Cake au roquefort et aux noix

Posted on December 11, 2015 by Meg

walnut roquefort cake1Walnuts and roquefort marry well, as they say. The combination turns up often in salads and as an after-dinner treat, perhaps with some pear slices alongside. In this savory cake, traditionally served in France at cocktail hour, the sharpness of the roquefort is offset every so slightly by the sweetness of the walnuts and the mild flavor of olive oil. It makes a festive offering for guests as we enter both the holiday season and the darkest days of the year.

Cake au roquefort et aux noix / Walnut-roquefort savory cake

But what is cake, French style? This is one of those cases when the French take an English word and tweak it ever so slightly for their purposes. A French cake is always made in the shape of a loaf — never round or square. It comes in both sweet and savory versions. You will find cake au chocolat (in a loaf), which is generally denser than gâteau au chocolat (round). The most common sweet cake is rum flavored and filled with candied fruit, although lemon cake is also popular. In recent years, savory cakes have come barreling into fashion. A recipe for cake with olives, bacon and pistachios can be found here.

I was inspired to make the walnut-roquefort cake by my friend Ann Mah, the food and travel writer, who served a similar version when I went over to her Paris place for drinks last August. (For her slightly different recipe, click here.) It made an elegant partner for Champagne — and was so irresistible that I’m afraid to say I had more than one slice.

With the holiday season nearly upon us, I have begun updating the Menus section of this site. New autumn menus for omnivores, vegetarians and vegans are now posted, and new holiday menus will be up by the end of the weekend. If you’d like to add a French touch to your festivities this year, please take a look. And…

Happy cooking!

Posted in 1. Starters | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Vin chaud épicé

Posted on December 4, 2015 by Meg

hot wine4Hot spiced wine is a traditional French party drink around this time of year, when short days and long nights inspire those of us in northern realms to light up our homes and invite some friends to brighten the gathering dark. The making of the drink is a party in itself — take some wine, add cinnamon sticks, peppercorns, cloves, star anise and orange peel, and heat it just long enough for the flavors to meld. For an extra kick, throw in a little brandy.

Vin chaud épicé / Hot spiced wine

Another tradition in France in December is the advent calendar, usually a decorated box with 24 little windows hiding chocolates inside, with one to be opened each day until Christmas — a way to make it easier for the younger generation to wait for the big day. This year, one village in eastern France decided to have a living advent calendar — each day from Dec. 1 to 24, one household throws open its doors and invites the rest of the village over for hot spiced wine. What a great idea!

Another idea, for a low-key present, could be to give a bottle of wine with a pretty little bag attached containing the other ingredients for hot spiced wine, along with the recipe. I just may do that myself this year. Friends, be forewarned.

As you can imagine, the French were not the first to concoct hot spiced wine. It apparently originated with the Romans, who called it conditum paradoxum. As far as I can tell with my rusty Latin, that translates as ‘paradoxical spices’. But there’s nothing paradoxical about this drink. Take a sip, and you feel happy. When you’ve had a full glass, you feel very happy indeed. As the merriment spreads among those gathered, tip your hat to the Romans, the French and — why not? — to all humanity.

‘Tis the season of good cheer, so here’s a toast from Paris. In our rough, mean, overheated world, let us all try to be human together — and let the planet live happily ever after.

Cheers!

Posted in Drinks | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Mousse aux châtaignes

Posted on November 27, 2015 by Meg

chestnut mousse2For an original winter dessert that’s fun to make, why not try your hand at chestnut mousse? Preparation time is reduced by using canned or frozen chestnuts. The chestnuts are boiled until tender and then puréed. You mix the purée with beaten egg whites with the yolks folded in. Whip some cream and fold it in, add a couple of adult ingredients, and voilà — a mousse with an edge. Serve it topped with cream or Greek yogurt, and you’ve got a winner.

Mousse aux châtaignes / Chestnut mousse

But now that you’ve prepared your mousse, how to serve it? I would never have asked myself this question if I’d not had the privilege of attending a major French powwow on food last Friday. The occasion was the the Rencontres François Rabelais, a gathering of foodies from all horizons that is held in Tours, a noble city on the Loire. This year’s president was Olivier Roellinger, a celebrated chef who sent shockwaves through the French world of gastronomy in 2008 when he decided to turn in his three Michelin stars — the highest accolade — in order to devote himself to a new calling.

