rue des Petits-Champs “Caviar”

I am still in design-mode working on my bedroom, but I sorely needed a break from physical labor. A Paris food memory has been haunting me all afternoon, an I wanted to share this with you, dear readers.

Not too long ago, dear friends took me to dine in a resto in the Seventh Arrondissment named Le Violin d’Ingres, owned by Chef Christian Constant. There I was served a crunchy sliced baguette with thick pats of rich French butter that was topped with pepper, crunchy fleur de sel (Brittany sea salt) and ground allspice. The famous food writer Patricia Wells had dined here, as well, and dubbed this dish “rue Saint-Dominique Caviar as the resto is located on 135, rue Saint-Dominique.

I like this appetizer so much, I wanted to try it, (with my own slight interpretation) when I invited friends to my Paris appartement for aperitifs.
Here is my take on this simple appetizer I call rue des Petits-Champs “Caviar” as I first made it in my Paris appartement located on that rue.


I used very thinly sliced baguettes and very thinly sliced unsalted French Echire cows-milk butter (but any unsalted butter sliced very thin works fine).
(FYI: French butter must be at least 80 percent fat and not more than 15 percent water. The remaining five percent or so is made up of milk solids and in salted butters, salt. French and French-style butters just have a higher percentage of fat than mass-produced American butters.)

I put all the black Tellicherry peppercorns, white, pink and green peppercorns and whole Allspice in one peppermill set on coarse grind and lightly dust the buttered slices. In a
small bowl, I a mixed equal parts of black Kilauea sea salt, pink Australian sea salt, and white flake sea salt from Cyprus. Sparingly I sprinkled pinches of the salt over the buttered slices.

This crunchy, salty, sweetly-creamy, and spicy combination of textures and flavors wakes up your palate...so simple, yet unexpected. Also unexpected is how festive this effortless fare looks on the plate. The colorful salts, peppers and spices resemble miniature confetti.
This dish is wonderful accompaniment to a fresh green salad as a first course.
That day that I first tried making this, I served it using small slices of toasted baguette with assorted green, black and purple olives and cornichons, (a small vinegary dill pickle) for my aperitif soirée at rue des Petit-Champs. I was relieved that it was a success...

I thought that you might enjoy this image as an accompaniment to the appetizer recipe…
It is a view down rue St-Dominique where I lived a student at École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. The signage is of resto Thomieux across the rue.
I could always tell when dinner service was about to begin, when the smells of garlicky escargot and sounds of clinking dinnerware pervaded my tiny garret as I studied.