A Moveable Feast

What to do with too many kumquats ?

Last week my favourite chef was on a well deserved vacation, and I had to deal once again with his replacement chef I don't like at all. Actually nobody in the team really likes him. A chef of the "old style", completely egoistic, ignorant and too much convinced of himself. Le patron keeps saying I need to get training at le chaud now soon, so that I can replace the chef next time. I know this has to be the next step if I want to make progress, at the same time I am scared that I won't be capable to fire out the number of main courses in a reasonnable time. Anyway, during that week, the replacement chef placed a couple of nonsense orders with our fruit and vegetable suppliers that nobody really needs, among them tons of kumquat.

First I told the chef on his return, that they need to use them as decoration element for the lunch menu desserts, but it didn't work. He suggested that I make a "confit", I said yes of course, without having a clue at all how to do it. But thank god there is the internet with all the recipes at hand I could possibly need.

And it turns out, that it is really easy to make kumquats confits (preserved kumquats) :

1) "Blanchir" - throw them 10 minutes in boiling water, then cool
2) "confire - step 1" - cook them 30 minutes in sirop (50:50)
3) let rest in the sirop 24 hours
4) "confire - step 2" - cook again 15 minutes in the sirop
5) dry - 15 minutes in the oven at low temperature (60 degrees Celsius)

Yesterday alone I had the impression that a third of the kumquats disappeared, just by my colleagues picking them each time they walked by... When I asked the chef during the afternoon mise en place, whether I can offer him a brownie, he addmitted : no merci, I already ate too many kumquats. No wonder, they turned out abolutely fantastic. A mixed but balanced taste of fruity, bitter, sweet, and sour.

Now the next question, what do we do with tons of kumquats confits, and I thought they would be nice on the "café gourmand" plate we have on the lunch menu, dipped in chocolate. "Sympa" was the chefs jugement, the typical French way, after "pas mal" (not bad), to characterize something outstandingly good.

 

Door #19 - Langoustines

Last Wednesday's entrée du jour (special starter) falls into the category : delicious, popular and to  simple to make to be true. On Tuesday the chef was called by his fish supplier to inform him that he could get a special price for langoustines, and so he decided spontaneously to make them the starter of the day for Wednesday. So Wednesday morning I peeled about 200 langoustines, they were very quickly sautéd in olive oil a la commande and we presented them with a arugula salad and shaved parmasan. It was a huge success, a starter that I need to remember...

door #7 - amuse bouche

For dinner only we offer an amuse bouche to the customers in the restaurant. The chef gives us total freedom to do whatever we want, only rules : use whatever is left from the plat du jour or entrée du jour, no additional cost, have it ready by 7 p.m., and make it fast to plate and send out.

I recently contributed with a recipe for savoury madeleines, I found in one of my about 200 cookbooks : "Les madeleines de Sophie". Basic ingredients are flour, eggs, emmental cheese, baking powder and whatever charecteristic ingredients you want to add. So now almost every Sunday, that is the day when I work alone "au froid", in the cold area, being in charge for mise en place of starters and desserts on my own, I browse the fridge and check what we have on stock, that doesn't go into an item on the menu and apply it to the receipe. Today I found a box with salmon tartare, a starter of the day from last Friday. So I applied the madeleine recipe and turned everything into 60 mini salmon-madeleines. I just added a little creme fraiche for dipping. This is how it looked like. Some customers even asked for an extra serving tonight....

Bucatini alle vongole

With my new 3-day weekends I have found again the energy to cook at home. Believe me, standing 12 hours per day during 5 days in a professional kitchen leaves no desire to even look into your own kitchen. The "crisis" helps as well to make me think twice before going out and pay unreasonable Parisian prices for food that I can cook now on my own. If everybody thinks like me though the restaurant business will not prosper...

Today I had a craving for pasta alle vongole and instead of spending half a day's cook's salary in one of St. Germain's Italian restaurants, I decided to cook it for myself. I was excited about the result, and the fact that it tasted better than in any Italian restaurant that I have ever eaten this dish confirms to me that I am probably not totally without talent in my new profession, and there is a chance that I will have customers that might like what I do.

 

While it is simple and fast to make, I believe the secret to make it outstanding lies in the cooking time of the pasta, in balanced seasoning (don't be scared to use a little chili) and very good olive oil.

