Farewell Feast...

I spent my last week in Bordeaux dashing around, trying to visit every possible church, museum, or chocolatine shop that I had somehow over looked during my four months as a bourdalaise, and revisiting places that I was particularly fond of.  For the very first time, I walked around the cathedral at Hotel de Ville that stands right next to tram stop I've been to at least twice a day this semester.  I had a second meal at L'Entrecôte, arguably the best restaurant in Bordeaux, that serves but one item:  a delicious cut of entrecôte served bleu, à point, or bien cuit with limitless fries and the best secret sauce ever made.  I danced the night away at the legendary nightclub, La Plage.  I spent my last mornings at my favorite markets.  And finally, I took the baker's wife up on her offer, and made dinner in Bordeaux's 300-and-some-year-old wood fired oven.

My friend Sarah, who is one of the few people I've ever met who can keep up with poetic waxings about everything Portland, spent the day par-baking pizza crusts, and preparing the best pizza sauce ever (she's still holding out on my with the recipe!!).  To the amusement of the bakers wife, who I don't think sees many people, leastwise a gaggle of Californians, invade her kitchen often, we spent the evening sitting around Le Boulange's large dining table, dressing our personal sized pizzas with mountains of cheese and fancy deli-meats, fresh cut vegetables and arugula leaves. 

With a well practiced grace, the bakers wife helped us shuffle our pizza pies into the vast oven on a large wooden paddle, and waited with us until the kitchen began to fill with the smell of warm tomato sauce and the crusts were perfectly crisp.

I have to disclaim now that I am not the biggest connoisseur of pizzas.  I've never eaten at The Cheeseboard (gasp!), and my dad usually orders Pacifica when he's feeling lazy.  So you don't have to believe me necessarily, when I say that these were the most amazing pizza I have ever eaten.

But, you should.

Each little pizza pie was cracked and bubbling , and the sauce and olive oil topping made puddles of charred goodness in cheese-heavy areas.  It was...merveilleuse.  And the absolute best way to spend my last night in Bordeaux.

My camera is still on the fritz, but lucky for me, I have photo snapping friends!  These pictures are from Sarah.  (Thank you, Sarah!  And send me the pizza sauce recipe!!)

Au Revoir, mes amis bourdalais!!

On to the next adventure!

Christmas Cookies...

I've given three oral presentations over the last weeks of finals and somehow managed to finagle them all to be about food.  Sort of telling, don't you think?

Naturally, the easy-bake lifestyle has been somewhat trying at times for someone so obsédé with all things edible, but no experience has been quite as painful and demoralizing as sitting in front of the toaster for ten hours this weekend as I put cookies in, two by two. (This process wouldn't have taken quite so long had nearly half the cookies not come out too unevenly baked and oddly shaped for public consumption.)

However! The kitchen itch can be overwhelming at times, and the debut of the holiday season necessitated some serious home baking, proper oven or no. (That, and I was sort of obligated:  I'd  signed myself up for The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap, back when I had access to kitchen facilities.  Oops.)

What began as a rather stressful affair however, soon turned into something else.  After hours of throwing blackened cookies into the reject pile, I selected three dozen nearly perfect Cardamom Sugar Cookies to send, all wrapped up in brown paper packages, to the community of fellow bloggers here in France.  Thirty-eight almost round toaster oven cookies was quite a feat, I must say, and it only got even more satisfying when, several days later, the mail lady began ringing the doorbell and bringing me boxes of cookies in return!

With the help of Hannah and Tsoleene, these wonderful boxes of Christmas Spice Shortbread, French Biscuits, and Chocolate Covered Flake Cookies quickly disappeared, and so the yuletide spirit settled on our little apartment, little 2ft. Christmas tree and all.

Thanks to Julie and Lindsay for putting on The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap! 

It was delicious!

Field Work...

Among the many jobs I've assigned myself over the past few months, the most difficult task just might be the hunt for the perfect cannelé.  

