1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (29 page)

Where:
In New York
, Benoit Bistro, tel 646-943-7373,
benoitny.com
;
in Yountville, CA
, Bouchon Bistro, tel 707-944-8037,
bouchonbistro.com
.
Further information and recipes:
On Food and Cooking
by Harold McGee (2004);
French Provincial Cooking
by Elizabeth David (1999);
An Omelette and a Glass of Wine
by Elizabeth David (1985);
nytimes.com
(search fines herbes omelet);
cookstr.com
(search fines herbes omelet).

Eleanor Clark immortalized oysters in her writing.

Anyone passionate about oysters should consider the fully immersive experience of a visit to the coast of Brittany for a sampling of the seductively salty and silky specimens known as belons or Armoricaines. Such intrepid food travelers may learn to better appreciate the flavor of the extraordinary
Ostrea edulis
, but they will probably never be able to accurately describe it. Even the brilliant novelist Eleanor Clark, author of an intriguing book on the history and cultivation of these mollusks and their native habitat, admitted defeat on that score: “It is briny first of all, and not in the sense of brine in a barrel.… There is the shock of freshness to it.… Some piercing intuition of the sea and all its weeds and breezes shiver you a split second. You are eating the sea, that’s it … something connected with the flavor of life itself.”

First published in 1959,
The Oysters of
Locmariaquer
is rightfully considered one of the great works of food literature. So for the maximum experience, get the book and set aside a vacation week in January or February when the ocean is coldest and the oysters are at their best. Then consult your
Guide Michelin
to find the hotels in Brittany that remain open during that off-season, ideally around the Gulf of Morbihan in towns such as Quiberon, Auray, Vannes, or La Trinité-sur-Mer. Pack some warm clothes and head for the charming half-deserted coast, where each day you can walk on the beach watching dark waves break against the shore, then warm up indoors with a coffee or a brandy and read a chapter or two of Clark’s wonderful book. At least twice each day, go into a snack bar, café, or restaurant to sample her beloved “plates,” with their flat, rounded, stone-gray ruffled shells. Needless to say, you will eat them neat—straight from the shell, without even a drop of lemon juice to adulterate the taste sensation.

Not only will you have tasted oysters in their peak season but you will have become part of history. Oysters have been cultivated off the Brittany coast since Roman times, and modern methods have not changed much. The larval form of the oysters, or “spat,” need support to survive and grow, so they are put into banks of hollow tiles that are planted in the sea in late May or early June, a colorful sight in itself. After about eight months, the young oysters are stripped off the tiles and moved to protected sea parks, or
claires.
There, they mature unharmed by predatory sea life for three or four years, whereupon they are transferred to even more perfect conditions for their
affinage
, or refinement.

The belons flourish when cultivated in Maine, but they are products as much of geography as of genetics. As good as our naturalized belons are, they bear hardly any similarity to their lusty Breton ancestors.

Further information:
The Oysters of Locmariaquer
by Eleanor Clark (1959);
North Atlantic Seafood
by Alan Davidson (2012).

Pan bagnat is a classic Provençal sandwich.

Nothing goes to waste in any frugal kitchen, least of all stale bread, which is cleverly worked into some of the Western world’s most beloved dishes. Of course, we’re all aware of French toast, known as
pain perdu
, or lost bread, but there are bread puddings (see listings
here
and
here
); soup (see
listing
); and the cool and lovely Italian summer salad
panzanella
(see
listing
), among many others.

Along the Côte d’Azur, the desire to make use of stale bread led to the creation of this sustaining and remarkably healthful summer sandwich that is essentially a
salade Niçoise
heaped into a crusty loaf of French bread. Sliced in half lengthwise, the cut sides of the baguette are liberally rubbed with garlic and doused with olive oil, hence the name
pan bagnat
—bathed or wet bread. The fixings are layered in: thinly sliced tomatoes, onions, green peppers; always hard-boiled eggs; and either the soft, salty accents of anchovy fillets or dark tuna cured in olive oil. The final touch is tiny black olives Niçoise (see
listing
), authentically unpitted, though the hazards are obvious. Once composed, the sandwich is wrapped firmly in wax paper, covered with foil, and then pressed down with some kind of weight for about an hour. Thus all the ingredients meld together, and olive oil oozes out until it is a downright threat to pristine shirt fronts. A bib might well be in order.

So might a glass of cool white wine, or an astringent, licorice-tasting pastis. In his classic work on French Mediterranean food, Jacques Médecin recommends this sandwich as a
mérenda
or midmorning snack, or as “a wonderful summer hors-d’oeuvre, an excellent and practical component of the picnic basket, or even a complete meal if you are out fishing or if the weather is hot and your appetite is flagging.” Who could ask for anything more?

