Simple Pleasures

When a wintry weekend afternoon reveals gloom not only on the news, but also in the damp and forlorn garden, the way to boost my fast-deflating spirits via a warming snack is as uncomplicated as baking a potato, the largest one in our cellier, roasted till its skin is crusty, slashed with a double cross so its fluffy insides can be puffed-out to be saturated with butter, crème fraîche, and chives, making that steaming, fragrant bundle look like it is puckering for a kiss. Though I am tempted to return the gesture, I am bien élevé enough to use a fork.

Preheat oven to 230 degrees C/450 degrees F. The chosen potato measures about 13 cm/5 inches long by about 7 cm/3 inches wide and is a floury type (low-moisture content) well-suited for baking. If you can't find baking potatoes then go with all-purpose. Scrub well and dry.

To let out steam as the potato bakes, prior to oven-time, pierce it all over with the tines of a fork. For a potato this size, ten stabs will be in order.

Roast for 50 to 60 minutes right on the centre rack till the skin is crackly and flesh is tender which can be tested by inserting a sharp knife in the centre. Place the baked beauty on a paper towel, potholder, or tea towel. Slash through the skin lengthwise and then make two perpendiculars near the ends of the initial cut.

Protecting your hands with the tea towel, press on both ends simultaneously towards the centre.

Fresh chives of course are the highest quality choice, but the second best are freeze-dried ones. They rehydrate quickly, retaining flavour and texture closer to the fresh version. You may have to hunt a bit for these as the less-expensive, air-dried herbs are way more common.

Put a noix (knob) of butter and a heaping teaspoon of crème fraîche (or sour cream) along with several mega-pinches of chives. A good sprinkling of salt is the final touch.

Carefully mash and mix with a fork, till all the ingredients are nicely distributed.

As you eat, don't be shy. Add more butter, crème fraîche, and chives.

And what's waiting at the bottom? The glorious skin!

A large potato with skin has about 1000 mg of potassium! 

À la prochaine!

RELATED LINKS

Health benefits, food sources, and recommended daily allowance of potassium

Savoury Parmesan Green Bean Potato Pie

At this time of the year, I make a thorough investigation of our freezer, checking to see what produce remains from the fall harvest. Ah, lots of green beans! Rachel Roddy, a Rome-based food writer and cookbook author, offers an enticing collection of homey, delicious, inexpensive, and uncomplicated recipes. The sundry produce from our potager found on the larder shelves/potted-herb window sill and in the root cellar/freezer often wind up in her recipes. Her inspirational approach to get you cooking includes wonderful stories of people enjoying precious moments and her encouraging to relish the process of cooking while experimenting to see what suits your individual taste which is exactly what I have done with this pie as I have included lemon zest (The Calm One serendipitously brought home a batch of untreated lemons), dried tomatoes from our garden, and parsley (the only herb on the sill). Think of what you have on hand to make this accommodating dish.

A hearty & easy-to-make breadcrumb crust presents a contrasting crunch

Ingredients
makes 6 ample servings

• Potatoes, boiled in their skins, peeled, riced, 500g/18 dry oz
• Green beans, cooked, roughly chopped, 450g/16 dry oz
• Parmesan, freshly grated, 100g/3.5 dry oz
• Eggs, 3
• Tomatoes, sun-dried, rehydrated, finely chopped, 1 T
• Parsley, flat-leaf, fresh, minced, 1 tsp and extra for garnishing
• Lemon zest, finely grated from an untreated lemon (reserve some strips for garnishing), 1 tsp
• Olive oil
• Breadcrumbs, fine, about 16 T
• Salt and freshly ground pepper

Preheat oven to 177 degrees C/350 degrees F. Get cracking those eggs!

Lightly whisk eggs in a bowl big enough to hold the finished mixture.

Add the potatoes, chopped beans, lemon zest, sun-dried tomatoes, Parmesan, parsley. Mix well and season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Lightly oil the sides and bottom of the pan (20 cm/8 inch round) and remember to grease where the sides and bottom meet.

Want to make your own breadcrumbs? Instructions are in this post

Spoon the mixture into the crumbed pan. Level and press down the filling with the back of a spoon/spatula.

Top with a thickish layer of crumbs and sprinkle well with olive oil. I sprinkled less than well, using just a tablespoon of oil. Next time I will be more generous with the sprinkling since it will not only add richness and flavour, but also will tame the crumbly nature of a breadcrumb crust. Another method would be to mix oil and crumbs in a bowl till well-moistened before placing them onto the filling.

