Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Tuesday, November 27, 2012 - No comments

The Great London Macaron Crawl: Part One



Paris may be the macaron capital of the world, but as the backdrop for my first ever macaron crawl, London far exceeded my expectations.

In case you didn’t read my previous post about the macaron crawl or have no idea what crawling has to do with little French cookies, let me enlighten you.  You’ve probably heard of a pub crawl - an event (sometimes organized, but more often spontaneous) during which participants move progressively from one drinking establishment to another, partaking at each stop along the way.  A food crawl is simply the edible version.  Urbandictionary.com defines a food crawl as “a multi-stop investigation of the best restaurants, meals, or specific items on the menu.  As in, ‘Bro, let’s do a taco crawl next week and find the best carnitas in town.’”

My dear friend Jessica was my taste-testing partner for the Great London Macaron Crawl.  Jess and I have this fun, global sort of a friendship.  We went to the same elementary school in Canada at the same time but never met each other until we shared a bunk bed at school in Tennessee.  Following our years down south, we both moved overseas, but layovers, visa runs and plain old “it-would-be-fun-to-see-you” trips have allowed us to meet up several times in our second homes of Turkey, Germany, and England.  

This time around, I was on my way to Scotland for a retreat, but since flying into London was much cheaper than flying straight to Glasgow, I decided to stop in and see Jess, who lives in Harpenden, England.  We had a whole Friday to spend exploring London, and I decided it would be fun to experience the city through a macaron crawl, sampling as many macarons as we could find in between checking out world-famous landmarks and royal residences.  Not that there was ever any doubt, but Jessica’s willingness to bring herself to the edge of a sugar coma for the sake of the Crawl proved to me that she is a true friend indeed.  

The plan was to try macarons from several different sellers and then do a proper taste-test, with ratings and comments.  I’d scouted out three spots for us to purchase our “specimens” and we were delighted to accidentally run across two others I hadn’t found online.  We bought all-day train/tube passes and plotted our course based on which iconic sites one should see on a first visit and which tube stations were closest to our macaron locations, leaving most of those for after dark when we would be done with posing for photos in front of monuments and ready to sit down with a cup of coffee and plate of pastries.

We decided on a rating scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being “knock-your-socks-off amazing”, and 1 being “what were they thinking?”  Our ratings took into account the texture, freshness and colour of both the macaron’s outer shell and the cookie itself, the flavour, thickness and “oomph” of the middle ganache layer, as well as the balance and overall taste experience of the whole package.

We started our morning with the Tower of London and a stroll over the Thames on the Tower Bridge, then headed down to the destination I was most excited about:  the Borough Market.  Tucked under one end of London Bridge, this collection of stalls was, as promised, a foodie’s paradise.  We sampled our way through the market, nibbling everything from strawberry balsamic truffles to garlic venison chorizo to mango ginger chutney, making sure to save a little room for a falafel wrap and some seriously frothy cappuccino from Monmouth Coffee.  


At the Comptoir Gourmand stand, nestled among the buttery croissants and the most massive meringues I’ve ever laid eyes on, we happened upon our first unplanned macarons of the day.  That inaugural raspberry macaron, followed by a coffee one, was the first macaron ever to pass across Jessica’s lips, marking not only the commencement of our Macaron Crawl, but of Jess’ newfound side-career as a macaron connoisseur.  While she didn’t feel qualified yet to make an educated judgment on it, she was pleasantly surprised by the softness of the cookie (she’d been expecting something drier) and the amount of flavour packed into its jam-filled centre and declared herself officially excited about the macarons to come.  

Jessica's first macaron 
As a (slightly) more experienced macaron sampler, I was pretty impressed by the texture of the ones from Comptoir Gourmand - a slightly crisp outer shell leading into a chewy cookie and pretty decent layers of jam and ganache, respectively.  I was disappointed by how little coffee flavour there was in the latter - it needed more of an espresso kick to really get my attention.  


