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April 2010 Desktop Calendar

April 1, 2010 By lizzie Leave a Comment

At the beginning of every month, I am offering C&Z readers a new wallpaper to apply on the desktop of your computer, with a food-related picture and a calendar of the current month.

Our calendar for April is a picture of these sugar-studded brioches I wrote about a few years ago, and have made again several times since then — with much less hand-wringing. Let this be a message of encouragement to anyone who’s still intimidated by yeast!

Instructions to get your calendar are below.

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[Edible Idiom] Plein comme un œuf

March 26, 2010 By lizzie Leave a Comment

Goose egg

This is part of a series on French idiomatic expressions that relate to food. Browse the list of idioms featured so far.

This week’s expression is, “Plein comme un œuf.”

Literally translated as, “full as an egg,” it is a colloquial simile applied to a thing or a place that’s completely full; close English equivalents would be “filled to the brim” or “packed to the gills.” Note that it can’t be applied to a person*: “full” here is not to be understood as having a full stomach, because the French adjective plein is not used in that sense.

Example: “Je peux mettre mes baskets dans ta valise ? La mienne est pleine comme un œuf.” “Can I put my sneakers in your suitcase? Mine is full as an egg.”

(In writing, the proper verbal construction would be “Puis-je mettre mes baskets dans ta valise ?” In common speach, however, it is the upward intonation that indicates the interrogation, and we skip the verb inversion.)

Listen to the idiom and example read aloud:

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How To Taste Chocolate

March 24, 2010 By lizzie Leave a Comment

Last week I had the good fortune of visiting Tain-l’Hermitage, a town in the southeastern quarter of France, near Valence. It is right in the middle of the Hermitage and Crozes-Hermitage wine country, in a gorgeous area that’s full of peach, cherry and apricot orchards. But me, I was there for the chocolate: Tain is also home to the Valrhona chocolate factory, and I’d been invited to take a tour.

We spent the day in paper hats, paper coats, and paper shoes (v. becoming), going in and out of large halls housing huge machinery, fat bags of cacao beans and ripples of chocolate, breathing in the intoxicating scents cacao emits as it is submitted to the many torments (cleaned, roasted, husked, crushed, ground, conched, molded, cooled, wrapped) that will turn it from bitter bean to the voluptuous antidepressant we know and love.

And the only thing I love more than chocolate is understanding how stuff works, so this was very much my idea of a happy Tuesday — despite the fact I’d had to get up at 4:45am to take the train, but I am nothing if not committed.

At the end of this full and instructive day, we were treated to a session with Vanessa Lemoine, the in-house expert in sensory analysis, a discipline in which the five human senses are used to describe and analyze products.

Among her responsibilities at Valrhona, she is in charge of training the chocolate tasters who assess the ten-kilo samples that are sent ahead of any cacao shipment. The beans from each origin are expected to conform to a particular flavor profile, according to the particularities of the cacao variety, the region’s terroir, and the production method that Valrhona and the growers have agreed upon. Any crop that differs significantly from that profile won’t be accepted for purchase. This is to ensure that the quality and personality of the single-origin chocolates as well as the blends remain steady, so that the chocolatiers and pastry chefs who have built their own recipes on a particular chocolate can in turn offer consistency to their customers.

The thing is, you can’t judge a crop by its bean: at this stage, the aromatic components are dormant, and its full potential will only be revealed after the beans are processed and turned into actual chocolate. So the sample beans go through a mini production line, and emerges as chocolate the tasters will grade along thirty different descriptors. A tough job, I’m sure — and I’m not being ironic.

It takes many training sessions to reach the finesse of palate that’s required of these tasters, but Vanessa Lemoine gave us a short primer on how to taste chocolate, and I thought it so interesting I wanted to share it here. The process is in some ways similar to wine tasting, so if you’re a honed wine taster, you’re that far ahead.

