A Moveable Feast

Tarte fine aux tomates, chorizo et chevre frais

This month I am back at "le froid", the garde manger and patisserie section, where all starters and desserts are prepared and plated. Whenever I get to do a new "entrée du jour" or "plat du jour" like the one today I think I have won the lottery by working in this bistrot. Who needs a two star Michelin recipe ?! I love those simple, easy and quick to make but beautiful and tasty ideas, and I keep track of them in a little notebook, for potential later use in my own place....

Today the special starter was a "tarte fine" : tomato slices, chorizo (spicy Spanish sausage) and goat cheese arranged on puff pastry. And I got to make them !

For the special of the day we usualy prepare 10-20 pieces. This is my "workbench" this morning. They were finished in the oven before the service by 11 a.m.. Then during service, when there was a customer order simply put a minute under the salamander (grill) again to reheat, with a tiny heap of salad in the center.

The chorizo looks a little bit burnt, but the chef insisted that I leave the tartes that long in the oven, to make sure the dough "puffs" up correctly. I really would have liked to take it out a little bit earlier...

Unfortunately, out of the 30 clients or so that we had today, only 3 ordered this starter special. A pity, because the combination while it is surprising and maybe not so common, tastes simply delicious. So the starter of the day turned into an "amuse bouche" for the dinner service tonight (last photo), and probably becomes the staff meal tomorrow....

Millefeuille de carpaccio et choux vert croquant a la thai

Here is one of my favourite entrées du jour of the bistrot I have been working at now for two months already. The chef proprietaire, while running this so traditional french bistrot, loves thai cuisine and from time to time he adds a thai twist to the starters or dishes of the day. Therfore there has always to be ginger, lemon grass and coriander in the fridge. I love it, but it is not very well accepted by our customers, who come to our place mainly for blanquette de veau, foie gras, pied de porc or sole meuniere, so unfortunately this entrée du jour did not sell at all.

Millefeuille means "thousand leaves" and while originally the name for a dessert with alternating layers of puff pastry and vanilla cream, it is used these days for any dish that has at least two alternating layers of two different ingredients. Typing this it just comes to my mind, that with this new "fashion" Lasagne could be called in a much more sophisticated way something like "Millefeuille de boeuf tomaté, feuilles de pates italienne et parmiggiano gratiné". How about that !?!

I had been in charge to "produce" this starter, and I liked it so much that I redid at home.

Green cabbage is shredded and fried just a minute in oil, only peppered, not salted (the salt will come later through the soja sauce). It is very important that the cabbages stays crunchy. For the seasoning mix olive oil, soja sauce, finely chopped lemon grass, garlic, coriander. (At home I also added chopped ginger an a little bit of hot red pepper). Season the cabbage with this mix like a salad. Alternate layers of thinly slices raw beef filet and seasoned cabbage three times. Finish with a coriander leaf.

Carpaccio de Saint-Jacques

One of the great advantages of my new workplace is, that during weekdays we offer a lunch menu that changes daily, the "plat du jour", so besides the items on the standard menu I have the potential to learn 12 new dishes every week (I don't work Fridays), or 564 dishes if I stay one year (deducting 5 weeks restaurant closure), one starter, one fish main course, one meat main course every weekday. The exciting observations for me besides the recipes are the customer responses to certain dishes and the organization, to make sure we can get them out in quantities during "rush hour" without any delay.

One of the l'entrées du jour (starter of the day) that is very popular, is a carpaccio de Saint Jacques (Scallops), and we offer it now almost every week. During the mise en place time in the morning we usually prepare 20 plates arranging the scallops cut in thin slices, store the plates in the fridge and at the moment of the customer order, we finish the plate by drizzling truffle oil, olive oil, freshly squeezed lemon juice, fleur de sel, some parmesan and either a little salad or a heap of green herbs in the center. So it usually takes less than a minute to send the plate out once the order reaches the kitchen us.

I wanted to try something similar today at home, using a new kitchen toy I offered myself last weekend. A siphon compressor in order to start playing around with the currently so popular espumas and chantillys (foams and whipped creams), that are used in professional kitchens far beyond creating just plain whipped cream.

And I found a nice recipe in the book "espumas & chantilly" (editions marabout). One year ago I would not have dared to buy scallops with the shell, but now I open hundreds of them every Sunday in the bistrot, so you could say I know the technique and I am getting fast at it. So of course I am buying them now with the shell.

