1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (30 page)

Puff pastry is a standard lesson in any serious French cookery class and an art worth mastering. It allows one to create elegant-looking dishes, sweet or savory, that may be based on the simplest preparations and ingredients. Ideally, the
pâte
is a mix of ordinary and strong durum wheat flours for elasticity, water, a little salt, and a lot of the best unsalted butter—although some maintain that combining butter with another shortening makes for a more stable, hot-weather-resistant result.

The mixed dough is put through a series of rollings and foldings, each capturing bits of butter, and then is chilled and rerolled until the final turn is completed. Rolled out flat and baked, the dough flakes into parchment-thin leaves as the butter melts between the layers, resulting in 1,458 to 3,645 leaves, the final count depending upon the number of turns made. Whatever the exact count, there are always more than enough gilded leaves to astound and entice.

And that’s where the magic begins, as the puff pastry is turned into classics that beckon to us from the cases of every patisserie worthy of that name.

Mille-feuille
or Napoleon.
Perhaps the best-known use of the golden pastry, these high rectangles sandwich three layers of puff pastry with fillings of whipped cream or eggy vanilla custard; their outsides are usually glazed with burnt sugar and are sometimes topped with a thin layer of icing. The most ethereal version of all combines the two fillings—whipped cream folded into pastry cream—for the sumptuous mixture known as St. Honoré Chantilly. The Napoleon, as the resulting pastry is most often called in the U.S., is equally popular in Italian and French pastry shops; its name is believed to have been derived by the French from Napolitano, honoring the city of Naples for its plethora of cream-filled pastries.

Gâteau mille-feuilles.
In the gâteau millefeuilles, we see the Napoleon transformed into a cake with three round layers of crunchy puff pastry parchment. Between them are sandwiched vanilla pastry cream and lushly red raspberry
jam; the top is frosted with rum fondant and a showering of chopped toasted almonds or pistachios, and sometimes finished with candied violets. The Napoleon’s combination of crisp and creamy, and the taste of that pure, innocent vanilla sweetness, is here writ large.

Gâteau Pithiviers
. Claimed by the French town of Pithiviers, this crackling, shiny-topped, bronze-gold cake also echoes the Napoleon, but in a completely different form. The big difference is a center filling of almond-accented pastry cream sandwiched between two round layers of puff pastry. Swirls carved into the top not only add a merry look but also indicate where wedge-shaped portions should be cut.

Of
palmiers
and
papillons
. Call them pigs’ or elephants ears, which some think they resemble, or more accurately palms, as in palmiers, these flat crunchy scrolled cookies are favorites on after-dinner petits-fours trays. When splayed out in the form of butterflies, they are called papillons. In whatever form, crunches of crystal sugar iced between the pastry’s crisp, buttery edges and folds provide an alluring contrast of taste and texture.

Where:
In Paris
, Pâtisserie Jean Millet, tel 33/1-45-51-49-80.
Further information and recipes:
Baking and Pastry: Mastering the Art and Craft
by the Culinary Institute of America (2009).
See also:
Rétes
;
Sfogliatelle
.

A classic late-night snack in the days when the French food market, Les Halles, was located in the middle of Paris, these crunchy garlic-and bread-crumb–encrusted pigs’ feet are still served (at all hours) in many old-style French bistros, and are a gift from the town of Sainte-Ménehould, where they were created. The gently simmered trotters, coated with buttered bread crumbs and grilled until crackling and fragrant, are treats for the serious nibblers who know that the meat is sweetest closest to the bones—though the pork’s rich flavor and gelatinous finish still come through when the cooked meat is
désossé
, or boned, prior to being grilled, as is more common these days.

Even when it comes to more elegant variations, wherein black truffles are slid into pouchy packets of pork skin, the best accompaniment is mustard—either smooth, brassy Dijon or the grainy, bitter-sharp
à l’ancienne.
Add some tiny pickled cucumbers, or cornichons, for a well-rounded appetizer, or, if the meat is the
plat de résistance
, a helping of buttery mashed potatoes.

Such preparations can also be applied to sheep’s feet—softer, stronger in flavor, and earthier, and generally even more richly endowed with fat than their porcine equivalents.

Where:
In Paris
, Au Pied de Cochon, tel 33/1-40-13-77-00,
pieddecochon.com
; Le Pied Rare, tel 33/8-99-02-13-89;
in Sainte-Ménehould, France
, Le Cheval Rouge, tel 33/3-26-60-81-04,
lechevalrouge.com
.
Further information and recipes:
The Escoffier Cookbook
by Auguste Escoffier, H. L. Cracknell, and R. J. Kaufmann (2011);
bonjourparis.com
(search pieds de porc).

