French Délices Part 5: Wedding Bliss
It was about 12:30am– many hours into the wedding reception of good friends at a château in southern France. I was busy working on my substantial cheese course as a procession of waiters carrying fancy giant pastries, cakes, and puddings began to wind its way between our tables and into a dedicated dessert room. I sneaked over to this magical chamber to check out the spread before the other guests could descend upon it. And what wonders did I see– 17 (count ‘em) different delights! The pièce de résistance was a traditional French wedding croquembouche, a tower of profiteroles stuck together with caramel and decorated with candies and sparklers. My cup, it overfloweth-ed!
French Délices Part 4: Pastry Passion
It was my 21st birthday, and I was studying in Aix-en-Provence. The program had just started, and I didn’t know anyone yet, so who cared about my little-ole’ big 2-1? I turned to our local patisserie, Le Pavé du Roy, to ease my sorrow. It was the castel praliné that caught my eye– square, powdered-sugary, layered, and creamy-looking, would it be any good? It wasn’t my type– there wasn’t a hint of chocolate or fruit, but dang, I thought, I’m 21, maybe I should try something new? I stood outside that shop and took my first bite of utter heaven– layers of pastry dough, crunchy meringue, and hazelnut cream sent my head spinning. One of my program mates called my name, but I couldn’t respond. I was in a pastry passion– my heart and soul were lost forever. When I got back to the States, I searched in vain for the castel praliné. I stopped in every French patisserie over the years to no avail. No one had even heard of it. And then a pastry chef at Almondine informed me that I would NEVER find the castel in this country because the sugar here is too coarse. Devastated, I bided my time until I could return to my long-lost love…
After ten endless years, I did come back. Would the castel be different? Would I be different? I worried. But when my castel and I were in each other’s presence again, there was no doubt that the love would be stronger than ever. After sating my desire, my head turned towards other temptations, such as a chocolate cakey delight and a chocolate-raspberry-pear hybrid. These were equally amazing. I tried to explain in my now-limited French how much I adore the unassuming Le Pavé du Roy patisserie to the other patrons there. They gave me blank stares. Of course this place was good– there would be another revolution if every little hole-in-the-wall patisserie in every crappy town wasn’t good.
In my travels, I encountered some over-the-top fancy pastries, too, that were way outta my league. They looked like ottomans, and were almost scientific in their perfection. The ones from Richart were accompanied by geologic-like schematical diagrams, so that you could see cross sections of exactly what was in each masterpiece. They had serious names likes “Fire & Ice” and “Sun’s Zest.” After scratching my head a bit trying to read the pastry “maps,” I discovered the one I would have chosen had I grown an extra stomach: “Crisp Flavors,” made up of layers of green lemon and caramel mousses, caramel-infused madeleine cookies, almond nougat, salted butter caramel cream, and toasted almond dacquoise. Just writing this description made me feel faint– does anyone know where I put my smelling salts?
Final note: there is a specialty in Lyon called praline rouge, which you find topping many pastries. The first time I saw it, I attributed the red color to a fruit, but a pastry proprietor told me that it’s basically just nuts (usually almonds or hazelnuts) ground up with butter, sugar, and some red food coloring; she had no idea why this trend started, and they never use any color other than red. Weird. Also not that tasty, really, because it’s a little “one-note” and makes you crave raspberries for some reason…
If you ever find yourself in Aix-en-Provence, by the way, hie thyself to:
Le Pavé du Roy 9, cours d’Orbitelle T: +33 0442262281French Délices Part 3: Ice Cream and Gelato
Also a major player on the French dessert scene is the glace, or ice cream. Nice has a famous gelateria called Fenocchio, which, funnily enough, has a rival gelateria called Pinocchio. The rivalry converges at Place Rosetti in the Old Town, where Fenocchio has its flagship location while Pinocchio has two across the way from each other. We all benefit from ice cream wars, don’t we? I only went to Fenocchio, and what an abundance of flavors– 96 to be exact! Of the many delightful parfums, imagine verbena (a flower), beer, vanilla-rose-pepper, thyme, Coca-Cola, Grand Marnier, jasmin, and chocolate-ginger. French ice cream is delicious and often comes in the form of complicated and expensive sundaes. I saw a few in Nice that cost 25 Euros! Yes, they came with seven scoops of ice cream, several toppings, and whipped cream, and probably should be shared, but wow, what a price. I accidentally purchased one of these while asking for an iced coffee in Lyon. I said café glacé, which literally means “iced coffee,” and was brought a monster of a sundae featuring several scoops of coffee ice cream, cookies, nuts, and whipped cream for 8 Euros. It was expensive, but very satisfying. After consuming this, I became sleepy, so I then purchased a regular coffee. This is the kind of mindless eating and drinking that you get in France, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I also tried an iced nougat at Brasserie Georges in Lyon, just for scientific study. It really wasn’t tough or chewy like you’d imagine a real frozen chunk of nougat would be, but rather had that nutty flavor and candied fruit, but with a decidedly ice creamy texture. It was tasty and a nice antidote for a rich meal. Our evening was punctuated with the waiters firing up an old-timey barrel organ to play Happy Birthday, which would be followed by a baked Alaska-type dessert garnished with a live sparkler being placed in front of a lucky birthday boy or girl.
