Life According to a Three-Year Old

Kitten and a Curtain

We are back in Sauzet, comfortably reinstalled in our familiar gite.  Boulette, the dog, was ecstatic to see us; she recognized the car and ran to it whimpering before we had parked.  That evening she didn’t leave our side, clearly making sure that we weren’t leaving.  Gris Gris also gave us a warm welcome, for a cat, and immediately began begging for milk. 

Charlie and Me

Our arrival “home” had been kept as a surprise for Charlie.  When she came home from school, Isabelle said, “I wonder who that is in the house”.  Charlie looked at the car, then at the lights, and screamed, “they came back”!  She ran up the stairs, into the house, and bestowed upon us large, gleeful hugs.  Since then, we have been receiving special Charlie artwork and exuberant visitations. 

Lessons

My cooking lessons with Isabelle have also recommenced.  Macarons have now been added to my French food repertoire, at least in theory.  Macarons are definitely the most complicated and intricate recipe I have ever made, or helped to make.  They are a traditional French dessert composed of ganache, sandwiched between meringue cookies.  Ganache is a chocolate (dark or white) based cream.  We added pistachio oil, rose water, and violet essence.  My favourite was the violet ganache—ganache made with white chocolate, raspberry puree, and violet.  It tasted like a violet petal. 

Using the Pastry Decoration Bag to Apply Ganache

Macarons are fun because each flavour of filling and meringue can be a different colour; this also makes the recipe complicated.  For each colour of meringue, a new batter needs to be prepared.  Isabelle and I chose to make green and purple ones, one colour and batter for each of us.  Unfortunately, the green colorant reacted with the egg whites, so our green macrons didn’t rise. 

The meringue is placed in a pastry decoration bag (like those used to decorate cakes) and squeezed into perfect circles to be baked for 12 minutes.  My efforts with the pastry bag were disastrous, creating irregular, misshapen blobs.  After the meringues are baked, ganache is squeezed onto one, and another is placed carefully on top, thus creating the sandwich.  The finished results were delicious and looked like something Hansel and Gretel would eat. 

Adding the "Chapeau"

Cooking with Isabelle is so much fun.  I was dubbed her “sous-chef” and Charlie her “sous-sous-chef”.  While cooking, I learned some important distinctions.  One makes French meringue by adding sugar as the egg whites are beaten; French meringue is usually used to top pies or eaten as a cookie.  Italian meringue has the sugar added after the egg whites are whipped and is usually mixed into the batter to make it fluffy and light.  Also, although this has less to do with cooking, what we call French coffee presses are referred to as Italian coffee makers in France.  

Finished Macarons

This week, I also made my first quiche and madeleines.  I only attempted the quiche because my mother had caught a 24-hour virus, so I was designated to make dinner.  Quiche seemed relatively easy, and French, so I followed my mother’s semi step-by-step directions from the couch.  The leek-zucchini quiche turned out surprisingly tasty and gourmand.  I even think I could replicate the effect without directions, but we will see. 

My Marbled Madeleines

Since our time in France, I had yet to taste a madeleine, so I decided I needed to bake them myself.  To find a recipe, Isabelle lent me her book of about 50 madeleine recipes—both sweet and savoury.  I wavered between making the madeleines with a chocolate heart, the marbled madeleines, and the honey madeleines.  Ever lazy, I chose the simplest recipe: the marbled madeleines.  The recipe was fairly easy, even if it was in French.  The only problem was that we didn’t have any measuring cup, so I was converting grams to cups and then measuring the ingredients with a teacup with sloping sides.  The recipe was supposed to produce 16 perfectly marbled madeleines, but we got 26 madeleines instead.  I ran out of vanilla batter about halfway through, so we even got some pure chocolate cookies.  Those were my favourite.  Surprisingly, the madeleines tasted and looked exactly like they were supposed to—which is to say delicious. 

To celebrate our homecoming in Sauzet, we went to our local store and bought some Brie as a celebratory dessert.  There were two Brie’s for sale and so we asked our friend at the counter how they differ.  The one Brie, she said, was made with raw milk; it was very creamy, and good.  The other pasteurized Brie was “zero”.  I was expecting her to say zero fat, or zero flavour, but it was just zero and utterly worthless.  After tasting the good Brie, we decided that the only Brie for sale in Canada is “zero”.