green & black’s chicken mole

4 May

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The only saving grace in drastically screwing up my holiday dates and arriving in England a week early for a planned holiday with friends was the book I had ordered, with the idea of savouring it on the beach in Cornwall. Luckily, I suppose, I didn’t make it out of London before I realised my mistake. My brother made me a cup of tea – “because I understand that’s what you do in these sorts of situations” –  I cried hysterically, bought three more Eurostar tickets and went back to Paris, and to the bakery for another week.

My colleagues teased me only a little, having waved goodbye to me and my overstuffed suitcase only 24 hours previously. The book went in my work bag along with neatly rolled apron, chef jacket and trousers.  It was Anne Lamott’s latest journal, about her grandson’s birth and her trip to India, ‘Some Assembly Required.’ On the way home after work I became so lost in her words I missed my metro stop and had to walk back, blinking at the bright sunlight.

Her honest open writing, her willingness and skill in describing her vulnerability, paranoia and love always amaze me, constantly make me laugh. Searching for a quote to read to a friend, I found a good one on every page. Liked a throwaway line about spring:

‘a few cool blue skies, new grass, wildflowers and I’m in love. You’re going to fall for that old magic trick again? Oh, yeah.’

Paris has welcomed me back with a scrubbed-clean spring face. She can be such a tease, playing it cold and distant for months, then just when you think you can cope without her, she magicks up some blossoms, begs for forgiveness. And I fall for it every time.

The sunshine makes all the difference, of course. Suddenly the words are unspooling in my head again, finally my desire to cook for myself has come back, long dormant. I love cooking for friends, guests, presents – but alone, tired, grumpy? Not so much. Rather like a good night’s sleep after a week at work, everything seems shinier in the spring. People seem more attractive. Or maybe the Parisians finally have smiles on their faces as they drink beer by the canal and swing their legs over the water.

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So I come home with energy and compassion, and fall on the recipe for Chicken Mole. Inspired by another book I received from a dear friend, ‘Like Water for Chocolate’  - a Mexican tale of magical realism, emotion poured into cooking – the casserole of chicken, tomatoes, paprika and chocolate transmitted all the love and warmth I had been missing over the winter.

Simple enough – you brown the chicken, cook some onions and garlic, add tins of tomatoes and beans and the final touch of chocolate and smoky chilis or paprika. (I snuck in a roasted red pepper and a little extra chocolate as well.)  Then stick the pot in the oven for the flavours to bind and deepen for at least an hour and a half. Today I served it over a plain accompaniment of brown rice and devoured half of it standing up by the window. It tasted earthy and wholesome, not specifically of chocolate so much as a complex blend of savoury flavour.  Tomorrow I will hunt for ripe avocados and corn tortillas as the recipe suggests, and I cannot wait. I am properly hungry again. It is a good feeling.

Next week I will be on holiday again, for real. The total cost of the aborted trip twists my insides a little, and it may well rain in Cornwall. But if I can hold onto the spring feeling regardless, and listen to the words and recipes growing … if I can weave half as good a story out of it – my seemingly endless screw-ups, my relationship with this tricky city – as Lamott does, then I will be extremely grateful.

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Chicken Mole

from the Green & Black’s ‘Unwrapped’ chocolate recipe book, as inspired by Laura Esquivel’s ’Like Water for Chocolate‘ - they advise serving with avocado salad and corn tortillas, or, if for vegetarians, replacing the chicken with an extra tin of kidney beans 

should serve 4 

1 large red pepper

4 chicken legs (thigh and drumstick)

