A quietly delicious Paris pâtisserie

My love affair with French food began with pâtisserie and I still take pride in knowing where to find the best, from Pierre Hermé's passion fruit and milk chocolate macaron to Sadaharu Aoki's green tea millefeuille. That's why I was surprised to come across an interview with Pierre Hermé in which he spoke of a pastry shop that had somehow escaped my notice.
Though I thought I could sniff out sugar from miles away, La Petite Rose is in a residential part of the 8th arrondissement not far from where I live when I'm in Paris. You can imagine that I wasted no time in dashing over there to see what I had been missing since it opened a couple of years ago.
In an age where pâtisseries and chocolateries are looking ever more intimidating, with stark facades that barely suggest there might be cakes inside, it was refreshing to find this cheerful shop with pastries in the window and a few tables scattered outside and inside. The walls are painted pale pink and chocolate brown, a combination that seems to me typically Japanese. Pastry chef Miyuki Watanabe is indeed from Japan, and she let me take a few photos while she shyly told me about training in Tokyo and working at Gérard Mulot before opening her own shop.


I resisted the small but exquisite selection of pastries as I was on my way to a three-course lunch, but chose a few chocolates, which I proceeded to gobble, lunch or no lunch. Most original was the soft nougat wrapped in dark chocolate, though my favorite was probably the subtly zingy ginger-spiked ganache. At €4.70 for about ten chocolates, her prices are well below those of the ultra-chic chocolatiers of St-Germain, and I couldn't detect a difference in quality.

Next time I'll be sure to try her Valentin, the chocolate mousse and crème brûlée cake that Hermé recommended, as well as her chocolate and raspberry macaron. (I won't be afraid to go back to this shop, since I didn't destroy any cakes.)
On the way out, I looked to my right and admired this view of Sacré Coeur as I crossed the street: proof yet again that Paris always holds new surprises.


La Petite Rose, 11, boulevard de Courcelles, 8th, 01 45 22 07 27.

Pane Pugliese

I wasn't planning to bring you a bread recipe today, but when this chubby loaf came out of the oven I found it irresistible. It's the first time I've made bread in weeks: my once thrillingly active starter has been languishing at the bottom of the refrigerator looking gray and neglected (though I know it will be quick to forgive me).
The recipe is a remarkably simple one using fast-acting yeast from Australian-born, London based bread guru Dan Lepard. The difference is that it calls for fizzy water - Dan uses Italian, I substituted Badoit - and soft 00 flour, the kind that goes into fresh pasta. Containing a spoonful of delicate-tasting Nice olive oil and Claude's incredible deep amber honey that tastes of wild mountain herbs, the dough was soft, velvety and a joy to knead by hand.
While I made tabbouleh for lunch I had Philippe take over the kneading, which he did with such enthusiasm that my marble board broke in half. Talk about stress relief!
With a creamy-colored, bouncy crumb and surprisingly distinctive honey taste, this bread reminded me of a crusty milk loaf. It's definitely going into my file of "breads to make again and again."
A little tip for Thermomix owners: when I make bread using bottled water or milk, I give the liquid 1 minute in the Thermomix at 40 C to warm it up.

Pane Pugliese
Makes 1 round loaf

Slightly adapted from an article in The Observer Food monthly.

Sponge:
1 tsp fast-rising (easy-blend) yeast
150 g 00 pasta flour
200 g sparkling water, warmed
1 tsp honey

350 g 00 flour
100 g sparkling water, warmed
2 tsp fine sea salt
1 tbsp good-quality olive oil

Cornmeal or semolina, for the baking sheet

In a large bowl, whisk together the ingredients for the sponge to make a smooth batter. Cover with a plastic bag and set aside in a warm place for 1 hour.

Add the remaining ingredients and combine with your hands or a plastic pastry scraper to form a slightly sticky dough, adding a little more water if necessary. Clean your hands and rub a marble or other work surface with 1 tsp olive oil, also rubbing some oil into your hands. Knead the dough for a few minutes, until very smooth and velvety. Return the dough to the cleaned bowl, cover with a plastic bag and set aside in a warm place to rise for 45 mins.

