Paris - Baking Memories

I ended up finding this book for free on Amazon: How to Travel the World on a Budget: These Tips Will Save You Thousands of Dollars! which had some interesting points, but the most important one I remember is that the author talks about how a lot of people go on a holiday to Europe with the goal of "doing Europe" - i.e. seeing all the typical sights, taking photos, and going from tour to tour. They usually end up exhausted afterwards, and while they are able to brag about having seen X sights in Y countries, and have a thousand photos to show for it, they can't remember really doing anything, because it was just a whirlwind of travel trying to pack all the sights into a short period of time. While I did want to see a lot of the sights, and I bought a Lonely Planet guide and made huge lists of things to see, MrFodder and I ultimately decided to take this vacation as an opportunity to actually have a vacation. Especially as we are both using all of our work leave that we have saved up, so it'll be a long time until we get another holiday. Plus, as the book pointed out, any photos we take are not going to be as good as those taken by a professional with a much better camera, and can be found with Google.

Though I have to say that this photo that MrFodder took of the Eiffel Tower was very nice.

As a sudden idea while in Paris, I thought I might try to take a baking class, and since seeing that episode of Yakitate Japan! where he bakes a 324 layer croissant! (if you haven't seen the show before, prepare yourself for large amounts of ham - it's a great show though, if you don't take it too seriously). Unfortunately, I clicked the wrong class, and ended up booking myself into a pastry and dessert class, and I emailed the instructor asking to change, but the croissant class was at the same time as our train to Berlin, so I couldn't make it anyway.

I went to the class and ended up having a fantastic time, we made:

Florentines:

Layer cake (and ladyfingers out of the leftover cake batter):

Crème caramel:

To be honest, I'm still in shock that I made those (even though it was under the supervision of an experienced pastry chef, so that helped a lot). But it was a great experience, and gave me a much better appreciation of French cuisine. The instructor was incredibly knowledgeable. The class I did was the French Pastry class at Pâtisserie à la carte (she changes up the desserts she makes in the class, so you may not get the same ones I did). I learned lots of tips, and I'm not sure if it's OK to post them all, but I guess since they're probably not super secret things if all chefs are doing it, here they are:

• when making caramel, don't stir it, otherwise the sugar will crystalise on the spoon - if it is cooking unevenly, just mix it around by shaking the pot. However, if the caramel includes honey or glucose, then it's OK to stir. For non-glucose caramel, you know it's done when the bubbles are really small, and the surface starts looking smooth - it'll happen, just have faith!
• egg whites don't like to be beaten too fast, so start beating them slowly, and increase speed over time
• when working with vanilla beans, cut in half and boil the seeds and the beans with the milk. Once the milk starts to boil, remove the beans, and squeeze them out to get the vanilla oil into the mixture and discard the beans (super important, as the vanilla oil is only released when heated, and that is what gives it a lot of flavour).
• when putting Crème caramel in the water bath, put a sheet of baking paper in the tray first, so that when the water starts bubbling, it will bubble into the paper and is less likely to bubble into your dessert.
• when making the custard for the Crème caramel, and mixing the hot milk with the beaten eggs, keep stirring the eggs as you pour the hot milk in, otherwise the hot milk will cook the eggs
• use skim milk for the Crème caramel, as the lower fat content is good for helping it keep its light texture

I enjoyed it so much that after returning, I ended up booking two more classes for when we're in Florence - a pasta making class, and a pizza and gelati making class (which MrFodder is also interested in, so he will be joining me this time).

Paris - First Impressions

The first thing we noticed about Paris was the fact that the Metro stations are definitely not built for people with luggage, or disabled people. There were no lifts going down to the train platform, so we had to lug our luggage up and down a heap of stairs. It made me glad that the only extra luggage we picked up in London was some chocolate frogs, a T-shirt, and some breakfast foods. Getting to our hotel was really straightforward, as it was just a short train-ride away - once we worked out how the Metro ticketing system worked (thank you very much Triposo Paris app!).

The first big hurdle we encountered was our lack of French. We tried to go out for dinner and the first few restaurants we went to had menus that were entirely in French, so we had no idea what to order. Plus, a lot of them seemed to have lots of smokers outside, so we moved on for cleaner air. It was also quite unfortunate that the place we stayed at was called Place d'Italie, which as it turns out, seems to be some kind of Little Italy, and there were so many Italian restaurants around. The Italy leg of our trip seemed so far away as we walked by Italian restaurant after Italian restaurant. Eventually, we found a place not far from our hotel that had an English menu.

MrFodder tells me that Paris is built on a kind of hexagonal structure, where there will be a central roundabout, and the streets kinda branch out from there, with rings of streets that go further and further out. As with London, the train network is amazing, and it's so easy to get from one place to another. The tickets you buy seem to be 2-hour tickets, and you can catch any train in the network in that time period. Each hex seems to have a station. In fact, there seem to be stations everywhere. One thing that did trip us up was that the map that was given to us from the hotel had a much smaller scale than the one we got from London. Things that were walking distance on the London map were much much further away on the Paris map.

I have to say, the first dinner we had in Paris was amazing. Even though pretty much everything in Paris is trying to kill me - it was hayfever season, and good luck finding something to eat that doesn't have dairy, eggs or nuts in it - I have to say that almost everywhere we went in Paris smelled delicious. The places that didn't smell delicious smelled like stale urine, so I'm hoping the delicious smells weren't just overriding the stale urine smells, but it was just so nice to walk down a street of restaurants and smell heaven.

Paris definitely gives a great first impression.