Tarte campagnarde a l'oignon/Country Onion Tart

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2009

I haven’t been trying any Lydie recipes lately. First of all, we were away celebrating my daughter’s graduation. Then, it’s holiday time and there are many traditional recipes that have to be made. No time for experimentation. I’ve been making a bunch of quiches for our annual holiday brunch. I am adding to my repertoire by including this onion tart. Quiches are delicious but they do contain lots of butter, cheese and cream. No wonder we put on weight during the holidays. (I won’t even mention the cookies!) Lydie’s tart does use the all-purpose butter crust but the filling is simply onions and a couple of eggs. You’ll note that I’ve added the lattice work of anchovies and nicoise olives to only half the tart – in deference to the revelers who aren’t as fond as I am of those ingredients. I plan to freeze this and bring it out next Sunday.

Gratin leger de coucourdon/Light Pumpkin Gratin, Sauce aux Airelles/Cranberry Sauce

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2009

Lydie’s cookbook has two recipes for pumpkin gratin: one that is standard and one that is a lighter version. I decided to try the lighter version. My husband arrived from his travels, quite jet-lagged. As a result, we did not have a traditional Thanksgiving. If we had had a traditional Thanksgiving I had thought of making this pumpkin gratin. Since it was still on my mind, I decided to make it the day after Thanksgiving and serve it up with one of those store-bought roasted chickens. This recipe calls for diced pumpkin baked in the oven with garlic, parsley, bread crumbs, and covered over with skim milk. I never would have thought that it would coalesce into a rich, creamy texture, but it did. It was very simple to put together. Then it is baked in the oven for 1½ hours. It was made particularly simple for me because I couldn’t find pumpkin at our local grocer’s. Instead, I substituted already cut acorn squash. No more chopping and peeling pumpkin for me! I suppose I’ll have to make the standard version as well someday (and use pumpkin!), given my goal of making all of the recipes in the cookbook. I feel little incentive for it, though, because this recipe was so good and so uncomplicated compared to the other version.

These recipes left me wondering what defines a gratin. I always thought it meant something in a cheese sauce. So, I consulted my trusty Wikipedia. It said: “an ingredient is topped with a browned crust, often using breadcrumbs, grated cheese, egg and/or butter”. Well, I guess the operative word is “often”. I learned that it needn’t have cheese, or egg or butter for that matter. This recipe is a real find. What a way to have gratin without all the rich ingredients. I learned that a gratin is also defined by a gratin pan – a shallow baking dish. I don’t have one of these but it worked out just fine.

Lydie has a recipe for homemade cranberry sauce. My husband always makes homemade cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving, with a little zest of orange grated in for a lovely flavor. The trouble is, the sauce almost never gels. I thought I would try Lydie’s recipe to see if it would gel. It didn’t. I referenced other cookbooks of mine and learned that the key to gelling is having enough sugar. I guess I’ll try again in the near future, since I’m on tap to make Christmas dinner this year and am determined to have gelled cranberry sauce (as well as the canned jelly type, which my sister prefers)!

Poivrons et anchois encore

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2009

I’ve been obsessing all week about the deleted photos of the peppers and anchovy dish that I made last week. Then I decided, why not make it again? I still have some scallions left and even some leftover dressing. Peppers are a snap to roast. My husband is still away so why not have a second food indulgence? Here it is: just as good the second time around.

Salade de poivrons aux anchois/Pepper and Anchovy Salad

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2009

What is your food indulgence? What would you make if you only had to cook for yourself, taking no one else’s food preferences into consideration? I recently had such a conversation with a group of women friends. Not surprisingly, pasta figured prominently in the selections. As it does for me.

My husband is traveling for about 2 ½ weeks. I figured I wouldn’t be cooking much during this time. Then I came across Salade de poivrons aux anchois. Anchovies seem to be an item that no one is neutral about: either you adore them or detest them. I’m definitely in the adore column, but I don’t get to use them very often because of the "detest" factor among most of my friends and family. When I saw a recipe that combines yummy roasted peppers and anchovies how could I resist! I would put them over pasta and have me a double food indulgence.

