A Quiet Sunday at Home

 T'is rare to have a quiet Sunday this time of year. I often feel that the fall is the most intense and stressful part of my year. In the spring, the new warmth and light bring energy aplenty, and I start juggling touring days with my kids' activities and school. I weed the garden and plant. I certainly keep busy. But the excitement of spring plus the rest and calm of late winter bouy me forth.

Fall however is my busiest moment of the year. School starts up again. Activities must be scheduled and put into place. New arrivals are to be welcomed and integrated into our family. The house is put back in order after the summer rentals. And, to top it off, it is the time of the year that I've seemingly non-stop tours. I'm grateful for the work, don't get me wrong. But it does require some expert juggling, and infinite levels of energy to care for all concerned, and not have a house that's a wreck, an empty cupboard, nor children stranded at school till all hours. Oh yes, and happy clients.

 And so, a short and quiet day (I've a concert tonight with my choir) is a true delight. The kids are with their father, the weather is spectacular, and I've the time to care for our chickens (we've three since last March), sweep out their house and lay fresh straw, change their water, give them grain and soaked stale bread, plus some time pecking and scratching in the garden.

 Filou is now a chicken herder. From his experience herding terribly pregnant goats (a while back now...) to today's mini-escapade, it seems that his Bichon/Poodle roots have some herding instincts in there somewhere. In any case, my chickens were not allowed to amble out of the garden too far before he dashed over to them and barked/ran them back to their pen. I was at first afraid he might go after them in earnest, and then realized that in fact, they were flocking to the safety of their pen, not into his jaws. Oh... interesting, and I suppose rather helpful.

 A while back I wrote about the building of the hen house (in exchange for a tango weekend with a dear friend). But as I didn't write much last year (or at all?) I haven't shared our joy in having 3 fresh eggs daily for the past six months. And, not only for ourselves but also for my summer renters who arrived to a note on the fridge

"There are 3 chickens in the back of the garden, please give them your scraps and left overs, with some grain and stale bread from the shed. Change their water once in the week, and they'll pay you back with many fresh eggs"

They've  been a hit with us all.

All summer I've proudly shared my favorite lunch - a fresh fried egg on my toasted multi-grain bread with fresh tomatoes from the garden, drizzled over with the olive oil from Paul Pierre (retired goat cheese maker). And I enjoy it still as the tomatoes continue to ripen and enliven my cuisine, and the eggs keep a'coming.

 This weekend's bounty includes a bowl full of ripe tomatoes, a couple loaves of my no-knead multi-grain bread, and a batch of raspberry muffins. The recipe for the latter is below:

A variation of one of my standards:

3 cups semi-whole wheat flour
1 cup non-bleached sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups plus turned raw milk (this can be replaced with yogurt) or enough to fully moisten the dry ingredients
2 eggs (mine are pretty small, so maybe just one large egg)
1/3 cup cold-pressed sunflower oil
a handful or more of summer raspberries (kept in the freezer for just this purpose)

Bake at 200/400 till puffed up and lightly browned. (about 15-20 minutes depending on your oven)

Remove from the oven, let cool, and warn the kids to not burn their tongues on the raspberries!

Left-overs, presto, changeo = veggie burgers....

Okay, more getting nourishing things into un-suspecting children. I really did a doozy on them last night. My first veggie burgers. Oh, I've made Erick's cereal gallettes many times (5 flakes, grated cheese, chopped onion, herbes de Provence, eggs, salt, fried in olive oil and served with soy sauce). But this time I worked with what was in the house:

Camargue red wild rice (about 2 cups cooked went in)
my last evening's lentils (lentils, onion, garlic, carrots, a touch of cloves and curry) - about one cup
my other last evening's walnut sauce (walnuts, almonds, garlic, olive oil, water, salt) - 1/4 cup, that's all that was left.
grated gruyère cheese, - a good handful with a bit more by special request from Leo
eggs (three)
more minced garlic (onions would be picked out by Jonas)
salt

I tried frying it in oil and it all fell apart, so, I added some whole wheat flour as a binder and tried again.

Perfect! They even looked like burgers. And yes, in this at least half-way American household (living in Avignon, mostly French, but...) ketchup was on the table. What can I say? I've raised ketchup (organic when possible) eaters, not mustard folk. I know, I'm abérrante. I've already shocked the new beau with such glaring lack of class (hey, I do well on other fronts, but well, isn't ketchup a vegetable? Lysine any one?).

Result -- they loved them! Even Jonas! I kept the recipe a secret though. No allowing for potential dissention in the ranks.

Feeling a bit more here

The house is getting in order. I'm putting away things as they should be, getting the kids' rooms ready for them, watering the garden and just re-investing it all with my energy and presence.

I've refreshed my sourdough bread starter (I stashed it into the freezer for the summer, upon the recommendation of Shirley Corriher in Cookwise) -- or rather I'm in the midst of refreshing it and have added flour and water to it to double its volume now for two days in a row. However, it isn't bubbling fiercely as yet, so I'll wait another day or two to make bread.

