Pots de crème au chocolat

Posted on March 1, 2013 by Meg

creme choco1Can you imagine that most of the world never heard of chocolate until the Renaissance in Europe? That’s when the conquistadors brought it back to Spain, having acquired it from the Aztecs. Cortés was among the first Westerners to observe its properties. His official biographer wrote that Montezuma drank a cup of it after every meal, followed by a smoke of tobacco flavored with ‘liquid amber.’ Others reported that Montezuma drank up to 50 cups of it a day. Did the Aztecs know what science has now confirmed — that dark chocolate is good for both heart and mind? If it makes you feel good, that may be because it contains the same chemical that is produced by the brain when you fall in love…

Pots de crème au chocolat / French chocolate cream

This recipe produces a satiny smooth dark chocolate dessert flavored with hints of cognac and coffee. It can be made in about 10 minutes, and served a couple hours later once it has had time to chill. Devilishly rich, it can be elegantly served in dessert wine glasses to make what the French call a péché mignon — a darling little sin that is excusable because one can’t help oneself from indulging in it. At this time of year, when the sun has been inexcusably absent for months, one would be sinful not to indulge in it. Happy cooking!

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Purée de potiron au parmesan

Posted on February 26, 2013 by Meg

This is the longest and dreariest winter I can remember in my more than 30 years in Paris. Gray, gray, gray every day, and it keeps snowing at a time of year when the café tables have usually started to come out, giving Parisians a chance to sip an apéritif in the sun and enjoy the lift that comes with the feeling that spring is just around the corner. By late February I normally get an itchy feeling in my fingers telling me it’s time to go down to Burgundy and trim the raspberry bushes. None such this year. Instead, I’m working on creating cheery winter dishes that can warm the soul on a cold and blowy night.

Purée de potiron au parmesan / Pumpkin purée with parmesan

Meantime, I’ve added a new category to this site: Classes. If you’d like to participate in cooking classes in my Paris kitchen, now or by arrangement in the future, please get in touch via the Contact form. The new series of classes kicked off last week with a delightful American couple just in from Minneapolis and a Parisian friend of theirs. We made pan-seared sea scallops on a bed of baby greens, veal chops with shiitake mushrooms, French apple tart and — you guessed it — pumpkin purée with parmesan. It took less than two hours, and we really had fun! I hope some of you will be able join in.

 

Posted in 8. Vegetables | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Rodolphe Paquin

Posted on February 22, 2013 by Meg

PaquinBWhen Rodolphe Paquin took over 16 years ago as chef at the Paris restaurant Le Repaire de Cartouche, the place was in a shambles. Which is a shame, if only because of the restaurant’s unique frescos depicting the life of Cartouche, an 18th century brigand and ladies’ man who hid out locally — yes, repaired — while seeking to evade the police (who eventually caught up with him and executed him on the rack when he was just 28). Paquin’s genius was not just to save the place, but to tap into his Normandy roots to introduce a creative culinary style based on ultrafresh products from the sea and the forest.

Rodolphe Paquin / A chef in Paris

This was a very good thing for me because Le Repaire de Cartouche is in my neighborhood, in the 11th arrondissement just down the boulevard from the Bastille. I love the place, which — despite earning the occasional testy online review — has never disappointed me. The seafood is sublime, game of all sorts is on the menu throughout the fall/winter season, natural wines are featured and the desserts are heavenly. Reason enough to choose Paquin as the second to be featured in this site’s series of interviews with our favorite Paris chefs. The Everyday French Chef will be back on Tuesday with a new recipe. In the meantime, happy reading.

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Huîtres gratinées aux épinards

Posted on February 19, 2013 by Meg

huitres gratinees3I’ll never forget my first taste of an oyster. My French boyfriend showed me how it was done. He took an open oyster on the halfshell, detached it with a sharp knife and, in one swift gesture, let the glistening gray morsel slip into his mouth with its tranparent liquid. My turn. I copied what he’d done, closed my eyes and tipped the shell to my mouth. It was like swallowing a nutty salty mouthful of pure sea. This experience ruined me for life, oyster-wise. I prefer them raw, live actually, and straight from the sea. But every now and then I get the urge to experiment — as I did the other day with this recipe.

