Red currants hold a special place in my heart as the perfect companion to peaches and nectarines and a dash of whipping cream in my mother’s summer fruit salads — preferably enjoyed in the cool shade of the garden, on a table with a cherry-patterned tablecloth secured by pretty star-shaped weight clips, should a little breeze pick up.

I also like that they are not your ordinary easy-to-like, easy-to-please berry. No. La groseille is startlingly red and pretty, but it is also super tart and a bit of a pain to prep, as you will need to carefully pluck each berry from its pale green stem. Some are advocates of the fork tine combing method, but this tends to crush a sizeable proportion of the yield so I prefer to gently pull at the clusters with the tips of my fingers, feeling each little bubble loosen its grip and detach itself, one after the other. But of course in the grand scheme of things, it is much less of a chore than, say, butchering a pig, and it is also considered good manners from whoever will eat the berries with you to help with the plucking.

Even at the time of the eating, the red currant won’t let itself be loved that easily: to enjoy the delicate texture that ruptures and explodes in your mouth (salmon roe made berry), to delight in the fresh burst of tart juice, you have to make do with the grainy seeds and their slightly puckery effect.

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Having heard many great things about Parisian-Japanese pastry chef Sadaharu Aoki, I was very eager to taste his edible creations for myself. I had often admired them at the Lafayette Gourmet store (okay, now I make it sound like I spend my life there when really I don’t, I go home to sleep and shower), but since I don’t usually buy pastries unless there is a good occasion — or at least deserving friends who will be happy to share them with me — I had so far limited myself to pure eye-candy enjoyment.

Sadaharu Aoki was trained in the art of pâtisserie in both Japan and France, so his work offers interesting Ginza-meets-Saint-Germain twists, slipping Japanese ingredients into typically French confections, and applying the Japanese sense of detail and intricacy to his presentation and packaging. His line includes pastries and entremets, cookies and cakes, chocolate confections and macarons — all of them strikingly beautiful and perfect, but never to the point of losing their appetizing power over the innocent, unsuspecting onlooker.

He has two boutiques in Paris, a corner at the Lafayette Gourmet store, and a handful of restaurants and salons de thé in Paris (all listed on his website) feature his pastries on their menu.

The perfect excuse to sample some of them recently presented itself, on an afternoon when I knew Maxence and I would be dining with our neighbors. I selected four (always a heartbreak — what of the others? will they be hurt and forever traumatized? must go back and make it up to them.) that we shared later that night after an excellent roasted chicken dinner:

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Two weeks ago, I posted about my impending trip to NYC, and asked for your advice and suggestions. Little did I know how overwhelming the response would be! Dozens upon dozens of recommendations for restaurants, stores, bars, sights, etc.

Such a wealth of knowledge could not go uncompiled, so I worked on putting together a little C&Z Readers’ Guide to NYC for your perusal and enjoyement. I hope it is as useful to you — NYers and non-NYers alike — as it will be to me!

[It’s not so easy editing a guide for a city one doesn’t know, so please feel free to tell me if you happen to see anything that’s incorrect in there! And I will work on adding more addresses, websites and phone numbers when I get a chance.]

Now, on to the next topic: the NYC get-together! If you would like a chance to meet fellow C&Z readers and myself, meet us on Sunday 19 at 5pm in the bar area at Otto. It shouldn’t be too crowded at that time, so we should have room to drink, nibble and mingle to our hearts’ content!

When: Sunday 19, 2005
What time: 5pm
Where: the bar area at Otto
Address: One Fifth Avenue, NYC
Phone: 212-995-9559
Confirmation, question? Leave a comment here or email me!

It may have become apparent by now just how much I love sandwiches, and it is always cause for elation to discover a new source for superior sandwich indulgence.

Bellota-Bellota is a store in the 7th that specializes in fine food products from Spain and also operates as an upscale tapas bar. A string of such venues opened a few years ago when the Paris food scene realized with a start that gastronomy did not stop at the Pyrenées — all things Iberian have been riding that trendy wave ever since. The company behind Bellota-Bellota, called Byzance, has a few locations in and around Paris, including a corner inside Lafayette Gourmet, the food area of the Galeries Lafayette department store.

I was there just the other day, it was lunchtime, I was hungry, and their bocadillos (bocadillo simply means “sandwich” in Spanish) looked like the perfect option. A glance at the little menu confirmed the intuition, describing the bocadillo with the following:

“Un pain au naturel farine biologique, cuit au feu de bois comme autrefois. De fines tranches de palette de Pata Negra. L’écrasée de tomates maison à l’huile d’olive Arbequina, fabriquée en Catalogne. Quelques pétales de manchego au lait cru des brebis manchega. Un trait d’huile d’olive.”

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