I've picked and simmered and canned elderberry syrup, sirop des baies de sureau, for this winter's various throat ailments (though it's rare that the boys are sick, Jonas has been known to cough occasionally). They were there, abundant on the trees, and I'm here. Thus, why not?

It was easy. I got out the ladder, my scissors and a basket and harvested away. Then I brushed the berries into a tub of water with my fingers to remove the stems and wash them, also sift out the dried or green berries, the branches, etc. I put them in my big copper jam pot with two litres of water and two plus 2/3 (all I had) kilos of sugar. I simmered for a bit. Then turned it off and let it sit over night. Then I mixed the whole batch in the blender -- breaking up the berries-- and put it back onto simmer. Then I poured through a strainer, pressing with a silicon spatula to get the least bit out. And voila. Now, no doubt, I should sterilize them. I don't think my quantity of sugar is enough to truly preserve. There was more juice in the berries than I anticipated, and I've quite a bit made. It was only 2 litres of water, but I've 2 bottles (750ml) and 3 jars (500ml).


In fact, the final product is a bit bland and vegetal in flavor. Though it is gorgeously deep purple and enticing to the eye, it won't replace black currant syrup for drinks or kyr any time soon.

Meantime, kidless for the week, I'm living a night life as I've rarely done since my youth. The days are too hot to be up and about (after 11AM that is) and the evenings are wonderfully refreshing and pleasant. There are tango balls all over the region, and so off I go. Being a night owl is not helping me get over jet lag. Quite the contrary. But as I'm able to work somewhat during the day (translations, email list, missive to the world for my tourism business, writing, letters, articles, etc.,) I don't feel completely slothful -- though definitely somewhat.

It is always such a strange thing to have time on one's hands. Once you become a mother, run a household, have a job, a thousand things to do daily, etc., it is simply surreal to be mellow and to discover you have time to read a novel -- if quite lovely. It looks like I'll be finishing Wolf Hall (all about the Tudors and Thomas Cromwell) by this weekend.

Tomorrow a few more errands, perhaps a bike ride? and more writing. Thus, perhaps, I'll feel virtuous and useful, if only briefly.

The simplest of meals

Friends called. They're on their way over. Or rather, lovely people I've yet to meet but exchanged on FB with and who've apparently been reading my blog for ages... or since its inception. Cool! She's a Franco-american artist with connections to Salvador Dali (wow!), he's an American composer (of tango music no less!) who also knows a childhood friend/composer/musician of mine and they're moving to my city. People who scorn cars (oh how I would as well if only...) and who've adopted a frugal but extraordinarily rich life-style over the years. My kind of folk?


What to feed them? Coffee at 11 is easy... but when noontime comes around? What then? I've not had time to shop for days (lots of touring clients-- thank you universe), so the fridge is not what you'd call full (at least of fresh veggies and fruit which to my mind means the larder is empty!).


Hey, remember? I've a garden, and in it there's garlic waiting to be harvested - I've followed Sharyn's advice to let it grow and then begin to wilt before bringing it in. Perfect... And all those potatoes I planted, why not dig up some little new ones now? Ah, little tiny red ones and nice sized yellow mona-lisas... Next? The last of the peas would be a lovely green garnish. And I can't forget the herb garden, some lemon thyme? basil? both small and large leaf.. Then dessert, a couple strawberries ripened by the sun?


With all these in hand I put on water for the pasta to boil, and started chopping, mashing, crushing, mincing, and voila, lunch was nearly ready. A few drizzles of my last bottle of JP's olive oil (wonder if I'll get more one day??) some sea salt, fresh baked bread (the timing on that at least was perfect), a bottle of organic rosé (yup, one of my last bottles of this too... ) and a meal is on the table.

Thank you garden! Thank you house! Thank you friends! Thank you Provence!

Hazelnut chocolate topped cake.

With friends coming over, and the prospect of an early birthday celebration, I got busy making the most scrumptious cake. The only problem is I'm not certain I'll be able to recreate it. As the French say, I often cook and bake in the haphazard fashion known as 'pif.' I've simply been baking since I could read and I've internalized basic proportions for nearly everything I make regularly from cookies, to muffins, to bread, to cakes, to soda bread, to biscuits, to cereal bars... You get the picture. However, this is a rather dangerous thing to do if and when you make a particularly scrumptious dish. How to recreate it faithfully?

To up my chances, I'll write down here what I can remember of it... There are no photos (it went too quickly) but I remember the moistness, the flavor...

I began with 2 cups flour and 1 cup hazelnut meal (I love nut meals, and my friend was someone who limits the gluten in her diet)
1 teaspoon baking soda
a pinch of salt
1 1/2 cups whey (I made fresh ricotta last week from turned milk and kept the liquid for just this kind of thing -- may be replaced with yogurt or turned milk). -- the lactic acid base with baking soda is something I've been doing ever since reading Nourishing Traditions (see my book list on the side). The idea that the wheat flour be somewhat broken down by the lactic acid, and the more nourishing aspect of baking soda to baking powder...

