<i> Noisettes</i> Reappear in the Cuisine Classique of Today : Dining: Chef Jean Claude Guillon brings back those thinly sliced pieces of lamb, beef and veal overlapping in a circle on a plate.

There is something zealous in the drive by Japanese restaurant and hotel owners to parade their star chefs around the world, I suppose to show off their stuff, like some pushy mom coaxing Junior to play a virtuosic “Flight of the Bumble Bee.”

That’s what happened the other night when executive chef Jean Claude Guillon of the Japanese-owned Le Grand Hotel Du Cap-Ferrat in Le Cote D’Azur, stopped off at the sister Hotel Bel-Air on the way back from similar visits to affiliated hotels in Japan, Hong Kong and who knows where else the new Japanese owners have hotels in the Far East.

There is nothing like a South of France meal in the middle of winter. It brings you back to the sun, so that the only thing dancing before your very eyes is not Michael Jackson walking into the Hotel Bel-Air dining room, or the woman at table number one bundled up in her Fendi fox, but the look of summer green in the salad, the blue of azure sea in the langouste and coquilles.

The noisettes de filet d’agneau roti is another thing that fills the room with the fragrance of the Riviera.

I remember going from restaurant to restaurant, from village to village, starting at Monaco and moving on to Cannes, where noisettes of lamb, veal and beef, thinly sliced and overlapping in a circle, were a common theme.

It was the noisettes period in the cuisine nouvelle in those days . Overlapping noisettes of veal, beef and lamb were everywhere. I found them in Los Angeles, as well, when I returned, and lo, they seemed to disappear as quickly as they arrived, with the declaration by Paul Bocuse, the father of nouvelle cuisine himself, that nouvelle cuisine was dead. “Vive la Cuisine Classique, “ cried Bocuse, raising his fork and stabbing the hunk of beef on his plate.

Cuisine Classique became--and is still--the cuisine of the moment. It’s the cuisine that allows a diner to order a shameless hunk of meat on a bone, and sop up the juices with a hunk of bread without remorse. I’ve been sopping up juices unremorsefully from shameless hunks of meats (osso buco is my favorite even though it’s Italian) ever since.

The overlapping noisettes, which I had almost forgotten existed, appeared again at Guillon’s dinner. Little overlapping noisettes circling the plate like a baggage claim belt or, to put it more delicately, like a carousel, brought back memories of those dinners on the Riviera.

What you do with the noisettes is to cut away at the clean, clear slices of perfectly formed meat in dainty strokes so that a mere morsel spears onto the edge of the fork. Then you tap it gently into a pool of buttery sauce on the plate. It’s OK, however, to sop up the delicious sauce with a tiny morsel of crusty bread stuck on a fork, although I did once observe Bocuse tear off a rather large piece of bread, coarsely dunk it in a sauce surrounding delicately arranged noisettes and stuff it whole into his mouth.

Guillon is no slouch in the restaurant business. His credentials read as Bocuse’s resume might, only better: Les Trois Marches, L’Archestrate, Charles Barrier, Gaston Lenotre, Le Gavroche, Auberge de L’Ill.

The menu he created started with a group of appetizers, which were passed with glasses of Louis Roederer, Brut 1983: pisaladiere , the pizza of the Riviera; tartlette ratatouille (crusty toast topped with ratatouille , a standby appetizer of Provence, plus tiny patty shells filled with langouste to remind you of the menu to come.

Once at the table the menu began with a salad of baby greens (arugula, mache, frise) mixed with lobster and scallops. Then there was the fillets of roast St. Pierre (turbot) on a pool of wild mushroom-anchovy sauce.

The noisettes of roast lamb “comme on les aime en Provence “ (as one likes them in Provence) was the same one that my memory brought alive. The sauce, as velvety brown as a coffee berry, responded to my crusty bread like a dream. Boscuse would have been proud.

