Please handle my suitcase with more care... It’s python and doesn’t travel well. Part II.

We're ridiculous and it's honestly the only thing that's keeping me sane. And a French feast of Magret de Canard (Seared Duck Breast), and a Caramel Upside Down Cake that will set your soul on fire.

Today I got into a fight.

Not really. I mean, I am fine with putting ‘em up but I prefer to fight a war I know I can win.

But today the 18 year old worker at the boulangerie thought the way I pronounced “Mille-Feuilles” was just HIlARIOUS.

Picture it, a young woman enters a Boulangerie (that’s French for Bakery), bright eyed and bushy tailed, excited to welcome the new day of adventure. She asks for the regular bread order of the company and four additional pastries to wow the guests. An Opera Cake, a Blueberry Tart, and a Strawberry with Chantilly Crème Tart. ALL in French, I might add!

But alas, the Mille-Feuille just happens to be one of the most difficult things to pronounce in the French language. And the French just loooooooove to make fun of you when you try.

I mean I love them, I moved here, I’ve chosen to build a new life here. But stop making fun of me when I’m doing my best!

A mille-feuille, what we call a Napoleon in North America, and a Vanilla Slice in the United Kingdom, is a French dessert made of puff pastry layered with pastry cream. According to some, it was earlier called gâteau de mille-feuilles ("cake of a thousand sheets"), referring to the many layers of pastry inside that creates the buttery, textured bite that mixes custard and puff pastry so delicately.

It can go to Hades.

I mean no, it’s not its fault that it’s name is one of the most difficult things to say in the French language. It just sent me over this morning, which got me to thinking…

What is a word that you can’t say, in English or in any language?

I polled Instagram, which is always such fun to do, asking what people what they find difficult to pronounce. Here are some fantastic answers:

• Facetious

• Archipelago- mine! Can’t say it. Shan’t say it.

• Irish names in general. In what world does Siobhán sound like that.

• Brewery (more than one vote for this one).

• Oenophile

• Minneapolis

• Made up words: Ubiquitious, instead of Ubiquitous

• Glicee (Had to Google: Giclée is based on the French word gicleur, the French technical term for a jet or a nozzle, and the associated verb gicler (to squirt out). Une giclée (noun) means a spurt of some liquid. The French verb form gicler means to spray, spout, or squirt).

• Theater- OK this seems obvious but I will let this person have it.

• And my personal favorite:

  

I want to know, what are yours!?

But back to the food.

Our main feature is one of my favorite things about France… Seared Magret de Canard (duck breast) with a sweet and sour Gastrique Sauce. A simple, quick (I promise!) dish that perfectly showcases any in-season berry. You can make the Gastrique with figs, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, apples, etc, but France in early autumn, we’re going to highlight the delicious, plump figs we found at the local market with the cute produce vendor.

And to top it off, for dessert we’ll play with a Caramel Upside Down Cake! I hesitate to single out a fruit for it because you need to be able to shift and make chaotic last moment decisions depending on what you can grow or what you can find at the store. Because it’s early autumn, we’ll focus on apples picked from the orchard! Slash cute produce vendor.

And then I dropped the Mille-Feuille on the ground the second I presented it to the Clients. It only seemed appropriate.

Happy Sunday, one and all.

ASF xx

What I’ve been cooking

Recipes exclusive to paid subscribers :) …

1. Magret de Canard with Fig Gastrique Sauce

2. Caramel Upside Down Cake 

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