Holiday eating in the Riviera Part 1: descriptions

So another summer has come and gone (if you can ever call it that in England) and with it the Family holiday. After last year in Majorca, this time it was back to Nice, France to an apartment we love 2 minutes from the sea. Along with my parents and two sisters we also had everyone's boyfriends which mean cooking was now a feast-like affair.  With my sister as head chef for the week, we all had a night of doing our cooking; with my dad's classic spaghetti bolognaise (a particularly good one this year), my eldest sisters kitchen wizardry, my boyfriend and I's French kitchen style meal and my middle sisters asian stir fry. The culmination of all this was a giant feast on the last night where we ate everything left in the fridge and had the most elaborate tapas meal of my life; from the classic homemade patatas bravas, onion, potato and vegetable tortilla (resourcefully made in a cake tin and put in the oven), spicy chorizo fried with red peppers, to the giant plate of stirfry noodles left over from the night before, chicken wings, poached salmon (?), fried calamari, avocado, salad and all the other additions such as cous cous, carrot salad, olives and tzatziki. It was the craziest mix of food but somehow it just worked as you can see by the pictures below of both my plate (first serving so not everything is on there) and of the table laden with the contents of the fridge. Definitely a good idea for the end of a self catering holiday and we ate better than going out to any restaurant nearby.

My plate with tortilla and patatas bravas and the table about to collapse under all the food.

Dessert came from my favourite patisserie in Nice 'Patisserie Lac' http://www.patisseries-lac.com/, these people make the most amazing desserts and macarons (this time I tried the passion fruit and caramel one which had the most beautiful flavour). We chose the tarte tatin, raspberry and passion fruit mousse (a favourite on this holiday and I am dying to find a recipe!), un délice (square chocolately/praline heaven), the extremely rich chocolate mousse 'dome' coated in bitter dark chocolate, the nutty pistachio crispy wafer thing and the amazingly light white mousse with raspberry (see right) and a wavy shaped white cake which had the most delicate creamy flavour of all of them (with hints of lime). I wish I could remember all the names/could find them on their website. A place everyone has to go if they visit Nice. We were lucky this year as they have open a new one on Rue Giofreddo round the corner from where we stay. It was meant to be...

Clockwise from top; tarte tatin,chocolate mousse 'dome' (just underneath), raspberry and chocolate mousse, nutty pistachio wafery thing, raspberry and passion fruit mousse, le délice and the wavy lime mousse cake. I wish I'd written down the names!!

So this blog post doesn't give you a recipe but allows me to share some of my recent favourite food moments. In the next post I will talk about some actual recipes.