Tarte au figues fraiches/Fresh Fig Tart

Call me fickle but I just can’t seem to stick with one cookbook. It’s not that I haven’t been cooking, I just keep being lured by other recipes, other sources which, hence, I don’t write about on “Lydie’s blog”. So... long time, no write.

True, there is the issue of the grandson, who, happily, consumes much of my time and attention. Here he is with one of his favorite toys – a saucepan! Perhaps I’ll write a blog about cooking with kids when he gets a little older.

Today, though, the moon and stars were properly aligned so that the presence of fresh figs in our market and my need to make a dessert occurred simultaneously. I have been wanting to make the fig tart featured in Lydie’s cookbook for some time. As many of her recipes, this is a simple but elegant dessert. The recipe uses her basic tart crust. Then, a blend of almonds, sugar, egg, butter, and rum is spread on the partially-baked crust. Finally, fresh figs are arranged on top. Bake. Voilà! Really quite lovely, don’t you think? My book group gave it two thumbs up for taste as well.

Bouillabaisse d'asperges/Asparagus Bouillabaisse, Aioli

MONDAY, MAY 10, 2010

The farmer’s market has begun! How nice to be among the familiar sights and smells, even though it was raining. Also familiar was the enticement of fresh lettuces, spinach, cheeses, etc. It takes will power to not buy every alluring item, which inevitably leaves me with not enough time to do something with everything. This time I limited myself to lovely asparagus so that I could try Lydie’s asparagus soup.

I was once again impressed with how simple, yet delicious Lydie’s recipes can be. Asparagus, oil and flour for a kind of roux, and chicken stock (guiltily, I opted for store-bought), pureed at the end. That’s it! Delicious!

Lydie suggests serving the soup with aioli. This was my first attempt at making aioli. Ladies and gentlemen: don’t try making aioli when you’re in a hurry. It requires incorporating olive oil into a mixture of egg yolks, garlic, salt and cayenne one drop at a time! This cannot be hurried or short-cut without a curdled mess on your hands! (Believe me, I know!) Next time I will use the standing mixer, not the hand held one, which will allow for a more leisurely emulsification of the oil with egg yolks. The end result was delicious, despite the aioli’s consistency being less than perfect. How can you go wrong with a garlicky mayonnaise. What a nice addition to the soup!

I am curious to know why this is called a bouillabaisse, not a soupe. Apparently, bouillabaisse has a meaning beyond fish soup, but I’m not familiar with what distinguishes a bouillabaisse from a soupe. Anyone out there know?

Tapenade, Toasts

SUNDAY, MAY 9, 2010

Another long hiatus. I can understand if you are giving up on me. It’s been a busy spring. A new addition to our family has been the biggest sapper of time and energy that might otherwise have gone to trying new recipes. Not that I’m complaining. At all!

Anyway, this weekend I was tasked to bring an hors d’oeuvre to a gathering. I decided to try Lydie’s tapenade. Tapenades were ubiquitous at all the farmer’s markets that we visited in Provence - luscious varieties next to bins of whole olives. I remember Lydie saying, and I read it again in her cookbook, that making a good tapenade is time-consuming. You have to strain the mixture through a sieve, teaspoon by teaspoon, in order to be rid of the olive skins. The first part is easy: just dump niçoise olives, anchovies, capers, and a little brandy in a food processor and push the button. It’s true: straining out the skins does take a little time. But that’s nothing compared to the time it takes to de-pit about 100 little olives! Note to self: do not try this unless you get pitted olives next time.

The resulting tapenade was very good. It compares favorably to the concoctions I had in France. I have another recipe for tapenade that includes garlic, which could be a nice addition, but also includes olive oil. While it’s tasty, I’ve always found it too oily, so this is a good variation and it's plenty creamy without the additional oil. Speaking of oil, Lydie suggests serving the tapenade on little toasts. She has a recipe for toasts, which basically entails slicing a baguette into ½ inch rounds and sautéing them in olive oil. Well again, to lighten things up, I decided to toast the breads in the oven on a cookie sheet which I had lined with tin foil to which I had added a thin coat olive oil. Maybe not quite as succulent as the sautéed variety but quite serviceable.

