It is “a killing”, as they say. The chocolate sweetness that
Nina Métayer designed for the festival
Taste of Paris, from September 16 to 19 in Paris, has the effect on the palate of a caress with constantly renewed sensations. The crunchiness of a chocolate crumble, the roundness of a light mousse, the spiciness of lemon segments marinated in rosemary, the freshness of a cottage cheese sorbet and the crunch of a cocoa tile, also infused with rosemary… And here is her “gourmet proposal for the plate which combines the resinous scent of rosemary and the comforting roundness of chocolate”, not easy to reproduce at home, but whose secrets Nina Métayer tells us in the video above. For a question of duration, we limited ourselves to the crumble. It is the simplest and it can always serve as an excellent base for your homemade desserts …
For the crumble, knead 110 g of butter, 90 g of brown sugar and 35 g of granulated sugar by hand. Once the butter is a little soft, “not melted, but in softened butter”, always incorporate by hand 130 g of T55 flour and 40 g of cocoa powder. “You can really feel the textures in the hand, and in particular the grains of the brown sugar,” insists the chef. Before placing the crumble on a baking sheet and baking for about thirty minutes at 155 ° C (especially not more than 160 ° C).
The role of female chefs at the “Taste of Paris” festival
We take advantage of the cooking time to ask Nina Métayer the importance in her eyes of having a slew of female chefs invited this year to Taste of Paris. “It’s very important that we are more and more numerous and that we see each other together to show that we are here, we know each other, we are close and we all get along very well. Like others, Nina Métayer is part of this new generation of female leaders who care about taking their destiny into their own hands without letting others decide for them.
“I’m convinced of it,” she said. Of course, I include myself among the women who want to get things done, that’s for sure, because I also have a lot of convictions on the role, on the status of women in these professions… I take this role at heart because it is important to show young women who have dreams that even if it is not easy every day, you must not give up to at least try to make them come true. “
The Delicatessen of Nina Métayer
We lick and we lick the plate of chocolate sweetness by asking Nina Métayer what fly stung her, anyway, to escape from palaces and starred restaurants, she who is loaded with rewards (best pastry chef or dessert, several years in a row), with the aim of creating at the end of 2020 its Delicatessen, a digital store where she designs, manufactures and sells her pastries directly.
“I come from a family keen on digital and confinement pushed me to take the plunge,” she explains. It’s better to focus on what you know how to do, baking, and you have less loss since you only work to order. »Including with the Spring of taste that comes fromopen on the 8th floor a corner in his name… “It’s for those who want to treat themselves to a small fruit tart on a whim. But for her, nothing is better than direct sales. “You can have your order delivered or come and collect it from the lab in Issy-les-Moulineaux, Printemps or Annexe Richard, a wine cellar in Les Invalides. I am there on Friday evening and it gives me the pleasure to have the time to chat with my clients. It’s great because they’ve already ordered, already paid for and so all he has to do is give them the cake and explain what’s in it… ”
Amandine Chaignot and Nina Métayer, two of the thirteen chefs of Taste of Paris
The best of the current culinary scene, it is from Thursday to Sunday at the ephemeral Grand Palais of the Champ de Mars that it is found. A festival to feast on the specialties of the most exciting chefs of the moment. To underline in the program “ women taking orders, which continue to assert themselves for the better, ”the artistic director of Taste of Paris invited no less than thirteen, which is fortunate when one comes out of several decades of machismo in the kitchen, sometimes mixed with moral or sexual harassment. The recent confinements will have given many of these chefs the opportunity to reinvent themselves and create new offers, such as Amandine Chaignot or Nina Métayer, whose recipes we are presenting this week. The two women know each other well having worked together at the Raphaël hotel in the mid-2010s and they both left palaces, their first employers, to set up on their own in order to have more direct contact with their clients.