Tag: cooking

Corsica

We’re changing things up a bit. Maybe it’s because restrictions are being lifted and some people — those who don’t own old houses in need of expensive repairs — are now able to book their own flights to France and my frustration at still not being able to go makes writing about pretend travel too unbearable.

So this is what I’m going to do. For regions of France that I have not personally visited, I’ll share my research and curation skills to provide what I think are the most interesting resources about the place.

And I will continue to make food because that is what I do.

Corsica, pointing at northern Italy. By Greece_in_its_region.svg: TUBSderivative work

Corsica, or Corse as the French call it, is a large, distinctively-shaped island in the Mediterranean closer to Italy than to France, but it has been part of France since 1768. The following year, Napolean Bonaparte was born there, and the rest, as they say, is history.

The rest, for me, is the promised resources for learning more about L’île de beauté.

You can rarely go wrong by starting with The New York Times. This 2016 travel piece is a semi-insider’s introduction to Corsica’s history, culture, food, and scenic attractions.

One reason I’m scaling back my travel coverage here is because it seems pointless when I can just refer you all to the excellent episodes of Échappées belles. This French travel show has been to Corsica at least three times: an overview, a focus on Haut-Corse, and a gourmand special. Even if you can’t understand French, you’ll enjoy the scenery.

Not suprisingly, Saveur focuses on the food of the “pleasure island” and it made me hungry.

So after reading that, I googled for some herby Corsican recipes and decided on the simplest: a mint omelette. I can’t get the Corsican cheese, of course, so I opted for fresh goat cheese as a substitute and plucked the mint from my garden. That and 3 eggs gave me all the ingredients I needed:

ingredients

If you’ve never made an omelette, it’s easy. Crack the eggs into a dish, then beat them until well-blended. Heat an omelette pan or skillet (preferably non-stick) and add a little oil or butter if you’d like. Pour the egg mixture in the pan and cook over medium-low heat. You can stir the eggs gently with a fork to help it along, and once the bottom starts to set, if you don’t want your omelette very runny, left the edges up slightly and tilt the pan so the uncooked eggs move to the edges. When the omelette is done almost to your liking, add the filling. In this case, it was chopped milk and crumbled cheese. Then fold it in half and serve. Salt and pepper and any other seasonings can be added to the interior before you fold or sprinkled on the finished omelette.

A mint omelette, served with bacon.

I also made a Corsican soup recipe from Let’s Eat France, but I forgot to photograph. It was delicious! Basically a vegetable soup with red beans and lots of herbs, including more mint, and I finished it with a leftover mint sauce to bring out the herbaceous flavors. There are lots of variations of this soup recipe on the internet, and maybe it would be fun to try them all, or just riff on one with what you have on hand.

Coming next: Provence, with my own travel stories and photos

Midi-Pyrénées and Carcassonne

Back on our virtual Tour de France (the only way most U.S. citizens can currently visit), we will make a brief stop in the south-central region formerly known as the Midi-Pyrénées.

Midi-Pyrénées

The geographical, cultural and historical composition of this region is odd, and we have better things to do than to sort it out here. For fans of medieval history, the dominant political entity was the county of Toulouse, whose powerful rulers extended their influence beyond this region. The counts were part of the family of our favorite queen, Aliénor d’Aquitaine, and were major players in the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars.

The principal city of the counts and of the region is Toulouse, the fourth largest city in France and a hub for tech, culture, medicine and education. One of my regrets from our last trip is that we bypassed the pink city on our drive from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. No vacation is ever long enough to do everything one might want. A stopover in Toulouse would have necessitated removing another destination, and Toulouse was among many possibilities that did not make the cut. Since adding #toulouse to my Instagram feed, I’m sure not to bypass it again.

Rue Peyrolières in Toulouse. My kind of place. (Didier Descouens, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Technically, our only stop in the Midi-Pyrénées two years ago was a short walk-around the center of Condom. We refrained from snapping selfies with the town sign, and we didn’t linger as it was a drizzly day and we were eager to get to the sunshine of the Mediterranean. Our only photos of Condom are the cathedral exterior and mail delivery via bike.

