Crespelle en Brodo

This very special version of crespelle en brodo is taken from Ivonne's blog, Cream Puffs in Venice, and is a treasured recipe of her family. I first made this dish which originates from the area of Le Marche in Italy about six years ago when The Calm One was in Paris constructing huge mainframe computer mockups for a Renault TV commercial. A definite symmetry: he was erecting rectangular structures while I was building a pile of pancakes. 

Supposedly way back when, an Italian chef working for a French household while making crêpes accidentally dropped some into a nearby pot of chicken broth. I, for one, am glad he/she did! Crespelle is usually made by rolling up herb-flecked, cheese-filled crepes and covering them with chicken broth or slicing unfilled ones into wide ribbons, pouring the broth over them and sprinkling well with cheese. This approach instead gives you a soaked-in-broth, quartered, plump stack layered with a mixture of Parmesan and freshly ground black pepper.

INGREDIENTS
makes thirty 6 inch or about fifteen 8 inch crespelle, enough for a hearty lunch for two or a first course for 4

• Flour, white, plain, all-purpose, 16 fluid ounces
• Water, tepid, 14 fluid ounces
• Eggs, large, at room temperature, 8
• Parmesan, freshly grated, 16 fluid ounces
• Pepper, black, freshly ground, 1-2 tsp (if you adore black pepper and can never get enough of it then go for the full dose!)
• Broth, chicken, homemade, (recipe here), reduced enough that it forms a jelly when cold, if not available, then the best that can be bought, around 32 fluid ounces, less if the crespelle are stacked snugly in the pot
• Vegetable oil for the skillet, I used olive oil.

These are much less delicate than the French version because of a greater proportion of eggs and the substitution of water for milk. In a large mixing bowl, blend with a wooden spoon the flour and the water into a thick but still lumpy batter. Then whisk until smooth. Continue to whisk, incorporating a few eggs at a time...

... to get an unctuous consistency like that of rich cream.

For each crespelle, you will need to grease an already hot skillet. To do this safely, use a wodge of paper toweling, making sure you keep it safe from any water contamination. I had placed mine first on a counter invisibly spotted with water. The sizzling that resulted probably was heard down the block!

Cup of olive oil and greasing towel wisely secured on a dry plate

Heat a heavy-bottomed skillet till very hot. Test by carefully dribbling a few drops of water which should dance if the pan is ready to receive the first crespelle.  Lower the heat to medium. Then spread a thin film of oil via the paper towel. For an eight-inch skillet, ladle a scant 2 fluid ounces/60 ml of batter into a small measuring cup. While pouring, swirl the pan around to get an even coating. If you miss some spots just dribble a bit of batter on those. Feel free to experiment on a few to get the technique down and to arrive at the right amount of batter for your pan. I did, and ate right away a couple deemed too thick! Cook for about two minutes.

Flip it over without any additional greasing and cook for another two minutes.

Pile them on a plate as you make them.

I keep the spotted side up because I think it's prettier!

Mix the black pepper and grated cheese together.

Using a suitable, lidded container, like a deep, stainless steel skillet or a round, ceramic pot, place the first crespelle, spread a heaping tablespoon of cheese on it, and repeat until they are all nicely layered. Do not put cheese on the very top at this stage. Quarter the stack, checking that all four pieces are truly separated from each other.

Carefully ladle the hot broth until it reaches the top one which does not need to be completely doused in liquid. Sprinkle on the remaining cheese. Once the lid is on, a magical transformation will happen during the next ten minutes. The sturdy crespelle will absorb the broth giving them the texture of scrumptious egg noodles while the cheese melts and the black pepper is encouraged to impart fully its trademark pungency.

Place a quarter in a soup plate and spoon some broth over it. Any extra can be kept on the table in a pitcher. Additionally leftovers can be reheated easily in it.

An exceptional first course or in my case, a wonderful lunch!

Elegance often embraces simplicity, and this dish has that aspect in abundance, reflecting what regional cuisine frequently does so well; with just a few ingredients, but with those that the chef are most familiar, that is, the best, the freshest, often local therefore ensuring the appropriate technique is chosen, an unassuming recipe is made that is memorable.

Dirac the kitten's gymnastic training continues at a nice clip. Since he is self-coaching, he often makes executive decisions that we wouldn't. The rocking chair gifted to me such a long time ago by a New York City roommate has been chosen to be Dirac's main work-out area. Additionally, he has decided it makes a great scratching post!

We think Dirac is trying to do push-ups on a decline

À la prochaine!

