Archive for Cookery

14 Jan 2009
Cookery • Desserts • fruit • Fruit recipe • locavore log • Recipes • Vegetable recipe

Really Cute Teeny Jam Tarts

Who does not like dessert? A little something sweet at the end of the meal? Especially a special meal? Yeah even the people who say they don’t really like sweets love a little dessert.

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While I like to think myself fairly conversant in making pretty no-bake sweet endings like sorbets, ice-creams, mousses and cold confections that use them to build more elaborate desserts such as Sundaes and Jubilees, dessert baking is not my forte. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I have a number of baked desserts in my repertoire (Tarte Tatin & Upside Down Cakes come to mind), but those are – shall we say – on the rustic, if delicious, side…. While a good tarte tatin is a thing to eat with gratitude, sophisticated it is not! However, many guests do remember the meal finale, not only how it tastes, but also how it looks: so grand it should be, or at least cute. A plate of fruit, no matter how fresh and how artistically presented, most often won’t do.

So… in my quest to prepare cute small desserts that I can conjure blindfolded, that can be prepared in advance if needed, that are not too heavy, and inspired by blogs such as Tartelette and Cannelle & Vanille, I am practicing small portion desserts.

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Disclaimer: you really should check Helen’s blog (Tartelette) and Aran’s blog (Cannelle & Vanille) if you are interested in gorgeous, inspiring, innovative sweets of all kinds. Both Helen and Aran are professional pastry chefs who are sharing their recipes with the rest of the world. While their creations look incredible (just the photos will startle your eyes wide open), they seem accessible; nonetheless, they require finesse and a sure yet delicate touch to produce such perfect-looking confections… I said I was inspired, I did not say I was there. Helen and Aran display a dedication to and an understanding of their craft that is admirable. Me? I just want to make pretty seasonal desserts that get all eaten with a sigh of satisfaction.

I have had request for snacks too lately. Something about brownies. But I though I’d get some practice with one of the basic dough, Sweet Short Crust Pastry, a very versatile dough great for making cookies, tarts, tartelettes, and one that can substitute for puff pastry in Tarte Tatin. It can also be made in advance and rolled and shaped shortly before baking. Unlike other crust, sweet short pastry does not need to be blind-baked: the egg in the dough prevents the pastry from becoming soggy when baked with its filling.

I’ve got jams, I’ve got canned pears that was put up in the fall and I’ve got frozen berries that I picked this summer. So I made a bunch of Pear and Quince Jam Tartelettes and some Wineberry and Raspberry Jam Tartelettes. (The snack eater appreciated them!). But really any fruit and jam that are complementary will work – as well as custard and pine nuts! Read more

sylvie | 4 comments | Tags: , , , , ,
03 Jan 2009
Cookery • food discovery • locavore log

Fast Food, Slow Food

pate-eating-006

My baker was really starting to slack.

He was supposed to bake for a New Year’s eve party. I would make pate, he would make bread, our hostess would “ouh” and “ah”. A 911 call came in. As a member of a local rescue squad, he responded. I guess that’s as good an excuse as one can get… That night, the hostess got Cardamom Custard Tartelettes, Pear & Quince Jam Tartelettes and a bottle of homemade peach liqueur. She still “ouh”-ed et “ah”-ed and promptly whisked the bottle away whispering, “if you don’t mind, I won’t serve that tonight”. I don’t mind.

So, my baker would bake for New Year’s Day and I would serve the Pate that day. Another 911 calls came in on New Year’s day morning, and so I served Hoppin’ John and Garlicky Vinegared Mustard Greens instead.

Eventually, a batch of country baguettes was baked the day after New Year’s day. By then, the Venison and Pork Terrine (made of all local ingredients, except for the Juniper berries) had nicely mellowed. The mache and lettuce, although battered by several days of cold temperatures (below 15 F/ -9C), are still yielding enough for a few big bowls of salad.

So this is lunch for the next few days. Grab & sit. No pan to wash. Fast food at its best.

Verdict: While the baguettes taste wonderful, the Terrine could have been salted more. It’s a good thing I had a jar of Spicy Plum Chutney from the Virginia Chutney Company on hand: the chutney, locally made in Washington, VA, really complemented the terrine very well, and helped to forget that I had under salted it. Hey, I am still developing the recipe. I don’t mind making more (I will) to perfect the recipe – as long as there is baguette to try it with. Nobody minds being guinea pigs for terrines & pates in the house. Mustard greens doesn’t  quite get the same welcome. I don’t understand…

Note for the Locavore Log: mache & lettuce greens for the salad, pork & venison used for the pateas well as some of the pickles immedatiately local; flour for the bread… I wish!

sylvie | 3 comments | Tags: , ,
30 Dec 2008
beverage • Cookery • Fruit recipe • locavore log • Recipes

Just In Time for Sipping the New Year In

Bottle of Homemade Peach Liqueur

Bottle of Homemade Peach Liqueur

It’s been aging in the dark closet under the stair since July. This morning, finally, it was time for bottling. You do remember the peach liqueur we made, right? YOU did make it, right?, when the peaches were full of flavor and fragrance last summer?

