u m a m i

Les Galettes des Rois 2010

It's nearly the end of January already. Only a few more days to eat galette des rois. This year we ate about 6 of them and by now I am completely sick of them. Here's my round-down of our favourites.

My neighbourhood patisserie Malitourne manages to surprise us every year with their reliably consistent textbook rendition. Crisp, airy puff pastry casing, check. Good quality frangipane, rich and fragrant without that overwhelming fake note, check. Good price, check, although at 14.50 euros for a 4-person cake it is more expensive than our last comparison test two years ago. 

What I had intended to do this year was to test the latest trend in this traditional cake. Like substituting frangipane with apples (Dalloyau) which made me wonder if that doesn't make it an apple pie instead. I read about Lenotre having a rhum-baba version and was curious to try it, unfortunately we left it a little late, they stopped selling this limited edition item within two weeks. Still, husband humoured me by bringing home their regular version.

Nice couronne. Galette impressively tall. Pity about the pedestrian paper bag though, not too classy.

I warmed it a little too long in the oven hence the darkened edges. The puff pastry was so light and thin it shattered upon contact with the blade of a knife. The frangipane was generous and of very fine quality without being cloying. The feve was very shiny too. Coming in at 22 euros makes it a treat for special occasions.

Until I washed the feve and discovered the heart stamps. Awww....

What we managed to do was to get to Pierre Herme quite early on in the season and they had two special versions. First was the "Pralinée". I got the version for one which means it doesn't have a feve. 

The filling is of hazelnuts and caramel, seriously delicious. Layers of nutty buttery sweetness shot through with a faint salty bitter edge. If it was not for our small family I would have bought a bigger cake. The instruction was to eat it unwarmed, otherwise the hazelnut filling would melt. 

Their other special was une galette made in the flavours of their famous confection Ispahan. I love the Ispahan especially their ice cream which is available in hotter weather but sometimes it doesn't translate well e.g. in croissants. Giving it benefit of doubt we brought one home. A 4-person portion cost something like 32 euros, this had better be good.

Thank goodness it was. The almond paste was there in the background, but played second fiddle to the gorgeous fruity flavours of the raspberries and rose-scented lychees. It was a marvelous and exotic treat, made all the more so accompanied by a pot of good tea and looking out into the cold and dark city. We shared the other half, still warm, with the gardienne and her husband, they too loved it.

I have to admit though, the reason I was so into these galettes is the feves. It brings out the "masak-masak' inclination in me. Here we have a collection from the past three years. The well-known patisseries have more elegant feves, e.g. the miniature of Pierre Herme's Plenitude confection but I love the nostalgic whimsy of the little sheep and milk jug too.  Rufus was no doubt considering if Bambi was actually edible. 

Coco yum yummy

 
I ate many of these babies when I was in KL. They're store-bought coconut buns, so ubiquitous nobody really gives them a second thought but not me, I love them.

The bread itself is not important, it is usually soft with a thin peelable crust, serving only to protect the filling of a crack-like coconut paste made by cooking down white coconut flesh with sugar until everything becomes chewy and candylike. Sometimes the coconut is cooked with brown palm sugar which makes it just as irresistible. 

Saint Valentin

Heart shaped breads for tomorrow's breakfast. V loves anything pink (even the loo paper which in France comes in all colours but seldom in white) and heart-shaped.

It's really gold!

"Or" is French for gold.

Clementines are synonymous with Chinese New Year because the Cantonese word for them, "kam", sounds similar to "gold" which is very auspicious. We make sure there is a pile of them in the house, for eating (after all, they are full of Vitamin C), for good luck, and for exchanging with friends and family as we exchange festive greetings.

These clementines were expensive, it cost 6.80 euros/kg compared to the average of 2.50 euros. I bought a kilo to find out if they're really much better. It is bigger, very juicy and sweet with a heady and long-lasting perfume. It wasn't until I was onto a third piece that I noticed the "or" on the sticker. So it was not just symbolic, we were really eating gold!

I ate oysters!

As a child, I feared certain foods. Bird's nest, sharks fin & snow fungus. These foods have a common property of getting stuck in my throat, their half-slimy, half scratchy texture switches on my gag reflex and I'd rather eat a plate of raw peppers than attempt to swallow them.

Later I added raw oysters to this list of food that made me retch, the cold bulbous mass sliding down the throat uneasily. The taste, overwhelmingly metallic and briney, didn't agree with me and the only way I would eat them would be in shooters, welcoming the alcohol and other parts of the cocktails as distraction.

These past few weeks though, walking past endless displays of oysters at the markets and outside every other restaurant and cafe, I wondered if I had given this shellfish its due. The only way to settle this question was to go to a good seafood place and order a plate of the freshly shucked specimens. Sipping some chilled white wine for support, I tried one. Then another, and another.

