[Codfish with Fava Beans, Cranberries and Pistachios]

This is the main dish I served on Saturday night, when our friends came to dinner. The idea for this sort of came to me out of thin air : I was leafing through cookbooks but nothing was really calling my name, when all of a sudden I had visions of fish, baked, with colorful little veggies. This materialized into codfish fillets, baked on a bed of green onions and sprinkled with fava beans, whole cranberries and pistachios.

We served it with quinoa, which I cooked with onions and herbs and served cold, and long-grain rice, served warm. Both sides were plated using my metal circle, with the help of my beloved assistant plater.

I highly recommend baking fish in a foil-covered dish : it’s a gentle cooking method which allows the fish to stay moist, and the circulating steam infuses it with the flavors of the other ingredients you add. Here, the mix of tastes worked really well : the green onions, fava beans and pistachios brought their gentle sweetness, while the cranberries and lime juice played it slightly sour and tangy. In terms of texture, we had the green onions for the softness, the beans and pistachios took care of the crunch, while the juicy cranberries burst on your tongue — all of them complementing the pleasantly firm codfish really well. Oh, and did I mention the gorgeous mix of colors?

It was also a rather light dish, which left plenty of room for the cheese platter that followed : all of us are huge cheese fans, so Maxence and I had carefully selected a few of our favorites at our cheese store on the rue Lepic earlier in the day. In attendance were : a Maroilles, a remarkably tasty Camembert, a Reblochon, a Chèvre Fermier, a Brebis du Larzac, of which we are particularly fond, and a Brocciu, with ample fresh baguette resources. Brocciu is a very fresh and very delicious sheep’s milk cheese from Corsica, and we served it with membrillo, the quince paste we had brought back from Madrid. The pairing was a real hit. Here : don’t they look happy and contented?

Continue reading »

[A Duet of Pesto : Rucola Pesto and Red Pesto]

On Saturday night, my dear friends Marie-Laure and Laurence and their respective (and dear, too) boyfriends Ludo and Jean-Christophe came over for dinner. This had been decided just the day before, so Saturday morning saw me sitting on the couch, surrounded by cookbooks, perusing them for inspiration. In passing, I have plans to create an exercice video which I will simply call “The Cookbook Workout” : I’m certain I burn an insane number of calories just lugging those piles of cookbooks around, from shelf to couch to counter, and back to shelf.

I decided to keep things simple, and skip the first course, replacing it with a little something to eat with the apéritif (pre-dinner drink). I like doing things that way, because it’s a friendly, laid-back way to start the meal, and I like the dynamics it creates, allowing people to hover around the bar and mingle. I also like to welcome my friends with something homemade : they’re probably hungry, and what you eat on an empty stomach is what you appreciate best, so it might as well be something I’ve lovingly prepared, no?

The idea of making pesto variations had been on my mind for a while : you start from the basic pesto recipe (basil, pinenuts, pecorino and/or parmesan cheese, olive oil and garlic), and work from there, replacing some of the ingredients by their cousins, be they close or removed — another kind of herb, another kind of nut, another kind of cheese. In this instance, I made two variations : I made a green rucola pesto, subbing rucola leaves (a.k.a. arugula) for the basil, and I used sundried tomatoes to make a red pesto.

I served both in their little jars, with a basket of thin ciabatta slices and two knives : each of us could prepare his own little canapés, putting as little or as much of the pesto of his choice as suited his taste. In truth I ended up doing most of the spreading while we chatted, but that’s just because I enjoy those things. And you know, these boys get so engrossed in conversation that they’ll starve if you’re not careful.

I will most definitely do this again : it is colorful and tasty, it is incredibly easy to make, and it gives me the perfect excuse to buy a big and beautiful granite mortar and pestle! You can prepare the pestos ahead, and keep them on hand for an improvized mini-meal. The pestos can also be used like regular pesto of course, in pasta, as a sandwich spread, as a salad dressing…

Continue reading »

[Goat Cheese and Herb Vegetable Terrine]

When trying to decide what to bring to the Paris Potluck the other day, my thoughts immediately turned to a terrine. I love terrines : I like the name, I like the dish you make them in (and specifically my own), I like the nice, country feel they have to them. They are also a wonderful thing to bring to a buffet, because they can usually be sliced into many servings (well unless they are micro-terrines like Barrett would have me make in my mini paper cups), they need to be made ahead, and they are best enjoyed cold or at room-temperature.

