June.

Juin

Is it real?

Tomorrow is my older brother B.’s birthday. He will be 43 — and he will probably spend his day in his wonderful garden. A gift.

So I can’t believe it’s June! I know, you’ve heard me say this before. But really, I mean it. This time, it’s just too quick to arrive.

My apologies for not being able to respond to your emails and notes, or being more present. I don’t like it — hopefully you won’t even have noticed — but I am simply not able to follow up right now. I have the cookbook to finish in a month.

Yes, you read well.

A short month.

With our Lulu to take care of, growing by the second, by my side. She’s all about stuffing her feet into her mouth at the moment. It’s her new thing. I had forgotten how fascinating a pair of feet can be. Oh, and blowing bubbles with her lips pursed too. That’s actually quite funny! I must say, I’ve spent a fair amount observing and discovering things through her fresh eyes. And giving her kisses — at least ten at a time — every two minutes.

It’s addictive.

Needless to say that I am b.u.s.y! Too busy!

It will change over time.

Now, of course, I am not complaining. It’s all fulfilling. But frankly, I’ll be happy to get to the depth of the summer when P., Lulu and I travel to Ireland and France — oh I love it already — and we can take long walks through the fields in the countryside, à la campagne, and smell the flowers again.

I cannot wait.

So I thought I would stop by quickly today, to share a recipe I’ve enjoyed preparing for my lunches these past weeks.

It’s a dish full of vitamins, taste and color — that’s, if like me, you like the color green and spring vegetables and a vanilla-flavored vinaigrette to go with it. But it’s also all about the egg too, you know, the kind you cook on the runny side. We call them oeufs mollets in French.

I just like the name.

And it’s just the type of foods that I need at the moment to keep me to go forward.

Well, you can try and tell me what you think.

Ok. I am a few days behind. It seems to be happening a lot lately. But better late than not at all. I still have an email to send to all of you who kindly offered to help with the testing of my recipes. I have not forgotten.

In the meantime, since it is fairly quick, I meant to let you know about a fun recipe that I wrote for the Boston Globe Seasons Column last week. Now, I am perhaps not an expert of Spanish cuisine, but I surely enjoy cooking it. Then, who can really resist potatoes, olive oil, eggs — and my addition of spinach and cumin. A Spanish tortilla anyone?

That makes a perfect breakfast, light dinner or lunch idea, and a great picnic for the summer. Oh, I cannot wait to get the picnic basket and blanket out!

The recipe can be found here.

There are privileges that I wish I could have kept from my happy upbringing in rural France. Take for example eggs. Would you have dreamed of anything better but collect eggs still warm, with feathers — and dirt — stuck to them, from the poulailler (chicken house)?

“Tu les laisses pour moi hein, dis mémé !” (leave them for me grand-ma!) I used to tell my grand-mother before my parents drove us to their farm, a few kilometers away. My brother B. was older and clearly less interested in those farm-like games. So mémé invariably did leave the eggs for me to collect. She and I would then walk to the large garden she kept impeccable at the back of their big house; we would feed the rabbits together and on the way back, we would dig out a salad and some vegetables for dinner. I would carry the basket full of our treasures; staying over for a meal was nearly always happening. A good thing since it meant tasting my grandmother’s saucisson, the best I’ve ever eaten to this day. I loved to be at the farm. And I loved to collect the eggs.

So perhaps like many people, I could worry about my consumption of eggs. Clearly they are a staple ingredient in my cooking. I use them in flans, clafoutis, cakes, omelets, custard, oeufs en cocotte: the possibilities are endless. But in truth, I have never worried about eating too many eggs. And I do not think that I ever will.

When I am working at home — or when P. and I go hiking or decide to picnic somewhere green and sunny — one of my favorite daily snacks is a hard-boiled egg sprinkled with a dash of fleur de sel, and a touch of preserved horseradish if I have any in the fridge. Aren’t they wonderful food?

My dad often tells me that he used to eat hard-boiled eggs as a snack on the farm when he was young. I suspect that he’s passed me the gene: in our family, while my mum and brother do not care much for them, my dad and I can make a meal on them.

A few weeks ago, with the Easter egg frenzy visible in every magazine I picked to read, I thought about eggs a lot, and feeling easily carried away, I ended up cooking many egg recipes. Amongst them, I came up with the idea of these Dressed up marbled eggs.

