Bien manger Bien être

Clean Up!

2010-09-12T03:42:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry for slow trickle of posts lately--Bien manger Bien etre is going under construction! I decided that it's time for this blog to get a new look and a new attitude...over the next couple weeks I'll be changing the design and features, and tweaking the content. So go cook some end-of-summer meals and let me take care of the dishes around here, and I'll see you back in a few!

Quinoa Salad with grapes, carrots, and feta

2010-08-27T08:17:00.000-07:00

Quinoa, a grain-like plant originating from South America, is our most complete plant source of protein; it contains a high amount of protein as well as a balance of essential amino acids, and it is gluten-free. In addition to the nutrition value, cooked quinoa is a very light grain (as opposed to the density of cooked pasta or rice), so it weighs less heavily on the stomach, which is certainly nice in the summer.

It’s a perfect vegetarian food for a healthy plant-based protein, or for anyone who would like to diversify their protein sources.

Quinoa can be compared to couscous in texture and to rice in preparation (you can make it in a rice cooker); basically it can be used as a substitute in any dishes calling for rice, also including pilafs, salads, and breakfast foods.

For a light and refreshing salad, combine the following ingredients:

2 cups quinoa, cooked and cooled
½ cup red grapes, halved
½ cup carrots, sliced or diced
½ cup feta cheese, crumbled
a drizzle of olive oil
juice of half a lemon
salt, pepper

Fruit Pizza

2010-08-23T12:58:00.000-07:00

A birthday party classic, and one of my favoritest summer desserts . . . look how pretty it is! For those who have never yet had the good fortune to partake of a fruit pizza slice--there is nothing pizza about this, it's actually a big sugar cookie with cream cheese and fruit topping.

For my U.S. readers, fruit pizza requires exactly 2 store bought items plus fruit.

1) one tube of sugar cookie dough. cut into slices, arrange in circular fashion on a cookie sheet, and roll out until you have one smooth sheet of cookie dough. Even out the edges of the circle with a knife. Bake the big cookie according to the package directions and let cool.

2) one container of cream cheese fruit dip. Spread evenly over the cooled cookie.

3) Wash and slice your fruits of choice and arrange prettily (or randomly) over the cookie base. Ta-da!

If you don't have access to sugar cookie in a tube or cream cheese fruit dip, follow your favorite sugar cookie recipe to make the dough. Cream cheese fruit dip can be made as follows:

Cream Cheese Fruit Dip

1 (8 oz.) package cream cheese, room temperature

1 cup confectioner's sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract or lemon juice

Whip all ingrediants together until smooth.

Bamia et Soupe aux Lentilles

2010-08-17T21:09:00.000-07:00

Je remercie une fois encore Safi pour deux recettes de plus; il me gâte! Voilà une soupe aux lentilles et un plat syrien fait avec des gombos qui s'appelle Bamia.

Bamia

Une boîte de Bamia (500 g de Bamia : 2 personnes) (indispensable)
Sauce tomates (indispensable)
De l’ail (indispensable)
Oignon (indispensable)
Huile d’olive
Poivre
Harissa

On chauffe une petite quantité d’huile d’olive dans une casserole, on rajoute un oignon bien coupé (en très petits morceaux), on le cuit un peu et on rajoute la Bamia (déjà cuite) avec un tout petit peu d’huile d’olive dessus. On ne chauffe un peu, et pas besoin d’attendre que la Bamia soit chaude.

On met du sel dans la sauce tomate, du poivre, un peu de citron, du Harissa mais surtout des gousses (3) d’ail bien coupées (elles doivent être coupées pour faire sortir leur saveur dans le plat). On verse la sauce dans la casserole (où il y a l’oignon et la Bamia), on couvre la casserole ou on attend un bouillonnement de 2/3 minutes.

Le plat est servi avec du riz, ou on peut le manger seul avec du pain.

Soupe aux lentilles

Lentilles rouges
Un oignon
Demi-citron
Beurre
Une baguette

Une tasse de lentilles rouges (la quantité varie, si on veut la soupe légère ou pas), normalement c’est une tasse de thé. On le met dans une casserole, on la remplie d’eau et on le rejette (pour nettoyer les lentilles, sinon le plat ne sera pas réussi), on remplit et rejette de l’eau plusieurs fois (ça peut atteindre jusqu’à 15 fois), on arrête quand l’eau qu’on met dans la casserole est très sereine.

On ajoute un oignon bien coupé (en très petits morceaux) et on remplit donc les trois quarts de la casserole avec de l’eau. On ajoute du sel à volonté, on ferme la casserole et on laisse bouillir jusqu’à ce que le mélange constitue un ensemble cohérent (quand il y a plus de lentilles), ça devrait prendre 30 minutes. Après on ajoute du citron (demi) et du beurre. Dans la soupe on peut tremper des morceaux de baguettes ou bien les jeter dans la soupe.

Cake, French style

2010-08-12T18:51:00.000-07:00

« Cake » in French is not the same as « gâteau », which is the French translation for “cake.” A “cake” in France is actually a savory loaf, often with olives, ham, cheese, tomatoes, or other savory ingredients. Confused? So was I, until I ate some, and the wonderful taste inscribed forever into my memory the difference between cake à la française and a sweet American cake.

This cake combines olives, red peppers, and Swiss cheese in a moist eggy batter. A slice of this paired with a salad would be a perfect light summer lunch. You can also prepare the same batter and bake as savory muffins.

Cake with olives, red peppers, and Swiss

1 cup olive oil
1/2 cup dry white wine
4 eggs
2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
swiss cheese, cut into small cubes
black olives
diced red bell pepper

1. Mix the oil, wine, and eggs. Add the flour, then the baking soda. Lastly add the olives, peppers, and cheese.
2. Bake in a loaf pan 30 to 45 minutes at 350 F.

Chili Dipping Salt for Fruit

2010-07-31T21:32:00.000-07:00

Southeast Asians like my mother have no qualms about dipping into spicy and steaming food in full summer heat. There’s something cleansing and refreshing about sweating both inside the body and out.

If you can handle the heat, try dipping fruit slices in a salt and chili pepper mixture. Finely mince fresh red chilis and add to sea salt or regular salt, then crush further if needed. The salt enhances the sweetness and tanginess of the fruit and the chili adds some unexpected bite.

My mother’s favorite is pineapple—try also peaches, nectarines, plums, apricots, or grapefruit.

Quiche with gruyere and chives

2010-07-26T05:43:00.000-07:00

Quiche is the fanciest-sounding easy French thing to make. It’s a pie crust filled with a delicious fluffy mixture of egg, cream, and anything else you wish to add. The only restriction in my book is not to get carried away with fillings—the egg should really be central to the dish, not just a binding for a load of vegetables and proteins. Thus I present to you a simple quiche with just grated gruyere cheese and chopped chives.

Cream and egg sounds a bit heavy, but this is a French dish, after all, and a French pie at that (quiche is often called a “savory pie” (tarte salée) in French). Don’t add milk instead of cream, ever. Not only do you sacrifice on taste and texture, but the extra liquid from the milk will make the pie crust soggy.

Cultural note: quiche is never eaten for breakfast in France, as the French don’t eat eggs for breakfast (anecdote: I’m teaching a lesson on meals to my 5th grade class, and we’re making a list of foods we eat at each meal. One student raises his hand: “Madame, there’s a mistake under “breakfast”—no one would eat eggs for breakfast!”). The point is, don't limit your options; a quiche paired with soup or a small salad is more than substantial enough for a good dinner.

Cultural note: to be called une quiche in French is a mild insult, something like a nitwit.

Quiche with Gruyere and Chives

Pre-prepared or frozen pie crust
About 4 eggs, or enough to fill the crust
¾-1 cup heavy cream
1 cup gruyere cheese, grated
handful of chives, chopped
salt, pepper

1. Beat the eggs with a whisk in a mixing bowl and add the cream, beat until smooth.
2. Add the gruyere, chives, salt, and pepper.
3. Pour mixture into the prepared crust and bake at 350 F for about 35 minutes, or until the top is firm and a knife inserted into the center of the quiche comes out clean.

Banana Cake

2010-07-21T05:54:00.000-07:00

Did I mention that I hate bananas? Always have. The texture is gross, the form repellent, and the odor unspeakably unpleasant. The worst part of the fruit is the stub at the bottom end, the bananus. Unlike other fruits, here you’re expected to eat the anus. Disgusting.

But, I have also mentioned my quest to overcome dislike for individual edible plants and food substances. Therefore, I’m taking a deep breath, holding my nose, jumping in the deep end and tackling bananas.

I can ease my way in with banana baked goods. The mushy texture lends itself well to baking, giving moistness and sponginess to the dough, and the taste is more subtle and can be cut with other flavors.

I'll admit that this banana cake is easy and pretty darn good, for something with bananas in it. It would work equally well in muffin form.

Banana cake with chocolate chips and golden raisins

1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups mashed banana (about 3 medium bananas)
1 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup golden raisins

1. In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar. Add egg, vanilla, and bananas, beating thoroughly.
2. In a separate bowl, combine flour, soda, baking powder, and salt. Add to creamed mixture and mix well.
3. Spoon batter in to a greased 9 x 13-inch baking dish and bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

Temaki-zushi (home sushi party)

2010-07-15T14:04:00.000-07:00

Temaki-zushi literally means handmade sushi; that is, sushi that is do-it-yourself instead of bought and served at a restaurant.

Sushi in western countries is generally thought of as trendy in-crowd food, the kind of restaurant you take a date to and try to impress by explaining the menu before the waiter can. It’s expensive and exotic. In Japan, however, people often make a much more casual kind of sushi at home and for parties. The sushi is not prepared beforehand; instead the rice, nori wrap, sauce, fish, and other fillings are laid out buffet-style for the guest to fashion her own roll.

The advantages to this are numerous: it’s quick and easy to prepare, it’s much less expensive, and it pleases everyone’s tastes. You lose out on impressing your date by how much money you blow and how many urchins you can eat at one meal—but who wants to date someone who’s impressed by that anyhow?

If you really want to impress your date, first know what sushi actually means: the word sushi refers not to “raw fish” (this is sashimi) but the kind of rice used (short-grain rice flavored with rice vinegar). That means that, contrary to popular belief, anything at all served on the sushi rice is legitimate sushi, including avocado and cream cheese (this is popular in Japan), eggplant, eggs, canned tuna, or corn and mayonnaise (also a favorite in Japan).

Maki is sushi in a roll, wrapped in the nori (seaweed) paper and sliced into sections. Nigiri is the individual ball of sushi with topping. While maki is much more commonly eaten in the U.S., a combination of different nigiri is the popular way to go in Japan. I find that sushi in the U.S. differs from sushi eaten in Japan not in terms of quality, but in style. I enjoy both kinds. In restaurants, Japanese sushi highlights the quality and the freshness of the rice and the fish; raw tuna, salmon or other fish are considered the cream of the crop sushi. As a result strong flavors are never added to the sushi, apart from a quick dip in the sushi dipping sauce (similar to soy sauce) mixed with wasabi. Americans, however, prefer not to consume raw fish or much seafood; because of this the sushi in the U.S. often contains cooked fish, tempura-fried seafood, or other raw vegetables. These flavors being more robust and less delicate (and because Americans are suckers for salty-sweet flavor explosions), sweet sauces are drizzled over the rolls, salty fish roe added on top, or potato chip crumbs sprinkled in for texture. It’s a far reach from the simplicity of flavor and form that highlights Japanese cuisine, but it’s good in its own way.

Back to the sushi party: The essentials are the prepared sushi rice, wraps (nori sheets or lettuce leaves), sushi or soy sauce and wasabi (ginger optional), and various bowls of toppings. Here I will give suggestions for a buffet of Japanese sushi fillings that is faithful to what is eaten in Japan while still being accessible to the Western home-cook. I am not including raw cuts of fish in the spread, but don’t worry—the disappointment of your guests at not seeing “real sushi” will quickly be forgotten once they start to eat.

Temaki-zushi buffet

1. Cook sushi rice in a covered pot (a rice cooker is better, of course, if you have one), measuring equal parts rice and water. When the rice is tender drain any excess liquid and transfer to a large mixing bowl. Immediately pour rice vinegar over the sushi and mix well, enough to wet the entire batch but not to leave it soaking. Leave the rice to absorb the vinegar, adding more vinegar as the rice dries out. When the rice has absorbed enough vinegar to stay moist after half and hour, transfer the bowl to the refrigerator and let cool.

2. Meanwhile, prepare the dishes. Set out a plate of nori wrap and/or large lettuce leaves. Toppings can include:

• Canned tuna with chopped onion or spring onion
• Corn and mayonnaise
• Surimi and cream cheese
• Avocado slices
• Raw cucumber, carrot, or bell pepper slices
• Kim chi
• Grilled eggplant or mushroom, sliced
• Omelet or boiled eggs, sliced
• Cooked shrimp

3. Take out the cooled rice just before serving. Serve with sushi sauce or soy sauce, wasabi, and ginger. The sauce should be mixed in individual bowls with a dab of wasabi to taste (start small!). Ginger is eaten between rolls to clean the palate.

4.To roll the sushi, don’t fuss. Grab a half sheet of nori or a lettuce leaf, lay a spoon of rice on top, and add the toppings. Roll into a cone for less mess and more style.

Spring Rolls (gỏi cuốn)

2010-07-13T14:51:00.000-07:00

When it’s too hot to turn on the stove, operate the microwave oven, or summon the energy to walk to the utensil drawer and withdraw a knife and fork, how do we do when we want to make good food?

Answer: prepare a fresh raw vegetable salad, in convenient utensil-less roll form: Vietnamese spring rolls, gỏi cuốn.

These spring rolls are very popular items at summer parties. Don’t get discouraged that the whole batch will be gone in less time than it took you to roll one measly roll. They don’t keep overnight, so they’re better off being eaten than hoarded.

The ingredients in a spring roll, like any salad, can be adjusted to taste. However, a spring roll is not Vietnamese without cilantro and mint inside. Besides this, the classic fillers are lettuce, sliced cucumber, sliced carrot, bean sprouts, green onion, and either shrimp or pork. Shrimp is prettier, and if you buy pre-cooked shrimp, doesn’t require cooking. I don’t use vermicelli noodles in my spring rolls because I find it to be tasteless bulk, as the rice paper is already there.

The best sauce to serve the rolls with is a peanut sauce; alternately a sweet Hoisin sauce with crushed peanuts mixed in or sweet chili sauce can be used.

Spring Rolls
Makes 16-18 rolls

1 pound small shrimp, pre-cooked and peeled
1 head butter lettuce, ribs removed
1 bunch fresh mint leaves
1 bunch fresh cilantro leaves
1 cucumber, thinly sliced into strips
3 carrots, thinly sliced into strips
16-20 garlic chives or Chinese chives
1 package rice paper (banh trang)

1) Fill a medium bowl with warm water and submerge a piece of rice paper into water. Wait one minute for the rice paper to soften, then take it out and spread on a cutting board.
2) Place a lettuce leaf at the lower end of the rice paper. Add mint, cilantro, cucumber and carrot.
3) Roll the rice paper over the filling and tuck it underneath. Add shrimp with the sliced side facing up. Fold the sides inwards and add a chive over the shrimp with 1 inch sticking outside of one side for a decorative effect. Continue rolling while keeping tension on the rice paper for a tight roll. The roll will seal itself.
4) As you are rolling, place a damp paper towel over the finished rolls to prevent them from drying out.
5) Serve with peanut Hoisin dipping sauce.

Peanut Hoisin Dipping Sauce
makes 2 cups

1 cup water
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon whole soybean sauce, crushed
3 tablespoons Hoisin sauce
4-6 tablespoons peanut butter
2-3 teaspoons chili garlic sauce or diced chilies to taste
1 ounce dry roasted peanuts, chopped

1) In a small sauce pan, add water and garlic. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to low.
2) Add soy sauce, crushed soybean sauce, Hoisin sauce, 4 tablespoons peanut butter and chili garlic sauce. Stir until peanut butter is dissolved and the sauce thickens. Add additional peanut butter until desired thickness (like mustard) is obtained. Adjust seasonings to taste. Garnish sauce with chopped peanuts.

Greek Salad

2010-07-05T23:47:00.000-07:00

An easy summer salad means a bowl full of fresh, flavorful ingredients—no cooking required. This mixture is my favorite. The tomatoes are sweet, the cucumber crunchy, the olives salty, the red onion bites, and the cheese hold its all together.

Greek Salad

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1½ tablespoons balsamic vinegar
½ teaspoon dried oregano
¼ teaspoon sea salt
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, and extra for garnish
3 tomatoes
¼ red onion
½ cucumber
4 oz (120g) feta cheese
16 kalamata olives

1. Cut the tomatoes into wedges, the red onion into rings. Stripe the cucumber with a peeler and chop into half-moons. Cut the feta into cubes.
2. Place the salad ingredients in a large bowl.
3. Mix the olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper and oregano in a small bowl, then add the dressing to the salad.
4. Garnish with a little freshly ground black pepper and fresh herbs if on hand.

Fatté de Damas

2010-07-03T11:43:00.000-07:00

Encore un plat délicieux grâce à mon pote Safi. . .

Ce plat s’appelle Fatté de Damas (le verbe fatta en syrien –ou en arabe- veut dire couper avec la main (mais pas les papiers) ; le mot Foutat signifie les miettes du pain ou ce qui tombe pendant qu’on mange une baguette.

Fatté de Damas

Première étape
- 1 kilo de Yaourt turque
- Tout petit peu d’eau (la quantité d’une tasse de café) et on remue bien le yaourt avec de l’eau ajoutée.
- 2 grosses gousses d’ail écrasées ou 4 si petites et on remue l’ensemble
- Assez de sel
- 2 cuillères de Tahina et on remue encore
- Demi-citron, à remuer aussi avec l’ensemble
- Beaucoup de cumin : deux grande cuillères
- Du piment moulu
Ce mélange reste froid en attendant de finir les autres choses.

Deuxième étape
500 grammes de pois chiches cuites, à chauffer dans l’eau jusqu’au bouillonnement. Mettre les pois chiches (sans l’eau) dans un plat. Y ajouter du citron, du cumin et du piment moulu.

Troisième étape :
Couper trois galettes de pain oriental en petits morceaux et les frire dans de l’huile végétale (comme les pommes de terre) jusqu’à ce que les morceaux deviennent craquants. Mettre le pain frit dans le même plat (sur les pois chiches).

Dernière étape
Verser la sauce (du yaourt) sur l’ensemble (les poids-chiches et le pain) et mélanger bien. On ajoute encore du cumin et du piment moulu. Le plat est servi avec des tomates coupées en tranches ou morceaux moyens, des feuilles de menthe fraiche ou autres sortes de légume.

Macaroni and Cheese

2010-06-25T09:44:00.000-07:00

On a recent visit to France, my father and brother thoughtfully brought a third member of the family with them—a block of extra-sharp Wisconsin cheddar. The gift was greatly appreciated. Being Americans and Wisconsinites, you could say that melted cheddar runs in our blood.

French people, pretending they know everything anybody ever needs to know about cheese, snub their noses and purse their lips at this suspiciously colored, pleasantly odored, non-runny susbstance; “That’s not cheese.”

I tell them, “Hey—just because it’s orange doesn’t mean it’s not real cheese.” More cheddar and crackers for me—they can have their smelly camembert.

But you can trick a French person into liking cheddar by making it into a sauce. Specifically, in the supreme American specialty Mac N’ Cheese. That is, if you're willing to share your precious cheddar that was smuggled across customs from the US. It'd take more than one cheese fondue, in my opinion, to make up for that.

Baked Macaroni and Cheese

1 (8-ounce) package dried elbow macaroni or favorite pasta (about 2 1/4 cups, uncooked)
1/4 cup (4 tablespoons) butter
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 cups milk
1 tablespoon whole-grain Dijon mustard
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1/4 teaspoon hot sauce
1 (8-ounce) package shredded sharp Cheddar cheese (about 2 cups)

Topping (optional):
1/2 cup fresh breadcrumbs
2 tablespoons butter, melted

1. Preheat oven to 350°.
2. Cook pasta, drain and set aside. Melt butter in a large heavy saucepan over low heat; add flour, stirring until smooth. Cook 3 to 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Turn heat to medium; gradually whisk in milk, and cook over medium heat, stirring or whisking constantly until thickened, about 10 minutes. Stir in pasta, mustard, and next 4 ingredients, stirring just until cheese begins to melt.
3. Pour pasta mixture into a lightly greased 13- x 9-inch baking dish. Sprinkle with more grated Cheddar. If desired, top with fresh breadcrumbs, and drizzle evenly with melted butter.
4. Bake, uncovered, at 350° for 25 minutes or until bubbly and golden. Let stand 5 minutes before serving.

Soupe aux fèves, à la syrienne

2010-06-16T05:43:00.000-07:00

L’autre soir j’ai eu le plaisir de gouter à quelques plats de la cuisine syrienne, grâce à Safi, un ami syrien. Le meilleur était une soupe aux fèves—pourtant je le dis avec de la difficulté, voit que tous les plats étaient excellents.

Les épices sont indispensables à la soupe et les salades, ainsi que le fromage syrien, qui est sec et très salé.

Prenez un verre d’Arak suite à votre repas ; c’est un alcool fort avec un gout d’anis qui ressemble au Pastis.

Soupe aux fèves :
- Prendre une boîte de fèves…
- Avant de chauffer le contenu, écraser de l’ail (2-3 gousses) et les chauffer ensemble jusqu’au bouillonnement.
- Ajouter une bonne quantité de cumin (mélanger pour voir si la couleur du cumin domine)
- Ajouter de la harissa et du piment moulu (mélanger aussi)
- Un citron
- De la Tahina (pas indispensable et la quantité est au choix, moi je mets une grande cuillère)
- Juste avant de servir, verser plutot beaucoup d’huile d’olive sur la soupe

La salade qui l’accompagne :
- 2 tomates (à couper en très petits morceaux)
- Un oignon (à couper en très petits morceaux)
- Beaucoup de cumin sur l’ensemble (les tomates et l’oignon)
- Assez de sel
- Demi-citron
- de l’huile de l’olive
- Du concombre mariné (pas indispensable)

Salade aux olives (servir avec du Hommos et des sandwiches de fromage)
- Demi-tomate coupée en très petite morceaux
- Des olives coupées en petite morceaux
- Du piment moulu sur l’ensemble
- Beaucoup de thym
- Assez de citron (moins qu'un demi-citron)
- Un peu d’huile d’olive
- Concombre mariné (pas indispensable)

Pan Bagnat

2010-06-11T13:56:00.000-07:00

Pan Bagnat is a speciality of Nice but is found in pretty much any boulangerie (bakery) in France. It’s a tuna sandwich with a vegetables based off of the classic salad Niçoise.

Hollow out a baguette or a round loaf. Fill one hollow with canned tuna packed in water or tomato sauce (as in the picture).

Add lettuce, thinly sliced red onions, thinly sliced green pepper, sliced hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes, cucumbers, and olives. You can add a few anchovies if you like them.

For the sauce, drizzle on balsamic vinegar and olive oil, with or without mustard.

If you added all the ingredients I mentioned, the sandwich will be stuffed to bursting. Squash it down hard or put it under a weight for a few minutes. Then proceed to transfer the stuffing from sandwich to belly.

Radishes with salt and butter

2010-06-06T13:25:00.000-07:00

Summer in France means eating outside on the terrace, a bowl of pink and white radishes on the table, accompanied by a pat of butter and a sprinkle of salt.

Eat the radishes raw with your fingers, softening their bite with a bit of sweet butter and salt. Perfectly refreshing for a small snack--and so cute too!

Chartreuse

2010-06-05T02:33:00.000-07:00

Chartreuse is both a green-yellow font color and a French herbal liquor of the same hue. The liquor came first, first distilled in the early 17th century, and all of the world’s current supply originates from La Grande-Chartreuse, a monastery in the Chartreuse mountain range in the French Alps, about 20 km north of my house.

Chartreuse is the most famous product that comes from Grenoble itself, and we are proud and hardy Chartreuse drinkers, despite the 55% alcohol content and ‘particular’ plant taste. There are two kinds of Chartreuse, green and yellow, the yellow being less strong and much sweeter. Both kinds are made from a combination of plants (130 different plants for the green), and the recipes are TOP-SECRET. That’s not top-secret in the way that Coca-cola’s recipe is top-secret. Supposedly, only 2 monks at La Grande-Chartreuse know the recipe, and they collect and sort the plants themselves, transport the plants to the distillery in Voiron where the liquor is fabricated, and regulate the temperature and aging of the liquor held in the cellars. Meaning that the production of all the Chartreuse sold in over 100 countries the world over is entirely in the hands of two monks from Grenoble. If that doesn’t make for a special liquor, I don’t know what does.

Fascinated by this story of reclusive woodland monks and their zealously guarded secret brew, I had plenty of questions for the poor tour guide at the Chartreuse distillery. What is the difference between green and yellow Chartreuse? How long is it aged? Are all the plants from the region? How much money do the monks make?

Each time I got, “I don’t know, Madame. The recipe is unknown.” Perhaps a strategic marketing tactic on the part of the monks, as this made me even more fascinated by the shimmery green liquor and I ended up buying a bottle in the gift shop.

Even without the story behind it, Chartreuse is a delicious liquor. It’s a beautiful color, is quite strong, and the taste is distinctive and fresh. It’s best served on its own, so chilled that it smokes, over a single ice cube.

But if you have a taste for a cocktail, try one of these:

Green Chaud
This is a popular alternative to hot chocolate on the slopes in the Alps. Add a shot of Green Chartreuse to your hot chocolate.

Orangina Chartreuse

1 part Green Chartreuse
1 part vodka
3 parts Orangina

Shake the glass a bit before serving to create foam.

Chartreuse Tonic

1 part Green Chartreuse
4 parts tonic water
lemon slice garnish

Moules Frites

2010-05-24T16:27:00.000-07:00

Ask most Americans what French cuisine is and you’ll probably get the following responses:

Croissants
Cheese, wine, and bread
Fondue
Frog legs
Escargot
Saucey dishes in expensive restaurants

Apart from going to France, all we can know about French cuisine what is exported to the US, and unfortunately most of the cuisine exported from France to the rest of the world is gastronomic cuisine that is, like in the US, confined to restaurants where you have to have a reservation (i.e. restaurants that I don’t go to). The homey French cooking, the food of the working classes, the recipes that are passed down from grandmother to mother, the cheap and easy recipes—are sadly skipped over.

Moules frites, or “mussels and fries” is one of those dishes. It’s a rather working class meal (think sloppy joes), and eaten happily by French kiddies at school cafeterias. The mussels come in a bowl of sauce of your preference, the classic one being Moules marinières, which doesn’t mean marinara sauce but refers to sailors. Apparently French sailors ate mussels with a white wine, garlic, and shallot sauce. Classy. Fries are the mussels’ steadfast companion, served on the side.

Moules frites is a sans-silverware eating experience, a tremendous advantage. Use the empty shells like pincers to pick out the mussels and spoon up the broth-like sauce. Don’t neglect the sauce by all means—dip your fries in, sop it up with bread, eat it like soup, whatever, but don’t send it back with your dirty napkin floating on top, please.

Moules Marinières

3 pounds of fresh mussels, scrubbed as well as you can and beards removed
1/2 bottle of dry white wine
3-4 shallots, finely minced
2 cloves of garlic, pressed
1/2 cup parsley

1. Put the wine, garlic and shallots in a deep pot and bring to a boil. Let boil for a couple of minutes to cook the shallots and garlic and then add thoroughly washed mussels. Discard any open or broken mussels, as this means they are already dead.
2. Cover the pot tightly and cook for about ten or fifteen minutes. When the mussels open cut the heat but leave the lid on the pot for a few minutes more.
3. Put the mussels in serving bowls. Pour on the sauce and add a handful of parsley. Serve with bread and fresh homemade fries.

Crêpes vs. Pancakes

2010-05-22T04:41:00.000-07:00

A crepe, as you are probably familiar with, is a very thin pancake originally from Brittany, a Northern region of France, and now widespread throughout France and popular in much of the world. Crepe batter is essentially identical to pancake batter, except that crepe batter contains more milk, making it thinner, and no leavening agent.

In France crepes are not eaten exclusively (or even very often) for breakfast, like pancakes are in the United States; instead, savory crepes called galettes are eaten as a meal and sweet crepes (crêpes sucrées) are eaten as dessert.

The batter preparation between galettes and dessert crepes differs slightly. Galettes are made with buckwheat flour, rendering the batter brown, and no sugar is added.

My favorite savory fillings for galettes:
Tomatoes, goat cheese, and pepper
Sliced salmon and chives
Sautéed mushrooms, asparagus, and gruyere cheese
An egg, sunny-side-up

Dessert crepes add a couple of tablespoons of sugar to the batter and use regular wheat flour.

Sweet crepe fillings:
Any sliced fruit or jam
Nutella
Chestnut cream
Peanut butter
Sliced bananas caramelized in brown sugar and rum
Granulated sugar and lemon juice
Butter and honey

I still prefer a thick stack of pancakes to crepes; the soft chewy texture of pancakes is hard to beat. But it’s true that crepes are more portable, accounting for the afflux of crepe stands in France (and absence, sadly, of pancake stands in the United States). And they are more attractive, maybe, folded elegantly with just the colored edges of sweet fillings tumbling out, powdered sugar sprinkled over top. And they are certainly more exotic and impressive, should you decide to make a romantic end to a dinner end (pancakes might fail to showcase your culinary skills—crepes are no harder to make, but no one has to be the wiser). And—you can make a respectable meal out of savory crepes, while eating pancakes for dinner is probably popular only in frat boy circles.