Although not technically in the Midi-Pyrénées, the medieval walled city of Carcassonne seems to me most aligned with this region. Its claim to fame is its role as a Cathar center, and its rulers generally allied with the counts of Toulouse. The well-preserved castle and fortifications are one of France’s top tourist attractions and definitely worth a stopover. We had a great view of and access to the city from our AirBnB. While some of it is a bit kitschy, overall a visit to the cité is almost a magical time-travel adventure.

Views of Carcassonne.

Now for the food. The most iconic dish of the region is the cassoulet, a hearty slow-baked casserole of beans and meat. Toulouse and Carcassonne are both famous for it, and of course we ordered it for dinner in Carcassonne.

When the time came for me to try it at home, I had difficulties. I followed, to the best of my ability, Paula Wolfert’s recipe for Cassoulet de Toulouse. The most essential ingredient — the large, white Tarbais beans — are one of those protected French agricultural products that normally you would need to import at great expense, but checking that box on my cassoulet ingredients list was surprisingly easy. I hesitate to tell you people about this source, because wait times for shipments have already stretched to weeks this year, with many products being sold out, but I’m good to my readers and my friends. The amazing heirloom bean purveyor, Rancho Gordo, grows the bean in California from French seed stock as “cassoulet bean.”

Getting all the meat ingredients during a pandemic proved too much for my patience. I gave up on the plethora of pork products and settled for a pork shoulder and some bacon. I wanted to be lazy and purchase duck legs confit, but I couldn’t find that and made my own with the sous-vide as recommended by Paula Wolfert. I also failed to procure the toulouse sausages which made me furious at myself because I have a deli right in my neighborhood (Raduno) that makes these rare beauties, but I remembered I hadn’t picked them up about 30 minutes after Raduno had closed for two days and the beans were already cooking, so I couldn’t delay. And finally, I burned some of the beans on the bottom. I’ll need to try this again. I can’t even add my photo because it was so ugly. Well, here’s the duck legs:

I’ll leave you with a book recommendation. Historical fiction and fantasy fans may enjoy Kate Mosse’s Languedoc trilogy set in and around Carcassonne. I’ve only read the first one, but it helped me imagine what life was like in the medieval cité and I was grateful I had read it before visiting.

Also, I discovered there’s a strategy board game called Carcassonne. Comment below if you’ve played it and can recommend.

Next: the Languedoc with sunshine, the sea, and wine wine wine.

Pays Basque

It’s been two years since we were last in France, and future travel is uncertain with Americans currently being banned in Europe and most of the world, so our pretend tour de France is back on!

When we last “visited” France, we were in the historic and magnificent region of Aquitaine, now called Nouvelle-Aquitaine, in the southwest. Because this region is so large and diverse, we divided our tour into three parts: Bordeaux and the Dordogne, Gascony, and the Basque country. The latter is all that remains for our tour of Aquitaine.

Many of us are feeling isolated in these days of social distancing. The Basque know something about that, although not because of viruses. The Basque language is an isolate, meaning it has no known relationship with any other language. Perhaps that is one reason some Basque people have sought independence from both Spain and France.

The bulk of the Basque region lies within the border of Spain. The French part is in the southwestern corner of the country, along the Atlantic coast and the Pyrenees.

Basque country. © Zorion, CC-BY-SA, Wikimedia Commons

A good base for exploring the Pays basque français is the lovely small city of Bayonne. It’s easily accessible by the high-speed TGV train from Paris, and le gare, like most train stations in Europe, is centrally located for accommodations, restaurants and touring Bayonne and its surrounds.

We stayed in an AirBnB in the old town and enjoyed two and a half days of walking the cobblestoned streets, taking in the sights, sounds and tastes of the historic city. We did not visit the famous nearby resort of Biarritz, mostly because the weather was cool and rainy, not tempting us to the beach. Also, Bayonne had enough attractions to keep us occupied.

A view of the old town from one of Bayonne’s many bridges.

