Taiwanese delights from Ciao Roue

In Taiwan, children sometimes take their snack in the street, around small carts equipped with funny pancake molds which allow them to make wheelcakes. Baked to the minute, these round pastries, halfway between a waffle and a pancake, are filled with pastry cream, adzuki bean (small red bean), black sesame or taro paste.

Ex-headhunter, Chiao-Wei wanted to find and share the taste of her childhood. She is the first, to our knowledge, to sell artisanal wheel cakes in Paris. To do this, the young woman looked for the best flour mixtures to give them the famous contrast between soft inside and crispy outside. She sells them in a shop of about twenty square meters whose furniture was made with a carpenter friend.

On the wall, calligraphy from her cousin, baskets from her mother. On the shelves, games for children from her house, all in wood, carved by hand. It is nothing and it does everything. Today, Chiao-Wei tells her story behind the counter while filling the wheel cakes with her preparations made from fresh produce. “I do everything, all by myself: the cooking, the paperwork… Fortunately, I have good friends who come to help me. »

A Taiwanese smiles when he hears us order almost the entire menu. He savors the feeling of being here as there and savors his wheelcake sitting behind the small wooden cart designed in homage to the street vendors of this famous pastry… Time to finish preparing the oolong tea and Chiao-Wei brings two small wooden trays filled with golden cakes. On each, a stamp indicates the perfume. In the cup, the milky oolong gives off the scent of lush mountains – all the teas come from Kancha Tea, a Montrouge tea house specializing in organic.

The conversation rolls as the first cakes are devoured. The one with pickled turnip is bitten with apprehension, but greeted with a broad smile of contentment. The sweet acidity of the root vegetable worked in a pickle, the way it is finely grated and still crunchy combine with the softness of the cake. The so-called vegetarian version (mushroom and tofu) is a little soft, so disappointing.

But, when comes the tasting of the sweet repertoire, the smile returns. Toasted hojicha tea-infused custard drips deliciously on the lips while the black sesame-filled cake wins the sweet treat. The grainy and sweet structure on the wire lets the gluttony of the seed explode with a subtly roasted taste. Even having never grown up in Taiwan, the gluttons of the day have reconnected with their childhood and know that they will come back here, because life is also a wheel that turns.