Tips for making crepes:
Making crepe batter beforehand and refrigerating it for 30 minutes to an hour helps produce exceptionally tender crêpes because as the batter chills, the flour expands and absorbs the liquid. When cooking the crepes, pour a ladle of batter into a non-stick flat-bottomed skillet and tilt the pan so that the batter spreads out evenly and thinly. You can add a bit of butter to the skillet to avoid sticking. The thinner the crepe, the better. Cook 1-2 minutes on the first side, until the edges begin to curl, and flip and cook another minute. Crepes cool very quickly, so if cooking for guests you can cook the crêpes in advance, then fill and broil them just before serving. Sprinkle dessert crepes with powdered sugar.

Black Pepper Crêpes with Goat Cheese and Tomatoes

Serves 4
1 cup milk
1 egg
1/2 cup plus 1 Tbs. all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. canola oil
1 tsp. freshly ground pepper, plus more, to taste
1/2 tsp. salt, plus more, to taste
8 tsp. unsalted butter
4 plum tomatoes, thinly sliced
4-oz. log of goat cheese (chèvre), crumbled

In a large bowl, combine the milk, egg, flour, oil, the 1 tsp. pepper and the 1⁄2 tsp. salt and mix until smooth. Refrigerate for 1 hour.

In a crêpe pan over medium heat, melt 1 tsp. of the butter to coat the pan evenly. Lift the pan at a slight angle and pour 2 Tbs. of the batter into the center, tilting the pan to spread the batter to the edges. Return the pan to the heat and cook until the crêpe is golden underneath, 1 to 2 minutes. Flip the crêpe over and cook for 1 to 2 minutes. Transfer to a plate and cover. Repeat to make 8 crêpes.

Position a rack 6 inches from the broiler and preheat. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

On a clean work surface, lay a crêpe flat. Put one-eighth of the tomato slices on the crêpe and top with one-eighth of the cheese. Season with salt and pepper. Fold the crêpe into quarters and transfer to the prepared baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining crêpes and filling. Broil until the crêpes are golden brown, 3 to 5 minutes.

Sweet crepes
Makes about 20 crepes

1 1/3 cups whole milk, room temperature
1 cup all purpose flour
3 large eggs
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 tablespoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
Nonstick vegetable oil spray

1. Mix first 6 ingredients in blender just until smooth. Cover batter and chill at least 15 minutes and up to 1 day.
2. Spray 7-inch-diameter nonstick skillet with vegetable oil spray and heat over medium heat. Pour 2 tablespoons batter into pan and swirl to coat bottom. Cook until edge of crepe is light brown, about 1 minute. Loosen edges gently with spatula. Carefully turn crepe over. Cook until bottom begins to brown in spots, about 30 seconds. Transfer to plate. Cover with paper towel. Repeat with remaining batter, spraying pan with oil spray as needed and covering each crepe with paper towel. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Cover and chill.)
3. Fill as desired and sprinkle with powdered sugar.

White Asparagus

2010-05-12T14:33:00.000-07:00

White asparagus is a highly prized item in France. It’s more tender than green asparagus, with a bit less flavor, and it’s more expensive too. But it makes your pee smell just as much as green asparagus.

Personally, I prefer to cook with green asparagus because I find the flavor stronger therefore and more agreeable, as I really like asparagus. White asparagus is quite nice, however, cold with just a bit of dressing as a simple salad.

White asparagus is found commonly in jars here in France, which is perfectly acceptable. When cooking raw stalks it is necessary to peel the outer skin and trim the tough ends. The tips cook faster than the ends, so tie the stalks in a bunch with string and cook them standing up in boiling water, the tips poking out of the water, until tender.

Why the white color? Actually, white asparagus is made white by covering the plant with soil to block the production of chlorophyll.

White asparagus goes particularly well with citrus flavors in a salad, like the one below.

White Asparagus, Orange and Arugula Salad

Ingredients:

SALAD:
•2 bunches of white asparagus, trimmed
•2 oranges, peeled
•1 1/2 cups of arugula (roquette)
•1/2 Spanish onion, sliced into thin rings

DRESSING:
•60 ml good quality, extra virgin olive oil
•30 ml red wine vinegar
•1 small garlic clove, finely chopped
•A pinch of sea salt
•Freshly ground black pepper

Preparation:
1.Use a sharp knife to slice the pith off the oranges and discard. Slice the oranges into segments and place in a mixing bowl. Set aside.
2.Blanch the asparagus (1 to 2 minutes), then refresh in a bowl of cold water, drain and halve length-ways.
3.Add asparagus to orange segments along with the onion rings and arugula.
4.Whisk red wine vinegar, extra-virgin olive oil, salt and pepper in a small bowl to combine, toss through salad. Serve immediately.

New York Cheesecake

2010-05-06T10:03:00.001-07:00

France may be the land of cheese, but it's not the land of cheesecake--New York is. Cream cheese doesn't even really exist here.

Last night a New Yorker friend treated me to her hometown's favorite dessert. You'll need to save room (or eat the dessert first), but it's worth it.

New York Cheesecake
recipe from joyofbaking.com

Crust:

2 cups (200 grams) of graham wafer crumbs or finely crushed vanilla wafers or gingersnaps (process whole cookies in a food processor until they are crumbs)

1/4 cup (50 grams) granulated white sugar

1/2 cup (114 grams) unsalted butter, melted

Filling:

32 ounces (1 kg) (4 - 8 ounces packages) cream cheese, room temperature (use full fat, not reduced or fat free cream cheese)

1 cup (200 grams) granulated white sugar

3 tablespoons (35 grams) all purpose flour

5 large eggs, room temperature

1/3 cup (80 ml) heavy whipping cream

1 tablespoon lemon zest

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Topping:

1 cup (240 ml) sour cream (not low fat or fat free)

2 tablespoons (30 grams) granulated white sugar

1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1. Grease a 9 inch (23 cm) springform pan. Place the springform pan on a larger baking pan to catch any leakage while the cheesecake is baking. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (177 degrees C) with rack in center of oven.

2. For Crust: In a medium sized bowl combine the graham cracker crumbs, sugar, and melted butter. Press the crumbs evenly over the bottom and about 1 inch (2.5 cm) up the sides of the springform pan. Cover and refrigerate while you make the filling.

3. For Filling: In bowl of your electric mixer place the cream cheese, sugar, and flour. Beat on medium speed until smooth (about 2 minutes), scraping down the bowl as needed. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well (about 30 seconds) after each addition. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the whipping cream, lemon zest, vanilla extract and beat until incorporated. Remove the crust from the refrigerator and pour in the filling. Place the cheesecake pan on a larger baking pan and place in the oven.

4. Bake for 15 minutes and then lower the oven temperature to 250 degrees F (120 degrees C) and continue to bake for about another 1 1/2 hours or until firm and only the center of the cheesecake looks a little wet and wobbly. Remove from oven and place on a wire rack.

5. Meanwhile, in a small bowl combine the sour cream, sugar, and vanilla extract. Spread the topping over the warm cheesecake and return to oven to bake for 15 more minutes. Remove from oven and carefully run a knife or spatula around the inside edge of pan to loosen the cheesecake (helps prevent the surface from cracking as it cools).

6. Let cool before covering with plastic wrap and refrigerating. This cheesecake tastes best after being refrigerated for at least a day.

Serve with fresh fruit or fruit sauces.

Makes one - 9 inch (23 cm) cheesecake.

*To freeze: Place the cooled cheesecake on a baking pan and freeze, uncovered, until firm. Remove the cheesecake from the freezer, wrap it in heavy duty aluminum foil and place in a freezer bag. Seal and return to freezer. Can be frozen for several months. Thaw uncovered cheesecake in the refrigerator overnight.

**Tips: Sometimes the surface of the cheesecake cracks. To help prevent this from happening do not overbeat the batter, especially when creaming the cheese and sugar.

Another reason for cracking is overbaking the cheesecake. Your cheesecake is done when it is firm but the middle may still look a little wet.

Also, make sure the springform pan is well greased as cracking can occur if the cheesecake sticks to the sides as it cools.

Gratin Dauphinois

2010-05-04T07:21:00.000-07:00

The gratin dauphinois is the heart and soul of Grenoble cuisine. As I stated in a previous post, here everyone’s grandmother makes The Best gratin dauphinois. Some may already be familiar with this French classic as “potatoes au gratin,” but we’ll need to make some things clear first:

1) There’s no cheese, ever, in a gratin dauphinois
2) Add fresh-grated nutmeg only, please
3) Rub the baking dish with garlic before adding the potatoes

The sole ingredients in a true gratin dauphinois are: potatoes, cream, garlic, nutmeg, salt, and maybe some pepper. A good gratin is not difficult to make, while a superb gratin is not much more difficult to make. The secret is to bake for enough time so that the cream reduces, thickens, and is absorbed by the potatoes. That can take between an hour to an hour and a half, depending on the size of the baking dish. The gratin, when ready, may look almost overcooked—brown and crusty on top, with not much liquid cream left underneath. But this is when you have succeeded in giving a cheese-like texture and taste to the cream (hence no need for cheese in the recipe).

Gratin Dauphinois

Serves 4

2 lbs. (1 kg) new potatoes
3 cups (75 cl.) heavy cream
3-4 cloves garlic
1 teaspoon fresh grated nutmeg
salt, pepper

1) Peel and slice the potatoes lengthwise into even, thin (1/8 inch) slices.
2) Cook the potatoes in a pot of boiling water for 5 minutes.
3) Pour the cream into a bowl and add the nutmeg, salt, and pepper.
4) Rub a baking dish with a clove of crushed garlic. Mince the remaining garlic and add to the cream mixture.
5) Drain the potatoes. Layer the baking dish alternately with potatoes and cream, making sure each layer is thoroughly covered before adding more potatoes. Pour any remaining cream on top.
6) Bake in a 375 F (185 C) oven for 1 to 1 ½ hours, until the potatoes are tender and the cream is absorbed.

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J’inclus aussi la recette en français, écrite par un vrai grenoblois . . .

Gratin Dauphinois

Pour 5 à 6 personnes

1 bonne gousse d'ail
1,5 kg de pommes de terre nouvelles
noix de muscade
1 litre de crème entière de Normandie

1. Tout d'abord éplucher les pommes de terres puis les couper en tranche fine voir très fine (l’épaisseur d'une pièce de monnaie). Tremper les dans de l'eau dont l'ébullition vient d'être arrêté (pendant quelques minutes).
2. Pendant ce temps préparer la crème en y incorporant sel, poivre et muscade. Presser 3 à 4 bonnes têtes d'ails puis les mélanger à la crème (facultatif mixer un coup) et laisser reposer. Presser 2 têtes d'ails que vous frottez sur toute la surface du plat.
3. Essorer les tranches et les rincer abondamment à l'eau chaude puis les essorer de nouveau. Placer une bonne couche de crème au fond, étaler les tranches de façon homogène, reverser de la crème abondamment, renouveler les couches jusqu'à remplir le plat.
4. Les pommes de terre doivent presque baigner dans la crème, la cuisson doit être à environ 200°. L’important est que la crème réduise fortement et qu’elle gratine sur le dessus, les pommes de terre doivent être cuites au point que la pointe d’un couteau touche le fond du plat presque sans aucune résistance.

Angelo's Stuffed Squid

2010-04-29T14:29:00.000-07:00

Guest Blogger!~My friend Angelo from Lisbon, Portugal contributes his favorite Portuguese recipe. You can substitute shrimp or a breadcrumb mixture for the chorizo sausage if you prefer.

I like a few things from Portuguese cuisine. Stuffed squid, for example. Or just a simple steak with rice, fries, egg and sauce.

I can tell you how to make the stuffed squid. I can tell you it's my favorite food!

First you clean the squid and move its legs to the side.

In a pot, you put olive oil, chopped onion, a little chopped garlic, a little parsley and bay leaf. You cook this for a bit and then you add chopped chorizo - not spicy! It's the Portuguese one and I am sure you can find it in France! - and the chopped squid legs.

You also boil an egg on the side, and when the chorizo and legs are ready, you chop the egg and add it to the mix. No need to cook the egg any longer; the stuffing is done.

In a new pot, you make tomato sauce (with olive oil, onion, garlic, bay leaf, adding the tomato, making sure it gets as mashed as possible). You put the stuffed squid in it, tied with a toothpick.

Then you add some white wine.

Let it cook, gently, and mix it once in a while, as it's easy to burn! Believe me, I know!

You serve this with mashed potatoes or plain spaghetti!

PS - I know you know this, but make sure you buy squid and not cuttlefish.

Fromage blanc au sel et poivre

2010-04-28T00:14:00.000-07:00

Les meilleurs desserts sont souvent les plus simples. Un petit bol de fromage blanc, avec du sel et du poivre, rend pour moi le repas complet et me laisse replète mais toujours légère. Le sel et le poivre, bien que la combinaison soit étonnante, est très rafraîchissante.

Pour ceux qui préfèrent toujours un dessert sucré, du fromage blanc avec quelques cuillères de miel et des noix grillé est également superbe.

Etre dehors sur la terrasse en savourant votre bol, c’est encore meilleur.

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A simple and refreshing French dessert is a bowl of fromage blanc (literally “white cheese”), which is thicker and creamier than yogurt, but with a similar light, slightly sour taste. It’s a classic French dessert; fromage blanc with honey dates back to the middle ages.

I like my fromage blanc with a liberal pinch of sea salt and fresh-ground black pepper. Surprising to have a salted dessert, perhaps, but it’s worth a try.

If you prefer to stick to your sweets, try fromage blanc with a drizzle of honey and roasted walnuts. Another classic is fromage blanc with jam and fruit mixed it.

Fromage blanc is generally unavailable in the U.S., but if you’re ever in a specialty shop—or in France—don’t miss it.

Night Barbeque

2010-04-25T02:26:00.000-07:00

We tried to coax summer into full swing with a beginning-of-the-season barbeque, begun at dusk and finished in shadows softened by candlelight, on the warm stone terrace of a friend's apartment.

On the grill the fresh vegetables shone center stage. Vibrant reds, yellows, and greens blistered black on the edges, sweating beads of olive oil.

Tough-skinned vegetables are perfect for grilling. Only a small amount of fat is necessary, and the barbeque gives great flavor. Wash the vegetables, and cut them into large, even pieces. To prevent them drying out over the flame, soak the pieces in water for up to 30 minutes before grilling. Then pat dry and brush with olive oil. Grill 2-3 minutes per side and season with salt and pepper, or any other herbs.

These vegetables are well suited for grilling:

Asparagus, whole
Bell Peppers
Chili Peppers, whole
Eggplant
Zucchini
Portobello or other mushrooms, whole

Garlic: Take whole bulbs and cut off the root end. Brush with olive oil and place cut side down for about 10 minutes or until the skin is brown.

Onions: Remove skin and cut horizontally about 1/2 inch thick. Brush with oil and grill 3-4 minutes.

Tomatoes: Something you don't usually see on the grill but it works well. Cut in half and grill cut side down.

Corn on the cob: Gently pull back the husks but don't remove. Remove the silk and cut off the end. Brush with butter. Fold the husks back down and tie or twist the ends. Place on grill for about 5 to 7 minutes. Turn to avoid burning.

Potatoes: Perfect for grilling but takes a bit longer. For whole potatoes, wrap in aluminum foil to keep the skin from burning and grill 35-40 minutes, turning occasionally. Or cut into wedges, brush with olive oil, and grill until browned.

Breakfast around the World

2010-04-16T11:28:00.000-07:00

American cuisine may not hit every spot on the mark (I’m thinking of KFC’s recent atrocity, the Double Down Sandwich), but we do make a great brunch spread. Much better than the light toast and coffee breakfast served in France, in my opinion—and who can resist a fluffy golden pancake with a pat of butter pooling the middle?

A traditional American breakfast is a hearty, heavy affair, but that’s not the case everywhere in the world. Breakfast favorites in the US typically include: eggs, toast with butter and jam, hash browned potatoes, bacon, sausage links, pancakes, waffles, bagels, doughnuts, muffins, cereal, orange juice, milk, and coffee. Lots of carbohydrates, fat, and protein here, enough to keep you well-energized throughout the day.

A French breakfast is typically much sweeter and less substantial than an American breakfast. The French drink their coffee from a ceramic bowl, and those who don’t like coffee drink hot chocolate. “Grilled bread”, or hard toasts, are dipped in the hot drink or spread with butter or jam, or nutella. Of course croissants, chocolate croissants (pain au chocolat), or other pastries are eaten frequently, although these are not necessarily eaten every day. Jam figures prominently on the breakfast table, as does chocolate. Most French people I know, if in need of a quick bite on the way out the door, grab a few cookies, a slice of cake, or anything I would normally eat for dessert. Unlike Americans, the French do not eat omelettes, quiche, or crepes for breakfast.

In Japan, asa-gohan (meaning “morning rice”) is not a grand affair, and is not restricted to certain “breakfast foods.” As more and more Western products reach supermarket shelves, more young Japanese start the day with toast, eggs, or cereal, but many still eat a traditional breakfast of rice and miso soup. Often pickles or fish accompany the rice, and a bit of natto, fermented soybeans. Leftovers from last night’s meal can be eaten as breakfast as well.

It’s interesting to compare breakfasts in different countries because it reflects, I think, the eating habits of the population. Americans eat a rather fatty, carbohydrate-heavy traditional breakfast, and quick weekday breakfasts are usually sugary and doughy (muffins, doughnuts, toast, cereal). And we overeat in general as well. The French load up on sugar in the morning, but they generally eat light as far as quantity. And a Japanese traditional breakfast is light in both senses—preferring savory tastes to fat and sugar, and keeping the portion small.

Once in a while, once every two months maybe, I like to do a good brunch. Two eggs sunny-side up, with 2 pieces of buttered toast, one to mop up each yolk. I skip the bacon but I happily take some hash browns, and of course the pancakes can’t be missed. Living abroad the last few years, I’ve learned to live without maple syrup (a better thing, anyways, as what passes for maple syrup now in most supermarkets is just coca-cola in a heat-up bottle). A much better substitute: a pat of butter and a drizzle of honey.

Making perfect pancakes at home is probably even easier than buying mix. The principal ingredients are flour, a spoon of sugar, a pinch of salt, a couple eggs, milk and baking powder. The baking powder is essential to get the rise and fluffy texture desired. I add only the yolk of the egg, reserving the egg whites for other sweets, and I swear that this makes the pancakes better. When combining the ingredients to make the batter, stir just enough to wet all the batter; overbeating the batter to try to get out the lumps will make the pancakes rubbery. If using a non-stick pan (this is best), there’s no need to oil the pan.

Perfect American Pancakes

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon white sugar
1 1/4 cups milk
1 egg

1. In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Make a well in the center and pour in the milk, and egg; mix until just combined.
2. Heat a griddle or non-stick frying pan over medium high heat. Pour or scoop the batter onto the griddle, using approximately 1/4 cup for each pancake. Brown on both sides and serve immediately.

Sultana Blondies

2010-04-05T10:42:00.000-07:00

These golden raisin blondies won over the Denoux family I had Easter dinner with yesterday. I passed the recipe on to them, as I will now do to you, in my quest to slowly but steadily infiltrate the French pastry market with the best of American treats.

Blondies are not only the brownie's blonde kid sister, they have a gooey chewiness all of their own and have more possibility than brownies for additions, including nuts, chocolate chips, caramel, peanut butter, dried fruit, or candy pieces.

I like the sexiness of the name "sultana", so I throw in golden raisins, dried apricot pieces, walnuts, and chocolate chips.

Blondies

16 Tbsp (230 grams) butter, melted

2 cups (400 grams) brown sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

pinch salt

2 cups (220 grams) flour

add golden raisins, apricot chunks, walnuts, and chocolate chips to taste

1. Mix all ingredients.

2. Bake at 350 F (180 C) for about 35 minutes.

And the Winning Dinner is White!

2010-03-30T12:04:00.000-07:00

As far as the “diner presque parfait” cooking competition, we really saved the best for last. Despite my extraordinary cooking skills, and the best efforts of us three preceding contestants, Astrid stole the show with her White dinner.

Disappointed losers? There weren’t any in sight, because we all enjoyed the best meal we’ve had in a long while.

We started the evening by popping a bottle of bubbly and snacking on hors d’oeurvres of pastry crust, cheese, and rosemary.

The first course was zucchini soup, topped with homemade croutons (INFINTELY better than store-bought, I assure you) and a crunchy morsel of fried parmesan cheese.

Next up were mussels in a white wine sauce, a French classic, with a side of wheat (this seems strange, but it’s just grains of wheat cooked like rice).

After we had scooped out the mussels and soaked up the last bits of sauce from the bowl with bread slices, we had to take a breather. Astrid served more white wine and the indispensable cheese plate.

Finally, the dessert: handmade vanilla ice cream and a chocolate cake.

What made this dinner excellent was not only the quality of the dishes, but also the presentation and the attention to detail—the crystal sugar garnish on the ice cream, the parmesan sliver in the soup, the white roses decorating the table. If I hadn’t been sitting in Astrid’s living room, surrounded by friends, I would have sworn I was in a restaurant. And a darn good restaurant at that.

We’ll be treating Astrid to a dinner out next week—I just hope it will be as good as hers was!

Zucchini Cream Soup

8 zucchinis, peeled and seeded
4 Tbsp butter
2 onions
1/2 cup white wine
4 cups stock
3/4 cup cream
salt, pepper
garlic
nutmeg
for garnish: homemade croutons, parmesan

Chop the zucchini and cook with butter and onions. Add the white wine and stock, bringing to a boil. Turn the heat off and add the cream and spices. Wait to cool, then puree. Serve the next day.

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Je suis déçue de vous dire qu’on a gardé le meilleur pour la fin ; ce n’est pas mon diner vert, mais le diner blanc, qui a gagné notre « dîner presque parfait ». Mais ne doutez pas de mes talents de cuisinière !

En revanche, je suis ravie de vous raconter le menu de la soirée, comme Astrid a bien mérité le titre de gagnante.

On a commencé avec une bouteille de champagne et des amuse-gueules au fromage et au romarin. Ensuite, Astrid nous a servi une soupe aux courgettes absolument délicieuse, avec des croutons et du parmesan par-dessus.

Par la suite, on a eu les moules au vin blanc et du blé, et finalement, un gâteau au chocolat et un parfait à la vanille.

Ce qui a rendu le diner d’Astrid vraiment merveilleux, c’était son attention aux tout petits détails : la garniture sur la soupe, du bon vin blanc, un morceau de vanille craquant sur le dessert, la présentation des plats, les roses blanches sur la table. Si je n’étais pas été assis dans le salon chez Astrid avec mes amis autour de moi, j’aurais dit que j’étais au resto !

Félicitations à Astrid et toutes les autres qui ont participé !

Soupe aux Courgettes

600g de courgettes
60g de beurre
120g d´oignons
120ml de vin blnc
900ml de bouillon
180ml de crème
sel, poivre, ail, muscade

D´abord il faut enlever la peau des courgettes et les épépiner.
Couper les corgettes et les faire cuire avec le beurre et les oignons.
Ajouter le vin blanc et le bouillon, et faire bouillir la soupe.
Ajouter la crème à la fin et déguster avec les épices... puis réduire la soupe en purée.

Spring Salad with fromage frais, roasted walnuts, and honey

2010-03-26T04:09:00.000-07:00

Spring is here at last—the fresh smell of spring in the air, a bouncy spring in our step as we step out the door, and spring on the plate, meaning light, fresh meals.

With the windows open and the sunlight shining in on my checkered kitchen floor, I decided to make a spring salad, using lamb’s lettuce, fromage frais, roasted walnuts, and honey.

Lamb’s lettuce is a tender spring lettuce with spoon-shaped leaves, common here in France and not so common in the U.S., probably. Try to use a softer lettuce like baby spinach or arugula.

Fromage frais is literally “fresh cheese”, very light in taste, almost like a thick yogurt. It’s perfect with still-warm roasted walnuts and honey/lemon dressing.

Spring Salad

Lamb’s lettuce
Fromage frais
Walnuts
Honey
Lemon
Salt and pepper

1. Roast the walnuts in a pan until dark brown and brittle, about 3-4 minutes. No oil is necessary.
2. Prepare a bed of lamb’s lettuce and top with the fromage frais, and warm walnuts. Drizzle honey on top and add a squeeze of lemon. Season with salt and pepper.

Crème Brulée and the Yellow Dinner

2010-03-23T06:05:00.000-07:00

Next up in our color-themed cooking round robin was Andi and her yellow dinner.

Just in time for spring, she decorated the table with sprigs of yellow flowers.

First course: bread and Manchego cheese, sautéed yellow bell peppers, and a Spanish omelette.

(intermission): white sangria with pears and pineapple slices

Main course: paella with mussels, prawns, and chorizo.

Dessert: crème brulée

The paella was pretty impressive, but the star of the evening for me was the crème brulée. Smooth creamy custard with a thick sugar crust (Andi made it thicker than normal, which I liked). Unlike what you might expect, you don’t need a fancy-torch-thing to crystallize the sugar topping—you can make it fine in a regular oven.

Vanilla Crème Brulée
Yield 4 servings
Recipe from Mark Bittman

Note: When baking the custard, a water bath is worthwhile. It makes the cooking more gentle and even. The custards are done in the oven when still quite jiggly in the center. Once you move the custard to the broiler, keep the door ajar so the compartment stays relatively cool, and keep a close watch.

2 cups heavy or light cream, or half-and-half
1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise, or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
5 egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar, more for topping

1. Heat oven to 325 degrees. In a saucepan, combine cream and vanilla bean and cook over low heat just until hot. Let sit for a few minutes, then discard vanilla bean. (If using vanilla extract, add it now.)
2. In a bowl, beat yolks and sugar together until light. Stir about a quarter of the cream into this mixture, then pour sugar-egg mixture into cream and stir. Pour into four 6-ounce ramekins and place ramekins in a baking dish; fill dish with boiling water halfway up the sides of the dishes. Bake for about 30 minutes, or until centers are barely set. Cool. Ramekins can be wrapped tightly and refrigerated for a couple of days.
3. When ready to serve, top each custard with about a teaspoon of sugar in a thin layer. Place ramekins in a broiler 2 to 3 inches from heat source. Turn on broiler. Cook until sugar melts and browns or even blackens a bit, about 5 minutes. Serve within two hours.

Irish Soda Bread

2010-03-19T04:07:00.000-07:00

A friend gave me this recipe for Irish soda bread, which she made for her class of French kiddies to teach them about St. Patrick’s Day. It’s a chewy, dense, slightly sweet bread which uses baking soda and buttermilk to rise in place of yeast. Which means, using this recipe you’ll have a loaf of hot bread in your hands within 45 minutes (instead of the few hours it takes to make a yeast bread). I ate the bread while still warm with a pat of butter; it dries out quickly and will not be good after a day or two.

The recipe calls for buttermilk (which is, by the way, simply the milk left over from the butter-making process) but an acceptable substitute can be made by mixing regular whole milk with white vinegar or lemon juice (1 Tbsp vinegar/lemon juice for 1 cup milk) and letting the mixture stand for 10-15 minutes.

Ingredients
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/3 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups buttermilk
1 cup raisins

Directions
1. Combine all ingredients and mix just until moistened. The dough should be fairly thick and dense and hold its shape on a cookie sheet or in an oven-proof skillet.
2. Bake at 325 degrees F (165 degrees C) for 35 to 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the bread comes out clean.

Dinner “Green” Chez Camille (me)

2010-03-16T15:43:00.000-07:00

Second up in the cooking rounds (see post below), and assigned to the color green, I prepared the following menu :

Aperitifs of Get 27 (an intensely green mint-flavored liquor)
Swiss chard chips
Green olives

Wine wine with frozen green grapes as ice cubes
Avocado salmon salad with chives

Pan-seared scallops with lime zested bread crumbs
Asparagus with a cilantro lime butter
Mashed potatoes and green peas

Macarons menthe-chocolat
Cheese plate with green grapes and pears

For the decor, I bought some green wrapping paper to spread on the table as a table cloth, and set the table with clean white plates, green napkins, and clear glasses.

Was it a success? I would say possibly. . . but only the sealed envelope holding the marks knows for sure!

My own recommendations: the swiss chard chips were easy, excellent, and strikingly unusual. The avocado salad was also very easy to prepare and absolutely delicious. The mashed potatoes with peas were very good; I like the balance of half vegetable-half potato in the puree to reduce the heaviness of eating a pile of potatoes. And finally, macarons tasted pretty darn good even though they had collapsed a little by the time I served them (I had made them the night before). If you don’t know what macarons are, you should. They’re a sort of sandwich cookie, but much fancier than that description, made with egg whites, powdered sugar, almond powder and a creamy filling. They come in every flavor imaginable, including licorice (my favorite).

I messed up the scallops because they were ready before the potatoes and so by the time I served the plate, the scallops and bread crumbs had gone cold. Timing is everything! Always make scallops immediately before serving.

Swiss Chard chips

Bunch of swiss chard leaves
A couple tablespoons of olive oil
Salt
Sesame seeds

1. Trim the leaves off of the swiss chard, cutting away the firm white stalk. Cut the leaves into chip-sized pieces.
2. Brush both sides of the leaves with olive oil. Spread in a single layer on a baking sheet. Salt and sprinkle with sesame seeds.
3. Bake at 350 F for 7-8 minutes, or until crispy.
4. If you must store the chips, don’t cover them or they will become limp.