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Filed Under: Foods & Delicacies, Life & Style Tagged With: Apricot Orchards, Cacao Beans, Chocolate Factory, Chocolatiers, Crozes Hermitage, Five Human Senses, Flavor Profile, Good Fortune, Gorgeous Area, Happy Tuesday, Lemoine, Paper Hats, Paper Shoes, Pastry Chefs, Ripples, Sensory Analysis, Southeastern Quarter, Tain L Hermitage, Valrhona Chocolate, Wine Country

Ginger and Almond Chocolate Clusters

March 16, 2010 By lizzie Leave a Comment

5da39 chocolatecrispies Ginger and Almond Chocolate Clusters

Lately I’ve had an insuppressible urge to declutter. I would chalk it up to the advent of spring if it hadn’t been so stubbornly cold, and if I didn’t find myself in that state of I-can’t-bear-to-live-with-this-stuff-for-a-minute-longer several times a year.

Actually, one of my resolutions for 2010 is to take on at least one decluttering project every weekend. It can be something quick, like sorting through the restaurant business cards we’ve accumulated over the years and removing the ones we’ll likely never visit again (done), or something ambitious, like reorganizing our overstuffed basement, recycling/tossing/giving old things away (check).

It’s not that we buy that much stuff to begin with, but clutter seems to build up out of nowhere; perhaps a good theoretical physicist will one day study the phenomenon. In any case, I find it relaxing to know I have a counter-strategy in place, and it’s easy to tailor the size of the endeavor to the time and energy I have, yet still get a nice feeling of accomplishment. I even write down what I’ve done each weekend, to keep track; I don’t go so far as to award myself little congratulatory stickers, but I’m this close*.

The approach applies to the kitchen, too, and I try to go through my cabinets and drawers with as unsentimental an eye as I can summon, and prune, prune, prune. What I no longer need I sell or give away. There is a special shelf in the lobby of my apartment building, and the unspoken rule is that one can leave objects, books, and magazines there for others to take. They’re unfailingly snatched up in a matter of hours, and it’s fun to think that some of my unneeded utensils simply live on another floor now.

And of course, my pantry also needs to undergo that treatment on a regular basis, to refresh my memory as to what it contains (the cabinet is so ill-conceived I have to take everything out to get a good look), group ingredients together with a semblance of logic, and identify those that need to be used up soon.

Unfailingly, I turn up small leftover amounts of dried fruit and nuts I want to use before they have a chance to shrivel up entirely or go rancid**, and these chocolate clusters are a delicious way to do so: they’re simply made by combining your choice of nuts, dried fruit and puffed grain with melted chocolate, and letting the clusters set.

(And by a happy coincidence, they’re also a perfect use for the box of 1,000 mini paper cups I’ve been working my way through for the past, um, six years.)

The chocolate cluster is a classic confection, but I only started making them after buying some at a chocolate shop in Barcelona a few years ago. Their version was called Trencadent and I couldn’t stop eating them; I tried making them after coming home to Paris, and it turned out to be the easiest thing ever.

My rule of thumb is to use 1 cup of dried fruits and nuts plus 1 cup of puffed grain for each 250 grams (9 ounces) of chocolate; this creates an ideal crisp/crunchy/chewy texture and chocolate-to-filling ratio.

The puffed grain is there mostly for texture; the flavor is brought on by the nuts and the dried fruits. The following pairings I’ve tried and liked:
- almonds + candied ginger (as below),
- pistachios + dried apricots,
- peanuts + dried cherries,
- Brazil nuts + dried figs,
- almonds + candied orange rind,
- hazelnuts + raisins.

But really, you can make up your own combos depending on what you have on hand, or visit Sara or Dorie for more suggestions.

You could certainly add some spice or a touch of ground chili, but that’s not really necessary. Just remember to toast the nuts, so their flavor will be at its maximum.

