October already? I guess that means I have to start thinking about a “Best Food of 2010” list.
The desserts are a slam-dunk. I can still taste one of my top two of the year – a wonder of caramelized apples, crackly puff pastry and rich caramel. That’s because I just found it recently in Avignon, France, on the first night of a week-long bike trip through Provence.
The menu at Le Moutardier du Pape called it “Pommes Tatin en Mille-Feuilles Croustillant.” Loosely translated, I’d say that means a deconstructed or reconstructed version of the fabled Tarte Tatin. That dessert, a thin pastry crust into which caramelized apple slices are nestled tightly like a Rockettes line, came about, supposedly, because of a kitchen accident.
Legend has it that in 1898 two sisters at the Hotel Tatin in central France were cooking apples in buuter and sugar for a traditional pie. When the apples started to burn in the iron fry pan, a sister quickly slapped a sheet of pastry on top and cooked it briefly in the oven. She flipped the creation out of the pan and served it to her hotel guests and the Tarte Tatin was born.
Le Moutardier’s masterpiece doesn’t have a story, but it does have sensational flavor. Three paper-thin sheets of pastry dough are the foundation for local apples slowly cooked in butter and sugar; a dozen “dots” of shiny whipped pastry cream; and a flurry of powdered sugar. On the side is a mousse of green apple that fairly floats from the plate, matchsticks of green apple, and swirls of luxurious caramel made from salted butter.
We stumbled upon the restaurant – housed in an elegant manse that some sources say was where the popes’ mustard makers toiled -- while we were looking for a place for dinner on the Sunday night we arrived in France. (Seasoned travelers know that is NOT an easy task.) We were thrilled with the setting – casual wooden tables and chairs scattered on the cobblestone pavement in front of the illuminated medieval Papal Palace. When the nearly-full moon came up over the Palace turrets, the effect was jaw-dropping…but the great food was still the star of the evening.
If you’re wondering about the other of my two favorite desserts of 2010….it’s a chocolate work of art at Fabios Restaurant in Vienna. More about that later.
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