Mix together till a paste, then add:
1 egg

In the mixer I put 2/3 a stick of sweet butter and 1 1/2 cups of unbleached sugar. I blended till fully mixed, then added perhaps 1/4 cup cold pressed sunflower oil and 1/2 teaspoon ground vanilla bean. This whipped up nicely, and I added an egg, and perhaps a second egg (making a total of 4 for the recipe)

I then poured the flour/egg/whey mixture into the mixmaster with the butter/eggs/sugar. I mixed till blended, and then poured it all into a non-stick cake pan and into my pre-heated oven (170C/350F) and let it cook till set (perhaps 40-50 minutes? it was a convection, so it goes faster than other ovens).

Remove from the oven and let sit till cooled, transfer to a cake plate.

In a small sauce pan melt 150 grams of chocolate, (5oz) with 1/4 cup water and 1/4 cup sweet butter. Blend till smooth, add a touch of cream (or in my case soy cream, I had none of the real stuff on hand) and whisk. Let cool a bit and then pour over the cake, smoothing it up the sides. Let it all cool and set a couple of hours and then serve as a lovely snack for tea time, or as dessert. As you would expect, the left-overs disappear at breakfast.

Acacia Beignets

What a glorious world this is that provides such lovely possibilities for my kitchen and my table!

The blossoms are coming in on many a tree, and yes, they are edible. A special treat at this time of year is Acacia flower beignet. The Acacia flowers grow like grapes and Wysteria, in hanging clumps. They are comestible and delicious. So, I sent the kids out to gather a few and prepared a simple beignet batter with:

2 eggs
1/3 cup flour
1/3 cup milk
1/3-1/2 cup water

I whisked this all together till it was of a light cream texture. Then I heated up some frying oil (cold-pressed, organic sunflower), dipped my flowers into the batter and began frying. It took no time at all to have a tray full.

I sprinkled them with powdered sugar and brought them out to my hungry crowd.

Oh what a pleasure!

Alongside the Acacia was my elder tree coming into bloom. I gathered the elderflowers, along with a few of the acacia and made syrup as I do every spring. Do see my post from last year on the many possibilities of syrups for the kids from my garden:

Elderflower syrup

Left-over potatoes? Gnocchi!

Oh joy of joys, I actually made enough mashed potatoes the other night (with lots of fresh milk, butter and salt) to have left-overs (not easy when you've a house with 4 boys with ever-developing hollow legs).

Thus yesterday evening a my 5 litre mixing bowl not quite half full of potatoes was enhanced with 3 fresh eggs and a few cups of flour. Oh dear, you'd like exact proportions? Well, let's say my hands did the talking? I mushed and mashed with my fingers, adding flour a cup at a time till I got to a nice soft play dough texture. Think extremely fresh, super soft.

I then poured some flour on my work surface, took out a handful of gnocchi dough and rolled it with the palms of my hands to make a boudin, aka a rope of dough about 1 1/2 inches in diameter. I got out a knife and cut my way down the rope, at half inch intervals. I placed these gnocchi on a baking sheet (in anticipation of a nice bath of salted boiling water) and continued the process till all my dough was rolled, cut and prepped.

I was making a lot, two large bowls' full if you will, as we were seven at the table, five being hungry boys, and one being myself, an incorrigible gourmande.

Once the water was at a roaring boil, in went my gnocchi -- in batches which didn't crowd the water too much. I covered the pot for a moment, checked two minutes later. Saw they were floating on the surface and ladled them out into my serving dish. A drizzle of olive oil on top, and on to the next batch.

I put cream, cheese, nutmeg, salt, tomato sauce and such on the table. The kids served themselves as they pleased and we all went to bed with nice round tummies.

Tonight, I'll reheat the left-overs in a frying pan with olive oil. Once they've browned a tad, I'll add a touch of cream and some tomato sauce, perhaps some fried bacon, and an option of fresh goat cheese???

The sky's the limit.

A Lady Cake for Yvonne

Well, apparently yesterday was grandmother's day in France. Nicolas shared this news with us Friday (having learned it from his girlfriend) and so I got to work preparing the cake and vegetables for the family meal on Sunday at the winery.

And, for reasons unknown, a favorite cake from my childhood browsings of Joy of Cooking (1960 edition) came to mind. As we all know everything is findable on the internet, and so not having the book on hand, I was still able to find a good copy of the recipe:

1 cup butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup milk
3 cups flour (I believe this is for pastry flour, as I had 65 grade meant for breads, I ended up using 2 1/2 cups)
1 tablespoon baking powder
6 beaten egg whites
and I added a pinch of salt...

