrors her colourful personality, an honest representation of herself.

Decorating cakes should follow the same rules, to reflect what is inside. Pierre Hermé believes strongly that it should be minimal, and should enhance not hide. (An error I certainly committed in my final exam when there was a dent in my tutti frutti entremets. I did indeed use all of the fruits to cover it up.) Hermé’s vanilla tart has a line of real vanilla seeds on a shiny white glaze. That is all. The reason that it is minimalist and not simply boring is that he delivers on his visual promise – the execution is perfect, the tart is a concentrated explosion of vanilla.  A sort of dessert sincerity. At work we place a dried vanilla bean on our apple tart because it contains a compote made with a spidery tangle of vanilla pods. However we also put chopped pistachios on the lemon tart, the acid-green contrasting prettily with the yellow when there is no pistachio in the tart itself: false advertising.

One of my favourite people – who detests cooking – asked me what on earth was the point of ‘dressing a plate.’ I compared it to ‘bookcase styling,’ a term I came across on the internet. The step-by-step guide to artfully arranging knick-knacks and bibelots just so on the shelves treated the (very few) books as an afterthought – or a stand for pretty vases. The same goes for dressing a plate: if all the drizzles and sprigs of parsley obscure the actual food, then the fundamentals have been lost somewhere between the kitchen and our mouths.

To see my bedroom with its stacks of books, haphazard wall of gilt frames is to know that I am far from being a minimalist. But I like my desserts to be fresh and simple, clean flavours and lines – and the garnish should reflect that.

We carried on discussing furniture – there was a violent disagreement over the idea of a violet pouffe – until I brought out the cheesecake. Made with Quark I brought back from Germany specially, it was light and tangy with a hint of lemon. It was baked in a loaf tin for neat oblong slices befitting a dinner party, that showed the pink bloom of the raspberries inside. It was neither rich nor cloying, more akin to the dense German kasekuche I had had in Stuttgart. That one had had a poppy seed topping; I adapted the idea and put the poppy seeds in the biscuit base for a bitter crackle, and covered the cheesecake with a thin layer of whipped cream instead. It might seem redundant, cream on top of cheese, but it works. Then a few diagonal lines of poppy seeds and candied lemon zest. Simple. Fancy. It was much appreciated – and because it was not too sugary nor too creamy, even those that normally hate cheesecake approved.