French Délices Part 2: Macaron Madness
Macarons are the little gemstones of the pastry world. They come in every color and flavor, and are highly sought-after. Some of them are even come covered in sparkles! A stale one is so sad– you hold it delicately and take a tentative bit, then the cookie collapses into shards and dust, and you must console yourself with the tiny bit of filling that’s inside. But a fresh one is a glorious contrast in textures, with meringue-almond cookies that are crisp on the outside and chewy on the inside. Then there’s the delicious filling, sometimes a cream base, sometimes more a fruit jelly base.
My favorite place in NYC to find a good macaron is Almondine, with locations in D.U.M.B.O. and Park Slope. I found that French pâtisseries offer so many more interesting flavors than just your average chocolate or strawberry. I saw mandarin orange, lychee, zucchini-mint, salted caramel, white peach-saffron, grapefruit, Earl Grey tea, green lemon-ginger, cola, rum-raisin, and marshmallow, to name a few. Perhaps French pastry chefs like to experiment as much with macarons as their American counterparts do with ice cream.
Here are a few samples from different places in Lyon:
I also learned about the existence of both savory macarons, like black olive, gorgonzola-sesame, and tomato-basil, and sweet and savory hybrids, like duck foie gras with apple-spice, pimento-pepper, and carrot-cumin. Maybe they would have been nice to try for anthropological reasons, but I had valuable stomach space to preserve!
French Délices Part 1: The Common Crèpe
I just returned from a wonderful trip to my dessert motherland, France. This blog cannot possibly express the extent of my insane reverence for the French people’s mastery of sugar and cream. They have dairy products we don’t even have words for in English, for Pete’s sake! All I can do is show you some examples of the many delights (or délices) I had along the way.
I begin with the humble crêpe. Maybe you’ve had one slathered with gel-like “strawberry” sauce at some crêperie in the Lower East Side. Or you’ve tried a specimen from one of seemingly countless NYC street fairs, or even at the Bastille Day festival put on by the French Institute. It’s fun to watch them use that little wooden wand to work their magic, isn’t it? And how wonderful that even the bad ones are pretty good, right?
We began with a forestière galette (ham, swiss cheese, and mushrooms) made with buckwheat flour. It was plump with filling– a nice amount, but not sickening– and we (perhaps erroneously) felt semi-healthy for getting something with a buckwheat base. Then we moved on to our lemon and sugar crêpe, made with generous squeezes of a lemon wedge (not that bottled stuff) and lots of sugar. Yes, you can get Nutella and whipped cream, but the simplicity (not to mention caloric savings) of lemon and sugar are heavenly. The secret seems to be in the repeated application of toppings after each fold of the crêpe. Our crêpe was warm, moist, refreshing, sweet, springy, and light. It was so juicy that the syrup dripped on my purse and leg, and, amazingly, also on my partner’s leg and shoe. It was pretty windy, but I guess I must chalk my messiness up to being in a crêpe daze. Adieu, perfect crêpes… until we meet again.
