If there’s one pastry from France that’s close to being a consensus for a wedding cake, it is the “piéce montée”. It’s also used for other celebrations, its main interest is that unlike american wedding cakes it’s actually good. When done by pros, it is this perfect conical shaped tower of cream puffs and caramel. It gets to be pretty high. It’s also called croquembouche or “croque en bouche” which can be literally translated by “crunches in the mouth”. Here … Click here to read the rest of the article

Then, it was on to dinner.

My mom recently offered me a comic book illustrating spending a couple years in the kitchen at l’Arpege, Alain Passard’s famed restaurant in Paris.

You can find it at http://amzn.to/wEL20c but be warned, it’s in French.

Passard is supposed to be the vegetable whisperer and attempting to reproduce his recipes although possible is probably vain because he grows everything himself in his farms and has staff attending to the vegetables and fruits to perfect … Click here to read the rest of the article

Thursday was Someone Special’s birthday. Pressure was on to try to wow her with culinary delights. After the mandatory and oh so French croissants for breakfast, I had to prepare a “light” lunch. You will soon see that the light part only had to do with quantity but, in theory, you can eat anything and be healthy if you do it in … hum … moderation.

After looking around for appetizing recipes, I decided on the “Vanilla Scallops”

It was … Click here to read the rest of the article