Paris adventures: pastries, oysters + a scooter ride
French deliciousness — and fun - from Paris in the fall
Hello! Hello!
I wanted to write to you about Paris from Paris, but I got behind. Again. So even though today’s dateline is American, all the deliciousness is French.
In no particular order, snippets and tastes from the city and moi.
Croissant Tip-Off
I’m embarrassed to confess that I must have eaten twice my weight in croissants before I learned that you can tell an all-butter croissant from its not-butter cousin by the tips. The ones that curve prettily and look like crescents? They’re not-all-butter. I was surprised, too. Those buttery leave-smudges-everywhere, coat-your-lips and taste-like-the-essence-of-France croissants are the straight ones. I discovered this — as I’ve discovered so much more — from the cooking school, La Cuisine Paris. (Love their newsletter. Love their website. Love their classes.) Knowing that the curveless croissants are the ones I like, I usually buy them and pay more attention to their taste and texture than to their tips. Or I did until I recently had a croissant from Paris pastry wiz, Pierre Hermé. Take a look at this: The ends of Pierre’s croissants are blunt! No little tips to pull at (I always pull the ends off first), but lots of beautiful layers of dough to admire. (Were they always like this and I just didn’t notice? Is this a new look for his butter babies? Does anyone know for sure?)
And so that you can see the difference, here’s an end-view of a classic all-butter croissant. This one’s from Isabelle at Maubert-Mutualité. In 2018, it was voted the best croissant in Paris, and it’s been keeping up its stellar reputation ever since.
Not What You Think — At Least, Not What I Thought
It’s not a truffle (if it were, I could probably pay off my mortgage). Not an odd rock. Not a barnacle either. Of course, it’s something to eat, but it’s so wildly not what I expected. It’s a deeply vanilla, deeply delicious pastry from Liberté, a Paris bakery best known for its simple loaf cakes, cookies and breads. In fact, I’d gone into the shop to buy a black baguette. Liberté, like a few other bakeries in the city, color some of their breads and sweets with charbon végétal, edible charcoal (remember the black-crusted fig tart from French Bastards?). This beauty, called Graine de Vanille (vanilla grain), has a bumpy white chocolate and fleur de sel shell colored with charcoal.
I bought it for its looks and, because I was in a hurry, didn’t ask anything about it, so you can guess how surprised I was when I sliced it and discovered that beneath the shell was a bright white whipped ganache, a sphere of salted caramel and a peanut financier to hold it all upright. It was a terrific mix of flavors and a nice play of textures. Also, a showstopper. Also, gluten-free. Bonus!
Changing the Shape — and Size — of Things
I left it to my friend, Jane Bertch, she who started La Cuisine Paris, to find a spot for us to have lunch on a drizzly afternoon and she booked the perfect place: Carrette. Tucked under the arcade of the dreamy Place des Vosges gardens, it’s been there since 1927, but I’d never gone. My loss. It’s a genteel tea salon that welcomes regulars (of which there were many) and first-timers with equal warmth. Its menu leans toward old-fashioned comfort food (we had oeufs brouillés//scrambled eggs) and its specialty is tea sandwiches wrapped with precision in waxed paper. Mention Carette to Parisians and they’ll go swoony over the sandwiches. Mention the pastries and be prepared to listen for a while. As dainty as most of the food and almost all of the pastries are, that’s how outsized their two most famous desserts are: The apple turnover (chausson aux pommes) is as long as a baguette and as a slender as a runway model; and the palmier is the size of a panda’s head! They were both wonderful.
Cookie Inspiration
Alain Ducasse, who already has coffee, ice cream and chocolate workshops in Paris and boutiques dotting the city map (I love his chocolates!), has begun making cookies in his atelier called Le Biscuit. I forgot to take a picture of the tin with the cookies that weren’t chocolate-coated, but here’s the idea: cookies made from different kinds of flours. All the cookies have strong flavors (strong enough to stand up to a chocolate coating). All of them have strong textures — you can feel the grains against your tongue (I want to say that they’re gritty, but I was afraid that would sound unpleasant — it’s not!). And many of them are six-sided — they’re called Les Hexas, and echo the shape of France, which gives it its pet name, L’Hexagone.
I tried to take a picture of the fold-out pamphlet with the key to all the cookies, but it was too long, so here are the flavors – they sparked ideas for exciting combinations for me and maybe they will for you too. If you’re inspired, let me know what you do.
