Tag: Recipes

Recipes and cooking instructions

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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Cognac and cake

Last week, we obsessed a little about Eleanor of Aquitaine (Alienor d’Aquitaine) and mostly ignored any other attraction of Poitou-Charentes. With Eleanor dead for some eight centuries now, some updating of the region’s charms may be in order.

Mais alors, non. Even the Wiki travel page for Poitiers notes “there isn’t a lot to do” in this pleasant, small city. It is the opposite of the tourist town lament, “a great place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.” Poitiers and other towns in Poitou-Charentes, such as La Rochelle, may be great places to live, but they don’t attract many tourists.

If one lived there, what would one eat? What did Eleanor eat? Likely she dined on some of the same delicacies still served in the region today. With a long Atlantic coastline, the Poitevins have long relied on les fruits de mer for sustenance. Oysters, mussels cooked in wine or cream, fish, eels and cuisses de grenouilles (frogs’ legs). The region also is rich in agriculture, so animal meats, cheeses and produce are fresh and plentiful.

This week’s video

Poitou-Charentes’ most celebrated contributed to world gastronomy is cognac, the exquisite brandy made from white grapes. It is not an ancient spirit; Eleanor almost certainly did not know it. Although wine historians say cognac may have been produced and consumed locally in the early 15th century, it didn’t really get going until the 16th century when Dutch merchants sought a better method of preserving wine for their long journeys home. Enter distillation, then later a double distillation, and the discovery that the resulting product was quite delicious before being diluted with water as the Dutch had intended.

Cognac is aged in oak barrels from the Limousin province directly to the east of Poitou-Charentes. Both Poitou-Charentes and Limousin are now part of the administrative region called Nouvelle Aquitaine, and as I think we’re unlikely to revisit Limousin on this tour, we’ll make a brief mention now. Limousin is a forested region renowned for timber, beef cattle and chestnuts. It also gets promoted frequently to British people as a cheaper alternative to the neighboring Dordogne region, sometimes called Dordogneshire due to its popularity for cross-channel second homes. The English have been in this region for centuries, ever since Eleanor’s days!

Back to cognac. Victor Hugo called it “the liquor of the gods.” Napoleon liked it, too. We have a bottle of Courvoisier, which claims to have been the emperor’s favorite.

Today, cognac is enjoyed worldwide, mostly in China where it is a symbol of luxury, and also by American rappers. According to a recent e-magazine feature, cognac is currently experience a resurgence of popularity – perhaps thanks to Jay-Z and P. Diddy – although not in France. The French protect it with an appellation d’origine contrôlée but only keep about 3 percent for their own consumption, unlike armagnac, a brandy from the Gascogne which is hard to find outside of France. (We have a bottle of armagnac, but we’ll get to that in a few weeks.)

As I have always thought of cognac as an after dinner drink, I decided to pair it with a cheesecake specialty from Poitou-Charentes. It worked well together! The cake, called tourteau fromagé, is quite simple to make, although mine did not achieve the traditional burnt crust, perhaps because I have a gas oven which is notoriously hostile to browning.

One of my favorite food writers, Clotilde of the Paris-based Chocolate & Zucchini blog, describes the history and significance of this dessert, along with a photo of what it is supposed to look like. And here is mine:

tourteau fromagé, unburnt

Despite its unburnt crust, it was delicious, and as my husband said, the lack of burning gave us more to eat.

I used a fresh local chèvre, or goat cheese, that was already quite dry and did not need to be further drained. I followed this recipe. Also, I did not have the proper mold, so I improvised with a small springform pan (for the one pictured above) and my English pudding steamer for the second one. They were equally good.

I’m also too lazy to trim my pastry crust to look pretty.

With a small glass of cognac, this was an excellent treat!

Next week: Bordeaux.

Wine and Food in the Loire Valley

First, apologies for the two-week delay in bringing you part two of the Centre-Val de Loire region. Real work forced this project to the sidelines. But now we can relax with a glass of very good wine.

This week’s video.