For the cream mix that goes into the siphon, mix :

- liquid cream
- soja sauce
- olive oil
- 5 epices (spice mix)
- lime juice

Then arrange thin slices of raw scallops on a round plate, ideally not white, to create a better color contrast. Drizzle with a mix of lime zest, olive oil and soja sauce. With the siphon add the cream mix in the center of the plate.

Decorate with afalfa sprouts, spring onions and lime zests. You do not need salt, as the soja sauce in the whipped cream and the vinaigrette contain enough salt. That's all ! And there you have a light, beautiful, not so ordinary starter ! Bon appétit !

Foie Gras for my Bistrot

Whenever I get to taste a good foie gras in a French restaurant I will say "this is one of the reasons I cannot leave this country". And it is not a joke. So obviously it has to be one of the items on my future bistrot's menu. This week I realized that despite having six (!) books about foie gras, a couple of months experience in two 2-Michelin stars restaurants who are specialized on foie gras in all its variations, I have never prepared one myself. And I can't really count the one that I did at Ferrandi in 2006 (too much help from chef Sebastien...).

This week was a good opportunity to change that. I wanted to use my days off now to cook again more at home, focussed on my future own business, which means trying for the same product different recipes and finetune to "perfection". I had invited myself this week for dinner to my Grenoble-friends Allison and Paul who live now just outside of Paris, and obviously I offered to prepare the dinner, clearly indicating that they would be my guinea-pigs ("any time, Ulla, any time !"). I really miss cooking for friends at home and having dinner parties, as my small "lounge" isn't laid out for inviting more than one person for a cup of tea. But the kitchen is big enough and well equipped to cook and then "transfer" the food...

I decided that as a starter I would do a "duo de foie gras" for them. Two ways of foie gras.

Like this I could start to try what type of foie gras recipe I would use in the future, based on the complexity of the recipe and of course the reaction of my "guinea-pigs". And there was a very clear winner. In fact one of the foie gras was so good, that I would say it is the best foie gras I have ever eaten in my life. Better than in any restaurant. Allison and Paul loved it, and I also gave a sample to Katia, who has a lot of foie gras experience, and also for her it was the best foie gras she has ever eaten, to quote her "people will travel thousands of miles to eat that foie gras in your bistrot, .... and now give me the recipe !".

Here are the two ways I tried : foie gras mi-cuit au gros sel & foie gras en terrine

For both recipes you need to take out the veins of the liver first. This has to be done very carefully, without destroying the structure of the liver. Remove the liver 30 minutes before from the fridge, otherwise it will break. When it has room temperature unfold it and use the back of a spoon very delicately to first track down the vein structure and then also to remove the veins. It is a bit messy so for hygiene reasons it is also best to wear kitchen gloves.

   

Now the following procedure will be different, depending on the recipe.  First, for "Ulla's-Bistrot-Foie Gras"

Foie gras mi-cuit au gros sel

Smoothen the surface of the foie gras, and bring back the two halfs together. Then roll them in thin bandage-tissue (the recipe said "gaze au rouleau" which I got in the pharmacy, which is a good story for itself : just try walking into a pharmacy and ask for "the biggest bandage they have", and then "no emergency, it is just for foie gras cooking". Funny reactions guaranteed !) into a cylinder shape. I also put the bandage in cognac before to add a little aroma...

Fill a bowl or cake mold with "gros sel" (coarse salt ?), place the foie gras on it, continue to cover everthing with gros sel until the foie gras is completely hidden by the salt, cover with film, and keep 24 hours in the fridge. Then take off the bandage and keep up to one week in the fridge (I doubt it will last that long though).

And that's it basically. So simple. The foie gras will be cooked by the salt. In fact it will be mi-cuit (half-cooked), with a perfect champagne-pink color and a texture like butter and the fullest authentic foie gras taste. Difficult to describe, but I do take orders as of now, so you can check yourself ;). Best with toasted dark rustic bread like for example Poilane, fleur de sel and a fruit&nut chutney.

Foie gras en terrine

This is the more typical method of cooking foie gras. For me the result was just o.k., nothing extraordinary compared to the one cooked by the salt.