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Regional cooking, Abruzzo style

The Versatility of Irish Soda Bread

Quick breads which are comprised of batter leavened with baking powder/soda are the ones I made early on in my continuing love affair with a hot oven. The yeasted glories came later. Cornbread, muffins, and griddle cakes, all boasting a hefty dose of levure chimique, topped my list way back then. One day a spunky upstart invaded the kitchen in the form of Irish Soda Bread.

Its fragrant crustiness made bumpy by raisins and caraway seeds along with its humility as it was neither too airy nor too rich won my heart...

...though this spartan aspect does not preclude slathering a wedge with sweet butter.

Or merrily drizzling a lemon glaze*. Or dusting a fine veil of icing sugar. Or filling a split wedge. With what you might ask? How about cream cheese, perhaps lemon curd? And the best tuna salad sandwich I ever had, was made with, you guess it, Irish Soda Bread.

The addition of caraway helps this bread straddle the line between sweet and savoury

INGREDIENTS
makes 6 good-sized wedges
recipe adapted from my culinary bible, Fannie Farmer

• Flour, plain, white, 16 fluid ounces/280 grams
• Baking powder, 4 tsp
• Salt, 1/2 tsp
• Sugar, 1 T
• Butter, sweet, 3 T, cut into small pieces
• Milk, 5 1/3 fluid ounces/1 1/2 dL
• Raisins, 4 fluid ounces/1dL
• Caraway seeds, 1 T

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F/190 degrees C. Butter a 9 inch/23 cm round pan. Put the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar in a large bowl. Using your fingers, work the butter into the mixture until it resembles coarse meal which takes just a few minutes.

Stir the milk in all at once to get a lumpy, moist mass. Add the raisins and caraway seeds, blending just enough to distribute them evenly, or as evenly as you can!

Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead about twenty times to get a fairly smooth, cohesive ball.

Place the dough in the center of the pan and press it to the sides. There shouldn't be any very thin spots, but in general the lumpy shape of the bread is one of its charms. Pop in the oven for about twenty minutes until a golden brown, and when its center springs back just a little when pressed. Cut into wedges of the size desired.

I would be the last one in the world to advise against the butter-melting indulgence of eating it hot from the oven, but when cooler or cool, the crumb is more conducive to making sandwiches. In any case, the raisins and caraway seeds along with an exceedingly tasty crust do a stand-up job of focusing your taste buds.

In the potager, the fall harvest is finally over. The Calm One and I have been conversing for the last month thusly:
Me (huffing and puffing up the sous sol stairs lugging a basket of just picked late-season tomatoes): Okay, these are the last!
Him:  You said that the last time.
Me:  Yes, you are right. Perhaps these are not the last.

I hate when an unusually long growing season makes a liar out of me, especially since we both look forward to topping The Calm One's macaroni and cheese with our tomatoes, sprinkling with even more cheese, then broiling the dish until they become saucy and the cheese bubbly.

The green stuff is chiffonade of basil

As there are no tomatoes whatsoever on the vines, red or green, I can say with certainty, these are the last! Whether or not they all will turn red is another story. So begins the impatient wait for next season's bounty as we do without fresh ones until then.

On the right is a jar of bay leaf cuttings waiting for their eventual potting up

À la prochaine!

*To make a fluid lemon glaze, add lemon juice to confectioner's sugar until you get the desired consistency. For extra punch, stir in some lemon zest.

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Joe Pastry discussing 'the continental divide', that is, the use of different leavening agents in America and Europe.

Lemon Curd Almond Shortbread

Cookies. Kids love them, right?  Well I didn't. That is until shortbread found its way into my young life via Nabisco. How was I ever to know that those usually crunchy, hard things could melt in your mouth? And when they did, I was hooked. Could that childhood memory lead to a new, improved version sans the assistance of a multinternational conglomerate? Bien sûr!

One aspect of living in France that speaks to me is the ease with which one can find ground nuts, especially almond and chestnut, which usually are stocked in regular supermarkets. These 'flours' are added to tortes, tart crust, crêpes, and sablés (French shortbread); their contribution of flavour, texture, and nutrition is significant. It just happens that there is some homemade lemon curd in the house, and as its pairing with shortbread is nothing short of sublime, who am I to keep those two from each other?

INGREDIENTS
makes sixteen 7.5 cm rounds

• Lemon curd, about 16 heaping teaspoons, recipe here, ample enough for these shortbreads
• Sugar, icing/powdered/confectioners, 90 grams
• Flour, plain, 185 grams
• Cornflour/starch, 60 grams
• Almonds, ground, 30 grams
• Butter, 250 grams, cut into small pieces
• Vanilla extract, a scant 1/8 teaspoon
• Extra icing sugar for dusting

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. Sift together into a medium-sized mixing bowl the icing sugar, flour, cornflour, and ground almonds. Add the vanilla extract and the butter, working the mixture with your fingers until it resembles coarse sand (it took me about five minutes). Press the mass to see if it mostly comes together.

