[Bacon and Cantal Cheese Clafoutis]

Clafoutis is originally a fruit dessert from the Limousin, a region roughly in the center of France (and yes, I checked, as I am direly geographically challenged).

Let me go ahead and open a parenthesis here. Limousin is renowned in part for its cattle breed, a milk-chocolate cow called la vache limousine, a rather unimaginative but quite sensible name. I’m sure you’ll be as fascinated as I was to learn that this cow is fed, of all things, on topinambours — topinambour meaning Jerusalem artichoke, and being a French word I particularly favor, as should you. It is this diet, in addition to its favorable genetic characteristics, that explains the superior taste and quality of la vache limousine.

Back to the clafoutis (alternately spelled without the “s”) : it is the epitome of the grandmotherly dessert, and involves baking fruit (most typically cherries, but also plums, apricots, and pretty much any fruit) in a batter made of eggs, milk, sugar and flour. Some recipes also include butter, cream or oil. As a side note, true Clafoutis aux Cerises fans claim that it is much, much tastier if you leave the cherry stones in : the cherry juice will not leak into the batter, and the cherries will have more flavor if they cook with their little heart. It just makes the eating slightly less convenient (be sure to warn your guests!), but the best dishes are often the ones you have to fight for.

Have you noticed this trend lately, which consists in composing a savory dish in the style of a dessert, and naming the dish after that dessert? Amazing how instantly appetizing and tempting it makes the dish : salmon crumble, tomato tarte tatin, mushroom muffin, herb financier, goat cheese charlotte, eggplant mille-feuille, my broccoli and cornmeal upside down cake… And here, this bacon and cantal clafoutis!

I had long wanted to reproduce a similar dish I had had at the restaurant “Le Réconfort”, where I was dining one night with my friend Sophie. I decided to put it on my birthday party menu, and made up the recipe based on a couple other savory clafoutis recipes I had in my files. Next time I may double the recipe or at least 150% it, but below is what I used exactly.

The result looked very appetizing, slightly puffy with a thin golden crust on top. I served it at room temperature (it did deflate a bit upon cooling down), cut in one-inch squares. I liked it very much, with its rich texture and flavorful bite, all fluffy batter, cheese bits and crunchy pieces of bacon. Judging by the speed at which it disappeared, I probably wasn’t the only one.

Of course, if you look at it with cold, objective eyes, you could say that this is really a crustless quiche, but I believe in the magic of words, and a clafoutis will always taste better than a simple quiche, no?

[Le Réconfort – 37 rue de Poitou – 75003 Paris – 01 49 96 09 60]

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[Ricotta Meat Terrine]

I have a file of recipes I’ve clipped out from the numerous cooking magazines I read. When I’m trying to come up with a menu, this is my number one source of inspiration : I like leafing idly through the colorful pieces of paper in all shapes and sizes, I like the patchwork pattern they form, and how as a whole they reflect my cooking tastes and interests.

And somehow, since I often go through that file, I’ve gotten to know it and its contents quite well, and you could say that it has become one of my most trusted cookbooks. It does lack a sturdy binding, but its annoying ability to spill out and scatter all over the couch is certainly part of the charm.

The interesting thing is that many of those clippings have acquired a flavor and a personality of their own. And among these, is the particular group of the almost-made-its, those recipes I have really and sincerely considered making and almost elected numerous times, but that never quite made it into a selection, because something more glamorous or shiny was demanding my immediate attention.

This terrine belongs to that category : it had been in my file for a while, out of a Biba article on “mozzarella, ricotta & co.”. I had often considered it for its appealing concept, but for some reason had never quite gotten to trying it. Until my birthday party that is, when I realized that my menu was dangerously bordering on the vegetarian, and I needed to balance it out with some kind of animal protein, in order to please everyone. I also liked the idea of a terrine, which can and should be made some time ahead, a convenient trait when you’re planning a party.

And the little terrine delivered, I think, and proved worthy of the chance I finally gave it : it was pleasantly moist from the ricotta, tasty from the different kinds of meat and herbs, and well-seasoned, which is always a challenge with terrines as you can’t very well taste the raw mixture. It also lent itself nicely to being cut in cute little cubes and passed around to the hungry crowd.

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[Parmesan & Zucchini Chilled Soup]

Well, my birthday buffet just had to have something zucchini, no?

This soup was an attempt to reproduce a soup I recently had at R’Aliment, which has become my first choice of restaurant for a weeknight girls’ dinner out with my best friends : excellent food, always different (the menu changes weekly), fresh, light, clean tastes, it never disappoints.

The soup I had in mind was a Délice Froid de Fenouil et Courgettes au Parmesan, which Laurence and I shared the other night while waiting for Marion, who was going to join us as she came out of her African dance class. I decided to try and emulate it, skipping the fennel because I didn’t want the slight hint of aniseed.

My version turned out somewhat differently from theirs : this was my first attempt at cold soups, and I suspect that theirs wasn’t milk or yogurt-based after all, and probably made from just stock and olive oil. Mine was also a tad spicier than I wanted it to be, which is what’s bound to happen when you’re preparing three things at the same time and just throw in a chili pepper without tasting it for strength first!

I liked my version nonetheless, refreshing and tasty with its nice zucchini flavors, enlivened by the sharpness of the parmesan and the tartness of the fermented milk.

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[Red Onion and Rhubarb Mini-Tartlets / Fresh Cheese and Quince Mini-Tartlets]

When I throw a party, even if I’m going to serve food buffet-style, I always try to have a few small nibbles to offer first, at the bar that separates our kitchen from the living-room, which is where everyone tends to linger at first. This allows all of the guests to arrive, get a drink and settle in, before the buffet is declared open and people can start picking up plates and helping themselves happily.

One of the requirements I had set for myself while dreaming up a menu, was to use at least one of my new Flexipan toys, and it is the mini-tartlet molds that ended up being elected.

While visiting my dear grandmother recently, I was leafing through one of the magazines she reads, Prima or Modes & Travaux, I don’t remember which. I usually enjoy looking at the cooking section in those magazines, because of their very practical, no-nonsense approach : the recipes are usually simple, but appealing and tasteful. I also like that they take great care to describe every single step, because their audience is not necessarily cooking savvy.

In this particular issue, a recipe for a red onion tart with apple and raisins caught my eye, and I jotted down a few of the guidelines. This inspired me for these mini-tartlets, for which I replaced the apples and raisins with rhubarb, made mini-tartlets instead of big tart, and filled the shells with just the vegetables, skipping the egg and cream mixture that they used in their recipe.

As for the brousse and membrillo tartlets, the idea just sort of improvized itself, from wanting to offer two kinds of mini-tartlets instead of just one like initially planned. Brousse is a kind of very fresh cheese that is a bit like very thick yogurt, made with cow’s, goat’s or sheep’s milk, and I had some leftover from another recipe. The brousse needed something to top it and kiss it to life, which is where my dear Crema di Membrillo came into play : I bought a piece of this Spanish quince paste on our recent trip to Madrid, and have been eagerly trying to create occasions to use it ever since. But if you can’t find those two ingredients, any other kind of fresh cheese will work, with any other kind of firm, not-too-sweet fruit jelly.

Both kinds of mini-tartlets turned out very nicely, both were a nice mix of sweet (onion and membrillo) and tart (rhubarb and brousse) flavors, cupped by the satisfying, buttery crunch of the tartlet shells. As with all mini-things, they were also a pretty sight in their colorful serving plates, and a very refreshing appetizer on this very warm July night.

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