France is, by many assessments, the greatest wine producing country in the world, and the Loire Valley is one of its most lauded regions. It may not have quite the fame of Bordeaux or Burgundy, but that may have more to do with its diversity of viniculture. (No one says, “I’ll have a bottle of Loire.”)

This mind-boggling diversity makes me want to throw up my hands and acknowledge that the only possible way to get to know Loire wines is to go there for a very long time and tour the vineyards. Preferably on a bicycle. And there are many tour companies that will take you there.

I’m a wine drinker, not a wine expert. I’m still learning about wine, and I’ll undoubtedly say that 50 years from now, if I live that long. Is it possible to stop learning about wine? Just dipping one’s toe into this region of France makes the pleasurable task of wine exploration seem like a journey that will never end.

Wine is not a ladder to climb, as we’re so often taught. Not even close. Wine is a maze, a labyrinth, one we gladly enter, embracing the fact that we don’t know where it will take us and that we’ll never likely find our way out.

Jason Wilson, in Godforsaken Grapes: A Slightly Tipsy Journey Through the World of Strange, Obscure, and Underappreciated Wine

One area in which I do have expertise is research (former research director -not of anything wine-related, but skills are skills). And I can recommend an excellent, user-friendly and comprehensive guide in English to the wonders of Loire Valley grapes. If you want to learn more about wine, you will not regret bookmarking the Wine Folly site. The book is also nice to have on hand.

Now, shall we open a bottle and find something to eat with it?

Fortunately, my neighborhood wine shop – which specializes in French wines and is a mere two blocks walk from my house – has a nice selection from the Loire Valley. An entire shelving unit is devoted to the region, nearly the same amount of store real estate given to Burgundy.

The Loire Valley section at Bon Vin

This past weekend’s free tasting included this delicious sauvignon blanc, which came home with me.

Val de Loire Sauvignon Blanc

And one of my favorites at last week’s mega-testing was a red Loire Valley wine.

What might you eat with one of these excellent wines if you were in the Loire Valley. Recall that this region is known as “the garden of France.” Apple and pear orchards are plentiful, as well as market gardens. Hunting was the lure that drew the French aristocracy to the valley, and game is still on the menu.

I was intrigued by a recipe for eggs poached in an herbed red wine sauce, mostly because of its name. Oeufs à la couille d’âne translates to “eggs with donkey’s balls.” I can’t explain. It has something to do with the color of the finished dish. No donkey parts of any kind are present.

Another simple recipe featuring something cooked in an herb-infused liquid- this time milk – comes from Patricia Wells in her Bistro Cooking.

Enjoy!

Pommes de Terre Solognotes

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups milk
  • 1/2 cup minced fresh herbs (tarragon, thyme, parsley, chives)
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 5 whole black peppercorns
  • 2 pounds baking potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced
  • Salt and freshly ground black pepper
  • 1 garlic clove, halved
  • 1/2 cup crème fraîche or heavy cream
  • 1 tsp fresh thyme or 1/2 tsp dried
  • 1 cup freshly grated French or Swiss gruyère cheese

Directions:

1.Preheat the oven to 375F.
2. Combine the milk, the mixed herbs, bay leaves, and peppercorns in a saucepan. Cover and scald over medium-high heat. Remove from the heat and let steep, covered, for 10 minutes. Strain the milk into a large saucepan, discarding the herbs and peppercorns.
3. Add the potatoes to the strained milk. Cover and cook until the potatoes are tender, about 15 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste; set aside.
4. Rub the inside of an oval porcelain gratin dish with the garlic. Spoon the potato mixture into the dish. Dot with the crème fraîche and sprinkle with the thyme.
5. Bake until the gratin is golden, about 45 minutes. Remove the gratin dish from the oven, and sprinkle with the grated cheese. Return to the oven and bake until the top is very crisp and golden, about 15 more minutes. Serve immediately.

Pommes de terre solognotes

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 !

La cuisine de Basse-Normandie

I thought about titling this post, “Just add Calvados.” That delicious apple brandy from Normandy is included in nearly every dish I have to share with you today – main course, dessert, even the coffee.

