Un week-end à Paris

I spent the weekend in Paris.

It was supposed to be a sort of quiet adventure and I was supposed to find the Sciences Po campus and talk a lot with Ashley, who would be meeting me there after a flight from Madrid.  It half-turned out that way.

The week before, I received the most casual Facebook message from Jennifer:

"Coming to visit you and Ash in Paris"

So we haphazardly planned to meet but didn't come to a real conclusion, but despite the vague nature of our plans, I made a dark chocolate fudge red wine cake and an apple tarte tatin and when Friday rolled around, I packed my backpack, wrapped the baked goods in foil, and got on a TGV to Paris.  I navigated the Paris metro in the very basic way--by riding lines to the end and transferring at large hubs.  The hostel that I'd booked for myself and Ashley was close to the Bastille stop, and I passed the opera house and an enormous pillar of a monument before I reached the side street of the hostel.  I'd booked a room for two so that we could sleep when wanted and also make as much noise laughing and watching TV or what have you as well as eliminate most of the creepy factor that scares me away from hostels.  I checked in and sat on the top bunk for about an hour before Ashley appeared.  I stuffed apple pie down her throat, hugged her, and then we headed back out to explore.

Our Friday evening consisted of a sort of lazy wandering up and down the street, scouting out stores and cafes to check out the next day and catching up on everything that had happened in our lives since she headed off to New Zealand and I went to Morocco.  It was a lot to talk about and we bought sandwiches and a bottle of cider and talked some more back at the hostel.

The next day, we rolled out of bed and went shopping.  After heading immediately to a sort of vintage pin-up shop at which we tried on all the dresses and chatted with the amiable storekeeper, we just sort of headed down the street and popped into every store that we took a liking to, all the while continuing to talk.  We bought more sandwiches for lunch and after dropping our purchases off at the hostel, we decided to get on the metro and see more of central Paris, or what we always thought Paris was--the Eiffel Tower, the Champs Elysees, the Louvre.

We rode the metro to the Champs Elysees stop, fully expecting to wander down the street to the Louvre perhaps, or l'Arc de Triomphe, but instead when we emerged from the station, we looked past the statue of Charles de Gaulle and were greeted by an expansive, sparking, and crowded Christmas market.

We immediately got ourselves cups of hot wine, and then set out to take in as much of the market as we possibly could.  There were jewelry stands, leather bound journals, all sorts of foods and candies and silly looking hoods from Canada and it was incredible.  We reached the Louvre, turned around, and then went though the other side of the market, munching on crepes and merveilleux and marveling at everything we laid our eyes on.

The next morning, we found breakfast in a cafe close to the hostel: pain au chocolat, orange juice, a hot drink--and then proceeded to browse the bookstores that happened to be open on a Sunday before returning to the hostel to meet Jennifer.

We ate and then went straight back to the Champs Elysees metro stop, where we returned to the Christmas market and then to the Louvre.

I have only been to Paris once before, and it was for one day, and it was a Tuesday, and so the Louvre was closed.  This time, however, it was definitely not closed, and the line was nearly non-existent, and so we went.

The Louvre is breathtaking, from the vaulted ceilings to the famous art pieces that you've studied in classes from middle school to university, to the sculptures that figure into the glossy coffee table books that you find at bookstores.  Michelangelo's slaves, Winged Victory, Venus de Milo...we must have seen 10% of the museum before becoming achy and hungry.  It will be a goal for me during the semester there to see the rest of the place.  We returned to the Christmas market for dinner (baked potatoes and crepes and mushroom-chicken pastry), wine (I convinced them to try Chinon red, from the Loire valley), and more talking.

The weekend was a much needed pick-me-up--I got to see some of my favorite people, I got to explore the city that will be my hope for five months, and I experienced the beautiful Paris Christmas market.  Also, I didn't touch a fork the whole weekend, sustaining myself on pastries and crepes and apple pie and chocolate cake and waffles and one cheeseburger.

Patisserie Megan

On Sunday the 14th, I Skyped Victoria and she told me to watch The Grand Budapest Hotel, which I had not yet seen.  I then watched it, watched it again, bought the soundtrack, and this is where the pastry craze that has seized my life began.

That next Tuesday, I had a free morning, so after heading to Monoprix and getting my hands on pastry bags and the relevant groceries, I started my pate-à-choux, the dough used to make little cream puffs.  The dough was incredibly easy and the custard to fill the little puffs was even easier.  I spent most of the morning in the kitchen, piping dough onto sheets, then piping cream into puffs, and then brought the leftovers to conversation club.

On my way home from conversation club, I bought two bars of flavored chocolate and a carton of eggs.