Jess didn’t rate her first macarons, but my ratings were as follows:

Comptoir Gourmand

Raspberry: 3
Coffee: 2


As we made our way up to the London Bridge tube station, a pastel rainbow laid out on a table in front of a pastry shop caught my eye.  More unexpected macarons!  The flavours at Patisserielila were pretty standard - chocolate, vanilla, various fruity ones, and lavender, which seems to be a must at most macaron shops.  A sweet Italian girl who spoke very little English helped us select our next specimens:  blueberry, peppermint and strawberry.  The flavours of our previous macarons hadn’t quite faded from our palates, so we decided to hold off on eating them just yet.  


It took some careful maneuvering to protect our delicate treasures amidst the crush of bodies on the subway, but they survived more or less unscathed.  We dove into the package on the sidewalk in front of Parliament, just across from Westminster Abbey.  Although I am more a fan of a macaron with some substance to it, these ones, while thin, were admittedly bang on in texture as well as shape.  I’ve read that proper macarons are supposed to be perfectly flat - rounded tops are a no-no.  These ones were smooth with a nice crispy shell.  The “feet” (that bit of airy frill on the inner surface of the cookie) were well formed, although there wasn’t nearly enough filling for our liking.  

The strawberry one, when compared to the raspberry we’d bought at the Market, had much more of a “real fruit” taste to it.  The inside tasted just like strawberry preserves.  The colour of the blueberry cookie was a little unnerving - that sort of bluish gray that results from mixing too many colours of paint together.  It didn’t taste very blueberry-ish at all and was rather a let-down.  The peppermint one was a bright, unnatural blue and while the flavour of the filling was closer to peppermint patty than it was to toothpaste, it was still a bit overpowering even for a mint lover like me.  (Maybe if the outside had been chocolate....)

Now that Jess had two macaron experiences to compare, she jumped in on the ratings.  (Hers are first, mine second.)

Patisserielila

Strawberry: 4 / 4
Mint: 3 / 2.5
Blueberry: 2 / 2

We needed some time to walk off the Borough Market samples and the cookies we’d consumed, so it was perfect timing for the “royal stroll” bit of our tour.  We made our way from Westminster Abbey up past Churchill’s “War Rooms” and the Royal Mews from which Will and Kate emerged in their wedding day carriage.  St. James Park was alive with fall colour (and hopping with hungry squirrels!) and the walk up to Buckingham Palace was a stretch of leaf-kicking bliss.  The queen wasn’t home (according to the absence of “her majesty’s flag” on the roof) so we didn’t pop in for tea.  (I imagine she would’ve enjoyed a macaron with her Earl Grey, though!)  Instead we headed through the autumnal beauty of Green Park and down to the Underground to make our way to the first of our scheduled macaron destinations:  La Maison du Chocolat at Selfridges on Oxford Street.

Oxford, one of London’s poshest high streets, was crowded and alive with early Christmas cheer and the buzz of brand name bag-swinging pedestrians.  Selfridges was a whole department store’s worth of sensory overload.  We stuck to the main floor, weaving our way through the massive cosmetics hall and “edible novelties” section to La Maison du Chocolat’s counter.  

We were greeted by a refined gentleman in a suit named Barnabas.  He spoke softly and oh-so-politely, making us feel like we were wealthy, Selfridges-worthy customers and not simply chocolate-craving tourists.  His crisp British accent had the slightest hint of something foreign underneath, and Jess pegged him for a German in disguise.  

Our personal chocolatier patiently explained to us the various chocolate-themed macarons behind the glass.  They all had exotic names like Maracuja (dark chocolate and passionfruit) and Rigoletto (salted butter caramel.)  His personal recommendation was the new and as-yet-unnamed coconut one, so we included that in our purchase of a box of four.  The truffles in the display case looked amazing, but we stayed focused and stuck to our mission.  Goodness knows we didn’t need any other sweets!  

As we were paying, we explained our Macaron Crawl to Barnabas, detailing the ones we’d already consumed as well as the ones we planned to buy on our next two stops.  With a raised eyebrow and a smile, he told us to be sure to eat some real food in between so as not to pass out from the sugar high.  Point taken.