If you are unfamiliar with this beverage, you’re not alone. It’s not popular in the United States and it can be hard to find except at well-stocked liquor stores. A note for those in northern Michigan: an excellent locally-produced apple brandy can be purchased at Black Star Farms’ tasting room.

Despite the elusiveness, I’ve rarely been without a bottle of Calvados in my pantry since college days, and I can credit that to the chunky apple walnut cake recipe in The Silver Palate Cookbook, which was my first acquisition in a cookery book collection that now numbers in three figures. My husband requests that cake every fall, and having once made it without the shot of Calvados, I can verify that this magical ingredient is worth tracking down.

Cows grazing among the apple trees of Normandy. Philippe Alès [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]

Calvados is an area of lower Normandy that takes its name from a cluster of rocks off the shore in the English Channel. The famous Camembert cheese also originates from lower Normandy. However, I did not pair these two classics for my dinner à la normande, mostly because I just missed closing time at my local cheese shop and was unable to get any Camembert.

Still, I have a great collection of recipes to share with you, starting with a rye bread that does not include Calvados (although I suppose it could be substituted for the hard cider.)

This week’s video.

For the Normandy Cider Rye, I used this recipe from The Rye Baker. I found a similar recipe from La Brea Bakery. If you have a digital kitchen scale – and if you bake, you really should – use the metric measurements, which for Greenberg’s recipe has 650 g rye flour, 260 g all-purpose flour, and 650 g hard apple cider.

Our main course came from another favorite cookbook, Dorie Greenspan’s Around My French Table. Her Chicken Normandy has been a weeknight standby in my house for years. I even included it for a class I taught at Oryana several years ago on cooking with apples.

Chicken à la Normande (adapted)

  • all-purpose flour (for dredging)
  • 4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves or equivalent chicken thighs
  • 1-2 Tbsp unsalted butter
  • 1-2 Tbsp olive oil
  • 1 large apple, peeled, cored and cut into 1-inch chunks
  • 1 medium onion, finely chopped
  • 8 oz sliced mushrooms
  • 1/3 c. chicken broth or green tea
  • 2 Tbsp Calvados
  • 2/3 c. heavy cream

Note: When a recipe has a small amount of broth, I often use leftover or second-brew tea instead, just because I have it handy.

Chicken à la normande, with a kale salad.
  1. Put some flour on a plate and season it with salt and pepper.
  2. Pat the chicken pieces dry and dredge them in the flour on both sides, shaking off excess.
  3. Put a large deep skillet over medium heat and add 1 Tbsp each of butter and oil. When the butter is melted, add the chicken. Cook for 3 minutes, turn and cook on other side for 3 minutes more.
  4. Add more butter or oil if the pan is getting dry, then toss in the apple, onion and mushrooms. Season with salt and pepper and stir to coat with the oil and butter. Cook for 1 minute then add the broth. Reduce the heat and simmer for about 10 minutes, until the chicken is almost cooked through.
  5. Turn the heat up again, pour in the apple brandy, and boil until it’s evaporated, about 1 minute. Add the cream and cook until the cream reduces by about one quarter. Taste for salt and pepper. 

I served the chicken with a kale salad, which I’m certain is not typical of Norman cuisine, but it worked well.

Wine note: an oaky chardonnay paired nicely with this dish. I opened a bottle, poured a glass, immediately regretted it because I wasn’t yearning for that taste, but then felt like a genius when I sipped it with the chicken.

And now, the Norman hole, or le trou normand. I had never heard of this delightful concoction until I researched the cuisine of the region, yet I suspect it will become a mainstay in my kitchen. It is a shot of Calvados on top of green apple sorbet, and in Normandy it it typically served between courses to aid digestion. I can’t say for certain that it helps for that, although it certainly didn’t hurt. It’s light, refreshing and also a nice ending for a meal. Unfortunately, commercial green apple sorbet is not readily available in most U.S. grocery markets, so I made my own, blending directions from numerous recipes in English and French.