Avocado Salmon salad with chives

Serves 5

3 ripe avocadoes
smoked salmon
2 lemons
handful of chopped chives, plus a few sprigs for garnish
baby spinach, or any leafy lettuce greens
salt, pepper
Tbsp olive oil

1. One hour before serving, marinate the salmon with the juice of one lemon, salt, pepper, and chives.
2. As soon as possible before serving, slice the avocadoes and cover with the juice of ½ lemon. If you must wait before serving, cover the avocadoes tightly with plastic wrap.
3. At the bottom of a transparent cup or bowl (one for each person), put down a bed of the lettuce leaves, then a layer of avocado, then a layer of salmon, then a second layer of avocado. Mix the juice of the remaining ½ lemon with the olive oil, salt, and pepper. Spoon a bit over the top of each serving. Garnish with chives.

Mashed potatoes and green peas

Potatoes, washed, unpeeled and cubed
Frozen green peas
Butter
Milk
Salt, pepper
Freshly grated parmesan cheese

1. Boil the potatoes until completely tender and easily mashable by hand. Add the peas to the boiling water a couple minutes before the potatoes are done. The ratio of peas to potatoes should be about ½ and ½ .
2. Add butter and milk until texture is creamy and fluffy. Season with salt and pepper and stir in parmesan cheese, reserving some flakes for garnish.

Mint chocolate macarons

Recipe courtesy of Savour-Fare

3 egg whites, left out for 2-3 days (egg whites don’t spoil the way the yolks do) or “aged” in the microwave for 10-15 seconds (ideally, egg whites should be almost liquid).
30 g granulated sugar
200 g powdered sugar
110 g almond flour
2 Tbsp menthe liquor
green food coloring, if you have it (I didn’t)

1. In the standing mixer, beat egg whites until soft peaks form. Gradually add granulated sugar, and beat until meringue is stiff. REALLY stiff.
2. With a rubber spatula, fold in 1/3 of the almond sugar mixture, using quick, firm, strokes. You want to break up the meringue in this step — don’t be too gentle! Add remaining almond mixture, 1/3 at a time, and use gentle strokes to fold it until all almonds are incorporated, no lumps of meringue remain, and the mixture is the texture of chilled honey — when you drop a teaspoonful of the mixture on top of the rest of the batter, it should take 30-60 seconds to disappear and be reincorporated. Stir in the menthe liquor and green food coloring.
3. Using a pastry bag or a ziploc with the corner cut off, pipe the meringues into 1 inch circles on parchment paper. Remember, you want some consistency so you can match them up in sandwiches.
4. Let air dry for 45-60 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 300 degrees. Bake for 15-20 minutes, then turn off the oven, open the door, and let the macarons cool on the cookie sheets (this helps them release). Sprinkle on chocolate shavings when they are almost cool.
5. When the macarons are completely cool, sandwich them with the chocolate ganache spread in the middle. Handle carefully!

Chocolate mint ganache filling

1 bar dark chocolate (70%)
¼ cup cream
fresh mint, chopped
1 Tbsp mint liquor

1. Melt the chocolate in the microwave. Stir in the cream, mint, and mint liquor.
2. Wait to cool before filling macarons.

Que la meilleure chef gagne!

2010-03-13T15:35:00.000-08:00

“Un dîner presque parfait” is France’s latest success in the cooking-competition-reality-TV show genre. A small group of strangers and amateur home-chefs dine together for a week, each taking turns hosting a meal for the others. The invites are, of course, given free reign to castigate any perceived faults in the food, presentation, decor, or ambiance of the evening, submitting a grade for each meal. The winner at the end gets something or other, probably a monetary prize.

Since three of my friends and I regularly cook for one another, I thought, why not add a little competition to the mix and organize a “dîner presque parfait” of our own? To makes things a little more interesting, each of us drew a color at random from a hat that will work as a theme for our meal. The eventual winner will get their bill covered by the others at a restaurant.

The first up this week was Franzi, a German girl with limited cooking experience (as she emphasized throughout the meal). It was, nevertheless, a great success.

First, her efforts at decor are worth noting—red napkins, a tomato-printed tablecloth, red candles, even music from the soundtrack of Moulin Rouge!

Franzi served as appetizer an hors-d’œurve of tomato slices on puff pastry, topped with chopped garlic and basil. Simple and delicious.

The main dish was a red bell pepper stuffed with a mixture of feta cheese, tuna, and tomatoes, served with a tomato rice on the side.

Dessert was a German chocolate cherry cake and a marzipan chocolate.

Very red, but was it good enough to win??

To be continued . . .

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Je suis dans un groupe d’amies qui dînent souvent ensemble, on s’est dit, « Puisque chacune d’entre nous cuisine pour les autres, pourquoi ne pas ajouter un peu de piment ? Juste pour le fun, bien sûr . . .» J’ai proposé à mes amies un série de quatre soirées, où l’une après l’autre on s’applique bien à préparer un grand dîner. Les trois autres invitées sont juges, et donnent des notes à la fin. Après que tout le monde ait fait leur dîner, on révèle la gagnante, qui gagnera un dîner au resto de la part des autres. C’est-à-dire, on imite l’émission de télé « Un dîner presque parfait. » Pour rendre le jeu plus intéressant et la compétition plus élevée, chaque dîner doit se préparer autour d’une couleur.

La première chef était Franzi avec son dîner rouge.

Elle a très bien décoré la salle à manger avec des serviettes rouges, une nappe imprimée des tomates, et même la musique de la Moulin Rouge !

Elle a servit comme entrée des tomates hachées sur une pâte feuilletée, avec de l’ail et du basilic.

Le plat principal se composait d’un poivron rouge farci cuit à la perfection, avec de la feta, des tomates, et du thon. Délicieux. À côté il y avait du riz parfumé à la tomate.

Enfin, le dessert : un gâteau allemand chocolat-cerises.

On a hâte de découvrir ce qui arrivera au suivant !

Estouffadou

2010-03-03T05:34:00.000-08:00

Dans le marché de Nice, je suis tombée sur un dessert merveilleux qui s’appelait « éstouffadou ». Tout de suite je me suis dit, je dois le refaire à la maison. Tout ce que j’avais comme recette c’était les ingrédients : de la polenta ; de la poudre d’amandes, du beurre ; et du sucre. A partir de ce moment j’ai inventé la recette, avec un grand succès. Pour que la recette de ce gâteau délicieux ne soit pas perdue, je la partage avec vous :

Estouffadou

170 g polenta (moyenne), pas cuite
200 g poudre d’amandes
170 g sucre
250 g beurre, fondu
sel
1 œuf
1 sachet de sucre vanillé

1. Mélanger tout.
2. Verser dans le moule et enfourner pour 35 minutes au four de 180°C.
3. Découper en carrés et servir froid.

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While in Nice I came happily across one of the most delicious sweets I have ever tasted—it was a bar made out of uncooked polenta, retaining the crunchy, grainy texture of the polenta in a flaky butter-almond mixture. Very simple, very unusual, and very, very good. I searched days afterward for the recipe, in vain. If this dessert exists outside of the Nice market, it does not go by the name “estouffadou.” Knowing only the basic ingredients—polenta, almond powder, sugar, and butter—I attempted to recreate the recipe at home. I threw an egg and a pinch of salt in, and I think a bit of vanilla would have done nicely as well. And, the “estouffadou” came out—perfect! So that this recipe won’t be lost to future generations, I’m passing it on to you.

Estouffadou

1 cup uncooked polenta (medium grain)
1 cup almond powder
¾ cup sugar
1 cup melted butter
a pinch of salt
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla

1. Mix all ingredients.
2. Spread into a brownie pan and bake for 35 minutes in a 350 F oven, until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.
3. Let cool. Cut into bars and serve at room temperature.

Spécialités Niçoises

2010-03-01T10:31:00.000-08:00

J’ai profité d’un voyage à Nice la semaine dernière pour me permettre de déguster tout les petits plats de délicieux que j’ai rencontré dans la rue. La cuisine niçoise est pleine de saveurs méditerranéennes : de l’huile d’olive, du sel, des olives et des tomates . . . ça fait penser à la mer, au soleil, au vent . . .

Les plats que j’ai goutés se retrouvent partout dans les rues du Vieux Nice ; il faut tout simplement vous balader sans but jusqu’à ce que vous tombiez sur un étal de socca, le plat préféré des Niçois.

La socca

Si vous n’avez qu’une spécialité de Nice à essayer, ça doit être la socca. C’est essentiellement une sorte de crêpe faite à base de farine de pois chiches, et cuisinée avec de l’huile d’olive dans un four à pizza.

Elle se mange chaude avec les doigts, aussi vite que possible après qu’elle sorte du four, et saupoudrée abondamment du poivre noir. Différent d’une crêpe, la socca n’a pas besoin de accompagnements ; elle se déguste très bien toute seule.

La pissaladière

La pissaladière ressemble à une pizza, mais sans la sauce tomates, et avec une pâte beaucoup plus épaisse. La pâte se couvre avec un lit d’oignons, cuits assez longtemps pour qu’ils deviennent presqu’une purée très douce. On ajoute ensuite des anchois et quelques olives (une par morceau).

La tourte de blettes

Il y a deux sortes de la tourte de blettes, sucré et salé. Le sucré est celui qui a le plus de succès, pourtant j’ai essayé les deux et j’ai trouvé le salé beaucoup plus agréable. Ça fait un peu bizarre, manger un dessert de blettes, non ?

Les petits farcis

Les farcis sont des légumes tels que des tomates, des oignons, des aubergines, des courgettes, et des poivrons, qui sont fourrés d’un mélange de viande, de mie de pains, d’œufs, et de parmesan. Ça fait un déjeuner léger et excellent. Je ne penserais jamais à faire farcir un oignon, mais en fait il était très bon comme ça.

Il y a aussi la salade niçoise et le pan bagnat, qu’on trouve n’importe où en France et qui sont bien connu ; il n’y a donc pas besoin que j’explique plus.

La Socca
Pour 8 personnes

250 g de farine de pois chiches
1/2 l d'eau
6 cuillères à soupe d'huile d'olive
1 cuillère à café de sel fin
poivre du moulin
à cuire sur deux plaques de 40 cm de diamètre environ ou une de 70 cm

1. Dans un saladier profond, mettez l'eau froide et y délayer au fouet la farine de pois chiches. Ajoutez deux cuillères à soupe d'huile d'olive et une cuillère à café de sel fin. Mélangez vivement pour éliminer les grumeaux. Au besoin, tamisez.
La pâte doit avoir la consistance du lait non écrémé. Si elle est trop compacte, rajoutez un peu d'eau et mélangez à nouveau.

2. Préchauffez votre four en position maximale pendant 10 mn. Sur une ou deux plaques circulaires, versez-le contenu de quatre cuillères à soupe d'huile d'olive. Répartissez et enfournez pendant 5 mn.

3. Sortez la plaque du four, versez la préparation et étalez-la de façon homogène. Enfournez aussitôt, dans le haut du four.

4. Au bout de 2 mn, mettez le thermostat sur la position gril. Laissez cuire de 5 à 7 mn, de façon que la croûte soit bien dorée, même un peu brûlée par endroits...
Pendant la cuisson, vous pouvez percer avec un couteau les cloques qui se forment.

5. Retirez du four, découpez et servez en n'omettant pas de poivrer abondamment.

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Specialities of Nice

Last week I went to Nice, on the Côte d’Azur of southern France, which is Mediterranean seaside paradise, even in February. While strolling along the maze of alleyways and corners in Old Nice, I stumbled happily again and again upon several Nice specialties being sold in markets, bakeries, and fast food stalls around town.

Nice is the home of pure Mediterranean cuisine, full of salty, rich flavors that remind one of the sea and the sun … olive oil, salt, olives, tomatoes, red peppers, chickpeas. The food I got from vendor stalls was eaten with my fingers, on the spot or while I continued to meander, and it was always cheap and fresh.

Socca

Socca seems to be the nicois snack of preference. It resembles a crepe, but is made with chickpea flour and cooked in olive oil in a pizza oven. Contrary to a crepe, it’s served unpretentiously broken into pieces and without accompaniment. Delicious for a lunch side or a quick snack. (Recipe below)

Pissaladiere

It’s kind of an onion pizza, but much more appetizing than “onion pizza” sounds. The crust is much thicker than a pizza crust, and with the distinct taste of olive oil. No tomato sauce is used, and instead the pizza is topped with a layer of onions that have been cooked until completely softened, almost a puree. Finally, the pissaladiere is topped with anchovies and a few olives.

Tourte de blettes

A tourte in French is very simply a pie with a top layer of crust. The tourte here, however, is not made in a circular pie shape but rather in a large rectangle, cut into squares. Blettes are chard in English, a leafy vegetable rather like spinach, and eaten fairly frequently in France. Despite the presence of chard in the tourte, it is most often made as a sweet dessert, which I found odd, even (especially) after tasting it. A savory version also exists, however, and that was much more to my liking.

Les farcis (stuffed vegetables)

A plate of small stuffed vegetables made for an excellent light lunch one afternoon; the vegetables included tomatoes, onions, eggplant, zucchini, and peppers. The stuffing is typically made of a mixture of meat, bread crumbs, parmesan cheese, and egg. I would have never thought to stuff an onion, but as it turns out it was ideal—sweet and the perfect shape for stuffing.

Socca
Makes about 3 thin flatbread pancakes

1 cup chickpea flour
1 cup plus 2 Tbsp water
3/4 tsp. sea salt
fresh ground black pepper
1 1/2 Tbsp olive oil (plus more for brushing griddle and drizzling over finished Socca)

Whisk together the chickpea flour, water, and olive oil.

When ready to cook Socca, preheat broiler. When broiler is hot, brush cast iron griddle or frying pan with olive oil, heat under the broiler for 2-3 minutes, then remove from oven and pour on a thin layer of batter.

Cook Socca under the broiler until it has firmed and well-browned, even slightly burned in places, especially on the edges, 2-4 minutes. Continue to make Socca pancakes like this, brushing the griddle with oil and heating it between each one.

Cut finished Socca into rough triangular pieces, sprinkle with sea salt and fresh ground black pepper. Serve hot.

Films on Food: Food, Inc.

2010-02-28T01:51:00.000-08:00

Released in the U.S. last June, the documentary film Food Inc. is the latest in a growing succession of best-selling books and popular movies about the politics of the modern U.S. food industry, including: Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation (2001), Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me (2004), Michael Pollen’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2006) and In Defense of Food (2008), and French documentarian Marie-Monique Robin’s Le Monde selon Monsanto (The World According to Monsanto) (2008).

The film, directed by Robert Kenner, and narrated by Schlosser and Pollen, gives an overview of the various dangers and ills posed to American consumers and workers by our current factory-farm model of food production. In no great depth, unfortunately, it covers most of the major issues consumers care about: foodborne illnesses such as E.coli found in hamburger meat, the effect of large companies’ purchasing power on farmers and small farms, immigrant workers lacking basic rights, genetic engineering, organic and local food efforts, and the environmental unsustainability of factory farms. The (much more interesting) frame of the film, however, is examining how companies such as Monsanto and Tyson are able to keep consumers coming back for more, when participating in such a harmful production system is becoming less and less interesting. Now, sales-pushing corporate dishonesty is nothing new. This is the problem in the first place with any mass industrial system, whatever it is producing. But you may be surprised to find how far, or how low, these companies can and will go to shield the truth from consumers who dare to look, and how deftly they and their Washington cohorts change laws in their favor. For example, food libel laws in several states make it illegal to publicly criticize food manufacturers. Even an expression of dissatisfaction is grounds for a lawsuit!

Controlling vast portions of the markets allows huge companies to reshape the consumer market as well as consumer behavior. 90 % of the meat produced in the U.S. is slaughtered by 4 companies. Wal-Mart leads the list of 5 companies that control 50% of supermarket sales. Conglomerates are very effective at lowering prices—good for the consumer—but they also essentially control the market, deciding what is bought and sold, what is available to the consumer. If Wal-Mart decides to stock its produce aisles with locally-grown beets (which it is doing in certain areas), it will create enough demand that it’s in the best interests of local farmers to supply beets. Unfortunately, organic foods are not yet in such high demand. Our American grocery stores are flooded with cheap meat, corn syrup-sweetened beverages and snacks, and processed foods. The companies that provide these products have enormous political leverage and influence. Corn and soy crops receive heavy government subsidies, driving down the cost of cattle, poultry, and dairy products (as a result of cheap feed), and also processed foods. Thus the food that most people buy (understandably, the cheapest available), and that children learn to develop a taste for, is by no accident the kind of unhealthy food that is mass-produced, and that contributes to the continued growth of McDonalds and Frito-Lay. Health problems posed by mass-produced meat are quietly passed by and health code violations overlooked by FDA officials. The bigwigs at the FDA and the chairmen of food companies are often one and the same. Hardly the objective eye we’d expect to be regulating our food safety.

Food companies today, the film reiterates, rely on a lack of transparency to sell their products. They fight GMO labeling, calorie counts, product history. It all comes down to how well you, as the consumer, know your food. What’s in it? Where did it come from? How will it affect your body and your health? Companies want to distract you with the price tag, but insist on looking beyond. The final message of the film is that despite corporate power, consumer behavior can change the system. Fight for labeling and be aware of what you’re eating. Most Americans sit down to dinner with a bag over their heads—maybe this film will poke a couple eyeholes in it.

Corn Muffins

2010-02-21T09:49:00.000-08:00

Vegetables in cakes and sweets are treated with suspicion in France. American classics such as pumpkin pie, sweet potato pie, zucchini bread, carrot cake, and cornbread are, sadly, unknown and unappreciated. But I’m working to regulate this problem.

These corn muffins, I think, will do the trick.

Corn reminds me of home sweet home in Illinois, where I spent several childhood summers slaving away in the corn fields under the blazing sun for minimum wage, wiping pollen from my eyes and spiders from my ankles.

Corn makes French people think of what, I don’t know, but maybe my corn muffins will communicate something to them, maybe it will bring a glaze to their eye and memories of blue sky and white clouds above a waving field of yellow and green . . .

There are infinite variations to these muffins, if corn doesn’t suit your fancy: carrot, zucchini, pumpkin, banana, applesauce, etc. Just make sure to mash the vegetable in the food processor first. Also, the whole-wheat pastry flour is used to give a finer texture than most wheat muffins.

Corn muffins

Recipe adapted from Mark Bittman’s Whole-Wheat Muffins

2 ½ cups whole-wheat pastry flour
¾ cup sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt

½ cup buttermilk or yogurt
½ cup melted butter
1 cup mashed sweet corn

1. Mix the dry ingredients together lightly.
2. Mix or fold in wet ingredients; stir just enough to wet the whole batter. Lumps in the batter are not a problem.
3. Fill muffin cups ¾ full and bake at 375 F for 25 minutes. Makes 12 muffins.

Le chou-fleur

2010-02-18T13:46:00.000-08:00

Quand on parle d’alimentation, généralement, la règle nous dit que les légumes de couleur foncée sont bon pour la santé, les légumes de couleur claire, moins bon. Pensez-vous à la laitue, la farine, la guimauve. Mais, si on considère le chou-fleur, on voit l’exception à la règle. Le chou-fleur est plein de vitamines et d’autres substances bonnes pour la santé.

Le chou-fleur se marie très bien avec du fromage. J’affiche une très bonne recette, et parfaite pour l’hiver.

Macaroni au chou-fleur

500 ml (2 tasses) macaroni grains entiers
½ chou-fleur moyen
1 oignon blanc, tranché
2 cuillères à soupe d’huile d’olive
50 g de beurre
2 cuillères à soupe de farine
150 ml de lait
250 ml (1 tasse) de Gouda, râpé
Au choix, et selon vos goûts, ajouter de la moutarde, du poivre moulu, du sel ou du cayenne.

1. Hacher finement le tronçon du chou-fleur et séparer la tête en petites fleurettes.

2. Dans une grande casserole d’eau salée bouillante, ajouter les macaronis et les laisser cuire pendant 5 minutes, pas plus. Ajouter le chou-fleur et laisser cuire 5 minutes de plus. Vider l’eau.

3. Dans une poêle, faire adoucir l’oignon dans l’huile d’olive pendant 5 minutes, et ajouter le beurre et le lait. Ajouter la farine et bien remuer.

4. Ajouter la moutarde, sel, poivre, et cayenne selon votre choix. Laisser cuire quelques minutes, puis ajouter le fromage et le laisser fondre.

5. Servir les pâtes avec la sauce de fromage sur le dessus.

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Cauliflower

Isn’t the rule of nutritious eating to eat deep, rich colors, and avoid pale, whitish colors ? Think iceberg lettuce, bleached flour, marshmallows. Cauliflower is a clear exception to the rule. It’s packed with vitamins and compounds that benefit the health, and has a very high nutritional density.

To boot, cauliflower has a high fractal dimension.

I’m attaching a superb recipe, surprisingly from Rachel Ray, whom I would not usually describe as superb. She picks up on the perfect marriage between cauliflower and cheese here, though. Because you’ll cook the pasta and cauliflower together (which saves a lot of time), make sure to cook the pasta no more than 5 minutes before adding the cauliflower, otherwise the pasta will end up overcooked.

The second recipe is a curry, which is also perfectly suited for cauliflower. The curry tints the cauliflower a beautiful yellow color, and the lentils give the curry the perfect texture.

Mac-n-Smoked Gouda with Cauliflower

from Rachel Ray, Food Network

pound elbow macaroni or cavatappi (corkscrew-shaped pasta)
1 head cauliflower, cut into florets
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 small onion, finely chopped
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon paprika
3 cups whole milk
3 cups shredded smoked Gouda
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
Freshly ground black pepper

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add salt to season the cooking water, then add the pasta. Cook for 5 minutes, then add the cauliflower and cook for 3 minutes more or until pasta is cooked al dente and the florets are just tender. Drain well and return to the pot.
2. While the pasta cooks, heat a medium sauce pot over medium-low heat. Add the extra-virgin olive oil and heat with the butter until it melts. Add the onions and cook for 3 to 5 minutes to sweat them out and turn the juices sweet. Raise the heat a bit, then whisk in the flour, cayenne, and paprika. Whisk together until the roux bubbles up, then cook for 1 minute more. Whisk in the milk and raise the heat a bit higher to bring the sauce to a quick boil. Once it bubbles, drop the heat back to a simmer and cook until the sauce thickens, 3 to 5 minutes.
3. Add the cheese to the thickened sauce and stir to melt it, a minute or so. Stir in the mustard and season the sauce with salt and pepper. Pour over the cauliflower and cooked pasta and toss to combine.

Cauliflower Lentil Curry

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 yellow onion, finely chopped
2-3 garlic cloves, minced or grated
1 medium fresh green chile, seeded and finely chopped
1-2 tablespoons curry powder (eyeball it according to your taste)
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 cup dried red lentils
1 head cauliflower, cut into florets
2 cups vegetable broth
1/2-1 cup water
cooked white rice, for serving

1. Heat oil in a large saucepan. Add onion, garlic and chile and cook until onion is soft, about 4 minutes. Add curry powder and salt, and cook, stirring frequently, for about 2 minutes.
2. Add lentils, cauliflower, stock and water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, cover and simmer until lentils and cauliflower and tender, about 15-20 minutes. Remove from heat, and let stand, covered, for 5-10 minutes.
3. Serve over rice.

Shrimp Gumbo and Sweet Potato Pie

2010-02-16T15:11:00.000-08:00

Today is Mardi gras, or Carnaval, as it’s called in French (even though “mardi gras” is French . . . ? I can’t explain that one). The Mardi gras festivities here are nothing to report on—it’s sort of like a candy-less Halloween, but quieter—so I’m looking to New Orleans for inspiration, and I’m celebrating with a big ole pot of shrimp gumbo, Louisiana Creole style, and a sweet potato pie.

Gumbo is a literal melting pot of cuisines, originating in New Orleans in the 18th century, but taking elements of French, Spanish, Native American, West African, and Italian cuisines. The original idea was taken from the southern French seafood stew bouillabaisse, the vegetables were imported from the Spanish, filé powder (used in place of roux to thicken the soup) from the Native Americans, okra (also used as a thickener) from West Africa, and tomatoes from the Italian population in New Orleans.

There are as many variations of an authentic gumbo recipe as there are native New Orleans willing to fight over it, but basically what makes a gumbo is a roux (or okra, or file powder), a combination of spicy meats or shellfish, and three required vegetables: celery, green bell pepper, and onion. We add in stock and tomatoes for the sauce, and good dose of cayenne for the spice. Serve over rice. If adding meat (for non-vegetarians: do this), the best choice would be a spicy andouille sausage.

Shrimp Gumbo

½ cup flour
½ cup butter
peeled shrimp
can tomatoes
1 cup vegetable or seafood stock
celery
green bell pepper
white onion
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 bay leaves

1. Over medium heat, melt the butter and whisk in the flour. Using a wooden spoon, continue stirring, lowering the heat if necessary to avoid burning, for about 10 minutes, or until the roux is a medium brown color.
2. Add the chopped celery, green pepper, and onion. Cook in the roux for a couple minutes, then add the canned tomatoes and stock. Throw in the bay leaves, cayenne, and salt and pepper to taste.
3. When the celery and green pepper are just about soft, add the shrimp and cook 1-2 minutes, just until pink.
4. Serve immediately over rice.

This is the second-best orange-colored pie I know, but it's a close second. It's a cinch to make and not too sweet, retaining the flavor and texture of the sweet potatoes.

Sweet Potato Pie

9 inch pie crust
3 cups cooked mashed sweet potatoes
1 egg
2 Tbsp melted butter
½ cup cream
½ cup sugar
½ tsp lemon juice
2 tsp vanilla
cinnamon
nutmeg
dash salt

1. Mix all ingredients and beat for 5 minutes.
2. Pour in the pie crust and bake 40-45 minutes at 325 F.

Vietnamese noodles: Bún thịt nướng

2010-02-14T06:50:00.001-08:00

To mark the occasion of Tết, the Vietnamese New Year, today, I’m posting my mother’s recipe for bún thịt nướng, a refreshing dish of rice noodles and grilled meat. It’s one of my favorites. Usually grilled pork or beef is used, but you can substitute grilled shrimp, egg rolls, or even tofu.

Bún thịt nướng is not traditionally eaten at New Year’s, by the way. It’s a light, summer-y dish, perfect for an evening of grilling outside on the patio. But it’s one of the only Vietnamese dishes I know how to make, so it’ll have to do for today.

Bún thịt nướng
Serves 4-6

Ingredients:
1 bag (14-16 oz.) dried rice noodles (bún)
grilled topping: pork, beef, shrimp, eggrolls, or tofu
plate of leafy lettuce (not the iceberg white)
1 cup bean sprouts
A bunch of fresh mint leaves
A bunch of cilantro
1-2 cucumbers, sliced thinly
Green onion or dried fried onions
1 cup crushed peanuts

Sauce:
Sugar
Water
Rice vinegar
2 Tbsp nước mắm (Vietnamese fish sauce)
Minced garlic
Chili pepper
1 lime
1 carrot, sliced very thin

1. The day before serving, marinate sliced meat or shrimp with salt, pepper, dried onions, garlic, nước mắm, and sugar. If you use beef, marinate with minced lemon grass. Grill right before serving.
2. Soak the noodles for a few hours in cold water. Cook in boiling water with a dash of salt and a teaspoon of cooking oil for a couple minutes, until tender. Drain with cold water.
3. To make the sauce, mix the sugar, water, vinegar, nước mắm, garlic, and chili pepper. Vary the amounts to taste. The nước mắm is very strong so only use 2 Tbsp. Squeeze in the juice of one lime and add the sliced carrots.
4. To serve, put the cucumber, cilantro, mint, lettuce, and bean sprouts in the bottom of a large soup bowl. Add noodles, and top with grilled meat, onions, and crushed peanuts. Pour on a couple spoons of the sauce and eat immediately.

Films on Food: The Chinese Feast

2010-02-11T15:48:00.000-08:00

What’s more exciting than spending a languorous evening preparing a home recipe passed down from your grandmother, and serving it to a table of approving loved ones?

Certainly, that would be a high-stakes cooking contest, to be completed in very little time, with very expensive and rare ingredients, served to ruthless judges that will decide the existence of your future career.

In other words, Iron Chef, the Food Network cult favorite, and possibly the strangest and most riveting cooking show of all time. Iron Chef combines action with art, allowing a lifetime of culinary talent to be judged in a quick 60 minute fireworks show of cooking skill. What I love about Iron Chef is that it leans towards the extreme, unveiling the ‘secret theme ingredient’ to be urchin, or beef tongue (either that or the most banal: cabbage, plain yogurt), and the chefs’ methods of cooking goes on to match. Cod roe ice cream? Not impossible. Lobster-flavored asparagus? The more money outlandishly spent, the better.

The Chinese Feast (1995) by Hong Kong director Tsui Hark, is Iron Chef in film form. It’s fast-paced, with bizarre characters, plenty of action, exotic dishes, and comedy. It evens throws a love story and a martial arts sequence into the mix.

The story follows Kit, a master chef fallen from acclaim, and Sun, a talentless young man seemingly aspiring to be a rock star and chef simultaneously. The popular Chinese restaurant in Hong Kong where Sun works is threatened by Super Group, a gang of tough-looking chefs who aim to take over every restaurant in China, and the two sides agree to stage a cook-off. The meal of choice is to be the Manchu Han Imperial Feast.