Without a proper electric beater (the winery is only minimally equipped for those who enjoy cooking and baking) I had to use a fork to mash the softened butter (I'd left it out on the counter, happily) into the sugar. I then added some of the milk, then some of the flour, etc., etc., till I got to a thick paste. I then mixed in a third of the egg whites, followed by the rest. Not having a spatula, I simply mixed gently, but no doubt lost some of the lightness and air the egg whites might have conveyed if treated more gently.

The cake baked up easily in the mini-oven -- though it took over an hour. A. because the oven is pretty dinky, and B. because the batter is quite heavy. A light sponge cake this is not.

While the cake baked, I made an orange syrup to pour over it with the juice of two oranges and a cup plus of sugar. I also prepared the ingredients for my ganache topping: 200 grams finely chopped dark baking chocolate, 100ml light cream and three pats of sweet butter.

Once the cake was out of the oven, flipped onto a plate and dowsed in syrup, I got to work heating my cream for the ganache. I poured the hot cream over the chopped chocolate, blended it together to "faire une mayonnaise" as they say here, and then added the butter till blended as well.


In the past I've used lemon juice/orange juice and powdered sugar to make a simple glaze for this cake with very good results.

The ganache went on smoothely, and the cake awaited the next day partly in the fridge, and partly on the dining table. Yum!

Oh yes, just to keep things amusing, I made a crême anglaise to accompany the cake: 2 cups milk, 5 egg yolks and a 1/3 cup sugar. Heat the first, blend the sugar into the egg yolks, add some of the heated milk to the egg yolks, whisking, then pour the egg yolks into the milk in the sauce pan (heavy bottomed, stainless recommended). Whisk and whisk and whisk, -- as the milk is already quite hot, this goes very very quickly. In a couple of minutes the milk had thickened. I removed the cream from the stove, poured it into a cooler and shallower recipient, whisked some more, and let it cool. Perfect to dollop atop the cake the next day.

A nourishing spring/end of winter dish

My kids aren't big beans eaters. The dried variety that is. I can easily get them to consume lentils and chick peas, but beans, chilli, etc., well, they just weren't raised with them, and don't particularly like the texture farineuse of these most nourishing of foods. Yes, I admit to neglecting their culinary education on this level. I shall endeavor to remedy the situation. However, when they scorn the most delicious chilli con carne of my brother, who is a superb cook... t'is not easy.

However, I do like beans, be they red, white, black or green. And so does JP. So, to nourish my hard-working man as he shoveled, dug, and transplanted in the garden, then hammered away on my shed, I set some classic little flagelets beans to soak the night before, and put them on to cook late morning.

I chopped up the onion and shallot I had on hand, smashed and chopped coarsely perhaps 6 cloves of garlic, drizzled some olive oil in the bottom of a casserole and got to work.

To make life interesting, and the dish of course, I put in perhaps 6 whole cloves (clous de girofle), a teaspoon of cumin seeds, a teaspoon of white pepper corns and a teaspoon of powdered paprika.

While the spices and onions were toasted a bit in the oil, I added 4 organic sausages, and some chopped prosciutto that I had on hand.

When the onions and garlic were sweated -- and long before the garlic could burn, I put in the beans and I liberally covered with water. I then added 2 tablespoons of sesame paste (taking a note from Mark Bittman's suggested uses of peanut butter to thicken and add depth to the dish), a sprinkle of salt, 3 or 4 large bay leaves from my tree outside and left my dish to simmer.

I wanted to cook the dish on my wood stove, but, as the beans had a ways to cook, I quickly saw that for us to eat at a convenient hour within the range of what is locally believed to be lunch time (between noon and twoPM), I needed to have more of a rolling simmer going on than a gentle back burner blub blub.

Once the beans were soft I added a cup of tomato sauce (I'd read that beans don't soften in acidulated liquid, thus I held off adding the tomatoes till the beans were properly cooked), and a cup and a half of (organic) canned corn. The dish continued simmering gently till we were ready to eat.

Some simple rice, JP's lovely red vin de pays, a salad and a cheese plate rounded out the meal. Yum! Just what was needed as the humidity and chill descended on what had been a gorgeous morning, and what was going to be a misty and moist evening.

chocolate delights

Okay, so, it's vacation, I'm hanging out in the house (fearful of the strong winds outside), writing, editing, working on the computer, but also hosting 8 year old Jonas and his best friend. After feeding them a simple lunch of pasta and sauce and some grated carrots like a good mom, I became (as often is the case) tempted by the idea of a snack for them.

But, I've not gone shopping for a bit, and it was a classic situation of what can I make with the ingredients I have in the house?

Two eggs
no butter, but a 1/3 cup of palm oil (in its natural bar form, solid at room temperature)
sugar
1/2 a cooked sweet potato
chocolate (a staple, right?) in this case 3/4 of a bar of 200g

So, I can't make classic brownies - not enough eggs
nor am I making a buttery concoction
and it would be nice to use up this sweet potato...

So, the following was produced, and you know, the kids are in heaven! I'm documenting this as quickly as possible, while the approx. quantities are still in my memory.