And let me remind you that Easter comes early this year — Easter Sunday is on April 4 — so if you’re in the market for an easy giftable chocolate idea, this may be it!

~~~

* Need help decluttering? Perhaps you’ll enjoy the Apartment Therapy Home Cures, which offer helpful weekly assignments, advice, and support. The spring home cure has just started, and the kitchen cure is under way.

** My freezer is too small and too humid to keep nuts safely, but if you have room in yours, it is said to be a good way to ward off rancidity.

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Filed Under: Foods & Delicacies, Life & Style Tagged With: Accomplishment, Advent, Apartment Building, Business Cards, Cabinets, Chocolate Clusters, Clutter, Drawers, Endeavor, Ginger, Group Ingredients, Nice Feeling, Pantry, Resolutions, Restaurant Business, Semblance, Several Times, Theoretical Physicist, Unspoken Rule, Utensils

[Edible Idiom] Ne pas y aller avec le dos de la cuiller

March 13, 2010 By lizzie Leave a Comment

Spoon

This is part of a series on French idiomatic expressions that relate to food. Browse the list of idioms featured so far.

This week’s idiom is, “Ne pas y aller avec le dos de la cuiller.”

Literally translated as, “not going at it with the back of the spoon,” it is a colloquial expression that means acting bluntly and deliberately, without restraint or moderation. It is often used in the context of interpersonal relationships, and especially when someone is particularly plain-spoken about an issue (equivalent then to “not mincing one’s words”).

Note: the French word for spoon can be spelled cuiller or cuillère; both spellings are correct. One should probably choose a spelling and stick to it for the sake of consistency, and when I stop to think about it I prefer the former, but I seem to go back and forth between the two in my writing.

Example: “Tu as lu sa critique du dernier film des frères Coen ? Il n’y va pas avec le dos de la cuiller !” “Did you read his review of the latest Coen brothers movie? He doesn’t go at it with the back of the spoon!”

Listen to the idiom and example read aloud:

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Converting Yeast-Based Recipes To Use A Sourdough Starter

March 10, 2010 By lizzie Leave a Comment

Starter conversion

Once you have a natural starter alive and kicking on your counter, stealing the occasional banana from the fruit bowl, it’s hard to go back to baking bread with commercial yeast.

Not only would that feel like a bit of a betrayal (though you can always blindfold the jar of starter or work under the cover of night) but every loaf is an opportunity to strengthen your starter as well as your skills. And frankly, you’ve gotten used to the vivid flavor and lasting freshness of sourdough-powered bread, so you’re a bit spoiled.

That’s not to say you want to limit yourself to those recipes written with a starter in mind: even though baking with a natural starter has the ancestral high ground and is regaining considerable popularity of late, it is still practiced by a minority of home bakers, and most of the bread recipes out there call for commercial yeast.

But of course, most breads (see caveats below) leavened with commercial yeast can be leavened with a natural starter. It is just a matter of converting the recipe; all you need is a calculator and a play-it-by-ear disposition.

So, how do you go about it? There is no single method* but I have had good success with mine, so I wanted to share it with you below. If you want to chime in with your own method and experience, I’ll be most interested to hear them.

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Rice and Bean Salad

March 4, 2010 By lizzie Leave a Comment

Rice and Bean Salad

I hardly ever eat meat or fish when I’m alone. I may have a bit of ham or chicken on occasion if there is some left over from another meal, but other than that, my solo appetite favors a plant-based diet, with a few dairy products (yogurt, cheese) and eggs thrown in.

And because I eat most of my weekday lunches at home, in my own company (I admit I’ve become frightfully attached to the quiet and solitude of my workdays) and as an accidental vegetarian, I started to worry about protein: was I getting enough?

It’s hard to say, since I’m not so worried as to weigh my food and tally up the grams of protein, but I thought it couldn’t hurt to be a little more diligent about my grain-and-legume combos.

A quick reminder to those of you who don’t spend their lives reading nutrition articles: most animal products provide what’s called complete proteins, meaning they contain optimal proportions of all the essential amino acids (= the smaller units that constitute proteins) the human body can’t manufacture, and therefore needs to obtain from its diet. Plant products, on the other hand, don’t provide that same balance in essential amino acids, offering good amounts of some and low amounts of others. But as Mother Nature would have it, the amino acids found in grains and those found in legumes are complementary*, so that combining the two essentially results in a complete protein. Ha!

You don’t have to eat the two at the same time — you could eat a grain at one meal and a legume at the next, as the amino acids are said to remain available for a possible hookup for twelve hours — but they happen to go really well together, as illustrated in many culinary cultures**: think couscous and chickpeas, pita and hummus, baked beans on toast, rice and lentils, corn and beans, rice and beans…

And so I resolved to cook a batch of some type of grain and some sort of legume at the beginning of every other week or so, and incorporate it into my lunches on subsequent days. It’s also a big time saver, naturally, because a minimal effort on Monday promises near-instant lunches after that: all I need to do then is add a form of fresh vegetable to the mix, raw or cooked, and we’re in business.

Today’s salad is an example of one such preparation: it uses a mix of beans and other legumes I bought on sale at the organic store — it was marketed as a soup helper — and an organic, fair-trade brown rice from Thailand I really like (it is fragrant and not too chewy, and it cooks quickly). The legumes and rice are soaked and cooked separately, then tossed with fresh herbs (chervil, in this case) and a mustardy vinaigrette.

I eat it slightly warm the first day, then cold or at room temperature. It works well over a bed of mixed greens, as a wrap in lettuce leaves or rice paper, plopped in a bowl of soup, or “refried” in a skillet and eaten in a tortilla. In all cases, it is wonderfully filling, improves as it sits, and can be easily transported for lunch at the office, where I hope you’re able to find a little quiet and solitude from time to time.

