Ingredients & Fine Foods

Le Tourteau Fromagé is a French cheesecake, one that I mentioned buying during a recent grocery store trip. “Fromagé” means “with cheese”, and “tourteau” is a variation on the word “tourte”, which means “pie”. I happen to find the word “tourteau” very cute – it puts me in mind of a small cuddly animal for some reason.

It is a specialty from the Deux-Sèvres, a district in the Poitou (South-West of France), and its origins can be traced back to the beginning of the 19th century. It is traditionnally made with fresh goat cheese (but is also sometimes made with cow milk cheese), flour, sugar and egg yolks, in which you incorporate beaten egg whites. The mixture is then poured in a special small round mold lined with a thin layer of pastry dough, and baked in the oven.

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UPDATE: I have now found a great recipe for IKEA-style havreflarn!

And today, it is with a plea for help that I come to you, a call to your infinite wisdom and collective knowledge.

Last time I did something of the kind, you proved to me that you were as generous with your advice and insight as I had hoped, and although I have yet to make another attempt at poaching an egg – I never seem to feel like it until the eggs I have can’t, in all honesty, be considered at their peak of freshness anymore – your precious tips will accompany me on my next foray, and you will be the first to hear about its relative or absolute success.

The matter at hand today is no less important than last time, for it involves chocolate: I am looking for a recipe to reproduce those Swedish Double Chocolate Crisps, made of two thin crispy buttery rolled oats cookies, sandwiched together by a layer of dark chocolate.

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Oh my.

This is one of the many luscious gifts that my blog-friend Jackie gave me when we met in London. Those square layered cookies come in a pack of three, each with a layer of buttery shortcake biscuit, a layer of creamy caramel, and a layer of sweet milk chocolate to top it all off.

Naturally, I expected something rich, so I cut one up into fourths and had a piece with a cup of tea. It was so good, the different layers melding together, the caramel getting squished between the crunchy biscuit and the velvelty chocolate, that I just had to have another quarter.

By then I was in such a sugar high that I couldn’t bear the thought of the two remaining quarters feeling lonely and neglected, so I let them join their little buddies and happily gobbled them up.

And then I spotted the nutrition facts on the package. And thought : “There has got to be some mistake.” Oh well.

Update : I was just catching up with Jackie’s posts. Now if that isn’t synchronicity…

[New Year Jam]

Just a couple of days ago, I happened to be around La Grande Epicerie de Paris, the quite huge gourmet food store attendant to the store Le Bon Marché. This kind of place works like a magnet on me, and although I was laden with different heavy items to carry, I still went in to browse around. This is really heaven for food lovers, but I didn’t stay long : there is only so much cumbersome aisle space negociation even I can take, as filled with tempting things as said aisles may be.

I did, however, have time to pick up the cutest jar of jam in history, with its little red polka dot hat and white knot. Christine Ferber is known as “la fée des confitures”, the jam fairy. I have mentioned her before, and how she makes fruit jams the old-fashioned way, in her little Alsacian village of Niedermorschwihr (pronounced whichever way suits your fancy). I have bought a couple of jars of her creations in the past, one Nougabricot (Apricot jam with honey and bits of almonds and pistachios) and one Framboise-Chocolat (Raspberries and Valrhona Guanaja chocolate). Both were memorably succulent.

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