Roasting peppers has become an easy endeavor. This recipe uses red and yellow peppers. I was struck once again by how much tastier they are made fresh than the jarred variety. These were topped by slivers of anchovy, sprinkled with an oil and red wine vinegar dressing, and topped with chopped scallions. The dressing was interesting because it contained the juices of the roasted peppers as well. One could even leave out the anchovy (or substitute strips of salami) and have one nice antipasto. Putting it all on top of pasta was like icing on a cake. Yum!

(I took a photo of this dish. It looked very pretty, with the peppers arranged attractively on a plate. However, in an effort to be efficient with my camera’s memory, I accidentally erased the images. Aaaaugh!)

Sirop pour coulis/Sugar Syrup for Fruit Sauce and Coulis de fraises/Strawberry Sauce

Part II of the Halloween meal: Since the chicken was a fairly rich dish, I decided to keep dessert simple: some ice cream with a strawberry coulis (sauce). I used Lydie’s recipe for making a simple syrup. This is added to fruit to make a sauce. Lydie’s cookbook has recipes for several fruit sauces, such as blackberry or red currant. None of these are in season so I made a strawberry sauce, using frozen whole strawberries, which I pureed. It tasted very refreshing. And, once again, it was simple to make.

So…in total I was able to tick off four more recipes from the cookbook. All in all a successful experience, I think.

Lapin a la sarriette et au coulis de tomates/Rabbit with Fresh Savory in a Tomato Sauce, Carottes braisees aux herbes/Braised Carrots with Fresh Herbs

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2009

It is Halloween weekend. In keeping with the holiday spirit, what scary thing can I cook? I know! I can cook rabbit! When I told my husband my plans he thought I was joking. When he realized that, no, this truly was my plan he was less than enthusiastic. I wasn’t going to let that deter me. I would invite our English friend and her husband to dinner. Surely her Continental sensibilities would fortify the notion that eating rabbit was a perfectly natural thing to do. (I know, I sound like an icky-squeamish American. I can’t help it. I can’t erase the image of those cute little creatures that I take delight in hopping across our lawn.) Our English friend hesitated when I asked about eating rabbit and that was it! I decided: the meal would be sans lapin and avec poulet. They always say that rabbit tastes like chicken so why not use chicken? So, lapin a la sarriette (savory) became poulet a la thym (thyme). I couldn’t find fresh savory and the recipe states that thyme could be substituted. I still had some in my garden. I would use the tomato sauce, frozen from a few weeks ago. (Remember, that delicate concoction from my first entry?) And I would serve it over the (now frozen) successful gnocchi I made last week.

The result was delicious: a very lovely braised chicken in a tomato sauce with shiitake mushrooms and little white onions. (I used cippollini from the last farmer’s market of the year.) This is a great dish for dinner guests as it can be prepared in the morning and simply heated up at dinner time. For an accompaniment I made braised carrots. They were a big hit – with our guests and me: the guests thought they were tasty and I liked the fact that they were simple to make. I think I'll keep the carrot recipe in mind for a holiday dinner.

Tetragone a l'ail/Sauteed New Zealand Spinach with Garlic

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2009

I was planning to take a break from Lydie this week, as I had a few other recipes I wanted to try. For one, this month’s Eating Well magazine has a recipe for gnocchi. I thought I would try again to make gnocchi that didn’t fall apart in boiling water. I’ve been a little emboldened by watching a young friend and great cook make gnocchi a few weeks ago while we were on a hiking trip. She was so non-chalant and made it look so easy. Well, this recipe from Eating Well worked! Little intact puffs of potato dough popped up in the boiling water! I then sauteed them and mixed them with chicken sausage and pesto. Very tasty. I realized I needed a side dish to compliment the gnocchi. Something green, perhaps. The farmer’s market is still going, though it is a shadow of its former self, especially since it was raining on Saturday. I did find some nice fresh Autumn spinach. I decided to use Lydie’s recipe for sauteed New Zealand spinach. On the internet I learned that New Zealand has a fuzzier, smaller leaf than ordinary spinach. What I used was ordinary, but it worked just fine. This is an extremely simple recipe and pretty much the way I’ve cooked spinach before: just fresh spinach sauteed in olive oil with slivers of garlic. Couldn’t be easier and couldn’t be tastier. I will definitely add this to my repertoire.

