Little Chan's patisserie excursion

One of the great joys of living in Paris is being able to visit (and sample!) the numerous boulangeries and patisseries which are scattered generously across the city. My first port of call this week was to renowned Japanese patissier, Sadaharu Aoki. He has a handful of boutiques across Paris, one of which is 5 minutes walk from school. The decor inside is minimalist, with a pastry case showing off jewel-like cakes and macaroons, surrounded by a few shelves of biscuits and jams, all packaged immaculately.

As usual, there was too much to choose from - since I went for something classic at Carl Marletti, I decided to push the boat out this time and go for something a little more innovative. Eventually, I plumped for the dome au chocolat, a couple of macaroons (sesame and yuzu) and a packet of matcha financiers. 

The verdict? The dome au chocolat was certainly innovative but am not sure how well the flavours worked together? Shards of chocolate on the outside (tick) surrounding a dome of chocolate mousse scented with ginger (interesting at first but then rapidly got a bit icky) with a centre of salted caramel (semi-tick, but a bit too sweet), dried apricot and fig (so wrong!) on a twin base of chocolate (tick) and coconut (nope) biscuit. Complex and ambitious but sadly, it failed to wow me. The yuzu macaroon was passable but the sesame one fell way short of the gooey and delicious one I had at Yauatcha. The financiers were OK but nothing to write home about. When I first entered the boutique, I thought that this was somewhere that I would potentially like to do my stage at but after tasting the goods, I've had second thoughts. It didn't help that they did not allow me to take photos inside the patisserie, which I found a bit rich since not even the great Pierre Hermé objected to me taking snaps?

This weekend, I finally made the trip to one of the bastions of Parisian gastronomy, Fauchon. The patisserie store looks truly spectacular, with lots of mouthwatering pastries on display (including a interesting looking Mona Lisa éclair). The selection of "fours frais" took my fancy but as I had other places to go to, I thought I might pop back at the end of the day to pick some up?

That didn't happen because I then headed to Arnaud Delmontel, winner of the Meilleure Baguette de Paris in 2007. My original plan was to go and visit the Rose Bakery (not impressed, the pastry case had scones which looked like unappetising turds, dull-looking chocolate brownie and remnants of pound cake, all of which I could make better versions of right now!) but a fellow student had told me not miss Arnaud Delmontel whose shop was across the street (감사합니다!!). I fell in love with the shop (a nice blend of traditional and contemporary) and all its goodies and left armed with a Renaissance baguette, an étoile de noisette (hazelnut danish) and a selection of mini-financiers (lemon & poppy seed, raspberry, pecan & cranberry, coffee, pistachio & cherry, orange & chocolate chip). All my purchases were delicious and I'm looking forward to going back to eat my way around the shop!! 

Asian food fix - L'Arbre de Sel and Kadoya

I never used to understand why my parents insisted on going back to HK and China all the time for their holidays. Since annual leave used to be a prized commodity for me of sorts, I used to use it to go and visit as many different places in the world and would rarely return to the same holiday destination. One of the reasons my parents always head out East is because of the food and now being in Paris, I am having similar feelings and am constantly on the search for good Asian food, maybe its just part of my DNA?

As we usually finish late on Wednesday, I decided to for a Korean dinner (to lick my "pastry" wounds post-lab!) before heading home. The restaurant of choice, L'Arbre de Sel is literally down the road from school which was handy. The menu was varied but again, I went for my old favourite, dolsot bibimbap. This was a marked improvement on the version I had a few weeks ago - firstly, there were more than just a few morsels of meat on top of my rice; secondly, at least the pot was almost two-thirds full of goodies and thirdly, it was mighty tasty (there were much more diverse veggies including some lotus root and shitake mushroom). At last, we have a strong contender for good Korean in Paris!

Having wandered up to Paris' Little India (in the 10th, near La Chapelle metro) on Saturday morning, I had grand plans to have lunch there but a mixture of apprehension and bad timing (do not try to find a table at 1pm on Saturday afternoon!) meant that I would have to try another day. A metro ride later, I ended up in le Quartier Japonais for a quick and satisfying lunch of ramen, gyoza and calpico at Kadoya (on the corner of rue St-Anne and rue Petits Champs). For all you Brits out there, they call calpico the original Japanese name here in Paris, "karupisu" - the similarity in pronunciation to cow piss is lost on Parisians, clearly! :)     

Boulangerie

After 2 weeks of "ly-ins" on a Friday morning, it was back to getting up at the crack of dawn this morning for our weekly dose of breadmaking. Actually, you don't notice that you're tired once you're in lab because we are constantly working on the different stages of making various types of bread and chef (different to patisserie) is a great teacher, very chilled out and a master moulder of bread dough!

Today we made baguettes again (the fastest type, taking around 3 hours!) and shaped some of the dough into "petits pains" as well. Then in pairs, we all made a different type of bread (rye, wholewheat, bran, pain de mie) as well as trying our hand at shaping and plaiting brioche. Early start and lots to cover but the result was some delicious bread and we even finished early so our weekends started early, most enjoyable! 

