Tout Les Eclairs

One of the most delicious pastries to enjoy is the French eclair. A true Gallic one, filled with delicate cream inside an airy puff of a choux shell is hard to find, non? Not anymore. There a fantastic new cookbook that has every kind of eclair from traditional to the innovative.

Award-winning pastry chef, Christophe Adam has written a very easy to follow book Eclairs,Easy Elegant and Modern Recipes (Robert Rose Press ) all about his signature dish, The classic French pastryParis features everything from popcorn stuffing to sexy eclairs. that feature not the traditional dark chocolate icing ,but a sexy sugar screened picture of a voluptuous Madame Noel or Mrs. Santa.It's no surprise that his good friend is Dominic Ansel, the creator of the famed and wanted cronut. Chef Adam, shares the same high-spirited sense of inventiveness and fun.The cookbook reflects his innovative style with such interesting and nontraditional ingredients as hazelnuts and passionfruits. Unlike some loftier pastry chefs, Chef Adam explains how to make the eclairs in simple language any home chef can understand along with providing detailed pictures of how-tos.What I like about it is the book is that he as a detailed and illustrated list of tools needed as well as his encouragement to go off script and come up with your own original fillings and toppings
, named after lightning,  has been elevated to gourmet status thanks to a sprucing up. Hist patisserie L'eclair de Genie, in the Marais section of

The eclairs themselves are in a rainbow of colors. The choux dough can even be dyed itself to create bright pink shells.perfect for strawberry or raspberry filled eclairs. There is a lemon filled one that has a gaily decorated shell complete with streusel balls and Swiss meringue dots. Apricot eclairs would be a nice treat for any Spring party. The filling is a mix of apricot puree with soft dried apricots and whole cream.Black currents are usually reserved for tarts but Chef Adam makes them an integral part of the eclair filling. The same goes for figs.passionfruit and raspberries. Of course there is the traditional chocolate ones made luxurious with the addition of whole cream and butter. It's decorated with small  squares of gold sugar dusted chocolate. For total fun, whip up the ever fun crunchy chocolate eclairs filled with ganache but topped with silver sugar coated chocolate pop rocks. Caramel , the flavor of the moment is also a filling.with a layer of caramel fondant on top. .There is even a sweet Valentines 'Day themed one where there are heart halves gracing the icing. Keep in mind that all the eclair recipes require gelatin sheets or powder.They can be found at some grocery stores , including Wal-Mart. They are used for thickening the cream so they 're a more solid,,  instead of being gooey and runny.

Eclairs are the new star of the pastry chef. Chef Adam has turned them into flights of delicious fantasy with his innovative recipes and ingredients. Now everyone can experience them in his new  easy to follow cookbook.

Viva La France Toujours

Our hearts go out to the Parisians and the French who  experienced those atrocious attacks of vile barbarism. It is a shame that the city and country of good food, where haute cuisine originated will have this scar for a long long time. Let's celebrate the dishes and treats of the City of Light. They are magnifique and what the city should be known for.

One favorite is the croque monsieur , that heavenly cheese sandwich.This is one if my all time favorite dishes to make..It's taking ham and Gruyere and drying it in butter. There should be a dash of mustard added for color and bite and it can be served with a béchamel sauce. A croque madam is one served with an egg on top and tomato can also be added for a croque provencale. Another Parisian favorite is steak Diane with pomme frites..These are a snap to make, with pan cooked steak with a cognac,tomato and shallot sauce.The sauce was originally meant for venison and wild game and named after the goddess of hunting , Diana.Pomme frites are French fries which can easily be made with Idaho potatoes. Cut  the potatoes into two to three inch sticks with a 1/2 inch width. Be warned, once you start frying these , you'll be snitching them  as they drain on a paper towel.The omelet is quintessentially French, having being created in the capital city in the 1600s. Originally called an aumelette, it has been a staple of French cookbooks for four centuries.The perfect one is made with three eggs and lots of butter (NO margarine, please). The eggs should be whisked into a smooth glossy liquid and then slowly poured into a hot buttered pan. As soon as the egg mix starts solidifying,, tilt the pan and coax it into a roll. Brush with melted butter for a nice glossy finish and decorate with fleur de sel and chives.

French pastries are another great gift to the culinary world. Croissants are true Parisian specialty, originally coming from Vienna with baker August Zang in 1839 . They were first called kipferl and later croissant by the  city that embraced them. In twenty years times, they were a breakfast staple. Even the famed English writer, Charles Dickens,  wrote about it in his periodical, All The Year Round. A variation of the croissant is pain au chocolat, a yummy, layered squared filled with bitter chocolate.There is also the almond croissant , stuffed with a buttery, crunchy almond paste, and again the taste is sheer heaven. Cream puffs, or profiteroles are another lovely treat,made with the slightly complicated choux pastry and filled with cream. These are topped off with melted dark chocolate and made into a tower called croquenbuche, translated as crunch in mouth. Eclairs are another must when in Paris. These are not those soggy ones American bakeries sell, but light , crisp choux pastry fingers filled with whipped cream or vanilla pastry crème and topped with a generous coating of melted semisweet chocolate. Patisseries also sell mille feulle,a thousand leaves, a crunchy  creamy layered pastry , perfect with the French coffee, café au lait

Vive le France! Vive Paris! Its ' people and food will shine through these dark days ! They have in the past, they will again! Salut!

Nadiya's Baking Conquors All

Can a television baking completion hold the answer to race relations? Can politicians learn from competitors vying for a title as they bake cream puffs and eclairs? The answer is yes. Some of our Republican front runners; can glean a lot from "The Great British Baking Show."'

This wildly popular  English TV program recently crowned a winner for their latest season, She is as British as the Windsors, but not as traditional as one might think Nadiya Jamir Hussein is a thirty year old mother  of three from Northern England. She is the daughter of Bangladeshi immigrants and a Muslim. While British politicos descry the influx of all sorts of immigrants and their effect on eroding everything that is good and British  (sound familiar? Listen to our debates) the rest of the country has embraced this expert baker. She is simply and lovingly known by her first name only, being a superstar and inspirations to millions of Britons,She has also turned around a lot of assumption about hijab wearing women heading off to join ISIS. . She is like any other English girl with a love of baking and a sweet tooth.The only thing scary about her is that her bakes are scary good.

I am in awe of her. It is not easy to please the show's formidable judges, Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry. They are quite critical when it comes to the trio of weekly bakes.that make up the series. A cake or cookie may look heavenly on the outside but in their discerning mouths could be nothing more than a scoop of sweet sand.What we deem as a perfect buttercream rose may be just another ball of colored  lard to them.They adored her raspberry mille feulle, and soda flavored cheesecakes. Her blue chocolate peacock and her mountain of eclairs in the shape of a nun won them over as it did Britain.. Nadiya also had her own style , crucial to winning an audience on any televised completion. Her cheeky humor won over viewers from Cornwall to the Orkney isles. During one stressful bake she joked that she would rather brave childbirth again than create a chocolate soufflé.Like any second generation her heritage shown through. Her lemon drizzle cake was decorated with jewels from her wedding, perched on a stand with a sari bearing the colors of the Union Jack. She is proud of both her blended backgrounds and that is important to young second generation Anglo girls trying to make peace with their identities.

The Great British Bake Off is not only an enjoyable show but it can be a great teaching tool for our American politicians.They should see how immigrants truly contribute to a country's identity, only giving their best.They need a Nadiya, not only for delicious treats and breads but to show them how people of different backgrounds make a country great.