Wednesday Dinner

This beauty is Carl Marletti's interpretation of the classic Mont Blanc, which is a pastry of magisterial proportions of crème de marron. Angelina's look like spaghetti. If you're curious, I highly suggest clicking through Le Figaro's gallery of how those little monsters are made. You don't need to know French to drool at pictures, and maybe you'll even be inspired for Halloween next year.

Carl's--we're on a first name basis--look like sophistication incarnate. It's a very non-traditional Mont Blanc that sort of puts together all of the disparate parts (vanilla cream, chestnuts, some kind of pastry base) into a beautiful machine. Chestnut paste becomes chestnut mousse. Vanilla pastry cream becomes crème légère. A meringue base becomes a noisette biscuit.

It is modern art's answer to pastry.

I was loathe to cut into the beautiful exterior and ruin the powdered perfection, but I set about doing so with scientific precision. To appreciate all of the elements playing off one another, I delicately cut away a bite-size cross-section. It was sublime. But I didn't let it get to my head, no, lacking all but a lab coat and glasses, I proceeded to try each layer individually, pausing to slowly savor each one. 

The white creme legere, flecked with vanilla seeds, like heavenly clouds sailing onto my palate from Madagascar.

The impossibly light chestnut fluff of the middle, in which bits of perfectly candied chestnuts were hidden like little nutty bombs, like a minefield of marvels, if you will.

The crunchy contrast of the thin noisette base.

This is where I stop believing in science, right about the moment where heaven is reflected in the tiny morsel of silver foil crowning Carl's God's gift to man.

Mercifully I thought to save a bite until I'd finished writing this post.