Pille — who shares the same love for beets as me — is the one who inspired me to dye hard boiled eggs again. I had not done so in quite a while, so practicing a little again was fun.

The technique is easy: hard-boil your eggs the way you normally do, crack the shells by tapping them gently on a cutting board, for example — which is what gives the pattern to the eggs — and then, place the eggs in dyed water for about 1 hour 30 minutes (the longer you leave them in the infused water, the more colored they become). I dyed mine with beet root juice diluted in water.

Then, create according to your fancy and taste to dress up your hard boiled eggs. I imagined a topping made of fresh anchovies, horseradish, fleur de sel, and a dash of pepper.

With a twig of chive tied around, the eggs looked like small packages of love and goodness easily dropped into the mouth; a recipe easy to prepare, wonderful enjoyed as a light finger food appetizer, or a nutritious snack to fulfill a sudden craving during the day.

Wouldn’t you too, like my dad and I, enjoy the bounty mother nature keeps for us in simple food like hard-boiled eggs?

Pourquoi chercher compliqué quand le simple peut être si bon ?
(why look for something complex when something easy can be so delicious?)

You can trust many of the food magazines everywhere to remind you of the foods popular at Easter. Amongst them, you will invariably find recipes using lamb, eggs and of course, chocolate. I am lucky: I am fond of the three.

So my dilemma is that I really had many egg and chocolate recipes ready for you but you see, I really don’t know where time went this week. It clearly vanished in my hands and here we are, Easter is in two days and puis rien. Nada !

But I trust that you will have already planned scrumptious meals, whether elaborate or simple, with people you love, your friends or family. Really, whoever is special to you.

Us?

Well, we cannot always plan everything, can we ? My second half P. is sick, so we will really have to play it by ear. In fact, I might simply make springlike green asparagus scrambled eggs like these ones. Filled with fresh herbs and a touch of spice on top. They would make anyone feel better, wouldn’t they?

In any case, I wish you all a Happy Easter, if you celebrate that holiday. Joyeuses fêtes de Pâques à tout le monde.

Some people hate runny eggs. I don’t. I love them, especially when they are prepared simply as “oeufs à la coque“. Perhaps because this takes me back to the time when, as a kid, my mum used to prepare soft boiled eggs. Like many children, my brother and I particularly loved the part when we could dip our mouillettes* into the eggs. Succulent!

“Oeufs à la coque ? We call them egg and soldiers in my family in Ireland,” P. told me when, many years ago, I asked him whether he had eaten them before.

“In your family only or in Ireland everywhere?”

He looked back at me. P. is often confused between remembering the foods he learned to eat living in Ireland or the States.

“Je ne sais pas. Ask my mum.”

“What about oeufs en cocotte?” I went on. “Do you have these in Ireland too?”

The look on his face showed that he was then puzzled by something. “Cocotte ? What is a cocotte?”

“An egg en cocotte is the cousin of the oeuf à la coque,” I replied. At least in my own interpretation.

You probably know that in French, a cocotte is an oval or round casserole with a lid and two hand grips on each side used for stewing or boiling. The reason why we call this egg dish an “oeuf en cocotte” is because the eggs — gently broken in the cup — are cooked in a small cocotte; nowadays a glass or ceramic ramekin is more often used. But I still prefer to use glass because I like the idea to see the food.

You can pretty much put anything that you like in un oeuf en cocotte; the different ingredients added are then called l’appareil. Crème fraîche or crème liquide (heavy cream) is often used, as well as fresh herbs.

In my first oeufs en cocotte batch, I decided to add tarragon — because anything tarragon is always welcomed in my kitchen, remember? — chives, leek and smoked salmon. The second one included sautéed chanterelles, because it is the season, n’est-ce pas ?

Served as an appetizer, this dish is easy and quick to prepare, fifteen minutes total, not more. This will even give you plenty of time to take a walk to the park before your meal, just as I did when I tested the recipe one evening, last week.

This time of year has to be one of my favorites in New England, when I am able to observe the change of colors in nature and trees. I have never seen anything like this anywhere else before. Antoine de Saint Exupéry wrote “Dessine-moi un mouton” in his marvelous famous novel, Le Petit Prince. I could change his words to “Dessine moi un arbre“, to illustrate my fascination with trees. Aren’t they quite something?

And oh, did I mention this before?

Renewing with my many years spent as a teacher of French as a second language, I was pleased to teach my first atelier cuisine/français (cooking/French workshop) at the French Library Alliance Française in Boston this past Friday. The theme? La cuisine réconfortante (Comfort food). This eggs en cocotte recipe was part of the menu.

