Posted: 03 Dec 2013 - David Lebovitz
One of the things about living in a
city like Paris is that you spend a lot of time – well, dealing with life. Bills
to pay, paperwork to do, typos to avoid, stolen bikes to replace, smokers to
dodge on sidewalks waving lit cigarettes (I got nailed the other day – ouch!),
or buying a pair of shoes, can easily take up much – or all – of your days.
It’s too-easy to get wrapped up in all that minutiae and let all the things you
love to do get overwhelmed by the other things that tend to take over, if you
let them.
I’ve let them and decided to do a
little turn-around by revisiting the places and eating the things that I love
in Paris. It’s easy to forget the pockets of wonderfulness that people see when
they come here for a week – the parks, the boulevards, the chocolate shops, and
just taking a stroll and getting some air (in between all the sidewalk
maneuvering) and take in the city.
Macarons aren’t new. Macarons gerbet, or filled macarons
are distinctly Parisian and have been around for about 150 years. True, they
are available elsewhere nowadays. But like a New York or Montreal bagel, or
Chicago deep-dish pizza, certain foods get designated with an appellation
because they are so closely associated with where they were first made. (Bagels
and pizza are from neither of those places mentioned, originally. And macarons,
which were originally from Italy, then came to France and are usually available
as simple, crispy cookies made with egg whites, sugar and almonds.) But that’s
getting back into minutiae, a word I had to look up the precise spelling for,
twice (more minutiae!) and I’m more interested in tasting pastries. So I took a
stroll over to the relatively new Pierre Hermé
macaron boutique in the Marais.
Macarons kind of had their day in
the soleil.
Everyone wanted to either make them, or come to Paris and sample them. For a
while, almost every day a question or two would land in my Inbox from people
who were making macarons, wondering why their macarons didn’t have the ruffled
“feet”, or why their tops cracked – and could I diagnose them? Interviewers
were astonished when they’d ask me what flavors of macarons Parisians made at
home, and I responded that I couldn’t think of anyone that made macarons in
Paris because no one had the space for a baking sheet on their kitchen counter.
And honestly, it’s easier for people to get them at their local pastry shop or
bakery.
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