Foraged Things

This morning, strolling the market, I noticed the foraged Spring things have finally made their way to town. Tonight we will enjoy fresh morels in cream on our own hand cranked pasta, and tomorrow a rabbit, nettle and potato soup. We had a full day of clear bright sun today for the first time in weeks, and it completely filled the kitchen, putting a definitive end to the chill of this year's winter that wouldn't let go. While we chopped and stirred our way through this morning's class, surrounded by picked edible plants exploding with life, I felt relief and peace spread into my bones, the kind that comes with the promise of a new season. New onions braced in my hands under icy running water, tonic and crisp. I have leftover gibelotte and my weekend has begun.

Simple Poached Pears

Poached pears keep well and are nice sweet touch to serve in their syrup when you've just had a family supper. Add vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce, and you've got a poire Hélène. If you're feeling more ambitious you can dice them and add them with a dash of Poire William to a creme bavarois for a charlotte. If you want something in between, you can choose small pears and then use them whole to accompany petit pots de crème that you've perfumed with any other of the fresh herbs that are coming to market. The pears above eventually went into a tarte Bourdaloue. Martin Sec, Bosc, or Conference pears are all good for poaching.

Simple Poached Pears

4 small pears, not too ripe
2 cups white wine (or water with a dash of lemon juice, if you like)
75 grams granulated sugar
lemon zest (optional)
1/2 a vanilla bean (optional)

Put the white wine or water & juice and sugar into a small saucepan big enough to nestle the pears into. Add the vanilla bean and lemon zest and bring it to a boil. Turn the heat down to a simmer. Peel the pears and slip them whole into the liquid and let it simmer 10 minutes. Remove from heat and allow the pears to cool in their juice. Keep them in the refrigerator in a non-reactive container. These will keep for at least a week.

Gougères and Canapés

This week's canapés feature the season's first fresh morels and the gougères were made
with a hunk of aged Laguiole from the cheese plate

The transition from making your own puff pastry to croissant dough is a simple one, with croissants adding yeast to the mix. The butter is flattened the same way, the folds are the same, just a different number. The addition of yeast yields a different flavor and consistency altogether, along with the need to consider temperature not just for the butter, but also how it plays in the development of the yeast. The slower it rises, the better it tastes. Last week I had a student sign up for several classes in a row. On Friday we made croissants and on Saturday, after visiting the market and fromagerie together, we went back to the kitchen to do one last multi-course meal. One of the delights in being able to cook over the course of several days together is that it opens doors for projects, one very important one being putting together a reception's worth of canapés and gougères. They freeze well, baking straight from their frozen state into quick savory appetizers. Whenever I do a croissant workshop, I always take some time to roll out some of that extra dough that we always have at the end and tuck in fresh green herbs and minced leafy aromatics with sausage meat or fresh farmer's cheese, seasonal wild mushroom duxelles and dabs of sauces we've whipped up over the course of the week, so that at any time, when the weather gets warm, friends can pop in for a drink or supper and we can get things off to a good start. It is a nice habit to get into.

Humble Beginnings

My first experience with French cheese was as a young adult, traveling in The Netherlands for work.  I had taken the train to a tiny little town called Delft on a free weekend to take a gander at the pottery, and in the basement snack shop of the cobblestoned town's museum, they were serving a thin slice of hot brie on toast. I went back to the counter twice, and then later that afternoon, before catching my train back to Rotterdam. To this day, I remember nothing of the pottery, but I do have a clear image in my mind of the Brie dripping off that oval of toast onto crinkly paper, and the sky in Delft.

Years later, I met a very interesting man and found love hurling me quickly to France. In order to save money I had taken a cheap flight to London and was sleeping on the floor of a flat that belonged to a woman he knew before continuing my journey to see him in his own country for the first time. She and I talked that night and after plying me with a small glass of Grey Goose, she asked me what my vice was. I told her it was cheese.  In my mind, this was NY State Cheddar ideally eaten while standing in muddy cleats by the light of an open refrigerator door.

She was sitting very straight up in a cross legged position and she twisted her curly black hair with her actrice's finger and gave out a throaty laugh. "Well, you're going to like France, then". At that moment my hot brie in Delft came back to me. And that was all. I imagined shops filled from floor to ceiling with toasts dripping with Dutch museum snackbar brie with the silhouette of the Eiffel Tower in the background.

After we ran into each others arms in slow motion along the platform at the Gare in Paris and then found ourselves in his little love nest near the Canal St. Martin, I told him I wanted to go to a cheese shop, immediately.

We got dressed and he took me to La Maison du Fromage. I was deep in a state of shock and was unable to articulate any reaction to what was facing me at the counter that seemed to go on and on. What did I want, anyway? He took the lead and picked out three cheeses.  A munster, Brie, at my request, and an herb encrusted goat's cheese from Corsica called "Brin d'Amour". We took them to his little studio with a baguette and had them on a card table. Let me tell you, at that moment, I knew. This was the man I was going to marry.