The Manchu Han Imperial Feast is a true historical event. It’s one of the most lavish meals ever known in China, comprising at minimum 108 dishes, spanning 3 days, and showcasing cooking methods from across China. It was held by the emperor of the Qing Dynasty, in an effort to resolve political disputes between the Manchu and the Han.

Although the battle of the chefs in The Chinese Feast consists of a mere 3 dishes, the film is true to form as far as exoticism goes. The three required meals are: bear paw, elephant trunk, and monkey brains. Is it cruel to eat live monkey brains? Maybe yes, but these chefs have some creative ways of getting around moral hesitations. I’ll leave that for you to find out.

The only doable recipes shown in the film (unless you want to be on PETA’s blacklist) are beef noodles and sweet and sour pork. Not being a fan of pork, I'm attaching a recipe for sweet and sour shrimp.

Sweet and Sour Shrimp

• 2/3 pound medium shrimp (peeled and de-veined)
• 1 tsp. soy sauce
• 1 tsp. cornstarch

Sauce:
• 2 ½ Tbsp. cornstarch
• 1/3 cup soy sauce
• 4 Tbsp. rice wine vinegar
• 4 Tbsp. (packed) dark brown sugar
• 1 tsp. ground ginger
• 1 tsp. garlic powder
• 20 ounce can pineapple chunks (in juice)

Other:
• 1 celery stalk, diagonally cut very thin
• 1 carrot, diagonally cut very thin
• 1 medium onion, julienne cut (thin strips from halved onion sliced from root to top)
• 1 red bell pepper, cut into thin strips
• 1 Tbsp oil

1. Marinate shrimp in 1 tsp. soy sauce and 1 tsp. cornstarch for about 20 minutes (in the refrigerator.)

2. In a bowl or large measuring cup mix sauce ingredients: 2 ½ Tbsp. cornstarch, 1/3 cup soy sauce (add soy sauce slowly and stir to avoid lumps), rice wine vinegar, dark brown sugar, ground ginger, garlic powder, and the juice from the pineapple chunks (reserve the pineapple chunks for later in the recipe.) Set sauce aside.

3. Heat wok or stir-fry pan over medium-high heat and add oil. When oil is hot, add shrimp (with marinade) to the pan and stir-fry until just cooked (shrimp will start to curl and turn pink.) Remove shrimp to bowl or plate.

4. Add more oil to wok or pan if needed and stir-fry celery and carrot to soften and remove the vegetables to a bowl (not the one with the shrimp.)

5. Add more oil if needed and add onion and stir-fry briefly to soften. Add back carrots and celery along with bell pepper and stir-fry for 1-2 minutes. Add pineapple chunks to wok or pan and add back the shrimp. Stir-fry for a few seconds. Mix sauce and pour into wok or pan. Stir everything in the wok or pan and bring to a boil so the mixture can thicken.

6. Immediately remove from heat and serve with Chinese white rice or over crispy noodles.

Notes:
Use a variety of colors to balance out the sauce, and chop vegetables with similar cooking times in the same shape. This is done so the ingredients cook evenly together, so the ingredients balance each other, and because it looks pretty. However, chunks of celery and carrot would overpower the dish and take too long to cook.

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La nourriture sur le grand écran: Le Festin Chinois

Le Festin Chinois est un film réalisé par le hong-kongais Tsui Hark. C’est l’histoire d’un ancien grand chef Kit qui a quitté son métier à la suite de son échec pendant un concours de la cuisine, et d’un rock-and-roll jeune chef Sun sans aucun talent. Les deux doivent collaborer pour sauver le restaurant où travaille Sun contre Super Group, une organisation de chefs qui souhaitent prendre le contrôle de tous les restaurants chinois en Chine. Ils décident de parier l’avenir du restaurant sur le résultat du plus grand, du plus somptueux festin dans l’histoire de la Chine, le Festin Imperial de Manchu Han.

Le Festin Imperial de Manchu Han a eu lieu dans la Cité Interdite à Pékin pendant la dynastie Qing. Il s’agit de 108 plats préparés sur 3 jours avec des méthodes variées traversant la Chine.

Le film souligne la nature extravagante et exotique du festin. Le concours comprend 3 plats extravagants : la patte d’ours, la trompe d’éléphant, et finalement la cervelle de singe. Vous trouvez cela cruel de manger un singe vivant, tout mignon et innocent? Peut-être, mais les chefs sont plutôt créatifs. Je vous laisse découvrir la surprise finale.

Le Festin Chinois représente le meilleur du cinéma moderne hong-kongais et chinois, c’est un film plein de comédie, d’action, d’amour, de personnages originaux, de situations bizarres.

Crevettes à l'ananas sauce aigre douce

Les ingrédients :
• 500 g de crevettes décortiquées
• 50 ml de sauce soja
• 5 carottes
• 1 oignon
• 1 poivron vert
• 1 poivron rouge
• 350 g d'ananas en conserve
• Pour la sauce aigre douce :
• 3 cuillèrée à soupe de sucre
• 250 ml de sauce tomate
• 60 ml de vinaigre de cidre (car plus doux et incorpore bien tous les parfums)
• 1 cuillèrée à soupe de fécule
• jus de l'ananas récupéré
• 15 ml de sauce aux huîtres
• sel

1. Laisser macérer pendant environ 1 heure les crevettes avec le sel, le poivre et la sauce soja. Chauffer l'huile d'arachide et frire les crevettes préalablement enduites de farine, à feu modéré et mettre de côté.

2. Couper l'oignon, les carottes, le céleri et les poivrons en lamelles. Faire sauter les légumes. Ajouter les morceaux d'ananas tranchés, puis la sauce aigre-douce. Mélanger les ingrédients. Servir avec un riz blanc.

Mousse au chocolat

2010-02-10T15:44:00.000-08:00

Il y a très peu de desserts plus élégants que la mousse au chocolat et pourtant c’est un dessert très simple à réaliser. Une recette classique ne nécessite que du chocolat, des œufs, et du sucre. D’autres recettes, pour une mousse très onctueux, nécessitent de la crème liquide ou du beurre.

De toute façon, vous pouvez créer un dessert impressionnant sans beaucoup d’effort.

Mousse au chocolat

• 3 œufs, séparés
• 100 g de chocolat noir
• 10 g de beurre

1. Faites fondre le chocolat au bain-marie, lissez-le à la spatule, puis ajoutez le beurre et laissez-le un peu refroidir de manière à obtenir une pâte homogène.
2. Ajoutez les jaunes d’œufs, en mélangeant bien.
3. Incorporez, ensuite, les blancs d’œufs battus en neige ferme sans les casser.
4. Réservez votre mousse au chocolat au frais, pendant 3 heures, avant de déguster ou d’utiliser pour garnir vos pâtisseries.

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Chocolate Mousse

Chocolate Mousse is pure French elegance and decadence, simplified. The classic chocolate mousse recipe uses only chocolate and eggs, but many recipes also add heavy cream to make the chocolate more rich and heavy.

At every potluck-style dinner I’ve attended in France, the chocolate mousse was infallibly present. It’s easy to make (though perhaps more difficult to make very well), looks impressive, and is very, very good.

For bonus points, shave more chocolate into the mousse before chilling, and keep a sprinkle of slivers for garnish on top to serve.

Classic Chocolate Mousse

This recipe serves four
1 bar good quality chocolate, chopped.
2 Tbsp. unsalted butter
3 large eggs, separated

1. Melt the chocolate with the butter in the microwave until just melted.
2. Let cool for 1 minute, then stir in the egg yolks, one at a time.
3. Put the egg whites into a clean bowl, and using an electric whisk or mixer, whisk until stiff peaks form.
4. Stir about ¼ of the egg white into the butter and chocolate to loosen the mixture. Then using a large metal spoon fold in the rest of the egg whites in around three further roughly equal additions.
5. Carefully spoon into the serving bowls you want to use. You could use some nice coffee cups, or pretty glasses.
6. Chill for two hours. Eat within 12 hours. Do not freeze.

Easier than pie: Apple Crumble

2010-02-01T04:19:00.000-08:00

An apple crumble is my go-to dessert when I want to make a dessert, but don’t feel like spending more than five minutes.

You don’t even need a recipe after you’ve made this once. All you need is some apples (or other fruit), butter, flour, sugar, and an oven. Cinnamon is a nice touch with the apples, but not necessary.

As always with baking, choose apples that are tart and crunchy and will hold some texture after they’ve been baked. The lemon juice is to prevent browning. The crumble topping (a streusel topping) is easy and delicious and should not be restricted to use for apple desserts.

Apple Crumble

Ingredients:

4 apples
1-2 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 cup cold unsalted butter
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup flour
2 tsp ground cinnamon

Directions:

Peel and core the apples and cut into fairly large chunks. Toss them in the lemon juice. Take about 1/4 cup of the brown sugar and 1 tsp of the cinnamon and toss with the apples to coat. In a bowl, mix the flour and the rest of the brown sugar and the cinnamon. Cut the butter into the mixture and smoosh it around with your hands until the mixture ressembles crumbs. With the apples in an oven-safe dish, top with the crumbly topping. Place uncovered in a 375 degree oven for about 40 minutes, until the top is golden brown and the apples are tender. Serve it with vanilla ice cream, hot from the oven or room temperature.

Grilled Sandwiches

2010-01-31T10:48:00.000-08:00

To inaugurate the purchase of a “plancha,” as it’s called in France, which is a teppanyaki grill (smooth non-stick grilling surface), I prepared some grilled sandwiches, an old favorite from my college days. At The Bread Co., a small restaurant of Swiss ownership, I used to work behind the counter during the lunch shifts, assembling sandwiches and bagging sourdough bread.

It’s only now that I’m in France that I appreciate all the unique touches on the menu and in the decor, as they originate from this region of Europe (France and Switzerland). Cheese fondue, roasted potatoes, raclette, linzertorte, sable cookies, chocolate mousse, baguettes (well, that was obvious), tartines, balsamic dressing, San Pelligrino, Orangina, Nutella hot chocolates, red candles on the tables wood slat chairs and tables, their daily specials, the wine and beer menu being longer than the food menu.

Grilled sandwiches were the lunch specialty. You must start with good quality bread, preferably sourdough, and cut relatively thick slices. Butter one side of two slices, and place them butter-side-down on the grill. Sprinkle gruyere cheese on top of both slices. Next throw a handful of sliced vegetables (I used tomatoes, a yellow bell pepper, and eggplant; a red onion would make it better) next to the bread and spoon balsamic dressing on top (a mixture of mustard, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar). Mix to coat the vegetables and let them cook, maybe 5 minutes. When the vegetables are softened and the bread browned, pile the vegetables on top of the bread and fold into a sandwich. You might never eat a flimsy grilled cheese again.

Of course this vegetable cheese sandwich was not the only one on the menu (in fact I’m pretty sure I invented this version). Another good choice was the Portobello-brie sandwich, where the Portobello mushrooms were chopped and cooked in the dressing, while a slice of brie cheese melted on the bread. The second slice of bread was covered in a raspberry aioli, a mayonnaise mixed with raspberry preserves. Unusual, and very good.

I grilled everything very easily at the same time on the teppanyaki plate, but you could also use 2 different skillets or pans.

Butterscotch Pecan Bars

2010-01-24T06:23:00.000-08:00

There are a certain number of foodstuffs beloved in the U.S. and widely misunderstood everywhere else in the world. The disregard foreign lands show towards peanut butter, for example, never ceases to confound me. Dipping French fries in vanilla shakes has also earned me no end of ridicule. Butterscotch, too, is grossly underestimated worldwide (besides the English).

Butterscotch syrup would be my ice cream topping of preference, butterscotch cream makes for a darn good icing, and butterscotch pancakes are quite simply the best. pancakes. ever.

My mother makes the best butterscotch pecan bars ever. They are very simple to make and quite attractive in a home-baking kind of way, with chocolate and butterscotch chips marbled on top.

My mom’s Butterscotch Pecan Bars

1 cup flour
½ cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 cup coconut flakes
½ cup butter, softened
1 cup pecan halves

½ cup butter
½ cup brown sugar
½ cup butterscotch chips
½ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350 F.
2. In a mixing bowl, combine flour, brown sugar, butter, and coconut flakes. Mix until smooth and pasty. If too dry, add a Tbsp of water.
3. Press mixture firmly into an ungreased 9x13 baking pan. Press pecans into crust.
4. In a saucepan, combine sugar and butter. Cook over medium hear, stirring constantly, until mixture is bubbling (3-4 minutes). Pour over pecans and crust.
5. Bake for 18-20 minutes, until filling is bubbly.
6. Sprinkle butterscotch and chocolate chips immediately on top. Allow to melt slightly, stirring lightly as they melt for a marbled effect. Do not spread all the pieces—leave about half of the pieces whole.
7. Cool completely before cutting into bars.

Films on Food: Ratatouille (or: How to Learn How to Cook)

2010-01-22T14:57:00.000-08:00

Seeing Ratatouille is rather like having a good home-cooked meal. It’s heart-warming, a good spin on your old favorites, well-executed, and, in the end, thoroughly satisfying. A quick summary: Remy, a rat, despised by humans and especially despised by restaurant staff, is nevertheless an aspiring chef. He finds his break in Gusteau’s, a previously top-notch restaurant that has fallen in acclaim. Using Linguine, the spineless mop boy, as a puppet, he succeeds in working his culinary genius, eventually winning over Anton Ego, a vulture-like restaurant critic, with a magnificent ratatouille. The film’s mantra is “Anyone can cook”, which Ego is forced to swallow as he realizes some of the finest food he has eaten was made by a rat.

“Anyone can cook.” Or, as the critic Ego finally understands, “Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.”

Now, I believe that anyone can cook. Artistic genius aside, getting to be a competent home-cook—that is, getting good food on the table in an efficient manner, is not so difficult. How does one learn how to cook? In my opinion, it takes four main things:

1. knowledge of food
2. experience
3. an equipped kitchen
4. technique

Knowledge of food. If you don’t like food—meaning, if you don’t pay attention to what you’re eating—you’ll never learn to cook. That’s obvious. What’s not so obvious is how to learn about food. You start by eating—not like a pig, but like a goat: an enormous variety. What foods exist on this earth? Try everything in the supermarket. Go to the foreign foods market. Ask your relatives for recipes. Travel. Then, learn about the individual qualities of the foods you cook with. When are they in season? How are they grown? What part of the world are they from? How is it best to cook them? What other foods do they go well with? This takes time and curiosity.

Experience. Like any skill, cooking takes experience. You aren’t going to cook the potatoes enough the first time. Nor will you wait until the onions are truly caramelized. Nor will you realize why it’s necessary to salt eggplant before you sauté it until you have a bone-dry pan and eggplants fat as sponges. You’ll make mistakes, and learn from them.

Equipment. Tools are necessary. If you are an aspiring pastry chef (like me), many tools (that you don’t have and don’t want to buy because you live in France) are necessary. Tant pis. You can’t really work around these things:

Cutting board and a good knife (a sharp knife should cut through a tomato without denting the skin). Colander. Salad spinner (bulky, I know, but soggy greens don’t cut it). Good non-stick frying pan. Pot and lid. Plastic spatula (metal will scratch your pan). Whisk. Potato peeler. Cheese grater. Kitchen shears. A food processor is really, really useful, but you can work around it (I do). There are loads of other useful things, but not much that you can’t absolutely do without.

Technique. This is the last step, because knowledge and experience are necessary well before you start learning actual cooking techniques. But without technique, everything you cook will basically be a big-ole-pot-o-stuff. Or, a big-ole-pan-o-stuff-with-oil. This is how everybody starts. You chop up things that you like and mix them in a pot. Voila, dinner. It satisfies hunger, but it gets a bit boring after a couple years. After that, you might learn how to fry things, because it’s easy and it tastes good. Then, sautéing, which is easy to do but difficult to do well. Then, on to roasting, stewing, grilling, steaming, baking, etc. One mistake a lot of beginning cooks make is simply putting too much in the pot. The best recipes are the simplest—maybe 4, 5 ingredients. Or less. Taste is like painting—mix too many colors and you end up with brown.

I’m no expert chef. But I love cooking and I know quite a few recipes. Some recipes I can do pretty well. And this has been my experience learning to cook.

. . . and Ratatouille? Can we return to this topic? What is a ratatouille? Let’s end this post with a recipe for the beautiful ratatouille that Remy serves to Ego at the end of the film.

A ratatouille is a vegetable dish from the Provence region of France. It is always made with tomatoes, garlic, onions, zucchini, eggplant, bell peppers, carrots, and Provencal herbs (basil, bay leaf, and thyme). Usually, the tomatoes, garlic, onions, and herbs are made into a sauce, while all the other vegetables are diced and sautéed. It can be served as a side, or as a main dish over rice. What makes a good ratatouille is the softness of the vegetables; they must be thoroughly cooked, enough to intermingle, but not to the point of mushy-ness.

The key to making a good sauce in this recipe is to salt the vegetable slices before cooking. This takes time, but it’s necessary to relive excess liquid from the vegetables. If you skip this step, the sauce will end up too watery. Also, canned tomatoes make life easier but choose a tasty one—the sauce will, of course, taste like what you buy. To add flavor to the sauce, add herbs, salt and pepper, or just make your own sauce. And, because we’re layering, keep in mind when you’re doing the grocery shopping that the vegetables need to be about the same circumference.

Ratatouille

1/2 onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, very thinly sliced
1 cup whole tomatoes in sauce
2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1 small eggplant
1 smallish zucchini
1 smallish yellow squash
1 longish red bell pepper
Few sprigs fresh thyme
pinch Herbs de Provence
Salt and pepper

1. Trim the ends off the eggplant, zucchini and yellow squash. As carefully as you can, trim the ends off the red pepper and remove the core, leaving the edges intact, like a tube.
2. With a very sharp knife, cut the eggplant, zucchini, yellow squash and red pepper into very thin slices, approximately 1/16-inch thick.
3. Spread the slices out on paper towels. Salt both sides and leave while you prepare the rest. You’ll need to blot out the excess water afterwards.
4. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
5. Pour tomatoes into an oval baking dish. Smash the whole tomatoes into a pulp with a fork. Drop the sliced garlic cloves and chopped onion into the sauce, stir in one tablespoon of the olive oil and season the sauce generously with salt and pepper.
6. Atop the tomato sauce, arrange slices of prepared vegetables concentrically from the outer edge to the inside of the baking dish, overlapping so just a smidgen of each flat surface is visible, alternating vegetables.
7. Drizzle the remaining tablespoon olive oil over the vegetables and season them generously with salt and pepper. Season with the herbs de provence. Sprinkle the fresh thyme over the dish.
8. Cover dish with a piece of parchment paper cut to fit inside.
9. Bake for 50 minutes to one hour, until vegetables have released their liquid and are clearly cooked, but with some structure left so they are not totally limp. They should not be brown at the edges, and you should see that the tomato sauce is bubbling up around them.
10. Serve with a dab of soft goat cheese on top, alone, or with some crusty French bread, atop polenta, couscous, or your choice of grain.

Bean Burgers

2010-01-15T14:55:00.001-08:00

I’m not a big fan of “imitation meat” such as Boca Burgers, Tofu-dogs, Tofurky. Soy is not meat. It has no need to aspire to be meat. It should be considered as a food in its own right. If you decide not to eat meat, take this opportunity to discover other protein-rich foodstuffs—tofu, beans, lentils, other legumes, nuts, grains—and learn how to cook with them. Don’t buy the usual meat dishes you are used to eating, but with soy instead of meat—they aren’t even good.

Bean burgers are really good. This is not, I repeat, not “vegetarian food.” A bean burger is equally as good as a hamburger (some say better), just a bit different. The patty is made with a combination of beans as opposed to ground beef.

Beans are neither fruit, nor musical, as The Simpsons informs us. However, they are rich in protein, iron, fiber, folic acid, and complex carbohydrates. They are low in fat and cholesterol. They are also inexpensive. Bean burgers can be made with any kind or combination of beans, including chickpeas, black beans, red kidney beans, white beans, or lentils. I prefer a combination of black and kidney beans. I use canned beans because dry beans take so darn long to cook, but of course home-cooked and seasoned beans would be best.

Like hamburgers, bean burgers have an infinite possibility for modifications. Feel free to experiment. The idea is to achieve a combination that is not too moist but not too dry, but the flavor possibilities are endless. I will give my basic recipe here. Variations suggested after the recipe.

Bean Burgers

Makes 4-6 burgers

2 cups well-cooked beans (see suggestions above), or one 14 oz. can
onion, chopped
2-3 cloves garlic
½ cup bread crumbs or rolled oats
2 Tbsp chopped chilies
1 teaspoon cumin
½ cup grated cheese
salt and pepper
1 egg
bean cooking liquid, if necessary
frying oil

1. Combine beans, onion, bread crumbs/oats, garlic, chilies, cumin, cheese, salt, pepper, and egg in a food processor. Process until chunky, adding liquid if necessary (this is unlikely).
2. Refrigerate mixture for 10 minutes.
3. Shape into patties, layering on a plate between plastic wrap. Return to refrigerator for another 10 minutes or so.
4. Fill a non-stick pan with oil over a medium flame. Wait for the oil to heat, then add the patties. Cook until well-browned on one side, then flip. Cook until thoroughly browned and firm.
5. Serve on buns with whatever you like.

Variations:
--add spinach, about 1 cup
--add other vegetables, but not so many that the patties don’t hold together: carrots, bell peppers, celery, potato, sweet potato, zucchini
--add fresh herbs: parsley, basil, dill, thyme, rosemary, cilantro, etc.
--vary the spices: curry powder, cumin, ginger, cayenne pepper
--add lemon, lime, or orange zest.
--add mushrooms
--use cooked grains instead of the bread crumbs/oats and egg

Films on Food: Our Daily Bread

2010-01-12T08:29:00.000-08:00

Our Daily Bread is a 2005 documentary film by Nikolaus Geyrhalter that takes a behind-the-scenes look at the world of modern agribusiness—specifically, the slaughterhouses, fields, and industrial farms of Western Europe. Don’t think PETA publicity—the film is not interested in provoking shock or creating scandals. In fact, it isn’t interested in feeding emotions to the viewer in any way. Consisting of unconnected, unnarrated scenes of actual working times in unidentified factories, the film attempts to give an objective window into a process which we all take part in, but very seldom see.

Watching the silent procession of scenes, often grand landscapes symmetrically arranged and without exception beautifully photographed, the emotions conjured within me were not shock and indignation, but wonder and awe . . . “How bizarre!” I kept thinking, on seeing a scuttling mass of baby chicks sucked into holding crates by a vacuum, or a giant tent moving at a snail’s pace in the dark across a vast field, while the illuminated workers below harvest lettuce heads.

The film gives an impression of the surreal, but why should looking at the most mundane of foods (eggs, tomatoes, fish sticks) be surreal?

When asked in an interview what moved him to make this film, the director Nikolaus Geyrhalter responded, “I’m fascinated by zones and areas people normally don’t see . . . the production of food is also part of a closed system that people have extremely vague ideas about. The images used in ads, where butter’s churned and a little farm’s shown with a variety of animals, have nothing to do with the place our food actually comes from. There’s a kind of alienation with regard to the creation of our food and these kinds of labor, and breaking through it is necessary.”

Our Daily Bread shows you the hidden processes behind what’s in your grocery cart, but it doesn’t tell you what to think about it. This absence of direction left me with a strange uneasiness—because I’m used to being pushed to be enraged about where our food comes from, but here we don’t see obvious animal suffering, or unhealthy working conditions, or accidents, and still these images of normal factory operation are unsettling.

What’s disturbing about the film, what makes the images strange and weird, is much more subtle. It’s precisely that the factories are running so smoothly, the machines are working so efficiently, exactly tailored to their function, the spaces are so clean and well-disinfected—because this has all been arranged to perform rather horrific, insensitive processes on organic creatures, such as spraying pesticides, clipping beaks of chicks, separating cattle innards. It becomes terribly obvious how the distinction between living and non-living goods is irrelevant in this system; i.e. the only thing taken into account is the material condition of the final product.

The world of food production today is not always beautiful, but it is often bizarre. This film is both—beautifully filmed, frame by frame, and a look into how far from Grandpa’s farm modern agribusiness has come.

Des Recettes Secrètes de la Famille Didet

2010-01-06T01:06:00.000-08:00

Être avec un homme français ça sert parfois. J’en ai profité en piquant quelques recettes à sa mère. La première est une buche de Noël, glacée avec de la crème de marron. À Noël cette année, j’ai essayé une buche d’une pâtisserie—pas pareil du tout.

La deuxième recette est pour des pâtisseries qui s’appellent oreillettes. Bien faites, les oreillettes sont légères et croquantes, fines et saupoudrées avec tellement de sucre glace, que chaque fois que vous prenez une bouchée, vous finissez saupoudré vous-même.

Buche de Noël

200 grammes de farine
250 grammes de sucre
1 paquet de levure
6 œufs
750 grammes de crème de marron
200 grammes de beurre

1. Mélanger la farine, le sucre, la levure, et les œufs.
2. Mettre une feuille d’aluminium double sur une plaque. Faire un rectangle 28x27 en fermant les 4 angles.
3. Beurrer toute la surface de la feuille. Y verser la pâte et cuire 20 minutes. Elle va un peu montée.
4. La sortir. La roulée avec la feuille pour y donner la forme. Attention, c’est chaud. La dérouler et la laisser refroidir.
5. Faire la garniture avec 750 grammes de crème de marron et 200 grammes de beurre. Mélanger.
6. Tapisser l’intérieur de la génoise puis la roulée a nouveau et la reste de la crème dessus.
7. Mettre 15 minutes au frigo et ensuite passer la fourchette dessus pour le décor.

Oreillettes

2 bon plats, peut être 30 oreillettes

500 grammes de farine. Faire un trou et mettre 250 grammes de beurre fondu. Mettre 2 cuillères à soupe de fleur d’orange ou pastis/rhum/cognac. Mettre 6 œufs entiers. Faire une boule et laisser reposer 1heure. Quand la pâte est reposée mettre de l’huile dans une tasse. Faire une boulette de la grosseur d’un kiwi. La trempée dans la tasse (c’est pour qu’elle n’accroche pas). L’étalée sur une table (ou plaque) à l’aide d’une bouteille.
Puis la décoller délicatement et la mettre à cuire dans une poêle ou se trouve la quantité d’un bol d’huile bien chaude. La retourner avec une fourchette. Quand elle est dorée l’enlever l’égoutter et la sucrée des 2 cotés. Faire de même pour les autres boulettes. Elles peuvent se déchirer quand tu décolles de la table—pas grave.

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House Recipes from the Family Didet

One of the benefits of having a French boyfriend is lifting house recipes from his mother, like this buche de Noël, a Christmas cake rolled into the form of a log and iced with chestnut cream. Buches nowadays can be bought at the store, often filled with ice cream, or at the pastry shop, where they’re made light and fluffy, with a whipped mouse icing. But nothing compares to the homemade version—dense and cakey, with a rich icing.

Buche de Noël

2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
6 eggs
30 oz. chestnut cream
1 cup butter

1. Mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, and eggs.
2. Cover double-fold a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Make a rectangle 11 inches x 10 inches.
3. Grease well the entire surface of the aluminum foil. Pour in the dough and bake 20 minutes at 350 F. It will rise a bit.
4. Take out the cooked cake and roll into a log. Be careful, it’s hot. Then unroll the cake and let it cool.
5. Mix the chestnut cream and the butter to make the frosting.
6. Ice the interior of the cake, roll into shape, and cover the outside as well. Put in the refrigerator for 15 minutes. Finally, run a fork through the icing to create the impression of wood.

Oreillettes means “little ears” in French. These airy doughnut-like pastries aren’t very little, but they’re kind of ear-like, in that the dough, when fried, contorts into strange shapes and develops irregular bumps.

The key is to roll the blobs of batter very thin, so the doughnut is light and airy after. Sprinkle liberally with powdered sugar.

Oreillettes

These amounts will make 2 good plates, about 30 oreillettes.

You need 4 1/3 cups flour. Dig a hole in the middle of the flour and pour inside 1 1/6 cup melted butter. Add 2 tablespoons of orange liquor, rum, pastis, or cognac. Add 6 eggs, make a ball and let the dough rest for 1 hour. After the dough has rested, prepare a small container of vegetable oil. Take a bit of dough and form a ball, about the size of a kiwi. Dip the ball completely into the container of oil (this is so that the dough doesn’t stick when you roll it). Roll out the ball very thin. Fry in a preheated pan of oil. Turn over once with a fork, and when both sides are golden, take it out and place on paper towels to absorb excess oil. Repeat with the rest of the dough, making balls, rolling, and frying. Sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Le Noël Chez Didet

2009-12-31T02:43:00.000-08:00

Mon premier Noël en France et la fête était aussi luxueuse que je m’y attendais. En France ils font deux repas, l’un le réveillon et l’autre le jour de Noël. Et ce n’est pas un repas et demain les restes, c’est deux repas également élaborés. Élaboré en France, c’est deux fois le sens d’élabore aux États-Unis. C’est-a-dire que j’ai toujours le ventre plein, quatre jours après Noël.

La fête a commencé le lundi d’avant, quand les enfants et moi avons fait la maison de Noël (voyez la poste au-dessous) et des gâteaux de Noël.