Turn the dough onto a lightly floured marble or other work surface and flatten with your hands, then shape into a ball. Line a small bowl with a floured tea towel, or use a linen bread basket if you have one. Place the dough seam-side up in the bowl or basket, cover with the plastic bag and let rise until doubled in volume, about 45 mins.

Meanwhile, heat the oven to 220 C, with the baking sheet in the oven and a ramekin filled with hot water on a shelf underneath it. When you're ready to bake the bread, sprinkle some cornmeal or semolina onto the hot baking sheet. Gently turn the ball of dough upside-down into your floured hand, then slide it carefully onto the baking sheet. Slash a cross in the dough using a very sharp knife or serrated bread knife.

Bake the bread (I used the convection setting) for 35-45 minutes, until golden brown and very crusty. Leave to cool on a wire rack before serving.

A moment in the sun

With deadlines looming like thunderclouds I've barely had time to breathe this week, let alone turn my mind to blogging. But I did find a few moments to appear on the local news.
It happened after I ran into a camera crew from France 3 television while giving a tour of the Cours Saleya market. We chatted for a few moments and I explained what I do. "A Canadian teaching Niçois cooking to Americans? There's a story in that," said the journalist Olivier, looking amused and slightly skeptical (I'm used to that look).
A couple of days later, Olivier and cameraman Niels showed up to follow my class around the market and into my kitchen, where I had planned a vegetarian menu of socca, artichokes stewed in white wine, soupe au pistou and tarte Tatin. "I don't cook," said Olivier, "but I do know how to make artichokes à la barigoule, so I'll be watching."
I breathed a sigh of relief when he gave a nod of approval, adding only that he likes to throw in some chopped tomatoes in summer (something I'll be trying as soon as tomatoes are in season). A big thank you to Judith from Vancouver, Rosana from Texas and Io from Oregon - their names are mixed up in the video - who seemed completely unfazed by having a big camera pointed at their faces as they perfected their artichoke-trimming skills.
I struggled for ages trying to upload the video, but for the moment all I can offer you is this link. Scroll down to 27.03 - Cuisine niçoise on the right-hand side and you can watch the short segment.
The picture above, by the way, is from my recent lunch at the Château de la Chèvre d'Or in Eze, which I'll be telling you all about very soon.

Tackling the artichoke

With leaves like Cruella's spiky fingernails and a spirit just as malicious, this is not a vegetable to be taken lightly. The spiky Italian artichoke seems hell-bent on causing injury - but oh, what a reward once you conquer it.
When my wine merchant saw the vicious thorns poking out of my basket this morning, his eyes lit up. "Ce sont les meilleurs," he exclaimed. "Comme du beurre." They even got the attention of the normally reserved Jouni, who became positively enthused at the sight of my acquisition.
Spiky or not, the artichoke is not as scary a vegetable as it looks. A member of the thistle family, this flower bud varies in color from pale green-gray to deep purple and can be bigger than a grapefruit or as small as a lime. As the name suggests, it contains a hairy "choke" (known as the foin in French) that can be removed before or after cooking to reveal its well-concealed heart: the real prize for all that effort.
Big globe artichokes from Brittany are the best for steaming or boiling whole and eating leaf by leaf with vinaigrette or mayonnaise. But a more familiar sight in the south of France is the small violet-tinged artichoke known as the artichaut violet or poivrade. With barely developed chokes, these can be eaten raw, stewed with white wine, onion and carrot in a barigoule or poached just until tender in water, the juice of a lemon and a tablespoon of olive oil before being added to salads or pasta sauces.
We often cook artichauts à la barigoule in my classes as a way of introducing people to the small violet artichoke. Preparing them gets easier - and definitely faster - with practice, but requires no special skill other than a bit of patience.
Today I decided to try a recipe that I had been eyeing for a long time in Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking. She described it as a primitive barigoule, involving only a startling amount of olive oil, water and artichokes. The water-and-oil emulsion spits and sputters as the water evaporates leaving only oil, but it's all part of the fun (as is cleaning up afterwards).
The result reminded me of the Jewish fried artichokes I had eaten in Rome, complete with crisp outer leaves, making this recipe well worth the mess. In hindsight, I could have discarded fewer leaves than usual for this recipe as the crunchy fried leaves - like little artichoke chips - were probably the best part.

