Truffade Auvergnate

For a rustic treatment of potatoes and cheese, look no farther than France. There's Tartiflette (my recipe), also Aligot (my recipe), and then there's the glorious Truffade Auvergnate. The latter two dishes come from Auvergne where la France profonde (heartland) does its thing with excellent and just a few ingredients, serving up an unforgettable taste without much fuss. Truffade is gooey and substantial like another great comfort food, Macaroni and Cheese.

Sorrel, with its lemony taste, is managing to grow in our December garden. It makes a perfect topping for Truffade and per its saucy nature, mostly melts upon contact with the potatoes and cheese served piping hot from the cast iron skillet.

The cheese used traditionally in this recipe, that is, Tomme fraîche du Cantal, may be hard to come by so the very melty Comté can be substituted. I preferred Comté aged twenty months which has deep, complex flavour and welcome any opportunity to eat it. Here's an excerpt from my post on this fabulous cheese:

The flavour hovers between tangy and sweet tinged with caramel, and I mean hover, you're never quite sure which of those two tastes will dominate, keeping your palate awake. The texture is similar to the richest nougat, unctuous beyond belief with a touch of gooeyness before giving way to an umami cloud pervading every nook and cranny of my very fortunate mouth. 

Ingredients
2 ample or 4 smaller servings
adapted from Sarah's Kitchen

• Potatoes, all-purpose, 500 g (I used Rosabelle potatoes from our potager)
• Fat, duck or goose, 1 T (I used olive oil)
• Tomme fraîche du Cantal or Comté (which I used), 200 g
• Garlic clove, large, crushed
• Salt and freshly ground pepper
• Sorrel, fresh, a small handful

Cut the cheese into 1 cm/.4 inch cubes and the peeled potatoes into 2 cm/.8 inch cubes. The size is important allowing the potatoes to be cooked tender within the allotted time and for the cheese to melt quickly.

Peel and crush or mince fine one fat garlic glove.

Heat the fat or olive oil in a heavy-bottomed skillet, preferably cast iron. Toss in the potatoes. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Cook for twenty minutes over a low to medium low heat. Move the taters around with a sturdy spatula, scraping underneath them, from to time.

Add garlic and stir well, getting the tiny bits mixed throughout. Cook for another five minutes or until the largest potato cube is tender and all is golden brown.

Take the pan off the heat (don't forget to turn the burner off). Crush most of the potatoes with a fork or masher. Toss in the cheese cubes, steadily stirring until cheese is melted and has coated totally the potatoes, that is, you can hardly see any potato for the cheese. You can serve as is or you can compress and shape the cheesy mass into a thick pancake with a spatula or a potato masher. It then can be browned on both sides.

Top with chiffonade of sorrel (wash, dry, trim, stack leaves, roll into a cigar shape, and slice thinly). Perhaps because I substituted Comté for Tomme fraîche du Cantal, my version resembled the New York City street food like pizza and knishes with which I grew up, meaning warming food eaten out of hand. The tremendous amount of cheese becoming one with the  potato means the melty fusion passed to a stretchy, stringy state and then one of congealment so quickly that only determined fingers can take on the challenge of pulling off a chunk at least when it's served in a bowl. A challenge I met with gusto. I have since found a local source for Tomme fraîche du Cantal, the cheese used traditionally in this dish. When I remake this I will use that cheese and report back.

Any left-overs can be shaped into a pancake, put in a covered container, refrigerated, and reheated in a skillet with no additional fat. Eventually served on a plate, it was easy to cut with a knife into small pieces.

À la prochaine!

Fruit, Veg, Flowers & Feline

Fresh April green here and there has morphed into verdant lushness all over. The first fig crop is forming while the second and more substantial one will happen in autumn.

Little fuzzy olive-green eggs are dotting the peach tree.

The strawberry harvest at present is enough for making a strawberry banana smoothie every other day. Peak production will be reached in several weeks.

Rhubarb is being picked now, the peas will be in a few weeks, and the potatoes at end of July.

The soft green of fennel (the herb, not the bulb) cosies up to flowering sage.

Comfrey is putting out young leaves and buds. It's an amazing plant for other plants as it is used as a fertiliser tea and a compost accelerator.

The weigela's flower-laden branches are draping the front garden in crimson.

The peony is continuing to set just a few blooms as I suspect the last couple of winters were too mild to give it the cold required for abundant flowering.