Sables à la confiture

Ingrédients
• 170 g de beurre, ramolli
• 200 g de sucre blanc
• 1 œuf
• 2 g de zeste de citron
• 250 g de farine tout usage
• 80 g poudre d'amandes
• 2 g de cannelle moulue
• 0,3 g clou de girofle moulu
• 340 g de confiture de framboise
• 50 g sucre glace

Itinéraire
1. Préchauffer le four à 175 degrés C.
2. Dans un bol moyen, la crème le beurre et le sucre. Battre l'œuf et le zeste de citron. Dans un autre bol, mélanger ensemble la farine, les amandes, la cannelle et clous de girofle. Incorporer graduellement les ingrédients secs au mélange en crème. La pâte sera rigide, de sorte que vous mai nécessité de la pétrir à la main pour l'amener à se rencontrer. Presser la moitié de la pâte dans le fond du moule préparé.
3. Abaisser la pâte à 1 / 8 pouce d'épaisseur et couper en rondelles avec un emporte-pièce. Les biscuits sur une plaque à biscuits espacés de 2 pouces d'intervalle. Comptez vos tours et à utiliser un emporte-pièce petit à couper le centre vers l'extérieur de la moitié des cookies. Cela peut être fait pendant l'autre moitié de cuire les cookies.
4. Cuire au four pendant 10 à 12 minutes au four préchauffé, jusqu'à consistance ferme et légèrement doré sur les bords. Autoriser les cookies pour refroidir complètement. Étendre la confiture sur le dessus des cookies solide et recouvrir avec les biscuits qui ont des formes découpées. Saupoudrer les cookies du sucre glace.

Gâteaux de Noël

Ingrédients
• 375 g de farine tout usage
• 6 g de crème de tartre
• 5 g de bicarbonate de soude
• 3 g de muscade moulue
• 1 g de cannelle moulue
• 225 g de beurre ramolli
• 200 g de sucre blanc
• 3 oeufs battus
• 5 ml d'extrait de vanille

Glaçage:
• 480 g de sucre confiseurs
• 115 g de beurre ramolli
• 15 ml d'extrait de vanille
• 60 ml de lait
• colorant alimentaire de couleur (facultatif)

Itinéraire
1. Tamiser ensemble la farine, la crème de tartre, le bicarbonate de soude, la muscade et la cannelle dans un bol et réserver. Battez le beurre et le sucre avec un batteur électrique dans un grand bol jusqu'à consistance lisse. Ajouter les œufs un à la fois, permettant à chaque œuf de se fondre dans le mélange de beurre avant d'ajouter le suivant. Battu à la vanille avec le dernier œuf. Incorporer le mélange de farine jusqu'à ce que tout juste été incorporé. Couvrir et réfrigérer jusqu'au lendemain de la pâte.
2. Préchauffer le four à 350 degrés F (175 degrés C). Abaisser la pâte sur une surface enfarinée à 1 / 2 pouce d'épaisseur. Coupez-les en formes avec des emporte-pièces de Noël. Les biscuits 1 pouce d'intervalle sur des plaques à biscuits non graissée.
3. Cuire au four préchauffé jusqu'à ce que les bords soient dorés, de 8 à 10 minutes. Si coupeurs utilisant petits appendices qui ont, comme les jambes de rennes, de réduire le temps de cuisson ou ils seront trop cuire. Supprimer les cookies sur une grille pour qu'ils refroidissent complètement.
4. Battre le beurre et le sucre glace avec un batteur électrique dans un grand bol, mélange sera raide. Ajouter la vanille et mélanger lentement dans le lait un peu à la fois jusqu'à une consistance de propagation est atteint. Incorporer le colorant alimentaire, si désiré. Assurez-vous que les cookies sont refroidir complètement avant de les glacer.

Puis le réveillon. On a commencé vers 8 heures le soir, avec des apéritifs—du champagne, du pastis, de la chartreuse, du vin, du whisky, du coca—et des amuses-bouches : des toastes au saumon, aux œufs de poisson, au fromage, des escargots (le gagnant de la table d’apéritifs), et une boule de fromage que j’ai faite moi-même.

Boule de fromage

250 grammes de Fromage nature
100 grammes de Gruyère râpé, ou assez pour tenir le fromage nature solide
3 gousses d’ail émincées
Une cuillère à soupe de moutarde Dijon forte
Une cuillère à café de Tabasco
Oignon verts, hachés finement
Une pincée de Cayenne moulu (facultatif)
Persil haché
Noix de pecans, noix, ou autres
Biscuits salés, pour servir

1. Faire griller les noix. Couper les en morceaux et laisser les refroidir.
2. Mélanger les deux fromages, l’ail, la moutarde, le Tabasco, les oignons verts, et le Cayenne.
3. Vider le mélange dans un gros morceau de film plastique. Emballer en forme de boule. Mettre au frigo pendant 30 minutes.
4. Mélanger les noix et le persil dans un bol peu profond. Déballer la boule de fromage dedans et rouler la dans le persil et les noix jusqu’à ce que la boule soit couverte.
5. Servir avec les biscuits salés.

Apres les apéros, Sophie nous a appelés à table. Elle avait préparé des huitres, nature et cuite, et du fois gras. Ensuite, des filets de lotte sur du riz. Finalement on a commencé les desserts—un plateau de fromage, 3 buches de Noël, un dessert à la crème chantilly et du sirop de menthe, des truffes au chocolat fait maison. Je suis sûr que j’en oublie. Finalement, on a pris des digestifs, du café, et des macarons ; le repas était fini. Il était 3 heures du matin. Apparemment on était tellement occupé en mangeant qu’on n’a même pas vu le père Noël !

Le matin suivant, j’ai pris un petit déjeuner de truffes et quelques gâteaux de Noël. À 2 heures il était de nouveau l’heure d’apéros. Après, sur la table, qui était merveilleusement décorée en blanc et rouge, on a trouvé des petites cuillères de coquilles St. Jacques et les gambas grillés. Dès que j’ai pensé que j’en avais assez des petits coquillages, Gérome a apparu portant les homards à la sauce tomate. Il était du travail de manger ce repas, mais il en valait bien l’effort, je vous assure. La salade et le fromage ont fait la suite, et le meilleur service, le dessert. Cette fois on avait encore les buches de Noël, et Gérome a sorti un dessert délicieux, la crème de marrons avec des petits morceaux de marrons glacés et de la glace à la poire au-dessus. Heureusement que la glace remplisse les creux du ventre, autrement je me serais faite explosée.

La famille a déballé les cadeaux tard dans la journée, après le repas. Nous avons tous ouvert en même temps, et les tickets n’étaient pas marqués de qui le cadeau était offert. C’était une procédure un peu différente de chez moi aux États-Unis, où on fait le tour, un par un, en ouvrant les cadeaux, et on remercie chaque fois celui qui a offert le cadeau.

Joyeux Noël et de Bonnes Fêtes !

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Christmas at the Didet house

Christmas in France this year was a sumptuous affair. It was just as extravagant, as classy, as gourmet as you would expect from a hoity-toity Parisian family—expect we were an average French family in a small town in Savoie.

Christmas dinner was actually two dinners, one Christmas Eve, and the other Christmas day. And we’re not talking one dinner with leftovers; Sophie, the lady of the house, planned two independent, equally extensive menus. In fact I’m still full, 4 days after Christmas.

The festivities actually began the Monday previous, when I embarked on a grand sugar adventure with the two kids of the house, Célie and Valentin. We made a gingerbread house (see below post) and decorated Christmas cookies. I also made another batch of the Linzertorte cookies, this time using three kinds of jam for added holiday punch: raspberry, blueberry, and apricot.

Christmas Cut-out Cookies

Ingredients
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons cream of tartar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1 pinch ground cinnamon
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup white sugar
• 3 eggs, beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Frosting:
• 4 cups confectioners' sugar
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup milk
• food coloring (optional)

Directions
1. Sift together flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, nutmeg, and cinnamon in a bowl; set aside. Beat the butter and sugar with an electric mixer in a large bowl until smooth. Add the eggs one at a time, allowing each egg to blend into the butter mixture before adding the next. Beat in the vanilla with the last egg. Mix in the flour mixture until just incorporated. Cover and refrigerate dough overnight.
2. Preheat an oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Roll out dough on floured surface to 1/2 inch thick. Cut into shapes with Christmas cookie cutters. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets.
3. Bake in the preheated oven until the edges are golden, 8 to 10 minutes. If using cutters that have small appendages, such as reindeer legs, reduce the baking time or they will overcook. Remove cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.
4. Beat the butter and confectioners' sugar with an electric mixer in a large bowl, mixture will be stiff. Add the vanilla and slowly mix in the milk a little at a time until a spreading consistency is reached. Stir in food coloring, if desired. Make sure cookies are completely cool before frosting.

Fast forward to Christmas Eve, about 8 o’clock. We pour some before-dinner drinks (champagne, wine, whisky, a liquor from the south called Pastis, a liquor from the region called Chartreuse, and coca-cola for the kids), and munch on hors-d’œuvres (this word is not used in French, by the way—the word is amuse-bouche). These include various toasts topped with salmon, fish roe, or cream cheese, some cream puff pastries filled with escargot (the clear winner of the appetizers), and a cheese ball that I contributed.

Holiday Cheese Ball

This ball has a bit of spiciness to it, which I love. Tone up or down the mustard, Tabasco, and cayenne to your preference.

1 package cream cheese, room temperature
½ cup or grated cheddar cheese, or enough to hold the cream cheese firm
3 cloves minced garlic
chopped green onion
1 tablespoon strong Dijon mustard (only Dijon is acceptable, no mild mustards please)
a few dashes of Tabasco sauce
a dash of cayenne pepper
½ cup walnuts, pecans, or other nuts
parsley, chopped
crackers, to serve

1. Roast the nuts in a pan over medium heat for 5-7 minutes, shaking the pan often to prevent burning. Crush into small pieces and leave to cool.
2. Mix the cheeses, garlic, green onion, mustard, Tabasco, and cayenne. Scrape out onto a big sheet of plastic wrap and wrap into a ball. Put the ball into the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
3. Mix the nut pieces and the parsley in a shallow bowl. Unwrap the cheese ball on the mixture and roll gently until the entire surface of the ball is covered.
4. Serve with a cracker assortment.

Sophie called us to the table. It was beautifully decorated in red and silver. Wine was served and the bread basket passed around. Sophie brought out several platters of oysters, both fresh and cooked. We followed with foie gras, and then with fish in a tomato sauce over rice. After a pause to catch our breath, we started in on the desserts—first the cheese course, of course of course, then three buches de Noël, a cake rolled to look like a log and iced with chestnut cream or chocolate. Also homemade chocolate truffles (many Americans may not know that truffle chocolates are named after the truffle mushroom, because a traditional truffle chocolate looks like a truffle mushroom), and a dessert of whipped cream and syrup de menthe.

I was breathing laboriously, and dinner was still moving on. After-dinner drinks were poured, and coffee served with macarons, possibly the most delicious French cookie existing today, and there’s some stiff competition for that title.

At last the Christmas Eve meal came to a close, at 3 o’clock in the morning. We were so busy eating we had missed Santa Claus.

The next morning I had a small breakfast of truffles and Christmas cookies, trying to conjure up hunger for the next feast.

Time again, around 2 o’clock in the afternoon. We started with drinks and appetizers, and moved to the table to be greeted with spoons of scallops and a heaping plate of grilled prawns. Once the pile turned into a pile of empty shells, Gérome brought out the lobsters, one per person. Ooh la. The beautiful napkins and tablecloth turned into a mess, but it was well worth it. I sat out the next two courses, those of salad and cheese plate, but was ready to go again for dessert. There were the buches again, the truffles, the gingerbread house and cookies, prunes and walnuts stuffed with almond paste, and a delicious glass of chestnut cream topped with candied chestnuts and pear ice cream. I will have to ask Gérome for that recipe. Luckily ice cream fits in the cracks, otherwise I think I would have exploded.

The present opening was more chaotic than I’m used to. At my house each person opens gifts one-by-one, thanking each gift-giver as necessary, which takes a good couple hours. Chez Didet, everyone had a go at once, wrapping paper flying, and many of the presents weren’t even marked “from.” But everyone had their presents and gave their thank you kisses in the end.

Merry Christmas and Joyeux Noël!

Gingerbread House

2009-12-29T04:40:00.000-08:00

In the spirit of the holidays, belly set to accommodate three or four times the normal sugar rate, with hours (in fact, days) of spare time on my hands, and two small children in the house, I decided to combine these elements to my advantage and construct a gingerbread house.

Architectural experience is not necessary, but useful. Which is to say, do not take the house pattern lightly. You want the house to stand solidly, to avoid gaping holes between walls (I failed at this), to aim for straight even lines and symmetry. Create or find a pattern, cut out the shapes, and make sure that they fit together correctly.

Recruit the children to make the dough. You’ll need to roll out a flat sheet of gingerbread, as large as your oven rack. Plan out how you’ll lay out the pattern pieces, to minimize scrap dough. I’m not providing the recipe I used for my gingerbread house, because it was a French recipe for pain d’épices, the French version of gingerbread, which is a dense bread, not a cookie. The resulting pieces were too thick and not flat, as you can tell from my photos. Try this recipe for gingerbread cookie:

Gingerbread Recipe

Ingredients:

1 cup butter, margarine or shortening
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup molasses
5 cups flour
1-1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cloves
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 to 1/2 cup water

Directions:

In a large mixing bowl beat butter until softened. Add sugar and beat until fluffy - at least three minutes. Add molasses and beat well. Combine dry ingredients and add to the batter a little at a time, mixing in each addition. You will have to use your hands to work in the last additions.

Divide dough into thirds and shape into balls. Cover with plastic wrap and chill for several hours, preferably overnight.

Roll out one ball to approximately 3/16 inch thick on a piece of aluminum foil. Dough must be sufficiently chilled before rolling to prevent stickiness. Lightly flour the foil, your hands, and the rolling pin, before rolling to prevent pulling. Or roll between a sheet of foil on the bottom and a sheet of wax paper on top.

Position the pattern templates on top of the dough at least 1 inch apart to allow for a little spreading of dough during baking. Carefully cut out the pieces, using a pastry wheel or paring knife, and gingerly lift the scraps away from the cutout shapes, and return them to the refrigerator. If your house calls for texturized wood grain, panels, brick, etc., score these effects into the gingerbread before baking.

Carefully slide the foil (with the cutouts on it) onto a cookie sheet. Bake at 375° for 9 to 11 minutes. Bake until just firm, never browned. Once all of the dough as been used, form the scraps into another ball and roll out again. Avoid rolling the dough out more than twice if you plan to eat your gingerbread as it makes the dough tough.

When all pieces have finished baking, remove from the oven and allow to cool on the cookie sheets. As soon as the pieces come out of the oven, check the edges and, if necessary, trim with a sharp knife so that the pieces will fit together. Lay the paper template over each piece to be sure the sides are square with those of the template. The dough will have spread somewhat, but the basic shape should be the same. The dough hardens as it cools, making it more difficult to trim later.
Allow the gingerbread plenty of time to cool on racks before you begin construction. If you can't start right away, slide the fully cooled pieces onto foil-covered cardboard or back onto the cookie sheets, wrap with foil or plastic wrap, and store flat. Gingerbread will stay reasonably fresh for several days.

When the cut out pieces are completely cool, the construction work begins. The pieces are bound together using an icing glue. This is not regular icing—it sticks immediately and dries rapidly, finishing like cement.

Icing Glue

1 egg white
1 cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon cream of tartar (I used baking powder; cream of tartar is one component of baking powder)

Beat eggs and cream of tartar together until foamy, then add the sugar gradually.

The children have probably wandered off by now, so call over another adult to help you hold the pieces in place while you glue. Think of building on top of wax paper or a tray that you won’t have to move the house from afterwards.

Leave the house to dry for a couple hours. Now the fun part beings—decorating! Call the kids back into the kitchen to help. You have prepared a candy assortment and spare icing, haven’t you? Big candies like gumdrops and chocolate look pretty, but make sure you have mostly lightweight candies and thin shapes; they will be easier to glue on.

Candy ideas
*A variety of colors, sizes, and shapes is important

red hots
gumdrops
licorice rope
pretzels
marshmallows
skittles
gummies
mini peanut butter cups
junior mints
starburst mints
candy canes

…and leave the house on display a sufficient amount of time for picture-taking and impressing guests. The gingerbread and the candies will dry out over the course of several days so you probably won’t want to eat the house if you leave it out too long. No matter—the gingerbread house is for admiring, not for eating!

Some impressive gingerbread accomplishments!

My Quest to Like Mushrooms

2009-12-17T09:31:00.000-08:00

I was not what you would call a picky child, but certain foods I refused to eat: mushrooms, olives, bananas. My mother always tried to sneak mushrooms into dinner, exclaiming in surprise, “What? No one but me likes mushrooms?” every time we groaned at the discovery of slimy grey things on our forks. Other foods I merely disliked: chocolate, melons, sauerkraut, cauliflower. My indifference to chocolate sometimes gave actual personal offense to others, especially chunky women with big hips, who would frown at this trespass of reason and good taste. And there existed a vast plethora of foods I had never even eaten before moving out of the house: artichokes, eggplant, zucchini, lentils, asparagus, chickpeas.

I have since come to the conclusion that this behavior is unacceptable. That is, one should not exclude foods in their natural state. Sure, I may not like how something is prepared in combination—vegemite, salmon pizza, thousand island dressing, bbq sauce, mayonnaise, strawberry-rhubarb pie—but to refuse a naturally occurring ingredient for being its unchangeable self is just plain unfair. The variety of edible plant species on this earth is a wondrous thing, and must be taken advantage of.

Back a couple years ago, I started forcing myself to eat foods I disliked, starting with olives. I figured, olives are a culinary staple, up there with caviar and wine for food respectability. No one could possibly take me seriously as a gourmand if I didn’t eat olives. And voilà, now I love them. Current mission: mushrooms. All vegetarians have to like mushrooms, it’s practically a requirement.

Next mission should be bananas, but I’m starting to get the willies. I may have to draw the line at foods that are just plain gross: sea urchin, durian, black licorice, mentaiko (pollack roe). One can only go so far.

Why you should eat mushrooms

Now I’m no mycophagist, but it seems like common sense not to like mushrooms. They’re fungi. They grow in gross places, look gross, and feel gross. They grow in caves, and on feet. Are they even nutritious?

Yes, they are nutritious, many species being high in fiber, various vitamins, and some minerals. Mushrooms are also a significant presence in Chinese, Japanese, and European cuisines.

I don’t suggest you go hunting around in the woods hungry for mushrooms, lest you stumble upon a death cap. Here’s an overview of the most widely available types of mushrooms on the market, which can be divided into 3 groups: common, exotic, and wild.

Button—common white mushroom

Shiitake—exotic mushroom from Asia and N America. Dried shiitakes are useful for conserving and for making sauces, just soak to restore. The tough stem is not eaten.

Oyster—exotic, prepare simply to preserve the delicate flavor

Enokitake—exotic, good raw in a salad. If cooking, add to pan at the last minute.

Cremini—exotic, button mushroom with a richer flavor

Portobello—exotic, up to 6 inches wide, good for stuffing or grilling

Morel—wild, good in butter or cream sauces, found in spring or dried all year round

Bolete/Porcini—wild, good sautéed, found late summer and early fall

Chanterelle—wild, woodsy flavor, good sautéed, available in summer and fall

Truffle—very rare and expensive wild mushroom, found only in southern France and northern Italy. Black truffles cost $130-390/lb. and white truffles go for $1350-2700/lb. Pigs and dogs are specially trained to hunt for truffles, which grow under the soil on the roots of oaks. Truffle oil, olive oil infused with truffles, can be found more easily.

Tips: To prepare mushrooms, clean mushrooms with a damp towel. Cut white mushrooms just before serving, otherwise they will oxidize and turn brown. When browning mushrooms, sauté with just a little oil and nothing else. Don’t add salt or the mushrooms will give too much moisture to the pan. For making a sauce, dried mushrooms are a better choice because the soaking water can be used in the sauce and the flavor is more concentrated.

Common mushrooms are extremely versatile and make a delicious addition to any sauce or dish, adding a subtle but not overpowering flavor. Note that I specified common mushroom, as I’m not going to be making any truffle dishes anytime soon. My favorite way to cook mushrooms is not even a recipe—just sauté in a pan with olive oil or butter until soft and brown. Second best, sauté them and make an omelet. Or, if you desire something just a tad more fancy:

Fettuccine with mushrooms

fettuccine
olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
button mushrooms, thinly sliced
3 eggs
parmesan, finely grated
parsley, chopped
salt & ground black pepper

1. Cook the fettuccine in a large saucepan of salted boiling water, following
packet directions, until al dente.
2. Meanwhile, heat oil in a large frying pan over medium-high heat. Add
onion & garlic & cook, stirring often, for 4 minutes or until soft. Add
mushrooms & cook for 4 minutes or until tender.
3. Drain fettuccine & return to saucepan. Whisk eggs in a small bowl with a
fork. Add eggs, mushroom mixture, parmesan, parsley & salt & pepper to
fettuccine & toss until well combined. Place saucepan over medium heat &
toss for 1 minute or until egg mixture has just set. Serve immediately.

Mushroom Burgers

Here mushrooms are the focus of the meal. The usual mushroom burger is a Portobello burger, but this recipe makes a burger patty out of sautéed mushrooms.

½ cup olive oil
750g cup mushrooms, thinly sliced
4 green onions, thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tsp ground cumin
2 cups fresh breadcrumbs
1 egg
salt & ground black pepper, to taste
4 hamburger buns, halved
salad leaves and mayonnaise, to serve

1. Heat 2 tbs oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. Add the
mushrooms, green onions, garlic & cumin & cook, stirring occasionally, for
2-3 minutes or until the mushrooms are just tender. Increase the heat to
medium-high & cook, stirring occasionally, for a further 10-12 minutes or
until the pan juices evaporate. Set aside for 5 minutes.
2. To make the burgers, place 1/2the mushroom mixture into a food
processor & process until smooth & pureed. Transfer the pureed mixture
to a large heatproof bowl.
3. Add the remaining cooked mushrooms, breadcrumbs, egg & salt & pepper
to the pureed mushrooms. Mix well to combine. Evenly shape the mixture
into 4 patties, about 8cm in diameter & 2cm thick.
4. Heat the remaining oil in a large non-stick frying pan over medium heat.
Add the patties & cook for 4-5 minutes on each side or until cooked
through. Remove & set aside to drain on paper towel.
5. Meanwhile, toast the hamburger buns until golden.
6. To serve, place the toasted bun bases onto serving plates, top each with
salad leaves, a patty & mayonnaise. Season with salt & pepper &
top with the remaining bun tops. Serve immediately.

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Les Champignons—je peux les aimer si j’essaie . . .

Question nourriture, je n’étais jamais difficile. Même en tant qu’enfant, je mangeais les légumes sans me plaindre, et pas trop de bêtises non plus. Il y a certaines choses que je n’aimais pas : les champignons, les olives, les bananes. Ma mère mettait furtivement des champignons dans le repas de temps en temps, s’exclamant en surprise « Ah bon ? Personne d’autre que moi n’aime les champignons ? » lorsque nous grognions en regardant les trucs gluant et gris au bout de la fourchette.

Il y a quelques années, j’ai décidé d’aimer les olives. Les olives sont une nourriture des connaisseurs, dans la même classe que le caviar et le vin. Personne ne me prendrait sérieusement si je ne les aimais pas. Je me suis donc forcée à les manger, de plus en plus je me suis habituée, et finalement je peux dire que j’adore les olives. Réussit !

L’essai actuel : les champignons. Tous les végétariens aiment les champignons. C’ est presque obligé. Mais pourquoi je me donne la peine à le faire? C’est que j’ai réalisé qu’il ne faut pas éviter une nourriture à cause de son existence naturelle. Il est normal de ne pas aimer des choses en combinaison : la pizza norvégienne, la mayonnaise, une tarte aux fraises. Mais ne pas aimer une nourriture, dans toute sa variété, quand il existe plusieurs moyens de la préparer, quelle gaspillage ! Il y a des milliers d’espèces de plantes comestibles dans le monde, il faut en profiter !

Le prochain essai devrait être les bananes. Mais ici je commence à être anxieuse. Peut-être il y a de la nourriture qui est dégoutante et c’est tout : l’oursin, le fruit durian, le réglisse, les mentaiko (les œufs de pollack).

Pourquoi manger les champignons ?

Il me semble normal que je n’aime pas les champignons. Ils ont l’air dégoutant et ont une texture dégoutante, et ils se trouvent dans les endroits suspects.

Mais les champignons sont bon pour la santé et se trouve dans la cuisine chinoise, japonaise, et européenne. Ils seraient difficile à éviter.

Je ne vous propose pas d’aller dans la forêt pour ramasser les champignons. Si vous n’êtes pas expert, ca serait dangereux. Mais ceux qui ne les aiment pas, je vous encourage à essayer encore les champignons.

Mes recettes préférées sont simplement des champignons sautés avec un peu d’huile d’olive ou du beurre, ou une omelette aux champignons.

Par contre, si vous cherchez quelque chose de plus impressionnant :

Gratin de champignons

Ingrédients
• 200 g de champignons
• 50 g de crème à 30% (environ 2 grosses cuillères à soupe)
• 1 oeuf
• 45 g de gruyère
• 1 gousse d'ail
• 1 noix de beurre
• 1 cuillère à soupe de persil

Préparation
1. Lavez et coupez les champignons en fines lamelles.

2. Faites chauffer le beurre sur feu doux dans une sauteuse puis ajoutez les champignons, l'ail épluché et émincé et le persil lavé et haché. Salez et poivrez. Laissez cuire pendant 10 min en remuant souvent jusqu'à ce qu'ils soient bien dorés.

3. Préchauffez le four à 220°C.(th.7).

4. Battez le blanc d'oeuf en neige ferme avec 1 pincée de sel. Mélangez le jaune d'oeuf avec la crème et 30 g de fromage râpé. Ajoutez les champignons, puis le blanc d'oeuf battu en neige, mélangez délicatement en soulevant à l'aide d'une cuillère en bois.

5. Versez cette préparation dans un plat à gratin ou des ramequins individuels. Recouvrez de reste de fromage râpé et faites gratiner au four pendant 10 min.

Variante : vous pouvez remplacer la crème par la même quantité de cottage cheese (fromage frais anglais, plutôt granuleux).

Burgers aux champignons Portobello

Ingrédients
4 cuillère à soupe de vinaigre balsamique
2 cuillère à soupe d'huile d'olive
1 cuillère à café de basilic déshydraté
1 cuillère à café d'origan déshydraté
1 gousse d'ail, hachée
sel et poivre du moulin
4 chapeaux de champignons portobello (ou très gros champignons de Paris)
4 tranches de mozzarella ou de Taleggio (facultatif)

Méthode de préparation
1. Dans un récipient peu profond, mélanger au fouet le vinaigre, l'huile, le basilic, l'origan, l'ail, le sel et le poivre. Placer les champignons dans la préparation, en les imprégnant bien. Laisser reposer à température ambiante pendant environ 15 minutes, en retournant les chapeaux deux fois.
2. Préchauffer le barbecue à feu moyen/vif.
3. Placer les champignons sur le barbecue, en réservant la marinade. Faire cuire 5 à 8 minutes de chaque côté, jusqu'à ce que les champignons soient tendres. Badigeonner fréquemment de marinade.
4. Deux minutes avant la fin de la cuisson, garnir de fromage.
5. Dans le même temps, mettre le pain sur la grille pour le dorer légèrement.
6. Retirer du feu et garnir de condiments (mayonnaise, ketchup, moutarde). Insérer un champignon grillé dans chaque pain et garnir de tomates, salade, oignon (facultatif).

Cookie Extravaganza!

2009-12-14T13:21:00.000-08:00

In the spirit of Christmas, I have been in a cookie-making frenzy. I went to a Christmas Cookie party this weekend at my friend Andi’s place, where we got all sugared up and played rowdy Christmas games. Among those present at the party . . .

Linzertorte Cookies

This classic Austrian treat comes in torte (lattice pie) form, but makes for beautiful wintertime cookies. The powdered sugar topping is reminiscent of snow, and the center cutouts and red jam contrast are instantly striking. The dough is basically a sugar cookie dough with ground nuts (usually hazelnuts, but also almonds or walnuts—I used almonds) and lemon zest. The lemon zest is absolutely essential; the flavor really comes out in the cookie. If you want to impress, this is the cookie for you.

• 3/4 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon lemon zest
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup blanched slivered almonds, ground
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 cup raspberry jam

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease cookie sheets.
2. In a medium bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Beat in the egg and lemon peel. In another bowl, stir together the flour, almonds, cinnamon and cloves. Gradually stir the dry ingredients into the creamed mixture. The dough will be stiff, so you may need to knead it by hand to get it to come together.
3. Roll the dough out to 1/8 inch thickness and cut into rounds using a cookie cutter. Place cookies onto a cookie sheet spaced 2 inches apart. Count your rounds and use a small cookie cutter to cut the center out of half of the cookies. This can be done while the other half of the cookies bakes.
4. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in the preheated oven, until firm and lightly browned at the edges. Allow cookies to cool completely. Spread jam on the tops of the solid cookies and top with the cookies that have shapes cut out. Sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Orange Gingerbread

Last month I was seduced by the chewy, faintly spicy gingerbread from Nuremburg, Germany, called lebkuchen. Lebkuchen comes in cookies, but I decided to make a block of gingerbread. Real gingerbread is made with molasses, and you just won’t get the same flavor and color without it, but you can settle for a honey substitution.