2 tbs olive oil

2 large onions

2 garlic cloves

2 smoked, dried Jalapeno chili peppers, soaked in water

OR 2 tsp smoked sweet paprika

400g tin red kidney beans

400g tin chopped tomatoes

100g dark chocolate, min 60% cocoa solids

salt

~~~

Stab the red pepper all over with a fork and bake in a 200C oven until soft and blackened.

Brown the chicken in the olive oil in a large oven proof casserole. After a few minutes, when the chicken has a little colour, add the onions and garlic. When they are translucent, add the beans (with all the liquid in the tin), the tomatoes, 50g of the chocolate. Either chop the dried and soaked chilis and add them in along with the soaking water, or use the smoked paprika. Bring to a simmer.

By this time the pepper should be done. Lower oven temperature to 150C. Remove pepper stalk and seeds, then roughly chop it and add to pot. Cover and place in the oven for at least 90 minutes.

Skim off any fat. Taste and add the rest of chocolate if needed, as well as some salt.

strawberries and shortbread

22 Apr

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Making fun of the French is all too easy. It has become a bad habit that I wear as easily as my shapeless duffel coat. What can I say? Their typically closed-off rule-following ways make for good anecdotes.

There was the time I went to the department store BHV and needed to ask five (famously snooty) shop assistants before one would deign to point me in the right direction for a cake stand. There are the continual awkward encounters with neighbours, who have made small talk about the weather with me for two years, who have all accepted free cakes from my bakery – but will never introduce themselves. I know that the couple on the 6th floor has a cat named Carlos. They have given me flowers to thank me for said cake. But they still don’t feel obliged to share their names.

Then there is the insistence on correct grammar, a reverence for words that I totally understand but still find amusing when upside in a hot yoga class and a student takes the time and breath to correct the American instructor: it’s la cheville not le. 

My first year in Paris, my year abroad, I wanted to integrate. I actively avoided anglophones. However this led to living and working with only Italians, a pleasant and unexpected consequence. I learned how to salt pasta water (heavily) and that una forchettata (a forkful) means a good 150g portion. I practiced some French, tangentially, with friends of friends or as a stilted common language with the rare German or Polish colleague, all confused and a little annoyed to find themselves in the crossfire of Italian chatter in that most French of institutions in the very heart of the city, in the Louvre.

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The second time around, a year later, I tried again. Granted, I was living with another Italian girl, the charming flatmate. But we made an effort to meet Frenchies, joined capoeira class, made small talk at soirees. Slowly slowly though, I started meeting English-speaking friends, an American, a couple of nice Canadians. Several girls from my tiny hometown of Hereford, all escaped to France in search of adventure. And I got to be myself a little more – my voice is squeakier and much more prissy in French, whereas in English (I hope) I am funnier, more relaxed.

Maybe my frog-mocking is just self-protection: it’s hard to fit in with the French. To break the ice without asking what someone does for a living, to slip in the subjunctive like it’s no big deal, to know how the latest thoughtful and depressing movie fits into the director’s back catalogue. It’s a little like tagging along with a sophisticated older sibling, trying to keep up. Just like brothers and sisters, the French and the English seem to be endlessly in competition, always making fun of each other more or less affectionately. That’s my excuse anyway, for pandering to stereotypes, which do nonetheless have a small grain of truth in them. And they do it too; how many times have I admitted to being English only to hear an often misinformed diatribe about how terrible our food/weather/national character is. (Oh dear, I am being a bratty little sister: ‘He does it too! He started it!’)

In the end though, the fact that I am still here has to count for something. I like all of the other cliched ideas about France, that its people take art and aesthetics, fine food and wine so seriously. I have become the Parisian who wouldn’t live anywhere else, wouldn’t give up all the city’s expos and vernissages, its street theatre, but still relishes a weekend in the French countryside with its rustic charm and simple meals. I love going to market and peering at the heaping mounds of produce, asking for that one to be ripe for tonight’s supper and another for three days time. Their care and attention when it comes to food is a kind of open-house hospitality, welcoming you in for the best they have to offer. You taste the cassoulet and mi-cuit foie gras from the farm next door and you notice immediately their pride in their culinary heritage.

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All the eating is part of a larger whole, the expectation that having followed those rules, paid one’s dues – the reward is rest and relaxation. Though the two hour wine-soaked lunch is becoming less common, the French have three bank holidays in May alone (in the sunshine of course) and still make the most of their five weeks holiday a year, preferably for a long August vacation. The state is very generous with unemployment benefits – which includes free entry into museums and cultural institutions – with health insurance and with help towards paying the rent for students and those on a low wage, even for foreigners like me. Provided you fill in all the forms of course, that is the classic stumbling block. Once you have cleared that hurdle, you are free to wander the streets and markets, pretending to be French, hoping that your charming accent will go unnoticed for two more minutes.

