I’ve been a little lax in my duties around here reporting on chocolate. In my defense, I’ve been sidetracked by bacon, seaweed, and kimchi. But man cannot live by chocolate alone, even in Paris. Speaking of chocolate, when I was doing research for my chocolate book, it was challenging to find people to talk about what they do. I met with one representative from a…
Seriously my friends, is there anything better than chocolate and toffee together? Especially when the toffee has a brown sugar-flavored buttery snap and luscious chocolate is smeared over the top so it hardens and melds with the crackly caramelized matzoh underneath. When a marriage is this good, a picture can only do partial justice to the love that exists between the happy couple. The Caramelized Matzoh…
Living in a foreign country, as an outsider, you tend to notice lots of contradictions. If you try to learn the native language, like I am, you’ll notice there’s all sorts of curiosities specifically designed to trip your up. When people ask me what I do all day, they don’t realize that just to do something as basic as write a check, I often have…
One of my favorite things to do in Paris is just wander around, often in neighborhoods that aren’t really known for anything special. There’s always something interesting to find; shops specializing in vintage hairbrushes and combs, or locksmiths for doors installed only during the reign of Napoléan III. And of course, I’m usually on the lookout for food, and am especially keen when I come…
I’m fortunate to live in Paris, a city where there’s an unusually large amount of very good chocolate shops. With so many to choose from, it’s hard to whittle it down to just the few, most perfect ones. But I must. And one of them is John-Charles Rochoux. His jewel box of a shop is located just off the bustling rue de Rennes. It’s not just…
Although most of the comments and messages I get are friendly and kind, a few do slip through that are less-than-complimentary. A majority of them illuminate the errors of my ways by pointing out the faults in my cross-cultural observations. So I was delighted when I found Socio-Site Scan v1.01, some brand-new software which allows me to simply input all my blog entries, and tells…
The hardest of all foods to photograph, I’ve learned, are chocolate-covered marshmallows. The bright, fluffy, vanilla-flecked cubes of sweet, airy marshmallow in contrast to the thin, intensely-flavored coating of bittersweet chocolate certainly presents a challenge. I futzed around a bit, trying to figure out how to show the lofty-white cubes in juxtaposition to the coating of pure, dark chocolate. They’re such diverse colors and textures…
I’d like to introduce you to Henri Le Roux. And if you don’t know who Henri Le Roux is, it’s time that you did. Le Caramelier; Salted-Butter Caramel Spread There’s a lot of very talented chocolatiers and pastry chefs in France. Some are quite famous, and some just go to work everyday and do their jobs well. A few have rather large egos, others are…
Summer is here in Paris. It arrived without warning last week and was brutal. It was hot, and it hit around 31°(about 88°) and so humid, I faced a real-meltdown of chocolate. And just about everything else around here, including me, suffered the same fate. Just when no one couldn’t bear it anymore, it stopped. Then we had rain and cool weather. It’s so other-worldly…
A
Get David's newsletter sent right to your Inbox!
Sign up for my newsletter and get my FREE guidebook to the best bakeries and pastry shops in Paris...