Where:
In Nice
, at stalls and cafés in the open market on the Cours Saleya.
Further information and recipes:
Cuisine Niçoise
by Jacques Médecin (1991);
Flavors of the Riviera
by Colman Andrews (1996);
saveur.com
(search pan bagnat).

Usually, those who love to cook are not equally fond of baking, and the other way around—a fact well acknowledged in professional kitchens, where chefs and pâtissiers hurl jibes and insults at one another with legendary abandon. Word is that the operations require different temperaments and skills—the bakers are more disciplined and scientific, while the cooks are more improvisational and freewheeling.

Be that as it may, one basic dough appeals to both:
pâte à choux
, or what Americans know as cream puff pastry. To make pâte à choux, flour, butter, salt, and pepper (or sugar, for a
dessert pastry) are heated together until they form a mass, then the dough is polished with beaten eggs. The result is spooned or squeezed from a pastry bag onto a baking sheet and popped into the oven. If all goes well, the rounds or lengths puff up to become hollow, tender-crisp, and lightly eggy in flavor, making them perfect casings for a battery of much-loved pastries, sweet and savory.

Cream puffs and éclairs,
two classic uses of this dough, can be made in full or miniature sizes and filled with vanilla-scented pastry cream or lightly flavored whipped cream. True devotees shun more highly flavored fillings, such as chocolate or coffee cream, although some do allow their round puffs or long éclairs to be brushed with chocolate or mocha icing. Others, preferring their shells to have an unmarred crispness, opt for a dusting of confectioners’ sugar.

Gâteau St. Honoré,
named for the patron saint of pastry chefs, is a lush combination of tiny custard-filled cream puffs bedded down on a round sheet of buttery pie crust. The center is filled with an extravagant lake of custard cream adrift with cloudlets of meringue and dottings of crystallized cherries and candied violets.

Paris-Brest
is a showy riff on gâteau St. Honoré. For this luscious charmer, pâte à choux is set in an 8-to 10-inch ring on a baking sheet. Once baked and cooled, it is split horizontally and filled with smooth praline cream and the smoky-sweet burnish of crushed, caramelized almonds. If the arrangement suggests a bicycle wheel, it’s because this delectable pastry was created to mark the first Paris-to-Brest bicycle race in the late nineteenth century. Not that it retains its shape very long before it is gleefully cut …

Profiteroles
are recurrent favorites on dessert menus throughout the Western world, and small wonder, as they’re essentially grown-up ice-cream sundaes. The airy puffs are filled with ice cream—traditionally vanilla, but chocolate or coffee aren’t bad, either—and mantled with warm, dark chocolate fudge sauce and a dollop or two of unsweetened whipped cream.

A strawberry shortcake cream puff
may not be part of the French pâtissier’s pantheon, but the high-style version of an American favorite is an innocent and worthy interloper. Fill the puffs with vanilla ice cream and top with sweetened sliced strawberries. Or fill with strawberries and top with whipped cream. Or … take your pick, but do add a few drops of rosewater to the berries for a real breath of springtime. A sprig of fresh mint doesn’t hurt, either.

Croquembouche
is the wedding cake among wedding cakes—a pyramidal mound of tiny custard-filled cream puffs stuck together and then crowned with lacings of glasslike spun sugar. The cake’s bottom is decorated with whipped cream and candied fruits. It’s a trick that bakers are loath to guarantee, lest the wedding day be rainy and the cream puffs slide out of place. Order at your own risk—though perhaps only a minor risk, compared to the main one you will take on the big day.

Gougères
are cheese puffs based on the same pastry as the previously mentioned desserts, but seasoned with salt, pepper, and grated nutmeg, sans sugar. They are a lovely nibble with aperitifs or as a garnish for a main-course salad. For a mild, subtle result, grated Gruyère or Emmental cheese is melted into the hot cooked dough before it is formed. For the sprightliest flavor, Parmesan is the cheese of choice.

Where:
In Paris
, L’Atelier de L’Éclair, tel 33/1-42-36-40-54,
latelierdeleclair.fr
; Popelini, tel 33/1-44-61-31-44,
popelini.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1
, by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, and Simone Beck (1961);
foodandwine.com
(search pate a choux).

Raspberry mille-feuille mixes cream and crunch.

We call it puff pastry—the buttery, flaky miracle that deliciously defines many of France’s most famous dessert temptations. Never mind that the form is believed to have originated in Szeged, Hungary, sometime before the eighteenth century. A minimalist creation of crisp, paper-thin golden leaves layered just thick enough to hold their eventual fillings,
pâte feuilletée
provides a teasing, toothsome crunch en route to the lavish custards, flavored whipped creams, or nut pastes within. Shaped into pastry casings that are known as vol-au-vents if they are large and communal, or
bouchées
if meant as individual portions, they are showy servers for sauced fillings of poultry, sweetbreads, or shellfish.