Included with the above were the basics below:

1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/3 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon salt

I melted my 60% chocolate bar with the palm oil in a pan on the wood stove
Meantime I mashed the sweet potato (about 1/3 cup all told) with the two eggs, adding in the 1/2 cup of sugar. It wasn't completely pureed, but the lumps were small enough to be lost in the batter.
I then let the chocolate mixture cool a bit before adding it to the eggs, along with the vanilla and salt. I then whisked in the flour and baking powder.

The kids requested muffins. So, I poured the batter into my molds, and Jonas was then inspired to top them all off with mini-chocolate chips.

Not even 10 minutes later, in my 175C/385F oven (convection) the delights were puffed up. I turned off the oven and waited a moment before removing them. They are fragile, but moist and yummy.

Yield - 14 muffins. Enough for two little boys and their mommy.

Crêpes and Such

As I browse amongst my friends' blogs on France I realize I neglected to mention la Chandeleur, or the mid-winter celebration marking the slow return of the sun. It is always fêted with piles of crêpes.

As I do my research into this celebration, I learn its pagan and Celtic roots: amidst the many references of Latin and Roman times, is one to a Northern European tradition of chandelours, or the equivalent of the American groundhog day but in favor of watching the behavior of the bear as he creeps out from hibernation as an indicator of the length of winter, ours meaning bear. The imagery is rather marvelous, no?

Then there is the day of Brigid or Imbolc the 1st of February, linked to the Celts, and a day of candles, or chandelles, bringing purification and fertility to the land before the spring plantings.

As generally happened, the Christian church chose the dates already on the celebration calendar to position a festival of their choosing. In this case it became the day to mark Jesus' presentation at the Temple, and the purification of the Virgin Mary. Thus, the use of blessed candels is approved, and all is made right. He who brings a lit candle all the way home from church without it being snuffed out by the cold wind will not die this year.


Celui qui la rapporte chez lui allumée
Pour sûr ne mourra pas dans l’année

However, those crêpes which persist as the layman's symbol are rich in imagery: the round disk of the sun, the golden possibilities of a good harvest, lay away the first made and the year will be bountiful, flip it with your right hand with agility and perfection while holding a gold piece in your left and your luck will be assured throughout the year...

As does still happen on occasion, my American roots overwhelm my French persona and I am more in tune to Presidents' Day and the fall Jewish holidays (I am a former New Yorker) than to the French holiday calendar. And so, it was my children who announced to me as we drove home from school on February 2 that it was crêpe day and thus my other offers of other snackfoods were swept from the table.

Happily, these children are pre-teens and children of cooks all, thus with but a bit of guidance from me (I made the pâte à crêpe, batter, and cut it with water as I really didn't want to see all the milk I'd just gotten at the farm Sunday be used up by Tuesday afternoon!)they attacked the project with gusto.

I also suggested -- remembering a past crêpe event this fall -- that they put their small ladelful of batter in the pan, swirl and then pour out the extra into the mixing bowl, to ensure thin crêpes, even if this method leaves a bit of a tail on the crêpe.

Stacks of crêpes were made for their afternoon snack. But then, it didn't stop there. Carnival was slated for Thursday at school and the older classes were to bring in ten crêpes each as their contribution (for Jonas' class the request was fruit juice and home made cakes). Thus the project was repeated Wednesday night.

Being the mom I am... I was fine with them cooking and using all my utensils, but... I draw the line at being the clean-up slave. With more than a bit of nudging, I was able to get them to clean up the stove top of cooked-on drips, and their pans, bowls, whisks, spatulas, etc., The floor was my job. No one's perfect.

And as I do so, I remember the canon about the Jour de Chandeleur that we sang during my Steiner/Waldorf training... if only I could grasp than the first line in my head.

Our crêpe batter for a very large pile:

La Pâte à Crêpe

3 eggs
enough flour whisked in to make a paste
1/4 cup of water whisked in to thin the paste
more flour till thick again
milk slowly whisked in till thinned to a batter texture
now switch to water and keep adding till you've a light cream texture
a pinch of salt
1 tablespoon of sugar
and optionally: a 1/4 teaspoon vanilla or a scrape of a vanilla bean

Ideally you have a short sided crêpe pan, but if not, a non-stick frying pan will do. We do rub it with a bit of butter on a paper towl nonetheless, get it hot and pour in a ladel of batter. Swirl around to cover the bottom and pour out the excess. With practice you'll get the size of your ladelful just right and no longer need to pour out the excess, improving the overall look of your crêpe.

Cook till it starts to bubble up with air from below, flip with style or with a spatula. Let cook a couple seconds on the reverse side and flip out onto a plate. Continue.

A Winter Soup -- 'Chinese style'

Whenever I roast a chicken or a rabbit I toss the post-meal bones into a stock pot with a few herbs, perhaps an onion, cover them with water and make stock. With the wood stove going nearly non-stop, it serves as the perfect slow simmering spot to draw out the flavors from those bones over a twenty-four hour period.

