Not Macarons...

Last Sunday, Corey did a lovely post on her friend, Shelly and French blue café au lait bols. I was reminded of the bleu bowls I saw while window shopping on rue Notre-Dame Des Champs last May in the 6ème.By the way lèche-vitrine (licking windows) is how you say window shopping in French -- it feels more accurate somehow.Are windows just more delicious in France?

*Here's a travel tip. It takes a good week and a half to get your eyes above window level in Paris. Then you can start to see the amazing architecture. Don't even try before 1 1/2 weeks...useless in my opinion.

I don't even drink coffee but I've always loved these bleu café bols. There's something about them that says grandmother's kitchen, something homey and comfortable. Maybe I've seen too many old French movies.

OK...So one GREEN bowl snuck in here. But these window still lifes are just too beautiful. Does Cézanne or Chardin own this shop? I bought a red and white café au lait bowl in France way back, made by Genevieve Lethu. I filled it with peaches and thought I'd paint it for this post...but no go :( It seems the MACARONS are still flying around in my head. Or maybe if the bowl had been BLEU?

Macarons on the Mind...

I think I'm having "separation anxiety" about leaving MACARONS to go on to other topics. This is the last MACARON post till I hit Paris for the Salon du Chocolat...just some silly stuff. I'm desperately trying to clear out my closet of old sketchbooks, wine reference, travel stuff, old clothes. An Ex once said, "When you're throwing out old things, don't look or you're lost!" I looked! and I found the parchment sheet + the bag + the photos + the crumbs from Véritables MACARONS de St-Emilion that I mentioned in my 1st macaron post. YAY! It's been lurking my Bordeaux wine reference box since 2003. Memories of my 1st French MACARON and still a few crumbs left. Ahhhh....
It seems that everywhere I look now I see MACARON shapes...I set up this still life in Paris with Arnaud DEL MON TEL MACARONS.
But don't they look an awful lot like these French pillowcushions from LivingStones?
I wasn't tempted in the least to buy any of these crazy colored MACARONS at Bon Marché.
But they remind me of these crazy colored Frisbees...
And these Yoyos...

Cherry/Macs, watercolor, 12 x 10"

I'm not going to stop painting MACARONS anytime soon. That's for sure. Maybe I better get back to cleaning the closet...who knows what other treasures lurk within :)

Macarons Payard

The Payard Patisserie is all about pale lemon yellow bows and pale lemon yellow striped boxes. You can't find a Frenchier place in New York to go pretend you're still in Paris.
I'd just about kill to have a Payard pale lemon Voyageur bags. You can get one stuffed with goodies at the Payard Bistro on 1032 Lexington Avenue.
I met François over 10 years ago while shooting food events at the James Beard House. Back then I also made "portrait business" cards, many of them for pastry chefs, the most visual and artistic chefs in the food industry.
I used to drop off the event photos in person at Restaurant Daniel and François would give me all kinds of delicious snacks. It's called multi-tasking :)
François is Niçoise and a 3rd generation pastry chef. He grew up in his grandfather's classic pâtisserie, Au Nid des Friandises on the Riviera. In 1988 he went to Paris and became pastry chef at La Tour d’Argent and then Lucas Carton. A great C.V. to come to New York and work first at Le Bernardin and later Restaurant Daniel. In 1997 he opened his own pâtisserie and bistro. I remember the opening...

Payard Macarons and Cherries, 2006, watercolor, 9" x 12"

Payard's macarons are made fresh daily. The pretty pastel flavors: Chocolate, Coffee, Pistachio, Raspberry, Lemon, and Coconut. You can get some very nice gelato here too.

Macarons For Breakfast

La Maison du Chocolat told me their macarons have a 2-day shelf life. Last week I brought home a box of 8 on Thursday and they hung around for 4 days waiting to be painted and photographed. On Sunday morning at 9:35am they disappeared.
They tasted fine to me. Then I found out they come over from France to New York 2 times a week. I bought another 3 today. They only lasted 2 hours...Their flavors come in pale neutral colors, not the crazy wild colors you see at Bon Marché for example. Even the chocolate was on the pale side but tasted deeply of Valrhona, who make a special proprietary chocolate for La Maison. Plus there is Vanilla, café, caramel and lemon. Sometimes they have raspberry and in the Fall, chestnut.