Before you start, prepare a bowl of water with the juice of a lemon. Add each trimmed artichoke to this water as quickly as possible to stop it from oxidizing (which turns it from a lovely pale yellow-green to gray).

Cut off the long stems, leaving about 5 cm (2 inches) of stem attached to the artichoke. The remaining stem can be peeled, cut into 1-inch pieces and cooked asparagus-style or made into soup.

Now cut about 3 cm (1 1/2 inches) off the top of the artichoke and discard the trimmings. You might like to keep a half-lemon nearby to rub the cut top of the artichoke before you continue.

Remove the hard outer leaves, starting at the stem and working your way up. Normally I discard at least three layers, until the leaves are pale yellow-green tinged with pink, but in this recipe you really only need to discard about two layers.
Now trim the stem using a small knife or vegetable peeler. The artichokes are ready to go into the lemon water.

When you've finished trimming all the artichokes, place them (without the lemon water) in a frying pan or saucepan that will hold them in one layer. Pour in olive oil to about halfway up the artichokes, then add water just to cover them.

Bring the water and oil to a boil over high heat. They should bubble vigorously and emulsify, creating a creamy liquid. Lower the heat only enough to minimize the spitting, but since the aim is to let all the water evaporate it has to boil hard.

When the water has evaporated and only oil is left, the spitting will calm and the oil will continue to bubble. Now keep a close eye on the artichokes. You might need to move them around a little, and I placed them stem side up towards the end to brown the leaves. It took longer than the recipe predicted, about 35-40 minutes rather than 15-20. This could be because I used a saucepan rather than a sauté pan.

Once the artichokes are golden, remove them with a slotted spoon, drain them on a paper towel and serve hot, sprinkled with fleur de sel.

Celeriac and kohlrabi rösti

With spring around the corner, the last thing I should be thinking about is knobbly, hairy vegetables that grow under the ground.
There are true wild asparagus at the market, which I've tossed with cappellini pasta, lemon zest and juice, cream and parmesan, and stirred into just-laid eggs with cubed potatoes for a frittata to be eaten on the beach (it has been that warm).

Finger-thin carrots taste sweet and delicate, even if they are just a tiny bit knobbly and hairy; I bite into them just as they are or glaze them in butter and honey with whole cumin seeds.
How do you like these violet artichokes? Trimming them is a fastidious task but the result is always worth the effort, whether I slice them raw, cook them quickly in lemony water or stew them for an hour in white wine and olive oil.

On Sunday, at the Libération market north of the train station in Nice, I spotted the season's first fava beans (also known as broad beans). They cost €8 a kilo, but I didn't hesitate for a second. "Une caprice," said the farmer, smiling knowingly. There is no better snack in spring than emerald fava beans straight from the pod, each one peeled of its bitter skin if you have the patience.
But, just as it's not quite time to put away my winter coat, I can still get excited about the earthy taste of celery root (or celeriac) and the turnipy crunch of purple-skinned kohlrabi. I picked up one of each from an organic producer at the market last weekend, not quite knowing what I would do with them. As I was idly flipping through a folder of clipped recipes, I came across a brilliant idea from Clare Ferguson in an old (2005) issue of Homes and Gardens magazine.
Her recipe called only for celeriac, but as my root was small kohlrabi seemed the obvious addition. The use of chickpea flour made these rösti slightly reminiscent of socca, that Niçois classic (note: these rösti are gluten-free). I was also delighted that the recipe called for parsley stems, something I throw away unless I'm planning to make vegetable stock.
The tomato sauce with sweet chili that Ferguson suggests would have been perfect, but as a light lunch with salad and nothing else they were very good too: sweet, slightly nutty and fresh-tasting all at once.
I seem not to be the only one who has celeriac on the brain: I was surprised to see, as I blog-hopped after that lunch, that aforkfulofspaghetti also has a post on celeriac fritters this week. They involve whole slices of celeriac, but look equally delicious.

