Plats du Chef Escargot in Brioche

Yes folks, Gigi does indeed not only eat snails, but she really likes to eat snails. I know many people think this is just gross. And having watched the little buggers get my front stoop all slimy with their booger trails, I totally understand that.

But much like Brussels sprouts, sometimes things that are kinda gross can be unbelievably good when properly prepared. Honestly, I have never attempted to cook escargot on my own, and I don't plan on doing it from scratch any time soon. But I assure you...when I see them on a menu, I will always order them (sadly, that happens less and less).

I found this offering from Plats du Chef in the frozen aisle at Trader Joe's, and I couldn't resist. Unlike my mostly hard-and-fast rules about frozen clams (and the rather bad results I got from that meal -- read all about it here), I have no such rule about escargot. I honestly have no idea how they come into restaurant kitchens. (For all I know they may be frozen.) And, as garlic butter is an essential part of good escargot, it looked fairly promising.



As a general rule, escargot is served in the snail shell. (You may remember the dinner scene from "Pretty Woman" where Julia Roberts flings one across the room.) Plats du Chef's version is served instead in an incredibly cute mini-brioche. If nothing else, these look really pretty on a plate. And since they are self-contained, they would make for easy party finger food.



The brioche itself is reasonably crispy. The garlic butter sauce clings to the inner sides...and who doesn't love butter and bread, especially buttery garlic bread? (The brioche on its own has no flavor beyond generic "bread.")

The butter sauce is sort of an alarming green that, in theory at least, comes from the herbs used in the sauce. Looks aside, the sauce is decent. Overly salty, perhaps, but garlicky and buttery. The duo combined made for a mini-version of your average supermarket garlic bread. Nothing wrong with it, just not special.



The snails? Meh. What I like about good escargot is that the snail seems a lot like a clam. The texture should be tender and just a little chewy. The meat tends to taste salty to me, and a little earthy. But these just tasted muddy. I understand that snails will taste like what they eat, and I do expect them to be earthy -- but there is a big leap from earthy to muddy. And in this case the texture is quite rubbery (perhaps from the freezing?).



All in all, it's not the worst thing I have ever eaten. The bread and the butter sauce were pleasant. The snails were just...yuck. No other word besides YUCK really works. To be fair, I was not expecting chef quality. It was under $3.00 and frozen, so expectations are necessarily lowered. But even with drastically lowered expectations, these snails were nasty.

If you've ever wanted to try escargot, please don't let this be your virgin attempt. Good escargot is nothing like this, and you would be tremendously missing out. If you are already a fan, this won't float your boat either. It may get you through if you simply have to have some but can't get another version.

But really, how often does that happen? All told...YUCK!!



PURCHASED FROM:
Trader Joe's (I feel the need to stress that while I bought this item at Trader Joe's, this is not a TJ's branded product.)

LU Petit Écolier Dark Chocolate 45% Cocoa Biscuits

Yes, I know the Petit Écolier ("Little Schoolboy") biscuits have been LU's best known product practically forever. But there is something Hannibal Lecter-ish about these cookies. I mean, isn't there something vaguely disturbing about eating a cookie embossed with the likeness of a little French schoolboy? (Yes, he is French. LU -- short for Lefèvre-Utile Biscuit Co. -- was a French company before Kraft bought them out, and they're still made there.) It just seems a bit...unhealthy.

To be fair, though, the little French boy doesn't look entirely normal himself. He's got that glassy stare that makes you imagine his neighbors on the news years later, saying things like "he was such a quiet man" or "he always kept to himself"...so maybe it makes more sense than I thought. And what snack is he carrying in that basket, anyway? Cupcakes? More LU biscuits? Or...dare I say it...lady fingers...?



Aside from possibly being the favorite childhood snack of Dexter, the Petit Écolier Biscuits sound pretty darn yummy. The slab of 45% dark chocolate that the creepy little French boy is bas-reliefed upon sits atop what the box describes as a French Butter Biscuit.

Once you bite into the biscuit, you realize that the chocolate layer is not as thick as you might have expected. While the edges are raised and thick, the layer of chocolate that covers the center of the biscuit is thinner than it appears. But that's not such a bad thing. Actually, the proportions are very good. The chocolate is rich and creamy, though personally I think it is more of a deep milk than a true dark chocolate.



The biscuit is indeed buttery. You know those ubiquitous "gift" tins of Dutch butter cookies that are sold everywhere around the holidays? These biscuits are like a really high-quality version of those cookies. Butter is the strongest flavor. (Sometimes butter cookies just taste oily, but these don't.) The texture is light and flaky.

Combined, the two flavors together make sheer happiness. Happiness as in puppy dogs and rainbows rather than fava beans and a nice Chianti. The relative simplicity of the biscuit sets off the richness of the chocolate. At the same time, the richness of the chocolate highlights the buttery goodness of the biscuit. The only thing I would have liked to have seen -- beyond a less creepy stare on the little French boy -- would have been a little extra salt. That would have really set the whole cookie off.

A good cookie/biscuit/serial killer treat overall. In fact, I'm willing to bet even normal people will like it a lot.



PURCHASED FROM:
My mom got them from Vons Supermarket

Starbucks Chocolate Madeleines

Madeleine's are one of those classic treats that I love to eat but have no desire what so-ever to learn how to make myself.
I group French Macarons in with that as well. Madeleine's may look kind of like a cookie but for those who don't know, they are actually small, spongy cakes. They are always shaped in that elongated shell-type shape (via a special pan of course) and the taste of a traditional Madeleine's is sort of like pound cake with a bit more butter and a little lemon.


I have never actually seen chocolate Madeleine's before, which either means I am not quite the bakery slut I had fancied myself- or that Starbucks is just being cutting edge. A quick Googling taught me that chocolate Madeleine's are more common then I realized, so I am not as well versed in fancydancy cake as I thought and Starbucks is just playing into Soccer Mom chic. Yeah well...


Anyway, let's talk about Starbucks version. The first thing I noticed is that while the ingredients list does not give any evidence that it's there, the Madeleine's smell very strongly of coconut.
The cake is moist but at the same time the mouth feel is lumpy. As if the dry ingredients weren't shifted. Rather then being light and spongy the texture is dense and a little greasy.

The flavor is pretty much like a really bad bakery cupcake. It has that overly processed taste that cheap cake products get. It does have a deep cocoa flavor to it, and while the ingredients does list cocoa powder and chocolate drops, it is more like a chemical version of what cocoa should taste like then real cocoa.

About the only redeeming thing I can say about these Madeleine's is that they are now gone and I don't have to eat another bite.

Rating:


PURCHASED FROM:
Starbucks

Trader Joes Chocolate Croissants

Preheat the oven and grab your copy of Bridget Jones Diary!
I admit it I have read Bridget Jones Diary around 20 times. Each time I read it I find myself craving one of Bridget's favorite pastries- the chocolate croissant. When I saw the box of these at TJ's I could not resist getting them.

These croissants require a little more effort then most TJ's products. You have to allow the croissants to proof (rise) for about nine hours before baking. I set mine out last night and baked them while I watched some of the Shark Week programs saved on my DVR.

They only take about 20 minutes to bake and the pay off is that they smell fabulous. It took a lot of self restraint on my part to allow them to cool a bit before diving in. I did however eat mine still warm.

OH MY GOD! let me tell you how incredible these croissants are!
The pastry it's self is light and flaky and yet still buttery and rich. They literally melt in your mouth. Because I ate mine still warm the chocolate was melty and smooth. It's a semi-sweet chocolate and it was like biting into a lake of happiness. These are high end bakery quality good.

These get the elusive 11!
A must try!