Soupe a la coucourde/Pumpkin Soup

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2009

Sadly, two friends each had a death in their family this week. I want to make some soup to take over. At times of illnesses and deaths in my own family I’ve truly appreciated the outpouring of help and food that others have offered. I want to give back when I can.

It’s fall and the pumpkins are ripe. Soup a la coucourde seems like a good offering: it can be eaten hot or cold and it can be frozen for a later time. I procured three “pie pumpkins” from our trusty farmer’s market. (It’s still going on for another couple of weeks.) The recipe calls for “6 pounds pumpkin flesh, peeled, seeded, and cut into 1-inch cubes”. The dastardly word in that phrase is “peeled”. Have you ever tried peeling a pumpkin? It’s not easy, my friends. I learned through trial and error that it is easier to cut the pumpkin into chunks first and to use a sharp knife rather than a peeler. (The cooks among you are probably saying “duh!”) There is also chopping of onions, garlic, and russet potatoes involved. I won’t even tell you how long all this took! I was making a double recipe so that I would have enough for my friends and for home too.

I got to thinking: why do I spend so much time on this? I find the cutting and chopping somewhat meditative. There’s nothing better than to have my ipod blasting great music while doing these preparations. I’m also coming to realize that Provencal cooking is simple cooking. The secret is fresh, local ingredients. I could have opened a can of pumpkin but that would have been another animal altogether. I did take license with the recipe in one way: rather than making my own chicken stock, as the instructions call for, I did use canned broth. I also used the zucchini and onion broth from the gratin of a few days ago. Anyway, I managed to finish the cutting and chopping with all fingers intact. I am remembering that at cooking school we did very little cutting and chopping. All that was done by elves (I guess) while we were cavorting at local markets or mountains. When we returned “home” we were mostly involved with assembling and cooking and savoring!

So, how was the final product? Good, not great. I have a recipe for curried (acorn) squash and pear soup, which is de-lish. It’s a hard act to follow. Hmmmm…..maybe I’ll add some curry.

This cooking endeavor did produce a batch of pumpkin seeds, which I roasted and salted. Yum!

Gratin de courgettes aux oignons/Squash and Onion Gratin and Galette aux pommes/Apple Galette

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2009

My step-son is visiting this weekend so the family is gathering for a dinner tonight. I decided to use the opportunity for another experiment from Lydie’s cookbook. What to make for this non-meat-loving crowd? There are also young kids involved so we must eat early – hence the preparation needs to be relatively simple. A squash and onion gratin looked interesting. It calls for boiling zucchini and onions in water, then draining it for at least 40 minutes. These ingredients then get mixed with ricotta and Gruyere cheese. It’s a good dish for company because it can be prepared ahead of time, then baked while people are eating hors d’oeuvres. For dessert, I thought I would try an apple galette – a free-form tart.

The gratin was truly simple to prepare. It helped that my husband played sous-chef with the cutting and peeling of zucchini. An essential step is draining the zucchini so that it is really dry. I drained and squeezed the heck out of it, but think that if I had gotten it even drier it might have turned out crispier – it was a little watery to my taste. Next time, I think I’ll put the mixture in a clean kitchen towel to absorb even more moisture. My step-son said that initially he was afraid that the dish would be heavy and cheesy. He was surprised by how light it actually was.

The apple galette was super easy. Lydie says she makes the dough beforehand then puts it together before dinner and lets it bake during dinner. That’s what I did and it worked really well. The basic tart dough is the one thing I have used consistently since attending cooking school in France. I’ve always been afraid of making pie crusts – mine turn out inconsistently. This tart dough is foolproof and is good for savory dishes such as tomato tart (which is becoming my signature dish) and sweet tarts, such as the one tonight. The galette was very pretty and goes well with ice cream or sweetened sour cream, as the French eat it. I know, my galette has an unusual, elongated shape. That’s because my little refrigerator cannot fit a 14 inch square pan. Oh well, it’s supposed to be free form!