On the subject of fresh ripe fruit from the market, the gariguette strawberries are finally in season. I rather bossily ordered a friend coming to dinner to pick me up a punnet or two for dessert “and definitely not any of those Spanish monstrosities.” Gariguettes are small and delicate and sweet, a more translucent red than the aggresively farmed ruby berries from Spain that are available all year around. These ones come out around March to June, and are extremely sensitive. They must be handled with care for they bruise easily. (Here I could make an unflattering parallel with a prissy Parisian, but I won’t.) They collapse in a puddle of juice when bitten into, releasing a sweet perfumed flavour that I had forgotten over the winter. Like having Italian sun-ripened tomatoes after months of those tough supermarket orbs, you remember when eating gariguettes what strawberries are supposed to taste like.

Though I was planned to make a fancy mousse cake with a jelly middle, iced and beribboned, in the end I left the strawberries whole and fresh in all their glory. We ate the shortbread base plain with some icing sugar, perfectly crumbly from the subtle addition of rice flour. The fruit was dipped in melted chocolate and honeyed cream. I should be promoting the extravagant cake, but really there is nothing nicer after a big meal than sharing big bowls of fruit, reaching across the table to grab at chocolate, making a pile of strawberry, shortbread and mascarpone for each bite. It was very companionable. In fact, this improvised pudding has the best of France, England and even Italy in all its basic ingredients.

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Strawberries and shortbread

technically feeds six polite people at a dinner party, but I like the shortbread so much I can eat most of it in one sitting (full disclosure, it comes from my mother’s book Seasonal Secrets)

125g butter, room temperature

50g caster sugar

125g plain flour

50g rice flour

1/2 tsp salt

zest of 1 lemon

to serve:

500g fresh ripe gariguette strawberries

more sliced fruit – kiwis or mangoes are good for colour contrast

200g dark chocolate, melted

250g mascarpone (or clotted cream)

3 tbs milk

1 tbs honey

Heat oven to 175C. Cream the butter and sugar, stir in flours, zest and salt until it just starts to come together. Line a tin with baking paper – I used a 22cm ring on a baking sheet to make  it easy to emove when baked – and press the dough firmly into it. Bake for 15-18 minutes until golden and just brown around the edges. Let cool.

When ready to eat, melt the chocolate gently over a pan of simmering water. Mix the mascarpone with the milk and honey to make a smooth dipping consistency. Cut the shortbread into diamonds and dust with icing sugar. Slice any other fruit neatly, serve the strawberries as they are. Plonk everything in the middle of the table and hand your guests skewers or fondue forks, let them help themselves.

kitchen rhythm

7 Mar

strawberry half 2

While googling wildly, I just came across Yumeiro Patishiēru, a manga and anime about a girl named Strawberry, but known as Dream-Coloured Pastry Chef.

I can rest easy – there is already an animated series about a clumsy girl who dreams of opening her own bakery in London and thinks there is a second stomach just for dessert.

On an unrelated note – but one that makes me almost as happy as this discovery - my essay about a year as an apprentice patissière is now online. Do let me know what you think?

an oaty biscuit or two

24 Feb

digestive biscuits

The same question every time, asked with confusion or with a sneer:

But is there any traditional English pâtisserie? What is this pooding? 

I sigh.

The heavy fruit thing? You must be thinking of Christmas pudding – which we only eat once a year, if that. 

They think that pooding is the epitome of our backward cuisine.

For the British, pudding just means dessert. It’s true that the word itself resonates comfort, evokes steamed sponges with thick custard – rather than the insubstantial wisp of a French dessert. But we have all kinds, not just Christmas: a sticky toffee replete with syrup, lemon self-saucing, a summer one bursting with red fruits. And not just pooding, the British really can bake: chelsea buns, scones, biscuits, all kinds of rich layer cakes.

Usually I am too lazy to properly defend our heritage. We have a terrible reputation for food after all. Sometimes I have to admit that these things are personal, vestiges of a childhood that do not necessarily cross cultures. (See also, the northern French habit of dipping smelly cheese in coffee in the mornings.)

When I made last week’s cheesecake, I ran out to buy plain biscuits and found some digestives in Monoprix. They had been renamed sablées anglaises, and had little British guards on the red packet. I couldn’t help but think that the French must be very disappointed in our rendering of a sablée - normally a flaky buttery biscuit – with its plain dry crunch. Ideal for dipping in tea, digestives are sturdy and reliable, a ready vehicle for cheese and chutney, or chocolate spread. I had them for school break time, sandwiched with a generous layer of cold butter. But they win no prizes for prettiness, certainly cannot compete with the class of the macaron or the indulgence of a warm, melting chocolate chip cookie. To foreigners, they are probably as lacklustre as they believe our climate to be.

So I tried to make some of my own, to convert the new French flatmate immediately to my cause. (Start small and work up to the full-blown sticky pudding.) It was the perfect excuse to use my tiny alphabet stamps for cookies, to spell out ‘welcome.’

They turned out beautifully – borderline oatcakes, with a craggy rough texture more like Duchy Originals (la di da) than proper digestives. Like my Granny’s old-fashioned oaty biscuits that are made with lard, no less. Mine had a little golden caster sugar for sweetness, but were still delicious with goat’s cheese. Those that weren’t slathered in butter were dipped in milk chocolate with marbled stripes of dark chocolate, for a very comforting and nostalgic snack. Most importantly, they stand up extremely well to dunking in tea. How can you be rude about a country that bakes such gems – better still, whose prince and heir makes the biscuits?

In the end,  I am happy if no-one believes the English really do know their way around an oven – all the more for me.