Thanks to the magic of photo editing software I “transformed” one of my pictures of peaches into a “watercolor”, and used it to make pretty labels.

Then looked for an attractive clear bottle – all the better to show the pale color of the liqueur (here a recycled Port bottle), carefully poured the fragrant liqueur from its aging container – and: voila, a fine bottle to sip on new year’s eve – and beyond – with memories redolent of summers past and with hope for summers to come.

Cheers! Happy New Year. May the winter be not too hard (but hard enough to kill the bugs and let the trees be dormant) and may the harvest be good next year.

Note for tLocavore Log: the peaches were immediately local!

sylvie | 6 comments | Tags: , ,
22 Dec 2008
Cookery • locavore log • Main Dish • Meat/poultry Recipe • Recipes

True Coq au Vin

For those who don’t know, “coq” means “rooster” in French. Therefore, “Coq au Vin” means “Rooster cooked in wine”. The dish is a staple of French provincial cooking, a dish originally made by using extra roosters culled from the chicken yard or an old chicken (aka a stewing chicken), the local red wine and available aromatics. Of course, in those areas that produce only white wine (Alsace), they have versions using white wine or beer (excellent beer is made is Alsace). In Normandy and Brittany, which are too cold for wine but where hard apple cider or perry (pear cider) have been made for century, there are versions of the dish too.

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It’s like curry, or chili or Brunswick stew. Nobody has a monopole on it: many versions have evolved over time in different parts of the country. I am sure the Spaniard and the Italians have their own way to slow-cook chicken in wine, too. What those many dishes have in common is that they were born of necessity and ingenuity and that they use wine as a simmering base. Don’t kill the chicken as long as it’s laying eggs, but once that’s over, find a way to eat it. It’s the essence of peasant/country cooking: you use what you have, and make the best of it. So, no fryer, no tender little poussin for this dish: Save your fryer for frying or grilling, and your poussins for quick braising or spit-roasting! Your old chicken, however, will be perfect simmered for hours in an acidic (wine) sauce with aromatics. It will keep its shape and provide an incomparable aroma (something maybe even too strong for those palates who like their chicken really mild! Be warned).

With temperature dipping in the single digit (Fahrenheit/ -13 C) and with the holidays, long slow cooked hearty dishes that simmer for hours on the stove with tantalizing aromas are just about perfect now. mmm… coq au vin….I was recently reading a post (December 11, sorry I can’t seem to get the permalink!) from Matt of Matt’s Kitchen who relates his disappointment of making the Barefoot Contessa’s version of Coq au Vin, and how vapid and insipid it turned out. Now, I am a great admirer of Ina Garten… but that recipe – as reported and photographed on the few blogs I looked at – sure does not lood like Coq au Vin. Not even remotely. The chicken swims in broth! It’s pallid! It looks like soup …. Several posters and commenters complained of a strong unpleasant wine taste: well… no wonder, that wine did not simmer long enough to let the alcohol evaporate and it never had a chance – along with the mushrooms, onions & bacon – to meld into a gooey mess of thick and silky luscious succulence that is the essence of Coq au Vin – a dish made to savor slowly, sucking all the bones clean, and eating up all the last bits of that thick silky unctuous sauce.

On Barefoot Bloggers (a group of bloggers who cook and comment on Barefoot Contessa recipes) there are suggestions for replacing the wine and brandy for which the recipe calls. Proposed substitutions vary from grape juice, to verjus, to apple cider, to vinegar, to chicken broth etc. All fine and dandy: many of those substitutions might produce tasty chicken dishes (although looking at some of the associated post – it did not), but what they do not do is producing coq au vin. With vinegar, it’s Chicken with Vinegar (Poulet au Vinaigre is also a French country classic); with hard cider: it’s chicken with hard-cider (even Normandy Chicken, if one adds a little cream); with broth, it’s chicken stew… you get my drift. Those wineless versions may be called coq au vin by their authors, but they are no more coq-au-vin than Velveeta is cheese!

By the way, no offense to Matt, Karen & others who reported great disappointment with the recipe. They followed it. They did not fail. It’s just not a good coq au vin recipe.