Once I've my two to three cups of stock, I drain it through a sieve -- putting the scraps outside for Filou and his friends to devour. It is then ready to add to my kids' current favorite soup.

This is my cheap, nourishing winter meal.

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 carrots peeled and diced very small
one onion diced very small
1 quart of water
my chicken stock
one organic vegetable bouillon cube
a handful of frozen peas and/or corn
A package of Asian rice noodles
some soy sauce to taste




I drizzle the oil on the bottom of the stock pot, toss in the carrots and onions (or if I'm getting a bit daring, chopped leeks and cabbage, but I'm afraid my kids weren't too psyched to recognize these green bits in their soup this past time), lightly sweat these before covering with the liquid ingredients, adding in the bouillon cube and letting simmer till soft (about 30 minutes on my wood stove). I then add in the peas and/or corn and the rice noodles. When the rice noodles are tender, I check the flavor, add a bit of soy sauce and serve.

The kids get a kick out of mastering chop sticks. They already are fans of gomasio (sesame salt) and add it if needed to punch up the flavor.

The broth fills them up, as do the noodles. Warmed from within, homework and bed to follow come naturally on this dark winter's night.

Cheesecake.... How I love it still

Here I am, living in France, surrounded by superb pastries, butter creams, éclairs, religieuses, ganâches to die for, tartes aux abricots... and yet, I yearn for a good old fashioned cheesecake.

Over the years, I've made attempts in this direction. At one point I purchased tubs of fromage blanc, dumped them into a (very clean and not soapy perfumed) dish cloth and squeezed as much liquid as possible out of these lovely textured dairies to render them if not as solid as Philadelphia Cream Cheese, then at least less fluid than they had been.

Then I pretty much gave up on the traditional New York style cheesecake (excepting when someone snuck me some cream cheese in from the States), and opted for ricotta (here known as brousse or broccio) cheesecakes. These have a grainier texture, which can be somewhat smoothed out in a mixer, and over the years became a standard dessert during the cooking courses. But though I was able to make them interesting (honey and spices, orange zest, grand marnier...) they lacked that certain acidic bite of a traditional cheesecake. Something was missing.

Out of the blue, I was inspired these past two weeks to make more cheesecake. It simply came upon me. Though then again, I had two dinner parties to orchestrate, so somewhere the inspiration for dessert was necessary, and rather than settle for a fruit tart, or a chocolate mousse, or a fruit salad and cookies... I felt like experimenting.

My first cheesecake was traditionally inspired, flavored only by lemon zest (of two lemons) and the juice of half a lemon. Delicate and creamy, all deemed it a success. I used the brown sugar cookies known as Gascognes crushed into crumbs by my blender, and melted butter with a pinch of salt as my crust. Graham crackers they were not, but they did have a lovely caramel flavor that well complemented the cheese and lemon.

My later creation (here photographed) was more flamboyant and considering that all my guests were French, rather on the unusual side for this side of the Atlantic. Fresh and candied ginger with dark chocolate swirl. I didn't have a packet of cookies on hand, but I did have hazelnut meal, cocoa, sugar and butter, so these made my rather haphazard, but appreciated and remarked upon crust.

And so, how did I succeed at long last where for years I'd simply stumbled or wiggled around the ingredients? Well, I picked up a faisselle. This is a fresh cheese with neither salt nor sugar, in a plastic tub in a tub. The inner tub is a sieve, keeping the curd intact and apart yet leaving it in contact with the whey.

To make this particular ingredient work for me I purchased it a day (or two, a bit more time wouldn't hurt) ahead of time. I removed it from its whey (which I put aside in a jar for future muffin or pancake making) and put it inside a strainer over a bowl and back into the fridge. In this way, I returned it to its cheese origins, and put it into a situation where it would slowly release its liquid and firm up. Thus, my kilo of faisselle became 850 gr of fresh cheese (approx 2 lbs).

To this I added 3 eggs, 1 1/2 cups of sugar (about 300g) -- note, these are the same proportions I used for the lemon cheesecake--, 2 heaping tablespoons of fresh grated ginger (which I now store in the freezer, something friends in Boston do, and how brilliant!) and 2 tablespoons chopped candied ginger. I blended this all together and tasted it to see if I wanted more ginger or not (I love ginger... can you tell? I also love tasting cheesecake batter...).

Once I was content, I poured the batter onto my rather creative crust (it was interesting, but not as yet a recipe I would share as a finished, or even preferred option...) and then prepped my chocolate.

In a heavy bottomed stainless saucepan I melted 150g (5 1/2 oz) of dark chocolate on the surface of my wood stove (t'is winter after all). I scooped up and blended some of my cheesecake batter with the chocolate in the saucepan till somewhat smooth and then poured this extended chocolate batter over the ginger batter and swirled it around with a knife till it looked relatively lovely, or at least like a meeting of the worlds of light and dark, with perhaps dark winning.

