David Lebovitz's Secrets to Living in Paris

Chef and author David Lebovitz discusses his new book L’Appart: The Delights and Disasters of Making My Paris Home. He tells the story of his experiences living as an expat in Paris, using his perplexing experiences in apartment renovation as a launching point for stories about French culture, food and what it means to revamp one's life.

 Two recipes from the book are listed below: 

APPLE MAPLE TARTE TATIN
Tarte tatin au sirop d’érable
SERVES 8
One of the most beloved of all French pastries is tarte Tatin, an upside-down caramelized apple tart that requires little expertise in baking but a measure of patience while the ap¬ples cook. I love when people bring me maple syrup, but the French are constantly wondering what to do with the bottles of sirop d’érable their American friends bring them. Since they don’t eat pancakes or waffles, or douse “French” toast (page 000) with the stuff, they’re not quite sure what to do with it when gifted a bottle.
Here I pair it with caramelized apples, a perfect Franco-American alliance, that I first discovered at Des Gâteaux et du Pain, an elegant bakery presided over by pastry chef Claire Damon. My version hones closer to the original than the decidedly more upscale individual tartlets on display in her shop, which are so pretty, you’ll want to take a picture. (But don’t, as it’s forbidden. Which I learned the hard way.)
Golden Delicious apples reliably hold their shape when cooked and don’t exude too much juice, which results in a deeply caramelized round of apples on top of the buttery crust. If you prefer another apple that has similar qualities, feel free to use it. You might think all the apples called for won’t fit in the pan, but trust me, they will. Or as the French say, “Pas de problème.” But in this case, I mean it.
Dough
1 cup (140g) all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons (4 ounces/60g) unsalted butter, cut into cubes and chilled
3 tablespoons (45ml) ice water
Fruit
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/3 cup (60g) packed light brown sugar (or half light brown and half dark brown sugar)
1/4 cup (60ml) dark amber pure maple syrup
Pinch of salt
8 medium Golden Delicious apples (about 4 pounds/1.8kg)
Crème fraîche or vanilla ice cream, for serving
1. Make the dough: In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix the flour, sugar, and salt together. Add the butter and mix until the butter pieces are the size of corn kernels. Add the ice water and mix until the dough comes together. Gather the dough with your hands and shape it into a disk. Wrap it in plastic wrap and chill for at least 1 hour.
2. In a 10-inch (25cm) cast-iron skillet, heat the butter, brown sugar, maple syrup, and salt. When the butter starts to bubble, cook, stirring gently, for 30 seconds. Remove from the heat and set aside.
3. Peel, quarter, and core the apples. Arrange them in the pan, rounded-side down, in concentric circles. Pack them in tightly—pas de problème—they’ll cook down considerably.
4. Place the pan on the stovetop and cook over medium heat for about 25 minutes, until the juices below the apples thicken.
5. Preheat the oven to 375ºF (190ºC).
6. On a lightly floured countertop, roll the dough into a 12-inch (30cm) circle. Trim the edges with a knife so they’re neat and drape the dough over the apples in the pan. Tuck the edges of the dough between the edge of the skillet and the apples.
7. Bake the tart until the pastry has browned, about 40 minutes. Remove from the oven and invert a serving plate or baking sheet over the pan. Being very careful of any hot juices that may spill out, quickly and surely flip the pan and the plate (or baking sheet) over together, making sure to tilt the pan away from you (so the juices don’t land on you) to unmold the tart. If any apples have stuck to the pan, reunite them with the tart.
8. Serve warm or at room temperature with crème fraîche or vanilla ice cream. (If you want to increase the maple flavor, you can brush it with a little more maple syrup just before serving.)

