Salade de roquette, vinaigrette à l’échalote et amandes grillées

Last week I had lunch with someone who told me about a cooking class she had attended. It was one of those conversations between two persons who don’t know each other very well, who suspect they are in the company of a fellow food enthusiast, but are still trying to determine how deeply infected the other person is, and just how much detail might be too much detail.

So they end up talking in layers like a mille-feuille, giving general information at first, to test the waters and see how the other person reacts. If he/she prompts for more, they elaborate a little, and if the eyes of their interlocutor still don’t glaze over, then they feel completely at ease and connected, and can lavishly share the mouth-watering details and the minute practicalities of whatever dish, recipe, or technique they are conversing about.

Of course, my lunch companion and I ended up discussing the whole menu that they had prepared during the cooking class. In passing, she explained the word contiser, a culinary term I knew not (I have found just a few references to the English translation “to contise”), which means to cut regular slits in a raw piece of meat or fish to insert ingredients that will lend flavor during the cooking — like slivers of truffle or, in her case, a sprig of fresh rosemary in a chicken breast. This is a bit like larder (to lard), only larder should theoretically be used for pieces of lard inserted in meat.

She also mentioned (getting to the point here) preparing a vinaigrette cuite à l’échalote, a cooked shallot vinaigrette, which had you slow-cook the shallots in balsamic vinegar (optionally cut with water) until completely absorbed. This idea stuck with me, and I decided to give it a try on Sunday morning, for brunch with our friends Marion and Benoît.

I intended to use the vinaigrette to dress a fresh green bean salad, but the store was out, so I got arugula instead. I dressed it quite simply with a little olive oil and walnut oil, added in the cooked shallots, and tossed with chopped toasted almonds. The trio was a very successful mix of textures (snappy greens, crunchy almonds, soft shallots) and flavors (tangy, peppery, piquant, sour, toasted and sweet) in every bite.

Continue reading »

Cheesecake is among my favorite desserts, and I find it hard to resist, with its fresh, creamy yet cake-y body, and its tasty cookie crumb crust. But when you try to make American-style cheesecake in France, you quickly run into a procurement hurdle: neither cream cheese* nor graham crackers are easily available. You can find them — at least if you’re in Paris — but this requires time and effort and the planning of a trip to one of the few stores that carry those items. I prefer my baking to be a bit more spontaneous.

This allows us to transition, as smoothly as a cheesecake, to the French semi-equivalent: le Gâteau au Fromage Blanc. Fromage blanc (literally “white cheese”, and the “c” is mute) is a type of fresh cheese, most commonly made with cow’s milk, that has the consistency of thick and velvety yogurt but is typically tarter than yogurt. It is a very common and popular product here, there are many kinds (fermier, battu, en faisselle…) and you can find it in different fat percentages, from maigre (0% fat) to entier (40% fat).

Gâteau au fromage blanc differs from cheesecake in that the crust is usually a thin pastry crust with a rim, and it incorporates beaten egg whites into the batter: this gives the cake a very airy and light texture, almost mousse-like, and makes it higher than most cheesecakes I’ve been served — usually around three inches. My habitual (and, need I say, beloved) cheese store sells their own, a huge and tempting affair beneath a cloche à fromage (a glass cheese cover, literally “cheese bell”) on the counter, to be sliced and sold by the weight like any other cheese.

I love Gâteau au fromage blanc, but have two objections to making it myself in the traditional way. One, nothing, and I mean nothing, beats a cookie crumb crust: the patting or the eating, it’s hard to tell which part I enjoy the most. And two, I don’t love recipes that call for “beating egg whites till stiff” because it often sounds like too much trouble.

In any case, when the desire and occasion for a cheesecake arise — and arise both did last weekend to end a dinner party with a flourish — I go for my own easy version, which enrolls fromage blanc and Northern European cookies (the spice-rich and toasty and delicious Speculoos, or Bastogne) in a sort of mid-Atlantic rendition of the cheesecake. Only this time, as promised a couple of weeks ago, I used the remainder of my gingersnaps for the crust, making this a 100% homemade cheesecake, which we all delighted upon with forceful cries of felicity.

* 2014 Update: I can now find Philadelphia cream cheese in most supermarkets around me.

Continue reading »

[Oyster Mushroom Salad with Apple and Bergamot]

Pleurotes, also known as oyster mushrooms or tree oysters, are these large greyish beige mushrooms with a round funnel-shaped hat, that grow in clusters on the trunk of trees — they don’t care much if said tree is dead or alive, if you must know. The flesh underneath the hat (and that part is called the hymenophore, aren’t you glad you came) has deep white gills that go all the way down the curve of the mushroom. The pleurote has a slight aniseed smell and some say an oyster taste, but I can’t say that was too obvious to me — I would think the name originates from the way the pleurote clings to the tree bark like the oyster to its rock.

In French, the name pleurote, I was happy to learn, comes from the Greek pleura which means side, and ous, outos which means ear. “The ear that grows on the side of a tree”. Neat, huh? And also, despite what one might think (or at least what I thought) it is un pleurote and not une pleurote.

I found those mushrooms at the Batignolles market, still clumped up in gritty bouquets right off the tree (which the city kid in me largely favors over separated and cleaned up), and chose one that looked nice and plump with no bruises. In passing, the background on the picture above is the typical brown paper bag that’s used in small produce stores or at the market to package up the more fragile fruits and vegetables, while the robust ones often get the plastic bag treatment (or no bag at all, if you are prudent enough to have come with your own personal basket).

Since the rest of my produce harvest that day happened to include mâche (lamb’s ear lettuce), bergamots and small juicy apples, I made them all play together to create this winter salad: lightly dressed mâche leaves, apple slices marinated in bergamot juice, topped with warm sauteed pleurotes and chopped walnuts.

You will likely find oyster mushrooms in Asian stores, but if you don’t (in France pleurotes are most readily available during the fall and winter), feel free to substitute other mushrooms with the same kind of tender, slightly chewy texture, like shiitake or chanterelles for instance.

Continue reading »

[Afternoon Snack (almost) at Pierre Hermé’s]

Yesterday afternoon I had the pleasure to meet Louisa, my own personal kitchen hero, and Andrea, her charming roommate from Mexico who also works at Les Ambassadeurs. When we discussed time and place, Louisa suggested we meet at Pierre Hermé‘s boutique, as Andrea had yet to discover it. Needless to say, I nodded vigorously (for the sole benefit of my living-room wall, as we were speaking on the phone) and happily agreed.

Pierre Hermé doesn’t have a salon de thé area in which to sit down and gape at your purchases before diving in blissfully. I’d always thought it unfortunate, but now Louisa has introduced me to the unofficial Pierre Hermé salon de thé, and for this she will forever have my gratitude. Just a block from the pastry shop is a café called “Café de la Mairie”. It looks and feels like countless other cafés in Paris (a little drab and flavorless, one has to admit) but for two invaluable things: one, it has a non-smoking room upstairs — an absolute prerequisite if you want all your taste buds to be alert and atiptoe — and two, the waiters will look the other way when you open your precious boxes and use your coffee spoon to savor their content.*

And here is the selection that Andrea, Louisa and myself enjoyed, taking spoonfuls in turn and yumming in unison, discussing our tasting notes and comparing them with the descriptions from the little catalog (the perfect bedside read for guaranteed sweet dreams).

Continue reading »