Ok. Enough for the rant. Here is my recipe for Real Coq au Vin! Read more

sylvie | 11 comments | Tags: , , , , , , ,
12 Dec 2008
Cookery • Main Dish • Meat/poultry Recipe • vegetable • Vegetable recipe

Chayote by Any Other Name

Cut shoots of chayote

I know. It’s not in season. But I am dreaming of it, because of a post from Elise on Simply Recipes. Chayote shoot is a taste of my childhood. Around the holidays, don’t we reminisce about good memories?

At some point I’ll post more info on the chayote, of which the young shots & leaves, the fruit and the tubers are edible, and on how to grow it in Virginia. In the US – at least here in Virginia – , I have only seen the fruit for sale. It’s easy to grow, is not bothered by pest – it just take time to get it started. Once it starts growing after the weather warms up, it will swallow a trellis in very little time, providing plenty of shoots for the kitchen: the more you pick, the more it branches, the more shoots there are – and shoots is what I want to talk about today.

While the fruit is very mild, easily absorbing other flavors, the shoots have a more pronounced taste of their own. It’s worth checking ethnic market for them. They might be carried there. Otherwise, come back here and read what I will write about growing your own. By the way, other name under which chayote (botanically Sechium edule) is known are: christophine or, christophene in the French Caribbean, mirliton in Louisiana, chocho in Australia, chouchou on Reunion Island. It originates from Mexico but has spread to many cuisines of the world, especially in Asia.They braise beautifully – or is that stir-fry since they need cook only 20 minutes or so after the initial few minutes in the hot oil – acquiring an unctuousity that’s hard to describe. A quick and tasty way to have them is Chayote Shoots with Ginger Pork.

Disclaimer added 12/13/08: Both photos were taken in the summer. As of December, here in Virginia, my chayote vine is dead, killed by cold. I will plant a new one out come next spring. You could freeze the shoots, once cooked.

Chayote shoots with pork

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sylvie | 13 comments | Tags: , , , ,
02 Dec 2008
Cookery • Kitchen Garden • locavore log • Main Dish • Soups

Simple Pleasures from the Quasi-Winter Garden

Winter lettuce under Reemay

The lettuce beds are looking lush and fluff – if you lift the agricultural fabric swaddled over them, that is – providing huge bowls of greens, but, with the temperature regularly dropping below freezing (at night only for now, thankfully), I am hungering for soup.

(Alas, since no picture of tonight’s soup was taken, you must look at pictures of the winterized kitchen garden beds, and the still lovely lettuce – of which I am quite proud.)

Winter Growing Beds In The Kitchen Garden

A quick walk through the garden yielded enough to make a nutritious hearty soup, what I call my garden soup. What goes into the pot depends on what I have – the secret being to use a super rich broth*. Today’s picking was symptomatic on a late fall day – quasi-winter really. Read more

sylvie | 3 comments | Tags: , ,
21 Nov 2008
beverage • Cookery • Fruit recipe • Recipes • Vegetable recipe

Consider the (Cranberry) Shrub

Cranberries are not a shrub, you say? You are right, but they can be turned into a shrub, the sweet-tart refreshing drink that was popular before colas.

Today – if the word is recognized at all as a drink – shrub is often understood to signify a cocktail. And indeed, in colonial times, it was often meant as a sweet-tart punch made with citrus or raspberry juice and fortified with brandy. The word shrub can trace its origins to Middle-Eastern drink made from fruit juice, often chilled with snow: sharâb – which gave us Sherbet in English. The beverage “shrub” comes from a related word šurb, a drink [itself from šariba, to drink]. By the way, the derivation of shrub, meaning a bush, comes from Middle English schrubbe [itself from Old English scrybb.] Over the centuries, the two different derivations melded into one word.

Several of the well-know 19th century cookbooks such as Martha Washington’s, Mary Randolf’s, and Lydia Maria Child’s, have recipes for shrubs – basically fruit juice (often from berries), sugar & vinegar made into a syrup. Sometimes they were called Vinegars, as in Mrs. Haskell’s Housekeeper’s Encyclopedia published in 1861 which has Vinegar As A Drink For The Invalids, adding sugar, pounded ice & water to a gill of fruit vinegar (made from scratch of course, and of which 14 recipes are provided from apples to currants to raspberries and whortleberries).

Over the 19th century, with food becoming industrialized, colas took over, providing a ready shelf-stable sweet drink and the word “shrub” disappeared from the common lexicon. Today, outlets where shrub can be bought are rare – Tait Farms, in Pennsylvania, is one of the few. Otherwise – short of making your own (which is very easy… and, yes, we are getting to that!) – you can probably sample it in those places that aim to give a glimpse on life in colonial times, like Williamsburg, VA.