Huîtres gratinées aux épinards / Oysters gratineed with spinach

These oysters, baked in the oven with a creamy sauce and a sprinkling of fresh baby spinach, fall into the French dining category of amuse-bouche — i.e. palate pleasers. They make a spectacular start to a meal, and you need serve no more than one per person, at the table or before you get there, during cocktail hour. They can, of course, also make a proper sit-down hors d’oeuvre, in which case one apiece would not be enough. But beware — these oysters are devilishly rich. And by the way, they bear only a fleeting resemblance to Oysters Rockefeller, a dish invented more than a century ago in New Orleans that a) does not use spinach, and b) does use breadcrumbs, which my recipe doesn’t. In France, they say the oyster season is limited to months with the letter ‘r’ — from September to April. That leaves two months or so to try this dish. Happy cooking!

Posted in 1. Starters | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Velouté de cresson

Posted on February 15, 2013 by Meg

watercress soup2Watercress was considered by the ancients to have medicinal and even magical properties. The Romans thought it could cure baldness, the Greeks that it could cure madness and moderate the effects of overindulgence in wine. Dioscorides, a Greek doctor who lived in the first century AD, considered watercress an aphrodisiac. Well, I won’t claim those powers for this soup — although it will, if not heat your body, warm your soul.

Velouté de cresson / Watercress soup

Speaking of aphrodisiacs, if you haven’t yet read Table for One, the story I published this week on Leite’s Culinaria, please take a look. You might find it, ah, stimulating. Also on the literary front, I’d like to mention two recent books worth checking out. The first is The Tin Horse, a novel that veers toward noir by Janice Steinberg (my cousin, who amusingly named some characters after women of our family). Here’s a collection of reviews. The second is The Idiot and the Odyssey II by Joel Stratte-McClure, who as publisher of the 1970s newspaper Paris Metro gave me my first job in journalism. Joel was kind of off-beat then, and now he has taken upon himself to walk clear around the Mediterranean. Here’s a link to an interview he gave about the book. Finally, for all local foodies, the Paris Cookbook Fair is taking place next week at the Caroussel du Louvre. I plan to stop by, and hope to see you there. In the meantime, happy cooking!

Posted in 2. Soups | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Omelette bonne femme

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Meg

omelet3I wanted to give you a great recipe for Valentine’s Day, and this is what I came up with. It’s a delightful brunch dish when preceded by a glass of champagne — and can also make a light supper with a minimum of fuss in the kitchen, leaving time for other pleasures. I’ve taken some liberties with the traditional recipe, adding arugula to the basic bonne femme combination of bacon and potatoes in order to create a more modern flavor.

Omelette bonne femme / Omelet with bacon, potatoes and arugula

The omelet isn’t the only thing that’s new today. I’m happy to report that a short story I wrote has been published on the site Leite’s Culinaria as a pre-Valentine’s Day special. Don’t be misled by the title they used. It’s a surprising cross-cultural tale of seduction originally titled Spicy. I hope you enjoy it.

Meantime, if you’re looking for the ultimate Valentine’s Day dessert, I’d like to direct you to another site, Joy of Baking, where the red velvet cake — a Georgia specialty I discovered last summer in Atlanta — is just out of this world. I learned about this site at the recent cooking conference in New York, and will return to that subject one of these days soon. Happy cooking!

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

Are cookbooks finished?

Posted on February 10, 2013 by Meg

cookconfThis is the question nobody wanted to ask out loud at the Roger Smith Cookbook Conference, a gathering of cookbook writers, editors, publishers, agents, food bloggers and food historians that has just concluded in New York. But it was lurking during two days of panel discussions as the people in attendance tried to figure out whether cookbooks have a future – or whether other (digital) means of obtaining recipes, from blogs and ebooks to mobile apps and online video, are making cookbooks into a relic of the past.

Here are a few key points:

* Everyone’s getting recipes online, even people who still use cookbooks. Okay, we already knew that. But now it appears that the younger generation is bypassing ‘old’ new media like blogs and going directly to You Tube for recipes. In other words, video is the next big thing.

* You want to write a cookbook? Don’t expect to make money. The size of advances has plummeted as the book publishing industry suffers from online competition. And despite the fact that cookbooks have resisted better than other categories of books, fewer are selling than in the past. So profits decline right down the line – for publishers, agents, authors and booksellers.

* 24 percent of all cookbooks published today are ebooks, and that figure stands to increase as time goes on. This was from a study by Bowker Market Research that also found that cookbooks in the form of apps for phones and tablets were doing slightly better than ebook cookbooks in 2012.

Of course, this being a cookbook conference, the bottom line here was that we still love cookbooks. You can do with them what you cannot easily do with digital media – write in them, dog-ear them, read them from cover to cover, enjoy them as literary works, etc.

