[Little Swiss Cheeses]

Un petit suisse, literally “a little Swiss”, is a fresh cow’s milk cheese that’s shaped like a small cylinder.

The story, I gather, is that it was originally invented in Normandy in the 1850’s, at a dairy farm owned by a Madame Hérould. One of her garçon-vachers (an employee who tends to the cows, literally a cowboy), who was from Switzerland, suggested she enrich her cheese with cream, like they did in his home country. She followed his advice to excellent results, and named the cheese in his honor. One Monsieur Gervais got interested; he helped develop the production process, and had the cheese shipped to Paris on the newly created train line, to be sold extra-fresh every morning.

Originally, a white strip of paper was wrapped around each cylinder to hold its shape, and the petits suisses were packed six by six in little wooden boxes. The contemporary version of the packaging has each petit suisse sit in its own ribbed plastic tub, like a yogurt. However, modern-day producers have cleverly kept the paper wrapping, which clearly marks the identity of the product.

It used to be a 60% milk fat cheese, but it is nowadays more commonly sold in its 40% version, or even 20% or 0%. Since it is unsalted and very fresh, it is a versatile ingredient that can be used for savory recipes (seasoned and mixed with fresh herbs, or added to a spread to make it creamy), but is also consumed as a dessert, like yogurt. It is especially popular with kids and widely served at school cafeterias, because the small tubs fit right into a child’s hand, and because unwrapping them is so much fun.

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Confiture de fraises au poivre noir et à la menthe fraîche

This is another one of the jams I made last summer, during my jam-making spree.

The recipe comes from a great book by Christine “Jam Fairy” Ferber, simply titled Mes Confitures. After a section with tips and techniques, which is kept nice and short, Christine goes on to share over seventy of her recipes.

Rarely have I tasted such a vivid strawberry flavor in a jam.

They are organized by season, and I find this clever and wonderfully suited: jam-making is really the art of canning an ephemeral moment of the year, to be enjoyed later when nostalgia strikes. And just like memories are often sweeter than reality was at the time, jam is the memory of the fruit, and is, indeed, sweeter and more concentrated.

Some of Christine’s recipes are classics, but some are very inventive and tempting. Spring is the time for Rosemary and Acacia Honey Rhubarb Jam. In the summer, we’ll make a Lemon, Lemongrass and Garden Raspberry Jam. Fall will come, and with it a Chestnut and Vanilla Pear Jam. As for winter, it will bring us an Orange, Chocolate and Banana Jam.

I made this jam last year with small strawberries from Brittany, and the result is utterly delicious: rarely have I tasted such a vivid strawberry flavor in a jam. Industrial strawberry jams are usually pureed, and I think it’s a real pity : here the crystallized strawberries have stayed whole, you can see their pretty shapes in the syrup, and you can bite into each one, sending shockwaves of strawberry flavor to your jubilating palate.

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I had read about this recipe a little while ago on Mariko‘s blog. She credited Melissa for it, who had herself gotten it from Wilson’s Farm in Lexington, MA. I’d always wanted to make a banana bread but never had, and the addition of cranberries sounded great. A few months ago, my grocery store was selling cranberries, very uncharacteristically I might add, and I had bought a basket with this bread in mind, and frozen it until the occasion arose to make it.

And arise it did! On Sunday night, my friend Marion invited me to dinner at her appartment, along with our other friends Stéphane and Caroline. The three of them had spent the day having a picnic and hiking in Fontainebleau and they’d be home just in time for dinner, so it would be a simple, whip-something-up affair.

No reason to skip dessert though, and around seven, I looked at the clock and thought : by golly, there’s just enough time to bake a Cranberry Banana Bread! So I did, giving a call to Marion to let her know dessert was in the oven. The news was met with a little shriek of joy.

The batter was very easy to assemble, and by the time the bread was done, the apartment was filled with a very, very promising smell. I unmolded the banana bread cautiously, wrapped it in foil, placed it in a bag and took it with me on the metro ride to Marion’s place. I could tell people were trying to locate where the yummy smell came from, while I kept a straight face, with the precious but innocent-looking bundle, still warm on my lap.

After a delicious dish of pasta alla carbonara, we dug into the banana bread. It turned out to be delicious : not too sweet, with the tartness from the cranberries well balanced by the stable banana taste. It was baked just right, nice and moist, with a slightly crispy outer crust. The slices also looked very appetizing, with pretty cranberry red freckles in the brown and white cake. I will definitely make it again, possibly substituting other berries or cherries for the cranberries, as they’re not so easy to find.

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[Fresh Fava Beans]

I’d never had fresh fava beans before, so it was a pleasant surprise to discover some in my Campanier basket this week. I decided to have them for lunch the other day.

Boy, do those little guys like to play hard-to-get!

What you initially have are those large, fat, green pods, that look a lot like giant green beans. I had quite a bunch of these.

When you tear one of the pods open, you can see that the inside is lined with a cottony padding, which I thought very pretty and delicate. It’s to protect the fragile little beans, you see.

The beans hang onto the inside of the pod by a sort of membrane, which is easy to detach, and leaves them with a cute hairdo. Unbelievable, the number of veggies among us with punk inclinations. The beans have the characteristic beany shape, oval with a slight depression on one side, and they’re a beautiful pistachio green, with a slightly darker spot in the middle.

So I opened each pod one by one, plucking the beans inside. A little time-consuming, but as is often the case, you get more dexterous by the bean, and I was watching some show on Gourmet TV, so all was right in the world. By that time, the fava beans were still my friend.

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