I have a great terrine cookbook I’ve mentioned before, but they were running an article on terrines in the latest issue of the French magazine Saveurs, and I decided to try one of the featured recipes. Coincidentally, it turned out that Christoph, who also attended the potluck, had bought that same magazine, and had decided to make a terrine from that same article on that same night. Thankfully we picked different ones : the plan wasn’t to turn the potluck into a side-by-side taste comparison of the same terrine made by all the attendants. Although, come to think of it, that would have been fun too!

The recipe I chose was originally for a “Terrine de légumes au fromage de chèvre et à la menthe“. I didn’t have mint on hand, but I had flat-leaf parsley and window-sill basil, so it turned into a “Terrine de légumes au fromage de chèvre et aux herbes”. The recipe has you steam carrots and zucchini in sticks, and layer them with a batter made of fresh goat cheese, eggs and faisselle. Faisselle is a kind of fresh soft cheese (usually cow’s milk, but also goat’s or sheep’s), which looks and tastes like a thick and slightly curdled yogurt. It is sold in a tub, with a draining rack inside that you pull out to separate the whey from the faisselle. If this is unavailable to you, my best substitution guess would be half thick yogurt and half cottage cheese.

My terrine turned out just as I had hoped. It was pretty easy to assemble, and it cooked perfectly in the time imparted. This is always a source of anxiety with egg-based terrines : realizing, right as you serve, that the inside of your beautiful construction is completely raw and collapsing from the center, is a torment I would not bestow upon my worst enemy — fret not, I have a slew of other horrifying things in store for them.

We brought the terrine to Isabelle and Ethan’s place, still in its dish (beautiful, beautiful dish, have I mentioned that?), and I managed to claim territory over a small area of the kitchen counter, to double-flip it onto a serving plate and slice it. It wasn’t the easiest thing to do, but Isabelle’s knife bread worked well and I managed to keep the slices together.

The terrine’s taste was very pleasant and fresh, and the cut slices looked oh-so-pretty, with their confetti of green and orange. The cheese part is moussy and soft, and the vegetable pieces, cooked al dente, come in delightful contrast. I do think, however, that this terrine would be better served on its own with some bread, than as part of a buffet : its taste is subtle and mild, and somehow all the different flavors of all these other delicious dishes overpowered it a little. But I would definitely repeat this, possibly with other vegetables and goodies layered inside, provided they’re dry enough (otherwise the cheese batter may not set) and not too heavy (or they may sink to the bottom).

Continue reading »

Our neighbor-friends Stéphan and Patricia have been busy repainting their living-room these past few weeks. On Sunday they were finally done, so they rearranged the furniture, knocked on our kitchen window with the Ceremonial Wooden Spoon, and invited us over for a little newly-repainted-house-warming drink.

You just don’t go to a house-warming party — however improvized — empty-handed, so we decided to prepare a few nibbles to accompany the bottle of champagne we knew they’d open. This seemed like the perfect occasion to try a recipe I had noticed in Trish Deseine’s latest cookbook, called “J’en veux encore!”. This new book has a focus on kids : dishes they’ll enjoy, recipes you can make with them, recipes they can make on their own. No particular conclusion should be jumped to here, we have no plans to start a family as of yet : this cookbook is just chock-full of great ideas and beautiful pictures — for everyone, not just parents.

The recipe I used here is a simple dip made by blending a can of white beans (drained) with lemon juice and peanut butter. It caught my attention because the flavor mix sounded great, and I loved how it used ingredients that you can easily keep on hand, to deal efficiently with dip-emergency situations. Of course, I couldn’t very well just follow the recipe as written, so I made a few modifications, substitutions and additions : lime juice instead of lemon, sesame butter in addition to peanut butter, sun-dried tomatoes for color and zing, and a little chili sauce and Worcestershire sauce for spice and seasoning.

We ate the dip with little sticks of young carrots and cucumber, and it was a real hit : creamy, tasty and quite addictive. A little rummaging around the kitchen had also produced a little tin of foie gras from the Perigord, which we sliced and spread on toasts, as well as a package of mini boudins créoles, spicy blood sausages like they make in the french Carribeans, to be served warm. So we were able to admire the pristine white walls in truly excellent conditions.

And you have just been introduced to the magic concept of “apéro dînatoire” — a pre-dinner drink with so many accompanying nibbles it simply cancels out dinner!

Continue reading »