~~~

Oaty biscuits

adapted from Peyton and Byrne’s British Baking – if you use oatmeal as they suggest the biscuits will have a fine texture like digestives, or grind rolled oats as I did for more bite, like hobnobs

150g rolled oats

150g wholemeal flour

50g golden caster sugar

1/4 tsp salt

1/8 tsp bicarbonate of soda

90g cold butter (I like salted)

1 egg, beaten

for decoration: 200g milk chocolate + 50g dark chocolate

Blend rolled oats in the food processor to a breadcrumb texture. Add flour, sugar, salt and bicarbonate of soda, then butter cut into cubes. Pulse until butter is lentil-sized bits. (This can be done by hand, but in that case you need to use a  fine oatmeal instead of rolled oats.)

Add egg and blend to form a dough. Tip out onto a floured surface and bring into a ball. If a little dry, add a tablespoon of water. Roll out with a little flour to 3mm thick, cut out rounds (I made 20 x 6cm biscuits) and stamp a message if you have alphabet stamps.

Bake at 200C for 12-15 minutes, until crisp and brown. Let cool, then dip one side in melted ilk chocolate. If you want to be extra fancy, pipe (or drizzle with the tines of a fork) the dark chocolate in horizontal lines before the milk chocolate has set, then draw the point of a knife back and forth in vertical lines to make a beautiful marble pattern.

endive, blue cheese and pear salad

20 Feb

pear and endive salad

My February kitchen has not been much to write home about. Though I resolved to try 10 new recipes from neglected cookbooks, I often end up eating leftover cake for supper (hurrah for being a grown-up) or a plain salad to balance out the cake (curses on adult responsability).

There was a whole mackerel roasted with lemon and a particularly nice dinner among girlfriends with beef, apricot and spinach meatballs simmered in tomato sauce – but that is all self-explanatory.

I can only offer this salad, in imitation of a wonderful Lyonnais bistro in St-Germain, whose address I will be not sharing (bribes notwithstanding) because it was too full and their seven-hour lamb was too delicious.