Bake 50-60 minutes till lightly puffed and browned. Let cool for twenty minutes. Garnish with lemon peel and parsley. Either slice right in the pan or if the pan has a removable bottom, loosen edges of the pie with a narrow, flexible spatula/knife and gingerly push up from the bottom with a hand, lifting it out on its own platter. An astuce: aim for upwardly slanting a part of the pan's bottom onto the rim which will serve as support over which the entire pie can slide onto the other hand, palm-side-up of course.

This pie with its cheesy, eggy taste and creaminess (thanks to the potatoes) is both satisfying and comforting. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Having enjoyed the tasty simplicity of this dish so much, I am devising a list of ingredients for another one: chopped, roasted sweet red pepper (there's an ample amount from the fall harvest in the freezer) instead of the green beans along with swapping the herb fennel (now rising from wintry muck) for the parsley, and adding garlic. How even nicer it would be made with potatoes from our potager!

À la prochaine!

RELATED POSTS (other Rachel Roddy recipes that I have made)

Roasted Sweet Red Peppers and Tomatoes
Italian Pasta and Beans
Pasta and Potatoes Minestra

Crème Anglaise

Many a year ago, when we lived in Yorkshire, I made my first custard sauce. Though I love eating this British classic anywhere, its pleasant taste, cheerful colour, and velvety texture is particularly comforting if the eater is gazing through a rain-drenched window overlooking windswept moors. Adorning many a dessert from fruit crumbles to sponge cake to parfaits and fools to just the simplicity of its flavoursome richness swirled through some plain yogurt or serving as a base for making ice cream, this sauce with its flaxen colour and a whiff of vanilla is versatile. Easy to make, any surplus will last about a week in the fridge and will present no difficulty to being gobbled-up.

Custard sauce topping rhubarb crumble in a pool of coulis (recipe)

Ingredients
makes approximately 1/2 litre

• Cream, heavy, 295 ml/10 fluid oz
• Egg yolks, 3
• Sugar, vanilla, 2 T (add more to taste if a sweeter sauce is desired). A whole vanilla bean could instead be put in the cream to be warmed, in that case use plain sugar. Remove, clean, dry the bean, and store it in a jar of sugar, to make vanilla sugar!

Beating yolks and sugar until thick and lemon-coloured is . . .

. . . something I never tire of doing. Just yolks thickened with sugar in itself is adaptable by lending its deliciousness to eggnog and zabaglione with which The Calm One would take a shower if he only could figure out how to get it to flow through the plumbing.

Whisking takes about five minutes; note how the mixture coats the whisk and bowl

Gently warm up the cream in a saucepan. Take it off the burner and let sit for a few minutes. If using a vanilla bean, remove it now. Stir a few tablespoons into the yolks and sugar. Stir in a few more. Stir in the final amount. Then pour the tempered yolk/sugar mixture in the pan, stirring all the time over low heat until when swiping a coated wooden spoon with a finger, the remaining sauce stays put. It can be strained for an even more silky finish.

Sauce takes about five minutes to get to this stage

Fill a suitable storage tub with the sauce.

Refrigerate for at least an hour to firm it up.

To assemble the rhubarb fool we had for dessert following our holiday dinner this past December, for two ample servings, fold in gently and completely 118 ml/4 fluid oz of custard into 118 ml/4 fluid oz of whipped cream.

Then incompletely fold in 118 ml/4 fluid oz of rhubarb puree. Use more if you want it to be very fruity. Instructions for roasting rhubarb which retains most of its pinkness (of course forced pink rhubarb will be the pinkest) and also provides copious juice for coulis are here.

I took a stick mixer to the roasted rhubarb to make puree

Aim for threads of rhubarb throughout.

Pile into dessert glasses, make a depression in the fool, and fill with rhubarb coulis. Though custard sauce can be made with milk or a fool just with whipped cream, using a cream-based custard to be folded into whipped cream makes it closer to unfrozen ice cream and oh so good.

À la prochaine!

Flour, Water, Fire, and Polly Jane

Today I have the pleasure of introducing to Souped-up Garden's readership, Botany Bakehouse, whose twitter stream has inspired and comforted me for many a month. Her joyous interface with life, food, and words is contagious. If that was not enough, she also pairs chilli jam with sourdough pumpkin bagels.

