Paris--Day 1: Food Notes

Let's start with another chicken Ferris wheel, this time on Rue St. Antoine near the hotel where we're staying for a couple of nights. Not far away is this patisserie, source of pastries to go with coffee at a nearby café. Both are far more expensive in Paris than in our area. Sigh. But the passing parade is worth it. This must be the best city in the world for people-watching. 

   Sitting on the train most of yesterday must mean we had energy to burn. We ambled all day, along Rue de Rivoli, through the Louvre, across to the Left Bank, back along to Notre Dame, over to Ile St. Louis, up to the Marais district, a quick look at Place des Vosges and then, well after 8 p.m., we fell into a little café and had a planche Auvergnat each (assorted charcuterie from the Auvergne, frites and salad) and a couple of glasses of rouge.

   Sometime today, we passed one of the branches of Ladurée, famed for its double-decker macaroons in flavours like blackcurrant-violet, and caramel with salt. Inside is like a jeweller's. A trio of smartly dressed women carefully lifted small perfect pastries into the kind of delicately pretty boxes you could imagine Marie Antoinette using. Photos of the store's interior are forbidden but I did snap the exterior and a couple of the store windows. Binge on the details at http://www.laduree.fr. It's a very--suitably--sweet site.  The raspberry-dotted gateau comes from another patisserie. Aren't those fat powdery berries irresistible with their individual cushions of spring green icing? 

Pâte (not pâté): a French convenience food I've come to love.

Lately, I've been on a tarte kick. And not because I'm a whiz at making perfect pastry either. You need cool hands, ideally a marble surface, and time to do that. Here, in France, you just go the local supermarket where, in the cooler section, you find pastry all ready to--I was going to say "roll" but, forget that. All you do is open the packet, unroll the pre-rolled disk of dough and pat it into your pie pan.

I wish I could say that this shot is of a home-made tourte (just to distinguish between tartes and tourtes, tourtes have a top crust too). It's not. It's from last year's apple festival in Mirepoix. 

What I did make last week though was an evilly rich tarte of mushrooms, onions, crème fraîche, thick cream and eggs (plus an extra yolk to up the already stratospheric cholesterol content). Oh yes, it was good.

But back to the topic of pastry. You can buy the classic pâte brisée for straightforward quiches and so on. Pâte feuilletée--flaky pastry--is another option. Recipes using both of these in dozens of different ways are in a cookbook that came (for an extra 99 centimes) with this week's Femme Actuelle, which is said to be France's most popular women's magazine. 

Among the recipes are an onion tarte tatin, small individual pork pies, and a rustic tourte made with potatoes, fresh cheese, goat cheese, crème fraîche and garlic. Any of those plus a sharply-dressed green salad? Works for me.