We were delighted to learn that Bayonne considers itself the capital of chocolate in France. The Spanish brought cacao back from their pillages in the Americas, but they initially kept it to themselves. Jewish refugees fleeing from the Spanish inquisition in the 17th century made chocolate in Bayonne, and soon their Basque neighbors took up the craft and excluded their teachers from practicing it.

Eventually, chocolate-making expanded throughout France, Europe and the world. Bayonne may not be home to the most famous chocolatiers in France, but a visit to the old city is a sweet ritual beloved by many in the southwest. We enjoyed a cup of the famous hot chocolate at Cazenave, on the Rue Port Neuf, in the company of a mother and daughter from Pau; la mère told us she had made a yearly pilgrimage to the small chocolate café with her parents and was continuing the tradition with her daughter.

My daughter perhaps starting a tradition of a chocolat chaud at Cazenave. It was served with toast.

A chocolate artisan on the Rue Port Neuf, Bayonne’s famous chocolate street.

One can’t live on chocolate alone, although Bayonne might tempt you to try. Fortunately, the city can satisfy savory meal demands equally well. Ham, or jambon, is a Basque country staple, and visitors to Bayonne will find it as ubiquitous on menus as is duck in other parts of the southwest. Bayonne even has a museum of ham.

Typical charcuterie board served at a Bayonne wine bar.

Bayonne is about an hour by bus or car from San Sebastian, which claims to have a higher concentration of Michelin stars than any city in the world. Alas, we didn’t cross the border to Spain, but that means we’ll need to return and have a more extensive tour of Basque country.

Meanwhile, we’re reliving our Basque experience with a couple of iconic dishes. Chicken with tomatoes and peppers is, aside from thinly-sliced jambon, among the most popular menu items in Basque country. Many recipes exist for this dish. I chose one from French chef Daniel Boulud, mostly because I just finished reading Bill Buford’s delightful memoir of his cooking life in Lyon, Dirt, and Boulud was frequently mentioned.

Basque chicken

I served this over slices of French sesame peasant bread from our excellent local bakery, Common Good. But I also had a hankering for Sarlat potatoes, which are not Basque but from the neighboring Dordogne region. I shared the recipe in the Bordeaux segment. It’s currently my favorite way to cook potatoes.

Sarlat potatoes

Finally, I spent most of the day working on a Gateau Basque. Many, many recipes exist for this delicious pastry cake. I used Paula Wolfert’s from her Cooking of Southwest France (sadly, out of print), and it’s definitely more involved than most recipes available online. It required early-in-the-day preparation of three components: Basque Aromatics made from steeping lemon peel in Armagnac and other liquids, pastry cream, and dough. The cream and dough were flavored with the aromatic liqueur and chilled for a few hours. Then I rolled out the dough into two rounds, spreading the cream between the layers and baking it for about 45 minutes. It was lovely and delicious!

Gateau basque.
Basque chicken and potatoes Sarlat.

Our time in Bayonne and Pays Basque was much too short, but we’ll be back!

Leaving Bayonne via the drawbridge across the moat outside the city walls.

Bordeaux, du vin

So summer sidetracked the project a bit, but let’s get back to it.

This week’s video.

As I mentioned last time, the northern part of the Aquitaine region is probably best known for Bordeaux, France’s most celebrated wine. Indeed, its global fame helps keep the premier cru out of the price range of ordinary mortals. For a fascinating film on this subject, check out Red Obsession, a 2013 documentary about the nouveau riche in China paying insane prices for the Bordeaux luxury brands.

Happily, all is not lost for the budget-minded wine enthusiast. Bordeaux has thousands of wineries and most of them are ignored by the Chinese. Not all of them produce excellent wine, but a good wine merchant can steer you to the values. My neighborhood wine shop stocks multiple wines we have enjoyed from Bordeaux for less than $20/bottle; for some vintages, such as 2015, he tells me that even mediocre producers had great success.

Most Bordeaux is red wine blended from several grapes, and the region is divided by the river Garonne, which creates the “Left Bank” and “Right Bank” subcategories of Bordeaux. Books have been written on the breadth and diversity of Bordeaux wine classifications, and I won’t attempt to write another one here. For a good, concise primer, check out these 10 essential facts from Vincarta. Easy! Now off to the wine shop.

