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Books : Paris Sweets: Great Desserts From the City's Best Pastry Shops |
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Books : Paris Sweets: Great Desserts From the City's Best Pastry Shops |
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by: Dorie Greenspan
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.86094436 EAN: 9780767906814 ISBN: 0767906810 Label: Broadway Manufacturer: Broadway Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 224 Publication Date: November 12, 2002 Publisher: Broadway Release Date: November 12, 2002 Sales Rank: 78212 Studio: Broadway Editorial Review: Related Items:
Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Vive la France, vive le chocolat!Dorie Greenspan's delightful, mouthwatering tour of Paris's patisseries in Paris Sweets: Great Desserts from the City's Best Pastry Shops is a gastronomic tour though the tempting varieties of French desserts, including cookies, simple cakes, tarts, pastries, more elaborate cakes, and base recipes. Illustrated with charming pen-and-ink drawings (no photos of finished desserts, unfortunately), Dorie's fascinating backstories on the numerous Parisian bakeries and their signature recipes make for an enjoyable read. Dorie's familiarity with these cafes really lends her an air of authority when discussing the finer points of pastries and ingredients, as does the fact that she's a resident of Paris and not merely a visitor. The selection of cookies includes delicate hints of citrus and spices such as anise, ground nuts, and classic cookies such as financiers and madeleines. For fans of chocolate, there are several chocolate cakes (pound cake, chocolate almond cake, Grandmother's creamy chocolate cake) and more unusual selections such as the Alsatian Kouglof (the original inspiration for the Bundt pan) and flan. When I think of Parisian desserts, my first vision is an elegant tart, and Paris Sweets doesn't disappoint. Included are several chocolate tarts, one garnished with apricot jam and ripe bananas, a baked apple tart, and an unusual tea-flavored Tarte Tatin from Mariage Freres. Also included are the custardy fruit tarts, originally from Limousin, known as clafoutis, a whole-lemon tart, a fig-and-citrus tart, and unusual variations such as coffee, strawberry and marshmallow, and darjeeling tarts. Perhaps the most emblematic of Paris's desserts are its pastries: creme brulee, chocolate mousse, chocolate bread pudding, ali-babas, coffee eclairs, and sumptuous hot chocolate thousands of miles above and beyond lame American Swiss Miss powder imitations. Simple yet elegant, these are described in exacting detail so that even a beginning home cook should feel confident enough to attempt them. The last section, grand gateaux, covers elaborate, time-consuming cake creations such as Bacchus (golden raisins soaked in rum, three moist, chewy almond and cocoa cake layers, slabs of mousse-like ganache, and a dark chocolate glaze), Opera cake (three layers of almond cake soaked in coffee syrup, a layer of espresso buttercream, a layer of bittersweet chocolate ganache, and topped with chocolate glaze), Chocolate Temptation (a layer cake made from cocoa cake saturated with chocolate syrup and spread with raspberry jam and covered with a bittersweet ganache), Blanc-manger, Kings' Cake (yes, this is probably the origin of the N'Awlins Mardis Gras King Cake since it was served at Epiphany and similarly contains a hidden trinket), and Mille-feuille (layered puff pastry filled with pastry cream). Base recipes include pastry creams (almond, vanilla), pate sucree (sweet tart dough), and puff pastry. Also included is a brief source guide (snail mail and URLs) and the addresses of all cafes and patisseries mentioned in Paris Sweets. Thoughtfully, recipes are given in Imperial and Metric measurements (supplies, ingredients, and oven temperatures). Most include ingredients that are easy enough to find if you happen to live near a well-stocked grocery store, or better yet, a Williams-Sonoma. Like with any dessert, you will want to use the best chocolate you can afford (Cluizel is always a solid choice), since baking won't improve the quality of the raw ingredients. The end result of Paris Sweets are deceptively simple desserts that will transport you to the narrow streets and aged facades of Paris's historic patisseries. Even if you never make a single recipe, Dorie's writing is a rewarding journey by itself, especially with a steaming bowl of cafe au lait as you flip through this gem of a cookbook. Rating: - Charming Book, Magnificently Delicious RecipesI ordered this book because it was the only cookbook I could find that included a recipe for Opera Cake. Opera Cake is my husband's favorite dessert, and so I thought I would make it for his birthday. Well, unfortunately, I learned that the recipe for Opera Cake actually has six (yes, SIX) subrecipes, and would probably take me about 3 days to make ... and with a new baby, I wouldn't have three days to spend on a dessert. So the Opera Cake, the original rationale for getting the book, never got made. But still, I found it somehow heartening that such a complicated recipe could be broken down into readable and comprehensible component parts ... something that a mere mortal could actually reproduce in her own American home kitchen - if she had three days and didn't happen to have a newborn to cater to, that is. One small disappointment was that Greenspan doesn't give a recipe for almond macaroons (macarons), which were my favorite treat when I spent a little time in France. She just gives a lengthy description of how wonderful they are and says they are hard for the home cook to reproduce. I know she is right in saying so, as I did try to make them once at home using the recipe in Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook, and they turned nothing like the ones I'd had in France and I considered that recipe a failure. Still, on Amazon.fr there are about 20 different single-subject cookbooks in French on making macarons at home, so I still hold out hope that it's actually possible and I'll find a good recipe someday (or get around to ordering one of the French-language macaron treatises). That said, this cookbook is a delight in every other way. The book is partly a travelogue describing the atmosphere and offerings at Paris's most famous patisseries, and her writing is so evocative, and so charmingly illustrated with line drawings, that you while reading you tend to feel as if you were standing in front of a gleaming case of sweetly scented pastries with a rotund pastry chef behind the counter sending up clouds of artisanal flour as you contemplate your order in line behind an elegant femme in couture high-heels leading a poodle on a leash. Along with the travelogue descriptions you get the occasional informative discourse on ingredients such as chocolate and flour and eggs and how the ones the French pastry chefs use are different from ours. And, of course, there are recipes, wonderful recipes. I made the choclate sables, and they were easy, and totally addictive as Greenspan warns. And I made the hot chocolate and it was so rich I had palpitations afterwards, but the taste was worth the risk of a heart attack. (And it was also easy peasy to make. I called my mom and gave her the recipe over the phone.) Ten stars for this wonderful book. Rating: - authentic and amazingDorie Greenspan writes the best recipes. Over the past year, I've tried more than a dozen recipes from this book, and all are authentic and delicious. The recipes for madeleines, Anise Cookies, and the Pierre Herme's Korova cookies are especially noteworthy. Also, recipes in the cookies and simple cakes sections don't take very much time and are suitable for a beginning baker. Rating: - Best Little Cook Book I OwnI got this cook book because I'm looking into becoming a pastry chef who specializes in French desserts and this book is amazing. Everything I've made so far has come out brilliantly, I can't wait to make the rest. The instructions were very easy to follow, and all the tips and tricks really came in handy. I recommend this to anyone whose looking into a pastry career or anyone who just loves fine desserts.
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