British Sweeties: Candy Bars and Biscuits
Since Kraft recently bought Cadbury, I’m extremely worried that the Flake bar will start tasting like American cheese, so I decided to stock up while I was in Scotland a month ago. It was ’bout time for a tasting:
Wispa & Flake bars are basically textured Cadbury chocolate. It just goes to show what a difference texture makes, because I’m not a huge fan of plain Cadbury chocolate, which they sell in the form of the Dairy Milk bar. I think it’s too rich, milky, and it has a tinge of raisin flavor. Wispas & Flakes solve this problem by making the chocolate lighter.
Wispas are full of tiny little air bubbles, which somehow produce a light and silky chocolate taste– almost like a meltaway. I adore them, but they are pretty hard to get in the U.S., so my aunt kindly brings me yearly stocks of them, which I gobble up faster than I care to admit. The only person I’ve ever shared them with is my chocolate-crazy niece, Maddy, who eats them in quiet reverence at the tender age of seven. Well done, little one! For some insane reason, Cadbury stopped making the Wispa in 2003, but a public outcry caused them to come back “for a limited time” in 2007. Then after more squirming and rage from the public (why must they play with our minds with this whole “limited time” thing?!?!?!), the world gave a great sigh of relief when the Wispa was brought back permanently in 2008.
Flakes are made of bark-like ribbons. Buying an intact specimen in the store, far less keeping that way across the Atlantic, is almost impossible, but somehow the one in the photo made it, that is until I ate it. It must be pointed out, by the way, that a soft serve ice cream cone in Britain without a Flake sticking out of it is like a kitty without fur: naked and sad.
Double-Decker bars get their name from the iconic British double-decker buses. They have a layer of crunchy, chocolatey biscuit, and a layer of nougat. I do get that hint of raisin flavor somehow, but I like it here.
The Crunchie claims to be a chocolate bar filled with a honeycomb center. Since chewing on wax is out of the question, the next best thing is chewing on something called a honeycomb, but is actually a super crunchy, tooth-achingly sweet, golden candy. Thank goodness for the nice amount of chocolate coating to provide some balance.
While doing a scotch of research for this post, I discovered that Kraft also owns: Lu (makers of the wonderful Petit Écolier chocolate biscuits), Côte D’or (the Cadbury’s of Belgium), Marabou (the Cadbury’s of Sweden), Milka (the Hershey’s of much of Europe), and Toblerone (the triangular-shaped Swiss chocolate bar with crunchy bits of nougat). Kraft’s all like, “Bring it, Nestlé.”
I also would be remiss if I didn’t write a quick word about Britain’s love of biscuits, which are often a chocolate & dry cookie combo and can be eaten at almost any time of day, but most often make an appearance at tea times. Digestive Biscuits, a deceptively healthy sounding example, are my favorite. They’re simply delicious. You can get them without chocolate, but why would you? They’re like wheat cookies or something– still sweet, but also a bit worthy, as my mother says.
Scottish Sweeties Part 4: Tray Bakes & Banoffee Pie
In order to further your understanding of British desserts, I present you with three different kinds of tray bakes and the famous banoffee pie:
Millionaire’s shortbread consists of three layers: shortbread (a very buttery, crusty cookie), a mix of toffee & dulce de leche, and chocolate. It’s obviously quite sweet, so I love it.
Tiffin is traditionally made up of cocoa, Golden Syrup (light molasses), stale biscuits and whatever else you need to use up around the house, like raisins & nuts (Scottish people are a frugal lot). It often has a layer of melted chocolate on top and requires no baking. Just mix it up and pop it in the fridge. I have no idea what the relation this kind of tiffin has, if any, to the similarly-named Indian lunch. Unless, of course, people would eat this dessert for lunch, which I can totally get behind.
I have a confession to make: I don’t like dates. They look like roaches whole, they look like roaches squished, and their flavor is meh. In the interest of cultural anthropology, I must report on the ubiquitous date square in Scotland. It tastes like you think it will.
Banoffee (banana & toffee) pie, however, is wonderful, if you get a good one. It consists of a layer of a pie shell filled with sliced bananas, toffee & dulce de leche, and whipped cream. What’s not to like?