Then turn out onto a floured surface and lightly knead a couple of times to get a smooth ball. First divide it into two roughly equal pieces, and then keep halving each resulting division into two until there are sixteen in total. Form into small balls. Gently press one into each cup.  The dough should fill about one third of the tin. As the pieces won't be identical in size, you could pinch a bit off the more heftier ones to boost the size of the smaller ones which will encourage more even baking.

I used a full twelve-cup muffin pan and a six-cup one though there were two empty places! Depending on what you have available, you may need to bake in batches, making sure that the pan to be reused has cooled off before placing dough in it.

Bake for fifteen to eighteen minutes until golden. Wait a minute and then make a well in each shortbread using your thumb or a couple of fingers, protecting them with a tiny piece of paper towel. Wait a few minutes more until there is a slight pulling away from the sides of the muffin tins. Carefully upturn the pans and while gently tapping each cup, remove all the shortbreads.

There's the bit of paper towel I used in the left upper corner! 

Let cool on a rack (I used one from the oven).

Lightly dust them with icing sugar. You may want to test one to see if that extra sweetness is a little too much. It sure looks pretty though! Then put a heaping teaspoon of curd into each depression. Though I wouldn't refuse a packaged shortbread, I certainly prefer homemade. These were fun to make and beyond delicious to eat.

The best way to get an even dusting of icing sugar is to use a small sieve

The weather is still remarkably warm which has encouraged some irises to put out an autumnal blooming.

Crimson mums in the left background and  two, makeshift bird baths to the right of them

Comme d'habitude, I didn't deadhead the hydrangeas, as their dusty violet and silver tracery is one of the joys of the autumn/winter garden.

We now know why Dirac the kitten bites onto a hacky sack for about five minutes straight. He is going through pronounced teething and has cleverly chosen his own teething ring!

Thank goodness we have a ton of these cloth 'pucks'!

À la prochaine!

Roasted Sweet Red Pepper and Garlic Spread/Dip

Our pepper patch surprisingly put out yet more crimson beauties. Being somewhat familiar with Balkan/Turkish cuisine via burek and gözleme, I looked to Lyutenitsa/Ajvar for inspiration. Because that spread is made with a specific variety of pepper—the roga of broad shoulders tapering to a point—and often served with feta, already the departure from the original is so steep since I will have to make do with our potager's piments des Landes and sweet red bell peppers. Therefore I have jumped off the culinary cliff by adding cheese directly to the mixture. Said cheese is not even feta, but cream cheese. Daring is my middle name, bien sûr!

Fennel fresh from our potager is often my go-to herb

If only I ate this as a tiny kid, I would have been able to respond I want to make sweet red pepper spread when asked what I want to do when I grow up. I am tempted to ask Dirac the kitten what he would like to be when he grows up, but I afraid his reply will be, I want to be a paper shredder, so I refrain.

INGREDIENTS
makes about 8 fluid ounces/240 ml

• Peppers, red, sweet, large, roasted, 4 or the equivalent if using ones much smaller than bell peppers
• Garlic, roasted, heads, 4 (about 4 T of mashed garlic)
• Olive oil, 2 T
• Lemon juice, 6 tsp
• Fennel, fresh, finely minced, 2 tsp
• Cream cheese, 10 T

Detailed instructions for roasting peppers are here

...and for roasting garlic, here.

Roasting more heads than required for this recipe makes sense because any surplus can be frozen.

Not a chestnut!

Place coarsely chopped roasted peppers and roasted garlic paste into a food processor and whirl until mostly smooth if you desire tiny bits of juicy pepper remaining. If you prefer complete smoothness, process until you get the consistency/texture you want. Add the olive oil, lemon juice, fennel, cream cheese and whirl again.

Salt to taste. Refrigerate for at least an hour to firm its texture and deepen its flavour.

Serve with any manner of chips, toast, and crackers. Sourdough rye grilled with olive oil was my preferred choice but as my quiet kitchen world suddenly erupted into various, barely contained disasters such as a beloved appliance going kaput, bells, whistles,  paroxysms going off inside and outside the house, and Persistent Percy, better known as Dirac the kitten, getting himself into scrapes I did not know even existed, I instead gratefully embraced packaged Swedish flatbread drizzled with a little olive oil. Pas trop mal! I am thinking ahead...maybe some mixed into pasta or filling ravioli or smeared on a hot sandwich wrap. It's lovely stuff and it's freezes well also!