The city of Bordeaux, which is supposedly the second most visited city in France after Paris, is a must stop for anyone wanting to explore the region’s viniculture in person. In 2016, the world’s most eye-popping wine museum opened in Bordeaux. La Cité du Vin is likely to be a premier cru destination for the wine tourist.

La Cité du Vin. Alice Veaux [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]

Bordeaux is also a hub for booking tours to the area chateaux. Expect to be set back about $90 per person for a half-day tour.

If you take my advice and get into the Bruno books, you’ll undoubtedly want to explore the neighboring wines of Bergerac. These share roughly the same climate and soil as Bordeaux, but not the same prices. You may need to go to France to try some, however. They aren’t easy to find in the United States. Here’s a funny story about Bruno and Bergerac from California. My neighborhood wine shop, which specializes in French wine, had nary a bottle from Bergerac at my last visit.

In France, wine is an integral part of a meal and rarely consumed without food. In southwestern France, we have entered the land of duck, or le canard. Duck is to this region as lobster is to Maine. The most iconic dishes are duck confit and foie gras, but the French have probably prepared le canard in every imaginable manner.

Duck can be harder to find in the United States, and here in northern Michigan, it is expensive. We’ll splurge for duck when we explore Gascony. For our northern Aquitaine menu, we made chicken and potatoes.

I’m fortunate to own a copy of Paula Wolfert’s masterpiece, The Cooking of Southwest France: Recipes from France’s Magnificent Rustic Cuisine. Unfortunately, it’s out of print, so if you want your own (and if you have more than a passing interest in le sud-ouest, you should!), you’ll need to find one in the used book market, and I recommend doing it quickly as this classic is likely to become more elusive and expensive the longer it remains out of print.

For our meal from the upper Aquitaine, I prepared two recipes from the book, and I’ll share my edited version here. Both were simple and received effusive praise from our guests.

The chicken dish specified sour green grapes, which is a thing one can get in the Dordogne but not in northern Michigan, so I used green table grapes. However, Black Star Farms in northern Michigan sometimes makes verjus. And, if you’re in Traverse City, Maxbauer has duck fat.

Sarlat potatoes on left, chicken à la dordogne on right.

Chicken Legs with Sour Grape Sauce in the Style of the Dordogne

  • 4 lbs chicken legs, at room temperature
  • salt and pepper
  • 4.5 tbsp unsalted butter
  • 12 plump unpeeled garlic cloves
  • 1/3 cup dry white wine
  • 6 to 7 tbsp verjus
  • 3 cups unsalted chicken stock, reduced to 1 cup (I used goose stock because I had it)
  • 3 dozen sour green grapes
  • 1.5 tbsp chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
  1. Trim away excess fat from the chicken legs. Dry well and rub with salt and pepper.
  2. Set a large, deep skillet over moderately high heat. Add 2.5 tbsp of the butter, then the chicken, skin side down, and the garlic cloves. Brown for 1 minute each side, shaking the skillet to keep the chicken and garlic from sticking.
  3. Reduce the heat to low, cover the skillet tightly, and cook for 10 minutes. Uncover the skillet, tilt, and skim the fat off the pan juices. Turn the chicken over. Add the white wine; cover again, and cook slowly for another 10 minutes.
  4. Uncover the skillet; add 5 tbsps of the verjus and quickly cover the pan so that chicken pieces absorb all the aroma and flavor. Cook slowly for 5 more minutes.
  5. Add 3/4 cup of the stock and cook for 5 minutes. Raise the heat; add the butter and the remaining stock and verjus. Swirl over heat to combine. Add the grapes and just warm through. Season the sauce with salt and pepper to taste.
  6. Arrange the chicken, garlic and grapes on a warm platter. Pour the sauce over the chicken. Sprinkle with the parsley and serve hot.

