[Broccoli Mimolette Soup]

This soup has to be the best broccoli soup I’ve ever had – and without a doubt the best one I’ve ever made. The really cool thing about it, besides being really really good, is that it is infused with flavor from two ingredients that usually get thrown out without batting an eyelash : the rind from a firm and sharp cheese, and the stems from a bunch of fresh herbs.

From now on I vow to always throw these in the freezer for later use : the flavor of cheese is very concentrated in the rind, and the stems of herbs are no less fragrant than the leaves, but they usually get discarded because they don’t look too nice as a garnish.

Having read in a few places about the use of these poor disaffectioned ingredients in soups (and you know how I feel about poor disaffectioned ingredients), I had frozen the stems from a bunch of parsley a little while ago, as well as the rind of a large hunk of mimolette extra-vieille. Mimolette is a bright orange cheese from the North of France, called “extra-old” when aged for a long time until brittle and very sharp. In its young and unaged version, mimolette has a more mellow flavor but is also excellent : it’s a favorite among French kids, its cheerful color playing a big part I’m sure. Some say it was also Charles de Gaulle‘s preferred choice of cheese (and I mean the President, not the airport).

Note that any other type of herb would work in place of the parsley, and you can use another type of cheese too (or even several), as long as it’s a firm cheese (fromage à pâte ferme), with a strong and sharp flavor – parmesan would be a great substitution, for instance.

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Brittany is a fantasy land of crêpes. My family and I would spend a week of vacation there every year, often in Carnac. We would eat crêpes every single night, to the sparkly-eyed delight of my sister and myself. Over time we built an entire itinerary of favorite crêperies to visit.

In Brittany, savory crêpes are made with buckwheat flour and are called “galettes de sarrasin” (or “crêpes de sarrasin”), whereas sweet crêpes are made with wheat flour and are referred to as “crêpes de froment”.

Traditional buckwheat galettes are made with just buckwheat flour, salt, and water, and they are cooked them on a billig, a wide, round cooking surface made of cast iron, completely flat with no rim. But 100% buckwheat crêpes are next to impossible to cook in a regular skillet on the stovetop (believe me, I’ve tried) so the recipe I’m sharing today is one that’s adapted for the home kitchen.

You can include whatever fillings tickle your fancy, but the most traditional (and, in my opinion, best) combo is la complète, garnished with a fried egg, cooked ham and grated cheese (usually gruyère or comté). At crêperies I like to order a complète with fresh tomatoes (in summer) or cooked mushrooms (the rest of the year).

If you’re hosting a crêpe party, it’s fun to prepare different kinds of fillings — cheese, ham, grated cheese, goat cheese, cooked leeks, cooked mushrooms, fresh tomatoes, smoked fish — and let each guest compose his or her own galette.

For dessert, a buckwheat and chocolate crêpe is a treat you won’t soon forget.

And of course, serve them all with bowls of hard apple cider or buttermilk (lait ribot), as they do in Brittany!

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[Apple and Date Crumble]

And this is the third (and final) item I baked for last Sunday’s Goûter de Cousins, thinking it would be nice to make an apple crumble in addition to the two cakes.

The idea was to serve something a little lighter and fruit-based for those of us who may have a small appetite, or may want to go the healthier route, or may be on a diet, or may dislike both chocolate and orange. As it turned out, nobody fit in either of these categories (or hid it well) but the crumble, to which I decided to add dates for a little twist to keep myself interested, was a very nice addition to the menu nonetheless. It was enthusiastically wolfed down.

As it happens, my darling sister Céline assisted me in the making of this. She has just moved into her new apartment, a luminous and spacious affair just a ten-minute walk from my apartment <overjoyous whoop>, and this is the first time she has her own “real” kitchen. What I mean by “real” is, in which you actually have room to take more than one step at a time, which boasts more than three square-inches of counter space, has an actual oven, and more than one and a half cooking ranges – one of them being half covered by the unavoidable clutter. So she has a great kitchen now, but what she doesn’t have (yet) is… baking tools! cooking paraphernalia! kitchen toys! ten years’ worth of gift ideas!

She still wanted to take part in the preparation though, and she offered to come and help : so while she efficiently peeled the apples I whizzed the topping, and we chatted while the crumble baked…

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Gâteau à l’orange et au gingembre

This is another cake I baked for our Goûter de Cousins last Sunday. I tasted my first flourless orange cake about a year ago at Rose Bakery, and absolutely loved it. I had tried to reproduce it then, and had made an Orange and Poppyseed version, adapting a recipe found on the web. It was really good — the orange and poppyseed pairing was great — but the texture wasn’t quite what I was looking for.

This time, I drew inspiration from Trish Deseine‘s book Mes petits plats préférés. Her recipe for “Gâteau de clémentines pochées” (Poached Clementine Cake) is pretty similar to the one I used a year ago — and one that appears in a Nigella Lawson cookbook as well — with just a little more almonds and a little more sugar.

As you know, following a recipe without throwing in my two cents just isn’t as much fun, so I decided to make an orange and ginger version of this cake, adding fresh ginger and candied ginger to the batter. The oranges I used were three of the small blood oranges from my last Campanier basket. I also lowered the amount of sugar, used baking soda in place of baking powder, shortened the baking time, and added an icing with pearl sugar.

This cake was a real hit and I received lots of compliments about it. Incredibly moist and flavorful, with the wonderful taste of orange marmalade, the subtle kick of ginger and a delicious sugar crust, it also looks beautiful. I will definitely make this again while the orange season lasts.

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