You CAN please everyone

To each his own

Here's how:

In advance, during late afternoon take 15 minutes to make a big batch of dough:

1 24g. cube of yeast
1 kilo or 2 pounds of flour
1 sugar cube
2 teaspoons sea salt
water as needed (between 1.5 and 2 cups)
4 teaspoons of olive oil

Run the tap water until it is as hot as it gets. Put the yeast and sugar cube in a breakfast bowl and add a cup of hot tap water. Let it dissolve, stir it, and let it be for about 5 minutes. It will foam and froth.

Put the flour in a bowl and add the sea salt. Mix it well and add the yeasty liquid. Give it a good kneading and add more water until it comes together. Add as much water as you can before it turns sticky. Adding a little too much water is better than not adding enough. It should be homogenous and very pliable. If it is too sticky you can sprinkle flour on it until the dough won't stick to your floured hands. Work it for 10 minutes. It will soften even more. Put a teaspoon of olive oil in the bowl where it will rise, turn it over twice, and set in a warm place to rise. It will really rise a lot.

Punch it down and work it every hour until the guests arrive, repeating the teaspoon of olive oil in the bowl.

Set into bowls to eventually put on the table:

Buffalo Mozzarella, sliced thin
Scarmorza, or any smoked cheese you can find
Fresh white farm cheese which has been seasoned with minced aillee (fresh young garlic shoots) and sea salt
Mountain cheese like Comte
Olives, green and black
Thin sliced breast of Bresse chicken (sliced with the grain)
Good Chorizo sliced thin
Sliced ham of various kinds
Local sausage
Fresh thyme flowers
Fresh and also dried oregano (last weeks which has been hung) for those who prefer it
Fresh and also dried sage
Vegetables:


Steamed asparagus
Onions, sliced thin
Shallot
Bell Pepper
Mushrooms in season
Wilted spinach (briefly sauteed)
Tomato Sauce
Zataar mixed with oil
Your secret stock of excellent olive oil
Red pepper flakes
Salt
Pepper

Support your local artisans at apero

At the table:

Begin with a generous salad of ultra fresh market vegetables. Roquette, julienned Oseille (sorrel), spinach, mixed greens, white radishes, mushrooms, carrots, onions, peppers, fresh spring veggies, and house vinaigrette, on the side.

Bring out the dough and give it one last kneading, at the table. Set out the toppings. Cut the dough with a knife into 8 pieces. It will be soft and easy to roll. Quickly and efficiently roll out the dough thin to make individual pizzas at the table, pass them around on baking parchment, let them choose, discuss, and pass the toppings. Cook as many pizzas as will fit in the oven at the time, in a medium-hot oven, warm enough to cook the crust and melt the toppings without browning them too much.

Everyone will state that their pizza is perfect. Isn't that amazing?

Serve with copious amounts of excellent 2005 Saumur Champigny. Monitor the glasses carefully and fill them as needed. Keep fresh spring water available to the non-drinkers.

Dinner Guest Notes

There are no pictures of last night's dinner with Francine and Lucas, but I thought I would go over the menu and include some notes.

Aperetif, brined picholine olives and local thin sliced dried sausages. The olives were a different kind from the ones we usually get at the market. I got them at the olive oil store on the quai last week, after tasting them in the shop. They aren't aged in any way. They get picholines straight from the tree and put them up immediately in a salt and water brine. Nothing else. I really enjoyed the clean fresh taste of these picholines. The sausage came from our friend in the Bugey, who keeps herds of foraging black pigs. We had envisioned serving a muscat, but Lucas brought a very nice 1999 Chateau Barriere Monbazilliac, all the better!

First course, Autumn veloute with wild pheasant hen and caramelized shallots. The soup was a continuation of a soup I have had going, with a recent addition of duck and chicken stock, rutabaga, and parsley root. This was pureed and strained. For service, I sliced shallots in a julienne and slowly cooked them until they began to caramelize, then added shredded wild pheasant breast and finely siced pheasant skin to brown and slightly crispen. I placed a mound of the shallots and pheasant on the top of each bowl of soup. Around each mound of pheasant, I drizzled garlic infused olive oil. For the wine, we had pulled a 2003 Pouilly sur Loire and had it chilled and ready, but Loic opened the wrong bottle - a Cote du Rhone. When he came and told me, we gave it a quick taste and both agreed that we could go both ways with this soup, being slightly spicy and smoky and topped with the wild game. We decided to stick with the Cote du Rhone Chateau Ruth 2003.

Second course, Rolled lamb saddle cut into slices served with reduction sauce, herb infused soissons, and steamed vitelotte potatoes. The lamb was beautiful, sliced crosswise, very nice. I dry braised it with a splash of duck/chicken stock at the bottom of the casserole. Prep included buttering and salting the outside, slipping bay leaves close to the skin, and tucking thyme around the meat to let it infuse with the juices. Lucas also brought a simply lovely bottle of 2001 Chateau Sesquieres Cabardes, which he chose specifically for the lamb. It was perfect.

