Tuesday, 29 June 2010

Pièce montée

I had never heard of a pièce montée before coming to France, but here it is quite traditional. It is a dessert, often served as part of a formal meal, usually one with a celebratory or religious function. Basically it's a big stack of profiteroles arranged into a cone, and decorated with sugar figures and shapes. When used, it takes the place of a fancy cake.

We catered a wedding party last weekend, and it featured a pièce montée. The meal started with champagne and nibbles, continued with a starter of seafood terrines, then on to a fish course (cod in papillotte), a steak main course, cheese, and the final pièce montée. A fantastic meal, it lasted from about 7:30 until 1:00 am, and everyone loved it. Very pleasing to cater at such a high level, and to everyone's satisfaction.

The tables all laid out with flowers, and the starter course ready to go.




















The cheese course, and the pièce montée. You can't see it well in the photo but the sugar sculpture on top is a bride and groom figurine. The choux-pastry balls, (not very visible in the photo since they are mostly covered by the hearts and other decorations,) are stuck together with a sugar syrup/caramel glue, and you have to cut them apart with scissors.

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7 comments:

  1. Jonathan30 June 2010 at 00:08

    It does look rather good! If you can cater for the French in this way then you have truly arrived. Curiously, it gives me the same sense of national pride I'm sure I would have felt if England had performed slightly better at football recently...

    Is this the room to which you were adding underfloor heating a few months back?

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  2. Tim Trent30 June 2010 at 01:03

    That looks like a true delight. A banquet that is light, tempting, gloriously laid out.

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  3. Mark In Mayenne30 June 2010 at 05:32

    Well I'm truly glad to hear that J. I also watched the match, but I couldn't get to the telly until after the start, so I missed the first three goals and also the one that the ref didn't spot. So also I saw was the last two, which was a bit disappointing.

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  4. Mark In Mayenne30 June 2010 at 05:33

    You are right, Tim. As you will appreciate, it's important to carry out stringent quality control checks, and I can confirm your opinion :)

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  5. Mark In Mayenne30 June 2010 at 05:37

    P.S No, J, this is not the room I added the underfloor heating to: all the renovations to the gîte were in place when we opened. In fact, I still haven't finished all the tiling in the newly-underfloor-heated room but I haven't talked about it recently, because a)I'm a bit embarrassed that it's taking this long, and b)I figure everyone would be bored with it by now. I might post a pic when it's all done....

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  6. Tim Trent30 June 2010 at 05:54

    If you find that you need extra quality control...

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  7. the fly in the web2 July 2010 at 19:48

    That all looks very tempting...you could give a few lessons to local restaurants, I think!

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