This petit pastry is a Bordelais specialty- no market is complete without at least two competing cannelé makers and, like the ever present Starbucks cafés at home, Bordeaux's famous cannelé shop, Baillardran, has a chain of shops all over town.  

These little fluted cookies/cakes/things, who share the same name as the french word for column (see the resemblance?) are hard to categorize.  With dark, caramelized exteriors and spongy insides, the cannelé might be best described as a baked custard.  The recipe is simple: milk, butter, sugar, eggs, etc.. But the process of creating the perfect cannelé, is not so easy.  After a little poking around in an attempt to solve why these are particularly famous in Bordeaux (a search that yielded many versions of an old story about baking nuns), I came across a full description on how these little cakes are baked via Chez Pim.

Cannelés here are fairly pricey.  A croissant will cost you approximately 85¢, but a cannelé de Bordeaux will set you back around two euro.  And now, after readin Pim's description of how they're made, I know why. (Pim, by the way, happens to be a friend of Kendra, small world.)
Each copper cannelé baking mold must first be coated with beeswax and white oil, and then the batter must rest for almost two days.  And, despite precautions, results are hit and miss.  Evenly baked cannelés are hard to produce and thus, bakers have taken to selling cannelés to patrons according to their crust preferences.  You can order them cru, moyen, or bien cuit, just like a steak! All this work for something that is, well, really not that amazing. 

I know, I know, I'm the worst pastry assistant in the world.

The taste, however, has done little to deter me in the hunt.  Amazing or not, I'll keep eating cannelés in the name of research, and maybe one day, I'll find one that will make it all worthwhile.  

Until then, here's the round up on some of the best cannelés in Bordeaux.

Marché au Chatron-  This Sunday morning market has some of the only hot cannelés I've tasted.  The baker here has a booth set up with an oven and he pulls out freshly baked cannelés all morning.  I get the little bag of six minis for two euros.

La Boulangerie- The cannelés here have a different texture than any of the other ones I've tried.  The crust, instead of being shiny and shell like, seems more a part of the pastry.  Worth trying for a taste comparison.

Ballairdran- I put off trying a cannelé from here for the longest time.  I assumed the big red awnings and giant window displays were a cover for inferior quality.  But they are quite popular.
And, after finally dragging myself in there, I have to admit , they are probably the best in Bordeaux.  The inside, particularly, stands above the rest; the custard is spotted with thousands of tiny vanilla bean seeds.

The search continues, but here's a secret:  I actually like cannelés better in California. La Boulange in the bay area, must add extra rum to their cakes- they're quite addictive.

Hibernating...

 I haven't felt very inspired to leave my bed this past week.  I've been mourning the loss of my camera, which after one to many adventures, finally past away on Thursday. After such a tragedy I decided, I just needed something comforting.  

And you know what, comforters are comforting.

Fancy that.

When I did finally pull myself out of this tangle of sheets, I set about baking away my sorrows.  However, after multiple cooking incidents ranging from miseyeballed metric conversions to the shortcomings of an easy-bake oven, this remedy was eventually abandoned and I resorted to staring at pictures of new cameras from the security of my bed.  During this period of wallowing, I compiled a list of things that I miss from home:

Baking Powder

Powdered Sugar 

Brown Sugar

Measuring Cups

Parchment Paper

Baking Sheets

A Food Processor

My Mom's Oven

Gas Stoves

Sharp Knives

Sundays

Breakfast

and

Stand Up Showers

Moping has been very productive for homesick blues, and naturally, this list could go on and on and on.  I've managed to intercept some of this melancholy however by adding things to my Svpply.  This dandy little website allows you to create a list of everything you want need, and in some odd way, making these lists makes me feel a wee bit better...

As for the status of my camera, I'm not really sure what I'm going to do quite yet.  Until I figure it out, I suppose I'll just post some b-roll from my iphoto; pictures that were taken pre-camera death, and in many cases, pre-French visa.  Check back for pictures of Portland, full moons, funny faces, and whatever else I can find in the recesses of my hard drive. 

Perhaps a little bit of nostalgia will drag me out from under this raincloud.