Celeriac and kohlrabi rösti
Serves 4-6 as a side dish, 2-3 as a light lunch with salad

1 small celeriac (about 325-350 g)
1/2 kohlrabi (about 100 g)
50 g chickpea flour
A handful of parsley, stems and leaves
1 egg
2 tbsp cold water
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp cracked black peppercorns
Good quality olive oil, for frying

Scrub and peel the celeriac and peel the kohlrabi. Shred coarsely by hand or using the grating attachment of your food processor.
If using the food processor (I did), replace the shredding blade with the chopping blade.
Add the chickpea flour, thinly sliced parsley leaves and stems, beaten egg, water, and seasonings. Process, in brief bursts, until the contents are fairly evenly mixed. By hand, simply mix well.
Heat a good tablespoon of oil in a non-stick frying pan over medium-high heat. Drop tablespoons of this mixture into the hot oil and cook for 2-3 mins on each side, until browned and cooked through. Set aside in a warm oven until all the rösti are cooked (you may need to cook them in two batches).
Serve alongside meat or with a tomato-chili sauce as a snack or light lunch.

Mandarin marmalade

My downstairs neighbor Tony is normally quite friendly. When I run into him in the street, he says hello and sometimes stops for a chat.
On Saturday, though, he backed away from me slowly as if I were a madwoman, muttering "no thanks, no thanks" without meeting my eye. It was my fault for asking the seemingly innocent question that no-one who lives in Nice wants to hear during the month of March.
"Would you like some citrus fruit?"
Local lemons, oranges, grapefruits and kumquats, untouched by chemicals and with glossy green leaves, sell for €3.50 a kilo at the market. Yet just about anyone who has been in Nice for any length of time knows someone with at least one productive citrus tree that produces a glut of fruit at this time of year. Just when I start to long for sweet French strawberries (which have, rather bizarrely, already made their first appearance at the market), I find myself cooking up enough bitter-orange marmalade to supply the whole reluctant neighborhood.
A well-meaning friend with a lovingly-tended garden filled my shopping cart to the brim with mandarins and bitter oranges this weekend. Mandarins have a mysterious, almost exotic scent that I would love to bottle and wear as a perfume. But there is a good reason why they have fallen out of favor over the years: they are absolutely stuffed with pips. Try to juice a mandarin with an electric citrus juicer and these will fly all over the kitchen, I've discovered the hard way (I now squash them with my hands directly over a sieve).
With heaps of mandarins in my kitchen, there was no excuse not to make the most labor-intensive jam in my repertory (I've decided to ignore the bitter oranges for the time being). Thanks to Philippe's help with the slicing and de-pipping it wasn't as painful as I had expected, even if it was a little disheartening to see 2.5 kilos of mandarins become a mere 7 jars of marmalade.
Still, when I've had enough of strawberries I know I will be glad to have given those mandarins a home.

Mandarin marmalade
(Sorry, it's hard to predict the number of jars! Allow about a dozen, just in case.)

An important trick when making marmalade is to save the pips as you slice the fruit. Place them in a small bowl, covered with water, overnight. The next day, drain the pips and add the water to the jam as it cooks: it's full of pectin. Unfortunately, my pips got thrown out by accident this time, which meant that the jam had to be reduced more than usual before it set.

2.5 kg mandarins (about 5 1/2 lbs)
1 lemon
2 kg sugar (about 4 1/2 lbs)

In one or two large bowls, soak the whole mandarins in cold water overnight.

The next day, drain and discard this water. Cut the mandarins and lemon into thin slices, removing the pips. Set these aside in a small bowl, covering them with water. Place the mandarin slices in one or two large bowls, with the sugar and just enough water to cover the fruit. Set aside overnight once again in a cool place.