~~~

* You can get similar results by combining seeds, nuts, and protein-rich vegetables (such as leafy greens or broccoli) with grains and/or legumes.

** I thought about this for a while, but couldn’t find a good grain-and-legume example in the French culinary repertoire, apart from a lentil soup one might eat with bread. Can you think of examples yourself?

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Filed Under: Foods & Delicacies, Life & Style Tagged With: Animal Products, Baked Beans, Bean Salad, Beans On Toast, Complete Proteins, Corn And Beans, Dairy Products, Essential Amino Acids, Grains, Hookup, Human Body, Legume, Lentils, Mother Nature, Nutrition Articles, Pita, Rice And Beans, Solitude, Twelve Hours, Workdays

March 2010 Desktop Calendar

March 2, 2010 By lizzie Leave a Comment

At the beginning of every month, I am offering C&Z readers a new wallpaper to apply on the desktop of your computer, with a food-related picture and a calendar of the current month.

Our calendar for March is a picture that represents the old marble mortar my grandmother found at the bottom of her garden in Marseille in 1937, and one of the venerable cookbooks she entrusted me with; this particular one is called Mes Recettes pour votre ménage. I hope this photo reminds you of heirlooms of your own.

Instructions to get your calendar are below.

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[Edible Idiom] Le gratin

February 20, 2010 By lizzie Leave a Comment

This is part of a series on French idiomatic expressions that relate to food. Browse the list of idioms featured so far.

This week’s idiom is, “Le gratin.”

As cooks may already know, gratin* is the generic French term for preparations (often involving vegetables and some sort of binding sauce) cooked in a baking dish in the oven until the surface browns and becomes crusty.

But it is also a colloquial expression that refers to a social elite, an exclusive crowd who distinguish themselves by their social background, their wealth, their elegance, and/or the select field they work in. It is generally used with a subtle mix of contempt and envy by people who are not a part of that circle.

A close equivalent would be the English idiom the upper crust (before it became a popular name for pizzerias and bakeries).

Though it was originally a matter of social class only, usage of this expression now extends beyond that to consider one’s connections, talent (perceived or real), and popularity: an up-and-coming artist, for instance, can belong to the gratin without being particularly wealthy (yet) or of noble origin. Because of this, the term is often qualified further to specify the traits of the group in question: le gratin du cinéma for the movie crowd, le gratin parisien for the Parisian high society, le gratin mondain for socialites, etc.

