November 15, 2005
the yakitate croissant and all that other food I ate
Here are lyrics to a song about my current state of physical being, which I'm making up right now:
My arms are jiggly
Because I ate so much food.
I should run around for a few miles
To try and decrease the jiggly-factor
But I'm lazy
And I'm updating my blog
Uh huh.
God, that was horrific. Don't ask me how the song goes. It should die. Now.
Yes, I ate a lot, and I don't know how I did it. Actually, that's a lie; I know very well how I shoveled forkfuls of organic matter into my mouth, but a part of me doesn't understand how or why I did it. Hunger? Nope. Craving? Not exactly, besides the chocolate.
- Valrhona chocolate discs
Eating that whole tub of chocolate would provide me enough calories to last the day. I didn't actually finish the entire tub, but you don't want to know how close to empty the container sitting on my bookshelf is at the moment. (Chocolate purists are going to hate me for saying this, but I liked the white chocolate more than the dark. The white was seriously like eating heaven's milk. And...what is heaven's milk? I'm not completely sure, but if you can get a few clumps of heaven [ye know, just take them and then be banished to hell], squeeze out the juice, and solidify the extraction, you'll get something like Valrhona's silky smooth white chocolate. The dark chocolate is great too, but I don't like the fruity taste dark chocolate sometimes has. Or many times. I would'nt even like fruity tasting milk chocolate; I'm not fond of chocolate pieces with fruit in them, or chocolate-dipped fruit. There are some dark chocolates I like, but I couldn't tell you what they are right now.) Even without the chocolate, I think I went way over the food quota that people like me (as in, short, not particularly slim or fat, but ultra-sedentary young women) should place for themselves. Except I don't actually place a food quota for myself; if I don't feel like puking, I'm a-okay!
Except that's not true. Yes, there have been times that I've eaten so much that I've wanted to roll over, die, and scrape out the innards of my stomach (which would be rather hard to do after the whole "death" thing, but the excess food probably poked holes in my brain), but most of the time I just eat more than I should and think, "Hey, there's still room for chocolate." Let me start from the beginning...
Actually, first off, here's what I cooked yesterday:
- curry and rice
Shopping at Whole Foods, Bangkok Center Grocery, and a store in Chinatown resulted in snow pea and fennel red curry with "pimped up" rice (pimped because I added toasted hazelnuts, chopped dried figs, and a splash of peanut oil). In all honestly, it tasted like something that could actually be served in a restaurant. Maybe. Now I almost don't see the point in ordering curry at a restaurant if I can make it myself with a can of coconut milk and some tablespoons of curry paste. I wouldn't make pad thai myself, but a basic curry sauce with whatever additions I'm in the mood for (snow peas; they rock my world) is easy to throw together. Sharing the food with my roommate was a proud moment for me: the food doesn't suck and I'm not the only one eating it! Sweet!
Now, let's go back in time...to Tuesday morning.
- croissant
As I kept hearing good things about Patisserie Claude's (187 W. 4th St) croissants, I decided to make the trip there from campus (you know, the 5-10 minute walk) this morning for a buttery, carbolicious breakfast. The bakery is very small, although it does have a few tables (which you can use if you spend at least $2; a croissant costs $1.40). They didn't have many pastries at the time I was there around 8:15, with the woman in front of me grabbing the last pain au chocolat, but they had a few croissants, brioches, and sweeter baked goods.
- croissant, again
The croissant seemed to have its own source of inner golden light. Each thin, delicate buttery layer puffed away from its neighbors, reminding me of Yakitate #3 where Azuma makes a 342-layer croissant. I could pick off the outer bits as though I were plucking the petals off a flower. But just eating the crispiest, phyllo-esque parts wasn't what I wanted to do. I needed...INNARDS.
- croissant innards
Whoaaaa. What? Do all croissants look like this inside? I think not, at least not the ones I've eaten (although to be fair, I think I've eaten two croissants this year, both within the same week). While croissant innards obviously don't look like those of your regular loaf of bread, the layers don't usually look as pronounced as the one in Claude's. I seriously just stared at it, wondering how the layers of dough and butter could've been folded so neatly as to make the croissant's inner swirl. Simply, I was thinking, "WTF?"
So how was the taste? Do you really need me to tell you? I think it was the best croissant I've ever had. As I said before, I haven't actually eaten many croissants in my life, but going through my memory bank of croissant eating experiences, never have I had one this crispy on the outside, buttery soft on the inside, with so many perfect, visible layers. It was delicate while at the same time retaining its structure. Lordy.
If you're like me and not particularly into croissants, you must try this croissant. As easily accessible this bakery is to me, I wouldn't go back all the time just because I don't crave crossants. However, I'd cringe at the idea of getting a croissant anywhere else. Maybe I'd get croissant variations with nuts or chocolate, but for a plain croissant? Perhaps when I go to France.
