cauliflower soup with toasted hazelnuts

26 Dec

cauliflower, whole

The pile of books by my bed is getting dangerously high. Possibly because I am ignoring the worthy French literature in favour of Nigel Slater’s ‘The Kitchen Diaries II.’ If I am too tired to actually cook, reading his simple prose is a comforting substitute. His are recipes of happenstance, of successful improvisation. He knows food well enough to play with it, to strip it bare and  build it back up again.

I want to say it is “real food” but that carries shades of judgement, like “real women have curves.” Slater is honest: though he admits that there is a better flavour in soaked beans, he cheats when he is hungry after a day in the garden. (Girls come in different shapes and sizes and food is always real, whether you have the time and energy to kill and pluck your own pheasant, or you just want to trick out a can of beans.)

It is earthy practical writing, punctuated with the odd hymn to the perfect wok, to the spurtle (a porridge stirrer) that is delightful to read. Also, I adore his grumpy “the world doesn’t need another cupcake recipe.”

Though his baked potatoes with rillettes are high on my list, the book ribbon is marking his cauliflower soup. It is pure and hearty – no cream, he insists, as it masks the shy flavour of cauliflower, which is supported by bacon and bay leaf and pepper. To decorate, he saves a few florets before blending the soup smooth and toasts some hazelnuts with oil and salt.

I do not have any stock in the freezer – rarely ever do, since it is Parisian pocket-sized – but improvised with a few dried porcini slices and a parmesan rind. I think Nigel would approve.

cauliflower, halved

Cauliflower soup with toasted hazelnuts

serves 6 – from Nigel Slater’s The Kitchen Diaries

1 enormous cauliflower

3 rashers good-quality bacon

1 onion

1 clove garlic

1.2 litres stock (or water + porcini + parmesan rind)

2 bay leaves

100g hazelnuts

1 tsp olive oil

salt and pepper

Cut bacon small and fry in its own fat until crisp and golden. Dice the onion and cook with bacon until translucent. Finely chop the garlic and add at the last minute so it does not burn.

Cut cauliflower in half, cut out the middle stalk and break the florets into small pieces with your hands. Chop the stalks small as well. Add cauliflower, stock and bay leaves to the pot and allow to simmer until the cauliflower is tender.

Remove bay leaves and a few florets for decoration. Let cool a little while you toast the hazelnuts in a small frying pan with the olive oil. When they start to smell toasty, go brown inside, they are done. Add a generous pinch of sea-salt.

Blend the soup perfectly smooth – be careful with hot liquid in a blender! – and add generous pinches of salt and pepper. Taste. Serve with the remaining whole florets and a few hazelnuts sprinkled on top.

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stollen (step 2)

20 Dec

stollen step2.1

The year that I announced a hand-made Christmas was not promising. I stayed up all night on Christmas Eve rolling truffles and finishing a painting for my mother. In the morning, I was bleary-eyed and smudged with oil paint. This time around, I made lists in October, went shopping in November and potato-printed wrapping paper in early December. I was feeling as smug as anything.

Then I remembered the stollens. The kilo of raisins, cranberries, apricots and prunes marinating quietly on the top shelf in the kitchen.

To be fair, we all laughed at my nice colleague when she announced her plans to make 25 stollens to send home to Japan – at Christmas time? With our insane work schedules and our ridiculously tiny Parisian kitchens?

But she was determined: months ago she went to G. Detou to buy kilos of fruit. She candied her own orange peel, made her own marrons glacés.  This week she spent her day off kneading dough, and her lunch hour (lunch-twenty-minutes, really) sliding the oblong loaves into the wide baker’s oven, wielding the wooden spade with ease. She bought fancy Bordier butter to brush on top when they came out, the brown crust bursting with fruit, and sucre neige or ‘snow sugar’ to cover the stollens the next day, veritable drifts of icing sugar that contrast with the simple dough and boozy fruit, and help keep the preserve the stollen for a month or two. Or so she tells me. I fear that I am not only lacking her work ethic but also her self-control.

I did copy her and left some dried fruit to soak in the headiness of dark rum. (That was the easy part.) I thought I could make a reasonable dozen. It turns out that my child-size oven will only fit one stollen at a time and my tired hands and brain only want to sleep after the long night-shifts in December.

This time around, then, I shall be a grown-up and admit defeat. I have made you all stollen, people that I love, delicious fruit bread with a marzipan centre that should leave you with a smile and a trail of powdered sugar on your jumper. It is not too rich for afternoon tea and will keep well even after the Christmas madness dies down, well enough to liven up a dull January day.

I have made you stollen, but it is only virtual.