Hardy miniature gladioli loves to self sow where I dare not to as in smack up to this ivy-covered pergola pillar.

The Ferdinand Pichard Bourbon rose is paying no attention to Dirac the Cat napping in the southwest sous sol window as all of its blooms are leaning directly towards the south to get as much sun exposure as possible.

À la prochaine!

Iron Cookware Series: Mashed Potato Cantal Onion Pancakes

Grating raw potatoes for pancakes can be a bother, so how to get that same delectable earthy flavour complete with creamy insides and outside crunch without shredding your fingers in the process? Just ensure that you always make more mashed potatoes than needed. Consider leftover mashed potatoes as having a seat at your table. You are cooking for four? Make believe it is five or six.

Yogurt makes a good accompaniment, both taste and nutrient-wise

When I lived and worked in New York City all those decades ago, a trusty cast-iron skillet had a place of honour on my stove. I loved it so much I use to sneak it into our backpack when we went camping. After yet another move, it got left behind. I have made do with stainless steel frypans with heavy aluminium bottoms. Recently The Calm One ambled into the kitchen with not only a replacement for the cast-iron Dutch Oven which had finally given up the ghost after twenty years of use, but also with a lovely iron skillet with two pouring spouts. The former is a fetching enamelled cherry-red with ivory insides, the latter, equally enamelled, is tomato-red. On to the pancakes! Ingredients (which are in bold) amount just to minced onion, egg, flour, salt, and cheese. I chose Cantal, not my usual entre-deux whose taste is similar to mild cheddar, but Cantal jeune whose flavour is closer to Muenster.

Did I forget an ingredient? Oh, yes, leftover mashed potatoes, of course! The better the mash, the better the pancake. This is how I made mine (choose a variety good for mashing, so no salad potatoes please!): boil peeled potato chunks till tender, strain them, add back to the pot, and dry them out a bit by shaking the pan over a low flame. Put them back in the strainer. While they are being riced, warm milk and butter (about a tablespoon of milk and a teaspoon of butter for each medium potato) in the same pot in which the potatoes were boiled. Add the riced potatoes, beat well with a wooden spoon. Salt to taste. Add more milk and butter if required. Wire-whisk till fluffy. When taking the leftover mashed potatoes out of the fridge, break them up with a wooden spoon to soften them.

For each cup of mash (American cup, 8 fluid oz= 16 tablespoons), make a well, and crack an egg into it.

Beat egg with a fork.

Stir in a tablespoon of minced onion and four heaping tablespoons of grated cheese. Parmesan, gruyere, cheddar, and comte would be nice choices. Add enough flour (I used around four heaping tablespoons) to get the consistency close to the original mashed potatoes, but it will be more moist. Add salt, around one half teaspoon. Cover the bottom of the skillet with oil and heat over medium high for around five minutes. Put heaping tablespoons of the mixture, leaving room between them so they can be smoothed out with the back of a metal spoon dipped in cold water (make sure not to get any water into the hot oil). Lower the flame a bit because iron retains heat well. Brown on one side, around three minutes, flip over, and brown for another three minutes. All the mixture needs to be used because it does not stand well. Drain on paper towels and serve with yogurt. Satisfying and warming on a cold night, they are a treat.

À la prochaine!

RELATED POSTS

Cantal Apple Clafoutis (different cantal affinages are explained)
Cantal Asparagus Tart
Fig Apple Walnut Cantal Dark Rye Hot Open-Faced Sandwich (recipe can be found halfway down the post)

Summer Is Right Around The Corner . . .

In about a week, it will be officially summer. There has been consistent rains for the last month which has delayed garden tasks that would have been best done before June such as sowing annual flowers like varied-coloured, long-term-flowering cosmos and zinnias; the last of the edible crops, graceful, stylish Tuscan kale with its smoky green-black leaves; fast-growing cover crops like mustard and tansy to revive the completely harvested pea beds (they provided about 5 litres of pods!). Hopefully, if we can believe the forecast, the next week will be sunny and the soggy soil should be workable fairly soon so those postponed tasks can be eventually completed. Regardless, the garden is humming along, with beloved-by-the bees, aromatic lavender, punchy poppies that reseed themselves through the years, and haughty Queen Elizabeth roses.