This year’s theme was hospitality (recevoir in French), and in his opening speech Monsieur Roellinger, a genial man, amused the audience by saying that the essence of recevoir (receiving) was donner (giving). We should all keep that in mind over the holiday season. But getting back to how to serve…

I took part in a round table on hospitality in various cultures at which one of the panelists, Galina Kabakova, spoke about traditions in Russia dating back to the time of the tsars. This is where I learned for the first time that there is something called service à la russe (Russian-style service): each guest’s plate is brought to the table with the food already on it. Just as we are generally served in restaurants today. Turns out it’s Russian. Who knew?

This contrasts with service à la française, in which guests are seated before empty plates. A serving dish is brought to each guest’s left side and the guests help themselves. Of course the English do it differently. With service à l’anglaise, the serving dish is brought to the guest’s left side and guests are served by the waiter or hostess. (Hope I got this right…).

At many of my own dinner parties, all the main dishes are set on the table and passed for guests to help themselves. We could call this service à la Meg, but in fact the French have a term for it: à la bonne franquette. This term, which does not translate readily into English, has a warm connotation. It derives from the word franc (also at the root of France), meaning frank or straightforward, and harks back to an earlier day, when French country people would gather around a table and share a simple meal. Happily, many French families continue to dine this way — together, and not separately in front of the TV.

How to serve the chestnut mousse? A la bonne franquette or however you like, as long as you’re with friends and family to enjoy it.

Happy cooking.

Posted in Desserts | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Dinde à la française

Posted on November 19, 2015 by Meg

Roast turkey1It’s the time of year when roast turkey appears on many holiday menus, including in France, where a meat stuffing is often used. Two years ago, I had the pleasure of traveling to Vonnas, north of Lyon, to attend a French version of a Thanksgiving dinner prepared by the three-star chef Georges Blanc. He stuffed his turkey with a mixture of ground pork and veal studded with walnuts and seasoned with thyme. It was fantastic.

Dinde à la française / Roast turkey, French style

Monsieur Blanc is not only a fabulous chef, he’s an amiable fellow who gladly shared some tips for how to prepare a turkey his way. One of the notable differences from the typical American turkey is that the French birds are generally younger and smaller, hence more tender. Georges Blanc used a dinde de Bresse, a turkey raised in the Bresse region east of Macon. Poultry from this area is the most highly regarded by French gastronomes. The birds are fed with corn and have an unmatchable flavor. While they are available in Paris, they are out of the price range of most mortals. I used a less expensive free-range bird when I made the turkey in the photo above, and it was nearly just as delicious.

If you’d like to try doing it the French way this year, for Thanksgiving, Christmas or another occasion, be forewarned — the stuffing is practically a meal in itself. Georges Blanc served his turkey and stuffing with roasted figs, pan-seared porcini mushrooms and a pumpkin gratin to die for. The recipe for the gratin is here, and tips for roasting the figs are included in this week’s recipe.

Here’s wishing you a joyful and peaceful holiday season. And…

Happy cooking.

Posted in 6. Poultry | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Gnocchi au four sauce tomate

Posted on November 13, 2015 by Meg

gnocchi2What could be more satisfying on a cool autumn evening than gnocchi enveloped in a rustic homemade tomato sauce, topped with mozzarella and baked in the oven? For an everyday chef, the beauty of this dish lies also in the ease of preparation: 15 minutes of cooking time, then pop it in the oven, and in 10 minutes more you’re done. A warming dish turned into a meal with the addition of a crisp green salad and a bottle of hearty red. Voilà.

Gnocchis au four sauce tomate / Baked gnocchi with rustic tomato sauce

Now here’s the question: are gnocchi French? The answer: no, and yes. The written history of these little dumplings made of potato and flour dates back to the 15th century, when the Florentine statesman Laurent de Médicis (Lorenzo il Magnifico) praised gnocchi in poems he wrote for the pre-Lenten carnival. Around that time, today’s French city of Nice was part of the House of Savoy, and thus part of Italy. The gnocchi served in Nice were called niocki (same sound, different spelling). In 1880, Emile Zola wrote about ‘nioky with parmesan’ in his novel Nana. It’s a dish with historic roots in both countries.

These days the French serve a dish called gnocchis à la parisienne in which the dumplings are made of cream-puff dough (pâte à choux) and baked in a Béchamel sauce. But the French also serve potato gnocchi, and in fact this recipe is inspired by a former little bistro down the street from me in Paris where the baked gnocchi were out of this world.

Meantime, Thanksgiving and Christmas are coming and, in honor of these occasions, I plan to post a French recipe for roast turkey next week. The recipe is inspired by my visit two years ago to the restaurant of the three-star chef Georges Blanc, who created his version of an American Thanksgiving. The turkey is stuffed with ground veal and pork, with walnuts and thyme instead of chestnuts and sage. Watch this space…

And happy cooking!