In this particular recipe the orange flavor overrides everything else, so it ends up being orange bread more than gingerbread. Which was still tasty, but if you want to stick to the spice flavors I suggest cutting out the orange juice and orange liqueur.

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 2 cups packed brown sugar
• 3 eggs
• 2/3 cup honey
• 1/4 cup orange liqueur
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1/2 cup orange juice
• 1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 cup raisins
• 1 cup chopped candied ginger

1. Whisk together the flours, baking powder, and spices.
2. In a large bowl, cream the butter or margarine with the brown sugar. Beat in the eggs, then the honey, orange liqueur, sour cream, and orange juice. Beat the flour mixture into the creamed mixture, and then stir in the raisins and ginger. Turn batter into a greased and floured tube pan.
3. Bake cake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 80 minutes, or until it tests done with toothpick. Transfer to a rack to cool.

Chocolate Crinkle Cookies (photo, below right)

Like snickerdoodles, these cookies are fun to make, so you can pass off the baking on any small children there might be around the house. The texture is what makes these cookies so good—perfectly soft and chewy. I’m no big fan of chocolate, but these cookies won me over. Recipe courtesy of Andi Busch and family.

1/2 cup vegetable oil
4 oz. melted chocolate
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup confectioner sugar

1. Mix oil, chocolate, and sugar. Blend in one egg at a time. Add vanilla. Stir in salt, flour and baking powder which have been sifted together.
2. Spoon out small balls and roll them in confectioner's sugar. If you refrigerate the mixture before spooning it out, it is easier to handle!
3. Place on greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes.

Hermits (photo, left)

These holiday spice bars will remind your mouth that it is indeed the Christmas season. Another Andi Busch family favorite.

2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup butter
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 1/2 cup currents or raisins
1/2 cup chopped nuts
2 tablespoons sugar and 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon (to sprinkle on top)

1. Sift together flour, cinnamon, salt, and baking soda. Put butter and brown sugar in a mixing bowl and cream them well. Blend in the egg and egg yolk. Beat well. Add dry ingredients gradually. Stir in currents and nuts.
2. Divide dough into 4 pieces. Shape each in a 13" roll and place 4 " apart on a cookie sheet. Flatten to 1/2 " using a floured fork. Sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon mixture. Sprinkle a few chopped nuts on top.
3. Bake at 400 for 11-14 minutes until lightly brown. Cut diagonally into 1" bars.

Eggnog

There’s a reason eggnog is a Christmas drink—nobody could stomach it more than once a year. It is pretty heavy stuff. Half eggs, half milk and cream, with a good dose of alcohol. Personally, a second glass would have made me vomit. But I’ll give you the recipe anyways. You can substitute dark rum for the whiskey and brandy.

12 eggs, separated
6 cups milk
2 cups heavy/ thickened cream
2 cups bourbon
1½ cups sugar
¾ cup brandy
2 teaspoons ground nutmeg

1. In a large bowl and using a mixer, beat the egg yolks together with the sugar for approx 10 minutes (you want the mixture to be firm and the colour of butter).
2. Very slowly, add in the bourbon and brandy - just a little at a time.
3. When bourbon and brandy have been added, allow the mixture to cool in the fridge (for up to 6 hours, depending on how long before your party you're making the eggnog).
4. 30 minutes before your guests arrive, stir the milk into the chilled yolk mixture. 5. Stir in 1+ ½ teaspoons ground nutmeg
6. .In a separate bowl, beat the cream with a mixer on high speed until the cream forms stiff peaks.
7. In yet another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.
8. Gently fold the egg white mixture into the egg yolk mixture.

9. Gently fold the cream into the egg mixture.
10. After ladling into cups, garnish with the remainder of the ground nutmeg.

Happy Holiday baking!

Stir Fry Ravioli

2009-12-10T07:06:00.000-08:00

We have our first guest blogger! My friend Tim Peters writes from Argentina on an unusual combination: cheese pasta and stir fry flavors.

Can cheese go with an east-Asian stir-fry?

I’m living in Argentina. One day I made a broccoli and beef stir-fry with rice. One of my roommates took a hunk of cheese out of the refrigerator and started grating it over his plate.

My culinary senses tingled. Grated cheese with rice? And with a soy/peanut/orange juice sauce?
My roommate grates a lot of cheese. His dad worked for a dairy company so there was always a lot of cheese in his house.

He offered to grate some on my stir-fry. I passed.

After I got used to him doing this, I thought…could it be so wrong? The reason there’s so little cheese in Chinese cuisine, for example, was the lack of space in which to raise dairy cows. That geographical necessity doesn’t imply a culinary necessity. And just because a regional cuisine starts off without an ingredient doesn’t mean it can’t mix it in and make it essential. Just look at that staple of Italian cooking, the tomato, which wasn’t even brought to Europe until the conquest of America.

So I thought…well, rice is a pretty neutral-flavored, starchy carb…just like potatoes or pasta, onto which we don’t hesitate to grate cheese.

As such, here’s a recipe I came up with that combines an east-Asian stir-fry sauce (along with some fried veggies) with Italian (Argentine, really) cheese raviolis:

Ricotta ravioli with a Thai stir-fry sauce

Ingredients:

Raviolis:
Here in Paraná, Argentina, I can go to the grocery store and buy pastas made that morning or the day before by a local company. A 500g box of raviolis costs four pesos, or about 1 USD! 500g of raviolis serves three people.

I use ricotta-stuffed raviolis. The other options, for us here, are vegetable or chicken. With ricotta the dish is vegetarian and fills you up pretty well. The ricotta’s got a very mild flavor and is a good base for the rich sauce.

Sauce:
2-3 tbsp soy sauce – Sad irony of Argentina: despite being one of the world’s largest soy producers, soy sauce and especially tofu are very hard to come by and expensive, and have no place in the local cuisine.

1 tbsp crushed peanuts

½ of an orange

1 tbsp cornstarch

1 large carrot

1 medium onion

1 medium red bell pepper

1 clove garlic

1-3 tbsp crushed red pepper (optional)

2-3 tbsp vegetable oil (or whatever oil you like to stir-fry with)

some smooth cheese for grating

Instructions:
I make the sauce while the water for the raviolis is heating up.

I chop up the onions, throw them into a couple tablespoons oil on medium/high heat, and throw some salt onto them. Next I chop up the garlic, finely, and throw that in. Next the carrots, which I slice into coins. Last comes the bell pepper. If you want some spice, throw in 1-3 tbsp of crushed red chili peppers.

I keep the heat the same and make sure to keep stirring. If you want the veggies crispier, don’t cook them so long. Don’t let them get limp and translucent.

For the sauce: put 2-3 tbsp soy sauce into a mixing bowl. Wash your hands and dip your finger in and get a feel for the flavor. Next I squeeze in some juice from the orange, tasting the sauce until it has a citrus flavor. Next, I mix in some of the crushed peanuts, stirring them in and tasting the sauce until I notice the peanut flavor. Next, mix in the 1 tbsp of corn starch, which when the sauce gets heated, while make it thick and sticky.

The raviolis cook in 2-3 minutes. Once they float to the top of the water, they’re ready. So, once I throw the raviolis in the water, then I mix the sauce into the stir-fry and stir it in. It thickens quickly. If the sauce starts bubbling I turn down the heat so it simmers until the raviolis are ready.

I strain the raviolis and then mix them into the stir-fry.

I grate some extra cheese on top before eating.

Better-than-a-Box Brownies

2009-12-08T10:46:00.000-08:00

Q: What is more American than apple pie?
A: Brownies.

I got this brownie recipe courtesy of Buns in My Oven, a cooking blog with great recipes and even better photos—is the photo above not the most flattering picture of a brownie you’ve ever seen?

Like the writer of that blog, I was never too keen on homemade brownies. They tend to end up cakey, dry, thin, or full of nuts (if you ask me, nothing destroys that perfect chewy brownie texture like nuts—blech!). I’ve always preferred brownies from a box. I was a teenage expert at brownie-from-the-box making before I even knew how to operate an egg beater. You open the plastic bag, dump the powder in the bowl, throw in the egg and the oil, stir, toss the pan in the oven, lick the bowl clean while you wait, and 35 minutes later you and a friend each grab a fork . . . and the ensuing magic can only be imagined.

Until now, with the discovery of a homemade brownie that is EVEN BETTER than the box! These brownies take the cake. Literally, they take the cake, step on it, and throw it out the window.

Look again at the picture. See that sparkle, the glistening moisture, like fertile soil after a rain? That is pure black gold. I can now state with confidence that brownies are the best desserts ever in the history of baking.

Fudge Brownies

1 cup (2 sticks) butter
2 1/4 cups sugar
4 large eggs
1 1/4 cups cocoa powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon espresso powder, optional
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

1.Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9×13 baking dish.
2. In small saucepan over low heat, melt butter completely. Stir in sugar and continue cooking for 1-2 minutes, stirring constantly. Do not allow sugar mixture to boil.
3. Pour butter mixture into a large bowl or stand mixer, beat in cocoa powder, eggs, salt, baking powder, espresso powder, and vanilla extract. Mix until well combined.
4. Stir in the flour and chocolate chips until well combined.
5. Pour into prepared pan and bake for about 30 minutes, until a tester comes out mostly clean. The edges should be set and the center should still look slightly moist, but not uncooked. Cool on a wire rack.

************************************************************************

Le Brownie, un dessert américain

Question: Quel est le meilleur dessert dans le monde?

Réponse : Le brownie.

Question : Où se trouve ce brownie ?

Réponse : Aux Etats-Unis.

Il se n’arrive pas souvent que les pâtisseries françaises soient vaincues par un dessert rival. Mais le brownie l’a fait. C’est un dessert pour ceux qui aiment le chocolat, pour ceux qui n’aiment pas le chocolat, même pour ceux qui n’aiment pas le dessert. Ce n’est pas forcement un dessert ; ça se mange à n’importe quelle heure.

Comme une petite fille américaine, j’ai grandi avec les brownies. Avant que j’aie connu la différence entre l’huile d’olive et l’huile végétale je faisais des brownies.

Ce n’est pas un gâteau, ce n’est pas la pate d’un gâteau, c’est quelque chose entre les deux. On dirait le mélange parfait.

Allez, je m’arrête de baver—goutez les vous-mêmes !

Fudge Brownies

225 g de beurre
510 g de sucre
4 œufs
160 g de cacao en poudre
une cuillère à café de sel
une cuillère à café de levure chimique
un sachet de sucre vanille
165 g de farine
200 g de pépites de chocolat

1. Préchauffer le four à 180°C. Beurrez un moule carré d'environ 20 cm de côté.
2. Faire fondre le beurre et le sucre ensemble.
3. Mélanger le reste des ingrédients entre eux. Rajouter à ce mélange le mélange beurre et chocolat fondu.
4. Verser dans le moule et faire cuire au four 30 minutes.

The Sociable Diner: Raclette

2009-12-06T05:44:00.000-08:00

I’m always a fan of sociable dining, and especially in winter, when packing guests elbow-to-elbow around the table generates much-needed body heat (is North America the only place in the world with central heating? Is it??), so I replied with an enthusiastic OUI BIEN SÛR when invited to a raclette dinner last Friday.

For an intimate, convivial atmosphere you can’t beat cooking food directly at the table and sharing the same dish among everyone. Hands are darting in and out of the center, the cheese is passed around every which way (French politess tip #1: always offer the morsel you just cooked to others first, and only if everyone refuses serve yourself), glasses are clinking, bread crumbs flying, conversations entangling.

I experienced the One Pot Love effect already this season in hosting a fondue savoyarde party; this time around it’s one cheese love, or maybe grilled cheesy love: Raclette, the svelte suédoise.

Le raclette is the name of a cheese originating from Switzerland and also made nowadays in the Savoie region of France. The dish la raclette (notice the gender change to differentiate the two) has been around since the middle ages. It’s a simple combination of heated raclette cheese scraped onto a plate of roasted potatoes, an assortment of dried meats, gherkins, and pickled onions. The word “raclette” comes from the French racler, meaning “to scrape.”

In our modern electric era, Raclette is heated on a table top grill using small pans to hold individual slices of cheese. Supermarkets carry packages of pre-sliced raclette cheese and meat assortments, so this is a meal almost free of preparation. The only cooking involved is roasting the potatoes, which leaves the host free to make the rounds of bisous (the French greeting custom of kissing both cheeks) and to serve aperitifs (before dinner drinks).

Raclette

Raclette cheese, sliced

Whole small potatoes Assortment of dried meats, sliced thinly

Pickles

Pickled onions or other dishes

White wine, to serve with

1. Scrub the potatoes and roast in a 400F oven until pierced easily, about 40 minutes.

2. Set the table with plates of dried meat, sliced cheese, and pickled vegetables

3. Roast the cheese slice by slice on the table top grill and serve as it is ready, scraping directly on top of the potatoes, meat, and vegetables. Alternately, roast the cheese in the oven and serve at once.

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La Raclette

Il y a plusieurs avantages quand on dîne en groupe. On passe du temps avec des amis et la famille, il y a plus de mains pour faire la vaisselle, et le monde, ça réchauffe la salle (il y en a besoin en France où l’on n’a jamais assez de chauffage).

Mais il y a aussi des désavantages : plus d’assiettes à laver après, beaucoup de travail et de temps pour préparer un grand repas, et on a toujours tendance à trop manger.

Voilà la raclette, la solution parfaite ! Le fromage à raclette et la charcuterie se vendent déjà préparés ; la seule chose qu’il faut faire cuire, ceux sont les pommes de terre—les laver, mettre dans un plat, au four, et c’est fini. Puis tout le monde s’assoit autour de la table et fait cuire soi-même les tranches de raclette. Et puis, la cerise sur le gâteau, l’appareil à raclette réchauffe la salle—pas besoin de mes moufles à cette table-là ! On mangera encore trop, mais manger beaucoup de fromage, ça va plutôt bien à mon avis.

La Raclette

1kg de fromage à raclette de Savoie ou de Suisse,
1 kg de pommes de terre nouvelles cuites,
500 g de charcuteries incluant jambon de Parme, viande de grisons, rosette,...
Cornichons et petits oignons blancs

Mettez tout sur la table autour de l'appareil à raclette et laissez faire vos invités selon leur humeur !

Vegetarianism is Not a Religion

2009-12-04T03:11:00.000-08:00

I follow a diet that is officially called pescatarian, meaning I exclude meat and poultry but allow fish, seafood, eggs, and dairy. This means hypocrisy in the eyes of some people. I offer a rebuttal.

Prelude: I will briefly explain my reasons for (still) eating seafood, while I haven’t eaten meat in over 3 years. In general, when making a significant diet change, it is wise to go gradually, or one risks feeling dissatisfied and giving up the diet completely. This is equally true for cutting down carbs as well as going vegetarian/vegan. Three years ago I decided to give up meat, but I kept seafood in my diet for the nutrition and menu choice at restaurants. One year later, I was off to Japan where it is significantly harder to avoid eating seafood. Now, living in France, I have not cut seafood out from my diet completely but it occurs only rarely—when I’m a guest at dinner, when there is no other choice at a restaurant. I purchase fish or seafood, and I try to avoid choosing fish, especially tuna, when eating out.

Now, sometimes confusion occurs among others (non-vegetarians, for the most part), when I specify my eating habits. Some fail to understand why I make the difference between meat and seafood. Some imply that by allowing some meat (fish) I am betraying my cause, thereby making it void. Here is my response, on behalf of semi-vegetarians, vegetarians, and vegans alike.

Vegetarianism is not a religion

Vegetarianism is a political and moral cause. It is not a health movement, it is not a choice undertaken because one is grossed out by the thought of bleeding pigs. It is a specific political action to counter the system of exploitation of animals that is inextricable to the modern meat industry. There are many distinct causes to protest: the suffering of animals, the health risks present in many meat products, the damage to the environment, the macho culture of carnivorism, but I won’t go into that here. The point is that being an activist movement, participation in any form is useful and beneficial to the cause. There are no fundamentalist vegetarians (well, perhaps there are, but that would be silly).

We are not Orthodox Jews who must keep kosher; we are not Muslims who are forbidden to eat pork. Our rule, the rule of not eating meat, is flexible, because it is an individual choice.

All or nothing

Most people would say, there are vegetarians, and there are the rest of us. You’re either veg or you ain’t. Either you eat tofu or you eat death. But the question is not whether you eat meat or not. This difference is essentially unimportant. This is the difference between meat being 0% of your diet, versus meat being 1% to 100% of your diet (or, being more reasonable, since none of you are actually lions—between 1% to 20% of your diet).

Think about it for a moment—how often do you eat meat? At every meal? Once a day? A couple times a week? More rarely? Everyone’s going to have different responses. Let’s say Bob eats a hamburger for lunch every day, Susan has one twice a week, and Liz never touches one. Susan and Liz have a lot more in common than Susan and Bob.

Mark Bittman, a food writer who hosts The Minimalist video shorts on newyorktimes.com, has written several vegetarian cookbooks even though he is not vegetarian himself. I like him because he turns the distinction between veg and non-veg on its head, while putting forth recipes that promote a reduction of meat intake. He has suggested diets such as vegetarian-before-dinner, vegetarian-on-weekdays, vegan-for-breakfast, and his recipes often reverse the proportions of meat to vegetables, making vegetables take up most of the focus and the calories and saving the meat for embellishment.

I’ve heard many times, “I tried to become vegetarian once. But I love meat too much.” That’s a false distinction. Arby’s may draw an impassable line between muscled meat-lover and pansy salad-lover, but real people have a combination of both tastes. If you care even a little about any of the causes vegetarianism supports, all you have to do is reduce your meat intake.

Supporting vegetarianism is not all or nothing. No one would venture to say that someone who actively tries to reduce her daily carbon emissions by commuting daily on bicycle is hypocritical because she drives on the weekends.

Practicality

A friend once told me that her problem with vegetarians and vegans was that they were inconsistent. They might not eat butter from a cow, for example, but they’d wear leather shoes. Well of course we’re inconsistent! For vegans, is it even possible to avoid every single animal product in daily commercial use? This goes way beyond food and clothing. It extends to makeup, perfumes, lotions, wine, toothpastes, tennis racquets and musical instruments, candles, paints, varnish, vitamins and medicines. Even being a strict vegetarian is difficult. It is not always obvious when foods contain animal remains: gelatin (made with animal collagen) is in marshmallows, jello, some pastries, and some yogurts, and vegetable soups often have chicken, beef, or fish stock.

Any system that demands perfection is not sustainable. We don’t demand perfection. We demand a significant change of lifestyle towards less dependence on products that exploit animals.

Bad and less bad

So why eat fish and not meat? Why draw the line there? Is killing and eating a fish or shellfish less wrong than killing and eating a pig? Yes, I would argue. Most animal rights supporters base their beliefs on the idea that causing unnecessary suffering is morally indefensible. It can be argued that fish suffer less than mammals or poultry. Many people might disagree with me here, are there are legitimate philosophical and moral arguments to the contrary, but the fact rests that there is a world of difference between sucking a few live oysters down and the billions of pigs that are raised in horrendous slaughterhouse conditions each year.

Environmentally-speaking, the stakes are a bit different. It’s important to pay attention and be informed about individual species. The over-consumption of tuna is already a grave problem (bluefin tuna will likely be extinct in our lifetime if the world continues its present rate of consumption), the popular seafood menu choices Chilean sea-bass and orange roughy are in severe decline, and Atlantic farmed salmon comes from enormous, over-crowded farms that pollute the nearby waters. Fishing wild Alaskan salmon, on the other hand, does little damage to the environment.

In conclusion:
I hope this post will encourage people to think beyond vegetarian and meat-eater and consider the impact of individual dietary choices. If you’ve thought, even idly, about reducing your meat consumption for whatever reason—political, health, environmental—but felt like you couldn’t cut it out completely, now is the time to think about a more creative way to do it that is sustainable in the long-term. Avoid certain foods, tuna for example, veal, or red meat. Stop cooking with meat, treating yourself only at restaurants. Eat meat only at dinner, or special occasions.

Being conscious of what you are consuming and whose pocket you are lining with your money is not tree-hugging crazy-talk. It’s essential as product manufacture becomes increasingly removed from you and your home, as consumers are increasingly unaware of how and where products are made. Who’s benefiting from your ignorance? And who’s suffering as a result?

Thanksgiving

2009-12-02T00:29:00.000-08:00

As you can see I’m not on the ball for Thanksgiving, arguably the biggest food event of the year. But I imagine many of you have part of a bowl of dried-out mashed potatoes still in the fridge, or maybe some pumpkin pie crumbs on the floor at least. Despite being in France, I refused to miss Thanksgiving, and with the help of my friend Andi, who hosted a Thanksgiving meal of 20 people at her place, I was able to enjoy all the classics (minus the turkey of course).

Thanksgiving was originally a harvest festival, to celebrate the edible wonders that grace the earth of North America; our modern Thanksgiving table spread adheres to this quite strictly: roast turkey, pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes, cornbread, green beans, apple pie, cranberry sauce. The feast that we call “the first Thanksgiving” was not at the time actually considered to be a Thanksgiving festival (that is, a religious observance of giving thanks to God), just an event to celebrate the successful harvest. In case you were absent that day of first grade when everyone made pilgrim hats and Indian feathers out of construction paper and learned the story of Thanksgiving, it goes like this: the pilgrims disembarked the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock in December of 1620, and subsequently lost almost half of their number to the severe winter. The harvest the following autumn, however, was bountiful, and to celebrate this the surviving pilgrims (about 55 at this time) organized a 3 day feast with about 90 Native Americans who had helped them throughout the year.

The table spread at this feast didn’t quite match our modern one—it’s not certain that there was actually turkey, and definitely not flour to make pies, or potatoes, which were still distrusted by the Europeans (they believed them to be poisonous). Instead, the pilgrims and Native Americans feasted on fish, lobster, clams, venison, pumpkin, berries, and plums. Good news for those pescatarians out there who want to be faithful to Thanksgiving.

The feast was not repeated, however, for many years, and it doesn’t have much historical connection to our modern holiday. Thanksgiving did not become a national holiday until 1863, when President Lincoln established Thanksgiving Day as the last Thursday of November.

Nevertheless, this story reminds me of the importance of the harvest, and how settler communities throughout history have thrived and starved on the success of their crops, how empires have made their fortunes on, and others been enslaved by, edible resources (opium, tea, chocolate); how fortunate we are to live on a land able to support a variety of foods, and in a society with access to a much larger variety.

Nowadays, Thanksgiving is a secular holiday that is an opportunity to get together with family and share a meal important to our national geography and history. It is, foremost, a celebration of food. It is also an opportunity to give thanks for the wealth and abundance that fills the platters on our tables, and to reflect on what it means and has meant for these 400 years to be an American.

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Thanksgiving

Je suis un peu en retard pour parler de « Thanksgiving », comme il a eu lieu jeudi dernier. En tant qu’américaine travaillant en France, j’ai dû travailler pour Thanksgiving, en effet Thanksgiving est une fête américaine, ce n’est donc pas un jour férié en France, ni le vendredi qui suit cette fête d’ailleurs. Par conséquent, je ne l’ai pas fêté avant samedi. Cependant, mieux tard que jamais.

Une copine américaine a fait un repas chez elle, invitant un vingtaine de personnes, dont la plupart étaient français. Elle a servi un repas traditionnel de Thanksgiving, incluant la dinde bien sur. Presque personne ne savait ce qu’est Thanksgiving avant qu’ils soient venus, c’était donc une opportunité de partager la culture américaine et la nourriture américaine.

Thanksgiving est surtout une fête de la nourriture native d’Amérique du Nord. Il prend son origine au 17ème siècle d’une fête dédiée à la récolte, et en notre jour il est toujours connu comme le jour où l’on mange très, très bien, autant qu’on l’appelle parfois « Turkey Day ».

Qu’est-ce qu’on mange comme dîner le jour de Thanksgiving ? Les plats sont très spécifiques :

1. une dinde rôtie
2. du « stuffing » ; du pain assaisonné avec du jus de dinde et des légumes
3. une purée de pomme de terre
4. des haricots verts
5. des pommes de terre douces
6. du maïs, ou un gâteau de maïs
7. une tarte à la citrouille
8. d’autres tartes telles qu’une tarte aux pommes ou une tarte aux noix de pecan
9. du cidre

Au cours de ce qu’on appelle « le premier Thanksgiving », la fête qui a eu lieu entre les colons européens et les amérindiens en automne 1621, les colons et les amérindiens ont mangé des plats un peu différent. Il n’est pas certain qu’il y ait eu de la dinde, et il leur a manqué la farine (pas de tartes) et les pommes de terre (qui étaient toujours crues toxiques). Au lieu de cela, ils ont préparé de la venaison, du poisson, du homard, des citrouilles, des fruits rouges, des palourdes, et des prunes.

Ce premier Thanksgiving, qui était plutôt une fête de la récolte qu’une fête de Thanksgiving (de remerciements à Dieu) durait trois jours. Les années suivantes il n’a pas eu lieu. C’est le Président Lincoln en 1863 qui a fait instaurer Thanksgiving comme jour férié, le dernier jeudi du mois Novembre.

Aujourd’hui Thanksgiving n’est ni religieux ni politique. C’est un jour ou l’on se rassemble en famille et mange la nourriture de notre pays. On remercie ceux qu’on aime, et on se rappelle tout ce qu’il est propice d’avoir. C’est pourquoi chez nous, c’est un jour tellement important, dans notre historie, notre culture, et nos familles.

Caramel Apple Pie

2009-11-29T07:48:00.000-08:00

This apple pie is pretty much perfect. The crust is flaky and soft, the filling is thick and dense, and the sauce is a balance of cinnamon and caramel.

There are some good tips in this recipe for pie-making in general. First, the apples are sliced very thinly and layered so that the baked pie will be dense and meaty, with no air pockets.

Also, I think the sugar sprinkling on top has quite a nice finishing effect, and requires about 2 seconds of extra effort. After brushing the top pie crust with egg white (which should always be done to make the top a healthy shiny brown--a good pie avoids a dull pallor just like a sorority girl in a bikini), sprinkle on a mixture of cinnamon sugar.

The only tricky step is making the caramel sauce. Be extremely careful not to burn it, which means keeping a close eye and stirring regularly (most recipes say to stir constantly, which is better, but it wastes so much time!). After you have caramelized the sugar, make sure to add enough cream and red wine so that the sauce won’t turn into caramel again when it cools (meaning, hard as glass—that wouldn’t go so well in the pie). The first time I made the sauce I reduced the liquid too much, so when it cooled it hardened into caramel and I was forced to reheat it in order to melt it and add more liquid. By doing this the sauce burned and I had to start over again, with many curses. You should add enough liquid to start so that the sauce itself is liquid, and then continue to simmer until it thickens into sauce consistency. It is essential to taste the caramel sauce before you add it to the pie. If the taste is bitter, you’ve burned it and you’ll have to throw it out and start over.

Another note: the recipe calls for red wine in the caramel sauce, but if you prefer use milk instead.

The Ultimate Caramel Apple Pie

Crust:
3 cups all-purpose flour
Pinch salt
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, cold, cut in chunks
2 eggs separated, (yolks for the pastry, whites for the glaze)
3 tablespoons ice water, plus more if needed

Caramel Apples:
1 cup sugar, plus 1/4 cup for the top
3 tablespoons water
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup red wine
1/2 vanilla bean, split and scraped
1 lemon, halved
8 apples (recommended: Granny Smith and Gala)
1 tablespoon flour
1 cinnamon stick, freshly grated
1/4 cup unsalted butter

1. To make the pastry, combine the flour and salt together in a large bowl. Cut in the chunks of cold butter with a pastry blender, a little at a time, until the dough resembles cornmeal. Add the 2 egg yolks and the ice water, and blend for a second just to pull the dough together and moisten. Be careful not to overwork the dough. Form the dough into a ball, wrap it tightly in plastic wrap, and let it rest in the refrigerator for 1 hour.

2. While the dough is resting, prepare the filling.

3. To make the caramel sauce: place the sugar and water in a small pot and cook, stirring constantly, over medium-low heat until the sugar has melted and caramelized, about 10 minutes.

4. Remove the pot from the burner and add the cream and wine slowly. It may bubble and spit, so be careful. When the sauce has calmed down, return it to the flame, add the vanilla bean and heat it slowly, until the wine and caramel are smooth and continue to slowly cook until reduced by half. Remove from the heat and cool until thickened.

5. Fill a large bowl with cold water and squeeze in the lemon juice. Peel the apples with a paring knife, cut them in half, and remove the core. Put the apple halves in the lemon-water (this will keep them from going brown). Toss the apples with the flour and cinnamon.

6. Take the dough out of the refrigerator, unwrap the plastic, and cut the ball in half. Rewrap and return 1 of the balls to the refrigerator, until ready for the top crust. Let the dough rest on the counter for 15 minutes so it will be pliable enough to roll out. Using a rolling pin, roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface into a 12-inch circle. Carefully roll the dough up onto the pin and lay it inside a 10-inch glass pie pan. Press the dough into the pan so it fits tightly.

7. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

8. Slice a couple of the apples at a time using a mandolin or a very sharp knife. The apples need to be thinly sliced so that as the pie bakes, they collapse on top of each other with no air pockets. This makes a dense, meaty apple pie. Cover the bottom of the pastry with a layer of apples, shingling the slices so there are no gaps. Ladle about 2 ounces of the cooled red wine caramel sauce evenly over the apple slices. Repeat the layers, until the pie is slightly overfilled and domed on the top; the apples will shrink down as the pie cooks. Top the apples with pieces of the butter.

