Today is the 10th edition of Is My Blog Burning?, the collaborative blogging event! It is hosted this time around by Fabulous Baker Jennifer, from The Domestic Goddess, and the theme is Cookie Swap.

A cookie swap, if you’not familiar with the concept, is a little party thrown between friends and/or neighbors before the holidays, where each guest bakes large quantities of one type of cookie to be swapped with the others, so that each attendant leaves with an assortment of cookies. From what I understand, it is originally a tradition in Northern Europe countries (where they know a thing or two about holidays and cookies), and was then imported and widely adopted in North-America. I’ve never heard of such a thing being hosted in France, but baking holiday cookies isn’t that big in France — we’d rather just eat chocolate and glazed chestnuts.

So. Cookies. What kind could I make? I love anything pistachio, from pistachios in the shell to pistachio macarons and pots de crèmes à la pistache, not forgetting pistachio ice-cream. I had once wondered how pistachio things got their pistachio flavor — it seemed unlikely that it was from grinding shelled pistachios — and a brief research led me to pistachio paste. I looked for it at G.Detou, my trusted source for all things baking and hard-to-find. They did sell pistachio paste, but in cans of one kilo that cost 25 €, and I found it somewhat hard to justify the expense, as tempting as it was.

So I reluctantly filed the idea in the back of my mind, until I started working on the Bar à Veloutés project, for which we decided to make a velouté pistache. And there was my justification! I promptly purchased a can of pistachio paste, and made the pistachio cream (simply using my crème brûlée recipe and adding two rounded tablespoons of pistachio paste per 4 yolks).

This happily left me with some of the paste leftover, which I decided to use to make a batch of pistachio cookies for our virtual cookie swap. I started with a chocolate chip cookie recipe, substituted pistachio paste for one third of the butter, and skipped the chocolate chips. I used half whole-wheat flour and half all-purpose, because I like the depth of taste that it brings. I also used light brown unrefined cane sugar : I think it works particularly well in baked goods, because it keeps a crystallized texture that’s really lovely to bite into. I bought this one from the organic store, it is from Paraguay and has the Max Havelaar fair trade label, which I support whenever I can.

Those cookies filled the apartment with a wonderful smell (I vowed not to open the windows for a week), and I love how they turned out : crispy on the edges, moist and tender inside with the crunch of sugar, and that fabulous (but not too overpowering) pistachio flavor underlined by a hint of salt. I served them for dessert when Marie-Laure and Laurence came for dinner, to accompany a simple no-sugar-added apple compote. I gave my dear friends a few cookies to share with their respective boyfriends and some pistachio paste so they could conduct their own pistachio experiments. Possible variations include half-dipping them in chocolate, or adding in chocolate chips, pistachio chunks or dried cranberries…

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On Sunday night, wanting to put the finishing touches on my talk, I decide to stay in and have dinner in my room, a small room with a view out onto the harbour, in the four-star Cannes hotel where the Gourmet Voice festival is taking place.

I order a club sandwich of course, not hesitating for one second : the first room service of my life, it has to be the epitomical sandwich, no? Besides, club sandwiches are one of the better inventions of mankind, and an opportunity to eat one should never be passed up.

The club sandwich arrives moments later, wheeled in on a tablecloth-clad table by a red-suit-wearing, white-haired, phonebook-serious majordomo. He maneuvers the table up between the bed and the television, and expertly hooks the collapsible sides back up so the table is, once again, nice and round, adorned as it is with a pink rose in a little vase and a brand new ketchup glass bottle.

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Well, here I am, back from Cannes! The Gourmet Voice festival was a fabulous three days of food- and media-oriented conferences, conversations and debates. I feel tremendously privileged to have had the opportunity to attend, it was really heartwarming and exciting to meet so many people from all over the world, all sharing that same passion of communicating on, with and around food.

The festival started out in the most auspicious way for me : as I hopped into the car that was to drive me in from the airport, I suddenly realized with a miniature stomach lurch that the person sitting to my right was none other than Ken Hom. This was just the first in a string of private little joys which I mostly kept to myself of course, pretending it was just the most natural thing to be sitting in a car, sharing a bathroom sink or striking up a conversation with celebrity chefs and journalists.

The talks covered a variety of subjects, from the history of cookbooks to guidebook politics, from cookbook best-sellers to the responsibility of food critics, from the making of a wine guide to the relationship between food TV and pornography. My own talk went very well, and I hope I did you all justice — fellow bloggers and readers alike — in speaking about the wonderful world of food blogs.

Here are a few of my personal highlights :

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[Chestnut Meal Galettes]

When I went to the Salon Saveur last spring, I returned with quite a number of purchases. Some of them were fresh and perishable, and the days that followed were a happy procession of delicacies, as we methodically and dutifully consumed what needed to be.

Such food shows are always Temptation Hall for me and I would gladly get a bit of everything, but there’s usually a moment when the little angel of Reason sitting on my left shoulder (the right one already laden with bags) starts to fidget and clear his throat, reminding me that, contrary to the belief I seem to hold, I do not have a family of five to feed, and that all those marvels won’t be any good if half of them have to be left in the refrigerator to spoil, for lack of opportunity to eat them and sheer stomach room. And don’t get him started about starving children or the société de consommation. He usually adds for good measure that he hopes I’m not counting on him to help lug the bags all the way home, because his back is extremely fragile and the doctor forbade him to carry anything heavy, and he doesn’t want to strain his neck yet again, thank you very much. I tell you, he’s a handful.

So. I’m usually careful not to buy more fresh stuff than we can conceivably eat, but that still leaves me with many options, products that have a longer shelf-life because they are canned, dried or vacuum-packed. Those I allow myself to buy (of course there’s that full set of monetary, weight and pantry space considerations but let’s not wander astray here). I will stash them somewhere in a cabinet, allowing myself to half-forget about them, thus preparing mini-surprises for myself when I rediscover them weeks or months later whilst rummaging in search of something else. (I’m thinking of organizing tours inside my kitchen cabinets, a bit like they do in the Paris catacombs, providing my visitors with flashlights and sturdy construction helmets.)

Case in point today : a package of Brise de Châtaigne, purchased at the aforementioned Salon Saveur last May. Brise de Châtaigne is a coarse chestnut meal produced in Ardèche, the region where all self-respecting chestnuts come from. Since brise is French for breeze, I am tempted to call this chestnut breeze because it’s poetic, but here brise comes from the verb briser, to break. It is made of dried chestnuts (“Ingrédients : 100% châtaignes”, said the label) broken into tiny nuggets, to be cooked like you would rice. This is actually a very new product, which first came out in January of 2004. I have yet to see it anywhere else than at the Salon though, but I haven’t really looked either.

I was instantaneously pop-inspired to turn the chestnut meal into these little galettes. Since I suspected a risk of mush in the brise once cooked, the idea was to bake it into patties for better texture and presentation. I considered adding diced sauteed vegetables (possibly carrots or zucchini) to the mix, but decided against it, to get the purest first taste of the brise. The galettes turned out not only pretty and appetizing, but also mighty tasty : they developped a golden color and a thin crispy crust, while the inside stayed soft and nicely mealy, with the fabulous sweetness and flavor of chestnuts.

I would definitely make these again to serve as a side to game or a roasted meat, or quite possibly as the centerpiece of a fall salad. (If you can’t find brise de châtaigne, chopped cooked chestnuts could be substituted, and I’m guessing that 180 g uncooked brise would be equivalent to about 500 g cooked chestnuts, but this is untested as of yet.)

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