I opted for baking the cake at a low temperature (150C/300F), rather than in a water bath, for nearly an hour or till the cake looked done with barely a touch of browning on the top, and the center jiggled only slightly. It rose high as a soufflet, and them came down a good bit, but not unpleasantly so.

I made this cake two days before my party, so I simply let it cool and put it in the fridge till needed. The extra chilling time deepened and melded the flavors.

The Kings' Cake - Galette des Rois

A favorite dessert and snack for this time of year. Easy to make, and easier to eat! Surprise your friends (elsewhere than in France and Québec!) with a homemade version.

The kings' cake is a favorite snack and dessert for this time of the year. My kids adore it and request it often. I can purchase one from any bakery worth its name, but it really isn't hard to make from scratch (if you've some flaky puff pastry on hand).


Ingredients:

* two sheets pâte feuilletée (puff pastry)

For the Frangipane:
* 1 1/2 cups ground almonds/almond meal
* 1/2 cup sugar
* 1/3 cup sweet butter
* 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
* 2 eggs
* 1 tablespoon flour
* a pinch of salt
* an egg with 2 tablespoons syrup (I used maple) to brush on top of the pastry so it will golden in the oven.
* a bean or a whole almond or a small clay figurine to be your fêve.


If you haven't found almond meal, then use your spice grinder or your blender to make it yourself (as I did this time). Blend all the ingredients together in your mixer, and then spread onto one of the puff pastry sheets. Put your fêve in the frangipane then top with the other sheet. Draw a criss cross pattern with the back of a knife (careful to not puncture the pastry). Pinch the edges of the pastry. Brush with the whole egg wash.


Place in a medium hot oven (375) till nicely golden on top, about 20-30 minutes depending on your oven.

Enjoy as an afternoon snack with tea, or for dessert. In traditional French house the youngest child goes under the table and tells the server of the cake to whom each piece should go. Then, he who gets the fêve is king for the day. Best to have a crown in the house ready for his/her head!

My Oriental Spinach

To accompany my mother's Christmas goose I made what has become a much requested recipe of sauteed spinach (and Swiss chard when available) with spices, ricotta (brousse) cheese, nuts and raisins. Often I will wrap it in puff pastry, or bake it in a pie tin and sprinkle breadcrumbs with parmesan on top. Or, when these are not available, I'll serve it simply. I've not as yet had any complaints.

Ingredients:

a couple bags of fresh spinach, washed, de-stemmed, chopped coarsely
olive oil
1/3 cup chopped and toasted nuts (pine nuts, pecans, walnuts...)
2 good-sized garlic cloves peeled and minced
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon fresh-grated nutmeg
1 cup ricotta/brousse cheese
1/3 cup yellow raisins or currants
salt and pepper to taste

In a large frying pan, add a tablespoon or two of olive oil. Toss in spinach to fill the pan, put on the lid. Wait a moment or two, then lift the lid to check the quickly wilting spinach. Toss with a wooden spoon or tongs till all is wilted and reduced. Remove and place in a colander to drain. Continue till all the spinach is cooked. Toss in the nuts and stir quickly till lightly toasted. Put aside.

Sizzle the minced garlic in two tablespoons of olive oil. Toss back in the spinach. Transfer all the ingredients to a large bowl and blend coarsely together.

At this point you can either serve, or put aside in an oven-proof dish to reheat before serving. Or, you can lay it in pastry and bake, or sprinkle with breadcrumbs and parmesan and bake.

Enjoy!

A Finished Christmas (Boxing Day?) Bûche

A Bûche begins

Une Bûche de Noël au Chocolat et Fruits Rouges
(a photo of the finished cake will need to wait till tomorrow's post... but the process is well detailed below).

I have been making a variation on this Yule Log cake since I lived in Seattle. The last year I was there, and my last Christmas on the West Coast, I found in Gourmet Magazine -- either that fall (1995) or one of the prior years -- a recipe for a Bûche with chocolate ganâche, raspberry jam and raspberry eau de vie as made by the pâtissier of La Maison de Chocolat in Paris.

Already at that time I was creative in my interpretation of the original recipe -- I didn't have any potato starch on hand (féculant de pomme de terre - far easier to find in a French grocery store than in Seattle in 1995) and so replaced it with normal wheat flour. Nor did I have raspberry eau de vie -- which at the tender age of 27 I didn't even recognize as referring to alcohol, a lapse which has since been corrected. So, at the time, I simply soaked my raspberries in the simple syrup I prepared to drench the cake. Not that the lack was felt by the many who indulged in the cake as I drove from friend to friend sharing what had turned out to be quite a generous cake -- a little dark chocolate goes a long way.

In the years since I've taken further liberties with the original recipe, and along the way I lost the page I'd taken from the magazine, well smudged with chocolate.