Rye/Coffee/Chocolate
Chickpea/Honey/Chocolate
Corn/Vanilla/Chocolate
Corn/Cocoa Nibs/Chocolate
Buckwheat/Sobacha
Melilot (like clover)/Cocoa Nibs/Chocolate
Wheat/Vanilla/Almond
Random Fun
I got to have a 4-hour breakfast and catch-up with Jaìne Mackievicz and my new friend, Caroline Le Touzé (thank you Café Lapérouse for making us so comfortable for so long). Remember Jaìne? She won The Julia Child Challenge and got to follow in Julia’s footsteps at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. Her semester there has come to end, but you can read all about it her newsletter (Jaìne’s writing really brings you into her world). And Caroline? Serendipity! I showed a picture of a cake to Twiggy at Fromagerie Sanders - Twiggy has been my favorite cheesemonger for decades, but I always think she moonlights as the mayor of the 6th arrondissement: no one knows more about the neighborhood than Twiggy (yes, she’s French and yes, that’s her real name). Twiggy saw the picture, opened her phone to Caroline’s Instagram and said, “You have to meet her! You’ll love her and you’ll love her pastry!” And in a nanosecond, Twiggy put us together and a week later we were on the cushy couches of Lapérouse, a threesome who talked about sugar nonstop. But there’s more — it turns out that when Christine Tobin, the food stylist for the HBO Max series, Julia, was working on season two in Paris, Caroline was her woman-on-the-ground and assistant stylist. The world is small and wonderful. (If you want to catch a glimpse of how Christine works — it’s fascinating — jump over here.)
Here’s the cherry on the cake: Caroline put on her gloves, the ones that say, “Ride Like a Girl,” and scootered me home. And a good time was had by all.
Oysters — Old School and New
I know that oysters can be controversial — so many people are put off by their texture — but if you love them, then the odds are that you’re committed to them. When my friend Jennifer McLagan (a fascinating cookbook author - listen to her with David Lebovitz on his excellent podcast below) and I went to La Rotonde, an old-school Montparnasse brasserie, we had a platter of oysters and a few sea urchins.
We ate dark bread and butter and didn’t touch the vinegary mignonette sauce that’s almost always served with oysters - we swore our loyalty to just a drop of fresh lemon juice on each bivalve and slurped on.
But just before I left Paris, I was seduced by a plate of gorgeous Cardoret Black Pearl oysters topped with a bold combination of fish sauce and green chiles at Bistrot Tontine. They were revelatory! Sadie and Anthony // Ha’s Dac Biet, Brooklyn chefs, took over the kitchen at this bistro (it’s part of the Paul Bert family) in November, put their Vietnamese stamp on every dish and it’s been packed ever since. I fell in love with their salad — the vinaigrette is Anthony’s mom’s recipe; went crazy for the pâté de porc en croûte chaud— Sadie’s flaky hot-water crust is beautiful (she told me that her first job was in a pie shop in Nyack, NY); and those oysters!
Just for Fun
Heart-shaped tigrés — financiers with chopped chocolate and a ganache center — from Gontran Cherrier at CDG airport
A warm squid salad with kumquats from one of my favorite bistros in Paris, Juveniles
Brunch at home with Kevin Pang and his family — charcuterie from Gilles Vérot, cheese from Fromagerie Sanders, a terrific (and new to me) pickle caviar from Maison Marc and a homemade carrot-mustard quiche (I had to have something homemade, right?)
Surprise! VV reads French!
To the friends who think that the elevator in my Paris apartment is small — take a look at this one!
Cakes Made Simple for the Holidays
I wrote a story and created recipes for New York Times Food (subscription) about three easy holiday cakes that don’t need coddling. I called them kitchen cakes because they’re simple cakes that can sit on the counter, there for anyone who passes by to take a slice and nibble. These are my favorite kinds of cake — I’m a plain girl at heart — and I hope you’ll love them as much as I do.
More Paris to come. Some Vienna, too. In the meantime, I love seeing what you’re cooking and baking — tag me on Instagram and Facebook, so I don’t miss your work — and, as always, it makes me beyond happy to pop into Bake and Tell and catch up with you.
I’m off to Hawaii to be with my family for the holidays. I’ll write soon.
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Thank you for the restaurant names- I plan to visit a few in June when I am there. And, not food related, but I love your coat! Is it available?
Everything looks so beautifully delicious. I love reading your stories. How is it possible that you aren't 400 pounds????