Green Apple Sorbet

  • 4 Granny Smith apples
  • juice of 1 lemon
  • 200 g sugar
  • 200 g water
  1. Thinly slice the apples, discarding the cores. Toss with the lemon juice and freeze overnight.
  2. The next day, make a simple syrup by boiling the water and sugar together until it dissolves. Pour this over the apples and whiz in the blender until smooth.
  3. Chill for a couple of hours and then add to your ice cream maker. Alternatively, you could use the freeze-stir method.

Finally, what would a Normandy meal be without an apple tart? I used a recipe from my new favorite food book, Let’s Eat France!

Tarte normande

  • 8 oz sheet all-butter puff pastry
  • 2.25 lbs apples
  • juice of 1/2 lemon
  • 3 eggs
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 8 oz (or 1.25 cups) crème fraîche
  • 3 generous Tbsp Calvados
  1. Preheat the oven to 350F.
  2. Line a pan with puff pastry; do not grease the pan.
  3. Slice the apples into medium-thick wedges, then sprinkle them with the lemon juice.
  4. Arrange the apple slices on top of the dough, placing them snugly against each other so they almost overlap. (Or just throw them in randomly; it will still be good).
  5. In a bowl, whisk the eggs and sugar together until lightened. Whisk in the crème fraîche, then stir in the Calvados. Pour this mixture over the apples.
  6. Bake for about 40 minutes, or until the top is golden.

I made a rectangular version because I used store-bought puff pastry and I didn’t want to cut it.

In true Norman fashion, you could serve the tart with a café-calva, which (do I even need to say it?) is coffee with a shot of Calvados. The café-calva is not a taste I loved on its own, but it was surprisingly delicious with the tart. The French really do know something about food and drink, n’est ce pas vrai?

Next week, our tour takes us to Brittany, the Celtic region of France.

À la prochaine semaine !

La cuisine de Haute-Normandie

Pity the lactose-intolerant in Normandy, where it seems every dish contains milk, cream or butter. Or maybe lactose-intolerance isn’t an issue there.

Normandy is justifiably renowned for its cheeses, which include Camembert, Livarot and Pont l’Evêque.

How did it get to be a land of such rich dairy products? Rolling green meadows and a breed of cattle regarded as highly productive.

Vache normande

We’ll get to the great cheese in a couple of weeks. Today, let’s learn about some things that can be made when milk is cooked very, very slowly.

One traditional Norman dish is teurgoule, which is a rice pudding. It may resemble crème brûlée, but the process is very different. It’s baked for hours at low heat in an oven until a crust forms.

Teurgoule. Raphael Labbé [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)]

The Normans also make a milk jam, called confiture de lait. It is milk, sugar and vanilla cooked over low heat until the milk caramelizes. It is strikingly similar to the traditional Latin American preparation of dulce de leche. I used this recipe after looking up several versions in French to ensure it was the real thing.

The confiture at the end of about three hours of cooking.

The confiture is delicious on toast, perhaps made from one of the signature breads of the region, pain brié. The name might lead one to believe it contains cheese, but don’t be confused. Notice the accent. This word comes from the Norman verb brier, which means “to pound.” And that’s exactly what you do with the dough: beat it senseless (or airless).

I used this recipe in English, again after confirming its resemblance to recipes in French. The amount of yeast seemed excessive, but perhaps that’s what was needed for the incredible rise it manages after all the violence. Check out the pounding of the dough in this week’s video.

pain brié

Next week: Basse-Normandie and famous invasions.

La cuisine de Picardie

Last week, we ended our look at Picardie’s culture with an introduction to its extraordinary native son, Alexandre Dumas. This week, we begin our exploration of Picardie cuisine with Dumas. Perhaps one reason we love the French so much is that it seems every French person, regardless of profession, is obligated to contribute to the cuisine. Dumas was no exception.

Dumas is famous for his novels, notably The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, but the last great work of his life was the massive Grand Dictionhnaire de Cuisine, a volume of 600,000 words published posthumously in 1873. According to the publisher of the abridged English translation, Dumas on Food, it was for this work that Dumas wished to be remembered.

As with many French persons, Dumas viewed the entire world of foodstuffs as his eminent domain. He provided descriptions, anecdotes, stories and recipes of foods across the globe, some discovered on his travels. It is a fascinating first-hand account of the gourmet habits of a 19th century French gentleman. [Note: If you wish to read this book, you will need to track down a copy in the used book market as it is unfortunately out of print.]