Pretty soon, I finished them all, and ordered another half dozen of my favourite. I cannot remember the name now, but it was lusciously rich and tasted surprisingly of crisp white vegetables, the finish luxuriantly long and lingering. It's texture didn't  bother me, they went down a little too fast, helped along by the sweet liquor in the shell. Ah well, better late than never. We are in the middle of winter, I have plenty of time to catch up. 

Snail Caviar

         

About six weeks ago I found myself in Lafayette Gourmet, and came across what I thought were albino caviar. It turned out to be snail caviar, or in laymen's terms the eggs of snails. The promoter was offering samples and I had a go. They looked so beautiful, glistening like pearls. The membrane pops with a satisfyingly fresh snap when bitten into, revealing tiny shots of liquid that tasted terribly subtle, with hints of sweet,briney, savoury, herbal and woody notes, all very transient. How intriguing. It is not ever going to replace sturgeon's eggs but can hold its own among its other gourmet brethrens.

I noted their email and asked for an image of their product, which they sent to me along with some notes. The company farms the snails in the snail equivalent of Ritz conditions, feeding them vegetable and cereal matter. EAch snail lays about 100 eggs a year, equivalent to 4 g, so for this 100g tub they'll need at least 25 snails. The eggs are then cured in that mythical French salt la fleur de sel de Guérande before finally ending up in their elegant packaging. The company is looking for distributors outside France, for more information please visit their website. No, they did not give me any bribes to say all these, it was simply that this product was such a novelty for me.

The Bread and the Tourteau

Last Saturday at the Avenue Wilson market I was very happy to see that the bread stall was once again in business. The breads are laid out on a long trestle table- pain au levain, pain de campagne, 3-4 types of fruity/ cheesy/lardon breads, brioche and fouasse(a type of brioche doused with orange flower water)- that's all for choices, and every piece of bread sold by weight, more expensive than usual but justified by its quality. The friendly lady explained to all her regular customers that no, she hadn't been on a long vacation, in fact she had 'un peu de souci avec le mairie' i.e. a bit of problem with the town council, over a typo error in her application form which resulted in another (actually a non-existent vendor) being allocated her usual post for four long months! Nevermind, we were relieved that finally we can get some decent bread in the neighbourhood, the past few months had us going without or going across the river to Rue St Dominique- there are at least 5 excellent bakers huddled close together, life is certainly not fair- for our supplies.

Initially I bought a small loaf of dark cherry and nut bread to go with the cheeses at home. At the other end of the market I came across a sign saying 5 euros for halves of cooked torteaux which is a kind of crab. I am not sure what is the difference between tourteau and crab, some French people I asked even shrug and say they are the same. Thing is, I have been eyeing these crabs for some time, the fishmongers always display their cross-sections so one is drawn in helplessly by the traffic-cone coloured roe. At 10 euros for two big halves it actually works out cheaper than eating a Sri Lankan crab in Singapore. Cold crab, bread with butter, some wine, let's see, these ingredients would make for a nice dinner at home. But we have no white bread. Hesitating, I asked the fishmonger to look after my caddy, he kindly obliged, and I turned around to fight through the crowds to go back to the bread lady for a quarter hunk of their pain de campagne.

Husband opened his last bottle of no-name Jurançon, deliciously cold, sweet and beautifully perfumed. The crab, we tore into it. The roe was golden rich and gratifying but the creamy milt (or whatever the paté-like matter surrounding the roe is called) was the unexpected surprise, all velvety volutptuousness and deep sea yumminess. After scraping the last bit of milt, I started on the flesh. Ahh, here lies the sad truth, the flesh is hard and stringy, sweet but not terribly plentiful either. Next time I might ditch the white wine and pair it with some black vinegar dip instead. On the other hand, now that the spell is broken, I will also try other cooked seafoods that is sold in the market; husband will just have to buy another case of Jurançon.

Couscous still on my mind

How can it be otherwise? Even Mark Bittman the Minimalist proposed couscous' sweet side.

Mr Bittman also reminds that couscous is not a grain, but a semolina pasta. Well, it still feels like a grain to me, all the more reinforced by my favourite film of this year La Graine et Le Mulet (Grain and Mullet) also distributed as Secret of the Grain or more prosaically, Couscous. I watched this film on the plane journey from New York to Paris last May, and over the months scenes of it keep popping into my head. It features couscous, and a fish version, but to say it is a food-centred film will be unfair. It is a family drama, a documentary and a little bit of a thriller. It is gritty, depressing, uplifting, riveting and unforgettable. The scenes of the young girl enjoying her mother's boyfriend's ex-wife's couscous, the dysfunctional family interactions, society's hypocrisies, the final agonisingly long scene and abrupt ending, one cannot be unaffected. See it, please.

Let's talk about couscous

Monday was bad, so terrible they called it Lundi Noir. Today it is the turn of the Asian market to meltdown. Husband was telling me Barclays shares are worth only 90p, c'est vraiment incroyable.