Cook either bucatini or linguini or spaghetti 3 minutes less than the recommended cooking time. Heat chopped garlic and some chili flakes and ground pepper in olive oil, add the well washed and rinced clams and/or cockles (I bought palourdes and coques at the market), then white wine and a little butter. Cover the pan for a couple of minutes, until all clams are open. Keep the clams aside and reduce the cooking liquid. Add the pasta and the clams again until the pasta are al dente. At the end just add the chopped parsley. Too easy, isn't it ?

The cheese course

Cheese is another one of many reason why I cannot live in another country anymore. Now as a future restaurant owner (yeah, I am still dreaming ;) I will also have to think about what type of cheese course I offer. I believe I need to add value as a chef, and "do something" to or with the cheese, otherwise, why would you order it in the restaurant and pay more for it than at the market. On the other hand I must admit that as a customer quite often I am very happy to order the assortimment, or just one cheese variety in a restaurant. Maybe the added value of a chef can sometimes simply be in the selection of a very good product ?

That is the way I discovered this year for example Stilton, an English (!) blue cheese, which I now prefer to many French blue cheeses. (So does it mean eventually I should live in England ???). Something I would have never been inspired to buy, if chef Chris Wright (from Manchester) of the restaurant "Le Timbre"  (http://www.restaurantletimbre.com/) in my neighbourhood wouldn't have it on his menu as only option for a cheese course.

Chef Juline Duboué of the currently much talked about bistrot Afaria in the 15th arrondissment (15, rue Desnouettes) has added a "little something" to his cheese course : instead of offering just a slice of Roquefort, he presents it on pain d'epice (Gingerbread) and covered with a red port jelly. A very nice idea, because port is a very good wine to be paired with blue cheese. I didn't have my camera that day with me (was I sick ?!?), so I reproduced this idea at home.

Immediately this inspires ideas for variatons. Combine in this way any kind of key product with its garniture and topped by the wine you would drink with it as jelly. The first variation that comes obviously to my mind would be foie gras on pain d'epice topped by Sauternes jelly....

 

Just another tarte aux pommes ?

Different from my two musketeer peers from Ferrandi Diane and Cathleen, my cooking style and therfore menu direction for my future restaurant will not be la haute gastronomie. I am rather in search of finetuning the taste and presentation of French bistrot classics, combined with mediterranean influences, mainly Provencal and Italian, to bring the sunshine into my plates. My restaurant should simply offer a cuisine that will correspond to what I would cook for my friends and for myself.  

A couple of weeks ago I found another Provence cookbook to add to my collection of about 15 or so I own already about that regional cuisine. But... it is not just another cookbook. The recipes are rather simple but add some twist to the known traditional recipes, and the photos make you want to cook and taste right away. The author is an English Chef who used to run a cooking school in Provence for a couple of years. Ultimately that would be my dream as well. Get a small bistrot successful, and after it is running smooth add cooking classes, and eventually some chambres d'hotes.

The first recipe I tried from the book was a different type of apple tart. I was motivated by the photography, I guess because I like very regular patterns as part of pastry decoration. Granny Smith apples (that add some acidity to compensate the sweentness of the caramel), are sliced very thin (my specialty) and arranged in a very regular pattern (my other specialty) on a disk of puff pastry, which I don't make anymore myself, since I discovered in the restaurant the quality and convenience of frozen puff pastry. Spread butter and sugar on the apples and bake in the oven, pressed between two baking trays for about 20 minutes, to prevent the puff pastry from rising, like the Millefeuille technique.

Recommendation : Keep watching what's going on in your oven, to prevent setting your kitchen on fire like I almost did. If the butter and the sugar leave the tray and drop on the oven bottom, a big smoke cloud will soon come out of your oven, then kitchen, etc...) After the firemen have left, take the top tray off, spread more sugar and continue to bake 15 minutes, to caramelize again.

The result is a super thin, caramel-crispy and juicy at the same time and intensely flavored apple tart. Such a simple recipe with a great impact! Exactly what I am searching for.

In a couple of months/years to taste in my bistrot... Or if you need it before, get :

Cooking in Provence
by Alex Mackay with Peter Knab
Ebury Press
ISBN 978-0-09-192494-2

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.