Endives can be jarring – too bitter, too teeth-squeakingly watery. But here, sliced as finely as coleslaw, they are the the star of the plate, crunchy but delicate, spotlit by a mustard dressing. Its subtle colours – cream, pale green. mottled blue – hide a wallop of flavour: bitter endive, sweet pear, sharp cheese. It is a wintery salad full of promise, for crunch and light and better things to come.

~~~

Pear, endive and blue cheese salad

serves 4 as a starter

4 large endives

2 crisp, slightly unripe conference pears

200g blue cheese

3 tbs olive oil

2 tbs lemon juice

1 tsp dijon mustard

1/2 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp salt

a pinch of pepper

Halve and core the pears. Slice them and the endives as thinly as possible. Shake the dressing ingredients in a jar, toss most of it with the salad, add more to taste. Crumble the blue cheese over the top.

raspberry and poppy seed cheesecake

12 Feb

raspberry poppy cheesecake

At supper with the charming Italian flatmate and her equally charming boyfriend (I am a welcome extra wheel because I always bring dessert) we discussed the decor of their future apartment (or, they politely argued, I concentrated on the saffron risotto).

He likes black and white with just a touch of colour. He is French, of course. She is a walking rainbow. He has been known to scold her gently for wearing purple and red together. Her room mirrors her colourful personality, an honest representation of herself.

Decorating cakes should follow the same rules, to reflect what is inside. Pierre Hermé believes strongly that it should be minimal, and should enhance not hide. (An error I certainly committed in my final exam when there was a dent in my tutti frutti entremets. I did indeed use all of the fruits to cover it up.) Hermé’s vanilla tart has a line of real vanilla seeds on a shiny white glaze. That is all. The reason that it is minimalist and not simply boring is that he delivers on his visual promise – the execution is perfect, the tart is a concentrated explosion of vanilla.  A sort of dessert sincerity. At work we place a dried vanilla bean on our apple tart because it contains a compote made with a spidery tangle of vanilla pods. However we also put chopped pistachios on the lemon tart, the acid-green contrasting prettily with the yellow when there is no pistachio in the tart itself: false advertising.

One of my favourite people – who detests cooking – asked me what on earth was the point of ‘dressing a plate.’ I compared it to ‘bookcase styling,’ a term I came across on the internet. The step-by-step guide to artfully arranging knick-knacks and bibelots just so on the shelves treated the (very few) books as an afterthought – or a stand for pretty vases. The same goes for dressing a plate: if all the drizzles and sprigs of parsley obscure the actual food, then the fundamentals have been lost somewhere between the kitchen and our mouths.

To see my bedroom with its stacks of books, haphazard wall of gilt frames is to know that I am far from being a minimalist. But I like my desserts to be fresh and simple, clean flavours and lines – and the garnish should reflect that.

We carried on discussing furniture – there was a violent disagreement over the idea of a violet pouffe – until I brought out the cheesecake. Made with Quark I brought back from Germany specially, it was light and tangy with a hint of lemon. It was baked in a loaf tin for neat oblong slices befitting a dinner party, that showed the pink bloom of the raspberries inside. It was neither rich nor cloying, more akin to the dense German kasekuche I had had in Stuttgart. That one had had a poppy seed topping; I adapted the idea and put the poppy seeds in the biscuit base for a bitter crackle, and covered the cheesecake with a thin layer of whipped cream instead. It might seem redundant, cream on top of cheese, but it works. Then a few diagonal lines of poppy seeds and candied lemon zest. Simple. Fancy. It was much appreciated – and because it was not too sugary nor too creamy, even those that normally hate cheesecake approved.

The charming flatmate left this week (interestingly, on the day that the Japanese traditionally celebrate casting out devils and inviting in good spirits!) to move in with the boyfriend. Soon there will be a new, and nice, French girl. For now I am alone in the apartment, its walls now bare, the bookshelves gone. In lieu of buying more, and trying in vain to style them, I shall make myself this cheesecake and actually read a book instead.

~~~

Raspberry and poppy seed cheesecake

adapted from Valentina’s recipe, one that I have been meaning to make for years now

75g butter, melted

175g plain biscuits, crushed

35g poppy seeds

80g raspberries (fresh or frozen)

450g cream cheese, quark or drained fromage blanc*

150g caster sugar

4 eggs

zest of 1 lemon

to decorate:

100g cream, whipped

lemon zest, poppy seeds, fresh raspberries

*I have tried all the cheeses below, each are delicious, but have a slightly different texture – however the fromage blanc needs draining 24 hours beforehand. A goat’s milk fromage blanc is particularly tangy and interesting. Drain in a colander lined with a tea-towel, leave in the fridge for 24 hours or more with a heavy weight on top. Start with about 800g to get 450g in the end.