While my students — and I — exclusively spoke French (and they were good!), they also prepared a three course menu:

And now that I am looking at it more closely, perhaps I should have entitled the class “La cuisine sur le thème du jaune” (Cooking in Yellow).

The next class is happening on November 13, with a theme around Verrines & Mignardises. Take a look if you are interested.

In the meantime, enjoy the eggs, and the beauty of fall, as long as it lasts! Yesterday, it was 75 F in Boston (23 C). Today, we will reach 80 F (27 C). C’est incroyable ce temps ! A bit scary actually!

The recipe of the apple flognarde will follow soon.

Technorati Tags: La Tartine Gourmande, Food Photography, Food Styling, eggs en cocotte, French dish, appetizer, oeufs en cocotte

Only a five and half hour drive separates Boston from Acadia National Park located in the northern part of Maine. We love it up there. We have reached a point where the Atlantic ocean meets gorgeous mountains. The pleasure of enjoying both at the same time.

I know well that you are perhaps all waiting for the DMBLGIT results. But if you permit, I am asking for just a little more patience! And my excuses are good, trust me. Beside, it was planned.

As I am currently still enjoying the beauties of a short vacation week in Acadia National Park in Maine, I have less time to spend on line or in the kitchen, and oh yes, that feels good too! Our days are spent hiking long hours in this magnificent park, eating simply, from packed picnics to homemade cooked meals at night, while pretty much enjoying an almost entire disconnection (well, I am on line, so this means that I still need progress to get to a hundred percent, don’t I?). And this time, we were able to enjoy a vacation destination that we drove to instead of the long flights we usually take. Benefit? Pack the car to the roof!

Well, almost.

Let me take you on a tour of one of our usual hiking trips, if you will.

Just the necessary — and more — to be comfortable cooking great food on hikes, you know!

My newest cooking/eating hiking purchase: foldable cups and plates ($6 each). It only takes 30 seconds to put them up together (well P. made a point of timing me because remember, I am not known as being so good at assembling things!)

Incidentally, the people working at this UK-based company would be in need of some help with the French translation. Argggghhh, grammar mistakes drive me nuts!

Of course, on ne perd pas le Nord non plus ! Always enough time to spend relaxing by the pool in the last place we stayed in, to be pampered.

And, as odd as it seems, I don’t seem to have taken many food shots at all. I thought about it, many times, but for some odd reason, it did not happen. Did we eat out? Once, but nothing to remember or write about, really. At least I had some Lobster. And Blueberries.

It proved that we went to Maine indeed.

A bientôt !

Technorati Tags: Food Styling, La Tartine Gourmande, Food Photography, Spanish Tortilla, Acadia National Park, Maine, Hiking Food

Brunch Culture

“Brunch? At what time do you say? 11 am?”

“How am I going to manage to be hungry at 11 am”, I wondered. I was still very content with the breakfast I had had that very morning.

I never skip breakfast. And better not for the sake of the folks around me, especially P. if he is around. He then calls me grincheuse. Let me add how much I regret to have taught him this word in French! Grumpy? Not at all. It is just that I like breakfast so much that I often wake up with la faim au ventre. I am not only hungry, I am starving! I can admit that I get up because I am just too happy to eat le p’tit-déj (short for petit déjeuner, ie breakfast).

“Mais le brunch c’est comme cela”, P. added the next time we were planning to have brunch. “You just have to eat less at breakfast, then you will be hungry.”

All right, I could do this I guess. And I proved it the next time we went out for brunch.

Over the years, I have developed a real love for this odd-time meal. I used to find brunches peculiar because I could never eat at 11 am if I had had my usual breakfast. But of course, there is no real set rule today. If going out for brunch, it can be eaten much later, which is really better suited for my internal time clock. I realized that I rarely host brunches. It is not in my culture I suppose, but at the same time, I cannot say that it is a reason that justifies my lack of involvement in this food culture. Because in fact, I really like brunch food: finger food of all types, French toast, fruits, mixed salads, quiches, savory cakes, sweet breads, and certainly not forgetting one food used as the basis of so many other wonderful tasty dishes, eggs.