Pâte à choux

This week, we were learning all things related to pâte à choux, choux pastry in other words. The first thing most people think about (well, at least in the UK and Ireland) when talking about choux pastry would probably be profiteroles but strangely enough, we didn't make these. We kicked off the week by making a French classic, éclairs. They looked simple enough to make, make your pâte à choux (lots of violent stirring!), pipe into tubes, pipe cream into tubes and glaze the top, right? Wrong, well, for me anyway! Piping tubes of pastry that are poker straight which are not too fat or too thin proved to be beyond me in lab. Filling the éclairs (with flavoured pastry cream rather than whipped fresh cream) also lead to the hazards of overpiping and the cream seeping out of cracks of the pastry, or underpiping where your éclairs are not filled enough and someone bites into plain pastry! Glazing was equally fiddly - if your glaze is too hot, it becomes dull when cooled (not nice), too cold and you're having to handle a pot of viscous mess!

We then moved onto making religieuses - a large-filled glazed choux bun with a smaller bun sitting on top of it and decorated with buttercream. As luck would have it, all of my choux buns were irregular-looking which meant that it was then difficult to stick the smaller bun on top without them sliding down the side! Looking on the bright side, at least the glaze for my religieuses was looking glossy. As you can see from the pic, I'll be needing more practice with my piping, not pretty! :)

Wednesday and it was time to make Paris-Brest, a pastry that was created in honour of a famous bicycle race from Paris to Brest and back, 1200 kms in one go! Paris-Brest is shaped like a wheel and is one large choux ring which is then filled with a gut-busting mixture of pastry cream, butter and praline (think extra sweet Nutella for the latter). Another day and more mistakes pour moi :( Firstly, my "cream" refused to get thicker and I was the only one in class who managed to reduce volume into my mixture the harder I whisked?? The only solution was to then place it into the freezer and pray. Then, I forgot to pipe some cream in the base of my ring which led chef to rip out my inner ring of choux to start again, as I didn't have enough cream, there are sections of my Paris-Brest which are a bit mongel-looking to say the least. Made note to self for the next time when I'm making Paris-Brest, make sure that my pastry cream is thick enough, even if you think it doesn't look that appetising when doing it this way!

The last thing we made in lab this week was St. Honoré - a cake named after the patron saint of "boulangers" and NOT "patissiers" (incidentally, the patron saint of patissiers is St Michel). This is essentially a shortcrust (or puff pastry) base with a ring of caramel (supposed to be golden but overcooked mine so it turned deep amber, oops!) dipped and cream-filled mini choux buns. This is then filled with a heart-attack inducing combo of crème chiboust (pastry cream with addition of egg whites) and copious amounts of piped crème chantilly (sweetened whipped cream). Time was a bit tight the day we made this so I haven't had the chance to taste the finished product yet, its likely it will be just a taste if I value my arteries! As you can see, pastry is not for the faint-hearted! 

Pierre Hermé & Marché Président-Wilson

Just a brief entry to say that I popped into Pierre Hermé after school on Friday afternoon to pick up some macaroons and noticed that they were selling the same "tarte au café" (mini and normal size) that we had made a few weeks ago (see "ESCF - Week 2" entry)! Personally, I think our tarts looked better than theirs but maybe I'm just biased!

Since arriving in Paris, I have only managed to visit one market, Marché des Enfants Rouges which didn't exactly float my boat. I think I went in the middle of the week and only half of the stalls were open. My opinion of markets changed dramatically this weekend when we went to Marché Président-Wilson on Saturday morning. This was a much more impressive market which spans most of Boulevard Wilson, and is choc-a-bloc with every kind of food stall (seafood, meat, fruit & veg, cheese, charcuterie, rotisserie, snails, oysters, picnic food), as well as a handful of amazing flower stalls. I went a bit trigger happy with the ol' camera, have just posted some of my pics here, including things I have never seen before such as fresh garlic and black carrots. Speaking of black carrots, I only found out after visiting the market that it is also the home of vegetable grower extraordinaire,  Joël Thibault - it is him that grows the black carrots and knarly looking toms!

L'Entredgeu + Le Pain Quotidien + Happy Nouilles + L'Ardoise + Lao Lane Xang = return of Fatty Chan!

This weekend was a marathon of eating, mainly due to having company (JD) in town, so lovely being able to spend some time together! Before JD arrived on Friday night, I met up with his ex-colleague, "François" and E, who were visiting Paris for the weekend for a lovely dinner at L'Entredgeu, a "neo bistro" in the 17th. This was my 2nd time at L'Entredgeu (first was a couple of years ago with JD, on the recommendation of François) and the food did not disappoint. I started off with a starter of rich langoustine bisque, a sense of déjà vu when it arrived as it was the same thing I ordered last time! I followed this with échine de cochon, melt-in-the-mouth rib of suckling pig served on a bed of buttery mash and finished off with a feuilletes de poire (due to my pastry chef curiosity tendencies). A lovely meal with some lovely company - made note to self to order the roast pigeon (François' choice) next time despite the 15 yoyo supplement. My only minor criticism was that service could be a tad better but thats not enough to put me off yet :)

JD and I met up with François and E on Saturday morning for a spot of brekkie at Le Pain Quotidien. We had first discovered this bakery chain during a long weekend in Brussels (where it originated) and have been hooked since (there are outposts in London, Paris and NYC). Breakfast is probably the best time to go (also the most popular!) as they have an extensive menu for a veritable spread.