Posted in 9. Pasta, Rice, Grains | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Salade de betteraves aux noix

Posted on November 6, 2015 by Meg

beet walnut salad3Behold the humble beet. Part of our culinary heritage since the time of the ancient Greeks, it is an inexpensive, low-calorie and nutrition-packed food. These days it’s getting a makeover in Paris, where it is served in chic restaurants in new varieties — from pale yellow to pink-and-white striped — sliced thin and added raw to salads. The familiar deep red beet has been around since the Middle Ages, when a salad such as this one may have been served.

Salade de betteraves aux noix / Beet salad with walnuts and herbs

The salad combines grated beets with garlic, walnuts and cilantro — a great combination, with echoes of Georgia, the land by the Black Sea where the legendary Jason and his argonauts sought the golden fleece. The French touch comes from the addition of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. If you’ve never tried this combination, prepare to be surprised.

Georgia is in traditional beet territory, which covered a wide swath of Europe from Germany to Russia. When the beet came to France, it got a boost from Napoleon, who responded to a British blockade of French ports by imposing a ban on sugar imported from British colonies in the Caribbean — and initiated cultivation of the sugar beet.

When I was a child in the States, beets were served warm as a side dish, without any particular sauce. They were far from my favorite food. The revelation came when I arrived in France, where beets bathed in mustardy vinaigrette are a star of assiette de crudités, the starter in which heaps of different veggies appear side by side on an inviting plate.

The return of beets to food fashion was signaled some years back by the appearance of beet chips in packets of root vegetable chips far tastier than the standard potato chip. I expect I may well see beets in one form or another tonight, when I’m being taken to a reputedly fabulous Paris restaurant called KGB (no connection to the former Soviet Union). Will let you know all about it next week. In the meantime, my friend Ann Mah’s latest entry on her food and travel blog describes three hot new Paris restaurants that you may want to put on your to-try list for the next time you’re in town. They may well serve beets too.

Happy cooking!

Posted in 3. Salads | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Travers de porc au miel

Posted on October 30, 2015 by Meg

bbq ribs1Barbecued ribs in France? When I first arrived in Paris, I spent a long time with The Joy of Cooking trying to create American-style barbecue sauce from scratch. It wasn’t easy. Just tracking down the Worcestershire sauce could take an entire afternoon. In the end, I mastered the recipe (which proved useful when I moved to Moscow in the ’80s). But I also discovered French-style ribs with a marinade of honey, balsamic vinegar, garlic and rosemary.

Travers de porc au miel / Barbecued ribs, French style

These ribs are oven roasted, meaning you can make them year round and don’t need to have outdoor cooking facilities. They are slow cooked (relatively) so that they remain succulent even as they crisp. If you want to add some heat to the sauce, you can add a little cayenne pepper. The result is very French, with zingy accents from Provence.

Meantime, American barbecue is at last having it’s day in Paris. David Lebovitz, the father of all food bloggers, recently wrote about a Texas barbecue joint called The Beast that’s not far from where I live. And Alexander Lobrano wrote a wrap-up of several barbecue places for The New York Times, all of which sound great. I’m looking forward to trying them.

For my money, though, the best barbecue sauce in the world comes from Oakland, California. Spicy and smoky, it’s sold by a restaurant called Everett and Jones that also features live blues on Saturday night. I discovered this thanks to my brother, a longtime Oakland resident and authority on fine food. Every now and then he sends me a jar of that dynamite sauce. But in between times, barbecued ribs, French style, are mighty fine.

Happy cooking.

Posted in 7. Meat Dishes | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Oeufs brouillés au Roquefort

Posted on October 23, 2015 by Meg

eggs roquefort1Making scrambled eggs with Roquefort may sound like a no-brainer, but in fact it’s trickier than you may think. If you scramble in the cheese too soon, your eggs will turn green — as I discovered when I first tried to make this dish. The inspiration was a small cookbook by the French author Marguerite Duras, whose work I studied in graduate school many years ago. But I tested her method and, well, it wasn’t pretty…

Oeufs brouillés au Roquefort / Scrambled eggs with Roquefort

I found the recipe in La Cuisine de Marguerite, a charming book with photos from Duras’s country home in Neauphle-le-Château, outside Paris, and facsimiles of her handwritten culinary notes. The book was actually brought out in 1999, three years after her death, with the cooperation of her son, Jean Mascolo (Editions Benoît Jacob). Her instructions can be bafflingly brief, as in the recipe I tested. Here’s a translation:

‘1 — In a saucepan melt bleu d’Auvergne (or Roquefort if you’re rich) with milk, without any butter.
‘2 — Melt butter in a skillet without burning it and stir, mixing the milk and roquefort with the eggs.’