A variation with squabs in green pea puree.

Many gourmands who claim to love squabs balk when told they are eating pigeons. True, no responsible cook targets the street-smart pigeons of city parks, but the birds are essentially the same. The real difference is between those farm-raised on corn or other feed, and those captured in the wild, that forage for anything they can find. Since selling the latter is usually illegal, you’re unlikely to find them on menus or in markets.

Old-timey French bistros have wonderful ways with these tiny, fine-boned birds and their dark, moist, and tantalizingly gamy meat. One such preparation,
pigeons en crapaudine
, begins with butterflying or spatchcocking—different words for the same technique, in which the tender birds are split and fanned out, their wings tucked behind their shoulder bones in a final form that suggests a toad, or
crapaud.
Brushed with butter and sprinkled with salt and pepper, they are then grilled or pan-grilled under a weight.

For a richer, homier rendition, whole squabs or the younger
pigeonneaux
are braised golden brown in a cocotte of copper or earthenware, along with the matchsticks of smoky bacon called
lardons
, white pearl onions, sweet lettuce to add moisture, and a handful of the tiny garden peas known as
petits pois.
The knowing palate will detect inklings of white wine and good, strong chicken stock, thyme, and garlic. Boiled new potatoes make the most of the sublime juices; or for textural contrast, a side of the straw-slim fried
pommes pailles
works well, too.

Where:
In New York
, North End Grill, tel 646-747-1600,
northendgrillnyc.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Larousse Gastronomique
(2009);
celtnet.org.uk
(search pigeons with petit pois).

Toppings may be scattered or arranged in patterns.

One of the most basic and tempting of Nice’s exquisitely light and lovely street foods,
pissaladière
suggests a pizza, but one that took off in its own savory, sophisticated way. It’s a slower sort of pizza, its basic yeast bread dough rising
fragrantly while slivers of onion in olive oil mellow on the stove for close to an hour, emerging deeply, richly sun-gold in color. Seasoned with salt and pepper, the onions are spread onto the flattened dough; locals say the onion layer should be fully half as thick as the crust. The silky mantle of onion is dotted with tiny, black Niçoise olives (most authentically unpitted, so watch out), and salty anchovy fillets are sometimes added in the form of the fermented anchovy sauce
pissala
, the origin of the name of this savory pie. (Although innovators might add tomatoes and/or cheese, either would compromise the purer, leaner contrast of sweet onions, salty olives, and anchovies with crisp, yeasty bread.) The pissaladière is finished with a sprinkling of sweet-scented thyme and oregano or marjoram, and then baked on a rectangular tray in a very hot oven, preferably made of stone and wood-fired for an extra-smoky burnish.

Sold in markets and bakeries by the slice, pissaladière is best enjoyed on the go, as part of a scenic stroll through the Cours Saleya in the heart of Vieux Nice—though dawdlers may find it just as pleasant to enjoy a slice and a glass of the local rosé, Bandol, at one of the cafés.

Where:
In Nice
, at the open-air market on the Cours Saleya.
Further information and recipes:
Flavors of the Riviera
by Colman Andrews (1996);
French Provincial Cooking
by Elizabeth David (1999);
saveur.com
(search pissaladiere).
See also:
La Grand Bouffe
Lamb with Pissaladière
.

The fish should be snowy, mild-flavored, carefully steamed so it is pearly and moist, and, needless to say, sea-breeze fresh. It should be adrift in a heavenly, satiny sauce that, convention dictates, can be made properly only by a female cook holding forth in what is known as a
cuisine de mère
or mother restaurant—a traditional keeper of the flame with the eye, wrist, nose, and patience necessary to produce this seemingly simple sauce that can so easily go wrong.

The preparation begins with finely minced shallots, sending forth their onion-garlic essence as they are sweated in a combination of red wine vinegar, white wine, and sometimes a few drops of fish stock. Meanwhile, unsalted butter is constantly whisked to its foamy melting point in the top of a double boiler set over water that is smilingly hot, but not bubbling, lest the sauce curdle.

Slowly, gradually, the fragrant shallot mass is whisked into the butter, one spoonful at a time, until all is absorbed and the sauce has the smooth consistency of hollandaise. Then
the rush is on, as the sauce must be served at once, spooned over the hot, steamed fish (most classically it is bass, pike, or turbot) graced with a few small, steamed white potatoes. And, fair warning, asking for a piece of lemon might have you ejected from the restaurant.

Further information and recipes:
French Country Cooking
by Elizabeth David (2011); for beurre blanc sauce,
Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1
, by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, and Simone Beck (1961);
cookstr.com
(search beurre blanc).