I have not seen Dumas’ original work, so I can’t know what was omitted in the abridged version. Perhaps he wrote extensively on the food of his boyhood and the editors chose not to include it. Nevertheless, the dishes that are now considered the icons of Picardie cuisine are not described by this most famous native son.

Fortunately, you have me to look them up.

And unfortunately, some can not be easily replicated outside their place of origin.

Unless you are one of those people who can obtain what she wants wherever she happens to be, you will need to go to Picardie to try agneau de pré-salé, lamb that feeds in the salt water marshes of the Baie de Somme and is prized for its unique flavor.

Also, you probably need to go to Amiens to sample its special pâté en croûte of a boned duck baked in pastry. I’ll be doing a hacked version here since I do not have the skills or patience to try the original and I highly doubt I’ll find it on a restaurant menu stateside.

However, easily accessible to the home cook is the delicious almond cookie of Amiens, a simple cake with chantilly cream, and a crêpe dish that could be described as French enchiladas.

More photos are on this week’s video episode.

First up is that hard thing, the pâté en croûte. Amiens, the premiere city of Picardie, is known for its version of this French classic. My old edition of the Larousse Gastronomique has a recipe, but otherwise most of the instructions I found for making it were in French. I’m sure the effort is well worth it, but I settled for a cheaper and less time-consuming version.

My pâté en croûte, after the first slice.

Start this two days in advance, or at least very early on the day before you plan to serve it. Basically, you’re chilling the filling and the dough for several hours.

The Superb and Rustic Pâté en Croûte

adapted from a recipe by Yohan Lastre in Let’s Eat France

Cook’s note: The original recipe used a combination of chicken breasts, chicken thighs, pork tenderloin and pork belly. My market didn’t have pork belly, so I used more tenderloin, but I’m certain the pork belly would have made it richer with the extra fat. Also, 1350g of total meat was a little too much for my pan; 1kg would have sufficed. And I only needed half the gelatin recipe.

  • 160 g unsalted butter
  • 1 egg
  • 1 pinch sugar
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 50 g water
  • 250 g all-purpose flour

Melt the butter, let it cool, then beat it with the remaining ingredients for 20 seconds. Knead it until a dough forms, wrap in plastic and refrigerate overnight. The next day, roll it into a large rectangle that can line a greased 9×5 loaf pan, about 1/2 inch thick. Place the dough in the greased pan.

Cook’s note: I highly recommend bakeware from the USA Pan company. You don’t even need to butter or oil these pans.

  • 650 g boneless, skinless chicken thighs, ground or chopped finely
  • 350 g pork tenderloin, ground or chopped finely
  • 350 g pork belly
  • 28 g sea salt
  • freshly ground black pepper (about 15 turns of the mill, maybe 1 tsp)
  • 1 pinch spice blend (I used garam masala)
  • 1/3 cup white wine, vermouth, brandy or port. (I used vermouth and sherry.)
  • 120 g shelled pistachios

Combine all and refrigerate, wrapped, overnight. The next day, after lining the loaf pan with the crust, add this filling. Bake for about 25 minutes at 400F, then lower the heat to 275F and baked until the center is 149F on an instant read thermometer.

While the pâté is cooking, make the gélee.

  • 1 pkg gelatin
  • 4.5 cups chicken or vegetable broth
  • 1/4 cup port

Melt the gelatin in the warm broth, then stir in the port.

Remove the pâté from the oven and fill it with some of the warm gélee. Repeat this step about four or five times in 30 minute intervals. Refrigerate the pâté and any remaining gelée overnight.

The next day, heat the remaining gelée and pour over the top of the pâté. Refrigerate until set. To unmold, gently warm the tin in the oven to loosen the crust from the pan. Slice and serve.

macarons d’amiens

Now that we’ve gotten the hard one out of the way, let’s go for the easiest. These little cookies are simple, delicious and gluten-free! Another treat from Amiens, they just require a little forethought as the dough needs to chill.

