Archives Under "pastries" (RSS)
More Eating.
11 June 2008 | eating, pastries, Europe, delicious, food | No Responses
In Beaune, France, I visited real pastry shop. Near our hotel there was a spot with delicious smelling individual pastries, all smart and clean and made similar modular molds and built in frames. I bought a triple chocolate mousse cake. The delicate chocolate garnish on top caught my eye, and the barely gelatine-ized mousses melted easily in my mouth. I felt myself getting closer to Paris as I ate my little cake in the park. My mecca of food and cooking was on the next horizon. I felt it all deep-like. We visited the local cheese shop, the smell of moldy funk filling the air, the streets. Viva fucking France, Man!! For lunch, we wandered an open air market We bought cheese, bread, tapanade, and fruit. We ate by the merry-go-round and people watched. Our dinners were good in Beaune, everything from snail shaped foie to burger and fries and carpaccio. We played cards at night and talked while drinking local wine. We woke early one morning and boarded a train to Paris. I knew soon I would be eating at Pierre Herme’s shop, the epicenter of my pastry dreams. A few days later, in a jewelery shop style setting, precise desserts were handed to me by white gloved employees who openly mocked my poor French. OK, maybe they didn’t have white gloves, but I couldn’t get my mind around this perfect pastry shop. I could barely take it in. I was all jittery, starstruck. Perfect soldier-like rows of macrons and chocolate masks. 60 euro boxes of truffles and what looked like loaves of quick-bread. I ended up buying a chocolate dome called Plentitude and two macarons. The two cookies we ate while walking through the Tuileries Gardens outside the Louvre. One cookie was olive oil, the other salted caramel. Kate found a huge wrought iron spider. Later, inside the Musee Dorsay, I ate the chocolate mousse dome. We saw several great paintings and cool sculptures. I saw paintings by Van Gogh and Degas. Pierre Herme’s mousse cake left a more lasting impression than either. Fractal shapes of uber-thin chocolate fit into a seemingly random pattern, covering the dome. Underneath, a glossy ganache coated a luscious dark chocolate mousse and a crisp cookie base. I went back a second time, and bought more delicious stuff. More macarons of course, and in Luxembourg Gardens, I ate another dome. This one had a creamy salty caramel center and milk chocolate mousse. A chocolate macaron made a base for the tempered chocolate hemisphere. I have got to get me one of them molds. I also visited Laduree in Paris, and had a fine meal. Seared Foie with crisp brioche and foie fat. Veal Sweetbreads with parsnip puree. Kate had Scallops with Black Rice. My first taste ever of sweebreads left me drooling and the foie was cooked perfectly. Kate cleaned her plate and we ordered dessert. An opera cake sort of, and a chocolate passion fruit tart. Both were cleanly executed and delicious…but I still had Pierre Herme’s in tongue-memory. The macarons we bought on the way out weren’t nearly as good. I could feel myself getting fatter and I didn’t care.
Eating in Italy Part I.
2 May 2008 | pastries, Europe, food | 7 Responses
In Malcesine (Mal-CHEE-see-nay,) Italy, we had the most amazing pastries. I think technically they were cookies, made from some kind of short dough, but there they called them Balls of Snow. Sure I had pizza and pasta, but it wasn’t until I ate these things that I knew I was in for some really interesting food. Balls of Snow are apparently only available in Malcesine, and can be a little tricky to eat. From what I could taste, this was a butter cookie of some sort, that while still warm from the oven was slathered with a filling and rolled into a ball. Then once cooled, a topping or glaze was added. After I started stuffing my face, it didn’t matter, they were brilliant, and fun to eat. I had other pastries in Italy, none that really stick out in my mind. Eating there was all about showcasing fresh ingredients, and this really came through on the savory side of things. In Limone, I had pizza that was so simple, yet so perfect, it left me speechless. Well, more like slurping, but you get the idea. One of our best meals was in Bellagio, at a little place called Barchetta. We walked up this little stairway/sidewalk, sat in the sun and had the lunch of a life time. We had bruscetta, then I had the Gorgonzola Gnocci, and Kate Spaghetti Carbonara. We washed it down with a 4 euro carafe of wine and were absolutely sated. I went inside to pay the bill and tipped the cook directly for an amazing meal. It was so good, that night we went back for dinner. At 7 pm, the dining room above the street opens up, and they serve even more good food. We shared a plate of Pan Fried Lake trout over Parmesan Rissotto, and of course more cheap wine. Our dessert was creme brulee (below,) but not in the traditional presentation. The custard was quenelled onto the plate and bruleed in a free-form way…on the black plate it looked sharp. Kate looked at me with that special look she’s got, and we knew we’d had another great meal. It was just enough to push us into a full fledged food coma. We slept like babies that night. Fat babies.