Artichauts en ragoût/Stew of Baby Artichokes with White Onions and Garlic

MONDAY, MARCH 15, 2010

Before the Lydie Project I would pick recipes to try based on their apparent appeal as I read them over – ingredients I liked or an interesting preparation. The thing about doing this project is that I am forced to make recipes that I would ordinarily overlook. Sometimes that results in a pleasant surprise. This is the case with my latest Lydie experiment. The baby artichoke dish looked kind of uninteresting. Just artichoke hearts braised with some onion and garlic, with herbs added. Boring. Au contraire. It’s quite the little gem of a dish. I saw some baby artichokes at the grocer’s and thought I'd give it a try. It turned out delicious. I also liked that the preparation was short. Braising takes just 30 minutes.

I was initially put off by the prospect of using only the hearts of the artichoke. It kills me to pull off all those succulent leaves and just throw them away. Another thing: the directions call for removing the choke, the hairy part at the base. I’m never sure what I’m doing or how to execute this maneuver. Well, I managed with a little paring knife that I stuck in and rotated at the base. It seems to have done the trick. They turned out just fine. (I only mourned the discarded leaves for a second.) This is a great little side dish that will go with many foods. The artichokes accompanied a pasta dish with almond sauce that I’d been wanting to try. (Not in the Lydie cookbook.) I’m sure I’ll make these little morsels again.

Croquettes de pommes de terre/Potato Puffs

SUNDAY, MARCH 7, 2010

We have a friend with a massive garden. Among the things he grows are something like 16 varieties of potatoes! Little ones, big ones, waxy ones, ones for baking, yellow, white, and some with a deep purple center with a white ring around the outside. Beautiful! I’ve used them for roasting and to make potato leek soup. Lydie has written a whole cookbook devoted soley to potatoes so I guess she knows her way around a potato. The cookbook of this project has only a few potato recipes. It’s the night of the Oscars and I thought it would be a good time to munch on croquettes de pommes de terre or potato puffs. I would be serving them along side a large salad. (My way of compensating for the fat consumed in the potatoes.)

I’m not one to seek out deep frying experiences. For one thing, I hate to use all that oil only once and then discard it. I also try to avoid the calories and health risks of deep frying. Yes, I know that if you get the oil to the right temperature and flash fry the item it doesn’t really absorb that much oil.

So, I have to admit I entered this project with a few misgivings and with some half-hearted preparation. I only poured a couple of inches of vegetable oil into the skillet, not the quart of oil the recipe called for. Secondly, I’ve never invested in a thermometer for deep frying seeing as how I never thought I’d be doing much of it. So, I didn’t really know if I got the oil hot enough.

Well, the result reflected my ambivalence. The potatoes were tasty, but, to my taste, a little greasy. The one thing that amazed me once again is the alchemy of mashed potatoes and flour. Incredibly, these two ingredients resulted in a dough one could quite easily roll out and cut with a cookie cutter into rounds to be deep fried.

In the hands of a deep frying aficionado perhaps this would be a nice recipe. Me, I think I will leave the deep frying to someone else.

Baguettes

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2010

One of the gifts I received at Christmas was a copy of the book Julie & Julia. I had seen the movie (which was the inspiration for this blog) but had never read the book. It is really entertaining. Unlike this blog, it contains many amusing anecdotes from her life. Well, my decision to keep this anonymous means that you’ll never read any dirt about my life – at least not here, from me. Sorry about that. I’m going to stick to food and recipes.

I’ve taken a bit of a hiatus from Lydie-cooking. I was visiting my sister and although I took “Lydie” with me, I never cracked the cover. We were too busy with other things to spend a leisurely day delving into a recipe. Instead we ate out, ordered in, or cooked very simple food.

I did want to get back to telling you about that wonderful potato dough from my previous blog. Not only is it good for making pissaladières, but one can make a baguette from it! A baguette from potato dough? I was dubious. I have to tell you that it turned out to be very delicious! I am a bit of a baguette aficionado. The best ones I’ve found are at the Chilmark Store on Martha’s Vineyard – even better than the ones I’ve had in Paris, at least to my taste. The potato dough baguette is not like a Chilmark or Paris baguette. The inside is not quite as light and the exterior is not as crusty. However….it is delicious! It has a more substantial taste to it and is almost a little sweet. I liked it very much. And so easy to make!

After two pissaladières and a baguette I still had some dough left, which I froze. Yesterday I defrosted the remaining dough to use for another baguette. My first clue that something was wrong was that it did not rise during the 30 minutes that you’re supposed to let it rise. I popped it in the oven, never-the-less. Result: something like an unleavened pita in baguette shape. I have to say, though, that it still was mighty tasty, if you got past the expectation of an airy texture. The photo is of the previous, successful baguette.

(p.s. I've finally figured out how to write French characters on my computer: as delighting an accomplishment as any recipe!)

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:

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.

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!

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.