Poached Eggs — Les oeufs pochés

I love eggs under all its forms. Poached eggs are high on the list. We all have preferences which condition how cooked we like our eggs. But in my world, the more yellow shows in the egg, the better ; the runnier, the better. I know well that many people might not agree with me, but I will nevertheless need to add that for me, eggs are amongst the simplest foods, remaining one of the most nutritious. A real world of goodness imprisoned inside.

When I thought about this brunch food, I wanted to create a dish that would combine different food groups — with vegetables, grain and protein — and varied contrasted textures — crunchy, soft. With it, I loved the idea to serve a fresh green salad, because rare are the meals that go without a salad in our household. I imagined a stack of layers mingling together! I used the idea of a fausse tart and precooked pie crusts. And then the layering idea came into place: goat cheese spread on the crust, cooked diced vegetables resembling a ratatouille, a prosciutto slice, and the top of the top, a poached egg with tarragon.

The great thing about this dish is that many steps can be prepared ahead of time, such as the pie crusts and vegetables. Once these steps are done, you only need to spend a few minutes to poach the eggs, reheat the vegetables and assemble your dish. Not a bad thing for a lazy Sunday morning. I do not know about you, but I love simple meals like this, giving you plenty of good energy to start a day. 11 am, noon, 1 pm, who cares after all when brunch starts?

Are you thinking the same thing as me and experiencing a scene of déjà vu? You have seen those shells a few posts ago and you might be thinking “encore!” (again!) but wait. Instead of a dark sweet filling, I am giving you a savoury one. For the other crowd. After all, there are people that just do not want anything to do with sweets. I mentioned this already, but my dad is one of those. He would exchange any dessert against a steak-frites-salade (steak/French fries/green salad).

I am one of those people like Molly who will always have eggs in my fridge! Never short of them, or if I am , it is a major issue! Eggs are so central to so many things I cook, whether it is sweet or savoury food. I might have been a bit of a Brit in a previous life since I love to eat eggs in the morning, hence my love for English breakfasts, when they are old school. Whether they are in an omelet, poached, scrambled, soft boiled or hard boiled, I can eat them at any time. In France, an old tradition was to be able to find hard boiled eggs on counters in cafés or at bistrots and troquets. When I am hungry and need a snack, hard boiled eggs are the way to go.

And so, since the Weekend Cookbook Challenge is all about Easter Brunch and today is Easter, I had prepared a recipe from my Eggs book, Essentials Egg by Jane Donovan. I just added the presentation twist as I thought it would look much cuter to serve the eggs like this.

A twist in your typical scrambled eggs! Happy Easter everyone!

Right, I think we are done with egg recipes, egg shells for a while. I keep seeing egg shells everywhere…

What if we were going to prepare Easter and play a little bit with chocolate. What about if during this coming week, chocolate was favored. I really have nothing against this idea since as you know by now, I love chocolate.

Did we, while we were kids, use to believe that around Easter time, all by magic, eggs would be found in the hen house full of chocolate, just like these ones? Des oeufs tout plein de chocolat (Eggs full of chocolate). Maybe we did.

Who would have believed this (Qui l’eut cru?)

I did and I remember the egg search. Do you? Kids running around in the garden on Easter day, hoping to discover lots of egg treasures filled with chocolate. Of course at that age, I did not really know that in reality, the egg was a symbol of rebirth and renewal, to celebrate new beginnings, such as Spring. I was mainly interested in finding the chocolate eggs I had been promised.

I do not want to sound nostalgic but if there is one time of year when I wish I could be in France, it could actually well be now (minus the strikes of course). During Easter time, à Pâques. In every town or village, wherever you can locate a chocolatier/patissier, you get unique pleasure for the eyes when looking in their window displays. And every year, they seem to be more and more imaginative. On n’arrête jamais le progrès (Progress never stops).

This year, with more time in my hands, I wanted to put myself in the mood for Easter earlier and decided that I should try something I had never done before. I decided to make praliné.

Praliné

Is commonly known as a mixture of almonds and boiled sugar. In the Dictionnaire de l’Épicerie (1898), you would find the following definition: praline = bonbon formé d’une amande rissolée dans du sucre dont elle forme ensuite le noyau, et parfumé et coloré de diverses manières.
Yet not verified but commonly repeated, a legend from the end of the 18th century suggests that the name praline is derived from the Duke of Plessis-Praslin. His cook would have invented a method of coating whole almonds in grained caramelized sugar.