À la prochaine!

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The Power of Lemon (Curd)

How powerful are lemons? They can form part of a battery set-up in science experiments. Switching on bulbs, lighting up taste buds, it's all in a day's work for this versatile fruit. One way to harness its culinary jolt is making a gorgeously silky-smooth concoction that lends itself to both desserts and sweet/sour savoury dishes. The name of this deliciousness? Curd. That's right. Curd. Lemons need to hire a new publicity team!

Though not difficult to make, the better known method can result in bits of coagulated egg white swimming about in the otherwise pristine curd necessitating pesky straining. Borrowing the basic butter/sugar creaming technique used for making cakes, Elinor Klivans details this clever approach in her article for Fine Cooking, Issue 26.

INGREDIENTS
makes four fluid ounces, recipe can be doubled/quadrupled

• Butter, softened, 3 T
• Egg, large, 1
• Egg yolk, large, 1
• Lemon juice, freshly squeezed, 5 1/2 T (around two large lemons)
• Lemon zest, 1/2 tsp, made from either non-treated lemons or ones that have been scrubbed and dried.
• Sugar, 8 T

Using a sharp, fine grater, make the zest, being sure to scrape off only the yellow skin. Then halve and squeeze the lemons.

Gather the sugar, juice, zest, butter, and the whole egg and extra yolk (I crack the egg in my palm and let the white drain through my well cleaned fingers).

The additional yolk imparts richness and deepens the colour

Cut the butter into small cubes and put in a mixing bowl. Beat with a wooden spoon until creamy. Add the sugar, mashing it at first into the butter with a fork then switch to beating with a wooden spoon until the mixture is more fluffy than not. The entire procedure took about ten minutes; an electric mixer will take a minute or two.

Add half of the eggs and beat until smooth. Repeat with the remaining eggs.

Pour in the lemon juice which will cause temporary curdling.

Put into a medium-sized, heavy-bottomed saucepan. Over low heat, stir for a few minutes or until the mixture becomes smooth as the butter melts. Raise the heat to medium, carefully simmer (no boiling, please!) for about five minutes while stirring til the curd when coating a wooden spoon stays put after your fingertip does a pass down the centre. If making a larger quantity, it may take longer. Stir in the zest.

Pour into a bowl or jar. Lemon curd is wondrous, splendid, and darn good!

Fresh out of the fridge, it will be much thicker, more like baked custard

Covering the curd's surface with a circle of clingfilm a bit larger than the diameter of the storage jar will prevent a skin from forming. Though it keeps just a week or so in the fridge, when frozen it will maintain its punch up for two months while remaining soft enough to scoop out when needed. Scraped-off curls of frozen curd are plush in texture, close to that of thick caramel, melting sublimely in your mouth. 

OK. You got curd. Providing you haven't scoffed it down immediately. Hey, don't look at me! Here are some suggestions for the more civilised among us:

• Stir in plain yogurt and top with granola
• Spread on toast, scones, shortbread, English muffins
• Make cake/cookie sandwiches
• Filling for tarts, mini or large
• Lemon curd bars (When baked, curd deepens in colour and firms in texture)
• Parfait with vanilla ice cream, top with candied lemon peel, chopped nuts, fruit (blueberries are particularly good)
• Fold into whipped cream and use as a topping/frosting/mousse
• Thin with cream for pancake/dessert sauce
• Add a little to rice along with parsley
• Chinese Lemon Chicken

In the potager and flower garden, various shades of red are making the rounds: vermilion, crimson, magenta, scarlet.

The very last bell pepper close to becoming completely red

When we first moved here five years ago, we brought a potted mum which happily grew on our Grenoble balcony for ten years.

Since then, not only have countless new plants been made from the original's cuttings, I have finally succumbed to the French custom of not prominently showcasing one of my favourite flowers in the front garden as these plants are reserved mostly for honouring the dead come All Saints' Day.

A pot of mums on the back patio just beginning to flower

The bougainvillea's bracts are still hanging on.

Dirac the kitten has graduated from batting around garlic cloves to the more demanding athletics of bouncing a ping pong ball into our house's deepest crannies. Those are very late season tomatoes, my dear Dirac, not red ping pong balls!

A colleague of The Calm One lives in a nearby village called Dirac. It's surrounded by countryside, farms, and forests.

Citizen Watch!

Not that the foliage colours in southwest France come close to the visual delight I often witnessed in New England, but it is still too early for any show to start. Instead a burnished green sits waiting.

À la prochaine!

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