Pierre Herme, the second official stop on the agenda, also had a counter in Selfridges, so we headed there next.  I had read a lot about Pierre, how he used to work for Laduree (Paris’ original and most famous macaron shop) and later struck out on his own, opting for more daring (and sometimes downright bizarre) flavour combinations.  Being a fan of unusual flavour juxtapositions myself, his were the macarons I was most eager to try.  

Unfortunately, it was a “no photos allowed” situation - I would’ve loved to have captured the variety of cookie-jewels laid out before us.  (Not to mention it would have helped us figure out which macaron was which when we ate them!  Thankfully their website could assist us with that.)

Our box of seven macarons was covered with fun little drawings of London landmarks as well as one of Pierre himself.  We filled it with a couple variations of caramel and chocolate, a mint one (to compare with that of Patisserielila), an olive oil (risky, but I’d read good reviews online), a Metisse (carrot, orange and Ceylon cinnamon), an Eden (peach, apricot and saffron) and the smooth-sounding Truffe Blanche et Noisette (white truffle and hazelnut.)

From Oxford, we hopped back on the tube and made our way to Knightsbridge, home of the famed Harrods department store.  This was one London attraction Jess had yet to visit, so it was fun to be first-timers together.  But before we went in, we heeded the wisdom of Barnabas (and the sound of our rumbling stomachs) and grabbed a couple of 3 Pound meal deals at a Sainsbury’s grocery store across the street.  We sat down on the sidewalk opposite Harrods, admiring the seven storeys of Christmas lights and the “grown-up Disney Princess” jewelry displays in the windows.  To passersby, we probably looked a little like homeless people camped out on the pavement, eating our picnic suppers.  Though I suppose homeless people don’t often eat cranberry and Brie sandwiches.  Nor do they usually have Selfridges bags by their sides.

It took us a fair bit of wandering and asking before we located Laduree in Harrods, partly because we were searching amongst the confection counters in the food hall when it actually had its own separate cafe in a back corner.  The decor itself was intoxicatingly sweet, like a sophisticated version of Candy Land, all pink and frills.  As Laduree is sort of the “mother ship” of the macaron world, we had pretty high expectations of their quality, even if the flavours were a bit lacking in imagination.  We chose lemon, chocolate, salted butter caramel, and, the most intriguing one of the bunch, “Cassis et Violette” - blackcurrant and violet.

It would’ve been fun to sit and sip some tea and take in the ambience while we sampled our macarons, but we didn’t think they’d take kindly to us pulling out samples from their competitors, so we decided we’d do our taste-testing at the Starbucks across the street.  I stood in line while Jess did some strategic hovering to score us a table in the crowded cafe.  Armed with our coffees, a plate and knife (for ease of sampling) and a cup of water (to cleanse the palate between bites) I headed upstairs and joined Jess, who was as eager as I was to dig into the “big guns” of the macaronisphere.  (Not to be confused with the macaroni-sphere....)


We started off with the fruity macarons from Laduree and worked our way around the plate, moving through the caramels and finishing with the chocolate ones.  Jessica discovered that she much prefers fruity to fudgy, and somewhere towards the end she was uttering phrases like, “I’m going to have nightmares when I hear the word ‘caramel’ now...”  For someone who doesn’t even take sugar in her coffee, eight intense cookies in one sitting was a bit much.  Like I said, a true friend, sacrificing comfort for the cause.

With the exception of the Caramel a la Fleur de Sel, (which was, in Jess’ words, “Just like a melted Mackintosh Toffee....but too much salt, too much butter, too much caramel”) we were definitely fans of the Laduree flavours, impressed by how much punch they were able to pack into such a small space.  The “citron” was seriously like a mouthful of lemon meringue pie, aided by the fact that the texture of the cookie is pretty close to meringue.  It brought back memories of licking the pie filling bowl at the bakery where I worked in high school.  :)  Jess liked the plain chocolate more than I did, preferring its subtle flavour to the intensity of the ones from La Maison du Chocolat.  We both “mmmmm-ed” out loud when we bit into the Blackcurrant and Violet.  It was such a full flavour - tangy and sweet, but not too sweet - and we loved the way the jam seeped into the cookie, filling up far more of the internal space than we first guessed.  That one was a winner all around.