The potato variety, Daifla, flowers profusely. (That's the raspberry patch in the background, and if you look closely you will see the berries.) Potato blooms signify that the tubers are being formed. In about two months, when the haulms (the growth above ground) have wilted yellow, it will be time to harvest.

The dark green of ivy makes a good backdrop for rhubarb and potatoes. In the upper left, a drooping branch of a Mirabelle plum tree can be seen with its immature fruit looking like green olives. When ripe, they will be a glorious gold flushed with red.

Most of our potato blooms are pure white but there are a few which are tinted mauve. An interesting aside is that Marie Antoinette, a passionate lover of flowers, was known to have tucked some potato blossoms in her hair during the time Antoine Parmentier was trying to convince the movers and shakers that the New World upstart wasn't poisonous. 

Every other day, there's enough raspberries, strawberries, and blueberries to fill up the dessert bowl. Since blueberries must have acid soil to flourish, our bush is grown in a pot with the desired potting mix.

The rambunctious wild area which harbours lizards, hedgehogs, birds, and insects is festooned with bramble blossoms. The middle bed is filled with bushy Roma tomato plants and in front of them are beets which since have seen the trusty cultivator tool which has cleared away the prolific clover.

During a month these well-established daylilies put out many blooms, each lasting just a day. There are cultivars which are everblooming from early summer to autumn which will soon find a place in our garden.

David Austin climbing rose, Falstaff, is beginning a second round of flowering.

In the front garden, yet more lavender and also Shasta daisies are just starting to bloom. The other day, our neighbour across the street told me that she loves seeing, as does her visitors, the small green haven in front of our home. After all this time, it is known by a few that je jardine comme une folle (I garden like a madwoman). The English lavender is putting on the show right now while the late-blooming French lavender waits to take the spotlight in about a month.

From the vantage point of a reclining, cushy chair under the pergola, this is what I get to see: foliage of mums, rose of Sharon, calla lilies, ivy, two enormous, neighbouring spruce trees, and the imperious blooms of a Queen Elizabeth rose. All of this exuberant growth exists in an urban space. Though I can hear the distant din of traffic, I pretend that it's the sound of ocean waves.

À la prochaine!

A Nippy Morn=Oatmeal

Peaches, butter, and cinnamon topping oatmeal is a treat on a cool, late-summer morning. The peach harvest is now finished with a yield of about eighteen kilograms/forty pounds.

Most of those peaches have been eaten or processed. But no bowl of oatmeal chez nous should fear not being adorned with fresh fruit. Because? Figs! Our tree puts out two harvests, a small one in spring, and the main and larger one in late-summer/early autumn. They must be picked ripe as they will not mature any further once off the tree. When ready, it will fall into a cupped hand after a slight downward pressure is applied on its point of attachment. Plus, it will feel and look like a tight balloon ready to break.

Not fully ripe figs taste chalky

Though I try to keep all our fruit trees not much taller than myself, the fig tree is just too exuberant to be tamed that way.

The birds get the ones that are too high for me to harvest

Figs in various stages of ripening festoon a branch.

Farewell, peaches.  Hello, figs!

That golden, gooey lusciousness tastes as good as it looks

The tomato harvest is slowing down. So far, forty-five kilograms/one-hundred pounds either have been eaten or processed.

Potatoes are being dug up every day. The Calm One scavenged a pallet to put on the cellier floor so they will be well ventilated.

An old duvet cover is used to keep the taters in the dark

There's a honeysuckle bloom here and there. It doesn't matter how few there are, their fragrance still suffuses the air.

The zinnias are going strong and have been since July. Sedum Autumn Joy is setting buds.

Autumn Joy provides nectar for bees and seeds for birds, plus a whole lot of prettiness

Eli the Kitten at ten months of age is going strong too and takes his assistant photographer job seriously, sometimes too seriously. When I scold him that he is underfoot and is slowing me down, he meows that such pauses help my concentration.

I don't know, maybe the orange zinnias would have made a better shot?

À la prochaine!

La Crique Ardéchoise...and the first potato harvest of the season

The potato pancakes as presented by various Ukrainian restaurants located close to the New York City apartment in which I lived when a young working lass were not memorable. The ones I made in my own compact kitchen at that time were not much more noteworthy, though the homemade apple sauce adorning them was fantastic. I put mountains of this 'condiment' on my serving similar to the way the little girl who I once babysat would not only smother flapjacks with maple syrup, but also would tip her plate and slurp down the syrup while asking for seconds, that is, just of the sweet, sticky liquid. But potato pancakes need not be so embarrassed as to cover their face; they can be crusty, delicious, and lovely while leaving the sour cream/apple sauce facial masque for their grey, soggy counterparts.