It was the dessert that really unraveled the memory veil that separated me from those glorious days in the South of France. Suddenly I was at Hotel Du Cap-Ferrat, as it was called then, on the patio, under a white umbrella, beneath a spreading chestnut tree, the skirts of the crisp, white tablecloths fluttering in the sea breeze.

Croustillant de Framboises et Le Coulis may sound formidable, but it is nothing more than a three-decker lace cookie sandwich filled with the creme patissiere that’s used for Napoleons. In fact, the dessert is a rendition of the classic Napoleon, only using cookies instead of puff paste.

A pool of raspberry sauce was the perfect flavor mate for the orange-flavored cookies, which the French call tuile s aux amandes, because they resemble roof tiles. These cookies often appear as after-dinner sweet nibbles in the form of broomstick rolls, curved tiles, cornets or other shapes, thanks to their pliability while still warm.

Unlike the noisettes, which require a complicated sauce and ingredients that only a restaurant chef would bother to deal with (such as a brown sauce made with lamb bones and stock), the cookie dessert is a great idea for home bakers who enjoy entertaining.

What an impressive company dessert it is. The lace cookies are rather scary to attempt at first try, but once you have the hang of handling the baked cookie and know what to expect, they are as easy as any cookie to make. Once out of the oven lace cookies are either molded or allowed to cool flat on the pan. Cooling causes them to become brittle and no molding is possible unless rewarmed. These cookies are flat so no special handling is required. A little practice will help, however, before tackling the real thing for the big day.

The creme patissiere can be made from scratch. But some chefs (not Guillon, you can wager) cheat a bit by using packaged pudding mix with some whipped cream folded in. It looks and tastes like the homemade creme patissiere, but it isn’t. Restaurant pastry chefs make mountains of the creme patissiere to use as needed so no recipe was given. We’ll share our tricky recipe using packaged mix. No one will ever know.

The coulis used by the pastry chef for this recipe is made with raspberry juice and clear caramel, another restaurant procedure hard to duplicate at home. So we substituted raspberry puree and corn syrup with good results.

CROUSTILLANT DE FRAMBOISES ET LE COULIS

1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon orange juice

Grated zest of 1 orange

2 1/2 tablespoons Grand Marnier

1 3/4 cups powdered sugar

6 tablespoons butter, melted

1 1/2 cups finely chopped almonds

6 tablespoons flour

Creme Patissiere

1/2 pint raspberries

Raspberry Coulis

Mint leaves

Whipped cream, optional

Mix together orange juice and zest, Grand Marnier, powdered sugar, butter, almonds and flour to form soft dough. Let stand 30 minutes.

Pinch off pieces about 2/3-inch in diameter (size of nut), and place on non-stick baking sheet, about 3 inches apart. Bake at 375 degrees until browned, about 4 to 5 minutes, watching carefully to prevent scorching. Remove from baking when slightly cool. Cool completely on wire racks.

Place lace cookie in center of plate. Top with dollop of Creme Patissiere and few raspberries. Layer with another cookie round. Top with more cream and raspberries. Top with third cookie round. Decorate with few raspberries and mint leaves.

Surround with Raspberry Coulis and decorate with pipings of whipped cream. Makes 12 cookies.

Creme Patissiere

1 (3 1/8-ounce) package vanilla pudding and pie filling mix

Dash vanilla

1 tablespoon powdered sugar

1/2 cup whipping cream

Prepare vanilla pudding mix according to package directions. Set aside.

Stir vanilla and powdered sugar into whipping cream and whip until stiff. Fold into pudding until well incorporated. Makes 2 1/2 cups.

Raspberry Coulis

2 (10-ounce) packages frozen raspberries, thawed

1 tablespoon corn syrup

Powdered sugar

2 tablespoons Cointreau

Press raspberries through sieve or strainer, discarding seeds. Add corn syrup and powdered sugar to sweeten as desired. Add Cointreau. Makes 1 3/4 cups.