The charming flatmate left this week (interestingly, on the day that the Japanese traditionally celebrate casting out devils and inviting in good spirits!) to move in with the boyfriend. Soon there will be a new, and nice, French girl. For now I am alone in the apartment, its walls now bare, the bookshelves gone. In lieu of buying more, and trying in vain to style them, I shall make myself this cheesecake and actually read a book instead.

~~~

Raspberry and poppy seed cheesecake

adapted from Valentina’s recipe, one that I have been meaning to make for years now

75g butter, melted

175g plain biscuits, crushed

35g poppy seeds

80g raspberries (fresh or frozen)

450g cream cheese, quark or drained fromage blanc*

150g caster sugar

4 eggs

zest of 1 lemon

to decorate:

100g cream, whipped

lemon zest, poppy seeds, fresh raspberries

*I have tried all the cheeses below, each are delicious, but have a slightly different texture – however the fromage blanc needs draining 24 hours beforehand. A goat’s milk fromage blanc is particularly tangy and interesting. Drain in a colander lined with a tea-towel, leave in the fridge for 24 hours or more with a heavy weight on top. Start with about 800g to get 450g in the end.

Grease a 24cm-long loaf tin and line with paper (makes it easier to lift out when cooked). Heat oven to 180C.

Either bash the biscuits in a plastic bag with a rolling pin to crumbs, or blend in a food processor. Stir in melted butter and poppy seeds and press firmly into tin.

Mix cream cheese or quark, sugar, eggs and lemon zest. Pour half into tin, scatter over raspberries then pour in the rest.

Bake for 50 minutes or so. The cheesecake will be golden brown and just set, and will come away from the side of the tin.

Lightly whip the cream and spread over the cooled cheesecake. Decorate with thin diagonal stripes of poppy seeds and crushed raspberries, or whatever takes your fancy.

(Still good the next day, were it to  be prepared ahead, refrigerated and decorated last minute.)

paris pâtisseries: l’éclair de génie

6 Feb

les eclairs de genie

The cupcake is dead, long live the cupcake. Everyone is looking for the next trend, that one simple item that can be customised in a million ways and sold for a fortune.

The man behind L’Éclair de Génie  may indeed be a genius. After the multi-coloured macarons, the American cupcakes, on the heels of Popelini’s range of cute choux puffs, comes the éclair in infinite flavours. Christophe Adam knows what he is doing – not least because he made the éclair into a luxury item at Fauchon back in 2003 – because he now has a designer boutique in the Marais, that sells only éclairs and truffles. Even at 4.50-5€ each, it is apparently doing so well after only six weeks he plans to open another shop straightaway.

I had to see what all the fuss was about – and to see, more importantly if his éclairs could beat the neighbouring pasteis de nata. Those custard tarts are my favourite example of one quality product, made fresh and perfect every day.

The boutique is egg-yellow and white, with elegant vendeuses wearing sleek black gloves. The line of éclairs stretches almost the length of the shop, a rainbow selection adorned with rose petals, striped icing and the Christophe Adam classic: arty transfers that make the pastry into a Louvre-worthy painting. I paid €14 (somewhat begrudgingly) for three small eclairs and carried the box home as if it contained delicate jewels.

The choux pastry seemed just right – not too tough nor too flimsy. The cream inside was liquid silk. Pistachio and orange was more subtle than I expected, the crème de pistache the palest green with just a touch of bitter orange. The Madagascan vanilla covered with a rubble of toasted pecans was a nice contrast of textures – with enough real vanilla seeds to pop between your teeth if you listened carefully. While the lemon and yuzu was rich and lovely, the extra-bitter twist that should have been the yuzu flavour – another ingredient à la mode at the moment – was a little lost. But that is the only criticism I can find; they were excellent eclairs. Well, that and the cost. Half the size of a boulangerie éclair, and twice the price. But they are special enough to rival even my beloved custard tarts. L’Éclair de Génie is inspired.

l'eclair de genie box

~~~

L’Éclair de Génie - 14 rue Pavée, 75004 Paris, métro St Paul – closed Mondays

*The name means ‘a flash of inspiration.’

lemon maple snow

22 Jan

lemon snow

After shuffling cases of cakes to the delivery van, careful not to spill their precious contents, we had a quick and furious snowball fight still in our aprons, running around and around the bare trees like hopeless cartoons. A faceful of snow, and then we were whistled back indoors so as not to shock the few customers that might have braved the chill for an early croissant on a Sunday morning. It was childish and exhilarating.

Later, on a train bound for equally snowy London I found myself cursing the weather – in the way of a precious two days at home. Keeping me company as we crawled through the tunnel was a book – a memoir with food – called ‘Risotto with Nettles.’ The stories of pre-war Milan, of tough Italian women rolling metre-wide stretches of homemade pasta and an angry army officer searching bags only to confiscate freshly made salami distracted me from the delay, left me dreaming.

One of the nicest images in Anna del Conte’s childhood is of running up to the attic overlooking the city and scooping snow into a large glass for an improvised lemon granita, simply mixed with lemon juice and sugar. Waking up to still-white England the next morning, I snuck outside in my pyjamas to make my own version. I used a whole lemon because I love the bitter twist and added a touch of maple syrup, in a nod to the Canadian maple syrup candy poured when boiling-hot onto the deep snow. Back inside, in the warmth, it was fresh and sharp and satisfying, a winter lemonade.

~~~

Lemon maple snow

serves 1 cold girl – inspired by Anna del Conte

juice of 1 lemon

3-4 teaspoons maple syrup

1 large glass of snow

Squeeze half the lemon into a large glass and mix with 2 tsp maple syrup. Fill the glass with fresh clean snow, stir vigorously and top with more juice and syrup. Stir again, taste and adjust flavouring accordingly. Eat straightaway.

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