Saturday, January 23, 2010

Pissaladiere aux aubergines/Eggplant Pissaladiere

FRIDAY, JANUARY 22, 2010

My friends have my number! Many Christmas and birthday presents I have received recently have had a food and/or cooking theme. I think people have gathered my interest in this field. One such gift was a DVD of A Moveable Feast featuring several celebrity chefs each making a delectable dish. The donor of the gift and the donee (me!) are getting together tonight (along with our husbands) to watch the DVD. What to eat while we watch? Maybe this is the time to tackle a category of recipes in Lydie’s book called pissaladieres.

I am reminded of a visit many years ago by a friend and her new husband. I slaved over a new recipe featuring a mélange of different cheeses blended with roasted potatoes and a bouquet of several herbs. This new husband, who has no truck with affectation, looked at the dish and said, “Oh, we’re having potato pizza in a bowl!”

A pissaladiere is essentially a French pizza. (It sounds so much more elegant in French!). Lydie makes it with a potato dough. So basically, I’m back to making potato pizza. This time not in a bowl!

(Later...)
The dough uses baking potatoes that are mashed and incorporated with flour and yeast. Lydie recommends using a heavy duty mixer with a flat paddle for mashing the potatoes and kneading them into the flour. If one doesn’t have such a mixer, she recommends mashing the potatoes with a ricer, then, kneading the dough by hand. I have neither a flat-paddled mixer nor a ricer so I used a simple mashing utensil, then, my hands. I was unable to get the potatoes to be totally smooth so that there were polka dots of potato in the dough. I was worried about this little flaw, but when it was baked, miraculously, the polka dots seemed to have disappeared.

As I was mashing, kneading, waiting for the dough to rise, rolling, I was thinking, “Well, this is interesting seeing how it works to make it from scratch but next time I’d rather just buy a bag of dough from my local grocer.” Sort of like learning the mathematical steps to a statistical program but really being content to hit a couple of keys on a computer program. I’ve changed my mind! The dough turned out to be delightfully light and flavorful. A special bonus was that it was very easy to work with. You know how regular pizza dough always seems to shrink back to its former size, like an elastic band, when you roll it out? Not so, this dough. I’m sure I’ll use this recipe again.

Lydie’s recipe book includes a variety of toppings. I decided on one with eggplant. Instead of sautéing the eggplant, which, in my experience, results in the eggplant soaking up the oil, I baked it, just brushing the eggplant with a little olive oil. Baking until it was soft took about 30 minutes. An interesting touch to this topping was combining mozzarella cheese with minced garlic and shreds of fresh basil, which was placed on the dough before adding the eggplant. It was really quite good.

And here is the result:



Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Tarte aux clementines/Clementine tart

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 20, 2010

Lydie’s cookbook has a basic tart shell recipe (pate brisee) that is an excellent basis for all kinds of goodies – sweet and savory. My favorite tomato tart uses this recipe. Lydie also has suggestions for sweet tarts for every month of the year. For January the “tarte de mois” is Clementine. It is a delicious yet simple concoction that uses sliced clementines poached in a sugar syrup, then placed on an orange custard. Once you master the basic tart recipe, (it’s really rather foolproof) it is easy to make an elegant dessert with little effort. It was the perfect cooling ending to a dinner of pork tenderloin marinated in a spicy chili sauce (not a Lydie recipe). I hope my guests liked it. I think they did.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Coulis de tomates avec des tomates en boite/Tomato Sauce Made with Canned Tomatoes

SATURDAY, JANUARY 2, 2010

Well, the holidays are past. The turkey, goose, quiches and tarts have been eaten. (The onion tart appeared to be a hit, by the way.) I don’t know about you but after a while all that bland, rich food makes me yen for something simple and comforting. I thought I would have on hand some good tomato sauce in case there was call for a non-holiday meal. This, I thought, would be a good opportunity to try Lydie’s alternative tomato sauce recipe: the one made from canned tomatoes. I had the illusion that it would be simple to prepare. It was, up to a point, but when you double a recipe, things begin to take more time. For example, this recipe calls for using canned whole tomatoes, which one must chop. Not a momentous task, but still, time consuming when the cans number six. The recipe, like the fresh tomato recipe, relies not on Italian herbs, but on onions and garlic for its flavor. The sauce is cooked over high heat – something I’m still getting used to, given my belief that good things come from long-simmered foods. The high heat helps concentrate the sauce into a rich thick one.

Indeed, we had an evening when turkey leftovers were just not going to cut it. I combined the tomato sauce with store-made meatballs over spaghetti (yes, the meatballs were store-bought…there’s only so much that this person is willing to make from scratch during the holiday busy’ness.) The verdict? The tomato sauce was a good, serviceable one. I’m not sure that it’s spectacular and I may be just as inclined to open up a jar of my favorite Dell’Amore sauce.

On a side note: I was inspired to make spaghetti and meatballs mostly because I wanted another reason to have roasted red peppers, this time, served as an antipasto, with salami and cheese slivers instead of anchovies. I discovered that the delicate flavor of the roasted peppers deserves to stand on its own, not next to spaghetti and meatballs. It really should be served as a separate, first course (which I didn’t do). Or, I still really like it best served over pasta.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!