Grease a 24cm-long loaf tin and line with paper (makes it easier to lift out when cooked). Heat oven to 180C.

Either bash the biscuits in a plastic bag with a rolling pin to crumbs, or blend in a food processor. Stir in melted butter and poppy seeds and press firmly into tin.

Mix cream cheese or quark, sugar, eggs and lemon zest. Pour half into tin, scatter over raspberries then pour in the rest.

Bake for 50 minutes or so. The cheesecake will be golden brown and just set, and will come away from the side of the tin.

Lightly whip the cream and spread over the cooled cheesecake. Decorate with thin diagonal stripes of poppy seeds and crushed raspberries, or whatever takes your fancy.

(Still good the next day, were it to  be prepared ahead, refrigerated and decorated last minute.)

paris pâtisseries: l’éclair de génie

6 Feb

les eclairs de genie

The cupcake is dead, long live the cupcake. Everyone is looking for the next trend, that one simple item that can be customised in a million ways and sold for a fortune.

The man behind L’Éclair de Génie  may indeed be a genius. After the multi-coloured macarons, the American cupcakes, on the heels of Popelini’s range of cute choux puffs, comes the éclair in infinite flavours. Christophe Adam knows what he is doing – not least because he made the éclair into a luxury item at Fauchon back in 2003 – because he now has a designer boutique in the Marais, that sells only éclairs and truffles. Even at 4.50-5€ each, it is apparently doing so well after only six weeks he plans to open another shop straightaway.

I had to see what all the fuss was about – and to see, more importantly if his éclairs could beat the neighbouring pasteis de nata. Those custard tarts are my favourite example of one quality product, made fresh and perfect every day.

The boutique is egg-yellow and white, with elegant vendeuses wearing sleek black gloves. The line of éclairs stretches almost the length of the shop, a rainbow selection adorned with rose petals, striped icing and the Christophe Adam classic: arty transfers that make the pastry into a Louvre-worthy painting. I paid €14 (somewhat begrudgingly) for three small eclairs and carried the box home as if it contained delicate jewels.

The choux pastry seemed just right – not too tough nor too flimsy. The cream inside was liquid silk. Pistachio and orange was more subtle than I expected, the crème de pistache the palest green with just a touch of bitter orange. The Madagascan vanilla covered with a rubble of toasted pecans was a nice contrast of textures – with enough real vanilla seeds to pop between your teeth if you listened carefully. While the lemon and yuzu was rich and lovely, the extra-bitter twist that should have been the yuzu flavour – another ingredient à la mode at the moment – was a little lost. But that is the only criticism I can find; they were excellent eclairs. Well, that and the cost. Half the size of a boulangerie éclair, and twice the price. But they are special enough to rival even my beloved custard tarts. L’Éclair de Génie is inspired.

l'eclair de genie box

~~~

L’Éclair de Génie - 14 rue Pavée, 75004 Paris, métro St Paul – closed Mondays

*The name means ‘a flash of inspiration.’

lemon maple snow

22 Jan

lemon snow

After shuffling cases of cakes to the delivery van, careful not to spill their precious contents, we had a quick and furious snowball fight still in our aprons, running around and around the bare trees like hopeless cartoons. A faceful of snow, and then we were whistled back indoors so as not to shock the few customers that might have braved the chill for an early croissant on a Sunday morning. It was childish and exhilarating.

Later, on a train bound for equally snowy London I found myself cursing the weather – in the way of a precious two days at home. Keeping me company as we crawled through the tunnel was a book – a memoir with food – called ‘Risotto with Nettles.’ The stories of pre-war Milan, of tough Italian women rolling metre-wide stretches of homemade pasta and an angry army officer searching bags only to confiscate freshly made salami distracted me from the delay, left me dreaming.

One of the nicest images in Anna del Conte’s childhood is of running up to the attic overlooking the city and scooping snow into a large glass for an improvised lemon granita, simply mixed with lemon juice and sugar. Waking up to still-white England the next morning, I snuck outside in my pyjamas to make my own version. I used a whole lemon because I love the bitter twist and added a touch of maple syrup, in a nod to the Canadian maple syrup candy poured when boiling-hot onto the deep snow. Back inside, in the warmth, it was fresh and sharp and satisfying, a winter lemonade.