Making praliné is actually pretty easy then, as David told me when I asked him. All you need is nuts – and not only almonds -, and boiled sugar - a syrup boiled to the caramel stage. But because today praliné is more commonly known as a filled chocolate, or rather praline is never used alone but to be combined, why not add some chocolate to my praliné paste. There surely exist many refined recipes to make des chocolats pralinés, secrets and techniques to be found by the best chocolatiers, but I am not a chocolatier. So as a starter, I wanted to keep it simple so that I could experiment slowly with the praline/chocolate process. I used a recipe found in Chocolate by Linda Colister, and followed the recipe pretty accurately. Key to every recipe success though, it was essential to use a high quality chocolate (chocolate which will melt easily) and good quality nuts. (I used Valrhona chocolate found at WholeFoods, or specialities stores).

Sam’s and I read:

Happy Pancake Day!

What?

Pancake day? When? T.O.D.A.Y? Are you sure? Nobody told me!!!

I pulled another window and surfed to another blog by a fellow foodie, Jam Faced and I read:

Pancake Day?

Again!
Did I miss something? What planet do I live on?

This past vacation really made me forget about the essential things of this world, what month it is, what day it is, what I am supposed to celebrate! Of course sacré bleu, how could I forget this time of year, from la chandeleur to Mardi Gras, when in France and other places we make crêpes, crêpes, more crêpes (and beignets (doughnuts))! But of course, I get it now. I know what happened! I was simply not here, so I am thankful to see I am just not as of yet losing it fully.

At the discovery of the news however, I had to sit down. Yes so early in the day. I was having a memory moment! Filled was my head with the memory of my childhood, when my mum would prepare a whole stack of crêpes for dinner – at that point, I think my brother and I must have begged her with it for days “Maman, c’est quand qu’on mange des crêpes ?” (Mum, when are we eating crêpes?) She was a patient woman but would give up in the end. Those times were just heaven on earth-and I mean not our nagging but les crêpes-, the perfect idea of a dinner for a young French girl and her brother: crêpes with sugar and lemon juice. We would roll them as cigarettes (kids playing and acting like they are adults, you know) and gulp them down so quickly that I wonder now why our stomach was not exploding! And don’t ask me why, my brother and I also had a tradition: with crêpes, we would drink Geyer lemonade (made 5 kms away from my home village, today called Lorina and sold in delicacies places (épiceries fines ) or at Whole Foods even – I knew that back then, I should have invested my pocket money in their business!)

So yesterday, despite that true love I have for crêpes – I don’t call it addiction yet-, I just did not think I was going to be able to make up for that lost event and make crêpes. I had no milk at home and did not feel like going to the store. More importantly, I had a date with my friend Pato and quite understandably, had no time or any desire to do errands such as buying milk. I know what you are thinking, getting a bottle of milk is no rocket science, but I was simply not in the mood to be grocery-shopping, even for a simple bottle of milk. I have days like this!

I was a lucky girl though I thought. I knew immediately that my obsessive organizational skill whatever-you-call-that-thing would become handy on such days like yesterday. I was indeed remembering the topic of a post written before I left, with a recipe for crêpes.

If you are French and you do not know how to make crêpes, it is like you are…well, what is it exactly, can you tell me? Could it be like I do not know where the Eiffel Tower is. Just kidding! In any case, there is one sure thing. I am French and I love crêpes. Nothing beats the experience to travel to Paris and as a street snack, eat a crêpe sucre – citron (sugar and lemon juice) rolled in paper. The process by which I eat my crêpe in the street is quite messy (I end up with sugar in unexpected places) but it is just too good to mind what people might think of the scene: an adult with sugar all around her mouth and face. Only P. seems to mind, or at least is honest enough to tell me. Others might just smile and walk away.

You can eat crêpes sweet (I have a recipe here with vanilla) or savoury. In such cases, crêpes are no longer called crêpes but galettes. We like to make things difficult for all those poor foreigners learning French (and let me tell you, I have had a lot of those kinds of questions when I taught French). For galettes however, the flour used is different, such as in the recipe that follows:

It is an excellent idea for meals like an appetizer, a brunch dish or a light meal/snack.

Another variation I have done with the same concept: mix together an egg with some ricotta cheese. Add chopped cherry tomatoes, a chopped shallot, fresh herbs and grated gruyère. Pour the preparation in the crêpe and bake in the oven (same temperature and time). Place chives on top when you take out of the oven.

Note: You will probably be left with more batter for more galettes!

Adapted from Crêpes, Sweet and Savory Recipes for the Home Cook