With relatively few bumps and wiggles here and there on the surface, these macarons were pretty uniform, with the cookie and ganache equally proportioned.  They had the feel of being the descendants of a long line of macarons hailing from an old and very precise recipe.  Makes sense, as Laduree is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year.

We rated Laduree as follows:

Lemon: 4 / 4
Salted Butter Caramel: 2 / 2.5
Chocolate: 3.5 / 2
Blackcurrant and Violet: 4.5 / 5 (The only 5 of the day!)


It seemed like the Maison du Chocolat macarons all had basically the same filling of chocolate ganache (fitting for a chocolatier), so the main flavour variations came in the cookies themselves.   The outer shells sorta fell apart as soon as you took a bite, in contrast to the Laduree ones, which really held together nicely.  The middles were thick and dense and seemed to take up a lot of space inside the cookie, which I loved.  (I was always the kid who always ate the icing and left the cake.)

The coconut was so-so, leading us to believe that our Barnabas, in true German form, preferred the “safe” flavours.  It had a smooth, balanced flavour (translation: boring) and didn’t really “wow” us.  We both agreed it should have had a chocolate outside and a coconut middle, more like a Bounty Bar, instead of the other way around.

I loved the description of the “Rigoletto” on the store’s website:  “The sweetness of lightly salted caramel with the milk chocolate ganache gently charms the palate.”  My palate was certainly charmed, though I would have preferred an even stronger caramel flavour.  Jess, on the other hand, found the filling to be a bit too much like pudding and wasn’t a fan at all.

The Quito seemed a bit like a brownie disguised as a macaron - it had the feel of a gooey Brazilian chocolate cake that you love but can’t take more than two bites of because it’s so rich.  I liked the slightly bitter aftertaste, with the chocolate decidedly on the darker side.  Jess, proving again to have a much more delicate palate than I, just thought it was too much all around.  (I don’t suppose this being the seventh one in half an hour helped!)

We both chose the Maracuja as our favourite from La Maison.  The chocolate flavour hit first, with the sweet tang of the passionfruit building slowly behind it.  Not as much “wow” factor as the Blackcurrant and Violet from Laduree, but definitely noteworthy.

Ratings for La Maison du Chocolat:

Coconut: 2.5 / 2
Rigoletto: 2.5 / 3
Quito: 3 / 3.5
Maracuja: 3 / 3.5

By this point in the evening, we’d probably exceeded our sugar limit for the whole week (and I was worried Jess might go into a sugar coma on the train ride home) so we decided to leave Pierre Herme until the next day to give our tastebuds a chance to recover. 

Stay tuned the verdict on the best macaron of the Great London Macaron Crawl of 2012 in Part 2, coming soon!

Monday, November 19, 2012

Monday, November 19, 2012 - No comments

Our Daily Bread


One recent Sunday morning, as I walked up the lane to our corner bakery, I paused to say hi to a neighbour.  

“Where are you off to?” she asked.

“The bakery.”

She squinted at me.  “What for?”

“To buy bread.”  I laughed.  That’s all they sell - what else would I be going for?

Her jaw dropped.  “Since when do you buy bread?  In all the years you’ve lived here, I’ve never once seen you go to the bakery.”

I smiled.  “And I’m not starting now.  I’ve been invited to someone’s house for breakfast and they asked me to pick it up on the way.”

“Ah.”  Now I made sense to her again.

......

It’s true, I am quite an anomaly around here.  No Turkish table is complete without bread - the usual allotment being half a loaf per person.  But I pretty much only buy bread when we are going to a Turkish home or having Turks over.  (And even then, it’s often not until we sit down to eat that I realized it’s missing and have to send one of the kids on a run to the bakery!)

Whenever I tell a Turk I don’t really eat bread, their shocked response is always, “Then how do you get full?!?”  Well, with other food.  (Perhaps a lesson on stomach volume might be in order here....)  