~~~

Lemon maple snow

serves 1 cold girl – inspired by Anna del Conte

juice of 1 lemon

3-4 teaspoons maple syrup

1 large glass of snow

Squeeze half the lemon into a large glass and mix with 2 tsp maple syrup. Fill the glass with fresh clean snow, stir vigorously and top with more juice and syrup. Stir again, taste and adjust flavouring accordingly. Eat straightaway.

chestnut and rum mousse

9 Jan

chestnut mousse

Non, Frances, ta pâte est stressée, tu la stresses.

Apparently my pastry is stressed out because of me, not the other way round. Puff pastry is a delicate creature, easily wounded by a fingernail nick or an impatient jab.

Unfortunately the season of Galette des Rois comes right on the heels of Christmas and New Year. Aren’t the French supposed to be depriving themselves after all the festivities? No, without any guilt, on the 6th of January and for most of the month they dive right into these all-butter puff pastry tarts enclosing a rich almond centre, in the hopes of finding the fève (a little token) naming them king or queen for the evening.

Though the powerhouses like Ladurée start preparing their 10,000 galettes in October (and Christmas begins in August, the patisserie calendar is totally screwy) we had to make several hundred of the pastry discs all this week – rolling and cutting, filling them and crimping the edges.

This is where I find myself stressed and thus stressing the pastry – no matter how many times our head baker explains, I cannot get the crimping – chiqueter - just right. Maybe it is a linguistic problem – the subtle difference between push and press that I missed in French which means I am squashing the pastry too hard; maybe it is just hard to translate verbal instructions to the tips of my fingers. I might as well be an elephant trying to use a tin opener. Too firm and the galette will rise unevenly, too weak and it will open in the oven, losing the precious crème d’amande centre.

So, no recipe for a traditional galette des rois. I’d happily never see another sweet one again, though I could go for the savoury galette I made last year with cheese and peppers and olives.  Instead of the buttery crackle of the puff pastry, I have another wintery offering – a chestnut and rum mousse.

Normally when the world gets too much, bumps into me hard, I need crunch and bite as a distraction. Crisps and crunchy toast provide white noise to fill my head and block out the hum of stress. But this week I tried something different, something smooth and utterly silent. (For you forget how much the sound or the absence of it plays a part in our culinary enjoyment.) I tried a mousse that demands concentration, not distraction – it demands that you pay attention to its subtle chestnut flavour and spike of rum, that you luxuriate in its sweetness.

Take your time over the preparation as well – though not arduous, it needs a slow hour or so to cook and cool. The mousse begins with a sort of crème anglaise – heating milk and chestnut puree until it bubbles, then whisking half of it into egg yolks to temper them. Then you stir it all over a very low heat in a figure of eight, not forgetting to scrape the sides from time to time. This is an activity excellent for contemplation: let yourself be hypnotised by the repetitive motion. Stop when it is just thick enough to leave a track when you draw your finger over the back of the spoon. Add a splash of rum and some gelatine and let it cool.

Come back when the chestnut custard is at room temperature and carefully fold in some lightly whipped cream. Now you can spoon it into small glasses to eat immediately, or chill it for half an hour before piping with a star tip for extra effect. I love the idea of paper-thin chocolate bowls for a slight snap to counter the muffled quiet of the mousse, however it would be a shame to lose the chestnut flavour to the pushier chocolate. I prefer just the slightest dusting of cocoa to decorate, not enough to taste, just to highlight the swirls of fawn-coloured cream. It tastes like winter, in the best way, like a snowfall that blankets the harsh outside and rounds off its corners, leaving only calm.

