Ingredients & Fine Foods

[Chocolate Orange Bread]

I bought this loaf of bread at the BoulangEpicier the other day. I’ve mentioned that store before, and it continues to be a favorite of mine : whenever I’m in the area I make sure to stop there, to buy some bread or grab one of their pricy but mind-blowing sandwiches.

I have also adroitly albeit heavily hinted at my neighbor Patricia, who works close by, that it was really perfectly okay to surprise me with a little something from Be every now and then. This has already won me a loaf of fig bread, one of a life-altering walnut bread, a little visitandine (a financier-like almond cake, named after the nuns who belong to the order of Visitation Ste-Marie), and a chocolate chip cookie. Good yield, no? Fine neighbor, too!

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What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is not just any old potato. No no no. Oh, no. These are Bonnotte potatoes, from the island of Noirmoutier, just South of Brittany. Noirmoutier potatoes, which benefit from copious rains imbued with sea salt, are considered to be the best, and the Bonnotte variety is the cream of the crop.

I bought a kilo of these last week at the Salon Saveurs, for 4.80 €. The guy at the stand, unlike most of the other stand-keepers, was slightly impatient and bordering on the dismissive, but still, I had to ask about the best way to cook them. He said, without so much as a moment’s hesitation : steam them.

Their skin is very thin and edible, and I asked about the cleaning step : should I rinse them under water and brush them gently? He looked at me as if I had just suggested slashing his firstborn’s throat open before we had even had lunch, and he said, “Oh no, god no! If you do that, they’ll take on the taste of water!”. This left me sort of puzzled. Potatoes? Taking on the taste of water? Um, whatever you say, sir, you’re the expert. “You have to rub them together with coarse salt in a clean dishcloth”, he said.

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[Little Swiss Cheeses]

Un petit suisse, literally “a little Swiss”, is a fresh cow’s milk cheese that’s shaped like a small cylinder.

The story, I gather, is that it was originally invented in Normandy in the 1850’s, at a dairy farm owned by a Madame Hérould. One of her garçon-vachers (an employee who tends to the cows, literally a cowboy), who was from Switzerland, suggested she enrich her cheese with cream, like they did in his home country. She followed his advice to excellent results, and named the cheese in his honor. One Monsieur Gervais got interested; he helped develop the production process, and had the cheese shipped to Paris on the newly created train line, to be sold extra-fresh every morning.

Originally, a white strip of paper was wrapped around each cylinder to hold its shape, and the petits suisses were packed six by six in little wooden boxes. The contemporary version of the packaging has each petit suisse sit in its own ribbed plastic tub, like a yogurt. However, modern-day producers have cleverly kept the paper wrapping, which clearly marks the identity of the product.

It used to be a 60% milk fat cheese, but it is nowadays more commonly sold in its 40% version, or even 20% or 0%. Since it is unsalted and very fresh, it is a versatile ingredient that can be used for savory recipes (seasoned and mixed with fresh herbs, or added to a spread to make it creamy), but is also consumed as a dessert, like yogurt. It is especially popular with kids and widely served at school cafeterias, because the small tubs fit right into a child’s hand, and because unwrapping them is so much fun.

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[Fresh Fava Beans]

I’d never had fresh fava beans before, so it was a pleasant surprise to discover some in my Campanier basket this week. I decided to have them for lunch the other day.

Boy, do those little guys like to play hard-to-get!

What you initially have are those large, fat, green pods, that look a lot like giant green beans. I had quite a bunch of these.

When you tear one of the pods open, you can see that the inside is lined with a cottony padding, which I thought very pretty and delicate. It’s to protect the fragile little beans, you see.

The beans hang onto the inside of the pod by a sort of membrane, which is easy to detach, and leaves them with a cute hairdo. Unbelievable, the number of veggies among us with punk inclinations. The beans have the characteristic beany shape, oval with a slight depression on one side, and they’re a beautiful pistachio green, with a slightly darker spot in the middle.

So I opened each pod one by one, plucking the beans inside. A little time-consuming, but as is often the case, you get more dexterous by the bean, and I was watching some show on Gourmet TV, so all was right in the world. By that time, the fava beans were still my friend.

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