The next morning, I started working on two more batches of custards--Lindt chocolate orange bar and blueberry bar went into two different pots.  You only need yolks for custard, so I whipped the whites and stuck them into the oven as meringues, which were flat and sad and burnt, but still sugar, so I ate them anyway.

After ballet on Wednesday, I made two batches of pate-à-choux and produced two enormous batches of puffs, glazed them in raspberry royal icing, and stuck them in the fridge.  They lasted for an enormous amount of time and I brought them on the bus that weekend for my friends on the trip to the chateax de la Loire.

And after that, I just didn't stop with the pastries.  The next week, I tried for choux pastries one more time and this time they puffed up, enormous and perfect and I filled them with the leftovers from the rest of the custard batches.

After spending some time on Pinterest, I decided to give puff pastry sheets a try, and after stocking up on three rolls and checking carefully on the Pinterest guides, I made little Danish pastries out of jam and kiri cheese, braiding the dough or just smushing the pockets of dough closed: apricot and cheese, cheese on its own, raspberry jam, strawberry jam, nutella with cinnamon...I had a pile of them.  With the last sheet, I made a rose shaped apple tart--the usual French design with the thinly sliced apples and I glazed it with apricot.

Dany tasted it and then had another slice and then three little nutella braids and told me that I should leave my studies and start baking, and I think if a French woman tells you that your pastries are that good, you've accomplished something.

Today, I kept up with the puff pastry line, with a ham and goat cheese and kiri cheese and mustard puff pastry pie and a rose design apple and plum tart.  I don't think I'm ever going to stop with this.  There's something extremely satisfying about checking back on the oven and watching pastries puff up and brown under the egg wash and the apples and plums caramelize and then of course presenting it to friends and being all happy when they appreciate what you've made.

So once I move back into a dorm situation, come find me and I will probably have baked goods.

Un gout du Maroc et un grand brunch à Nantes

I didn't end up writing a post on the fifth week, and that's mostly because nothing unusual happened on the fifth week.  I went to classes without interruption from strikes.  I chatted at conversation club hour.  I ate a lot of bread.

On Friday the 10th, I went shopping with Sydney, because we sort of needed things and we also mostly wanted things.  We poked our heads into Kiabi, which advertises "fashion at a small price."  We found many small prices, and we also found sweatshirts supporting the fifty-two states of America.  Whether this is a simple mistake or some sort of misguided campaign for the statehood of Puerto Rico and Washington DC, we aren't completely certain.  H&M and Zara seem to be the same everywhere.  We walked around a little more before Sydney brought up my earlier plans to find a bakery called Al Rayan.  I'd told her that I was going to find it on Saturday, but since we had little else to do, we hopped on the tram, rode it just one stop, and found the bakery easily.

Al Rayan is a Middle-Eastern bakery.  Every plate of pastries has a small sign stuck into it with the name of the pastry, its country of origin, and the name in Arabic script.  I have been craving chebakia ever since I left Morocco, and I had some of them the night I left.  Chebakia are fried twists of saffron dough, soaked in honey and coated in sesame seeds.  I love them especially because I learned how to make them with Ouafae and Lima in Rabat and two-year-old Lina learned alongside me.  I beelined past the marzipan fruits and the almond cookies and the honeycomb pancakes and pointed at the chebakia right when I laid eyes on them.

"I would like the chebakia," I told the proprietor.  "I would like six of them."

I ate two of them right there and the other four were gone before Sunday.

That Sunday, Sydney, Audrey, and I met for brunch at Tabl'o Gourmand, which I mentioned in the scavenger hunt post.  This time we headed for the other location, as we were worried that the large location in the center of town would be crowded.  Therefore, we found ourselves at the slightly smaller location close to the IES center, a cozy cafe tucked into a side street.  It was raining and it was also ten in the morning on a Sunday and we were essentially alone. We shared the basket of bread--still warm and soft and spread with violet jelly and cherry jam and Ovamaltine, the crunchy nutella, essentially.  I decided to go all in for the Tabl'o Gourmand signature brunch, which came in waves.

First thing was a chocolate chip muffin and a coffee, followed by plain yogurt with honey, scrambled eggs with fried bacon, and then the brunch salad.  At Tabl'o Gourmand, the brunch salad is a cup or so of salad surrounded by three different cured meats and three literal bricks of cheese.  Warning:  if you eat the whole Tabl'o brunch like I did, you might not eat anything else for the rest of the day.

After the brunch, Sydney reminded us that it was Fete de la Science in Nantes, which meant that the natural history museum was free.  If a museum that you normally pay for is free, you should go see it.  I really do love the natural history museum at Nantes--it is structured in levels, from geology to mammals and sea-creatures, and then birds and seashells on the loft level.

And so that weekend was much more exciting than the week that preceded it.