After having taken the veins off, season the opened foie gras with salt, a little bit of sugar and spices that you like. I used "5 epices Chinois" which is a prepared powder mix of  "anis etoile, cannelle, clou de girofle, fenouil and poivre de szechuan" (star anis, cinnamon, clove, fennel, Szechuan pepper). Bring back the two halfs into their original shape and season also from outside. Put the big half with the skin side down in a terrine, then add the smaller half on top, skin side up. Add some alcohol like Armagnac, Cognac, white port or white sweet bordeaux wine. Put the lid, film, and keep in the fridge over night. The spices and the wines will have time to pass their flavours on to the foie gras.

Cook the terrine at 120 degrees C for 50 minutes in a bain-marie. Core temperature should be 48 degrees when done. Take off the liquid grease, then place a carton and a weight on the terrine and store again 24 hours in the fridge, before unmolding.

Needs also to be served on warm toasted bread and with fleur de sel. Bon appetit.

Two-Star Tuiles

Unlike a lot of women in Paris women I don't spend much time and money on shopping for jewellery or shoes or handbags, but what gives me a real kick is an afternoon strolling through the professional kitchenware shops in Paris, namely Dehillerin, Mora and A. Simon., all in the same neighbourhood of the former Les Halles in the 2nd arrondissement. One of the things I discovered at Mora when I returned from my stage was this "thing" on the picture on the right.

Immediately it made my heart and my credit card race, as it was a tool I recognized from the pâtisserie kitchen of my stage. When I had to prepare the petit fours during my two weeks in the pâtisserie I was using the identical one. I had to have it at home !

You wonder why this ugly metal thing makes my heart beat and what it is ? Well, it is simply a "professional" tool to bring tuiles into their typical roof tile shape (hence the name).

Now combine that with the right recipe, and you can make a lot of people happy (my key objectve with all this career-change-adventure I am going through). Here is one that helped me to succeed... :

The good thing about this recipe is, that you can make it in advance, freeze it, and like this are always ready to have the most amazong tuiles ready within 5 minutes. In the restaurant, this helped to be more efficient, as the batter for the tuiles was only made once per week in a huge amount, and it allowed to do the tuiles in the right quantity, corresponding to the number of reservations, within minutes just before service time.

1 x butter
1 x sugar
1 x glucose syrop
1 x flour
1 x chopped almond + pistachios

("1x" means, that you use the equal amount of each ingredient, no matter what, for example 100g of each will allow you to make about 50 tuiles)

Mix the softened butter with the sugar, then add the glucose syrop, a liquid that looks like translucent honey (see picture), and is available in pastry ingredients specialty stores, like in Paris for example at G. Detout. The glucose contributes to the tuiles being so crunchy and crispy and to their airy texture and is really key for the recipe ! Add the flour and then the chopped almonds and pistachios. So far nothing special or difficult. Now comes the trick I learned during the stage: roll the batter into cylinders (about 3 cm thick), and wrap them into film. Then freeze !

   

Now next time you plan to have the friendly neighbour over for tea (or any other friendly person for that matter), just preheat your oven to 160° C, cut slices of 0.5 cm, place them on a "silpat" (silicon mat), and bake them until they have the right color, depending on your oven that would be between 5-7 minutes. You need to watch though, as they can turn too dark within seconds after being perfect...

And now my new toy comes in .... You need to be really fast when placing them from the mat into the shape (alternatively you can use a rolling pin, if you don't have such a toy), as the tuiles are only flexible for seconds, and if you wait too long they will break.

The best is really to do them just the day you want to serve them (they won't last longer anyway...).

Voilà. Success guaranteed !

Tarte Tatin aux Abricots

One of the things I haven't done at all and missed doing during the last year is trying recipes from the hundreds of cooking books and magazines I have. Now I have some time for this until my stage starts, so yesterday I tried a simple but wonderful recipe from the German magazine "essen & trinken", an apricot Tarte Tatin, with an interesting little twist.

Tarte Tatin has always been one of my favourite desserts in France, so when I discovered the recipe for the apricot version (with chili !) I had to go for it. The original version of the Tarte Tatin is attributed to the sisters Caroline and Stephanie Tatin who ran a hotel in the Loire region at the end of the 19th century. One day Stephanie, who managed the kitchen, was so much overworked (how I can relate to that now...) that she forgot the apples for her standard apple tart cooking in the caramel, and tried to save the situation by adding quickly the dough on top, then pushing everything in the oven, and then served it hot, without taking the time to cool down. So the famous Tarte des demoiselles Tatin was created.