Sarlat Potatoes

  • 2 pounds red potatoes (waxy potatoes are best)
  • 3 tbsps rendered duck or goose fat, or fat scraped from duck confit
  • 2 tsps finely minced fresh garlic
  • 1.5 tbsps minced fresh flat-leaf parsley
  • salt and freshly ground pepper

Directions:

  1. About 30 minutes before serving, peel and rinse the potatoes. Using a mandoline or food processor, cut into 1/8-inch slices. Do not wash the slices.
  2. Heat the fat in a well-seasoned, 10-inch cast-iron skillet over moderately high heat. Add the potatoes and let them brown for an instant. Cook, turning with a spatula to coat well with the fat and avoid sticking, for about 2 minutes. Reduce the heat to moderate. When some of the slices begin to brown, press down on the potatoes with a spatula to form a flat round cake. Reduce the heat to moderately low, cover the skillet with a tight-fitting lid, and cook for 7 minutes.
  3. Raise the lid to allow steam to escape. Wipe away any moisture on the lid. Toss the potatoes gently so the crisp bottom pieces mix with the rest of the potato slices. Gently press down again with the spatula; cover and cook for 7 more minutes, shaking the skillet to keep the potatoes from sticking.
  4. Repeat #3. Then remove from the heat and let stand without uncovering for 30 seconds. Remove the cover quickly so the moisture doesn’t fall onto the potatoes. Wipe the inside of the cover dry. Tilt the skillet and spoon off and reserve any excess fat.
  5. Cover the skillet with a plate and invert to unmold the potato cake. Return the reserved fat to the skillet and set over moderate heat. Slide the potatoes back into the skillet and cook, uncovered, until the second side crisps, about 3 minutes. The potatoes should look somewhat like a cake and be puffy, crisp and golden. Transfer to a heated serving platter and sprinkle with the garlic and parsley. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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Pays de la Loire, du vin

We began this virtual tour de France nearly three months ago, and for the first time on our journey, we have arrived in wine country.

That seems hard to believe considering the importance of French wine in the world market and, bien sûr, to the French. However, wine has not been commercially produced in every part of France, and the regions bordering the English Channel – the focus of our first three months – are those traditionally without a wine industry.

This week’s video.

The wine map of France is expanding, thanks to the European Union’s liberalization of French rules that previously restricted where vines could be planted. Still, the regions with wines likely to be exported and available in your local wine shop are those from the prominent regions, with Champagne being the most northern of those.

French_vineyards.svg: *France_blank.svg: Eric Gaba (Sting – fr:Sting)derivative work: Sdaubert (talk)derivative work: Furfur [CC BY-SA 2.5 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)]

The Loire Valley is the area in neon green on the map above, and it happens to produce some of the best wine in France. With dozens of appellations (legally defined wine-growing areas), the Loire Valley is one of France’s largest and most varied wine-production regions. Diverse styles of white wine dominate, but excellent reds – particularly from the cabernet franc grape – are produced as well. Other grapes grown in the area include cabernet sauvignon, chenin blanc, chardonnay, and sauvignon blanc.

DalGobboM¿!i? [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]

Link to the map above, for zooming in.

This is a big region covering two stops on our tour de France. This week, we’re in the Pays de la Loire, the lower river valley closest to the Atlantic Ocean. I wanted to try a wine from Saumur, mostly because I’m a book nerd and I previously read Balzac’s Eugénie Grandet, which was set in Saumur. As it turned out, the wine I purchased was an excellent accompaniment for the fish I prepared to celebrate the Pays de Loire.

First up, the main course, or le plat principal. I wanted to highlight beurre blanc sauce, which is a butter sauce invented about a century ago by a chef near Nantes and is now a classic of French cuisine. I baked some whitefish in foil to serve as a base for the sauce. The wine’s acidity was the proper contrast with the richness of the butter. It was as if the wine and the sauce were made to go together, and perhaps they were! This is why we often choose a wine from the same region as the food.

Many, many variations of beurre blanc sauce exist, with recipes readily available on the internet. We are a household of three adults, so the following recipe – which I adapted from numerous sources – was just right, although it was so delicious we all could have stuffed ourselves senseless with it.

