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.