That’s the whole thing. No quantities mentioned. And the result was unfortunately green. Well, gray-green.

And by the way, you don’t have to be rich to buy Roquefort these days, at least not in Paris, where a nice-sized chunk (150 grams, or about 5 ounces) costs around 2 euros. So I tried a few different methods and came up with one that works. It takes about five minutes from beginning to end, requires no fancy equipment and is pleasing to both eyes and palate.

You may be wondering why I’m including such a simple recipe on this site. A friend of mine scoffed when I told her about it. But there are a few good reasons. First, it’s quintessentially French, what with the Roquefort. Second, it’s a wonderful lunch or brunch dish that goes equally well with coffee, wine or Champagne. And finally, it’s a perfect dish for everyday French chefs — inexpensive, very quick and oh so elegant.

Happy cooking!

Posted in 4. Omelets, Soufflés, Quiche | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Truite de mer à la crème balsamique

Posted on October 16, 2015 by Meg

sea trout1What makes this recipe really special is the balsamic cream, inspired by a recent visit to the Daniel Rose restaurant Spring. He served it with a poached pear dessert, but I so enjoyed the flavor that I thought it might also marry well with savory foods. For example, sea trout. The fish fillets are pan fried on one side only — à l’unilatérale, as we say over here in Paris — and served with balsamic-vinegar-flavored whipped cream alongside.

Truite de mer à la crème balsamique / Sea trout with balsamic cream

My father having been an enthusiastic river fisherman, I thought I knew quite a lot about trout until I began researching this post. We always had a freezerful of trout of one sort or another, which my mother served dusted with flour and fried whole. What I’ve now learned is that sea trout, also known as salmon trout, are actually the same species as brown trout, the difference being that brown trout remain in the river throughout their lives, while the sea trout head out to sea and then come back to the river to spawn. Making matters still more confusing, sea trout are not to be confused with spotted seatrout, also known as speckled trout — and from an entirely different family. Sea trout are of the same genus as Atlantic salmon, while the spotted variety are not…

If, like mine, your interest in trout is primarily culinary, then the merits of sea trout are in their delicate flavor and substantial size. One fish will easily feed two people. Serve the sea trout with a seasonal purée — of potatoes, cabbage or celeriac, in autumn, for example — and perhaps some wild rice. Other possibilities include braised finocchio and Belgian endive, lightly steamed spinach or French-style green beans. Or use your imagination.

Meanwhile, for those of you who may be interested, I’d like to draw your attention to an exchange about foie gras prompted by my post two weeks ago describing my recent visit to Spring. A reader objected most strenuously to the idea of a chef including foie gras on the menu. I replied with a French point of view. (The exchange is at the bottom of the post.) While many people object to the force feeding of ducks and geese to produce foie gras, not everyone shares that opinion. California chefs celebrated wildly in January when a state ban on selling foie gras was lifted. Here in France, foie gras is widely accepted, but other countries discourage or ban it. An opinion? Your thoughts would be welcome.

And happy cooking.

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Tarte aux champignons sauvages

Posted on October 9, 2015 by Meg

wild mushroom tart1It’s mushroom hunting season in France, rather a dangerous sport as the hunting season for wild game is on as well. In my corner of Burgundy, men with guns have been out since September 21 hunting for pheasant, partridge, wild hare, deer and wild boar. Okay, maybe some women too, but it’s mainly men. That makes a trek into the forest to hunt for porcinis, which are abundant in the region, an outing that I, for one, prefer to avoid.

Tarte aux champignons sauvages / Wild mushroom tart

cepesThankfully, as I love wild mushrooms, they’re also abundantly available at French farmers’ markets at this time of year. Not just elegant porcinis (cèpes, at right), but also succulent golden chanterelles (girolles, below left) and oyster mushrooms (pleurotes). I’m not terribly familiar with the latter variety, but porcinis and chanterelles — don’t get me started.

In this recipe, those two varieties are sautéed in olive oil with a sprinkling of parsley and placed in a savory tart shell over a bed of lightly browned onions or shallots. They are covered with a mixture of cream and egg yolk, and the tart is baked until golden.

girolles at marketThe aromas emanating from your kitchen may drive you mad, along with everyone else in the house, so one solution is to serve the tart straight out of the oven. But the tart may also be reheated and served later — as a main dish at lunchtime or a starter for a larger meal. In any event, it is a noble dish, deserving of a noble wine. Choose a dry red with enough body to stand up to the wild earthy flavor of the mushrooms.

Happy cooking!

Posted in 4a. Savory Tarts and Tartines | Tagged , , , , , , , | 5 Comments