Poisson au beurre blanc

  • 4 to 8 oz filets of whitefish per person
  • olive oil
  • sprigs of fresh herbs, such as rosemary
  • salt and pepper
  • foil or parchment paper
  • 2 tsp minced shallots
  • 1/4 cup white wine (I used the Saumur)
  • 1 stick butter, chopped into about 1-inch cubes
  • 1-2 Tbsp heavy cream
Beure blanc with some slightly overcooked shallots

Prepare all of your ingredients – mise en place (everything in its place). Heat the oven to 425F. Place each filet on a piece of foil large enough to fold into a packet. Brush or rub each piece of fish with olive oil, salt and pepper and a tablespoon or more of fresh herbs. Fold the foil or parchment over the fish and crimp the edges to seal, then place on a cookie sheet or roasting pan and bake for about 15 minutes. If it finishes before the sauce, keep it warm in the foil until ready to serve.

While the fish is baking, heat a little oil in a saucepan, low to medium heat, just enough to cook the shallots. Try not to let them brown too much, but if you get distracted like I did and nearly let them burn, don’t panic – the sauce will still be good. It has butter and wine in it, after all.

Add the wine to the shallots and let it cook down until almost completely evaporated. At this point, add the cream and cook a little more. Let it get thick but do not boil. Now turn off the heat and start whisking or stirring in the butter, little by little. You can put the pan back on the heat to help the butter, but you want to keep the sauce under 130F. Finally, add salt and pepper to taste, then enjoy over the fish.

Russian Salad coming together

Russian Salad

To accompany the fish, I made a salad that is definitely not traditional for France. But with all the references to Russia along the banks of the Loire from last week’s video, I felt inspired to make one of my favorite salads.

Again, many versions of this Russian salad are available. I used this one, with a bag of frozen peas (cooked in the microwave) instead of the canned.

And the finished meal is below. Trust me, it tastes much better than it looks. My food photography needs improvement.

Crêpes and cake in Brittany

We’ve been traveling the past two weeks, although not in France. We’ve been enjoying le printemps (spring) in Caroline du Nord (North Carolina). We’re planning a special edition of this blog and our video channel later this week to highlight Francophone finds in the Triangle region of North Carolina.

Today, we discover what we might eat if we were in Bretagne (Brittany).

Almost certainly, we would eat something from the sea. With its extensive coastline, fishing has long been a mainstay of the regional economy. Seafood platters dominate restaurant menus. We once watched an episode of No Reservations in which Anthony Bourdain consumed a colossal tower of shellfish.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t replicate that experience.

Instead, we bring you another iconic contribution to world cuisine from Brittany: the crêpe. These thin pancakes are ubiquitous throughout France and, increasingly, the world. My own neighborhood in northern Michigan has an excellent crêperie operated by the genial Vanessa, une femme française who settled in Traverse City.

In Brittany, savory crêpes – called galettes – are made with buckwheat flour. We used this recipe for the traditional galette complete, which is a crêpe with ham, cheese and egg.

Galette complete.

We also made a Far Breton, which is a custard-like cake similar to flan. We made the pirates’ version using a recipe from Let’s Eat France, our new favorite food book.

The Privateer’s Far Breton

adapted from a recipe by Thierry Breton in Let’s Eat France

  • 2.25 cups (220 g) all-purpose flour
  • 3/4 cup plus 2 tbsp (175 g) sugar
  • 1 tsp (6 g) sea salt
  • 5 eggs
  • 4.25 cups (1 L) whole milk
  • 1 cup plus 1 tbsp (250g) heavy cream
  • 1 tbsp rum or armagnac
  • seeds of 1 vanilla bean or 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • about 2 cups of soft prunes
  • 1 tbsp plus 2 tsp (25 g) butter, for greasing the pan

Chop the prunes coarsely and soak in the rum or armagnac for as long as you want. Preheat the oven to 475F (250C). Grease and flour two 8″ round cake pans or a 9×13 baking dish, or better yet, line the baking dish with parchment paper and grease the paper. In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, salt, eggs, milk, cream and vanilla. Distribute the soaked prunes in the bottom of the pan or pans. Pour the batter over the prunes. Bake for 20 minutes, turn the oven off, then let the cake rest in the oven for another 30 minutes. Cool before serving. Dust with powdered sugar.

To see more, check out this week’s video.

À la semaine prochaine !