mercredi 18 novembre 2009

a fifteen minute walk and how an apprentice in pastry spends all her money

I never work on Wednesday, it is one of my two days off. Since most of my friends and the members of my family are not available to "play" with me,I do things on my own.For instance, this morning, I headed for a section of Paris where I should never have gone: the area near St Eustache and Les Halles. Indeed, in this part of the city, one finds just about anything one wishes for if one is an amateur or professional cook: kitchen utensils, books and special ingredients for cooking and baking. I intented to buy black sesame paste for a future desert, a pseudo zen cake(something in the mode of sadaharu aoki zen pastry. I went to the famous, busy, expensive but irreplaceable Maison Mora which sells kitchen ware and bought a fabulous mini offset spatula ("palette coudée mini mini")for small tarts and tiny entremets, only to be used home for my "dînette" pastry parties. Then I went to the wonderful bookstore "La Librairie gourmande" to check out Mr Conticini's (from the " Patisserie des Rêves") pastry book that just came out (by the way he will be signing his books on Saturday the 28 th of November). I chatted with the owner, bought the "Journal du Pâtissier" since my subscription had just run out(this month there is an article about the different "bûches" that one will find at Christmas at "Pain de sucre", "Des gâteaux et du pain", "Carl Marletti" ect).Then I went to "G Detou" (a food store whose name mean"I have everything"), hoping to find the magical black paste. Unfortunatly the nice shop assistant told me he hadn't any a slight dissapointment but I kwew I would find some at "Keiko", a Japanese grocery store); he suggested however I take a look at their new food aromas(pomme verte, barbe à papa, and so on) telling me that they would be selling soon savoury aromas like cheese aromas. Being a bit conservative on the subject of aromas( synthetic aromas un particular), I simply looked through the aroma shelves. However I was able to find many other delicacies (more traditional but just as elating to me): matcha tea, pecans, crystalised violets, maple sugar, and maple flakes which can also be ordered on the web on the site "couleur quebec" as a fellow food blogger("Tronche de cake") suggests. I came back home, thrilled and merry. No bloody black sesame seed paste and a lighter wallet but a bag full of wonderful things I didn't expect to find and many new pastry projects in mind.

Here are the addresses of the three places I visited:
Mora (kitchenware) 13 rue Montmartre Paris 75001 tel: 0145081924
La Librairie Gourmande (bookstore) 90 rue Montmartre Paris 75002 tel: 0143543727
G Detout (food store) rue Tiquetonne Paris 75

3 commentaires:

  1. oh dear, you had a little latk with Annick at the bookshop ?!!

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  2. Unfortunately Annick wasn't there, i chatted with the owner and an other shop assistant asked them what they thought of Mr Conticini's book"Sensations".They told me the texts and recipies were good accurate and precise.About the pictures and the mise en page they didnt say much.They thought howerver it was one of the best pastry book for the clearness of PHIllipes BOE's texts.

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