9. Now, roll out the other ball of dough just as you did the first. Brush the bottom lip of the pie pastry with a little beaten egg white to form a seal. Place the pastry circle on top of the pie, and using some kitchen scissors, trim off the overhanging excess from around the pie. Crimp the edges of dough together with your fingers to make a tight seal. Cut slits in the top of the pie so steam can escape while baking. Place the pie on a sheet tray and tent it with a piece of aluminum foil, so the crust does not cook faster than the apples.

10. Bake the caramel apple pie for 25 minutes on the middle rack. In a small bowl, combine the remaining 1/4 cup of sugar with the freshly grated cinnamon. Remove the foil from the pie and brush the top with the remaining egg white. Sprinkle evenly with the cinnamon sugar and return to the oven. Continue to bake for another 25 minutes, until the pie is golden and bubbling. Let the apple pie rest at room temperature for at least 1 hour to allow the fruit pectin to gel and set; otherwise the pie will fall apart when you cut into it.

Jerusalem Artichoke

2009-11-27T03:39:00.000-08:00

Je n’ai jamais entendu parler d’un artichaut de Jérusalem avant qu’une amie française l’ait amenée chez moi pour un dîner la semaine dernière. Je ne l’avais d’ailleurs jamais vu un non plus—c’est un légume hideux ; il a l’air d’une patate qui a poussé en terre radioactive, avec des bosses bizarres et des grosseurs partout ainsi que des poils longs et épais qui l’enroulent. Quand Aurélie a ouvert le sac pour me montrer l’artichaut, j’ai reculé en horreur—quelle création démoniaque était-ce? Mais, elle m’a assuré qu’il n’était pas fétide.

« Mais s’il ne vient pas de l’enfer, d’où vient-il ? » ai-je demandé. « Ah, Jérusalem, surement ! » Aurélie n’était pas sure.

En fait—qui aurait cru—ça vient des États-Unis, de l’est et du centre, plus précisément. L’explorateur français Samuel de Champlain a découvert l’artichaut de Jérusalem au Massachussetts en 1605 et l’a renvoyé en France, mais la plante était cultivée bien auparavant par les amérindiens.

Malgré son nom, l’artichaut de Jérusalem ne vient pas de Jérusalem. Et ce n’est pas un artichaut non plus ! C’est une espèce de tournesol. Comme il est bizarre, cet artichaut !

Je ne savais pas comment préparer l’artichaut, Aurélie m’a donc montré sa préparation en soupe. C’est très simple :

Soupe d’Artichauts de Jérusalem

Artichauts de Jérusalem
Un peu de lait
Un peu de crème de soja (ou crème)
Sel et poivre

1. Peler les artichauts et les couper en dés. Mettez-les dans une casserole remplie d’eau bouillante. Ajouter un peu de lait afin que l’eau soit nuageuse, car autrement les artichauts deviendront noirs.
2. Les faire cuire pendant 10 minutes, jusqu’à ce qu’ils soient doux.
3. Drainer et faire une purée dans un mixer. Ajouter de la crème, du sel, et du poivre.

Il se sert aussi bien en gratin qu’en salade.

L’artichaut de Jérusalem est riche en fer, et il contient aussi du potassium et de la vitamine C. Pourtant, il y a un défaut : ça provoque des gaz intestinaux.

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The Jerusalem Artichoke

What is a Jerusalem artichoke? It’s difficult to guess. Is it an artichoke from Jerusalem? Seems logical, but no. Is it (looking at the photo) some kind of cancerous potato? Nope. Is it the ugliest vegetable you’ve ever seen? Likely, but that doesn’t answer the question.

Despite the name, the Jerusalem artichoke is neither from Jerusalem, nor is it an artichoke. It’s a species of sunflower, and here we’re concerned with the edible root. It is found naturally across the eastern and middle United States. In 1605 the French explorer Samuel de Champlain encountered this homely root (it had been widely cultivated before by American Indians) and sent it back to France, suggesting that it tasted similar to artichoke. Hence, 400 years later my French friend Aurelie is opening a grocery bag to show me a dirty knobbled thing with wiry hairs coming out of it and telling me we’re going to have Jerusalem artichoke for dinner.

She served a soup, which was great, and this vegetable would make a great gratin, salad, or side dish as well. The texture is much like a potato, but the flavor is sharper and very distinct.

Nutrition advantage: The Jerusalem artichoke is rich in iron, and is also a good source of potassium and vitamin C.

Social disadvantage: In the words of a 1621 publication Gerard’s Herbal, "which way soever they be dressed and eaten, they stir and cause a filthy loathsome stinking wind within the body, thereby causing the belly to be pained and tormented, and are a meat more fit for swine than men." So might be best to skip Jerusalem artichoke on your next candlelight dinner date.

Jerusalem Artichoke Soup

Jerusalem artichokes
2 Tbsp. milk
Cream
Salt and pepper

1. Peel the artichokes and cube. Fill a pot with water and add the milk to cloud the water. It is necessary to cloud the water because if the light reaches the artichokes they will turn black (not appetizing).
2. Add the artichokes and boil until tender.
3. Strain and make a puree in a blender. Add a touch of cream, and season with salt and pepper.

Fondue Savoyarde

2009-11-25T15:43:00.000-08:00

I just finished une petite soirée with some friends (yes I will be annoying and insert French expressions into this English blog post, because “little evening” isn’t quite as classé), in which we partook of fondue savoyarde, your classic cheese fondue, which happens to come from Savoie, this region of France.

Well, not “happens to come from” because anything with copious amounts of hot cheese plus white wine (i.e. delicious) is from Savoie (Tartiflette and Raclette postings to come).

Fondue is perfect for wintery evenings spent with friends or family. I love a meal that can truly be shared, from one pot. That way everyone is forced to focus on the center—no one can just get up and leave and do something else, or get distracted in talking only to their neighbor. I also love a meal that has to be worked for in some fashion, even as little as sticking the little fork in the cheese and twirling it. It just makes you that much more hungry.

Making fondue is terribly easy, it just requires the table equipment, which may be tricky to find. If you have a portable stove, problem solved. If you don’t, you will have to buy a gel fuel such as Sterno, which comes in round metal tins and use it in conjunction with a fondue pot and stand. If you don’t have a stand, there’s no need to spoil your fondue-fancy, just invent a makeshift one to hold the pot (like I did) in some fashion above the flame with various other grills/trays/pots. I am taking no liability for ruined dinners/scorched tabletops/fires however, on account of not having the proper equipment.

Some fondue recipes call for rubbing the insides of the pot with a garlic clove, I prefer to rub the bread itself. It’s best to use day-old bread, that’s a bit hard and stale, or if you only have fresh bread, throw it in the oven to toast after breaking it into bite-size chunks.

In college I used to work at a Swiss restaurant where fondue was the specialty. I remember a friend going once to the restaurant and ordering the fondue. He was shocked when it came out: “It was just a big pot of cheese, and some bread, and some potatoes!” he complained. “Well,” I said, “that’s . . . what . . . fondue . . . is . . . ? . . .” I still don’t understand what he was complaining about. Usually you don’t even get the potatoes.

Nevertheless, because of this restaurant, I like to serve fondue with roasted diced potatoes, and also a couple plates of vegetables to dip along with the bread. Vegetable ideas: tomatoes, broccoli, carrots, mushrooms, celery, bell peppers, cut into bite-sized chunks. Then your salad is taken care of.

The wine must be a dry white, preferably from the Savoie region for the sake of authenticity. Although no one would know the difference anyways. Also, the kirsch is not totally necessary (but don’t tell anyone here I said that).

Fondue Savoyarde

12 oz. Emmental cheese, grated
12 oz. Gruyere cheese, grated
12 oz. Tomme de Savoie or Beaufort cheese, grated
6 glasses dry white wine
2 Tbsp kirsh liqueur
pepper
1 clove garlic
day-old bread

1. Rub the bread with the garlic. If not sufficiently hard, toast the bread first. Cut or tear into bite-sized chunks.
2. Bring the wine to a low boil in a non-stick pot. Add the cheese and stir with a wooden spoon to melt.
3. Turn the heat off and add the kirsch. Sprinkle freshly ground pepper on top.
4. Serve with roasted potatoes and vegetable assortment.

Tarte Tatin

2009-11-19T13:29:00.000-08:00

Jeudi dernier j’ai commencé à faire un gâteau à la citrouille, et j’ai fini avec un pudding de citrouille. La pâte était trop liquide au début, donc dès que le gâteau a été sorti du four, bien qu’il soit cuit, son centre refusait de sécher. Je l’ai servi quand même ; chaud, moelleux, collant, avec un goût de cannelle et vanille—pas mal finalement, mais il lui manquait beaucoup la texture.

J’étais déçue d’avoir raté le gâteau. « Bon app tout le monde ! J’ai raté le gâteau! » Ai-je déclaré.

« Mais non, » Maxime m’a répondu, « Le gâteau est délicieux comme ça. Tu n’as pas raté le gâteau. Tu as inventé une nouvelle recette. »

J’ai froncé le sourcil. Je ne suis pas tellement naïve, normalement.

« Si, » a insisté Maxime, « Tu sais qu’est-ce que c’est une tarte tatin ? C’était aussi fait par erreur. Et elle est délicieuse quand même. C’est donc devenue une nouvelle recette. »

Hum. Tarte Tatin. Selon l’histoire, en 1898 à l’Hôtel Tatin, le chef Stéphanie Tatin a laissé une poêle de pommes caramélisée trop longtemps sur la cuisinière. Essayant de sauver la tarte aux pommes, elle a mit la pâte au-dessus de la poêle et mit tout dans le four. Dès que la tarte était cuit, elle a retourné la poêle à l’envers et l’a servit. Les clientes d’hôtel étaient ravies avec la nouvelle tarte.

Allez, me suis-je dit, si Madame Tatin pouvait rater une tarte aux pommes et l’appeler Tarte Tatin, moi aussi je pourrais la faire. La recette n’avait pas l’air très difficile.

Bien sûr, la première fois que j’ai essayé de préparer la tarte qui avait été ratée, je l’ai ratée. Dans la poêle, j’ai cuit le sucre à peu près 5 minutes, jusqu’à ce qu’il dore et devienne collant et épais. J’y ai ajouté les tranches de pommes, puis j’ai tout cuit pendant 6-7 minutes de plus, j’ai mis la pâte au-dessus, et transféré la poêle au four. Le problème, c’était dès que j’ai retourné la tarte, j’ai vu que je n’avais pas bien caramélisé le sucre. Les pommes ne se tenaient pas entre elles sur de la tarte, et le caramel a inondé l’assiette. En bref, le caramel était trop liquide.

La deuxième fois que j’ai préparé cette tarte, j’ai bien fait caraméliser le sucre, avec un peu de beurre et les poires, (cette fois-là j’ai décidé à mettre des poires) tout ensemble pendant 25-30 minutes, jusqu’à ce que la liquide ait réduit et le sucre soit devenu marron et très épais. Il fallait cuire en feu moyen/bas. Ensuite, j’ai couvert la poêle avec la pâte et tout mit dans le four pendant 25-30 minutes. Et voilà, quand j’ai retourné la tarte, tout était très attrayant et très bon.

Tarte Tatin aux poires

8 à 10 pommes
150 g de beurre
150 à 200 g de sucre en poudre
200 à 250 g de pâte

1. Éplucher, épépiner et tailler en quartiers les poires.
2. Dans un moule à manqué, mettre le beurre, le sucre en poudre, et les poires. Bien mélanger.
3. En feu moyen/bas, cuire pendant 25 minutes ; faire un caramel brun. Attention à ne pas le laisser trop noircir, cela donnerait un goût amer à votre tarte. Retirer du feu.
4. Abaisser la pâte sur 3 ou 4 mm d'épaisseur en un disque légèrement supérieur au diamètre du moule. Recouvrir les poires de pâte. Rentrer le bord à l'intérieur du moule.
5. Cuire à four chaud (180-200°C) jusqu'à cuisson complète de la pâte. La pâte est presque cuite et le caramel commence à remonter sur les cotés.
6. Au terme de la cuisson, recouvrir le moule avec un moule plus grand, et démouler votre tarte tatin tant qu'elle est encore chaude. Après il sera trop tard ! Attention aux éclaboussures du caramel bouillant. Elle se sert nature, sans crème anglaise, ni crème fraiche, ni glace.

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Mistakes in baking usually don’t turn out well. When you mistake salt for sugar in the cake batter, for example. When you get water in the chocolate and it seizes, or when you frost the cake while it’s still warm and the icing melts.

This was the case last week, during an attempt to make pumpkin bread. The batter contained too much liquid, and as a result what started as pumpkin bread ended up, finally, as pumpkin bread pudding. The taste was still there, but the texture was most definitely not.

I announced to the would-be eaters of the bread, “I messed it up. Sorry. Bon appetite.”

I was disappointed. It was a waste of perfectly good pumpkin, cinnamon, and nutmeg, and, more disappointing, a waste of an hour of delicious-smelling anticipation wafting from the oven.

“You didn’t mess up the pumpkin bread,” a friend Maxime told me, exuding French politesse, “You invented a new recipe!” I raised my eyebrows and pointed my chin at the pile of pumpkin moisture on his plate.

“Really,” he insisted, “it still tastes great like that. Don’t you know the story of the tarte tatin? It was made by mistake too, and now it’s a classic.”

No, I didn’t know the story, so I consulted wikipedia when I got home. And so, the story of the tarte tatin:

France, 1898. Two sisters, Stephanie and Caroline Tatin, were running a hotel. Stephanie started to make an apple pie but left the apples, butter, and sugar cooking too long on the stove. In an effort to rescue the pie, she placed the pastry on top of the pan and threw it all in the oven. Once baked, she flipped the pie over and served it. And the guests were, surprisingly (or not, since it is delicious), delighted.

So basically the tarte tatin is an upside-down apple tart. Ok, I told myself, if Stephanie Tatin could ruin an apple pie and call it tarte tatin, then I probably could too. The recipe seemed simple enough.

Wrong. Once again I got it wrong, the tarte that had been gotten wrong to begin with. I started by cooking a stick of butter with a little less than a cup of sugar. After about 7-8 minutes, when the mixture had gotten brown, goopy, and caramel-like, I added the apples and cooked for another 7-8 minutes. Then, I put the pastry on top and transferred the pan to the oven. The problem was, once I took the tarte out of the oven and turned it onto a plate, I saw that the sugar/butter mixture had not been truly caramelized, meaning it ran out in a liquid mess over the plate, and the tarte was merely a crust with sugary saucy apples on top. Not good enough.

The second time I made the tarte, using pears this time, I began with only an ounce of butter with maybe ¾ cup sugar. I added the pears immediately and cooked all three on medium/low heat for about 30 minutes. It was necessary to stir often to prevent anything from sticking or burning, and to cook on low heat to make sure the sugar didn’t burn. After about 30 minutes, the liquid reduced and the sugar started to bubble and turn dark brown. Caramelization achieved. I managed to arrange the pears nicely in a circular fashion within the same pan (or you could simply transfer them to another pan), and I transferred the pan to the oven. When the tarte came out, I turned it onto a plate, and success! The tarte held together nicely, and was perfectly caramelized and intensely sweet.

Tarte Tatin

Pears (a lot, more than you think you need)

Butter
Sugar
Pastry crust

1. Peel, core, and cut the pears into wedges.
2. Over low/medium heat, stir pears, one ounce of butter, and ¾ to 1 cup of sugar in an oven-proof skillet.
3. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the sugar is caramelized, about 30 minutes.
4. Remove from heat, arrange the pears nicely, and place the pastry crust on top. The crust should be a bit larger than the skillet. Tuck the edges of the crust around the pears.
5. Cook in a 400 F oven until the crust is baked and nicely browned, about 25 minutes.
6. Wait five minutes, then turn the tarte upside-down onto a dish larger than the skillet. Do the turn quickly and confidently. Don’t wait until the tarte cools, otherwise it will not come unstuck.

La Citrouille Mon Amour

2009-11-17T23:48:00.000-08:00

Chez nous, l’automne est synonyme de citrouille. Aux Etats-Unis les feuilles des arbres deviennent oranges et les plats sur les tables également. Au début de la saison, on sort avec la famille à la ferme locale pour ramasser une ou plusieurs citrouilles pour ramener à la maison. Cette excursion, elle ressemble un peu celle d’acheter un animal de compagnie. Il faut bien choisir la taille, la couleur, regarder la peau pour vérifier il n’y a pas de taches bizarres, et bien sûr il y a des citrouilles plus mignonnes que d’autres . . . Puis, on apporte nos citrouilles chez nous, on en met au moins une à côté pour couper un Jack-o-lantern pour Halloween, et les restes se trouvent bientôt dans une tarte, une soupe, des muffins, un risotto, ou une infinité d’autres desserts.

Les citrouilles viennent, à l’origine, de l’Amérique du Nord, c’est pourquoi elles sont indispensables chez nous pour les jours fériés de Thanksgiving. Aussi nécessaire que la dinde, on pourrait dire (et plus nécessaire pour moi, comme je ne mange pas de dinde).

En fait, 90% de citrouille en conserve aux Etats-Unis est produit dans mon état, l’Illinois. Imaginez comment je suis fière maintenant d’être Illinoise ! Mais malgré cela, j’ai grandi en ne mangeant pas plus de citrouille que ça. Dommage. Pendant mon enfance, mon expérience de la citrouille était limitée à la citrouille en couple avec la cannelle et la muscade. Ce qui est très bon quand même, mais on oublie le vrai goût de la citrouille seule. Tout a changé en Chine, en 2006, où j’ai goûté de la soupe à la citrouille et de la citrouille frie. Oui, elle n’existe pas qu’en dessert ! Je fournis une recette de risotto à la citrouille pour le confirmer.

Risotto à la Citrouille

500 g de citrouille
320 g de riz rond (arborio)
1 oignon
30 g de beurre
1 litre de bouillon
parmesan râpé
persil
sel et poivre

Découper la citrouille en cube. Couper l'oignon et le faire revenir et suer dans la moitié du beurre. Rajouter les cubes de citrouille et les faire revenir 10 à 15 minutes jusqu'à ce que les cubes se démêlent. Si besoin, rajouter un peu d'eau lors de la cuisson.

Ajouter le riz et mélanger. Mouiller le mélange riz et citrouille avec le bouillon et continuer à mélanger. Rajouter régulièrement le bouillon. Compter 17 à 20 minutes de cuisson.

Lorsque le riz est cuit, éteindre le feu et ajouter le parmesan. Bien mélanger et ajouter le beurre restant et le persil. Servir aussitôt car le risotto ne se réchauffe pas.

Je n’ai pas oublié le dessert—il suit une recette de muffins à la citrouille. On peut suivre la même recette pour préparer un gâteau, mais il faut prolonger le temps de cuisson.

Pour préparer une purée de citrouille, faites-la cuire, en morceaux, dans l’eau bouillante ou dans un four micro-onde et bien écraser les morceaux pour évacuer l’eau.

Muffins à la Citrouille

750 ml de farine tout usage
30 ml de levure chimique
1 cuillère à café de cannelle
½ cuillère à café de muscade
1 cuillère à café de sel
250 ml de cassonade
2 œufs
375 ml de lait
125 ml d'huile végétale
250 ml de purée de citrouille

1. Préchauffer le four à 220°C.

2. Dans un grand bol, mélanger la farine, la levure chimique, les épices et le sel. Ajouter la cassonade et bien mélanger.

3. Dans un autre bol, battre les œufs. Ajouter le lait, l'huile et la purée de citrouille.

4. Ajouter aux ingrédients secs et mélanger juste assez pour humidifier (sinon les muffins risquent d'être durs).

5. Répartir dans des moules à muffins bien huilés et cuire environ 25 mn.

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Peter Peter pumpkin eater,
Had a wife and couldn’t keep her.
He put her in a pumpkin shell,
And there he kept her very well.

--from Mother Goose, 1825

I can think of at least four better uses for a pumpkin than Peter did: risotto, soup, muffins, and pie.

Pumpkins are native to North America, which is why they feature so prominently in Peter’s (and his wife’s) early American life. As we all know, there are two guests absolutely indispensable to Thanksgiving dinner each year—those being the turkey, and the pumpkin pie (although for me, the pumpkin pie is actually more indispensable than the turkey, as I don’t eat turkey. Yes, I’m one of those people who ruin Thanksgiving for everyone else by politely declining the turkey and stuffing and insisting that the vegetable dishes are more than enough).

Out of all the processed pumpkin produced in the U.S., Illinois accounts for about 90 percent—imagine how lucky I feel now to be a former Illinoisan! Despite this, I didn’t eat more pumpkin than anyone else while growing up, my experiences being limited to pumpkin/cinnamon/nutmeg combos. Then China, 2006: my discovery of pumpkin soup and fried pumpkin cakes was huge. Pumpkin does exist outside of desserts!

This is why I find risotto to be an especially nice way to cook pumpkin, as after years of pumpkin desserts one starts to forget the distinction between the actual pumpkin flavor and the flavor of cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice. The texture of the pumpkin is a perfect complement to al-dente risotto, and the vivid color looks great, especially beside fresh sage and parsley.

Pumpkin Risotto

570ml/1 pint vegetable stock
1 small onion, chopped
12 fresh sage leaves, chopped finely
12 fresh sage leaves, whole
4 tbsp olive oil
6oz Arborio (round grain) rice
9oz pumpkin, diced
2oz butter
salt and freshly ground black pepper
parsley
fresh parmesan

1.Heat the stock until almost boiling and then keep over a very low heat. In a separate heavy-based saucepan sweat the onion in the oil until soft but not browned. Add the chopped sage and cook for a couple more minutes.

2. Add the rice and mix well for a few seconds to coat the grains with oil, then pour in one-third of the stock and bring to a gentle simmer. Cook until almost all the stock is absorbed. Add the pumpkin or squash and a little more stock, and continue to simmer gently until the stock is absorbed.

3. From then on add more stock a little at a time, until the pumpkin is soft and the rice nicely al dente. You may not need all the stock, but the texture should be loose and creamy.

4. When the risotto is almost ready, heat a little more oil in a small pan and quickly fry the sage leaves until crispy - it takes a matter of seconds.

5. Stir the butter into the risotto, and season well with salt and pepper. Sprinkle with parsley and parmesan cheese.

But let’s not forget our dessert classics either! To make pumpkin puree, cube the pumpkin and boil, then mash, rather like making mashed potatoes. I like to mash the pumpkin in a mesh colander so that the excess water is forced out. Pumpkins are about 90% water, so you will have quite a lot excess.

Pumpkin bread and pumpkin muffins are the same recipe, but the size of the bread pan requires about an hour of baking time, versus about 25 for muffins.

Pumpkin Muffins

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 cup pumpkin puree
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 large eggs
1/2 tsp each cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, allspice
1 ¼ cups brown sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon and 1 Tbsp sugar, for dusting

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease muffin pan.

2. Whisk together flour and baking powder in a small bowl.

3. Whisk together pumpkin, oil, eggs, spices, 1 ¼ cups sugar, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl until smooth, then whisk in flour mixture until just combined.

4. Stir together cinnamon and remaining 1 tablespoon sugar in another bowl.

5. Divide batter among muffin cups (each should be about 3/4 full), then sprinkle tops with cinnamon-sugar mixture. Bake until puffed and golden brown and a toothpick inserted into center of muffin comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes.

6. Transfer muffins from pan while still warm.

Now if Peter the Pumpkin Eater had used his pumpkins to make these for his wife, perhaps she would never have gone astray in the first place!

Une Castagnade

2009-11-10T08:26:00.000-08:00

L’automne est arrivé sur Grenoble; les feuilles rougies tombent de leurs arbres et s’entassent dans les coins des rues, les marrons et les châtaignes se retrouvent au sol et les femmes ont sorti leurs grandes bottes en cuir du placard.

Si vous avez de la chance, vous habitez prés d’une forêt où il y des châtaignes et vous pouvez en ramasser. Ou, presque aussi bien que ça, vous connaissez quelqu’un qui en a déjà ramassé et vous en a donné. C’est ce qui s’est passé pour moi—Gérôme, le frère de mon copain, m’a donné un gros sac plein de châtaignes. C’était chez lui ce week-end, où il nous avait invités avec ses voisins pour une castagnade.

Le meilleur moyen de cuire des châtaignes est de les griller au-dessus d’un feu de bois. Avant de les cuire, il faut fendre les châtaignes avec un couteau. Mettez-les dans une poêle qui a des trous sur le dessous. Laissez les griller pendant 20 minutes en secouant la poêle de temps en temps. Après, lorsqu’ils sont toujours chauds, mettez-les dans du papier journal et secouez-les vigoureusement pour que la peau s’enlève. Puis, pelez-les et voilà !

Sans feu, vous pouvez toujours profiter des châtaignes. Faites-les cuire dans un four, ou faites-les bouillir.

Comment on mange les châtaignes ? Si vous en avez assez, préparez une confiture.

La confiture de marron (de la part de Gérôme):

Matériel nécessaire :
-un moulin à légume avec un tamis fin (pour ne pas laisser passer la peau de châtaigne,
-un bon couteau, et oui éplucher les châtaignes ça fait mal aux doigts !!
-une balance pour peser les ingrédients
-châtaignes
-sucres en poudre (sucre normal)
-extrait de vanille liquide, ou un sachet de sucre vanillé
-bâton de vanille

Tu commences par couper le dessous de châtaignes, ensuite tu mets toutes les châtaignes ainsi coupées dans une cocotte minute et tu les recouvres d'eau froide (quelques châtaignes vont flotter, ce n'est pas grave).

Tu fais chauffer le tout à feu très fort. Dès que l'eau commence à bouillir tu baisses la puissance du feu et tu laisses cuire pendant 30 minutes. Au bout de 30minutes, tu arrêtes le feu. Je te conseille de laisser les châtaignes dans l’eau chaude car elles sont plus faciles à peler.

Donc, une par une, tu enlèves la grosse peau des châtaignes et tu mets ces châtaignes dans le moulin à légume. Lorsque tu as environ 10 châtaignes dans ton moulin, tu les presses (ton moulin doit être posé sur une marmite) jusqu’à ce qu’il ne te reste que la fine peau. Donc dans la marmite tu obtiens une farine de châtaigne et dans le moulin il te reste la peau. Jette la peau et remets des châtaignes dans ton moulin, jusqu’à ce que tu aies fini toutes les châtaignes qui trempaient encore dans l’eau chaude.

Une fois que tout est terminé, il faut peser la farine de châtaigne que tu as obtenue.
Les quantités que je vais te donner sont pour 1kg de farine de châtaigne :

-mets 30 cl d'eau dans la cocotte ou grande marmite
-ajoute 800gr de sucre en poudre en mélangeant
-fait chauffer pendant 3minutes à feu doux (tu obtiens du sirop qui a blanchi)
-ajoute 1 à 2 cuillères(s) à soupe d'extrait de vanille selon ton préférence
-ajoute 1 bâton de vanille fendu
-ajoute la farine de châtaigne.

Laisse cuire 8 minutes à feu doux. Tu dois toujours mélanger, la confiture ne doit être ni trop liquide, ni trop pâteuse (Si elle est trop pâteuse, ajoute de l'eau et du sucre ; si elle est trop liquide tu dois ajouter 4 feuilles de gélatine).

Pendant la cuisson de la confiture, prends des pots vides et passe les sous l'eau bouillante pour tuer les bactéries (pots et couvercles).

Ensuite tu enlèves le bâton de vanille, et mixe bien ta confiture. Puis remplis tes pots (ils doivent être pleins). Une fois remplis, remets le couvercle et pose les à l'envers.

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“ Chestnuts roasting on an open fire . . .”

Turns out Nat King Cole was right, roasting chestnuts on an open fire really is great during a chill evening with your family, as I discovered this past weekend in Saint-Genix.

My boyfriend’s brother Gerome and his family had been able to gather a whole lot of chestnuts from the woods and invited us over for une castagnade, which is what the French call an evening of roasting chestnuts.

Yes—they have a name for it, it’s that fun!

In the train stations in Japan I would sometimes see chestnut vendor stalls, who roasted the chestnuts on open coals and sold them in paper bags to commuters.

To roast chestnuts over a fire you need a pan with holes in the bottom. Score each chestnut to prevent explosions and roast them, shaking the pan occasionally, for about 20 minutes. Then dump out the hot chestnuts onto newspaper, crumple into a package, and rub vigorously to loosen the skins. Peel and eat!

You can also bake the chestnuts in the oven, which would be the same process as above, or you can boil them in a pot.

If you have a lot of chestnuts left over, make confiture de marron, which would be usually translated into chestnut jam, but in this case is more like a cream. Try a spoonful of this on toast in the morning, mixed with yogurt for a dessert, or use it for frosting on a cake.

The chestnut flour obtained from this recipe can of course also be used in a variety of other ways, including breads, pancakes, and pastas (chestnut is the original ingredient for polenta).

Recipe for chestnut cream:

Chestnuts
Sugar
Water
Vanilla extract, and one whole bean

First cut the oblong end of each chestnut, then place in a pot and cover with water. A few chestnuts will float; this is normal. Bring the water to a boil, then lower the heat and cook 30 minutes. After 30 minutes turn off the flame but leave the chestnuts in the hot water to ease peeling.

Peel the chestnuts and put them in a vegetable processor or mill that will turn the meat into a flour. The mill should also remove the second, finer skin of the chestnut and leave only the white.

Weigh the flour you have obtained. The following measurements are given for 1 kg of flour, or about 4 ½ cups.

