Montparnasse Cocktail

It’s been fun doing my daily Apéro Hour on IGTV and happy that people are tuning in. Here’s how if you’re not familiar with the format. Yesterday, bartender and spirits writer Jeffrey Morgenthaler, author of Drinking Distilled and the award-winning The Bar Book, was my guest and he made his revised French 75. Here’s the line up for the rest of the week: Wednesday: This…

It’s been fun doing my daily Apéro Hour on IGTV and happy that people are tuning in. Here’s how if you’re not familiar with the format. Yesterday, bartender and spirits writer Jeffrey Morgenthaler, author of Drinking Distilled and the award-winning The Bar Book, was my guest and he made his revised French 75. Here’s the line up for the rest of the week:

Wednesday: This Montparnasse cocktail with Calvados from Normandy and elderflower liqueur

Thursday: A round-up of French apéritifs; Pineau de Charentes from cognac, Pommeau de Normandie (made with apples), and the elusive, but excellent, Macvin du Jura.

Friday: Making tisanes and herbal infusions the French way with a Frenchman…Romain returns!

Saturday: A visit to Burgundy with traveling distiller Matt Sabbagh of Alambic Bourguignon and Sab’s Spirits, who makes gin, pear eau-de-vie, and marc & fin de bourgogne.

This cocktail is named after Montparnasse, an area of Paris where the Gare Montparnasse is situated in, a train station that’s surrounded by crêperies. Each train station in Paris serves a different region of France; The gare du Nord serves the North of France, the gare de l’Est serves Alsace, and the gare Saint-Lazare transports people to Normandy.

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Crepes Dentelle cookies (Gavottes)

These may be the best cookies in the world. Okay, they’re not really cookies, per se. At least not in the French sense. Les cookies refers to chocolate chip cookies and these ultra-thin, ultra-crisp, and ultra-buttery tasting crêpes dentelles are so different, yet so good, you’ll find yourself eating your way through several of them in no time. To prove that point, as a courtesy, the…

These may be the best cookies in the world. Okay, they’re not really cookies, per se. At least not in the French sense. Les cookies refers to chocolate chip cookies and these ultra-thin, ultra-crisp, and ultra-buttery tasting crêpes dentelles are so different, yet so good, you’ll find yourself eating your way through several of them in no time. To prove that point, as a courtesy, the company that makes them places two crêpe dentelles in each shimmering foil packet because they know that it’s impossible to eat just one.

The other great thing about these cookies (let’s just go with that, in English), is that you can pick up a box in any French supermarket, yet the cookies are grand and elegant enough so that restaurants in France have no problem serving store-bought cookies to customers. At least I’ve never heard any complaints. French grandparents and others are known to crumble cookies over a dish or bowl of ice cream to dress it up at home. (For the record, I like to think that I still fall into the “others” category – even though a young man offered me his seat on the métro the other day.)

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