Gnocchi a la semoule/Semolina Gnocchi and Daube dioise/Winter Beef Daube from Die

MONDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2009

I am visiting my daughter in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It is October 12^th and it has been snowing! Big fat stick-to-the ground flakes! This calls for something cozy and warming. Since my daughter has volunteered to be sous chef, the cooking should be a breeze as well as fun. I’ve put her in charge of selecting the project. It must be innocuous, with not very many exotic ingredients, as we want her not-so-gastronomically-adventurous husband to enjoy the results of our labors. A recipe for gnocchi seems like it fits the bill. I love gnocchi and almost always order them if they are on a menu. However, every time I’ve tried to make them at home they fall apart when I plunk them into boiling water. This recipe calls for baking them. And they’re not the usual dumpling shape but rather squares. This is a leap of faith, but I will try. We’re also going to make a beef stew, or Daube dioise – a daube from the Die region of France. Hopefully this will be just the right hearty touch to top the gnocchi on this wintry day.

So, preparing the stew was a challenge for this vegetarian-inclined chef. I must confess I was a little squeamish about the task of removing extra fat, tendons, blood and gore from the beef shank meat that had been cut into chunks by the butcher. I was very aware of the “imperfections” in the meat as the stew was cooking, but the 3 ½ plus hours of cooking rendered everything quite tender. The end result? The assessment of my daughter and her husband was that this was a cut above an ordinary stew. They liked the addition of canned Italian plum tomatoes, reduced to a rich sauce. The dish really was quite tasty. I, too, enjoyed it but I’m drawn to foods that have a little more flash.

The gnocchi was another matter. First of all, Lydie specifically instructs us to use semolina, not semolina flour. Well, in the UP finding anything exotic is a challenge. I have to admit that I don’t really even know the difference between semolina and semolina flour. Anyway, all I could find was semolina flour. It made a sticky dough which we then baked on a cookie sheet. They definitely did not look like any gnocchi I’ve ever seen. I kept returning to the recipe: “Do they really get cut into squares??” It made me wonder what makes a gnocchi a gnocchi? Apparently not the shape. And apparently not the ingredients: these were made with semolina rather than potato as I’m accustomed to. Wikipedia describes gnocchi as a word meaning “lumps”. That covers a lot of territory. As for the taste, they were pretty subtle (aka bland) even with the gruyere cheese that the recipe called for. So, in conclusion: I may not have done justice to the recipe, given the substitution of semolina flour for “real” semolina. At any rate, my quest for a foolproof, dynamite gnocchi recipe remains unrequited. I did end up with a bag of semolina flour, which I may be inspired to turn into pasta at some future point.

You call this gnocchi??

The final product.

A quick update...I did make the spaghetti squash and mixed it with the red peppers, which I sliced.  It was delicious.  The garlic olive oil bath that the  peppers were in coated the spaghetti squash in just the right amount of flavor.  I added a few shavings of Ayr cheese.  This is a local hard cheese, verging on parmesan, with a rich nutty flavor.  I'm beginning to think these poivrons rouge would enhance the flavor of even cardboard!  And, yes, I will make this recipe again. These tasty tidbits add a nice touch to so many things.

Marmelade de poivrons rouge/Red Pepper Marmalade

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2009

Today’s project is Marmelade de poivrons rouge. Red Pepper Marmalade. It’s the kind of recipe, were I not doing this project, I would skip. Though I’m sure it will be very tasty – roasted red peppers, garlic and olive oil – what’s not to like about those ingredients, it’s not immediately obvious to me what I would do with the dish. It’s like pickles…I like them but it rarely occurs to me to eat them. Lydie says put them in sandwiches, on pasta, in a salad. Okay, what kind of sandwich, salad, etc.? I’ve been giving consideration to this question. For some reason I can picture them on meatloaf (of all things). So, I’m going to also make an elegant meatloaf from a recipe in Eating Well that contains dried porcini and chanterelle mushrooms, bulgar, and a variety of herbs. Other uses for the peppers that I thought of: they could be combined with spaghetti squash or served on a baguette with a soft cheese. So there you go. I have a plan. Here are some pictures of the spaghetti squash I bought from my favorite Farmer’s Market.

