One Night In Paris (Part Deux)

Sorry to inundate you with more Paris photos, but well...maybe I'm not really sorry! It is impossible to go to Paris and not want to take a gazillion photos. And yes, of course gazillion is a proper number. The photo above was taken on the steps just outside the Sacre Coeur - there's a platform where you can see almost all of Paris. 

We also had escargots - it probably isn't to everyone's taste, but Shad and I loved it so we were looking forward to it all day. These ones were pretty good, served with lots of herby garlic butter and not overcooked. They came with some fancy forks and special escargot tongs, and we had to concentrate on handling the tongs to avoid a repeat of that scene in Pretty Woman. You know the one...she's in a fancy restaurant and has to use the tongs to pick up her snails and her dinner ends up flying off into a waiter's face. We were both too hungry to remember the name of the restaurant, but there are plenty of places around Montmartre serving them up if you want to have a go.

Shad and I also paid a visit to Shakespeare and Company - it's a haven for bibliophiles, and has been visited by writers including William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Henry Miller. There is an antiquarian section, as well as a lending library and some boxes outside containing a selection of curiosities you never knew you needed. 

One night is Paris simply isn't enough...

One Night In Paris

From one city to the next... I enjoyed a rather impromptu 24 hour trip to Paris last week with Shadi. We ate a lot, of course! 

Wild Honey

December involved quite a bit of eating out - which is fine by me because it means I leave the washing up to others. Manbacon and I decided to head for a restorative meal at Wild Honey instead of battling other elbows at the post-Christmas sales. The dining room, hidden behind a set of billowing (and slightly confusing) red velvet drapes, was satisfyingly calm. 

I don't drink much alcohol, but since it was the holidays, I decided to go a wild and order a cocktail. I know, how crazy. I don't remember what it was called, but it had peach nectar and a rosemary spring in it, and was rather refreshing. 

Starter  - steak tartare

To keep things simple (and because I take an age to decide on what to order), we both went for the Working Lunch set - a really good deal at £27 for 3 courses. We were also given a choice of bread and a pat of butter to tide us over before the food came. Our starter of steak tartare was just the right size and served with a lovely, unctuous orange egg yolk. I love a good egg yolk...

Salmon with broccoli  and sea lettuce (I think?)

The salmon came served on a hefty, earthy, pottery plate which I was very tempted to try and ferret away with me. You can never have too many nice plates (even if you have to keep some of them under the bed because there isn't any more space on your kitchen shelves). The fish itself was perfectly cooked - so tender and succulent that I didn't even need a knife. One of my chief gripes with salmon is that so many people and places tend to cook it to death - really, there's no need to stick a tiny piece like that in the oven for 20 minutes, that's just over the top! Anyway, this was cooked exactly the way I would have wished, and the veggies on the side helped provide a lovely crunchy element. Manbacon made a wisecrack about the foamy bit being 'saliva' (haha, hilarious...) but it was rather tasty and surprisingly rich. And not at saliva at all.

Classic custard tart

You get to choose between a cheese course or a dessert. The cheese that day was Comte, which, although tasty, wasn't the most exciting choice, so we both went for the custard tart. I had already unfairly dismissed it as a boring, stodgy pudding, but I am a bit of an idiot sometimes. It was amazing!  I don't know how they kept the custardy bit so light and soft, yet managed such a sharp, neat cut. The custard was smooth and almost runny, yet kept it's shape perfectly. I'm going to have to make a bunch of custard tarts in the near future so I can try to replicate it. Who wants to be a taster?

Wild Honey

12 St. George Street

London, W1S 2 FB

Quick and Easy Pear Tart

So, you really, really feel like dessert, but you just don't have to energy to head to the shops, and the thought of baking something is more than enough to drive you under the duvet. I was feeling that way a couple of nights ago, when this pear tart came to the rescue!

This tart takes hardly any time and effort to throw together, doesn't require any fancy ingredients, and is endlessly customisable, so you can always whip up a few if you've got unexpected guests coming over, or a last minute invite to...well, any occasion where you're likely to want stuff your face.

Easy Pear Tart (serves 4)

Ingredients 

1 ready rolled puff pastry sheet 

3-4 medium pears

about 2 tbsp brown sugar

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground ginger

a knob of butter

Directions

- Defrost puff pastry sheet (if frozen). Preheat oven to 220C.

- Place puff pastry sheet onto a greased or lined baking try. Quarter, core and thinly slice pears; you can skin them if you prefer. 

- Arrange pear slices on the puff pastry sheet, leaving about 1cm empty on all sides so the pastry can puff up and form 'walls'. Sprinkle cinnamon, ginger and brown sugar all over the pear slices, then cut up little chunks of butter and dot them around the pears. 

- Place prepared tart in the oven and bake for about 15-20 minutes, until the pastry is golden brown and puffed up on the sides, and the pears are soft and browned. Let it cool down slightly, then enjoy it!