VANILLA ÉCLAIR PUFFS W ITH BITTERSWEET CHOCOLATE SAUCE
MAKES 35 BITE-SIZE PUFFS
One thing I’ve learned from the French is that not every¬thing needs to be reinvented. Sometimes, what already exists doesn’t need to be improved upon. (But I am keeping a list of a few things that could stand a little improvement, just in case they ever ask me.) Young Parisian chefs trying to break away from classic French cuisine attempt to make statements by spewing foam onto square plates and dusting plate cor¬ners with powdered mushrooms. And no matter how much I want to dive into a slab of juicy côte de boeuf, I’ll never get used to the sound of a steak knife screeching across the slate plate underneath it. I’m happy with a (round) plate of fish or vegetables, properly sauced, or a steak presented on a wooden board, ready to be devoured
I feel the same way about pastries: sometimes, it’s best to stick with the classics, and there’s nothing I love more than a good éclair. For home bakers, though, éclairs can be tricky to pipe and fill, so I call these mouthfuls éclair puffs and douse them with warm chocolate sauce, which I like bet¬ter than the traditional chocolate glaçage. (So I guess I am guilty of a little tradition-tampering, too.)
French bakers use vanilla beans, while Americans favor vanilla extract in their desserts. Like my life as an American in France, I straddle two cultures, appreciating the qualities of each. In this case, the bean adds an earthy, floral vanilla flavor, and extract introduces a brighter vanilla note to the pastry cream filling, so you can get the best of both worlds in one perfect bite.
Vanilla Pastry Cream
2 cups (500ml) whole milk
1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
2 large eggs
3 large egg yolks
2/3 cup (130g) sugar
6 tablespoons (50g) cornstarch
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Pâte à Choux
1 cup (250ml) water 8 tablespoons (4 ounces, 115g) unsalted butter, cut into cubes
2 teaspoons sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup (140g) all-purpose flour
4 large eggs, at room temperature
Chocolate Sauce
1 cup (250ml) water
1/2 cup (100g) sugar
1/2 cup (160g) light corn syrup, rice syrup, or golden syrup
3/4 cup (75g) unsweetened cocoa powder
2 ounces (55g) bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped
Toasted sliced almonds (optional)
1. Make the vanilla pastry cream: Have ready a clean me¬dium bowl with a mesh strainer set over the top.
2. Pour the milk into a medium saucepan. Scrape the va¬nilla seeds from the beans. Add the vanilla bean seeds and pod to the milk and heat over medium-high heat.
3. In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, egg yolks, sugar, and cornstarch. While whisking continuously, gradually pour the warmed milk into the egg mixture, then scrape the mixture back into the saucepan. Cook the custard, stirring continuously with the whisk, until it comes to a boil, then cook, whisking continuously, for 1 minute, until the custard is quite thick.
4. Pour the custard into the strainer and press it through with a flexible silicone spatula. Stir in the butter and vanilla until the butter is well incorporated. Press plas¬tic wrap directly against the surface of the pastry cream and refrigerate until cool.
5. Make the pâte à choux: Preheat the oven to 400ºF (200ºC). Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats or parchment paper.
6. In a medium saucepan, combine the water, butter, sugar, and salt and heat over medium-high heat, stir¬ring occasionally, until the butter has melted.
7. Add the flour all at once. Reduce the heat to medium and stir vigorously until the mixture pulls away from the sides of the pan and forms a smooth ball. Remove from the heat and let rest for 2 minutes, stirring it once or twice to help it cool.
8. Add the eggs, one at a time, stirring quickly to make sure the eggs don’t cook. (You can also do this step in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attach¬ment . . . as long as your mixer hasn’t been buried when you’re packing up for a move.)
9. Scrape the mixture into a pastry bag fitted with a wide plain tip and pipe the dough onto the prepared bak¬ing sheets in thirty-five 1-inch (3cm) rounds, evenly spaced apart. (If you don’t have a pastry bag, fill a zip-top freezer bag with the dough, snip off a corner, and squeeze the dough out through the opening. Or use a spring-loaded ice cream scoop to shape the dough.)
10. Bake the choux puffs until deep golden brown on top, 25 to 30 minutes, rotating the baking sheets in the oven halfway through baking. Let cool on the baking sheets.
11. Meanwhile, make the chocolate sauce: In a medium saucepan, combine the water, sugar, corn syrup, and cocoa powder and heat over medium heat, stirring con¬tinuously with a whisk, until the mixture comes to a boil. Remove it from the heat, add the chocolate, and stir until it has melted.
12. Scrape the pastry cream into a pastry bag fitted with a small plain tip. (If the pastry cream is very stiff, you can beat it by hand or in the bowl of a stand mixer fit¬ted with the paddle attachment, to smooth it out.) Poke a round hole in the bottom of each puff by inserting a paring knife and rotating it. Fill the puffs with the cream. You can also split them horizontally and spoon the cream in the puffs.
13. Serve the puffs, three per plate, doused with warm chocolate sauce. Scatter toasted sliced almonds on top, if desired.

Reprinted from the book L’APPART: The Delights and Disasters of Making My Paris Home by David Lebovitz. Copyright © 2017 by David Lebovitz. Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, on November 7.