Every Tuesday is women’s day at Geneva’s Bain des Paquis, which is a sort of promenade into lake Geneva with a small lighthouse at the end. Either side is lined with sand and it is typically crowded with half-naked sun-worshippers throughout the summer. The view of the city from there is really quite pretty. In the winter time there is a sauna, Turkish bath and hammam, and on Tuesdays, it is reserved exclusively for women. Years ago when I used to live and work in Geneva and my daughter was still small I used to look forward to these Tuesdays where I would enjoy some quite time and some steam by the lake, either by myself or with a girlfriend. Ever since I moved back here nearly two years ago, I haven’t returned, though I have been meaning to. For one thing, the friend I used to go with is busier now, and it is less fun to go alone. In any case, this week I decided I to go. The first thing I noticed was how most women had much less body hair than a few years back! Also, the two only girls wearing bikinis were Anglophones; the rest were stark naked (I brought a sarong into the sauna and Turkish bath).

(Photo courtesy of the Geneva Tourism website)

It was a gloomy March day, with the temperature not rising beyond four degrees Celsius, perfect for a sauna. As I lay in the wooden room with the heat up to ninety degrees, the water in the lake looked more and more tempting. This is coming from a girl who will typically not go for a dip unless the water is twenty-eight degrees. When I used to frequent this place, I would not even consider dipping my toe into the lake though my courageous friend went for a swim. Finally I left the sauna, relieved by the cool air as soon as I opened the door outside, walked towards the lake. There were a few steps with a metallic handle going down, but the water only skimmed the last step; the lake was unusually low. I stared for a bit, looking around; I was alone, clutching my sarong and my towel. I turned around, and headed to the resting room, a room with deck chairs and blankets for relaxing. Who was I kidding? 

Recently on an episode of Top Chef France, the contestants were all given the task to prepare a chocolate cake. Pretty much all of the chefs balked at the exercise, to the general tune of: "I am a chef, not a pastry chef (je suis cuisiner, pas patissier!). It's true: baking requires an altogether different set of skills from cooking. It is less forgiving of deviations and substitutions, and demands the utmost precision. When I was training in the kitchen back in Marseille, I both loved (for its sheltered isolation) and hated (for missing out on the action in the rest of the kitchen) the pastry station (see http://thrillainmassalia.blogspot.ch/2010_11_01_archive.html for more). 

But back to Geneva, where my dear friend C turned forty last Saturday, and yours truly had the honour to bake her a cake. So the fun part of a cake is that you can treat it as a canvas in a way you could not a main dish… or at least in my limited experience. Since the theme of the birthday party was 1940, I immediately hit the internet for typical 1940 birthday cakes. Unfortunately, nothing very inspiring came up. What I did stumble upon at the store were these adorable champagne candles… I knew they were perfect for the birthday girl, who is a self-proclaimed champagne junkie and connoisseur. Then, miraculously, the cake just built itself from the top down. Or just about. I searched for "champagne cake" and it turns out that pink champagne cakes were all the rage in the 1950s (close enough - after all, she did specify post-war). It also turned out I had a perfectly yummy bottle of Pommery Brut in the refrigerator just begging to be sublimated into a show-stopping confection… so white (as opposed to pink) champagne cake it would be! I also thought it was more appropriate to skip the food colour as Europeans don't seem as fond of it as, say, Filipinos or Americans More than one European has balked at my purple yam cake because of its vibrant violet colour, deemed too unnatural in this part of the world (pic below).

Never, ever do like me and try a cake recipe for the first time when you are to serve it. The scariest part for me here was the frosting. The more I read on the internet about horror stories with champagne frosting, the more I was freaking out. And lo and behold, my champagne frosting was the fluffiest, creamiest ever.

In the end, the whole thing came together, my daughter helped me decorate and C was super happy, and so was I. Happy fortieth, C!

Yvoire is a mere 30 minutes drive from Geneva centre, and yet this week was only my second visit. The medieval village lies on the edges of lake Geneva, across the Swiss border in France, and is a favourite for both locals and foreign visitors. My first time there was ten summers ago, on a scorching hot day. The place was packed with tourists. This time round there was hardly a soul; it was a cold and windy March week day and only a handful of us intrepid gourmands headed to this destination with the same thing in mind: filet de perches. 

Thinking back I realise it was an unconscious prayer for Spring, this yearning for the small, tender filets of lake fish, a way to put behind a winter of melted cheese, bread and potatoes, an adieu to the fondues and raclettes of the previous months. 















Well, whether local or not, the perch filets were delicious and satisfying, though the highlight for my companion was dessert: two scoops of sorbet (lemon and pear) served with its own tiny bottle of local eaux-de-vie, which is basically fruit macerated in rubbing alcohol. I guess it's one way to compensate for the fact that Spring is not here yet!

The perils of researh

Yesterday I decided to take my daughter with me for a “research” lunch at a tiny restaurant in the Quartier des Banques (the Bank Neighborhood). I’ve often walked past the window of this very narrow establishment, and have been intrigued by the name (“I Feel Bio”) and the menu, which seemed sparse but healthy and refreshing. We were warmly greeted by a host/server and asked if we had a reservation. When I replied negatively, he managed to find us a seat at the end of a long elevated table next to two German women, the one next to me with pointy elbows who was annoyingly edging towards my very limited, personal table space. The day’s menu featured a chicken curry (I was making chicken satay for dinner), a fish pastilla which raisins (not a fan of raisins), a vegetarian, almond sushi plate (serisously?) and a brown basmati risotto. I had to go for the risotto, and stirred my daughter in the same direction. The “brown rice” should have been a red flag for me. When the dishes came out, my daughter looked incredulously at hers and said “is it oatmeal?” Visually it was already not at all enticing, and the taste and most of all texture just confirmed that neither of us was going to finish our plate. What I couldn’t understand was that they charged CHF 26 ($27.50) for this vegetarian dish with no first course or salad – nothing. And the place was packed! I was appalled and apologized to my daughter on behalf of the kitchen. We were both embarrassed to leave our dishes full as I asked for the bill and when the server asked us how our meal went I just muttered that we were in a hurry, incapable of pronouncing how I really felt. In any case, the other people in the restaurant seemed happy, so perhaps ours was just a fluke, and everything else they serve is downright delicious. I like giving places (and people) a second chance like that.

Fortunately just around the corner is a temple to French pastry which would surely wipe any disappointing culinary experience away, at least for my daughter (who was taking notes on her little notebook about the meal she had just experienced). There she had a selection of macarons, one of her favorite treats, and I had a delicious cannelé, a small French pastry of vanilla dough spike with rhum in a tiny bundt form with a crutsty caramelized outside and a soft, chewy filling (delicate to bake, due to temperature, timing and resting period). Our brown rice risotto nightmare was behind us. The thing was, the restaurant was packed and the pastry shop was empty, albeit for three white-haired ladies and us. What did we learn from this? Folks can’t live on pastry alone…