Put 30 cl (1 ¼ cups) water and 800 grams (3 ½ cups) sugar into a pot and cook about 3 minutes over an easy flame, until a syrup has formed. Add a teaspoon or two of vanilla and the vanilla bean. Then mix in the chestnut flour.

Continue to cook over an easy flame, stirring continuously, for about 8 minutes. If too thick, add more water and sugar. If too thin, you must add some gelatin.

When the cream is done, take out the vanilla bean and store in glass jars you have disinfected by boiling.

Tempura

2009-11-06T07:37:00.000-08:00

It’s time to take a little break from the European scene and talk a little about my favorite Japanese dish, 天ぷら, or tempura. Tempura is a plate of lightly battered and fried vegetables and seafood, commonly served over steamed rice, soba noodles, or in udon soup.

It’s said that tempura was introduced to the Japanese by the Portuguese in the 16th century. At that time Portuguese missionaries referred to the period of Lent and other holy days with the Latin word temporo, which means “time” or “time period”, these days being a period when they avoided the consumption of meat and instead ate fish and vegetables. Hence the modern word tempura.

Let’s talk ingredients. A wide variety of vegetables and seafood are commonly used in Japan.

Vegetables: green pepper, eggplant, carrot, sweet potato, potato, mushrooms, asparagus, okra, white onion, pumpkin (the Japanese kabocha variety is best), green beans, lotus root (renkon), shiso leaf. The lotus root and shiso leaves make for especially beautiful and delicate morsels, but they might be hard to find outside of Japan. My personal favorites are kabocha and green pepper. Unfortunately our western pumpkins don’t seem to have quite the flavor and texture. You can of course use other vegetables, but I recommend against using broccoli, because it will absorb the oil.

Seafood: Prawns or shrimp, scallops, squid, white-meat fish

Don’t overdo it. Choose only 5 or 6 different items for your meal.

Let’s talk sauce. The sauce typically eaten with tempura in Japan is tentsuyu sauce (three parts dashi, one part mirin, and one part shoyu) with grated daikon. I’m going to assume that you don’t live in Japan and don’t have these things in your pantry, so let’s make a similar salty/tangy dipping sauce using soy sauce, lemon juice, and grated radishes.

To eat tempura, serve the freshly-fried pieces alongside hot steamed rice. Have a small bowl of sauce for each person, and dip each piece in the sauce before eating. DO NOT pour the sauce all over your plate of tempura and rice, unless you like drinking soy sauce. Japanese cuisine is all about light flavors and textures. Dip your tempura, don’t drown it! There is an alternative (or addition) to the dipping sauce. Sprinkle your tempura with sea salt, or salt mixed with seasoning. I prefer salt mixed with curry powder, or salt and sesame seeds. You can also cut the salt with powerded green tea.

Recipe for Tempura

Assortment of vegetables and/or seafood (see above note)
Flour
Cold water and ice
Frying oil such as vegetable oil
Steamed rice

For the sauce:
Radishes, grated
Soy sauce
Juice of one lemon

First, you must cut the vegetables into pieces suitable for frying. This means large slices with a lot of surface area. If you fry small pieces you will end up with a lot of fried batter and not much inside. A medium-size green pepper, for example, will yield 4 quarters. Use whole prawns, green beans and whole or halved mushrooms. Cut carrots on a sharp slant to yield larger slices. Cut slices of pumpkin so they curve. To prevent oil splatter, poke a few holes in water-retaining seafood and hard-skinned vegetables such as squid and bell peppers. I learned this the last time I cooked tempura when I almost lost an eye to popping oil.

Mix the flour with cold water. Some stores sell ‘tempura flour’ but you can just use regular flour. The water must be cold to ensure crispiness after frying. To keep it cold, put in a couple ice cubes. Do not mix the batter thoroughly. Lumps are desired to give the tempura its unique texture.

Heat oil an inch deep in a pan to 160-180 degrees Celsius. I don’t have a thermometer so I know the oil’s ready when a drop of batter sizzles and floats.

Coat the pieces with batter and set in the pan. They should sizzle immediately and float. When they are golden take them out and dispose on a platter covered with paper towels. As you fry, remove the little pieces of batter that rest in the oil, otherwise they will burn and taint the flavor of the oil. Use two different pairs of chopsticks to mix the batter and to fry.

Tempura is best served immediately, so if you’re cooking for many people it’s better to take a fry-as-you-go approach rather than prepare a large batch at one time.

To make the sauce, combine all ingredients to taste, using a good amount of radish. If the sauce is too salty, thin with water.

And enjoy! Itadakimasu!

German Goodies

2009-11-04T14:02:00.000-08:00

Pendant les vacances de Toussaint, je suis allée en Allemagne ; Là-bas j’en ai bien profité pour grignoter toutes les choses allemandes délicieuses.

Recently on vacation in Nuremberg, Germany, I took the opportunity to sample all the German goodness. Between the all the pretzels, sauerkraut, döner-kebab, and Black Forest cake I managed to get in a few other things . . .

Premièrement, j’ai vu cette boîte de bonbons dans le supermarché et je n’ai pas pu résister à l’acheter. Trop drôle ! Sérieusement, qui a pensé à ce nom-là ? Ils ne réalisent pas ce que ça veut dire ? Il me rappelle un ami au Japon qui me racontait le temps où il est allé au resto en Angleterre qui s’appelait Mini-Bite.

While in the supermarket I picked up this box of treats and chuckled to myself for a good three or four minutes. Seriously, who thinks of this stuff? They really don’t realize what this means? It reminds of the time a French-speaking friend told me of a restaurant he had been to in England, which was called Mini-Bite, what a double entendre. . .

Nuremberg, où j’étais, est célèbre pour son Lebkuchen, ou « gingerbread » comme on dit chez moi, une sorte de pain d’épices. J’en ai goûté dans le marché ; c’était trop. bon. Tout doux et moelleux dedans, sucré au-dessus. Pour ceux qui imaginent des biscuits en forme de petits hommes, ou des maisons décorés à la « Hansel et Gretal », le Lebkuchen allemand est différent. La seule forme qu’ils modèlent, c’est le cheval à bascule. Je suis maintenant inspirée pour faire du Lebkuchen . . . la recette va suivre bientôt.

What luck !—Nuremberg just happened to be the home of gingerbread, one of my favorite cookies! But the Lebkuchen, or gingerbread cookies there surpassed all expectations. They are thick and chewy, with pieces of candied ginger and sometimes nuts and fruit inside. Forget gingerbread men and gingerbread houses, the only unusual form gingerbread takes in Germany is a rocking horse (strange I know). I am now inspired to make my own gingerbread, recipe coming soon.

Parmi les grands verres de bière—tous excellent—que je prenais le soir, il y en a eu un qui était différent des autres. C’était Rauchbier, la bière fumée, une spécialité de Bamberg, une petite ville aux environs de Nuremberg. « Une bière fumée ?? » vous vous demandez ce que c’est . . . En fait le nom explique tout ; c’est une bière avec le goût de la fumée. Je ne dirais pas que c’était la meilleure bière que j’aie jamais bu, mais elle n’était pas mal quand même.

Amidst all the glasses of beer I was drinking every night (not to excess, but a meal and a beer go hand in hand in Germany), one stood out. It was Rauchbier, or smoked beer, a specialty of Bamberg, a small town near Nuremberg. “A smoked beer??” you ask. Well in fact it's exactly how it sounds it would be--a beer that tastes like smoke. It wasn’t the best beer I’ve had in my life, but it wasn’t bad either.

“Du bon fromage, du bon vin, du bon pain. C’est trop français, et c’est trop bon!”

2009-11-02T02:44:00.000-08:00

Les américains sont obèses. Selon l’enquête de 2005-2006 du Centre National des Statistiques de la Sante, plus de 66.7% (deux tiers de la population!) des adultes américains sont obèses. Cela veut-il dire qu’ils apprécient la cuisine? Au contraire.

Moi, je trouve que Mr. Tout le monde a une appréciation de la nourriture qui est bien plus développée que Mr. Joe Blow. Si on offre à un enfant français le choix entre un Twinkie et un artichaut . . . que va-t-il choisir? Et un enfant américain, que va-t-il choisir ? OK, les deux enfants choisiront le Twinkie, c’est évident. Un Twinkie a l’air doux et délicieux alors qu’un artichaut pas vraiment . . . Moi aussi je choisirais le Twinkie des fois (non, je plaisante . . . je me respecte trop pour manger des Twinkies).

Mais il est vrai que la plupart des français peuvent choisir un bon fromage, savent ce qu’ils aiment comme vin, peuvent reconnaitre une baguette qui est douce à l’intérieur et croquante à l’extérieur. Même s’ils ne savent pas cuisiner un bon dîner, ils prennent plaisir à en manger un. Cela n’est guère surprenant ; la cuisine française a la réputation d’être l’une des meilleures au monde, en effet, la nourriture et l’artisanat sont fermement encres dans la culture française.

Je soutiendrais que les pluparts des américains n’ont pas la même appréciation de la nourriture que les français. Ils n’aiment pas les légumes. Ils préfèrent manger des chips à une pomme, Macaroni n’ Cheese à du vrai fromage. Ils ne veulent pas goûter les plats qui ne leur sont pas familiers. Franchement, j’en ai assez de cuisiner pour ma famille, c’est désolant. L’été dernier j’ai fait une salade, des tranches du melon enroulées dans des tranches de jambon cru, c’était vraiment alléchant, et personne ne l’a touchée. Apparemment ils sont incapables de goûter la viande crue, les olives, les poivrons, les fruits de mer, les asperges, les tomates non plus d’ailleurs. S’il vous plaît ! Finalement j’ai abandonné et j’ai fait un plat de macaroni and cheese, fait maison. Mes frères préféraient encore la nourriture en boîte.

Qu’est-ce que ça veut dire pour nous, en tant que société, si nous préférons la nourriture en boite a la cuisine faite maison? Si nous préférons les McNuggets au poulet rôti ? Cela veut dire que nous nous développons des mauvais goûts, nous nous rembourrons avec les aliments sucrés, gras et salés. Les conséquences sur notre santé sont maintenant évidentes. De plus, il nous manque la culture de la cuisine. Il nous manque une variété merveilleuse de plantes comestibles, et je trouve cela dommage. Regardez cet imbécile, qui est apparu dans un article du New York Times. Il nous ferait croire que l’on peut vivre heureux en mangeant que des bonbons. Il doit avoir une vie pitoyable.

Lorsque je travaillais comme professeur d’anglais au Japon, une élève qui venait d’étudier aux Etats-Unis et qui était restée chez l’habitant pendant son séjour m’a dit que la mère de famille chez laquelle elle était, n’avait jamais cuisiné. Au lieu de cela, elle faisait les pizzas surgelées ou commandait des plats à emporter. L’élève m’a dit, « La famille ne mangeait pas parce qu’ils avaient faim, ni parce qu’ils prenaient plaisir à manger, mais tout simplement parce que c’était l’heure du repas… »

En changeant les habitudes de manger des américains, je vois deux problèmes. Tout d’abord, nous mangeons trop. Il faut manger modérément aux heures de repas, pas a n’importe qu’elle heure sous prétexte d’avoir faim. Ensuite, nous ne faisons pas les bons choix alimentaires. Il faut encourager les enfants à manger des choses saines des leur plus jeune âge, et effectivement découvrir nous-mêmes le plaisir de manger et de cuisiner. Les Etats-Unis, c’est le pays qui nourrit ses enfants au beurre de cacahuètes Skippy ou JIF, dont le deuxième ingrédient après les cacahuètes est le sucre.

Récemment j’ai dîné chez une amie. Nous avions mangé une bonne tartiflette, et nous nous détendions après-le-repas, tout en discutant avec un bon verre de vin. Son colocataire Maxime a dit, « Du bon fromage, du bon vin, du bon pain. C’est trop français. . . Et c’est trop bon ! »

En effet, c’est trop bon d’entendre ça.

*********************************************************************************

Recently I dined at a friend’s place here in Grenoble. We feasted on a homemade tartiflette, one of the cheesy potato dishes specific to the Rhône-Alpes region, and afterwards stretched out in our chairs and chatted, lingering on the leftover wine bottles and scraps of bread that littered the table.

“Ah,” sighed Maxime, one of the roommates of the apartment, “A good cheese, a good wine, and some good bread. It’s so French—and it’s so good too!”

And so true too. The only thing that could have been more “French” about the scene is if everyone had been wearing berets; that’s how much we connect an appreciation of quality food to the French.

Which got me thinking—how often would you find a group of young 25-ish, predominantly male Americans raving over a meal they’d cooked themselves that wasn’t in bun form or didn’t just get out from the deep-fryer? Not. Too. Often. Can you imagine a young man being excited to see white asparagus in the grocery store? Or taking a good five minutes to make a selection in the wine aisle, scouring the label of each bottle?

French cuisine is well-regarded as some of the best food in the world, and an appreciation of good food and drink is firmly entrenched in the culture. This I find to be sorely lacking in the American mentality. Raised on cardboard boxes full of refined sugar and saturated fats, many Americans quite simply have bad taste in food. We prefer chicken nuggets to Chicken cordon bleu, fried mozzarella sticks to a round of camembert, glow-in-the-dark gummy worms to dried fruit, and we prefer pretty much anything to vegetables. Look at this imbecile in the New York Times, who would have us believe it’s possible to live healthily and happily subsisting on candy alone. His life must be as empty as the calories he consumes.

It’s been established that now about two-thirds of American adults are overweight. According to National Center for Health Statistics in their 2005-2006 survey, 66.7% of adults are overweight, with more than half of that number being obese. Voluntary food choice according to taste (as opposed to other factors, such as cost and availability) plays a huge part in this. This is a country that raises its kids on Skippy and JIF brand peanut butter, of which the second ingredient after peanuts is sugar.

I would argue that it’s their culture of good taste that encourages most French people to make relatively healthful eating choices. To include salads and fresh vegetables in every meal, for example, and to cook at home rather than eating take-out or frozen meals. On the other hand, we all know that French cuisine is not the lightest on earth, making liberal usage of butter, cream, and red meat, and eggs. Which brings me to my second point, that this culture of good food, whether it be healthy or not, nevertheless inculcates values of eating well, appreciating what you eat, knowing food, and taking pleasure from it. Which means that you are more likely to embrace a variety of foods, enjoy cooking, and build eating habits based on selection and quality rather than gluttony.

It’s a darn shame, I think, that Americans for the most part don’t really enjoy food. We are a nation of the largest people on earth, but does that mean we love food so much we can’t stop eating? On the contrary. We are vastly uneducated about and unappreciative of what we eat. We don’t know how to select good quality produce. We don’t know how to prepare our own meals. We don’t know where our beloved boxed food comes from or what’s in it. We don’t even know which foods are good for us and which are bad (as evidenced by the recent marking of Froot Loops with the “Smart Choice” label—how could anyone really buy that Froot Loops are in any way smart, especially with such a gross misspelling?).

While I was working as an English teacher in Japan, one student who had recently come back from a study abroad home-stay in the Pacific Northwest complained to me about the meals she had been served by her host family; her host-mom never cooked, she said, and instead served frozen pizzas and take-out Chinese. From what she observed, she said, the family didn’t eat in the evenings because they were hungry, nor because they took real pleasure from the food, but rather just to fill their bellies—because it was dinnertime and that’s what one did at dinner.

What a shame to eat in this way, just to fill your belly, mindlessly, without pleasure!

Let’s start a love affair with food, real food. And kick those other amateurs out the door: potato chips, frozen burritos, plastic neon cheese. Let’s not compromise our peanuts with sugar or our chicken noodle soups with salt. Start trying new flavors, learn how to cook. Teach your children to like artichokes and spinach. Make simple dishes and taste all the flavors. Enjoy what you eat! And the end of your meal, lean back and say, “Ah, now that was really good…”

Les salades

2009-10-28T09:50:00.000-07:00

With all the richness and extravagance we normally associate with French cooking, it’s easy to overlook one of the simplest, most wonderful staples of every meal: the salad. I like the way salad is done in France. It’s always easy, always fresh, and best of all, always there. Often no more than a handful of romaine leaves and “la sauce”, or a quick handmade dressing, the starter salad is essential to accompany the first course of a meal (usually a dish made of seasonal vegetables as well). I’m talking everyday cooking, of course, and it’d be a good habit to incorporate this simple pile of greens (or otherwise vividly colored produce) into the beginning of every meal.

It’s important to think as well that a salad need not be—or even, for a starter, should not be—an elaborate dish, complete with tomatoes, onions, eggs, croutons, and grated cheese. A few crisp leaves, something fresh to throw on top (if you have it), and that’s that.

Some common salads I’ve had in France:

--lettuce (the most common, and yes, just the lettuce)

--quartered tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, and tuna

--lettuce, slices of goat cheese, and croutons

--boiled artichoke

--quartered figs and pears

--half an avocado, eaten with a spoon out of the shell

--radishes with salt and butter

*And everything goes with the vinaigrette (recipe follows)

Now let’s compare this to what Americans are eating as salads in the most popular restaurant chains in the country. I personally never order salads at a restaurant, because I don’t see the reason in spending $10-15 for something I could make in 10 minutes at home. But for those who order salads because they think they’re going to feel better afterwards about what they ate…well, they’re just plain fooling themselves.

The Cheesecake Factory’s Tossed Green Salad includes chopped greens, croutons, tomato wedges, cucumber slices and shredded carrots, zucchini, and beets. It has 189 calories according to calorielab.com (the restaurant provides no nutrition information on its food). A little bit too many ingredients for a side, but not bad. On the other hand, The Cheesecake Factory’s starter Caesar Salad with Chicken is 976 calories. Yup, that’s about half the calories you need in a day (the full portion has 1699).

Olive Garden’s popular unlimited-refill Garden-Fresh Salad has 350 calories per one serving with dressing (120 without the dressing) according to its own nutrition information. Add on the breadsticks and that’s enough calories for one meal already.

I think it’s generally well known that the fast-food salads are not even better for you than their burgers. To prove the point: McDonald’s Premium Bacon Ranch Salad with Crispy Chicken and Ranch Dressing has 540 calories, as listed on their website. A Quarter Pounder with Cheese has 510 calories.

While I think it’s a good practice to be aware of how many calories basic foods contain, I myself don’t make a habit of counting calories. Nor do I think of salads as necessarily “health food.” Salads can be rich, creamy, cheesy calorie bombs too. But the point to list out the calories here is that salads as starters to your meal are not by nature elaborate, calorific creatures. On the contrary, they’re an opportunity to enjoy the flavors of the season fresh and simple. And that always turns out healthy too.

***
Buy dressing? Quelle idée!

Recipe for the French version of French dressing, “La Sauce”:

Extra virgin olive oil
Balsamic vinegar
Dijon mustard
Salt

First mix a good spoon of mustard with about 2 counts of balsamic vinegar. Whisk in (or stir in well with a fork) 2 counts of olive oil, until smooth. Salt.

Of course the better quality ingredients you have, the better this will taste. Heinz yellow mustard is not allowed here (I hope I didn’t even have to mention that, but just in case . . .)! Apart from that, this is not rocket science. Lacking all tools and know-how, you could just drizzle olive oil over your greens and add a squeeze of lemon. I purposely didn’t give specific measurements of each ingredient; try to experiment with the percentages and see which pleases you. I myself like the vinaigrette rather strong and thick, with a lot of mustard.

Making vinaigrettes in general is very, very simple. You basically need two components—an oil and an acid, with other ingredients as you like. The oil is usually olive oil, but can surely also be a nut oil. The acid is usually some kind of vinegar, but can also be the juice of a lemon, lime, or other citrus. To go the way of making a dressing—thicker and creamier—add cream, yogurt, or cheese. To make a sweet dressing, add sugar or honey. If you’re in need of a stronger flavor, add fresh herbs, soy sauce or nuoc mam (Vietnamese fish sauce), or even chilies. The possibilities are endless.

Hopefully by now you have already gone to your pantry and thrown out the bottles of orange stuff labeled “French dressing.” And all other plastic squeeze bottles. I’m particularly wary of the one called “Thousand Island.” What is that? I heard once that it was every condiment mixed together, ‘kamikaze’ style. At any rate, it’s probably mostly ketchup and mayonnaise mixed together, which is sick and gross.

Have a look at the ingredients on the label of your store-bought dressings. If there’s more than five, it’s no good to you. If one of the first ingredients is sugar (likely), it goes bye-bye. The ingredient list for Hidden Valley Fat Free French Style Dressing follows:

Ingredients: water, sugar, corn syrup, distilled vinegar, tomato paste, salt, honey, less than 1% of garlic, onion, spices, modified food starch, natural flavor, hydrolyzed corn gluten, autolyzed yeast extract, partially hydrogenated soybean & cottonseed oil, oleoresin paprika, xanthan gum, propylene glycol alginate, sodium benzoate & potassium sorbet (preservatives). Calcium duodenum delta (to protect flavor). A trivial amount of fat is added by the oils.

Compare that to four ingredients for the vinaigrette I gave above. Now which do you prefer?

***
Ce que j’aime le plus des salades françaises, c’est la simplicité. Avant ma venue en France, je n’ai jamais même pensé à faire une salade avec uniquement de la laitue et de la vinaigrette, comme on le voit ici dans toutes les assiettes le soir. Pour moi, une salade devait être composée : des tomates, des œufs, des carottes, des concombres; sinon, ce n’était pas la peine de la préparer. Maintenant, j’ai changé d’avis; en fait il n’y a pas besoin de faire trop compliqué pour une bonne salade. C’est-à-dire, une salade comme entrée est meilleure quand on n’utilise que deux ou trois ingrédients, afin de prendre plaisir à sentir tous les fruits et les légumes frais de la saison sans distraction.

Les américains ont tendance à faire des salades trop lourdes, un peu superflu (du moins si nous en préparons une pour le dîner). Mais ce qu’il y a de pire ceux sont les sauces que nous utilisons pour étouffer les crudités: la “French” sauce, la Catalina, la César, la Ranch, ou encore la Thousand Island, qui est la pire. Toutes ont des couleurs vraiment affreuses et ont leur eau et leur sucre énumérés comme les deux premiers ingrédients.

Moi, je préfère prendre la sauce vinaigrette avec ma salade, s’il vous plait!

A potato salad to be proud of

2009-10-26T14:45:00.000-07:00

Summer may be the time for picnics and potato salads, but now it’s fall, the time for turtlenecks and all things orange! Well, except oranges, but I prefer sweet potatoes anyways. What a perfect way to transition from summer into fall—sweet potato salad, which is better looking, more nutritious, and definitely more glamorous than its humble cousin, the regular potato salad.

The original recipe is Mark Bittman’s: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/dining/30mini.html?_r=1&ref=dining.

I didn’t follow his recipe exactly—not out of choice, but because I didn’t have all his ingredients on hand. I used kidney beans instead of black beans, white onion instead of red, parsley instead of cilantro, lemon instead of lime, and I omitted the jalapeno entirely. And voilà!—the salad was still beautiful and delicious. Red onion would have been better than white, but the other substitutions worked just fine. For a real southwest flavor, however, you would have to use lime, cilantro, and jalapeno.

Sweet Potato Salad

2-3 sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed
can of kidney beans
one red onion, chopped
one red or yellow bell pepper, diced
lots of parsley

for the dressing:
minced garlic
olive oil
juice of one lemon
salt and pepper

The only time-consuming part of this dish is the first step: roasting the sweet potatoes, onion, and bell pepper together, which takes about 40 minutes. You will want to roast them rather than boil them because that way they retain more flavor and texture when mixed, so take the time to do it. When the potatoes are tender, throw in the other ingredients, and you’ll have a gorgeous salad on your hands!

Cuisses de grenouille

2009-10-19T13:17:00.000-07:00

Yes, French people really do eat frog legs. Going for the stereotype, I tried a plate at a restaurant in Dijon. They weren't bad--the texture resembling fish, I would say, more than chicken. That makes more sense anyways. It is a pain, however, to pick around all the tiny bones. Other than that, and the thought that I was eating a pile of plucked-off legs from about 9 frogs, they were not bad at all.

Le gratin de courgettes

2009-10-19T13:06:00.000-07:00

Ce plat ressemble au classique gratin dauphinois, une spécialité de la région Rhône-Alpes, où se trouve Grenoble. Ici, le gratin dauphinois est le plat dont tout le monde assure que le meilleur est celui de sa grand-mère. Normalement le gratin dauphinois est fait de patates. Dans ce cas le gratin est fait avec des courgettes, c’est également délicieux (du moins moi je le pense). La touche secrète est la crème de soja, qui donne un goût plus riche qu’en ajoutant la crème seulement. J’imagine qu’on peut aussi le faire avec l’aubergine, ou n’importe quelle sorte de légume ayant une texture absorbante et douce.

La recette du gratin de courgettes :

1 grosse courgette
crème de soja
crème
gruyère râpé (facultatif)
ail, 4 à 5 gousses
sel et poivre
beurre , pour beurrer le plat

Couper la courgette en fine rondelles, les saler et les faire cuire à l'eau légèrement salée ou à la vapeur 10 minutes.
Les déposer dans quelques serviettes en papier et les écraser à la fourchette de façon à ce que le surplus de liquide s'égoutte.
Mettre la pulpe des courgettes dans un plat allant au four, ajouter la crème et la crème de soja, saler, poivrer. Ajouter les gousses d'ail hachées finement au couteau.
Y ajouter le gruyère râpé.
Malaxer bien à la fourchette, directement dans le plat de cuisson.
Recouvrir avec le reste de gruyère râpé.
Mettre à four chaud (210°) 15 minutes et faire gratiner au grill deux ou trois minutes.Peut se manger chaud, tiède ou froid.

***

A classic example of regional cuisine in the Rhone-Alps is 'gratin Dauphinois.' Here, this is the dish that everyone will tell you their grandmother is THE best at making, hands down. You may be already familiar with potatoes au gratin, a similar dish to gratin Dauphinois, but have you thought of trading in the potatoes for zucchini? It makes for a completely new dish, and more colorful at that.

A gratin is basically two ingrediants: your vegetable of choice (zucchini in this case, usually potato) cut thinly into rounds, and cream. It is then baked, forming a consolidated mass of creamy softness. For more flavor add minced garlic and shredded cheese, and of course liberal amounts of salt and pepper. A gratin Dauphinois uses nutmeg, which is always nice. If your heart labors at the thought of eating something swimming in cream, substitute milk for half of it.

What makes this recipe special is that I use half regular (dairy) cream and half soy cream (apparently cream from soy...I'm not sure on the English name because I'd never heard of this before coming to France). The resulting flavor is wonderfully rich, with an intriguing taste of je ne sais quoi...

Zucchini Gratin

1 large zucchini

cream

soy cream

garlic, 4-5 cloves

shredded swiss or gruyere cheese

salt and pepper

butter to grease the pan

Stripe the zucchini with a peeler and cut thinly into rounds. Cook by boiling or steaming.

Drain the zucchini and blot with paper towels to remove all excess water.

Grease a casserole dish with butter and layer in the zucchini. Add the cream, soy cream, garlic, and most of the cheese. Salt and pepper. Use a fork to mash down the layers, and spread the rest of the cheese over the top.

Bake at 400 F for 15 minutes, then broil for 2 or 3 minutes to brown the cheese on top.

Le gâteau d’anniversaire de Cristina

2009-10-19T12:56:00.000-07:00

Pour son 59ème anniversaire, Cristina, la femme argentine avec qui j’habite, a fait une petite soirée. Bien que ce soit son propre anniversaire, elle a fait le dîner elle-même : un rôti de bœuf, un gratin de courgettes, une salade de tomates (comme on est en France, il n’y a pas besoin de parler du pain et du vin). Après le repas, c’était l’heure du gâteau—ou plutôt des gâteaux, comme il y en avait deux. Santiago et Nina, le fils de Cristina et son amie, avaient apporté une tarte au citron, et moi j’avais fait un petit gâteau au chocolat, modelé comme un cœur, avec un simple mais délicieux glaçage de framboises sur le dessus. On a donc mis 59 bougies sur les deux gâteaux, on a éteint les lumières, on a chanté « Joyeux Anniversaire », et Cristina a soufflé toutes les bougies en même temps. En Argentine, on a trois vœux pour ça !

La recette du glaçage aux framboises :

1 unité de fromage frais
1 unité de beurre, sans sel
environ 1 unité de sucre glace
des framboises

Ramollir le beurre et le fromage frais. Mélanger les au sucre glace, jusqu’à que le mélange soit lisse. Ecraser les framboises dans le glaçage, en en conservant quelques-unes pour la décoration. Mettre le tout au frigidaire pour tenir frais.

***

In Grenoble I live with a wonderful Argentine woman named Cristina. For the occasion of her 59th birthday recently she had me, her son Santiago, and his girlfriend Nina over for dinner. We enjoyed a pork roast and gratin aux courgettes (zucchini gratin), after which we stuck 59 candles on 2 cakes and sang Joyeuse Anniversaire! Santiago and Nina had brought a lemon tarte, and I had made a little heart-shaped chocolate cake with raspberry cream cheese frosting.

The frosting takes just a minute to make. It's about a third each cream cheese, butter, and powdered sugar. Start with the cream cheese and the butter at room temperature, mixing with a spoon, and add in the powdered sugar until the texture is smooth and the sweetness is to your liking. Then mash some raspberries inside, and the frosting becomes a beautiful pink dotted with plushy red spots. In the French recipe I used "fromage frais", which is a soft cheese similar to cream cheese, as cream cheese is not widely available in France.