The peppers have now been roasted. I would advise putting them in a paper bag and not the plastic bag that Lydie suggests. The heat of the peppers immediately melted the plastic. Besides, all of what we’re learning about chemicals leaching from plastic makes me a bit leery. I am ashamed to say that the seeding and peeling of six roasted peppers took about an hour. Maybe a more experienced cook could do it in less time. I’m once again reminded of the value of a sous-chef. Forget sous, just a partner to share in the cutting and chopping would be nice! I had a friend once who said she only made recipes where the list of ingredients was long and the directions were short. So far what I’ve endeavored is the exact opposite. (This recipe had only four ingredients: red peppers, garlic, oil, and salt.) Maybe there really is no substitute for hard labor.

The peppers are tasty and were a good compliment to the meatloaf. The core question, though, is: are they better than what you could buy in a jar? I would say yes. Definitely sweeter and more tender. Will I make them again? We’ll see….

Coulis de tomates d'ete/Summer Tomato Sauce

Friday, September 25, 2009

Well, it didn't take me long to decide to make this into a real blog. Look out, twenty first century, here I come! My fear about creating a blog was that noone would read it. At least when I email my friends they oblige me with taking a glance at my scribbles. However, I received some interesting comments to my first entry (emailed) which leaves me wanting to have others' comments available to all. So here goes. My only request is that this blogger remain anonymous in your comments. Thanks.

Here's my first entry from last Sunday:

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2009

Okay, this is a bald-faced rip off of Julie & Julia. I decided that I would do my own bloggy-type thing using the cookbook that I purchased when I attended fabulous cooking classes with Lydie Marshall in Nyons, France. Though I’ve tried some of the recipes in the book, I have decided that I will go through it systematically. The recipe book is: A Passion for My Provence by Lydie Marshall. I intend to cook on Sundays whenever possible.

My first dilemma is: do I go through the book in order, one recipe after another? If so, I’ll be spending several months on appetizers, then main courses, finally desserts. Do I really want to do that? I’m thinking now that I may skip around a bit so that seasonal recipes conform to the season and that there will be a variation of courses. I’ve also decided that, rather than worry about a whole menu for a meal, I will simply make the recipe at hand and let the chips fall where they may about the accompaniments. Maybe we’ll just have a tart for Sunday dinner sometimes. Worse things have happened!

So today’s project: Coulis de tomates d’ete. Summer Tomato Sauce. I figure since local, ripe tomatoes are in abundance this would be a good start. Yesterday I went to the Farmer’s Market and got 5 lbs. of tomatoes and some onions. I will use garlic from Rachel’s garden and basil from my own. I must admit to some skepticism about whether this will be any different from the many tomato sauce recipes I’ve tried – I have some good ones.

Later on Sunday…so, the sauce got made. It took about two hours. Even though the cooking time is pretty short – 35 minutes - it took a while to chop and seed 13 tomatoes. When I first read the recipe, it appeared quite plain – tomatoes, garlic, onion, basil – but the results were surprisingly flavorful. It tasted “very Fweeench” – subtle but rich flavor. The trick, I think, is in the directions to cook it on high heat. It really reduces the liquid leaving the strong essence of tomato. I was comparing it in my mind to other tomato sauces I have known…it has none of the kick of oregano of Italian sauces (which now seem so vulgar) nor the punch of garlic that is in a raw tomato sauce I like.

It was a hit with Andy. I served it over linguini with a splatter of fresh parmesan. Since I wasn’t going to worry about side dishes I put together a watermelon and cucumber salad – ingredients I had at home. Maybe not the best compliment but it worked.

The sauce is referenced in other recipes in Lydie’s book – one with veal and one with rabbit. (Sob, will I really be able to cook a rabbit?? But I’m inspired by Julie who had to kill a lobster. Anything for the cause!) I froze the leftover sauce for future use. Tune in later.

(I’ll be happy to send you any recipes you’re interested in.)