And here the Apricot version form the German magazine :

Ingredients

for the dough :
- 250 g flour
- 125 g soft butter
- 100 g sugar
- salt (I used a small teaspoon)
- 1 egg

for the apricot filling :
- 600 g abricots (fresh, not canned !!!)
- 170 g sugar
- 50 g butter
- 2 pinches of red chilli flakes or powder
  (or a teaspoon, amount depending on individual preference...)
- I also added fleur de sel to this recipe

1) Mix the ingredients for the dough. I did it manually just the way we learnt it in school :
Mix the flour and the chunks of butter between your hands (this technique is called "sabler"), then create a "fontaine" (a well) with the "sand". Put the remaining ingredients, egg, salt, sugar, in the middle of the fountain, and dissolve with your fingers the sugar and the salt in the liquid of the egg. Then work the "sablage" (the flour) into the other ingredients progressively. Crush the dough with your palm, to help the dough hold together, without overworking it. Cover in plastic wrap and keep about 2 hours in the fridge.

2) Cut the apricots in half and pit.

3) Heat 150g of sugar until it you get a golden caramel, then add the butter and the chili flakes. Pour quickly in a mold and spread on the bottom before it solidifies. At this step I decided to sprinkle the caramel also with fleur de sel, which I had just brought directly from Guerande during our field trip to La Baule. I wanted to get the taste of caramel au beurre salé into the tarte. And I can tell you I do not regret this idea....

4) Place the apricots with the round side down on the caramel. Sprinkle with the remaining 20 g of sugar that had also been mixed with some chili powder before on top of the apricots.

5) Cover with the rolled out dough.

6) Cook 40 minutes at 200° C.

7) Turn immediately upside down on a plate. And serve hot ! (I sprinkled again with a little fleur the sel and chili powder at this point, but only because I figured I could have put more intitially). The taste is so good and intense it doesn't require any "creamy" addition. But if you can't resist, you could add creme fraiche, vanilla ice cream, or an idea I found on the web : whipped cream flavoured with thyme leaves. Et voila. Bon appetit !

Fraises au Campari

My favorite dishes to prepare are amuse bouches, appetizers, finger-food. I remember one of my long talked about birthday parties in Grenoble was an "apéritif dinatoire", where I presented just appetizers (and and mini-desserts) to my guests the whole evening. I love the detail that is required to make small things look very appetizing and make them very tasty too. So yesterday, when we were scheduled on different dishes for the school's public restaurant, in "production kitchen" as we call it, I traded a lamb saddle dish for an amuse bouche with Cathleen. Maybe not clever in terms of skills enhancement potential, but I tend to search as much fun and enjoyment in the school's kitchen as possible, now that there are so few days left. The amuse bouche I prepared together with Genny, a guest student in our class from Johnson & Wales University in Rhode Island was Fraises au Campari, Strawberries with Campari. According to Chef Sebastien this recipe is a creation of Ferran Adria (the famous chef of El Bulli in Spain, leading the list of top 50 world's best restaurant published by the british magazine Restaurant).

It is a very easy recipe that does not require a lot of ingredients and time, but guaranteed will create an ahhh, ohhh, mmmmmh effect among your guests.

For 10 persons you need :

5 strawberries
0.1 l Campari
1 leaf gelatine (2 g)
10 small leaves of fresh mint
zestes of 1/4 untreated lemon
1 teaspoon wasabi
Toothpicks

Soak the gelatine leaf in cold water for a couple of minutes, until swollen.

Cut off a bit off the top of the strawberries, and "dig a hole" ideally with a small melon ball scooper . Then find a way to stabilize the strawberries vertically, either by placing them in sugar, or as we did, in plastic wrap over egg carton.

Heat the Campari a little bit and add the squeezed out gelatine leaf into it, stir until it has completely dissolved. Then pour the liquid into a small plastic bottle. Fill the holes in the strawberries  with the campari and let set in the fridge.

When the liquid has set, cut the strawberries in two. Decorate with finely grated lemon zest (ideally using a microplane), a small mint leave and a tiny bit of wasabi (ideally using a small piping bag). To find the right amount of wasabi, you should be able to recognize the wasabi taste, but it shouldn't paralyse your mouth, we ran some trial and error tests before... Add toothpicks.

