les jardins

a box of macarons from pierre hermé landed, unexpectedly, in my hands last night.* macarons are a bubble which has not yet popped. a few years ago, most people wouldn't know them from a macaroon. today, many places with aspirations to quality (and some without those aspirations) manufacture and sell them. for a while, mcdonalds in france sold macarons.

macarons are little sandwiches with cookie shells made of ground and blanched almonds held in a flavoured meringue, filled with a flavoured ganache or cream. it is easy to make a mediocre macaron.

the shell is notoriously finicky. the meringue must be robust enough to support the almond flour during baking, requiring the maker to detect and respond to very small gradations in the texture of the uncooked meringue. this in turn responds to very small gradations in ambient temperature and humidity and the hydration of the meringue. macaron-making thus features many arcane directives. some recipes call for aged egg whites (which have lower water content due to evaporation). many formulations also call for uncooked macaron shells to be set out for a while to dry further and develop a skin on the top surface. this skin constrains the cookie as it rises during baking, producing the desired smooth, glossy top and rough-edged foot.

fillings should have flavours and textures that complement the shells. overly aggressive flavours are unfortunately common, but texture seems to be the bigger hurdle. many fillings in inferior macarons are poorly matched to the texture and robustness of their shells. biting into a robust shell causes a too-fluid filling to squeeze out of the sides. conversely, a delicate shell collapses too quickly around a too-rigid filling. both scenarios are untasty. (not incidentally, the same principle of textural harmony applies to sandwich construction and design.)

inevitably, average macaron quality declines as supply of macarons increases. i am happy to leave most macarons on the shelf, for those who would exchange their hard-earned doubloons for dense (or over-airy and/or sticky) shells and tasteless (or overly flavourful and/or overly avant-garde and/or poorly textured) fillings.

on the other hand, it is a good day when life hands you a box of macarons from pierre hermé. their shells have perfect texture, density, and surface, and just enough understated filling of precisely the right texture (some traditionally flavoured, others quite unusual). naturally, he is Big in Japan. confiserie sprüngli, conveniently close to the main train station in zurich, is another place to get very correct macarons of a different style. (and different name. these luxemburgerli are smaller, with a more fluid filling and a more delicate shell, and more traditional flavours.)

a great macaron is usually a rare and costly experience.

* thx journeyman; welcome home.

philippe parreno: the boy from mars

i saw this at the kunsthalle in zurich; to get to the screening room, you walk through galleries mostly empty except for parreno's extremely bright marquee sculptures. one room was dedicated to a cloud of helium-filled black speech bubbles bobbing at the ceiling. the gallery was deserted, and the marquee at the door to the screening room slowly faded from brilliance to complete darkness while the boy from mars looped, a quiet, serene, and disquieting film made in thailand, apparently on property owned by rirkrit tiravanija. (music at the end is by devendra banhart, whose music is so surpassingly strange i am lost for words.)

munich to zurich

[catching up #2; tenses are all over the place, as you might expect]

this first bit written on a quiet, fast, inexpensive train from munich to zurich*, with leonard cohen's the faith** playing on the ipod as we roll through the summer country towards switzerland. this is immeasurably better than flying.

the 3D display at the zurich hb was dark when i got there, so i passed it by and came directly to wollishofen where hk was waiting for me at the tram stop. i rehydrated extensively while she cooked, then we walked down to the lake when tom got back. after dinner, we allowed the food to settle for a decent period before venturing into the lake, which was clear and not as cold as it looked. i bumped into a duck while swimming to the jetty; it looked surprised, bobbed its head slowly up out of the water, then sent a long string of poop into the depths.

* is it really so hard to get this right? spend less money on highways and cars, stop subsidising gas and the auto industry, learn to eat food grown closer to home, tax cars and gas more, build common-gauge rail lines, and good transit systems almost inevitably become reality.

** apparently based on an old basque song. i first heard this at enrique martinez celaya's lecture at the ranch last summer.