I imagine a lot of it is an economic thing - it is certainly cheaper to fill a belly with bread than it is meat.  And I am grateful I can afford to fill mine with more than just fluffy white carbs.  But more than just a money-saver, bread is a central part of Turkish culture, and it’s taken very seriously.  When we lived in Istanbul, one of my American friends, who also lived with a Turkish family, got yelled at for throwing bread away because it was “a sin.”  (She eventually got creative and started putting her leftover crusts under other garbage in the trash can in her room!)  I always have to chuckle when, at the dinner table, I hear a Turkish mom tell her kid to “finish your bread” much the same way mine would have told me to “finish my vegetables.”

The exception for me was the season in Istanbul when we had a kapıcı (door man) who would come by every morning and afternoon with a basket of hot, fresh bread.  Sometimes us girls would buy a loaf, pop open a tub of garlic yogurt and dunk our way through the entire thing in one sitting!  But even then, it was more about the yogurt than the bread.  To me, bread is not much more than a vehicle for something else to dip it in or spread on it.  I can take it or leave it, and in the end, I’d prefer a cracker.  Why waste precious space in my stomach when there are so many other good things to eat?

I say all this to explain why I was so surprised to find myself eating bread at least once a day while I was in the UK last week.  Granted, the place I was staying served only toast and jam for breakfast, and most of the meals revolved around bread - flatbread with hummus, rolls dipped in soup, deli meat subs - so the option was either to eat it or go hungry.  

But what shocked me was the fact that when I was out and about, I purchased sandwiches of my own free will...on several occasions!  (This is so, so unlike me!)  They sucked me in with those darned meal deals at stores like Marks and Spencer, Boots and Sainsbury’s - 3 pounds for a sandwich, drink and snack.  When we were out exploring London or when I was getting ready to board a train or a plane, they were always right there, calling my name.  They took all the flavours I miss in Turkey and stuck them between two slices of bread, and for that price, I couldn’t resist!  

I had to laugh at myself and wonder if I’d become a complete convert when, just before I got on the plane to come home from Glasgow, I found myself inexplicably drawn to a sandwich cooler in the WH Smith by my gate.  There, in all its yummy glory (and on the one Pound discount shelf, no less!) was the mother of all sandwich deals - the “Christmas Triple” with three sandwiches in one box:  

Turkey and Stuffing (turkey with pork, sage and onion stuffing, cranberry chutney, mayo and spinach on malted bread)

Brie and Cranberry (brie cheese with cranberry chutney, mayo and spinach on oatmeal bread)

Prawn Cocktail (prawns with cocktail sauce and lettuce on oatmeal bread)

And suddenly, as I was standing there with a full stomach (from the turkey and stuffing sandwich I’d just purchased pre-security) looking for an excuse to buy this amazing trio, it occurred to me that, since my roommate had also been away for a week, there would be no food in the house when I got home.  Excuse found!  

And so it is that my British sandwiches found their way onto both my lunch and dinner plates once I was back in Turkey.  And, man, they were good.

I might just become a regular at the bakery.

Monday, November 19, 2012 - No comments

There's No Taste Like Home

I wonder if you can go to jail for illegally bringing pistachios into the UK.  I eyed the drug-sniffing customs dog warily.  I’m going to get arrested over a baggie full of pistachios, and they aren’t even mine.  The worst part is, I don’t even like pistachios.  

“You’re sure you don’t have any food in there, right?”  I pointed to her duffel bag, the one I’d tied onto my suitcase so she wouldn’t have to carry it.  “Like meat or cheese or fresh fruit or something?”  I could just picture them opening her bag and finding it full of mandarins (“From my garden”), pomegranates (“They’re in season, you know”) and bottles of the salty yogurt drink ayran (“They don’t sell it in England and my daughter misses it so much.”)

She clucked her tongue and raised her eyebrows.  “Just pistachios.  And hazelnuts.  And dried figs.”

They’re going to ask me where I got the pistachios, and I’ll have to tell them, “That lady gave them to me.”  And they’ll ask how I know her, and I’ll have to tell them how I just met her half an hour ago, and that she gave me this little bag of nuts and told me to put them in my backpack.  They’ll ask why I ignored the warnings about carrying things in for other people and I’ll tell them it was a gift and they’ll open the nuts and find cocaine inside the shells and I’ll never see daylight or my mother again.