There is much, much more to report from the conference – information of interest to foodies everywhere! – and I plan to blog about it once I get back to Paris. In the meantime, I welcome your thoughts on the matter. Please use the Comment form below.

And watch this space…

— Meg Bortin (aka The Everyday French Chef)

 

Posted in Et cetera | 7 Comments

Suprêmes de poulet aux morilles

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Meg

poulet morilles1Tender chicken breasts poached in white wine with a little cream and the woodsy succulence of morel mushrooms – sounds great, right? Wish I could remember. I’m having a little trouble conjuring up this dish right now because I’m on an airplane on my way to New York for a cookbook conference. But as you can see from the photo, I did actually make and serve chicken with morels back in Paris the other day. Once I’d soaked the dried mushrooms it took not even 15 minutes. And was thoroughly enjoyed by all…

Suprêmes de poulet aux morilles / Chicken breasts with morel mushrooms

Dried morels are essential at this time of year because the fresh ones won’t appear in the woods until spring. You won’t get exactly the same flavor, but it’s close enough. In fact, any kind of mushrooms will work – from wild chanterelles to the less exciting white cultivated variety. But in France this is a dish typically served with morels, the black wrinkly mushrooms that look rather frightening when you first encounter them. As for my trip, I’ll tell you more about it in my next post. It’s the Roger Smith Cookbook Conference, and I think it’s going to be a blast.

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Salade d’hiver aux poires et aux noix

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Meg

mesclun poire4Take a couple handfuls of mixed winter greens, add bits of pear and walnut, spritz on some lemon juice, add olive oil, salt and pepper, et voilà — a zesty winter salad that takes no more than five minutes to prepare. I owe this recipe to my Sicilian friend Gisella, who made a version of this salad for a sumptuous feast held under the volcano last Christmas. Mount Etna, of course.

Salade d’hiver aux poires et aux noix / Winter salad with walnuts and pear

I’ve made this salad three times in the last three days — once as a first course (preceding an earthy dish of chicken with morel mushrooms, which I’ll be posting here on Friday), once as a main dish (at lunch), and once as a side dish (with grilled steak). Just to say that it’s a salad as versatile as it is simple to prepare.

And now for more site news: I’ve just posted my first two how-to videos: how to make mustard vinaigrette, and how to make mayonnaise. Take a look — and send me your feedback! In the meantime, happy cooking.

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Vacherin aux fruits de la passion

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Meg

vacherin1Ethereal, sweet, light as air, meringues make a lovely dessert in various guises. In France, when meringues are combined with whipped cream, ice cream or both, the dessert is called vacherin. Julia Child explains how to make a large ice cream vacherin using three large concentric rings of meringue. In this simpler version, individual meringues filled with vanilla ice cream and whipped cream are set on a coulis, or sauce, of lightly sweetened passion fruit. I first tasted this dessert at Spring, the Paris restaurant of Daniel Rose. His creation was so heavenly that I had to try to replicate it at home.

Vacherin aux fruits de la passion / Meringues with passion fruit and vanilla ice cream

Meringues have been served as a gourmet dessert in France for about 300 years and came into their own in the early 1800s, popularized by Antonin Carême, chef to kings, nobility, diplomats, bankers and even a tsar. Carême used meringues to garnish  fabulous almond-paste constructions of Greek temples and other monuments. Early in his career, possibly with Talleyrand as his sponsor, he sold large meringues out of a pastry shop on Rue de la Paix. I know this because I’ve just finished reading Carême’s rags-to-riches story, as told by Ian Kelly in a biography called Cooking for Kings (Walker, 2003). It’s a book I would recommend highly, not just for the engaging narrative but also for the many recipes it includes. They amusingly demonstrate how much French cooking and tastes have evolved in the last two centuries — and how much simpler our recipes have become. Carême’s recipe for ‘Apple Meringue as a Hedgehog,’ for example, calls for 40 apples that must be cored, peeled, boiled in syrup, and rubbed through a sieve or stuffed. The meringue, used as a topping, is a mere afterthought.

Site news: The ‘Menus’ section of this web site has been updated, with new winter menu suggestions for every day and special occasions, and new menu pages for vegetarians and vegans. I have also expanded the ‘Your Kitchen’ section with a photo catalogue of useful cooking equipment as exemplified by the equipment in my Paris kitchen. Coming soon: The site’s first 2 how-to videos.

Posted in Desserts | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment