France: a little history

That is, about my personal experience in France, and what brings me here this time around--not French history! (References to Marie Antoinette and a familiarity with Monet's water lilies only get one so far...)

I'm here in Toulouse this year doing something called TAPIF, or the Teaching Assistant Program in France. It's a program run by the French government that, every year, hires thousands of Americans (and some Brits) to come over and help French children in the public school system all over the country to practice English language skills. I'll be working in 3 écoles primaires, or lower schools, alongside the teachers in those classrooms. I won't really be responsible for things like homework, discipline, or curriculum; what I'm there to do is speak English, over and over again, so the kids get used to how it sounds coming from the mouth of a native speaker. I'm also expected to come up with fun, interactive learning exercises that will help cement the student's developing understanding of my langue maternelle.

The first time I visited France was during my freshman year of college. By wintertime, I had already withdrawn from the tiny liberal arts school in Minnesota that I had elected to attend, and was back in New York, taking classes at the New School, working a lot of catering hours, and generally wondering what else to do with myself. When spring rolled around and I still didn't have an answer to that question, I looked at the (relatively) fat stacks of money that I had earned catering, and thought: why not Paris? I'd never been there, but (despite my earlier joke about my lack of Franco knowledge) I had been reading and learning about it for years, mainly in the context of the treasure trove of artistic and cultural capital centered there. I also knew that my old babysitter Virginie lived there; when she graciously offered me the use of her tiny apartment for the 10 days of my stay, my decision was made.

Of course I loved Paris--who doesn't?--and I knew that I'd want to someday return to France and explore more of it. The opportunity didn't really roll around, however, until last fall, when I decided to take a 2-month break from the city life, and uproot myself to Europe, namely to Spain and France, to work on farms through the organization WWOOF. WWOOF, or Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms, facilitates connections between farms all over the world who need a helping hand, and people who want to learn about agriculture. When you're interested in going to a particular country, you join its online network for a small fee; once inscribed, you can browse short descriptions of farms looking for aid. In exchange for your work, which is usually fairly basic and takes up about 4 or 5 hours of your day, you get three meals and a place to sleep. Although you don't make any money, you also don't spend any, so it's a great way to travel, and much more enriching than the usual touristic routes.

Now that you're armed with this background information, I can (finally) come to the main subject of this post: a woman named Emilie Missant, whose farm I worked on for one month last fall. Emilie and her husband live in a tiny village in the southeast of France called Lasalle. They run a small working farm and take their produce (bell peppers, eggplant, chilies, salad greens, the best tomatoes and sweetest strawberries I have ever tasted, bar none) to the tiny market in the town square three times a week. While Philippe handles most of the farm work, along with the WWOOFers, Emilie's in charge of the kitchen side of things, turning out jar after jar of pickles, relishes, and confitures (jams) that also get sold at the market. Emilie is an amazing cook, and what I loved most about her style was that it was so simple. She made things like soup, salad dressing, and bread almost every day; the recipes were rote to her and involved little effort, but they were immensely satisfying.



















The single food item that I remember most from the farm in Lasalle was the potimarron, a sweet hard winter squash that's closely related to the kabocha. Like all of the produce that Emilie and Philippe grew, their potimarrons were incredibly flavorful and needed next to no adornment. Emilie would incorporate them into a lot of her cooking; I always commented on how sweet and delicious the squash was, and when I would ask Emilie what else was in the recipe, the answer was inevitably something like, "Oh, just a little garlic and oil," or "just some onions." Almost no spices, apart from salt and pepper; and yet the squash was positively bursting with flavor (I don't know about you, but I don't usually make an association between "squash" and "bursting with flavor").

My favorite potimarron dish of Emilie's was a simple puréed soup that the French would call a velouté, which refers to its creamy texture. It has exactly four ingredients: butter; garlic; onions; and squash. And it's delicious. As I've been harping on about on the blog, there's a vast world of flavors out there that we Americans often miss out on, simply because of the manner in which we raise our food (in factories, as opposed to on traditional farms). Fruits and vegetables that are cared for lovingly, and grown without the use of chemicals or hormones, instead of being treated like manufactured goods, have much more taste and, I suspect, more nutrition.

I've made this soup many times in the year since I learned the recipe, and I tweak it a little bit on each occasion. If I can't find kabocha, I use a different type of hard winter squash; I also vary the herbs and seasonings. Although Emilie's soup didn't really need any flavorings besides salt, since her garlic, onions, and squash were so good, I find that when I make this in America I need a little kick from cumin, paprika, or other warm spices. I made some last week here in France, with squash from the local market, which was very flavorful, but didn't quite live up to the memories of Emilie's soup. I guess I'll just have to go back to the farm for that!



















Emilie's Velouté aux Potimarrons
Makes 10 - 12 servings

Ingredients:

1 medium kabocha squash, or other hard winter squash like butternut or Hokkaido, peeled, de-seeded, and cut into large chunks
1 large or 2 medium onions, white or yellow, peeled and diced
4 cloves of garlic, minced
3 tbsp. butter
Salt
Water
Optional: spices, such as ground cumin, dried thyme, sweet paprika

Preparation:

1. In a large, heavy-bottomed soup pot, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the onions and garlic along with a pinch of salt, and sweat (don't brown) for about 5 minutes, stirring frequently.
2. If using spices, add them to the onions and briefly sauté them. Add the cubed squash and stir to combine.
3. Add enough water to the pot to just cover the squash. It should be about 6 cups.
4. Bring soup to a boil then drop the heat to a simmer. Cover partially and cook until squash is tender, about 20 minutes.
5. Allow soup to cool briefly and then purée until smooth using a blender or an immersion blender. If soup appears too thin, try not to add all the cooking liquid. If it appears too thick, add some extra water. Check soup for seasoning and serve hot, preferably with a little dollop of créme fraiche.

Over the sea and far away

Well, hello there! It's been so long, I hardly recognize you! You look great!

So, it's been a while since I've written on this blog. It's not something I'm happy about, but I'm here today to make amends. And by "here," I mean Toulouse, France. That's right, folks: this Brooklyn girl has up and moved to Europe. I'll be spending 8 months in La France, teaching English to little kiddies in the public school system, hopefully having a few adventures, and surely eating very well. And I pledge to document that. I don't really know what made me lose interest in my blog all those many months ago, but I do know that once I made the decision to come to France, I was sure that my time abroad would provide me with some much-needed inspiration. Having decided that I would once again become a loyal blogger after my big move, it was hard to motivate myself to blog at all before I got here. But I'm here now, and blog I will!

I don't know if my cooking will be much different here in Toulouse, but I'm hoping that what I'll make will indeed reflect my new locale. And even if it doesn't, I intend to talk a little bit about what I notice about the food here, and how it differs from what we cook and eat in the United States.

There's one big thing to mention and although I'm sure it's no little known fact, I'll go on and tell you anyway. The food here is fresher and tastier than a lot of what's available back home. In general, French people (and possibly the greater European population) care a great deal about where their food comes from, and what it tastes like. As a result, the factory farms that produce the great, great majority of the meat and produce for sale in the U.S. haven't really caught on here. There's still a great tradition of market (not supermarket) shopping: fresh food, made here in France, that's sold by vendors in the street once or twice a week in smaller villages, and every day (in different locations) in larger cities like Toulouse. I don't know if it's a law or not, but at these markets, each and every item for sale lists its country (and often its region) of origin, and you'll quickly notice that with few exceptions, that country of origin is France. In the United States, the provenance of our food is hidden from us: when you go into a supermarket and buy, say, some apples, a bit of cheese, some crackers, it's likely that your haul has been flown in from 2 continents, maybe more. If you've eaten local food, you know that it tastes better. And so the food tastes better here.

I'll probably devote at least one post to street markets at a later date, but for right now I'll go down another path and talk about two very important food items here in France: bread and cheese. Again, not news: who doesn't think of bread and cheese (and wine) when they think of France? But the quality and accessibility of these two foods is truly remarkable. First of all, there are bakeries, or boulangeries, everywhere. Just all over the darn place. In my small residential neighborhood just outside the city center, there are 4 excellent boulangeries all within walking distance of my house. Each produces seven, eight, possibly more varieties of very good bread (plus five or six kinds of pastries), all baked fresh every single morning. A simple baguette, another cliché French image, is astoundingly good and astoundingly cheap, usually costing around 85 euro cents, or about a buck. (And baguettes really are all over the place. Walking in the street, you can't go long without seeing someone passing by with one or two long loaves tucked under their arm.) Another thing? The boulangeries are open 7 days a week. That's a big deal in a country where almost everything shuts down on Sundays, and people just hang out around the house, or around the café, drinking coffee and chatting. It shows you where French priorities are, though: they simply can't go 24 hours without their daily bread.



















The perfect match for a nice baguette is, of course, some well-made cheese. Again, there's no shortage of that here: France produces over 400 varieties of cheese, and each year the French people lament the loss of various kinds of traditional cheeses as they fall out of production or popularity. That's a subject, too, for another post; but suffice it to say that to my American eyes, there's still a lot of excellent cheese to be had here. Many of the most well-loved French cheeses, such as the iconic Camembert, can't even be tasted in their true form in the U.S., because they're traditionally made with raw milk. Because the U.S.D.A. has ruled raw-milk cheeses as being possibly more dangerous to consume than those made with pasteurized milk, America simply isn't allowed to import them. Raw milk, though, can develop many more nuances of flavor than pasteurized milk; the heat used to kill bacteria also kills taste. So there's a much fuller spectrum of goût, or flavor, to be experienced here than you could ever have access to in the United States. Another thing worth mentioning? High-quality, interesting-tasting cheese isn't expensive. I've been trying all sorts of cheeses nearly every day since I've gotten here, and they've rarely cost me more than 3 or 4 euro for a nice-sized hunk.



















Et voilà! Those are my opening words on the rich subject of French food. Stay tuned, 'cause there's more to come! Next up? A recipe for silky squash soup that was passed on to me personally via a hardworking French farmer named Emilie. A bientôt!

A happy accident

Like most fundamental things in life, good cooking has a lot of mythology surrounding it. The origins of iconic dishes such as Caesar salad, Buffalo wings, and oysters Rockefeller, to cite just a few American examples, are often hotly debated, with at least three or four stories of ownership and invention existing for each one--not to mention the endless variations on each recipe that restaurants across the country proudly declare to be the "original."

A related form of cooking mythology is the "happy accident" variety. You know what I'm talking about: those recipes that are supposed to have developed through some chef's error that, magically, turned out to be even more delicious than intended. Toll House cookies probably best exemplify this category. The accepted story goes like this: in the 1930s, Ruth Graves Wakefield was the owner of the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts. One night, running low on the unsweetened bakers' chocolate that she used to make the inn's popular chocolate cookies, Whitman decided to break a semisweet chocolate bar into chunks and mix them into her plain cookie dough in the hopes that the chocolate would melt in the oven and create a chocolate cookie. But of course, the chunks stayed intact, resulting in an equally, if not more addicting cookie that has gone on to become the most popular American dessert since apple pie.

Now, I tend to mistrust stories like this. Why? Because I think that most accomplished cooks and bakers, like the ones featured in these recipe myths of origin, tend to be knowledgeable enough to be able to predict how their ingredients will react. Chefs aren't just running around kitchens throwing things into bowls and hoping that they'll taste good in the end (well, not usually, at least). Particularly in the Toll House cookie example, the story just seems far fetched: any experienced baker would know that the chocolate chunks in the cookie wouldn't melt, and so on and so forth for the many other "oops I made a mistake but wow does that taste good" tales that exist.

Or so I thought. Until that very thing happened to me. Allow me to set the scene: it was Thursday, June 17, 2010, and I was hard at work in the kitchen creating a rhubarb, apple, and blackberry tart. I had never made one before, but I knew, more or less, where to begin. I started by making an all-butter pastry crust in my brand-new, shiny Cuisinart, mixing the dough only the barest amount, using the smallest bit of water possible to make it set, and allowing it to rest comfortably in the refrigerator for half an hour before even thinking about attempting to roll it out. I was feeling confident as I set to work on the filling, which consisted of sliced apples, sliced rhubarb, whole blackberries, lemon zest, cinnamon, and sugar.

But not enough sugar. Much to my dismay, after smelling the warm, enticing aromas of browning butter and softening fruit during the hour or so that the tart spent baking, I pulled a beautiful, delicious-looking pastry from the oven and stuck an eager fingertip into the bubbling juices--only to pucker up in disgust at the sour taste. I didn't use enough sugar! And I'm due at a barbecue in a half hour! I racked my brain for possible solutions, and there seemed to be only one: I grabbed a box of raw brown sugar from my pantry and sprinkled a generous handful of the coarse crystals over the fruit, then stuck it back in the oven, under the preheated broiler. In about a minute, when the sugar had turned into a tawny, crackly glaze--exactly like the one you find atop crème brûlée--I declared the tart done. There was nothing else I could do.

Later on, at the aforementioned barbecue, I duly cut my tart into even slices, but with a heavy heart: I had little hope for it now. My friends gathered around to try it, and I sat back to gauge their reactions. And much to my delight, far from running to the nearest trash can or patch of grass to indelicately spit out the bitter crumbs, my pals were oohing and aahing with delight, reaching back for seconds and thirds. I tried a piece. It was phenomenal: the crunchy sweetness of the caramelized sugar topping followed by soft, yielding fruit; the whole thing anchored by a light, crumbly, and buttery crust. It was a mistake, and yet it was so good. I guess happy accidents really do exist.

















Bruléed Apple, Rhubarb and Blackberry Galette
Serves 8

Ingredients:

1 stick (8 tbsp.) very cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt
3 to 4 tbsp. ice water

1 large apple, peeled and cut into thin slices
3 large stalks rhubarb, peeled and cut into thin slices
1/2 pint blackberries
1 1/4 c. sugar
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
Zest of one lemon
2 tbsp. all-purpose flour
1 tbsp. unsalted butter
About 4 tbsp. raw brown sugar, or granulated sugar

Preparation:

1. Make the dough: in the bowl of a food processor, combine the flour and the butter. Pulse several times to distribute the butter. Pulse several more times, adding as little ice water as possible, until the dough comes together in a smooth ball. Do not overmix, as this will result in tough dough. (Alternatively, you can mix the dough by hand, but a food processor will produce a lighter, flakier crust.)
2. Wrap the ball of dough in plastic wrap and flatten it slightly into a disk. Place in the refrigerator and chill for 30 minutes to one hour.
3. Meanwhile, make the filling: combine the apple, rhubarb, blackberries, sugar, cinnamon, and lemon zest in a large bowl and toss to combine. Let it sit while you wait for the dough.
4. Preheat the oven to 350°.
5. Remove the dough from the refrigerator and let it sit at room temperature for about 5 minutes. Then, working on a large, flat, well-floured surface, use a rolling pin to roll the dough out into a large oval of about 1/4" thickness. Carefully transfer the dough to a large cookie sheet.
6. Evenly sprinkle the 2 tablespoons of flour over the fruit filling and toss to combine. Carefully spread the filling over the center of the tart dough, leaving the outer 1 1/2 inches of dough bare. Carefully fold the dough edges over the filling, creating an ovular tart. Break up the 1 tablespoon of butter into small pieces and dot them over the fruit filling.
7. Place the tart in the oven and bake for 1 1/4 hours to 1 1/2 hours. When done, the tart dough will be golden brown, and the fruit filling will have cooked down and set.
8. Remove the tart from the oven and turn the oven to the broiler setting. Sprinkle the additional 4 tablespoons of sugar evenly over the fruit and place it under the broiler for about 2 minutes, or until the sugar has melted. Be careful not to burn the sugar.
9. Let the tart cool to room temperature before slicing into 8 portions. Serve (preferably with vanilla ice cream).

Potluck, please

I don't know about you all, but I love potlucks. I love hosting them; I love attending them; I even like just talking about them. As much I enjoy eating in restaurants every once in a while, dining out has never really been my thing. That's because my favorite kind of food is the simple, comforting, homey kind; the kind, say, that my friends might make for me. Plus, I've always been a sucker for dim sum/Indian buffet/smörgåsbord-type situations, where you get to try lots of different dishes all at once. So, as you can see, potlucks basically represent the sweet, sweet center of my personal Venn diagram of dining.

I've been fortunate in life, I suppose, because I happen to have found a set of friends who share my passion for potlucks. My pal Patricia, who sadly lives in France nowadays, used to host them in her Brooklyn apartment with some regularity, and a coworker of mine has themed potlucks at her house about once a month. Most recently, though, it was my friend Hallie who invited people over to her new place in Williamsburg for a housewarming potluck.

When deciding what to bring to a potluck, there are a few factors to take into consideration. The obvious one is size: you want to make something that will feed a large group. Another is broadness of appeal: a potluck is not the time to try out that recipe for wasabi-sriracha snails you've been eying. Finally, you'll want to think about portability: if you, like me, are riding your bike or even taking the train to your destination, you don't want to prepare something ultra-delicate that will suffer from transportation.

When choosing my potluck dish this time around, I was inspired, as I so often am, by leftovers. I had a box of phyllo dough that had, funnily enough, been hanging around in my freezer since the last potluck I attended, when I made an Austrian potato strudel. In my fridge, I found some slightly sad-looking shiitake mushrooms that needed to be cooked immediately. Lastly, I had purchased a huge bunch of beautiful fat leeks at the farmer's market, and I wanted to spare them the shiitakes' fate and make sure to use them while they were still in their prime. It was obvious to me, once I considered my options, how all these items would go together: in a rich, savory tart.

I sauteed the leeks and shiitakes together, adding some button mushrooms to fill the mixture out, let that cool, and then folded it into some ricotta cheese, adding grated Parmesan and fresh thyme to tie it all together. Once the filling was done, I set to work on my phyllo, laying out the sheets on a large, clean workstation and covering them with a damp towel. After brushing each sheet with a mixture of melted butter and olive oil, I layered them in a shallow glass baking dish, then spread the filling on top. I added several more sheets of phyllo dough, slid the tart into the oven, and in about 40 minutes had a crispy, golden, delectable-smelling pastry cooling on my countertop. I got to tuck into it a few hours later at the potluck, and it was delicious: the earthy, slightly chewy mushrooms breaking up the soft bland richness of the ricotta, the caramelized leeks adding sweetness and just a little bit of bite. If you try it out for your next potluck, don't expect to bring home any leftovers.




















Savory Leek, Mushroom and Ricotta Tart
Serves 10

Ingredients:

1 box prepared phyllo dough, thawed
1/2 cup + 3 tbsp. olive oil, divided
3 tbsp. + 1 tbsp. unsalted butter, divided
1 cup shiitake mushrooms, cleaned, stems discarded, and cut into bite-size pieces
1 cup button mushrooms, cleaned and cut into bite-size pieces
4 - 5 leeks, sliced into half-moons and rinsed of all grit
1 small (15 oz.) container ricotta cheese
1 egg
Grated Parmesan
Chopped fresh thyme
Salt
Pepper

Preparation:

1. Preheat the oven to 375°.
2. In a small pot, melt 3 tbsp. butter, then mix in 1/2 c. olive oil. Set aside to cool.
3. In a large, wide, heavy-bottomed skillet, heat remaining olive oil and butter over a medium flame. Add leeks and mushrooms and cook, stirring occasionally, until leeks are wilted and mushrooms have released their liquid and browned, about 8 minutes. Season with salt and pepper and set aside to cool.
4. Combine mushrooms and leeks with ricotta, egg, Parmesan and thyme to taste. Season with salt and pepper. Set aside.
5. Lay phyllo sheets out on a large, clean workstation and cover with a damp towel. Working with one sheet at a time, brush phyllo generously with oil/butter mixture, then quickly lay it in a 7"x11" glass baking dish. Repeat with 7 more sheets of phyllo.
6. Spread ricotta filling on top of phyllo, distributing evenly.
7. Add a final layer of 8 phyllo sheets on top of the filling, making sure to seal the tart well.
8. Place tart in oven and bake until phyllo is golden brown and crisp, about 40 minutes. Let cool completely, then cut into 10 pieces. Serve at room temperature.

Talking turkey

If there's a "less is more" school of turkey burgers, then you could not count me among its adherents. I happen to really like turkey burgers, and make them often. Every time I do, my formula is a little different, but each is marked by one particular characteristic: a reckless hand with seasoning, herbs and spices, and add-ins. One might deem this the Kitchen Sink school of turkey burgers.

Ground turkey, I think, needs a little extra help. The packaged kind you buy in supermarkets, and particularly the all breast meat type (which I always steer widely clear of), can be a little dry. It can be a little flavorless. This is because the meat comes from factory raised birds fed a diet of mostly uninteresting things like corn and soy by-products, and if the turkey doesn't eat interesting things, then why would it itself taste good? In order to combat this Tasteless Turkey syndrome, I'm accustomed to throwing lots of flavor at the problem: finely chopped onion or scallions, as well as garlic, are a must; lots of salt and freshly ground pepper are advisable; generous amounts of dried spices like paprika, cumin, and red pepper flakes are common; and chopped fresh herbs like parsley or cilantro often show up, too. One last thing to consider is a little lubrication: I'll often toss in a bit of whole-milk plain yogurt, or a dash of olive oil, to ensure that the burger comes out juicy.

And tonight, my friends, I did all those things--and more--to my turkey meat. But as it turns out, I might not have had to. You see, after a recent viewing of the excellent, eye-opening, generally disturbing but also fascinating (much like a car wreck) documentary, Food, Inc., I've decided to avoid supermarket meat for a while. I don't want to make any hard and fast declarations, especially since my wallet might not be equipped to handle such claims, but for the time being, at least, I've decided to buy the vast majority of my meat at the farmer's market (and avoid the label "Perdue" like the bloody plague). I started my new resolution this past weekend, when a trip to the Grand Army Plaza farmer's market proved quite fruitful (or meat-ful?). I stocked my freezer full of ground pork, ground turkey, and different cuts of free-range beef, so now all I have to do is reach into the icebox for a guilt-free meat meal.

I used up the first of my provisions, the ground turkey (from DiPaola Turkey Farm in Hamilton, New Jersey) in the aforementioned burgers that I made for dinner earlier this evening. I added all the usual suspects--plus a blanket of sharp, rich Cato Corner Farm cheese--and, to be blunt, ended up with a juicy fistful of The Best Turkey Burger I Have Ever Eaten in My Life. Yup--it was that good. Supremely moist and packing a wallop of flavor, I suspect that there was more at work in this burger than the seasonings that I added to it: namely, the freshness and quality of the turkey. Maybe, with meat this good, you don't really need to add much to it. So you should treat yourself to some good meat, too. But for those times when you can't or don't, try the Kitchen Sink technique.




















Kitchen Sink Turkey Burgers
Serves 3 - 4

Ingredients:

1 lb. ground turkey, dark meat preferable
Finely chopped onion or scallion
Minced garlic
Salt
Pepper
Dried spices such as but not limited to: paprika; cumin; coriander; chili powder; red pepper flakes
Chopped fresh herbs such as parsley, cilantro or thyme
Worcestershire sauce (optional)
Whole milk plain yogurt, for moisture (optional)
Olive oil, for moisture (optional)
Cheese, for topping (optional)

Preparation:

1. In a large bowl, combine turkey with ingredients and amounts of your choice. The flavorings listed above are a good guideline but can be varied or omitted according to preference. Just remember to add a lot of seasoning. Mix lightly and form turkey into 3 or 4 burgers. If time allows, let burgers rest in the fridge for about 20 minutes. The flavors will meld, and the burgers will hold together better during cooking.
2. Heat a cast iron skillet, grill pan, or grill. Alternatively, preheat your broiler. When pan is hot, add burgers and cook over high until cooked through but still moist, about 8 minutes per side. When burgers are nearly done, shut the heat off, top burgers with cheese if using, and loosely tent the pan with tin foil. This will help burgers to finish cooking evenly, and will melt the cheese. Serve as desired.