After a wander around Marché Président Wilson and yet another failed attempt at climbing the Eiffel Tower (we'll get to the top one of these days!), JD and I had some lunch at Happy Nouilles, a noodle shop in the 3rd which I had walked past last week and vowed to return and try out. We both had a large bowl of the house special "hand pulled noodles", mine was in soup topped with 5-spice duck, JD plumped for what our neighbours were having, "zhajiang mian" (noodles topped with spicy pork mince sauce). Both were very good, I don't think zhajiang mian is actually on the menu so you'll have to ask the waiter for this - a return trip beckons!

Saturday afternoon was spent holed up in Kitty O'Sheas having minor heart attacks (at the game and being charged close to 5 yoyos for mineral water!) whilst watching Ireland v England in the 6 Nations. It was too close for comfort, 14-13 (could've been less so had "red-head" ROG kicked all of his missed 11 points, char!) but a win is still a win (props to BOD for single-handedly leading Ireland to a win despite playing concussed for half the game) and the Grand Slam is still a possibility.

We then went for dinner at L'Ardoise, another "neo bistro", this time in the 1st and on the recommendation of Joan Pan. In the words of Craig Revel Horwood, the food here was A-MA-ZING! I had a seafood feast of langoustine ravioli in shellfish jus - whole plump langoustine enveloped in silky pasta, and roasted scallops in herb butter, 5 sweet morsels of scallop meat with some little roast spuds, mucho delish! My dessert was "ballon de banane et caramel" - a generous ramekin of banana and caramel crème brûlée, with small chunks of banana and oozing caramel throughout and topped with a mini-scoop of banana sorbet. As a budding pastry chef, special mention has to go to JD's dessert, "feuilletine de pistache et nutella" - I have never tasted such thin and crispy millefeuille, it was light years ahead compared to my feuilletes de poire at L'Entredgeu! I think L'Ardoise has definitely become my new favourite bistro.

Our eating marathon reached a climax this afternoon at JD's choice, Lao Lane Xang (usually known as Rouammit in guide books), a popular Laotian restaurant in the 13th. We arrived relatively early to snag a table for lunch - a mixed meat platter, red chicken curry and pad thai. It was also the first time we tried out the desserts, JD went for Tofu Hua with ginger syrup (didn't realise they eat this in Laos, OK but could've been a little smoother) and I was presented with a gargatuan portion of mango and coconut sticky rice, yum!

Since arriving in Paris, I have actually been losing weight (despite taking a pastry course, bizarre!) but after this weekend, I believe that Fatty Chan might be making a return appearance, ho-hum! :)  

ESCF - week 3

I cannot believe how fast the time is passing here! As mentioned before, week 3 was puff pastry week for us. At first, I felt like I was getting the hang of things but mid-week arrived and everything seemed to be going a little pear-shaped. Chef gave us our first feedback session after we made pithiviers and conversation, both variations of puff pastry with almond cream. The feedback for me was that I needed to score the top of my pithiviers harder, the shape was a little oval, and I needed extra royal icing and longer strips for my conversation. Maybe I'm being a little hard on myself but at the time, it felt like a lot that I needed to work on. Am feeling a bit better about it now though, the only way to learn is to make mistakes so that it won't happen the next time! Btw, my pithiviers and conversation are the ones at the back of the pic, another fellow student made a perfect pithiviers in the foreground, mucho props to Pha! :)

We continued to make more variations of almond cream and puff pastry in the guise of pain complet and jalousie/dartois and yet more mistakes, char! My scoring of my jalousie was lopsided but was happy enough with the scoring on the top of my dartois so some consolation there. Friday arrived and we had one more almond cream/puff pastry combo left to make, chaussons italiens (puff pastry turnover filled with pastry cream/choux pastry combo plus raisins). Despite a shaky start, I was quite pleased with how mine turned out (they puffed up,  yay!) so it was good to end the week on a semi-high note! I took nearly all my finished pastries home for a tasting and have come to the conclusion that I do not like almond cream, well, not a bucketload of it - I ended up eating the pastry of the pithiviers and leaving the cream. The pastry was especially yummy because we had made it with feuilletage inverse, which is inverse puff pastry, essentially flour dough wrapped in butter. This slight change of technique gives a crispier and more buttery pastry compared to normal puff pastry (butter wrapped in dough), mmmm! The pain complet and chaussons italiens were my other 2 favourites, my only gripe is that I wish chef had not put orange flower (and too much as well!) into our pastry cream, was starting to think I was eating my own body wash, not nice!