It all started when I was standing in the “other passports” line at Gatwick Airport.  They asked if anyone spoke English and Turkish, and I stepped forward and was hired on the spot as (Un)Official Translator for Turkish Teyzes (aunties/old ladies).  

She wore a long brown coat and a matching headscarf, tied under her chin in the village way.  There was a large mole on her right cheek with a long hair growing out of it.  She looked terrified.

“Could you please ask her how long she’s staying?” the immigration lady asked me.  

She had an open ticket.  “One month.”  Her accent was thick, from the east.  “Maybe two.”

I translated this back.

“Who is she visiting and what do they do here?”

She told me she was visiting her daughter and grandkids.  “My son-in-law is unemployed.  He used to be a barber, but....he’s out of work.  You don’t have to tell her all that, do you?”

I winced.

Back and forth we went.  Why didn’t she have a return ticket?  Had she been to England before?  Did she understand that her visa would expire in March and she absolutely could not overstay it? 

“I’ll need to call her daughter.  Does she have a phone number for her?”

She did.

“Could you tell her she can just go sit on that blue bench over there while I call and then I’ll come get her?  I’ll process you quickly and then you can go on through.”

I looked at her, gripping the paper with her daughter’s address on it tightly, apprehension in her eyes.

“Is it okay if I wait with her?  I think she’d feel better that way.”

And that’s how I ended up sitting in “the pen.”  We took our seats on the blue benches in the roped off area set aside for those who are “questionable.”  So this was what it felt like.

“Where are you from?” she asked me.  

“I live in Turkey.  But I’m from Canada.”

“Near Pazarcık?  Oh, I have relatives there!  Who do you know?”

“Uh....it’s a big country.  I’m from Vancouver - on the far west side, by the ocean.  Do you know where that is?”

She just stared at me.

“Where’s your hometown?”  I asked her.  

“Kahramanmaraş.”

“Oh, I’ve been there!  Great ice cream.  What did you bring your daughter from Maraş?  I’m sure she misses the food there. ”

“Well, we live in Antep now.  I’m coming from there, not Maraş.”

“Gaziantep?  So you’re bringing her pistachios, then?”

She brightened.  “Yes, pistachios.  Help me unzip this, will you?”

I helped her with the zipper on her duffel bag.

She pulled out a plastic LC Waikiki shopping bag, and there they all were.  Little baggies of pistachios - probably a dozen of them.

“Here, take one.”  She held out a baggie.  “You’ve been so kind to me.”

“Oh, I couldn’t.  Your daughter should have them.”  And I don’t really like them anyway.

She laughed.  “Look how many I have!  Take it, take it.”

I took it.

“They’ve been in the freezer and now they’ve thawed, so they’re a bit wet.”  

Great.  Wet pistachios.

Not wanting to be rude, I gingerly extracted one from the bag and followed her lead, squeezing it to set it free from the soggy outer skin, then cracking the shell between my teeth and eating the nut inside.  Not terrible, I suppose, but I certainly prefer roasted to raw.

“Here, take the rest with you, for your family.”  She tied up the baggie and handed it to me.

I glanced around, sincerely hoping we weren’t breaking some law by eating raw nuts here, in the immigration hold.  All the officials were busy with other travelers and didn’t seem too concerned with us.  I accepted the baggie and shoved it into the side pocket of my backpack.

I was grateful that, at least, the people I was going to be visiting used to live in Turkey.  I could pawn the nuts off on them.  It would probably make them feel nostalgic.

“Where did you say you were from again?  A village near Pazarcık?  Maybe you know my relatives.”

“Um, no.  I’m from Vancouver.  It’s in the western part of the country.”

“How far is it from Gaziantep?”

Here we go.  This is going to be one of those conversations where I have to explain that you can’t take a bus to Vancouver from Turkey.

“Uh....maybe 24 hours, depending on how long the layovers are.”

She squinted at me.  

“You know, it’s just north of America.”

More squinting.  

Then, all of a sudden, the light went on.  

“Oh, you said ‘Canada!’”  She slapped her knee.

“Yes......”