How do you do, this is Botany Bakehouse. Michelle has kindly asked me to write a piece for this lovely blog. I’m honoured! I run a tiny, tiny bakery in a small village deep in the mountains that are in the background of all those tourist photos of Alhambra. My business constitutes three staff. Me, the baker, the bread slinger, and Polly Jane.

Before Polly came into my life, a bake off took all night. The electric wiring in our house is too capricious (not to mention the danger of taking the whole village out) which meant that getting a commercial oven with a massive appetite was too impractical. Gas is very expensive here too.  The maximum I could fit in a domestic oven was two 500g loaves at a given time. I was exhausted! I even contemplated becoming a cookie business, or a novelty cake maker. I drew the line at cup cakes. But I love baking bread.

Spelt and rye boule tied in raffia

And luckily for me, many villagers on this mountain and the next accepted my bread with open arms. One day my bread slinger decided enough is enough and contacted a local stonemason. Painstakingly, layer after layer of brick, concrete, insulation, and more concrete was formed into a vaulted arch oven perfect for making bread. Polly Jane was born.

First food!

But she was a feeble child. The bread slinger and I would feed her log after log of the best olive wood we could find but she remained cold. Then suddenly she became an angry, young woman. Burning everything inside. I would shed tears over the charred loaves while the bread slinger conducted desperate searches online for answers on how to control temperature on new, wood-fired ovens. That was all last month. She is more than fine now. We have an understanding. Her teenage years are—mostly—behind her.

1. I heat Polly Jane the night before to the point of inferno.
2. The bread slinger gets pizza for supper.
3. Before sunrise Polly Jane starts baking boule.
4. Then she bakes Viennoiseries. 
5. The bread slinger sets off. 

After washing up, I pop some simple ingredients in a clay pot and leave it to slowly cook in Polly Jane so that when my bread slinger gets back we can have a slow and lazy lunch after all the excitement.

Rabbit and butterbean stew

Even as the heat dies off the following day, you’ll find me and Polly Jane experimenting with slow infusions of herbs in the olive oil we have produced, drying herbs, or just making sure the logs for the next bake are bone dry.

I love Polly Jane to bits. When I was working for a busy café bakery in a big, big city I took the heat generated and used up for granted. Too many other matters to worry about. Energy is precious here, and Polly Jane channels it beautifully.

Flu, Not Flew . . . and the budding relationship between Dirac the Cat & Eli the Kitten

My customary zipping about while doing several things at once comes close to flying. But not when the flu visits. While The Calm One keeps going even if he shouldn't, I am not given that choice because my limbs have changed to lead. However, my mind ignores the physical heaviness and keeps churning away, planning way more things than I can do in my flu-ridden state, for example, writing about how I made Rhubarb Fool with a cream-based custard sauce for our holiday dinner this past December. Those instructions will have to wait until next week's post. We hope you don't have the flu, and if you do, that you get well soon.

Let's instead glory in the unfolding of the relationship between the confident, bordering-on-smug, nativist feline, Dirac the Cat and the scrappy newcomer, Eli the Kitten. Eli, upon entering his new domain, has retained white, ankle boots on three paws along with the thigh-high one on the front, right leg.

He quickly located various sources of heat including stretching out on my laptop. He has trained me to close it when leaving my office because if I don't, I could come back to a computer which verbally describes my click-by-click activity. It took The Calm One some time to figure out how to get it back to a non-crazy-making interface.

Eli adores watching videos of birds and fish. However his favourite which he highly recommends is a mouse hunt game created for cats.

But those vids can't beat the real thing which is a paws-on play session with Dirac which starts innocently enough with Dirac up high on the wall unit and Eli on the coffee table directly below.

It progresses when Dirac notices Eli has jumped off the table onto the floor. Such action is countered by Dirac stepping down to the first shelf below.

By that time, Eli is waiting for him, with just one shelf separating them.

They bat paws for about ten minutes. The endgame happens when Dirac jumps onto the floor and meows to be let out leaving Eli who is still confined indoors, without a partner. Eli then searches out my computer . . .

À la prochaine!