I know I said I'd talk more about the chocolate show, but I think I said most of what I wanted to say. Also, since it's been a few days, I forgot the rest of what I would've wanted to say. Eh, it couldn't have been that important.
Back to today! Because my beverages class ended early, I ate lunch with one of my friends in the class at the conveniently nearby (and open for lunch) Katana Sushi. My friend the nutritionist ordered a beef negimaki bento box while I went for the super healthy tonkatsu, and by healthy I mean "deep fried and breaded".
- tonkatsu bento
It was kind of disappointing, although I did eat it all. While I had nothing against the pork, the breading was soggy. You can tell from the photo that it probably wasn't fried long enough, or perhaps something was wrong with the oil. Everything else was fine and I thought the miso soup was good (as in, not overly sodium-filled) considering I don't really like miso soup. It's not a bad lunch by any means, but my favorite bento box is still found at Win49.
I hadn't planned on eating lunch because, god knows, I wasn't especially hungry, but it was a good way to spend time with a friend outside the confines of our alcohol-riddled class, in which today we tasted gin, rum, vodka, and tequila. Oh. Joy. I didn't particularly like any of it, although the gin felt interesting upon my first sip. By interesting, I mean it felt like I was drinking perfume, volitile, stinging perfume. It was almost refreshing after I spat it out. The second sip was worse...and thus ended any semi-positive feelings I had towards tasting gin.
- curry and noodles and too many onions
After taking way too long buying groceries at Whole Foods (while racking up at $60+ bill after buying eggs, milk, spices, a microplaner, a cleaning brush, chocolate, and I forget what else), I came home to make use of the leftover curry from yesterday. I added the curry to chopped onions, fennel, green onion, and snow peas, and mixed in some rice noodles. The end result was something with way too much onion and not something I would ever force upon someone else to eat. Was it really that bad? Well...I ate all of it. The curry/vegetable-to-noodle ratio was way off, not to mention the whole onion and green onion bits that decided to take over my mucus membranes. Oops.
And I ate a crapload of the chocolate. Or a shitload. I haven't figured out the exact measurements of each one, but sometimes "craploads" doesn't cut it.
Oh, what will tomorrow bring? I'm scared to find out.
Posted by roboppy at 10:40 PM
Comments (6)
Now that is a good crossiant! And I love the sound of the rice with hazelnuts. Pimp me up!
Posted by: AugustusGloop at November 16, 2005 6:40 PM [#]
Ah, this "Yakitate" reference explains a lot.
When you mentioned a fresh curry pan in a recent post and said "it was almost a yakitate moment" I was thinking, well, what was wrong with it?
I only knew "yakitate" as a word meaning "freshly baked."
"Dekitate" or "tsukuritate" mean freshly made, and I suppose you can use "mushitate" for freshly steamed (for rice and maybe for pudding or mushipan)... "Yudetate" works for freshly boiled...
I should stick to cooking.
Posted by: Jason Truesdell at November 16, 2005 9:08 PM [#]
Ooooh, curry noodles. Those are hard to cook because of all the ratios. But when you get it right, hot damn. Luv 'em to pieces, that's what I say.
Anyways, a trick I learned was first you heat the curry powder over low heat, until some of the oil leaks out, then you slowly pour coconut milk in it and keep stirring gently...and add your vegetables and meat, raising the heat to medium as you stir gently...(basically, you make a typical curry that meant to get mixed with rice later on.)
And then you dump the noodles (I like the thick rice noodles from pad thai, though my mom swears that vermicelli is better) and stir fry your curry noodle mix like there's no tomorrow. Fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun.
And now I'm hungry.
~Mahar
P.S. You ate all those chocolate discs? I envy you.
P.P.S. I am typing this while eating a Cadbury milk chocolate with Hazelnut bar. So I am suffering from Choco-envy.
P.P.P.S. Your croissant place must've used a croissant machine. As of 4 years ago, professional caterers have been using those for perfect croissants...but the machine costs $2000.
The crossiant looks delicious. I was searching the web for how many calories there are in a chocolate one (as I was thinking of having two!!) but came across this site instead. it is nice to read about people enjoying their food, especially while you are enjoying yours too.
Ps Crossiants in France do look like that and taste like that too - try eating one in the sunshine and it is the best thing ever!!
Good eating....
Posted by: Jennie at April 6, 2006 6:46 AM [#]
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That croissant looks fantastic. I think that that's what they're supposed to look like. When you make the pastry you fold the butter and dough into many thin layers just like that. At least that's what I remember from watching Baking With Julia on PBS.
Posted by: mzn at November 16, 2005 3:56 PM [#]