Serving Cranberry Shrub

Just one more point before we get to the recipe: how do you drink shrub? Easy… put a jigger of the shrub in a glass, top with soda/carbonated water or tonic water or sparkling apple cider or sparkling wine, and you have a tasty pretty fizzy drink perfect for celebrations. Since this not the season for raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, or currant (unless you stashed some excess in your freezer), let’s make Cranberry Shrub. A Votre Santé! Read more

sylvie | 7 comments | Tags: , ,
18 Nov 2008
Cookery • Kitchen Garden • locavore log • vegetable

Hickory King Corn and Nixtamalization

An ear of hickory king corn

Back in January when I was browsing seed catalogs for interesting fruit & vegetable seeds, I came across the description ‘Hickory King’ a pre-1875 dent corn cultivar (throughout this post – and throughout my blog - I am using corn in the American sense of the word, i.e., meaning “maize”, not the British meaning of “grains”). Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, a small seed house based in Mineral, VA, specializes in non-GMO open-pollinated kitchen garden seeds with many of its heirloom offerings adapted to Virginia. Here is what the 2008 catalog entry for ‘Hickory King’ reads: “HICKORY KING: 85/110 days. [Pre-1875.] In the hills and hollows of Virginia this corn is still appreciated as a roasting and hominy corn. It is considered the best variety for hominy because the skin of the kernel is easily removed by soaking. Also good for grits, corn meal, and flour. Makes a nice roasting corn (the old fashioned way of eating corn on the cob). […]. This variety grows extremely tall. Our stalks reach 12’. Some people use this variety for providing support for pole beans. Produces about 2 ears per stalk. Ears have very large flat white kernels. Husks are tighter than most varieties and give excellent protection from beetles and earworm. Has good tolerance to northern leaf blight (H. turicum) and southern leaf blight (H. maydis).”

12 feet tall? That must be quite a sight, thought I wonderingly, and would remind me of the sugar cane growing in fields next to my childhood home… I was also curious to experience what corn tasted like before sweet corn came along a 100 years ago or so. Temptation bit – it did not need to bite hard. ‘Hickory King’ was ordered. Read more

sylvie | 21 comments | Tags: , ,
13 Nov 2008
Cookery • locavore log • Main Dish • Meat/poultry Recipe

Pork Chops with Chunky Pepper Tomatillo Sauce

Friday night’s dinner often requires little thought as it often consists of homemade pizza – not much to think about: make the dough, let rise 45 minutes, flatten, spread some toppings (variations are endless). Bake for 15 minutes. Meanwhile mix a salad, set the table and voila!

Thursday night is sometimes a little more complex: it’s not yet the week-end, and we are still caught up in the week’s activities. Stir-fries and sautéing then come to the rescue, especially if one has thought of taking some meat or chicken out of the freezer the night before. Then all that’s left to do is to take a quick inventory of what’s around in terms of vegetables and throw something together using those classic techniques. Varieties is provided by the vegetables and the spices.

Tonight was such a night. Pork chops (from a local farm, of course) were thawed, we have plenty of home-grown potatoes in the storage area and the peppers and tomatillos picked before the frost, while still perfectly good, need to be used. Impromptu Pork Chops with Chunky Pepper Tomatillo Sauce was forming a picture in my mind. Less than 30 minutes later dinner was ready. The recipe makes dinner for two – but is extremely easy to double or triple. You just need another pan for the extra chops.

pork chops with pepper tomatillo sauce

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sylvie | 3 comments | Tags: , , , ,
08 Nov 2008
Cookery • Kitchen Garden • locavore log • Main Dish • Side Dish • vegetable • Vegetable recipe

Fall Salad Days

I think I love my kitchen garden more in the fall then in the spring: cooler temperatures are accompanied by a lot less bugs and the beds are brimming with salad greens (sorrel, lettuce, frisée, endive, mache, arugula), cooking greens (tatsoi, pakchoi and other mustard, kale, Swiss Chard), peas (the shoots of which are delicious in salad too – besides the pods), carrots, celeriac, beets (the tops of which are also edible) and some cabbages. Potatoes, sweet potatoes, winter squash & pumpkins have been harvested and stored. The last of the tomatoes were brought in to ripen and the peppers picked before the first frost will remain good for a few more weeks.

But what I really love in that time of the year when we often have a little spell of Indian Summer with sunny warm days and mild nights is to feast on big bowls of fresh mixed greens salad. Back in August I was urging you to go and plant your fall garden. Remember? I hope you did sow your fall garden seeds then and are now harvesting the leaves of that effort. I am.

The two pictures above explain my planting fervor back in the heat of summer: the first one was taken on September 12 after transplanting various seedlings that had been sown in August. The second one was on October 24. (Click on the picture for a larger – and cleaner- version.)

The result is lots of salad lunches! Read more

sylvie | 3 comments | Tags: , , , , , ,
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