The next day, dump the fruit in its syrup and the pip water into a very large saucepan or copper jam basin. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat to a steady bubble and cook until the juices set when a small amount is dripped onto a plate. This can take anywhere between 1-2 hours.

Pour into sterilized jam jars. I sterilize my jars by washing them well, then placing the wet jars on a tray in the oven at 180 C (375 F) for at least 20 mins.

New olive oil and salade exotique

You could easily miss Claude's trestle table among the producers at the Cours Saleya market. Little pots of hand-labelled tapenade stand next to bottles of herb-infused red wine vinegar and deep golden oil, with a few jars of honey to one side and sometimes a long loaf of pain d'épice.
It might seem like a modest collection of goods, but if Claude sold nothing more than vinegar I would still be heartbroken if she stopped coming to the market on Saturday mornings*. Perfumed with basil or slightly peppery nasturtium, this pure ingredient goes into nearly every one of my twice-daily salads. Her deep amber honey is a revelation, tasting of the rosemary, thyme and other plants that grow wild on her unruly hillside, and her oil has the delicate almond taste, typical of this area, that I've come to love.
Modest and unassuming, Claude brightens visibly when anyone shows enthusiasm for her products. Her pain d'épice, made without eggs and spiced only with anise in the Provençal way, already has an avid following; for Christmas, she produced a sugar-free version to serve with foie gras. She is the only small farmer at the market who speaks English, and many a visitor has been won over by her tasting of olive paste and tapenade.
You can imagine my excitement when Claude invited me to see her transform freshly harvested olives into oil earlier this month. There are a few stone olive mills in the hills behind Nice, but they are rarely used these days and Claude is the only producer I know of who has her own old-fashioned mill. It's a legacy from her father who, amazingly, built the whole mechanism himself using a giant stone from a perfume factory and bits and pieces from other mills. In his day, the mill could produce oil on one level and flour up above; Claude uses it only for oil, making it two or three times a year.
February might seem late in the season to make olive oil: in many parts of the olive-producing world, the harvest begins in October or November. But the little black Niçois olive, officially called the Caillette, is traditionally left on the tree until most of the olives are purply-black. This results in a deep golden oil that might at first seem too subtle if you are used to a more peppery taste. I love its almost buttery character, particularly with fragile mesclun leaves and on white-fleshed fish.
Though Claude's farm is just 40 minutes from Nice, the countryside feels surprisingly remote. We followed Pierre's wife Anne in her bright orange car towards Contes, then to Coaraze where Claude lives next door to her 87-year-old mother Marguerite. It happened to be Marguerite's birthday, and her playful eyes as she offered us a glass (or three) of her own very quaffable wine told me immediately that she is a force to be reckoned with. Indeed, Marguerite kept an eagle eye on the olive oil making process all day, often pitching in to show how it's done.

First about 300 kilos of freshly picked olives went into the big stone mill, which efficiently ground the flesh and pits to a black paste. This so resembled tapenade that a couple of people, Philippe included, couldn't help dipping their fingers in. "Beurk!" Olives straight off the tree are horribly bitter.

Eventually the oil started to separate from the paste. This clear oil could be scooped out with a ladle, and tasted remarkably sweet and almondy.

Then Claude turned on a tap and nearly filled the big stone basin with lukewarm water, causing the oil to float to the top. While this was going on, a volunteer farm worker from Vermont (you too can work on an organic farm in exchange for room and board by visiting Wwoof) took us on a tour of the property. Taking care of nearly 300 olive trees and a few beehives too is a daunting task for Claude and her mother, and Claude has come to rely on her "wwoofers," volunteers from around the world who stay for a week or longer.

We said hello to the beautiful goats, who sadly no longer supply cheese for the market. Claude's goat cheese was legendary at the Cours Saleya, but European Union regulations forced her to stop her artisanal production and she didn't feel able to invest in the separate, surgically clean building that is now required. These regulations explain why there is now so little farmer's cheese to be found in this area. Luckily, the EU bent its rules for the olive mill thanks to its steel mechanism, which was considered nearly as hygienic as stainless steel.

