The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World's Most Glorious - and Perplexing - City by David Lebovitz Read Free Book Online

TO 10 SERVINGS
    Every Frenchwoman I know loves chocolate so much she has a chocolate cake in her repertoire that she’s committed to memory, one she can make on a moment’s notice. This one comes from Thérèse Pellas, who lives across the boulevard from me; when I first tasted the cake, I swooned from the rich, dark chocolate flavor and insisted on the recipe.
    Madame Pellas is fanatical about making the cake two days in advance and storing it in her kitchen cabinet before serving, which she says improves the chocolate flavor. And the Brie she keeps in there as well doesn’t seem to mind the company. (For some odd reason, the cake never tastes like anything but a massive dose of dark chocolate.) She uses Lindt chocolate, which is widely available and very popular in France—and whenever I see her out and about, I notice there’s always a telltale bit of foil wrapper sticking out of her purse, indicating she’s also squirreling a bar away for snacking.
    9 ounces (250 g) bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped
    8 tablespoons (120 g) unsalted butter
    ⅓ cup (65 g) sugar
    4 large eggs, at room temperature, separated
    2 tablespoons flour
    Pinch of salt
Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C). Butter a 9-inch (23-cm) loaf pan and line the bottom with a strip of parchment paper.
In a large bowl set over a pan of simmering water, heat the chocolate and butter together just until melted and smooth.
Remove from heat and stir in half the sugar, then the egg yolks, andflour. (You don’t need to measure the half-quantity of sugar exactly. Just pretend you’re a Frenchwoman cooking in her home kitchen and don’t worry about it.)
Using an electric mixer or a whisk, begin whipping the egg whites with the salt. Keep whipping until they start to form soft, droopy peaks. Gradually whip in the remaining sugar until the whites are smooth and hold their shape when the whisk is lifted.
Use a rubber spatula to fold one-third of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture to lighten it, then fold in the remaining egg whites just until the mixture is smooth and no visible white streaks remain.
Scrape the batter into the prepared loaf pan, smooth the top, and bake for 35 minutes, just until the cake feels slightly firm in the center. Do not overbake.
Let the cake cool in the pan before serving.
    STORAGE: The cake can be stored for up to three days. Madame Pellas keeps it in her cabinet, but you may wish to put it under a cake dome. It can also be frozen, well wrapped in plastic, for up to one month.

DINING LIKE A PARISIAN
    Before I moved to France, my preferred mode of eating was to belly up to the table, position myself strategically over a plate heaped with food, grab the remote, and obsessively tap the “up” button until I reached whatever Hollywood gossip show I could find.
    Then, while watching reports about which supermodel might have swallowed a carrot stick by accident, or waiting for a round-table analysis of why a paparazzi-surrounded celebutant would uncross her legs at the wrong moment, I’d have a go at shoveling whatever was piled on my plate into my mouth. My fork was used to spear chunks of food, andalso did double-duty as a makeshift knife—albeit a very dull one. I didn’t care how I looked, and I’d attack my plate of food with the fervor of a starving wild beast.
    Not wanting to out myself as the ill-mannered
étranger
that I am to my cultivated counterparts, I always,
always
use both knife and fork when dining with the French. Which also forces me to slow down when I eat. Early on, I learned to mimic them, steadying my food precisely in place with a fork while using the knife (a real one!) to cut refined, reasonably sized morsels that traveled from plate to mouth, piece by bite-size piece. Once you’ve picked up the knife at a French dinner table, don’t even think of putting it down until you’re done eating.
    During my days as a backpacker traveling through Europe, I remember people staring at me as I yanked