When living in Grenoble, we were able easily to visit the departement of Ardeche which was about an hour's drive away. Though we did not partake in its well known, dinner-plate-sized, speckled-with-parsley-and-garlic potato galette while there, I will never forget what a beautiful area it is -- a breathtaking, gorgeous landscape combination of the British Peak District and the foothills of the Alps.

In our potager, Dolwen, a primeur potato, has just started to be harvested. Uncommon for an early variety, its texture is closer to an all-purpose potato, rather than the usual firmer/moisture-rich one best used for only salads and steaming.

One of the seventy-five potato plants I managed to get in the ground this season!

Therefore it can be made into soup, au gratin, smashed or mashed potatoes, salad, not to mention steaming the smallest in their pretty jackets, then drenching them with butter, and finally sprinkling the dainty ovals with fresh, minced flat-leaf parsley and fleur de sel.

The smaller ones are reserved for steaming

If dug right from the ground, make sure you give them a good scrubbing. For one generous serving or for two smaller ones, gather two large all-purpose potatoes, several small parsley sprigs (remember to save one for garnishing), one garlic clove, one tablespoon of extra-virgin olive oil, one tablespoon of butter, black pepper mill, and salt.

All three ingredients are from our potager!

Using the proper hand/electric tool, finely grate the peeled potatoes onto a plate.

The world's greatest hand grater which stores various inserts in itself.

Squeeze out as much liquid as possible into a bowl. I use my well washed hands to do this, but the grated potatoes can be pressed against a wire-mesh sieve or wrung out in a clean tea towel. They will be much dryer, with more separate strands, and a bit fluffy. Put them in a medium-sized mixing bowl.

They will look more like a pile of grated cheese when dry enough.

Let the potato liquid sit a few minutes until it is mostly clear. Finely mince the garlic and parsley.

This is not a beaten egg!

Carefully pour off the watery top layer into the sink, reserving the white, thick starch at the bottom which will take the place of an egg for a binding ingredient.

Any grated potato that made its way into the liquid will settle to the bottom

Add the starch along with the minced parsley, garlic, salt, and freshly ground black pepper to the grated potatoes. Mix well with a wooden spoon.

Heat the oil and butter over medium-high heat in a medium-sized heavy skillet for a few minutes until very hot. The bottom should be covered lightly with the fat mixture. Using enough oil (to raise the smoking point)/butter (for taste!) is essential for developing a delectable crust.

Put the potato mixture into the pan, flattening out the pile into a pancake the size of the fry pan with the use of a large wooden spoon or a spatula.  This method of using all available skillet real estate when making one large pancake is a clever approach. Over medium-low heat, cook for about twelve minutes. Be sure to refrain from covering the pan during cooking as it will be more steamed than sauteed.

The grated potato will begin to get opaque and 'melt'

From time to time, flatten and even it out with a spatula while neatening the edges.

Check occasionally to see how the under crust is developing, adding more oil/butter if deemed necessary for pronounced crisping.

At this stage it likely will be too soft and flexible to flip over using most spatulas. Take the skillet from the heat, and while firmly holding in place the right-sized plate over it, turn the apparatus upside down. Voilà! The crique should now be on the plate, browned side up. If it has ungratefully folded itself during this procedure, try your best to unfold it as gently as possible. Put another plate of the same size on top and flip again, uncooked side is now up.

Put the skillet over the plate and flip this apparatus upside down. The crique, unbrowned side down, should now be in the pan! Cook for another twelve minutes.

Loosen with a spatula and slide the galette onto an attractive plate. Cut into fours -- I used a pizza cutter to do this. Since I forgot to reserve some parsley for garnish, some fresh dill graciously subbed for it.

Crunchy and succulent with each bite, a savoury crique is traditionally served with a salad or as a side for meat. If a heftier pancake is desired with a greater proportion of succulence to crunch, then use a smaller skillet or increase the amount of potato along with the parsley and garlic. More time will be required. But don't forget to nurture the crust regardless.

À la prochaine!