On a happier note the weather is holding its own. The rain's stopped, the sky is still its typical grey and cloudy but it is not cold which is actually very good in my books. And if it doesn't rain I can walk to the market. Where the poultry guys ignore the queue until they have cut up the previous customer's order of FIVE whole chickens. Where the organic stall is unusually free of its usual crazy crowds so I managed to buy some very juicy and sweet last-of-the-season strawberries. Oh there was also a TV chef with his film crew and an old lady whose dog looks very much like Mimi before we trimmed her hair short. Which brings me to mentioning groomers and lead on to couscous....

My husband, like all other Singaporeans I know who has ever studied in France, is crazy about couscous. He said that it is the closest thing in the university cafeteria to Asian food because it has a highly absorbent grain base like rice, and is served with meats and vegetables which is faintly curry like and the harissa is a kind of sambal substitute. Kind of like how I used to look forward to the days when hospital cafeterias in UK (I have eaten at many, and often) served chilli con carne, the meat I could never determine was real or not but the spiciness was both familiar and comforting, even if the rice was more often than not very cold and very hard.

So, there we were, one chilly September afternoon, on the way to depositing the dogs at the groomer, husband noted that Al-Mounia (16 rue de Magdebourg, 16th arr, T: 01 47 27 57 28) was open so he suggested we go in. He's already eaten an earlier lunch of cheese sandwich and yet he could not resist this, my curiosity was piqued in spite of my reservations about couscous.

The interior is beautiful, all carved woods and worked metal. It may sound cliché but the atmosphere managed to transport us somewhere more exotic, like Fez or Marakkesh. We sat on cushioned divans and nibbled on olives. The space is divided into two antechambers, as it was Ramadhan the clientele was sparse, mostly French business people. We ordered pastilla to share and a portion of couscous a l'agneau brochette (grilled skewered lamb). There's no merquez in the menu, husband joked that the place is too classy for the spicy sausage. He was taken here for lunch by an acquitance who works at Singapore Airlines which has an office nearby; a man who, surprise surprise, studied in France when he was younger and whose wife also doen't care much for couscous.

The pastilla arrived. They spilt it into two before serving, very considerate. This was an excellent version. The best I have eaten was at the well known 404 (69 rue des Gravailliers, 3rd arr, T: 01 42 74 57 81) but this was just as good. The balance between savoury, meaty, spicy and sweet is excellent, the cinammon barely perceptible as I prefer it, just enough to assert its warm spiciness and tame the sugar but not enough to turn this into an American dessert.

Our single portion of couscous arrived. (The lighting was too dim, hence the poor quality of the images) Fluffy grains with fetchingly charred lamb chunks and caramelised onion in the middle. A big jar of vegetables in broth. Sidekicks of raisins, chickpeas and harrissa. I was very impressed. The meat was yummy. The broth was delicious, clearly meaty but still brightly clear, the vegetables done to a tender turn, everything soaked up in an instant by the couscous.

This may well be my favourite coucous yet, it is certainly husband's. He went back two days later with his colleagues. Before this I favoured the couscous at Le Marche des Enfants Rouge, that is good too but I may have been more swayed by their merguez sausages. As for the other restaurants we've tried, I find Chez Omar's (47 rue de Bretagne) too watered down, Le Souk (1 rue Keller) plain weird, Sensi Dar Faudel (1 bis, rue Jean Mermoz in the 8th) actually not bad but the dining room is always empty, and that of  L'Atlas (12 Blvd St Germaine) rather pedestrian. We'll probably not stray further because Al-Mounia is not far from our apartment, and the dogs do have to venture to that neighbourhood for their routine groomings.

We are now officially a coucous eating household, we even order delivery versions. Our favourite is from Allo Coucous, which we find serves a more tasty, and generous version compared to their competitors. Their minimum order of couscous is for two people, see image above, which actually fed the three of us for two days and we still could not finish everything. This was a lamb couscous and the meat was tender without being overcooked. Excellent. Their briks are very tasty inside but the journey in the delivery man's motorbike made the skin rubbery but still okay, little V ate the better part of it.

Tortas de Aceite

            

Our food stash is full of exotica these days, as friends and families who visit bring me food presents which they know I will appreciate. C in particular was very excited to share this new treat which she is madly in love with. Torta de Aceite originates from Seville, Spain and is a biscuit made with wheat flour, almonds, olive oil, sesame and anise. Knowing my antipathy towards licorice and anise flavours in general, she warned that I might not like it but to also give it a chance anyway. We therefore approached with much caution, the oily wrapping paper not making it less intimidating but after our first hesitant nibbles we realised that the anise flavous is subtle and gives it a unique finish. 

            

In the beginning it is hardly discernible; the heady scents of sesame, olive oil and almonds are noticed first, followed by gratifyingly crunchy-crisp (somewhere between pizza bianco and palmier) sweetness with the anise providing a not unwelcome jolt at the finish. The anise gives this cookie highly addictive qualities, cleansing the palate just enough to make one reach for yet another morsel, and another, until to one's surprise, the packet is empty.