The Kings of Pastry: "Be a Man, this is the MOF!"

Recently Matt and I watched the documentary KINGS OF PASTRY, where we learned all about what it means to be a Meilleur Ouvrier de France. Sometimes I'll walk by a cheese shop or a patisserie, and outside it will proclaim "Meilleur Ouvrier de France" outside, which mean "Best Craftsman in France", but I figured this was just a marketing ploy, kind of like every pizza shop on 6th Avenue proclaiming itself Best Pizza in New York.

But no! Meilleur Ouvrier de France is a real thing, a real serious thing they give out to craftsmen in everything from pastry to hairstyling to wickerwork to - yes - taxidermy. The medal ceremony takes place at the Sorbonne in the presence of the President of France. And, at least as a Meilleur Ouvrier in pastry, you get to wear three stripes in the color of the French flag on your chef's jacket, and if you're caught doing this and you haven't won the competition, you can be jailed for fraud.

So it is serious business. And, like everything in France, serious business means serious acronyms, so it's not Meilleur Ouvrier de France, its MOF (pronouced to rhyme with "cough").  KINGS OF PASTRY follows three different pastry chefs, all of whom are vying for the title, and must go through a grueling three day competition where they have to make everything from candy to wedding cakes to sugar sculpture. Here's a pic of what I mean:

Yes, that is all made of sugar!

 Let me just say, I never thought a movie about pastry could be so dramatic. There's rage, tears, and macho attitude:  "Be a man, this is the MOF!" says one judge to a competitor who is about to cry over his broken sugar sculpture. And after seeing what these guys go through to make the sculptures, I was about to cry as well.

There's also a lot of structural engineering involved in pastry design. One of  the chefs explains how he makes his domed, multilayer wedding cake by drawing a cross-section and filling in the layers for us  "...Praline, then mousse, now raspberry, more mousse and then here at the end ... the crunchy". They have to put the outer layer in a blast freezer for the cake to hold its shape. Once I saw all the engineering involved, I understood the machismo a little better ... What guy doesn't want a blast freezer, really?

After watching the film, we realized that we had a MOF right in our neighborhood, Arnaud Larher - he's actually one of the winners in this film, though not one of the chefs  they followed. So of course, we had to try out his pastry. And they were delicious -really, MOF pastry is a cut above.

This is a Mosaique cake with basil and lime.

Arnaud Larher
53, rue Caulaincourt, 75018 Paris
Tel. +33 (0)1 42 57 68 08
Fax +33 (0)1 42 57 68 22
Métro: Lamarck-Caulaincourt
Hours: Mon. to Sat. 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 3:30 p.m.to 7:30 p.m.; Sun. 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Jour du Macaron

Readers, I'm going to shock you. Until just weeks ago, I had NEVER had a Parisian macaron.

Well, okay, I guess that's not strictly true since I had some frozen ones from Picard once at someone's house, but I'm not going to count that. I had never hit the big spots for this most famous of French cookies - Laduree and Pierre Herme. So when the Jour du Macaron rolled around this year, I knew it was time.

Actually, this Jour du Macaron thing was all new to me. Organized by Pierre Herme, the "bad boy of French pastry" (what does that mean? I'll get to it), this is a relatively new charity event that each year donates to a different cause by giving away macarons for a voluntary donation. Yes, give a penny, get a macaron. Stores all over town do it, and of course it works out great for them as well, since once you have one macaron you are basically hooked.

Yes, these are the crack cocaine of cookies, as may have been reported to you already. I kind of couldn't believe how good they were. I had spent a lot of time dismissing them in my mind as a kind of dainty, girly because of the way they look - but they are freaking delicious and don't need to be girly at all.

The king of making the macaron a thing of robust, masculine deliciousness is Pierre Herme, who on occasion puts foie gras in his macarons - which is actually AMAZING.The chocolate foie gras macaron was so good I got an extra six of them, then went back the next week for MORE, only to find it was a special flavor he did only for Jour du Macaron. Rats.

But as Pierre Herme is the pioneer of the "creative" macaron, there are lots of other interesting flavors, including Jasmine, Mandarin Orange/Olive Oil, Earl Grey Tea, Rosewater, and Lychee. And they are all AMAZING. I am jumping on the Pierre Herme bandwagon. Thank god he's got several Paris locations.

THE PARIS LETTER: Tuileries and Chocolate

Hello there and welcome to the BLOG version of The Paris Letter -

Today I'm 38 weeks pregnant, officially full term - and, coincidentally, the 7 billionth person on the planet will be born this week, somewhere in the world. I mentioned this to Matt - since I'm full term, seems like we've got a shot here. Matt's first response was " Does it come with a cash prize?" 

Here is my response: 

So, yes! For the next two weeks, as we await the appearance of our kid, I'm trying to do just what I WANT to do, with my limited energy - so today, the Tuileries Garden and Angelina hot chocolate, after the jump: