Moroccan Cuisine Rocks!

There is a large minority of folks with North African ancestry whose cuisine figures significantly in daily life here.  Couscous is one such dish and is an aesthetically presented main course, commanding all eyes to dwell on its major star attraction.  It has the distinction of being the third most favourite food in France.   Though having some common elements, couscous is prepared differently from family to family.

Our friends graciously catered a complete couscous dinner for us recently.  As the husband was unwrapping all the warm dishes his wife prepared, amidst my excited volley of ça sent bon, tout est tellement beau, c'est magnifique, I would ask more sedately from time to time, oh, what is that?  Moroccan bread.  And that?  Moroccan dessert.  And this here?  Moroccan sauce.

A meal emitting such tantalising smells like this one was not going to wait until my mania for knowing culinary facts were fulfilled.  But then again, the important keyword was Moroccan, so I figured I had a fighting chance of being able to identify some of the ingredients via web research as our friend needed to return home, and we needed to do justice to this splendid repast.  Hopefully my research is correct and if not, a kind reader will let me know!

The couscous had well browned, tender chicken legs, zucchini, carrots, chick peas, and cabbage quarters on a bed of couscous, everything being redolent of tumeric and cinnamon among other spices.  Veggies certainly have their appeal when crunchy, but they are also excellent if they are succulent and full of absorbed flavours.  The accompanying, golden sauce was made from the spicy water in which the veggies were cooked.  Its heat level was moderate, giving a wonderfully warming sensation on a dreary, rainy day.

That's the sauce in the upper left corner.

The warm bread was a flattish but yeast-raised, round loaf with a hint of whole grain goodness and a pleasing, anise-flavoured, rather open crumb.  It is traditionally used as a means of eating the food.  Its shape allows for a high proportion of tasty crust which was delightful.

Not all bread lends itself to be broken, but this one begged for such treatment.

The dessert was astounding:  scrumptious and gorgeously presented.  An elegant, paper-thin pastry enveloped a saturated-with-honey, pleasantly grainy filling of almond paste flavoured with rosewater and cinnamon.

This elegant pastry wrapper is called Warqa and was a revelation:  tender but crisp and formed to resemble petals caressing the delectable almond paste.

At first glance, I thought the wrapper was made from fondant as it is creamy, moist, and smooth to sight and touch, though upon tasting and closer observation, it was clearly baked with delicately browned bottoms and edges.

The pastries were decorated with sugar shot and edible glitter.

Two had the shape reminiscent of Cornes de Gazelle, but with way more elaboration as they were wrapped in a patterned Warqa pastry with their open ends dipped in roasted sesame seeds.

As much as I adore cooking, it was wonderful to be able just to sit down and dive right in.

Couscous of course also makes a delicious accompaniment for many dishes and here are basic instructions for making it.  I like encircling tuna-stuffed, garden-fresh tomatoes with couscous.

Several weeks of almost constant rain has made it impossible not only to be able to prepare the potager for the big plant nursery order soon to arrive, but also even to walk that much around the garden as there is no structure more fragile than sopping-wet earth.  Everything is dripping with cool rain, and Dayo tries to keep his paws off the drenched soil by staying on concrete paths/terracotta tile edgings.

There are still quite a few plump leeks to harvest!

I am thankful for some evergreen 'bones' like this flourishing patch of thyme.  When passing by, I often bend down and crush a handful which releases its bracing fragrance.  Then when returning to the kitchen, I toss them in boiling water, shut off the heat, and then steep covered for about five minutes.  I comfortably sit down at the dining table and put a towel over both my head and the pot while carefully breathing the soothing vapours which aid in keeping my respiratory tract from getting too dry in our centrally heated home.  Does The Calm One do this?  No way!  But he should...

Some pale-chartreuse daffodil buds are getting ready to flower fairly soon.

One broccoli plant remains which insists still on putting out edible side shoots as the main stalk has long since been harvested.

When I first join Dayo in the garden, he stays close by me, trying to help as much as he can.  Here he is investigating some hidden broccoli side shoots.

He also likes to keep me company in the potting room where I write up plans for the spring garden and sow indoors for eventual planting out.

Since receiving The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady as a gift from my super-sweet G+ friend, +Feisal Kamil, I periodically read the corresponding month from Edith Holden's charmingly illustrated book replete with her own calligraphy.  Her February entry focuses on the beginning signs of the major hustle and bustle soon to be found in gardens:  

I saw a little Robin gathering materials for its nest, at one place on the bank and further on, a Thrush with a beakful of long straw.  Everywhere the branches of the Willow bushes were tipped with downy white balls and the Alder-catkins were shewing very red.  In the garden of Packwood Hall adjoining the churchyard the borders were full of large clumps of single snowdrops.  I brought away a great bunch.  The farmer living there brought out a little lamb to show me, one of a family three born that morning.  I held it in my arms and it seemed quite fearless--poking its little black head up into my face.  Rode home seven miles, in a storm of sleet and snow.

Wild Arum is the middle plant illustrated by Holden.

Although there are no Willow trees nearby, there is a clump of wild Arum in the unkempt patch kept for small wildlife.  Though it is too mucky to go there to take photos right now, it is nice to know that there is some overlapping between Holden's Edwardian world and ours here presently in France.

She ends her monthly account with these lines by George Meredith.

Now the North wind ceases;

The warm South-west awakes,

The heavens are out in fleeces

And earth's green banner shakes.

À bientôt!

Strawberry Heart Scones

Though there are signs of incipient growth in the garden and my nursery order is expected to arrive any day with its blueberry bare-root plants and asparagus crowns among other goodies, winter's breath in still in the air.  And there remains in the freezer a lot of strawberries from the summer's harvest.  Also there seems to be a holiday, not a particularly holy one, though it does bear the name of a saint, but it's more holely, in the sense that celebrating it traditionally could put holes in your wallet via expensive purchases of red roses and chocolates.  All this has inspired me to warm up the house and cheer up the bread basket with strawberry scones, some of them in the shape of hearts.

I have adapted Smitten Kitchen's recipe.  Deb Perelman's focus is on using juicy, over-ripe, fresh berries which ooze their liquid innards and erupt from the scones while baking, giving forth to sticky, luscious goodness.  I had figured if I did not completely defrost my garden strawberries, perhaps my scones would spurt red lava also.

Alas, I got involved in something else and the berries completely defrosted while waiting for me.  I drained their juice which I then promptly drank, yum, which meant that the berries were way less juicy than fresh.  But still, these scones were lovely and some of the strawberry bits dried out enough to add a nice crunchy texture plus giving an intense burst of flavour resembling a mix of strawberry/dried red currant/raisin here and there.

Ingredients
(If dough is cut about 3/4 inch thick, recipe makes about eighteen 2 1/2 rounds)

• Flour, all-purpose, 2 1/4 cups*/280 grams
• Baking powder, 1 T/15 grams
• Sugar, 1/4 cup*/50 grams
• Salt, 1/2 tsp
• Butter, sweet, cold, 6 T/85 grams, cut small
• Sugar, confectioner's, as needed for dusting
• Strawberries, fresh or slightly thawed, hulled, washed, and chopped, 1 cup*/130 grams 
• Cream, heavy, 1 cup*/237 ml

*American measure, that is, 8 oz

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F/230 degrees C.  Mix well the flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder in a suitably sized bowl.

Using your fingertips, blend the butter into the mixture.

The goal is for the mixture to resemble coarse sand with some bits the size of peas.  It should take no more a minute.

Chop the strawberries.

Stir in the strawberries, making sure they are all well coated with the mixture.

Add the cream.

Mix/fold lightly and gently with a wooden spoon or a flexible spatula.  The less mixing and handling, the better the baked texture will be.

Dump contents onto a work surface.

Knead lightly a few times or just cup/pat into shape.  This should take about thirty seconds.