There are several recipes on the internet. I used this one, but I forgot to brush the cookies with the egg yolk.

ficelle picarde

A newer entry (circa 1950s) into the cuisine de Picardie is this dish that reminds me of enchiladas. I made it to great acclaim, even from our French houseguest who had never before tried it (he’s from the south of France). I used this recipe, substituting white wine for the lemon juice and using emmantaler cheese.

gâteau battu

A sweet ending or an afternoon snack with tea, this cake is not difficult to make and uses pantry ingredients. It’s almost more of a bread than a cake, and it is traditionally eaten with jam. In Picardie, it is baked in a mold that resembles a chef’s hat, but lacking such a thing, I happily discovered I could approximate the effect with my English pudding pan, thus creating another role for that aside from the annual extravaganza that is Nigella’s Christmas Pudding.

The gâteau also provided a nice base for a dollop of chantilly cream, a classic version of whipped cream originating from the Picardie town of the same name.

There are so many dishes from Picardie that I read about but did not have time to try this week, and now we’re off to Normandy. I feel like I need to move to France and do this over a decade, at least!

À bientôt !

Nord-Pas de Calais

For centuries, English travelers have entered France at the port of Calais. This region – the first in our tour de France -is known as Nord-Pas de Calais, although since 2016 has been part of the new administrative region of Hauts-de-France.

Historically and culturally, this area has been part of the low countries that include Belgium (its neighbor to the west) and The Netherlands. Many of the iconic foods and beverages here are claimed as Belgian or Dutch. Indeed, the stew that is perhaps the most famous dish of the region -Flemish Carbonade or Carbonnade à la flamande, which is first up in our culinary tour – notes its origin in the name.

Due to its strategic location, the region has known war and more war throughout its history. You may have seen the 2017 film Dunkirk or read the book on which it was based. But since those events in World War II, things have settled down and the inhabitants have been left in peace to fish, farm, manufacture autos and sell petrol to chunnel travelers.

We’ll explore the culture, people and attractions in the next post. For now, let’s get to the food.

I wish I could’ve made the famous tarte aux maroilles (or flamiche au maroilles) and washed it down with a beer from the region, but I couldn’t find either from my local purveyors. But I was able to find the infamous mimolette cheese, which is apparently legal in the U.S. again.

Mimolette cheese
Faluche

And for bread, these little buns called faluche. I altered this recipe slightly by substituting a tiny bit of buckwheat flour for the all-purpose to make it a little less white.

For beer, I skipped across the border for a Belgian red ale.

Our main dish was the iconic stew, and it received such rave reviews that I think I’ll be making it again.

Check out our YouTube channel for a video of this week’s project.

Flemish Carbonade

recipe adapted from Let’s Eat France

  • 2.25 lbs beef stew meat, sliced thinly
  • 1 tbsp neutral oil (I used safflower)
  • 1 tbsp all-purpose flour
  • 4 onions, peeled and thinly sliced
  • 1 tbsp butter
  • 1 bunch mixed herbs, finely chopped
  • 1 bouquet garni (thyme, bay leaf, parsley, celery stalk)
  • 1 slice spiced bread or gingerbread
  • 1 tbsp red wine vinegar
  • 1 tbsp turbinado sugar
  • 1 2/3 cup red ale
  • salt and pepper
  • boiling water
  • 1 tsp capers

Preheat the oven to 300F. Heat the oil in an ovenproof skillet or flameproof casserole, add the beef and brown on both sides, cooking in batches if necessary to avoid overcrowding the pan. Sprinkle with the flour, stir to coat and set aside. Melt the butter in a skillet and cook the onions over low heat for about 10 minutes. In a baking dish, place a layer of the cooked meat, top with a layer of cooked onions, then a layer of herbs, and repeat. Place the bouquet garni on top, crumble the bread over the top, sprinkle with the vinegar and the sugar. Add the red ale, season with salt and pepper, and fill the dish with boiling water to the level of the ingredients. Cover and cook in the oven for 3 to 4 hours. Remove the bouquet garni. Distribute the capers over the top and serve.