January 6th is my older sis’ birthday as well as Three Kings Day, aka the Epiphany, or the last day of the Christmas season (you know, the 12th day of Christmas like the song.) The French have a particular tradition for today, the eating of the galette des rois. It’s an almond puff pastry cake with une feve (a favor) inside, usually a little figurine of the baby Jesus or even a porcelain pain au chocolat; that’s what was in our galette des rois last year. The cake comes with a paper crown, like the ones they would give you at Burger King for your birthday—(I don’t know if they still do that)—and whoever gets the favor in their slice of cake gets to be king for the day. This will be my third time vying for that oh-so-elusive feve. Considering we’ll be sharing the galette with only 4 people tonight, that means I’ve got a 25% chance of being crowned!
This year, Dman and I sprung for a super-luxe galette from Regis Colin, who is some maitre boulanger (I think it’s like the Jedi Knight of boulangers) just a few blocks from our house. Despite all my good New Year’s intentions and working out for an hour today at the gym, I still managed to stuff my face with a croissant and half a baguette from this bakery. Damn you, Regis Colin!
This is the galette (and crown) I’ll be partaking in tonight. I’ll let you know if I get coronated.
UPDATE: I got crowned! The galette was seriously one of the best cakes I’ve ever eaten and I bit down on the favor, thus becoming the Queen. However, I dragged it out of Dman later that he switched our slices so that I could get the feve. Which was very sweet but anyway, I still won! And the feve was some strange elf-looking dude with a winged lion and the words “Venise, la Souveraine,” which quite frankly, I don’t understand. Venice, the Sovereignty? Another French thing I just don’t get.
Address:
Regis Colin, 53 Rue Montmartre
75002 Paris
+33 1 42 36 02 80
2 Comments
Saturday, February 2, 2008 at 11:28 pm
I’ll try to explain “Venise, la souveraine”
1 There is a palace in Venice which has on the building a lion. This is wrong.
2 In the flag or the arms of the city of Venice there is a lion. This is wrong too.
3 Then I went to google.fr and typed “Venise la souveraine” then I found a site where you can buy a serie of 8 “feves” all with the name “Venise, la souveraine”.
Here is the link :
http://www.priceminister.com/offer/buy/12641449/Serie-De-8-Feves-Venise-La-Souveraine-Figurine.html
I suppose your “fève” is Marco Polo, the great Italian adventurer and businessman (from Venice!), who went in the 13th century to China. When he came he wrote a book about his trip to China (24 years). The book became well known in Europe (it is the first trade contact between China and Europe) I suppose that in this book he wrote about meeting lions on his way to China, as he was travelling through Asia. This is the most plausible explanation I could find. I admit this is not easy!
Here is a link about Marco Polo :
http://marcopolo.mooldoo.com/
“Venise, la souveraine” means: Venice, the independent city, that rules the world. That was true in the Middle Ages. It was the centre of international trade at that time.
Sunday, February 17, 2008 at 4:51 am
What a fantastic explanation. Merci encore, Dirk. You rock!