My current version of the recipe is enhanced/affected/adapted to include the pastry lore I've soaked up during my visits both professional and friendlyl at my local pastry shop -- my pâtissier's basic recipe for biscuit, the base of most of his cakes which he then elaborates with ganâche, fruit jellies, mousses, pralines and more. He uses only egg whites, almond meal and powdered sugar. Hmmmm, and advised me to bake it in a very hot oven for a very short time -- just seize the outside and leave the cake as flexible and soft as possible to allow for rolling/bending/ etc.,

And of course, my chocolatier shared with me his basic ganâche recipe. And I started making oodles of jams alongside Erick, adopting the technique of 2x fruit to 1x sugar and leaving the fruit to release its juices for at least a few hours before putting it over a flame.

It's come to the point where the original recipe is no longer necessary. I simply make my bûche. And, when I come across someone who is gluten intolerant, I've many a solution. However, in the spirit of the season, I kept careful track of my steps yesterday and today. And below are the precise measurements (where possible in both American volumes and metric, but without a scale at Ma's house...) that I used this time around... Enjoy!

Ingredients :

For the biscuit :

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 cup almond meal
1/4 cup powdered sugar
6 egg whites whipped stiff
4 egg yolks whipped till lemon yellow
scant 1/4 cup brown sugar

For the jam:

1 pound fresh or frozen raspberries or mixed berries
1/2 pound sugar

To drench: if you have it on hand:

1/2 cup of raspberry eau de vie
1 cup sugar
1 cup boiling water

Or, you can do as I did yesterday: remove a cup of the sugared berry juices from the jam pot, add a 1/2 cup of white rum.

For the ganâche filling :

For the Ganache:

300 grams (12 oz) superior quality dark chocolate (like Lindt 70%, Valrohna 64%)
225 grams (9 oz) tablespoons heavy cream

for the coating:

200 grams (8oz) superior quality dark chocolate (like Lindt 70%, Valrohna 64%)
150 grams (5 oz) tablespoons heavy cream

To make the biscuit : Preheat oven to 400F/200C

Sift your cocoa and lightly blend with the ground almonds and powdered sugar.


Whip the egg whites stiff.



In a separate mixing bowl, whip till lemon yellow the egg yolks and brown sugar.


Sprinkle in some of the dry ingredients, then fold together with the egg whites and the rest of the dry ingredients.

Spread thinly on a lined (with parchment paper) or non-stick baking sheet, or on a silpat atop a cookie sheet.

It is important to either bake the cake on a silpat and let cool, then remove onto parchment paper before drenching in syrup/alcohol, or to bake it directly onto parchment paper, remove onto another sheet of parchment paper when cool, and drench. I once made the rather total error of leaving it on the silpat and drenching it with the syrup/eau de vie mixture. It then stuck terribly and made a total visual catastrophe of a dessert. Lessons must be learned, right?


Bake for 5 minutes – till the surface is lightly browned, but the center still soft.

Remove from the oven promptly. And let cool. Reverse onto a large sheet of parchment paper and put aside.

Mix together the eau de vie and the simple syrup (or do as I did yesterday) and brush evenly and generously with a pastry brush over the biscuit and let soak in.

For the jam:




Put your fruit and sugar into a bowl (this can be done the night before) with a 1/2 cup of water (if not the night before) and set it to simmer. Once it is nicely blended and bubbling, ladel your berries into a vegetable mill and grind away. The grinding will release the pectin present in the raspberry/blackberry seeds and help thicken your jam. Not feeling the need to truly remove all those seeds, (in a mixed berry jam) which is far more necessary if you're only using raspberries/blackberries, I put the solids back into my jam pot and continued simmering till the mixture thickened sufficiently -- when it cooled a thick skin formed on the surface.

For the Ganache:

Chop the chocolate into very small pieces. You can use a large knife, a meza luna rocking chopper, or a food processor. Put your chocolate into a large mixing bowl.

In a saucepan, heat the heavy cream till just the boiling point. Remove the cream from the heat and pour it slowly over the chocolate – you can pour it on the whisk to limit splatter. Stir gently till the chocolate melts into the cream.


Pour your chocolate over your biscuit, and gently spread it out in an even layer. Let cool and set, this will take at least 2 hours.

Finishing touches :

Once the chocolate is cooled and set (you may want to speed up the process by putting it in the fridge a bit), spread your jam (somewhat cooled too) over the ganâche and let set for a couple of hours.


Having your cake on the parchment paper gives you a tool for rolling the cake. You can roll it either the short direction -- for more rolls, or the long direction -- for more slices. I tend to do the latter.

Once your cake is rolled up, put in the fridge covered to set. It is best to leave it over night.

The next day, slice off the ends of your bûche on an angle and position them as branch stumps. Then melt more chocolate with a bit of heavy cream to extend it, drizzle over your bûche (being cold, it will quickly set the chocolate). Then pull a fork over it to design your bark.

When you are ready to serve: Sprinkle of powdered sugar on top.

A fun touch is meringue mushrooms... boughs of holly or branches of pine, or perhaps even some snow drifts of whipped cream (not unwelcome with such a rich cake).

Slice carefully, and enjoy!

left-over jam never goes to waste.