Flour the board, hands, and rolling pin well, especially if you are using fresh berries and roll out lightly and quickly or pat into shape about 3/4 inch thick.  Using a  floured 2 1/2-inch biscuit cutter or a glass, cut out using a straight down motion (gives a nice layered edge effect when baked) and place them well apart on cookie sheets lined with parchment paper.  I used half the dough to make rounds, and the other half to make three hearts--large, medium, and small.

Paper templates can be used to form heart-shaped scones of various sizes--just fold paper in half and then draw one half of a heart, cut along the outline, and then unfold.  Or if you pat the dough into square shapes, you can snip off bits with a pizza cutter or knife and mould by hand into the right shape.  Gather all scraps to make additional scones.

Bake the rounds for about 15 minutes until edges are well browned and they are wonderfully crusty. Larger shapes will take longer.  Cool on a wire rack.  They taste great warm for sure, but they are pretty good cold too.

To make powdered sugar hearts, fold paper in half, draw one half of a heart, and cut that half out and unfold.  Place the template where you want the confectioner's sugar heart to be and dust with the powdered sugar, pressing it through a small wire mesh.

The large heart developed a fissure, though superficial, right down the centre because it was cut quite thick and acted more like a bread loaf in the oven.  There will be no broken hearts, thank you very much, so I resorted to camouflage.

As for gardening, the major action is happening in my potting room.  I am sterilising pots and trays for preparation for sowing indoors, but also getting ready beds outside before my plant nursery order arrives if the almost constant rain lets me.  As for Dayo, he is mostly keeping indoors as he prefers to be dry.

Sentinel Kitchen Duty:  making sure no sweet butter will get by without testing it is safe for consumption.

Far, faraway, in Duvet Land...

If only the fireplace was lit then everything would be purrfect!

À la prochaine!

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Triple coeur à la crème & strawberry coulis

What to Do With 'Les Restes'?

In France, frugality is well appreciated in the kitchen, and there are traditional ways of handling leftovers, or les restes*.  Hachis Parmentier* is such a dish.  Any extra meat from a roasted joint can be used, but because I recently pot roasted a leg of lamb and because we both love the British dish, Shepherd's pie, minced lamb then it will be.

Antoine-Augustin Parmentier revolutionised the eating habits of the French by cleverly convincing them that potatoes were a palatable comestible though at that time it was considered as food fit for hogs:

...surrounding his potato patch at Sablons with armed guards to suggest valuable goods — then instructed them to accept any and all bribes from civilians and withdrawing them at night so the greedy crowd could "steal" the potatoes.

Parmentier simply means topped with browned mashed potatoes.  The only differences I can see between Hachis Parmentier and Shepherd's Pie are different flavourings, and for the meatier Parmentier, the mashed potatoes often get sprinkled with bread crumbs while vegetables like carrots and peas stretch out the meat in Shepherd's Pie.  My recipe is a cross between the two approaches.

With the remaining leftovers of the pot-roasted leg of lamb which consisted of some meaty bones, I made Scotch Broth.

Oven casseroles and hearty soups with their comforting warmth and appetising fragrance lend a cosy, satisfying feel to any home.  Chez nous, Dayo contributes to this sentiment by snuggling contentedly into an exceedingly fluffy duvet.

These are both easy and simple dishes to make, but also nourishing and very tasty.  For the Shepherd's Pie, the first thing to do of course is to peel potatoes and then cut them into quarters.  A medium-large tater suffices for each serving plus add another one for the baking pan. 

That's my new ceramic knife in the below photo--beautiful and what a slicer!  It's an inexpensive brand, and I was apprehensive per my research that it would chip easily.  So far I have only used it for what it is made for, which is slicing. After a month of careful use, still no chips.  I had no idea how tiring it was using a regular knife for slicing veggies!

Put the potato chunks in a  roomy pot to allow easier mashing/beating and cover them with water. Put the lid on and bring to a boil, and then lower to a simmer and cook until tender, around 15-20 minutes--a tip of a sharp knife should slide easily right into the centre.  While they are boiling, start on the lamb filling (see below).  Drain the taters and on low heat, shake the pot for about a minute to dry them out.