Instead of Campari you could use Martini (the vermouth) or Cointreau, Grand Manier, etc. But I personally find the slight bitterness of the Campari is a very good complement to the strawberry taste.

Bon appétit !

Notre Poisson d'Avril

April Fools day is called "poisson d'Avril" (April's fish) in France. You find all kinds of fish in a lot of shop windows, including pastry shops with bread or chocolate in fish shape.

And like anywhere else, the French fool each other. Before the weekend our class had made a plan as well about how we could fool our chef Sebastien a little. The difficulty was April 1st on a Sunday, and we were not together in class. As a conclusion the "fooling" had to happen via email or SMS. We figured that something that would really concern him, would be if there were cancellations for the 3-star restaurant lunch on Tuesday this week. An event, that had been planned and organized for a while, with quite a budget by the school involved. And obviously one of the highlights of the Anglo program, that everybody is waiting anxiously for and would not miss for whatever reason.

So this afternoon, he received from one student after the other individual messages with excuses for next Tuesday's absence for the three-star lunch. We kept each other in blind copy, so I had quite some fun this afternoon reading the creative excuses my classmates came up with. I wrote that there was a problem with my (sold) appartment in Grenoble and I had to go down for a day, Elaine is stuck in London without return ticket for the Eurostar and doesn't know when to get back, Irene has a confused husband who mixed up dates for when to pick up their new kittens in the south of France, so they need to go Tuesday, etc. etc. After the second mail I was convinced chef would be sitting at home amused about his silly class, but.... at 7pm the ones that had written until then got a serious and pretty worried email from chef, that our absence was not excusable and all of us would have to be there on Tuesday. We could sense how much he was worried about having to justify the whole situation to his director.

So, what I hadn't believed before (honestly I hadn't been convinced the whole thing would work) : we got him !

But we also were then concerned to not make him suffer any longer, so he was "let off the hook" already tonight, instead of tomorrow as initially planned.

In Germany we have a saying "Was sich liebt, das neckt sich", meaning "those who like each other, tease each other" ;), so we are hoping that is how he will see it and smile tomorrow.... Thinking about it I am afraid of revenge though.

It's a girl !

Just received an SMS at 11 p.m. Who is writing so late ? Then I saw the sender "Sophie mobile" and I knew without reading what it was about.

After many days of suspense Charlotte was born today at 3 p.m. Everything's well. I am incredibly happy for my friends Sophie and Philippe in Barcelona.

Felicitations ! Je pense a vous et je vous embrasse tres fort...

(picture added April 5)

Tarte au Citron

After the Monday pastry class we can take home whatever dessert or cake we produced. I did it regularly in the beginning, but then figured out, that having cake instead dinner from Monday to Thursday would not be the best thing for my hips and health in general. So I stopped doing that, and left the cakes in school, where they will usually end up in the cafeteria the next day.

Yesterday had to be an exception though, as we did one of my favourite French cakes : tarte au citron. My classmates were surprised that I liked it more than the choclate cake we did the same morning, but which I left at school. I would trade a tarte au citron anytime against any chocolate dessert ! And if you had any doubts (but then you are not a regular reader), yes the one on the photo is the one I did.

As you have noticed my blog is not turning into a recipe source, so instead of documenting in detail all the ingredients and steps (which I cannot afford to spend time on anyway, as I am in the middle of learning 30 recipes and many other things by heart for next Tuesday's written test, sigh, sigh, sigh) here is just the big outline of how to do it :

The base is a pate sucrée, very similar to pâte brisée, just more sugar and butter (ha, hello hips !). The dough is blind baked and the edges should be smoothend with a microplane (THE tool to have for serious chefs !).

 

The lemon filling is basically a crème pâtissière, but made with lemon juice instead of milk. It is "cooked" during its preparation. So the cake does not go back into the oven anymore.

 

Optionally everything is topped with a meringue swiss (eggwhites beaten with sugar over a bain-marie), that can be caramelized under a grill or with the chalumeau. Personally I prefer the tarte without the meringue topping, but the one chef Thierry showed us was not bad...

   

So guess what's for dinner tonight, and tomorrow, and... ? Yummie, yummie, yummie....

P.S. for Sophie and Philippe : Oui je me rapelle d'une tarte au citron differente mais tres tres bon, dont j'attends toujours la recette ;)