“I thought you said ‘Kandilli!’  Canada!  No, I don’t have any relatives there.”

Ten minutes and several pictures of the grandkids later, the immigration lady returned and told us she had spoken with the son-in-law, who was waiting outside, and that we were free to go, but would she please be sure to buy a return ticket next time to avoid the hassle.  

She promised she would.  “Who knows?  There might not be anyone here to translate for me next time and then I’d have to sit on those blue benches all day!”

I shouldered her heavy duffel full of all those wet pistachios and set off, teyze in tow, for the baggage claim.  

“You shouldn’t carry something this heavy, teyze!”

“Yes, and I have rheumatism.  But my daughter does love pistachios....”

We collected our suitcases, by now the only two going round and round on the carousel, and headed towards customs.  

“What are the dogs for?”  she asked.

“You know, they look for drugs and stuff.”

I shifted her duffel to my other shoulder and eyed her big red suitcase.  I prayed that these dogs liked wet pistachios as little as I did.

Imagining how it would look if things went south and I was the one holding the bag containing the illegal edibles, I decided being up front was a better approach.

“Excuse me, sir.”  I motioned to one of the customs officers.  “I was helping this lady at immigration - but I don’t know her - and she’s got pistachios in her bag.  Is that okay?”  I left out the bit about them being fresh off the tree.

“Just pistachios?”

“And some other nuts.  But no cheese or anything - I asked.”

“No, love, that’s fine, she can take them through.”

Whew.

When we got to the front of the line, my little teyze started heading for the escalator.

“Ma’am, please stop right here,” said the customs lady.

“Hold on!” I called after her in Turkish.  “You need to wait!”

She kept walking.

This is the part where she uses her selective hearing, leaving me to stand here with her duffel while the dogs discover what’s really inside!

The dog barely gave her suitcase a sniff as she passed and then aimed his nose at me.

Here we go.....

I lowered the duffel nonchalantly.

He sniffed it once, disinterested, and then moved on to the bag behind me, which must have had sausage links inside it.  I exhaled.  He clearly preferred pork products to my apparently legal wet pistachios.  I didn’t blame him.

I caught up with my teyze at the top of the escalator.  She had just caught sight of her grandson and had begun to squeal.  

I deposited her safely with her son-in-law, who shook my hand and thanked me profusely for taking care of his wife’s mother.  She kissed me on both cheeks and asked if they could drop me off anywhere, but I assured her I was fine with the train.   

As I headed towards the station, the sound of her grandson’s giggles fading into the distance, a rumbling in my stomach and the prospect of an hour-and-a-half journey sent me into Marks and Spencer to grab a snack.  

As I perused the dizzying array of ready made salads, sushi trays and wraps, I caught sight of something that made me smile out loud, if such a thing is possible.  Cranberry and Wensleydale cheese sticks for 60 pence each!  We’ve got nothing of the sort in Turkey and it’s something from home that I love.  I grabbed four sticks and headed to the check-out.

Sitting on the train, I carefully unwrapped the first of my treasures and took a bite.  Amazing.  I imagined a Turkish woman who was about to have her whole year made by the arrival of a blue duffel bag full of wet pistachios and I smiled.  

I knew precisely how she felt.



Thursday, November 8, 2012

Thursday, November 08, 2012 - 1 comment

A Macaron Crawl of Royal Proportions








It was love at first cloud-filled bite.  

My first experience with a macaron, it turns out, wasn’t really with a macaron at all.  It was a “luxembergerli,” which I have since learned is a near, and in my opinion, superior cousin to the classic French macaron.  Smaller and airier, luxembergerlis are made by Sprüngli, the Swiss patisserie/chocolaterie where I tasted my first one.  On an early morning quest for coffee during a long-enough-to-explore layover in Zurich, I had the divine pleasure of sampling a couple alongside my cappuccino.  My favourites were definitely the caramel fleur-de-sel, for its salty sweetness, or the champagne d’or, for its shimmering gold dust.  The only thing that kept me from eating one of every flavour right then and there was my duty to pay equal attention to the rich truffles occupying the other half of the plate.  Not that that stopped me from taking a little box home on the plane with me...