chestnut mousse half eaten

I wrote more – and more coherently – about the sound and texture of food and cooking, the way that it is reflected in our language, and about the difficulties of translating language into manual skill for an FT competition. And I am extremely happy with the result. The essay will be online shortly! In the meantime, please enjoy this chestnut mousse, whether as solo comfort or a dinner party offering.

~~~

Chestnut and rum mousse

serves 8

- any extra can be frozen in small glasses or ramekins and defrosted in the fridge 12 hours before eating

- as for the chestnuts, I used the creme de marrons d’Ardeche with its swirly art deco tin found in most French supermarkets

270g sweetened chestnut puree (40% chestnuts)

270g milk

4 large egg yolks

10g leaf gelatine

2 tbs dark rum

500g cream

Soak the gelatine in very cold water. In a small saucepan, heat the milk and chestnut puree until the puree has dissolved and the mixture starts to bubble. Whisk the egg yolks in a bowl and pour over half the hot chestnut milk. Whisk well and return to the pan. On a very low heat, stir the mixture with a flat wooden spoon making sure to scrape the bottom thoroughly: stir figures of eight then go around the sides. You want to avoid scrambling the eggs! (If the mixture is too hot, it will become lumpy, so stop cooking immediately. Decant mixture into a bowl and blend with a hand blender.)

Stir constantly until the liquid thickens to the texture of a thin custard. Draw your finger over the back of the spoon: if it leaves a track then it is probably ready. Drain the gelatine well and stir in, along with the rum. Leave to cool in a large bowl.

Whip the cream to soft peaks and fold it in to the cooled chestnut custard, half at a time. Either pour into small glasses and refrigerate, or if you want to pipe the mousse, leave it in the fridge for an hour or so first. Serve dusted with a very small amount of cocoa, or with thin snappy biscuits for contrast.

new year soup

1 Jan

spoon

Between the Christmas festivities and the expansion of our pâtisserie to a grand total of two shops just a month beforehand, my schedule has felt a little vampiric recently. For the month of December, I had to work nights to make up the deficit in yule logs for the new shop. At first I enjoyed the calm and the quiet, stirring figures of eight in vats of crème anglaise and pouring the finished bavaroise into hundreds of long gutter-shaped moulds. I liked coming home at sunrise, picking my way through the morning market with its oysters, pyramids of tangerines and a solitary suckling pig. Then I started to miss the clatter of customers and the warmth of the bread oven. The time difference began to give me all the dizziness of jetlag. We worked in organized panic right up until the morning of the 25th, icing and decorating, before we could finally take a breath.

New Year’s Day meant catching the metro at 5.30a.m. as usual, but this time with a crowd of tired revellers and a strong smell of vomit and cigarettes permeating the carriages. It meant the parties were over and I could go back to the comfort of a daily routine. Best of all, it meant New Year Soup.

Until we sat down to drink the simple broth, buoyed up with cabbage and scraps of chicken, I had been muttering grumpily to myself about the seemingly endless long hours. It is all very well following a dream, but the reality always seems to include more drudgery than bargained for. It is one thing to have a burning passion, but if it leaves scorched earth behind it… In short, I was as miserable as a sleepy toddler.

But the soup - o-zōni, a Japanese tradition for New Year’s Day – was nourishment itself, flavoured with miso and fish stock and a splash of yuzu (a citrus fruit even more bitter than lemon). Floating in the middle, a sticky mochi rice cake on which many old age pensioners and young children choke every year. Though it is obviously a sad predicament, I had to laugh at the dangerous nature of their celebration soup and at the obvious joy my Japanese colleagues showed in drinking every last drop.

For the rest of the afternoon, I felt like a person again. Like I could go back to writing and running, two parts that make up my whole, as well as working. I would have the time to indulge all of my passions and not get lost in just one. I started noticing, and taking pleasure in, the satiny fluff of egg yolks whipped with hot sugar and the scrap of blue sky out of our new window. Paragraphs started shaping themselves in my head… until the milk boiled over.

Back to work, now with a lighter heart. Fortified by lucky soup and all the possibility of beginnings. Happy New Year, everyone!

~~~

P.S. Upon googling o-zōni, I have discovered a fierce rival. Cooking with Dog – charismatic and well-coiffed, and he is even called Francis. I fear I cannot compete.

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