La Maison Macarons, 2006, watercolor, 10 x 12"

The outside biscuit has a nicely crunchie texture and is glossy. The interior is a creamy ganache but not too excessive or maybe I'm just getting acclimated to buttercream...Sugar is an undertone not a top note. Nice.
These beauties are not the easiest subjects to shoot or paint. They shed crumbs like crazy and roll off their assigned perch at will. As uncooperative as they are, I could paint them forever. The round shapes contrast nicely with the square box and make for compositions that are fun to play with. Plus there's a reward when the painting is done. I'm wondering if there are any openings for macaron painters on Craig's List...?
If you're not in the mood for macarons, you can always get some of their delicious creme glacée.
2 flavors in 1 scoop. Last week I tried raspberry + caramel...today pistachio + caramel. This is seriously habit-forming...

L'obsédée du MACARONS

This post is for the MACARON-obsessed.

Others need not apply.

If you google the word MACARONS you get 427,000 entries here.

Fauchon MACARONS come wrapped tightly first in a clear cellophane bag and placed inside the box - so they never get damaged till you eat them...

This is one BIG obsession.

Read Kuidaore's entry from Pierre Hermés book here. These towering macs are in Fauchon's Paris windows.

La Tartine Gourmande has another beautiful MACARON post. The macarons again. For general vicarious wasting of time while dreaming of all things Paris, MACARONS included, try Dessert First's photos on flickr. You can buy this tea set at Lenôtre and have macs every single day. Or you could go off to Pierre Hermé's pâtisserie school to follow your bliss.

Even Wikipedia is obsessed with MACARONS...Again about that Paris MACARON contest - June 1st, 2007 is the next event's date. Jean-Paul Hévin won again in the chocolate categorie. Ridiculous? No obsédée.

Fauchon 3 Macarons, 2006, watercolor,10" x 12"
Correction: my translation of Hermé's MACARON description was way off - "Une fine envelope croustillante, une forme rounde, légèrement bombée, de belle couleurs chatoyantes et un coeur moelleux..." - Chatoyante means that they caress, chatouille, that is to tickle the eye with their colours...Coeur moelleux means the center (le coeur, le coeur de la planete for example) Au cœur de ce projet, at the center of this project…
With all this MACARON research I'm almost over my obsession.

I just have to try out the macs at La Maison du Chocolat. I'll report back soon :)

PARIS Macarons

As a kid I insisted on Lemon Meringue pie instead of birthday cake. In Paris I always made for the meringues, the ancient Italian granny of the French macaron. These wildly-colored meringue sandwiches were a mystery till I became addicted to foodblogs. Then I couldn't take my eyes off them. Besides macarons fall nicely into my pastry-geometry theory. They're both circular and a cylinder and you can view them as an elipse too, when seen in perspective. I didn't even eat my 1st macaron till last November at New York's Fauchon. It was lemon of course. I did wine research in Saint Emilion and you can buy another old relative there - almond flavored "lids". They come still attached to the parchment paper they're baked on. You peel them off - delicious. I saved this paper as a souvenir. Don't ask me why.
While you line up for your macarons, there's a black and white 18-page catalogue you can plough through with detailed descriptions. Plus a small accordian brochure describing the macarons flavors. This you get after you've bought your macs, I suppose to keep you coming back for more. As if that were even an issue.
An example of a Hermé macaron description:
"Une fine envelope croustillante, une forme rounde, légèrement bombée, de belle couleurs chatoyantes et un coeur moelleux..."

A very rough translation would be: A fine crispy envelope, a round form, slightly bent, beautiful colors (I'm getting nowhere with chatoyantes or moelleux) and a marrowy (mushy?) heart...hmm

There's a macaron war going on. Who has the best Paris macs? A city-wide competition with an annual winner- Jean-Paul Hevin won last year.

It's just a smidge of jam, not the whole jar. It doesn't overwhelm of the basic bisquit lids IMO. The Pierre Hermé macarons are tres riche, filled with a multi-plex of buttercream flavors.
An example is: biscuit macaron choclat, ganache chocolat caramet et éclats de chocolat àla fleur de sel...Along with being anti-birthday cake, I'm not a buttercream fan. I won't even have mit schlag (whipped cream)on my hot chocolate. I don't have the slightest problem when it comes to ICE CREAM though...But if you LOVE buttercream than Pierre Hermé is your place. Paris Macarons, watercolor, 11" x 9"

Carrément Chocolat - Pastry Geometry

I'm down to my last few delicious SQUARES of chocolate from the Fancy Food Show a month ago...Pierre Hermé likes SQUARES too.His Carrément Chocolat shows up in many sizes - as a gateau for 4, a popsicle, as a portion individule (I bought this one).