Lyon: First Signs of Spring

Lyon's Spring has gotten off to a slow start this year, and only yesterday, with almost two weeks having trailed on since the vernal equinox, did the first sign of the season appear at the markets. They aren't there and we're slogging through rain and drear smudged with a winter that won't let go, then suddenly like the daffodils, they appear, organic swirls of bright color punctuated by the gauzy dance of the tips of their roots, freshly pulled, glistening in cool damp morning sun. I think that since the skies are generally overcast when they arrive, their color, the first really vibrant color coming from the producers' stands, hits us all like a drug. Everyone feels better. (I took this photo with my phone while out with my students!)

Plum's Favorite Tarte Tatin

Glowing jewels of apples and pears that have absorbed the caramel you nestled them into is one other way to enjoy your caramel and get your apple a day. This pie can be done with any pan with a rounded edge that can also go in the oven. Ikea, for example has some rounded bottom 28 cm / 11 " pans with metal handles that I have done tarte tatin in, as well as the good old Emile Henry Flame series tatin set which comes with the plate to flip it out onto, although I have done it many times with a regular old pan and flat plate.

There isn't a whole lot of sugar in this recipe, so you want to get the sweetness from the fruit itself. Go for a sweet apple that will absorb the caramel while it cooks and still hold its shape. What we use here are Elstar, and any Reinette apple including Reine de Reinette or Canada gold.

Recipe: Plum's Favorite Tarte Tatin

8 - 10 apples, medium to large (see note above for the kinds of apples that I have found work best)
2 pears, Martin Sec or other pears that hold up to cooking
200 g granulated or one cup sugar, divided
80 g or 8 tablespoons butter, divided
A double batch of basic pâte brisée

Prepare your favorite pie crust, my favorite is a pâte brisée, which will at once absorb some liquid once the tarte is turned and also add a buttery base with a little bit of salty contrast to the sweet topping. You can start with the crust, and while it rests, do the rest of your mise en place:

In 4 small bowls, measure out into each one 170 grams sugar and 30 grams sugar, and 50 grams butter and 30 grams butter. Reserve the larger amounts (170 grams sugar and 50 grams butter) for the caramel, and have the smaller amounts (30 grams sugar and 30 grams butter) ready to use after the apples are nestled into the pan. Peel, cut all of the fruit into 4 pieces each, and core the pieces before you start this recipe. The apples should be ready to go directly into the hot caramel. Roll out the pate brisee to the size of your pan plus a couple of cms or one inch. This way, you can nestle it directly over the apples and in along the sides. Pierce the rolled out dough with a fork to create a way for steam to escape. Now you can put the tarte together.

Heat the oven to 200C or 400F.

Make the Caramel. Using the pan in which you will eventually bake the tarte, Heat the pan thoroughly, then add 170 grams sugar. Cook the sugar directly in the pan until it melts. It will begin to caramelize in places before the entire amount is melted. When this happens, using a wooden spatula or spoon, gently push some sugar that has not melted into the hot spot. There may be places that start to smoke, and when this happens, push cooler sugar into these hot spots as well. There is no need to stir the sugar more than simply nudging it about to get it to melt evenly. Once the sugar has completely melted, turn off the heat. Don't worry if there is a little smoke, that's what gives that delicious caramel flavor.  Off heat, quickly add the 50 grams butter immediately, in one piece and stir it around to melt in the hot caramel (it will bubble and hiss!). The butter serves to cool down the caramel a bit and stop it from burning.

Immediately layer in the apples, 2 layers. While this mixture is still hot, carefully nudge apples and pears, core side up, around the edge of the pan, right on top of the hot caramel. They will sizzle as you add them. Fill the edges of the pan, then fill the center with apples. Don't touch the caramel. It is hot. Once the first layer is in, add a second layer of apples and pears on top, core side down. Settle them down on top to get a nice snug fit. Sprinkle the fruit with the remaining butter in little bits across the surface of the fruit, and then sprinkle that with the remaining sugar. Cover the whole thing with rolled out and pierced pate brisee, and transfer to the hot oven. One trick I have found is useful is to place a lined cookie sheet on a rack below the tarte as it bakes to catch any drips, since depending on the fruit, you may get some spillover.

Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until the crust is a golden brown, and the caramel is bubbling. Remove the tarte from the oven, and let sit for approximately 10 minutes to cool and absorb the liquid before flipping the tarte onto a flat plate. Allowing this tarte to cool makes cleaner slices. You can serve this with vanilla or caramel ice cream, crème chantilly, or just plain crème fraîche.