Since Claude gave up making cheese she has taken up beekeeping, a project she originally intended to share with her sister. Unfortunately, her sister had a severe allergic reaction to her first bee sting and Claude is now on her own.

Sam had a go at beating the olives off the trees, which takes some strength.

Back at the mill, golden oil was floating on the water. We took turns scooping up the oil with a a holey frying pan intended for roasting chestnuts and transferring it to a bucket before filtering it. I wasn't entirely sure why we were using a pan with holes in it (and forgot to ask), but I think it allowed any water to run out before we poured the oil into the bucket. On either side of the mill, helpers used small brooms to sweep the oil towards the scooper. The most efficient helper was Marguerite, who can remember olive harvests year by year back to the 1940s.

Finally, Claude's sister toasted slices of baguette in the fire for the brissauda. We rubbed these with garlic, dipped them in the fresh oil and sprinkled them with oregano: heaven. I thought about how many people must have indulged in this ritual over thousands of years, and how lucky I was to be taking part.

By the time our potluck lunch was served we were a little less hungry, but all of us ate with gusto anyway: Claude with her mother, sister and nephew, Pierre, Anne and their two sons, Nadim, us, a few wwoofers and a couple of friends of Pierre. I contributed a bulgur and red pepper salad that Claude dubbed salade exotique, while Pierre brought fennel from his farm which, in Nadim's words, tasted as if they had been dipped in pastis. We simply cut the bulbs in half and bit straight into their white flesh, dipping them first in olive oil of course. Claude prepared a huge dish of pasta while her sister, who lived in Greece for 10 years, made a delicious Greek pea stew. Then there were several cakes, including a birthday one for Marguerite.

After lunch Claude got straight back to work, pressing the pulp to extract more oil (which she would use for her flavored oils) and then draining the water into a rectangular basin outside. My job was to gently rake the oil from the top of this basin while Philippe scooped it into a bucket.
Making oil this way is labor-intensive and Claude could easily save herself the trouble by taking her olives to a modern mill, which would turn them into oil with zero effort on her part in a couple of hours. But I got the feeling that keeping this mill running is an ongoing gesture of respect for her father's ingenuity and hard work.
We were the last to leave and, when we did, Claude presented us with a bottle of cloudy oil to take home. I'm tempted to treasure it, but I also know that oil this fresh is best savoured quickly.

* Claude is taking her annual break, but will be back at the market at the end of March.

My bulgur and red pepper salad came from the Casa Moro book, though I found the recipe in my Books For Cooks 7 collection. Red peppers aren't exactly in season, but at this time of year I think it's OK to overlook that kind of thing occasionally. I found that I needed to soak the coarse bulgur for a lot longer than the recipe said, and I added the juice of a lemon to the dressing. Of course, I also doused the salad liberally with olive oil fresh from the mill.


Salade exotique
Serves 4-6
(adapted from Casa Moro)

3 red peppers
175 g (6 oz/1 cup) medium or coarse bulgur
6 spring onions, finely sliced
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1/2 tsp hot paprika (I used Espelette pepper)
1 tbsp tomato paste
3 tbsp olive oil
Juice of 1 lemon
2 tbsp each roughly chopped flat-leaf parsley and mint
1 tbsp roughly chopped fresh dill
Salt, black pepper

Grill the peppers either under a preheated overhead grill or over the naked flame of a gas hob, or on a barbecue and cook, turning, until evenly charred and blistered all over. Put the peppers in a bowl, cover with a plate, and leave for 10 mins while the trapped steam loosens the peppers skins so that they may be easily slipped off. Then peel, core and seed the peppers before very finely chopping to a semi-purée.

Soak the bulgur in warm water for 15-45 mins or until no longer hard in the center, then squeeze dry and put in a large mixing bowl with the chopped peppers, spring onions, garlic, paprika, tomato paste, olive oil, lemon juice and fresh herbs. Mix everything well together and add salt and pepper to taste.