The interior - Chocolat noir, gelé de chocolat et croustilland de chocolat = this is a whole lot of chocolat!

Google translates carrément chocolat as 'straightforwardly' but I think "SQUARELY chocolate" would be better.
Any help from the audience is appreciated.

Paris pastry chefs use plenty of geometry in their creations.

Desserts naturally take the form of abstract geometric shapes-cubes, spheres, cylinders, pyramids, triangles what with the SQUARE and circular pans used for baking. But What's so great about geometric forms and why ever would these influence French pastry chefs?

Pierre Hermé Gateaux, watercolor, 10 1/2 x 7 1/2"

Cezanne said, if you can draw a cube, a sphere, a pyramid...you can draw anything. Most art foundation courses start off drawing these same shapes. They're the basis of all forms.

Ok not mashed potatos, but the head, the figure etc can all be carved out of a cube.

There's an inherent harmony in these shapes.

They're pleasing aesthetically to the eye and no chefs are more conscious of aesthetics than pastry chefs IMO.

Everywhere I looked in Paris I saw these pure geometric shapes. Square within a square at La Maison du Chocolat, rectangles at Christian Constant, triangles and circles at Lenotre, on and on.
BTW if you buy any of these don't let them sit around as I did on my drawing table -- you'll have a nice penicillin farm in no time at all.

The vendeuse at Jean-Paul Hévin said ONLY 3 HOURS OUTSIDE THE FRIGO! after I left a raspberry rectangle out while I went south for 3 DAYS!!!

And let me tell you, even in the Frigo - do not forget these guys! OK do you think I'm nuts?  Feel free to tell me know your opinion of the Paris pastry geometry theory.
 

 

Ice Cream For Breakfast

I was going to write about Pierre Hermé's chocolate cakes today but it's just too damn hot. We're looking 100 + degrees in the face =UGH I was lucky. Cold Stone Creamery believed me when I said I had 3 under-12-year olds waiting at home for some ice cream. They let me buy 3 "Kid's Size" cups of ice cream at $1.25 each !!! This has to be the bargain of the century.

At least in New York where you can easily spend $5.00 for a not-so-hot cup of 2 flavors at CONES for example.
They have a pretty shop and their flavors LOOK gorgeous but I thought the ice cream was mediocre. Sorry CONES, but THIS IS NOT GELATO!
I wasn't thrilled with Mary's Dairy ice cream either, though they do have adorable ice cream cone seats.
I tried their Yin-Yang flavor -Milk chocolate with Valrhona Bittersweet chunks...why ever would you pair these two? Valrhona deserves better. I don't think they'd approve. I've come to the conclusion that true gelato can not exist outside of Italy. There are factors like altitude and Italian cows you can't replicate. And forget cloning too. If you're ever in Bologna go to Gianni's. I'm excluding il laboratorio del gelato from this discussion because their stuff is celestial and something all together different.

Two Dips, watercolor, 10 1/2 x 7 3/4"

It's much easier to be an ice cream critic than a chocolate critic. Who hasn't eaten ice cream since almost day one ? Did your mom "trim" those 1st ice cream cones like my mom did? I'm not sure that's allowed anymore...off-limits territory for parents :( Nowadays Kids are King.

Speaking of drips, Food And Wine magazine says in their article, Shoot First, Eat Later that you should ->
#3) Wipe glasses and plate edges. Be sure surfaces are free of smudges and greasy fingerprints, says food stylist Alison Attenborough. In good light, they really stand out.

I have yet to get this one right especially with a vulnerable subject like ice cream and I like a bit of mess in my photos. Hmmm..
The other day the NYTimes said “It’s simple, never leave a container of ice cream unfinished.” Otherwise you get ice crystals. Now I'm totally with them on this one. BTW the Watermelon ice cream shown here was delicious and I can recommend it without hesitation :)