Emily in France 🇫🇷 Galette-a-Palooza 2022!
What's in a day, really?
When I was applying for college (um. Nearly 20 years ago. Gross.), one of the essay topics for the University of Chicago was to write about what you thought about Tuesdays. I remember writing some sort of meandering thing about why Tuesdays weren't as nice as Thursdays. Or something. Tuesday isn't the first day of the week, but it's nearly as bad as a Monday. It's perhaps unsurprising that it's named for gods of war in both English (after the Germanic god Tiw) and French (mardi aka, day of Mars).
Is this my way of apologizing for neglecting you two Tuesdays in a row? Maybe. (Weeks don't make sense anyway.)
May I make up for it with pastry?
I have tried a whopping 10 galettes des rois in Paris this year, which, of course, meant I had to rank them. Now, a word of warning, before I divulge my faves: I did extensive research before trying any galettes at all, so all of the ones I tried were pretty excellent, as far as galettes go. Should you try any of these galettes – or, for that matter, hit up any of these bakeries in non-galette times – you will not be disappointed. That said, some did rise above the others, so below, please find my (exclusive!) ranking of them all.
10. Babka Zana is one of my favorite mono-pastry shops in Paris, and I was eager to try this maple- and sesame-spiked galette. Unfortunately, a reliance on a brioche feuilleté instead of the traditional puff pastry meant that even though I loved the filling, this galette couldn't quite top the rest.
9. Ten Belles is my favorite place for filter coffee and lemon bars in the city (and home to my favorite chai anywhere in the world – except maybe for Small World in Princeton!) It is also where my favorite sourdough comes from, and I'm not alone – it's the staple bread of some of my top restaurants from Le Mermoz to Le Saint-Sébastien. Of the shop's two galettes, the plain one, while nice, was just a little too, well, plain. The pastry, while flaky, lacked the overtly buttery notes I was looking for, and the frangipane filling, despite the unpeeled almonds (my preference) was a bit one-note.
8. Liberté's plain galette was the first I tried this season, and while it was tasty, it suffered a bit from being in an individual size instead of a slice. The pastry hovered between buttery and flaky, and the frangipane was indeed tasty. But at the end of the day, there was too much of the former and not enough of the latter (a common issue with this format). And above all, there was a bit too much air.
7. Eternally one of my all-time faves, Sain Boulangerie baked up two galettes this year – a plain and a chocolate-macadamia version. The latter was super well-made, and the fact that it ranked 7th is far more a matter of personal taste – I don't much care for chocolate – than a dig at its quality. I loved the giant chunks of macadamia nut studded throughout and would have loved to taste them more in the filling, but the chocolate really was the dominant flavor here. I didn't even get the cardamom, though I've been assured that is 100% a me problem.
6. Ten Belles' bergamot galette was much more my speed. Unless I'm mistaken, this galette began with exactly the same base as the plain, albeit with the frangipane studded with candied bergamot peel. The flaky yet not-too-butter-forward pastry and milder filling were punched up considerably with this addition, which toed that line between pleasantly bitter and sweet. A lovely play on the classic!
Want to know who came in 1st through 5th? Check back next week! (Maybe even on Tuesday!)
Cheese of the Week
Comté is one of France's favorite cheeses, if not its number one! The pressed Alpine cheese is sold in massive 100+-pound wheels and is available at a variety of ages, ranging from three-month to upwards of four years. Fans of the nutty, buttery flavor of Gruyère will love this cheese.
For me, Comté begins to gain a real interest at about 18 months of age; this beautiful, ochre-colored slab is a whopping 40 months old. Sourced from fromagère Marie-Anne Cantin in Paris' 7th arrondissement, it boasts lovely crystallization of the amino acid tyrosine, which forms crunchy pockets of flavor throughout.
To discover more of my favorite cheeses, be sure to follow me on Instagram @emily_in_france.
What I'm Eating
Street food is not a particularly French pursuit, but there are loads of international options popping up all over the city, including SAaM, which blends Korean and Chinese street food traditions to deliver fried kimchi balls, tteok bokki, and my fave – the five-spice chicken bao. More on the blog.
Discover more of my foodie finds via Instagram @emily_in_france.
What I'm Writing
1. If you're looking for some inspiration to get you through the end of Veganuary, check out this roundup of five plant-based ingredients that make your meals even more moreish, for Organic Authority.
2. If, on the other hand, you are resolutely not giving up cheese, now or in the future, then you'll definitely want to check out this cacio e pepe arancini recipe that Chef Mike Friedman shared with me for InsideHook.
3. And for dessert, I'm digging up the roots of my favorite childhood Halloween candy (yes, I've always had weird tastes): Almond Joy. For Mashed.
What I'm Saying
Navigating the French is on hiatus before the launch of Season Two, but while you wait for episodes digging into French words like débat, viennoiserie, entrepreneur, and more, you can still hear my, uh, melodious voice on the Good Beer Hunting podcast, where I recently joined Beth Demmon to talk about the inspiration behind my deep dive into the terroir-focused mindset behind Paris' Deck & Donohue brewery. You can listen to that here (and if you haven't yet read the story, photographed by the inimitable Eileen Cho, you can find it here.)
What I'm Reading
1. I was seven years old in 1994, the day that the Little Women adaptation of my heart was released. It’s still a frequent flier in the Monaco household, as a Christmas film, even though much of the hundreds-of-pages-long novel doesn’t take place at Christmas at all. It does, however, start at Christmas, as the adaptation did, and so, this Christmas (which I recognize is over a month ago, now – Jesus, where does the time go?) I finally sat down to read it. More on the blog.
2. This vintage story about Jean-Paul Sartre, which features such gems as his assertion that "Two phrases only are necessary for a whole evening of English conversation, I have found: ‘Scotch-and-soda?’ and ‘Why not?’ By alternating them, it is impossible to make a mistake.” In the New Yorker.
3. This strategy for addressing one of my most worrisome book-related problems: how to read the books you already own, for BookRiot.
A bientôt !