While maintaining the low heat, add a tablespoon or two of butter and mash the potatoes well.  I recommend the type of masher below because it actually rices the potatoes right in the pot.

Season to taste with salt/freshly ground black pepper and add more butter if that is your wont.  The topping needs to be stiffer than regular mashed potatoes so only add some milk if your potatoes are very mealy and dry.  What I do in that case and also when making regular mashed potatoes, is to push the potatoes aside in the pot and pour in some milk--raising the heat and tipping the pan so only the milk heats.  It saves a pot that way as milk needs to be warm so as not to make lumps.  I lower the heat and finish off by beating with a wooden spoon or a large balloon whisk to get a smooth, creamy mass.  Turn off the heat.

To make the lamb filling, chop finely the leftover lamb.  A cup of lamb makes a serving.

In a pan, add the chopped lamb, about a quarter of a cup of left-over lamb pot roast gravy for each serving, a smashed, fat garlic clove, and a large spring of rosemary. 

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F/205 degrees C.  Gently simmer covered for about ten minutes so the mixture can thicken slightly.  But be careful not to make the lamb stringy by cooking for too long.  Add salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste. Fish out the garlic cloves and rosemary.  Put the filling in a suitable-sized oven dish and start spooning the mashed potatoes around the edges first. 

Using a fork, 'knit' the spoonfuls of mashed potatoes together.

Make a pattern using the fork.  I mark striations in one direction followed by ones made at right angles, and then ones made on the diagonal, ending with a run of the fork all around the edges to seal in the filling.  The goal is to rough up the surface to encourage a nice, golden-brown crust.  For a fancier effect the potatoes can be decoratively piped onto the filling.  Dot with butter to increase browning.

Bake for about thirty minutes until the top is golden brown and crusty.  The casserole could be placed under the broiler to increase its crustiness.  This dish is comfort food at its most basic.  If the filling is on the liquid side, wait about five minutes before serving.

For the Scotch Broth, you need just a few ingredients: 1/2 cup of barley, a chopped medium onion, two chopped carrots, a chopped stalk of celery or lovage, and of course the left-over meaty bones--when carving the original roast, I leave about at least a couple of servings on the bone.  These amounts make about four servings.

Place the lamb bones along with the barley in a soup pot, add about 1 1/2 to 2 quarts of water, just enough to cover the bones and simmer with the lid on for about 90 minutes until the barley is tender.  Remove the bones and separate the lamb from it.  Cut the lamb into bite-sized pieces and reserve.  Skim off any scum from the surface of the soup.  Saute the chopped onions, carrots and celery/lovage in some butter in a skillet for ten minutes.  This step causes the carrots to release some colour into the butter which is a truly important cosmetic touch as the finished soup will then have a golden glow instead of resembling dishwater.

Add the veggies to the soup and cook another ten minutes until they are tender.  Add the chopped lamb and heat gently for a minute or two.  Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.  It's a lovely soup--glistening with a hint of gold and soothing with a touch of silky milkiness.

The weather has been mostly unseasonably warm this January except for a snow flurry or two.  The garden therefore thinks it's time to bud and sprout and flower.

Roses needed to be pruned YESTERDAY!

It's looking that there will be daffodils by early February!

The gold-dusted Aucuba putting out its first growth for the new season

The warm weather prevented the perennial geraniums from dying to the ground

With the winter carrots, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts completely harvested, there is only leeks left to provide fresh veggies.

A good part of the leek is buried so as to blanch its succulent bottom part.

There is still a lot of onions and garlic in the cellier along with some frozen fruits and veggies like peas and strawberries.  But for the most part, the provisions harvested and processed from last season are winding down.  However, the early spring harvest is just around the corner as long as I prepare the beds and put in my nursery order. Then another active, sometimes frenzied--but always fruitful in some important way--garden year starts!

À la prochaine!


RELATED POSTS:

Pot Roast of Lamb

*French Pronunciations: 

Hachis  
Parmentier
Les
Restes
À la prochaine