Scottish Sweeties Part 3: Deep-Fried Mars Bar
Yes, it had to be done. I had to try a deep-fried Mars bar. Even though I’ve been coming to Edinburgh all my life and have never seen one, all my American friends kept telling me that Scottish people love these things, so I was on a mission. Here’s what you do: find a chippy (fish & chips joint), ask them kindly, and they’ll run out from behind the counter to grab a still-wrapped bar from their candy stash, which they’ll then open up, dip in batter, deep-fry, and present to you for your immediate consumption, all for around £2.
Well, I loved it. I was afraid it would taste fishy or sausagey or be tainted by some other flavor from the pile of assorted deep-fried shapes you see on their warming tray, since I’m guessing they’re all dipped in the same batter and oil. But it didn’t. No hint of fish or meat at all. I was also worried that the bar’s insides would become like molten lava, but my worries on this front also faded the minute I took a tentative bite. The inside was pleasantly warm and melty. The thin layer of batter had a nice crunch– not too greasy and it immediately adhered itself to the roof of my mouth along with the oozy caramel. So I don’t suggest trying to carry on a deep discussion about Existentialism or the many iterations of the health care bill while you’re eating. Just enjoy.
Scottish Sweeties Part 2: S. Luca’s Ice Cream Parlour
As a child, a trip to S. Luca’s ice cream parlor in Musselburgh, a port town very close to Edinburgh, was the greatest of treats. Sluca’s (my grandfather’s nickname for it), has been making the most unctuous ice cream since 1908, when Mr. Luca Scappaticcio came over from Italy and learned the craft from a Swiss sous chef (weird, right? aren’t Italians the ones who are kinda known for ice cream?). Sluca’s sundaes, especially the almighty Knickerbockerglory, are legendary, and I had to make a pilgrimage:
The Knickerbockerglory is a parfait made from vanilla and strawberry ice cream, with strawberry topping and whipped cream. The Praline Parfait is Neapolitan ice cream with chocolate sauce and hazelnuts. Both are quite tall and force you to improve your posture greatly in order to consume them. The Meringue Mess is vanilla ice cream floating in a butterscotch and freshly-cut banana soup, with a little crunchy meringue for texture. These 3 were, of course, parfaits parfaits.
At first, I scoffed at my mom’s Sticky Toffee Pudding order, as there were plenty more delightful sundaes to choose from, but she pointed out that an STP is good for my Scottish dessert research and also quite tasty, so I relented. It wasn’t sticky, so much as sweet and decadent. The cake was so moist, it sparkled like a mound of jewels. An STP’s toffee is typically made from black treacle (molasses), Demerara sugar (unrefined and brownish), and cream. Ours was quite warm, and the accompanying scoops of vanilla ice cream melted right into the toffee pool.
We brought some vanilla and strawberry ice cream home for my grandfather, who will almost certainly eat it smothered in extra-thick double cream, which I think is illegal in the U.S. My Grandpa is such a rebel.
S. Luca 32-38 High Street Musselburgh EH21 7AG Scotland 0131-665-2237 http://www.s-luca.co.uk/Scottish Sweeties Part 1: Homemade Treats
I was in my mom’s home town of Edinburgh last week to celebrate my aunt’s 50th and my cousin’s 18th b’days (Hello, Auntie Margaret & Lisa!). The baking was out of control. Check out all the desserts we had in one night of partying:
My mom made a Celtic “Hoops” roulade. For those of you who don’t know how crazy Scottish & Irish folks– actually all Europeans– actually all Earthlings outside the U.S.– are about soccer, then let this cake be your introduction to the insanity. My family worships the Celtic football team, so the decoration was green & white stripes, much like the players’ jerseys. The sponge cake was light and moist, and it was filled with fresh raspberries and cream and frosted with cream cheese icing. Heavenly. Then we had my Aunt Miriam’s delicious chocolate cake, made with Cadbury Drinking Chocolate, which not only sounds, but actually is, much better than the likes of Nesquick. Now some may say that also having lemon & chocolate tarts was just too decadent, so those people aren’t related to me. And, finally, what meal would be complete without some Butlers chocolates straight from Dublin as a digestif? I wonder where I could possibly have gotten my sweet tooth?