RELATED POSTS

Rhubarb fool made with custard and cream

'Don't Scrimp on the Shrimp' Bisque

Comfort food, based either on a flexible interpretation or even better, sans recipe, is eaten often chez nous. At times, however, following a methodical and exacting approach appeals because it simultaneously teaches new skills while honouring old ones. In that way, expertise continues to build upon itself. Special celebratory meals assist in this endeavour by giving carte blanche in terms of the expense and amount of time required for elaborate cuisine, making its indulgence a joyous fit.

Shrimp bisque was the first course for our Noël dinner

If you are of the squeamish persuasion, choosing whole, raw shrimp in all their verminous horror replete with unnerving eyestalks is challenging. The Calm One and I tootled off in our much loved electric car to visit four supermarkets which were scattered in and around Angoulême before I actually put a hand in the freezer filled with shellfish, pulled out the right-sized packet, and put it in our cart. As we skipped from market to market, cognac went into one basket, but not the alien creatures, fresh chives went into another, but not the fringy frights, and in the penultimate shop, roast beef, but not the briny thingies. We had worked up enough acclimatisation, not to mention we were running out of stores, hence on the final try, celery found its rightful place as finally did the shrimp though my eyes were partially closed when I plonked them into the cart. As he said, all that creepy crawly aspect is bad enough, but do they have to be grey too?

The camera lied as the shrimp were a shade of slimy slate

Ingredients
makes four ample servings

Stock:

• Butter, sweet, 1 T
• Shells and heads from 400 grams of raw, medium shrimp
• Litres, 2, scant, water
• Bay leaf, 1

Bisque:

• Butter, sweet, 3 T
• Shrimp, medium, fresh or frozen, whole, raw, deveined, shelled, about 30, 400 grams
• Bay leaf, 1
• Carrots, medium, 2
• Celery, stalks, 2
• Shallots, 6
• Cognac, 235 ml
• Rice, white, long grain, 4 T
• Parsley, fresh, several small sprigs
• Thyme, fresh, several small sprigs
• Cayenne, 1/4 tsp (I used one tiny dried whole pepper)
• Cream, 235 ml
• Lemon juice, freshly squeezed, 3 T
• Chives, fresh, 4 T
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper

In order to overcome my aversion of getting physically close to shrimp while shelling, deveining, and decapitating them, I thought of all the wonderful people who fished, packaged, and transported these wild shrimp to me. As it was the least I could do to express my gratitude, I had no trouble in doing what was needed to be done:  locating the first joint from the head, and slicing it off; pulling off the shell; cutting out the black vein.

While the shrimp resided, covered, in the fridge, the shrimp stock was made.

Stir fry the shells and heads in one tablespoon of butter over moderate heat for several minutes till slightly browned. Add water and the bay leaf. Simmer, uncovered, for a half of an hour.

Strain the broth via a fine sieve and discard the shells.

Stir fry the prepared shrimp in a tablespoon of butter over moderate heat for several minutes till opaque. Upon peeking into the kitchen, The Calm One queried, is that the same as those creepy things? Cover and reserve them in the fridge, keeping four shrimp separate which will be used for the garnish.

Now this is something a mother can love

Finely chop the carrots, celery, and shallots. Slowly saute while stirring them occasionally in two tablespoons of butter over medium heat till soft, about fifteen to twenty minutes.

Mirepoix or soffrito forms the savoury base of many a dish

Remove pot from heat and pour in the cognac. Return to heat and while stirring, let the alcohol mostly evaporate.

Add the tomato paste and rice. Stir for a minute.

Pour in the shrimp stock and add a bay leaf, cayenne pepper, parsley, and thyme.

Parsley, thyme, bay leaves, along with the shallots, came from our potager

Simmer, uncovered, for thirty minutes. Remove the bay leaf. Add all the shrimp except the ones reserved for the garnish. Blend the soup with a stick mixer. Then pass the mixture through a fine sieve; the more you can get through the sieve, the thicker the soup. Return the bisque to the cleaned pot and add cream. Gently reheat and add lemon juice. Season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Finely mince the chives and the four reserved shrimp. Place the garnish in each soup plate and ladle the bisque around them. Since what I wrote in the previous week's post captures the essence of the bisque, I'll repeat it here:  Being of Goldilocks consistency, the bisque washed over my palate in a briny wave with an undercurrent of spice, nutty taste, slight sweetness, a bit of tang, and buttery savouriness, all laced with cream and cognac. It was the better the next day, and the day after, it reached regale status.

À la prochaine!

RELATED LINKS

Wikipedia entry on bisque