Note to self: don't ever throw your battery operated instant read thermometer into the dish water, ever, ever again! Bad girl. I tossed it in the sink with all the rest after I made the caramel sauce for dessert, and somehow the water got run on it. When I receive guests, I always do best testing the meat by temperature. Too many distractions and too much chance of cooking something improperly. Since my thermometer conked out, I went by touch and feeling method, and the meat was fine, but it's not a good idea to take risks that way. About the potatoes - let them cook longer. Don't bring out the soissons and potatoes until you have already sliced the lamb saddle medallions. It would have been much better if I had let them gently continue to steam together while I was carving the meat and served them all at once, and put the jus on them instead of serving it seperately.

Palate cleanser, Arugula with light white Modena balsamic sauce and crushed green peppercorns. This might have been better as mixed greens. Note to self: Take the time to choose greens carefully.

Cheese plate - St. Nectaire, Comte, St. Marcellin, Tomme au Marc, producer's Sechon.

Dessert, individual cheesecakes with salted butter caramel sauce. I used too many eggs in the cheesecake, having split the recipe in half. The original recipe called for 3 eggs and instead of breaking in 3 eggs and splitting that in half I chose 2 smallish eggs. It tasted vaguely eggy to me. Everyone seemed to like it but I think I could have done better. Next time make the crust thinner. I could have made these cheesecakes smaller. Perhaps a white chocolate mousse with the caramel sauce would have been better. The sauce was fine, using the Fleuron les Glieres butter and a touch of added fleur de sel. We served a thimble of the house vin de noix with this dessert.

About the sauce: My initial attempt at the sauce was a dud because I let the sugar cook slightly too long and used creme fraiche, not having regular whipping cream. It had not only the bitter burnt flavor, sugar's flavor reinforced the flavor of the creme fraiche, and it seemed to have a strange sour undertone to it. It could have been interesting if I hadn't burned the sugar. Since this sauce literally takes about 4 minutes to make, I could easily do it again. I made the second sauce with milk and it was technically perfect. Unfortunately, it had very little personality in comparison to the first one. Therefore I mixed 1/3 bitter sour caramel sauce with 2/3 perfect pretty caramel sauce made with milk, and voila, a sauce with a hint of complexity. Just right. I spread it on my breakfast toast just to be sure this morning.

I want to do this lamb saddle again, stuffing it next time. I should think of a better use of the vitelotte potatoes.

We really enjoyed the great conversation and the super personalities of these two interesting people! Conversation highlights - telling our respective 'how we met' stories, Francines tales of the slopes, Lucas and his adventures abroad - all in all a great evening!

Mothers and Cheddar - My Favorite Things

My mother arrived from the States in time for lunch today, and brought me a years supply of New York State cheddar, the kind I like.

When I came to France for the first time, I was a student and was on my way to visit my (then) boyfriend (now husband). At the time they had these great $99 Thursday flights to London and this was the way I came through. He arranged for an actress friend of his to let me crash at her place so could catch the first train out the next morning. We enjoyed a glass of the Grey Goose that I'd purchased for her at duty free, and had a wonderful conversation. It began when she confessed that her weakness was sweets. She did this as I watched her daintly devour one chocolate after another.

I confessed that I had a weakness for cheese. Thoughts of hot summer afternoons when I would click from the back door across the yellow linolium kitchen floor still wearing my cleats and make myself up a nice snack - multiple thick slabs of New York State cheddar cheese cut with a dull butter knife and carefully lined up between two slices of white sandwich bread slathered with mayonnaise, the sweet American kind, Hellmans. I would listen to the summer chicadas, spoil my dinner, and close this down over the cheese, peel the bread back, and then top the sticky cheese with a generous sprinkling of Morton's salt. It stuck to the cheese better that way. In those days I could down a pint of whole red cap milk with one of those sandwiches a day and never give a second thought to my girlish figure.

This was the cheese that I was thinking of when I confessed my weakness, and I barely gave it a thought when she laughed and said that in France I'd have plenty to choose from. Oh yes, those cheeses they have in France. I didn't know them nor was I focusing on what prospect was in their existence at the moment. It wasn't cheese in general, but one very particular kind of cheese.

The appreciation for the ubiquitous cheddar of my youth came only once I'd left my home town. Still in America but far from home, I realized that in Monterey California, they don't sell cheddar like the kind I knew. As I moved from place to place, I learned that no, in the South they don't have this cheese, and no, not even in Washington, Boston, Chicago. They don't make cheddar like Upstate Cheddar in London, Frankfurt, Istanbul, Moscow, Beijing, Hong Kong, or anywhere in Asia for that matter. Locally made, delicious and tangy, just enough resistance in the bite to tell me it is real, NYS Cheddar cheese quietly haunted me for years. I carried with me a secret longing, and never told anyone about it, until the day before my first visit to Paris. Brought to light by a little juice glass half filled with Grey Goose.

Today my cheese plate creaks with slabs of Morbier, Reblochon, Picodon, Bleu d'Auvergne, 18 month aged Salers, Rocamadour, St. Marcellin, Banon, Roves de Garrigues, and New York State Fisherman's Delight, produced in Chateaugay, New York. Thank you, Mama. Your visit, I know, will prove to be yet another great one, with this auspicious beginning.