It is frequently used with tout (tout le gratin = all the gratin, the whole gratin), which serves to point out that these groups tend to adopt a herd behavior.

Example: “Je suis allée à son vernissage, tout le gratin de la presse était là.” “I went to her vernissage, the whole gratin of the press was there.”

Listen to the idiom and example read aloud:

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Brown Butter Spiced Crisp

February 17, 2010 By lizzie Leave a Comment

Brown Butter Spiced Crisp

Planning the menu for a dinner party is all about being realistic, balancing the different dishes not only in terms of flavor and style, but also in terms of workload. If I opt for a main course that’s a bit elaborate, then I know I won’t have much time or energy to devote to dessert, and the fruit crisp or crumble* is my wildcard choice. (The trifle, too, but we’ll talk about that another day.)

A fruit crisp requires very little work (throw the topping together, cut up some fruit, sprinkle, bake), it is seasonally flexible (you can use whatever fruit is available locally), it is the least time-sensitive item on your list (you can make the topping a couple of days beforehand, bake the crisp on the day of, and reheat just before serving) and, more important, everybody loves a good crisp: it speaks of warmth, comfort and simplicity, and even those who never go for seconds may be caught red-handed, spooning out just a little more from the dish they’re taking back to the kitchen.

This particular recipe is adapted from Claudia Fleming’s dessert book The Last Course, which I mentioned in my Best of 2009 list and is, unfortunately, out of print**.

In the book, the recipe appears as a Spiced Italian Prune Plum Crisp, and I was intrigued by the spiced topping flavored with cinnamon and cardamom, the proportions for which are quite different from my usual crumble formula.

This topping calls for melted butter, rather than cold butter that you’d rub into the dry ingredients. And ever since we decided we didn’t really need a microwave oven, I’ve used one of two methods in such situations: I’ll either piggyback on the preheating oven, as described here, or just, you know, heat it in a saucepan on the stovetop. And when I use the latter method, a miniature knee jerks in my head: butter? melted? in a pan? why not go the extra mile and brown it?

Really, it takes just a few minutes to go from melted butter to beurre noisette, but the benefit is considerable in the depth of flavor it lends to baked goods. (I think of it as using just the right foundation for your skin: few people will be able to pinpoint the source, but everyone will notice the glow.)

I haven’t owned the book long enough for us to have been through plum season together, but the brown-butterized crisp — which I also altered by using hazelnut flour in place of ground walnuts, and adding salt and pepper — was a delight on apples, and I think it would be a perfect fit for peaches, apricots and mangoes, in addition to the original plum idea.

A note on cardamom: the recipe as published calls for 1/8 teaspoon ground cardamom, but I prefer to keep whole pods (in a submarine-airtight container, their smell is so pervasive) and grind the seeds as needed in a teeny mortar and pestle I got at a garage sale in my California days.

~~~

Do you know what formspring is? It’s an simple site that allows you to set up a Q&A page for yourself. I’ve enjoyed following Grace Bonney’s (she’s the delightful creator of Design Sponge), and I thought it might be fun to create one as well. So, if you have questions to ask me that are not related to a particular post, I invite you to submit them here!

~~~

* Some say a crisp becomes a crumble when the topping includes rolled oats; some use the two terms interchangeably. To me, “crisp” has a slightly more elegant ring to it, so I use it when the dessert feels a bit more sophisticated that a good old crumble.

** However much I like the book, I am in no way encouraging you to pay absurd amounts of money for it. You can always look for it at the library, ask around to see if a friend or coworker has a copy, keep an eye out for it when you visit used book shops, and — it’s worth a try — contact the publisher to express your interest in a reprinting.

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Filed Under: Foods & Delicacies, Life & Style Tagged With: Brown Butter, Cardamom, Claudia Fleming, Cold Butter, Dinner Party, Dry Ingredients, Extra Mile, Fruit Crisp, Knee Jerks, Latter Method, Melted Butter, Microwave Oven, Noisette, Piggyback, Prune, Saucepan, Spooning, Stovetop, Trifle, Warmth Comfort