Day 1907 (Sunday) 28th August 2022

It wasn’t quite so hot today, only 36 degrees on the balcony.

At sunset last night we thoroughly enjoyed some champagne, which tasted even better than it should because it was free. Some difficult American guests in the big apartment left it behind when  they left, so we kept it for today.

Huw Googled the name of the champagne and discovered that it was £49 a bottle in Waitrose.

Pol Roger was known to be Churchill’s favourite fizz, and it’s also the Champagne of choice for royal weddings. 33 metres below street level, Pol Roger’s cellars are three degrees cooler than other cellars in the region – a tiny variation which makes all the difference. It slows the fermentation right down, which intensifies flavours and creates extra-fine, elegant bubbles. After four years of ageing, this Brut Réserve is well worth the wait. You’ll find aromas of pear, mango and honeysuckle, with ripe and developed flavours of quince, apricot and toasty brioche. The richness is balanced by a crisp, refreshing acidity.

This was followed by a lovely birthday dinner of poulet roti, sweetcorn and delicious roast potatoes cooked under the roasting chicken from the poulet roti stand in the market.

This was rounded off beautifully with a very expensive strawberry tart (5€) from the patisserie 

A few hours later the night ended with a spectacular fireworks display.

This morning Huw found these photos in the Nice Matin taken last night in Nice

This display was to celebrate the anniversary of Nice becoming a UNESCO world heritage site.

The United Nation's cultural organisation said that it had added the French Mediterranean city of Nice to its world heritage list.

Photo: Valery Hache/AFP

UNESCO made the announcement in a tweet calling Nice, famous for its mild climate, the “Winter resort town of the Riviera”.

Nice joins France’s more than 40 world heritage sites which include the banks of the river Seine in Paris, the Amiens cathedral, the Mont Saint Michel and stretches of the Loire valley.

“The history of Nice, which is at the same time deeply rooted and open, Mediterranean and Alpine, European and cosmopolitan, has produced an architecture and a landscape that are unique, a model for many other cities in the world,” Nice’s mayor Christian Estrosi said in reaction to the announcement.

With close to one million inhabitants, greater Nice is the second-biggest city on the French Mediterranean coast after Marseille, and the fifth-biggest in France.

It is a tourist hotspot with several million visitors per year, and its airport is one of the country’s busiest.

Nicknamed “Nice the Beautiful”, the city attracted European aristocracy from the 18th century, starting with British royalty who had the seafront Promenade des Anglais named after them.

We had arranged to have lunch with Suzanne in Les Garcons on Rue du Pouli, we bought her an aloe vera plant and a gorgeous Villefranche-sur-Mer mug with a new design that has appeared lately. Huw gave me the one on the right yesterday – it’s not a very accurate drawing of Villefranche but we decided that it could be Le Phare and we gave the one on the  left to Suzanne with baguettes sunbathing on the private beach in Villefranche.

Pat and Dee were meant to join us for lunch but Dee’s sister is still unwell in Cannes so they took their super-fast motor bike to see her. Her and her husband are only in the area for a week and they have been sick since Tuesday – how unlucky is that?

In Les Garcons they have a set menu for 19€ which includes a starter and a main course or a main and dessert. In my best French I asked if I could have a starter and a dessert without the main and they agreed. These waiters can speak English very well so I was chuffed when they didn’t switch to English on hearing my pronunciation.

I had the chevre chaud

 

Suzanne had  beef tataki – I can’t think of anything much worse than this…

Tataki is a Japanese preparation whereby red meat, fish or even tofu is seasoned, seared at a scorching temperature and rapidly cooled down to leave the centre as rare or untouched as possible – for this reason you should use the best quality meat or fish you can afford.

Huw had the fish and it came with mashed potatoes, which he usually hates but when he tried them he decided they were the best mashed potatoes he had ever tasted because they were loaded with butter.

 

In between courses we gave Suzanne her birthday presents and she seemed very happy with them.

For dessert Suzanne and I had panna cotta with a red fruit coulis and it was delicious.

One of the best known and frequently requested desserts, panna cotta – literally “cooked cream” – originated in Piedmont and is made of cream and sugar. There are different versions and flavorings. Its delicate sweetness, smooth texture and the elegant way it is plated make it a perfect treat at the end of a meal. 

A few years ago we invited Olivier and Audre for dinner and they brought us a beautifully presented packet of macarons 

They looked wonderful but we were both disappointed that we didn’t particularly like them. Today Huw decided to give them another chance and that was his dessert, they were much nicer than we had remembered.

The History of the Delicious Macaron

Macarons are elegant sweets that come in a wide variety of delicate flavours. 

Colourful, pillowy and delicate, macarons are one of the most treasured desserts in France. These meringue-based sweets may now be a near art form – just visit Ladurée or Pierre Hermé pâtisseries in Paris – but they were not always so glamorous. Ever wondered how the macaron came to be? Read on to find out.

Who invented the macaron?

First things first, macarons are not to be confused with macaroons. Macaroons are small and slapdash coconut haystacks, and are often dipped in chocolate.

Macarons are elegant little sandwiches that are made with meringue, almond flour and buttercream filling.

The first known appearance of the macaron in Europe was during the Middle Ages. At the time, it was a small sweet made of almonds, egg white and sugar, and was crunchy on the outside and soft inside. Even though the French are often given credit for the macaron, Catherine de’ Medici likely brought the maccherone to France in the 1500s from Italy, where it had been produced in Venetian monasteries since the 8th century. Back then, they were rather humbly called “priests’ bellybuttons” due to the shape of the pastry.

Nevertheless, France is where the confection became popular. The first written macaron recipe appeared in France in the 17th century, with a number of versions emerging since.

How the macaron became popular

In 1792, two Carmelite nuns in Nancy, who became known as the Macaron Sisters, baked and sold the sweets to survive during the French Revolution. In 1952, Nancy honoured the pair by renaming the spot where they produced the macarons after them. Over time, different regions in France adopted the recipe as a local specialty.

However, the macaron as we know it now (with two meringue cookies brought together by a light, flavoured filling) was a creation of the French capital. In the 1830s, Parisian confectioners introduced the world to the macaron parisien. The recipe was popularised by pâtisserie Ladurée, a company created in 1862 by Louis-Ernest Ladurée, a gentleman who clearly knew how to make a great sweet.

The macaron has endured a never-ending process of reinvention and an unceasing emergence of new flavours and colours. At the beginning of the 21st century, confectioners started offering macarons with a difference in flavour between filling and cookie. Recently, pastry chefs have been revamping the traditional recipes using savoury inspirations (basil, mint or Thai curry, anyone?).

The sweet has since spread across the world, thanks in part to Sofia Coppola‘s 2006 film Marie Antoinette, in which the queen is surrounded by luscious pyramids of multicoloured macarons (which were provided by Ladurée). The macaron has since experienced a surge in popularity in North America and Asia.

Last but not least, the macaron has a special day of the year: 20 March. It was introduced in 2005 by Pierre Hermé, another famous French confectionary house. On Macaron Day, participating macaron shops offer free samples to their customers. Save the date.

It was all very delicious but pretty expensive so after we paid the bill we went to Le Phare to have a cheap glass of rose to round off the meal. My mother in law often sends Huw and I some money for our birthdays and we put this money in a jar and use it to pay for meals when we go out, so thanks for our lunch today Pat.