Such was the beginning of my sweet love affair with macarons.

A few days after my tastebuds were introduced to the colourful joy of macarons in Zurich, my aunt brought me a package of the real thing from Thierry for my birthday.  My curiosity to try every one in the tube (vanilla, chocolate, lychee, pistachio, orange-chocolate and lemon) was tempered only by my even stronger desire to photograph this edible rainbow.  My little models co-operated beautifully, though I had to keep transferring them back to the fridge for refreshment when the late June heat made them sweat and their shells started to slide away from their creamy centres.





















A few hundred images later, I had the beginnings of a calendar and a new card series in my head (check them out at my site, fivesmoothstones.etsy.com) and, along with my mom and a neighbour, we devoured the models.  I can’t say I liked the texture of the Thierry macarons as much as that of the Sprüngli luxembergerlis - it was slightly more dense and cakey, and lacked that bit of crispiness in the outer shell.  But perhaps that was more due to the fact that I’d forced them to perform for me for several days before actually eating them.  :)

Wanting to round out the pictures I’d need for a twelve month calendar and, even more so, eager to try out as many flavours of my new favourite treat as possible, I grabbed every opportunity I could to try out new macarons while I was in Vancouver this summer.  

Mom and I took a trip of our own to Thierry downtown and picked up several new flavours to sample at a potluck with friends.  (After they’d obediently posed for several hours of shooting, of course.)  The Earl Grey was really nice, as you would expect from a bergamot tea flavoured cookie.  I liked the salted caramel, too, though not as much as the salted caramel and Canadian bacon ones by Kitchening with Carly that I picked up at Edible Canada on Granville Island.  The texture of the latter was closer to what I remembered of the luxembergerlis and I was amazed at how much flavour was packed into such a tiny morsel.  The smokiness of the bacon and the sweetness of the caramel were a perfect match and I declared this one my new favourite.  

From what I’ve read, I think the Thierry macarons are closer in texture to what a true Parisian macaron is supposed to be like, so it is entirely possible that future macaron experiences could be hit and miss.  However, for their photogenic nature and the endless possibilities of flavour combinations (like strawberry wasabi, vanilla basil, mango chili), I am hooked.  

It seems I might be a latecomer in my relationship with these little ganache-filled cookies, but I’ve decided to declare this my own “year of the macaron” and am on a quest to seek them out whenever I get the chance.  Google Amca has already found me several places in Istanbul that are on my list for the next time I head up there (including a Laduree, the Parisian patisserie where they were first born) as well as a few more closer to home that I intend to hit up on a day off in the near future.  I even found a box macaron kit at the grocery store and am looking forward to trying it out once the weather gets less humid.  (Apparently macarons are temperamental and don’t like moisture much.)

I’m heading to the UK today for a retreat, and as I’ll have a day to spend roaming around London tomorrow, I’ve scouted out a few macaron-makers to put on the itinerary.  I’ve been to London three times on layovers, and each time kind friends living nearby have taken me out for proper English experiences like afternoon tea and a Tesco picnic in a Kensington park, but due to time constraints, I’ve always had to stick pretty close to Heathrow.  

This time, though, I’m actually going to get to “do” London - at least as much as can be done in a day.  On the agenda are Buckingham Palace and the Tower of London, the Borough Market (under London Bridge - a foodie’s playground of samples and stalls) and some wandering along the Thames.  But honestly, as much as the “royal sights” I am excited about the macarons I’m going to find!  Laduree and Pierre Herme, the two most famous French macaron-makers, have stores in Harrods and Selfridges respectively, and I also plan to head for La Maison du Chocolat at Piccadilly Circus.  

I’ve read about people doing “macaron crawls” in places like New York City where a group of friends or strangers meet up and go bakery-hopping to sample as many macarons as possible without going into a sugar coma and then publish the results of their taste-testings.  So that’s kinda my plan for tomorrow.  I’ll let you know how it goes!

I’ve never really had a desire to go to Paris (sacrilegious for a traveler, I know) but I think now I might have a reason to visit one day.  Think of the macaron crawl one could do there......