La Pâtisserie de la Semaine

La Pâtisserie de la Semaine is

Duo Chocolat - Caramel Beurre Salé

This small but evil creation is moist chocolate cake filled with creamy chocolate and rich salted caramel. Thanks Pain et Compagnie! Pain & Cie is one of my favorite places for lunch and now I'll be making up all kinds of excuses to drop in just to have one of these.

Previously featured pastries:

Bolero
Tuile
Kasama
Zephyr à la violette
Swedwich
Italian Chocolate-Meringue
Canelé
Hérisson

Tartelette au citron meringuée

Pavé aux fruits

Tarte aux pommes
Tarte Amandine aux Framboises
Succès

Sidewalk Sale

All the shops along the main street in the posh Sixième neighborhood have been having sidewalk sales for the past couple of days. And what did I buy? New bedding for the guest bedroom which is not exciting but necessary. Don't get me wrong, it's very fine bedding or as the ladies in the shop told me, "It's very refined Madame". In any case we had a beautiful, sunny day which made it nice for sidewalk shopping.

La Banane and Grand Voyant Medium International

This funny little character plastered onto a wall downtown reminds me of a French expression I learned this week "avoir la banane", to have the banana, which means to smile. I don't know, he's yellow and he seems to look happy. Or maybe I was just looking for a way to fit "avoir la banane" into a post.

And remember way back last fall when I posted about the notice from Monsieur Soriba the Grand Psychic (SEE IT HERE)? We get these notices in the mail all the time and I love reading about all the things they promise to do for you. The one today came from Professeur Dia. He's one-upped Monsieur Soriba because he's a Professeur and not just a run of the mill Monsieur. And if we further compare and contrast the two we see that Prof Dia is a Grand Voyant Medium International while Soriba is just a plain old Grand Voyant Medium. Prof Dia also says he can solve problems within 3 days, which I believe is 72 hours. Soriba said he could solve problems in 74 hours (??) What does he need that additional two hours for? Clearly he's not as fast at problem solving as Prof Dia who also makes the bold claim that he can definitively end your romantic relationship problems and even goes so far as to say that he won't accept payment until you see results! Soriba only says his results are 100% guaranteed but he takes the cash up front. Fishy. 

Under wraps, Slacklining and Floating Bars

 Scaffolding wrapped with faux windows and real advertising encases a hotel under renovation

I see these guys a lot practicing their tightrope skills by the river. It's actually called slacklining. I guess if you want better balance and cat-like reflexes, this is the exercise for you.

After work, the floating bars and restaurants along the Rhone become packed with people during the summer

You Knew It Had to Happen

Since I live in France and I like to cook I've wondered how long it would be until I attempted a cooking class. Answer: Exactly one year. Today was the day thanks to a friend who went to L'atelier des chefs (chef's workshop) and loved it. She told me about it and it sounded like fun so I signed up for one class. Now understand, this is a French chain of cooking workshops that anyone can sign up for and no cooking skills are needed. So the chef doesn't teach you how to cook in general he only teaches you how to cook one recipe. They offer a multitude of different courses but today we took the 30 minute lunch time class. When you walk into the kitchen all the ingredients are there and already measured out. The chef shows you how to prep each ingredient and then he assists in the actual cooking, today we chopped and sauteed a lot. Afterwards, the food is plated up and taken into a side dining room where you sit and eat your lunch. It was so much fun and for the price, less than 20 dollars, you learn something, drink a glass of wine and have lunch as well as dessert which is included, though it's already made ahead. Today we had Chef Olivier who was super nice and patiently answered all of our questions in French and English. He did give us lots of little cooking tips like how to correctly handle a knife when slicing things, the best way to chop a shallot, how much and when to add salt to water for boiling pasta and his secret ingredient for the cream he put on top of the exotic fruit salad dessert. 

A couple of friends in the class

So what did we make and why is that Popeye flyer picture at the head of this post? I'll start by telling you what we made: Baked salmon with black olives and tagliatelle with spinach and in French: Pavé de saumon rôti aux olives noires, tagliatelle aux épinards. The preparation was not complicated and it was, necessarily, all done within 30 minutes. We made a shallot, tomato, and black olive garnish which went on top of the salmon. The salmon was fried, skin side down, for about 3 minutes then went into the oven for 5 minutes. We also made a light cream sauce with mushrooms, shallots and spinach for the fresh tagliatelle. That drizzle on the plate is cream of balsamic which they sell in squeeze bottles at the workshop and, in the words of Ferris Bueller, if you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up. You can do just that HERE

Now to answer the second question which is why is Popeye pictured on the flip side of the recipe card that was handed out? Because there's a comic strip festival coming up in the middle of June and they are tying it into some of their classes. We used spinach in our recipe today and evoked Popeye I suppose, though he ate canned spinach and of course, Chef Olivier would never do such a thing.

The exotic fruit dessert (mango, kiwi, passion fruit, lime juice and the not so exotic green apple) topped with thick whipped cream and sprinkled with toasted sesame seeds. The secret ingredient? A little bit of curry.

La Pâtisserie de la Semaine and Summer

The pâtisserie of the week is the Bolero.  It's covered in a thin coat of raspberry sauce with two sugared almonds on top. The inside is an almond-vanilla mouse with a raspberry compote inside and it sits on a thin almond wafer. It's the same concept as the Zephyr à la violette but this had bold flavors whereas the zephry had a subtle and unexpected flavor combination.

Here is my bolero all wrapped up and hidden away in it's little to-go box. I've never mentioned the nice way pâtisseries bundle up little individual pastries to go. They nearly look gift wrapped.

Previously featured pastries:
Tuile
Kasama
Zephyr à la violette
Swedwich
Italian Chocolate-Meringue
Canelé
Hérisson

Tartelette au citron meringuée

Pavé aux fruits

Tarte aux pommes
Tarte Amandine aux Framboises
Succès

Summer is here at last....

Late afternoon sun on the pastel-colored buildings along the Saône river

People sitting and walking along the Rhône river - just down a bit further from this spot are all the floating bars and restaurants which have been packed full of people out enjoying the first real days of summer.

Yes, I Know

I know I'm late again this week with the patisserie de la semaine. I've dropped the ball and I'll try to get back on track before the weekend. But for now I've posted some photos from our latest bouchon experience. Bouchons are the "meat and three", "the comfort food",  "the soul food" and /or "the food the French grandmother you never had made" restaurants of Lyon. 

I ran across the bouchon Le Musee recently on a shopping excursion downtown and wondered about it. After reading outstanding reviews on Trip Advisor (see the reviews HERE) we gave it a try. My dinner was fantastic. I had the chicken liver salad and pork cheeks for the entree. My friend was underwhelmed with his dinner however. He had the white asparagus salad and the quenelle for his entree. He said it was good but it wasn't anything to write home about. I will say this: the quenelle at Abel is the best I've had anywhere. Take into account I'm not exactly a quenelle expert but if the measure of a good quenelle Lyonnaise is the perplexing dual consistency of firm and at the same time utterly light then Abel has the market on them.

The check at Le Musee is delivered to the table in a "bone". Cute, no?

The back door of the restaurant opens into a traboule and the restaurant owner, armed with a flashlight, will give you a quick tour. The above not so impressive passageway opens into a stunning renaissance courtyard. That's Lyon!

Looking into one of the restaurant kitchens from the traboule

A funny sign inside the dining room declares, "Everything in the pig is good".