All you have to do is follow the instructions and get your hands a little sticky kneading buttery dough speckled with fruit. Spend a lazy afternoon by the fire as you wait for it to rise, stroke a cat, wrap some presents. Think of me in the bakery, placing raspberries on Christmas logs with geometric precision, as you pat the dough out and enfold tubes of marzipan inside. Try not to cut into the loaf as it comes out of the oven, though you will be tempted by the smell of yeast and almonds. Brush with butter and sprinkle with caster sugar, and wait until the next day. Cover in handfuls of icing sugar, on both sides, and still, don’t eat it! Distract yourself with mince pies, speculoos. Wait a week, if you can, for it to settle and mature, absorb the sugar and become a rounded whole.

However in the spirit of lowering the bar, of reasonable expectations and an absence of self-flagellation, I could certainly understand if you were to nibble, a little early, on your homemade stollen. If you forgot to soak fruit in rum months ago, do it now and leave it for two days – you are forgiven. For it is Christmas and there is no space for guilt, only indulgence.

stollen step2.2

Stollen

makes 2 large loaves – or even 4 small ones for postable gifts

200g plain flour

30g sugar

5g salt

10g active dried yeast

80ml water

80ml milk

70g egg yolks (about 3 large eggs’ worth)

120g butter, room temperature

360g dried fruit pre-soaked in rum

100g walnuts

250g marzipan

to finish:

120g butter, melted

caster sugar

icing sugar, lots

Mix flour, sugar and salt in a large bowl. In a small jug, mix the hand-warm water with the yeast and just a pinch of sugar. Leave for 15 minutes to bubble. Heat the milk in the microwave, again to body temperature, and stir in the yolks. Pour both milk and yeast into the flour bowl and stir well to combine.

Start to knead the dough. If there are lots of dry flaky bits, add a tablespoon water. When you have made a smooth ball, break off a piece and squish it together with the butter, which should be nice and soft. Then combine with the rest of the dough. It will be a sticky mess, no matter, as long as it is a homogenous sticky mess, work in the fruit. (It is probably best to drain the fruit in a sieve beforehand so that it is not too wet.) When the fruit is evenly distributed, sling the mass of dough back in the bowl and cover with clingfilm. Leave to rise for an hour. (If your kitchen is as cold as mine, microwave a cup of water until bubbling, quickly shove your bowl in the microwave and close the door. Then it will have a warm humid environment for good rising.)

Tip dough out onto a floury bench, roughly shape into two or four balls. My dough was still too shaggy at this point to really form a ball. Dust with more flour and cover with a teatowel. Leave for 20 minutes.

Depending on how dry your dough is, either roll it out or push it into a rectangle about 30x20cm for two large stollens. Squeeze the marzipan into a cylinder 30cm long, enfold in the middle of the dough. Gently place the roll seam side down onto a baking tray lined with baking paper and let rise for 40 minutes.

Heat oven to 175C. Bake stollens for 30-35 minutes, depending on their size. They should be golden brown, firm to the touch and leave a toothpick clean when prodded. Brush immediately all over with melted butter and sprinkle with caster sugar. The next day, cover  with icing sugar, lots and lots of it, top and bottom.

Try to resist eating the stollen for a week. Or at least, eat one loaf and save the other. If you want to post one, dust extra-well with icing sugar, wrap in several layers of clingfilm, then wrapping paper and bubble wrap and you should be good to go.

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not a treacle tart, not a pecan pie

17 Dec

trick or treacle

It’s a tired cliche: English girl abroad, starts to miss proper English cooking, stocks up on armfuls of Earl Grey and crumpets when back in London.

Also buys two tins of treacle, because of their cutesy Halloween “trick or treacle” faces, because in France treacle is non-existent and molasses is found only in health-food shops.*

When nostalgia hits hard, sometimes she puts treacle directly on her porridge for a double hit of home.

In the end,  girl combines a French recipe for a molasses tart – really a simple custard tart that gets a bittersweet kick and a mahogany shine from the black syrup – with the Italian-inspired, London-based River Cafe’s pastry, then adds a handful of pecans and takes it to her first American Thanksgiving, in Paris.

The tart is a jumble, a hybrid of traditions where the sum is better than the parts.  It is nowhere near the candied nature of an actual English treacle tart – here treacle is the only sweetener in a filling that is made silky with cream and eggs. The pecans are good for crunch, but are not the stars of the show. The pastry is sturdy, with a shortbread crumble when bitten into.

Together, it makes a happy whole, both bitter and sweet [insert another cliche about living away from home].

The Americans approve of the culturally confused pie. Since in itself, it is not overly sweet, it goes very well with liberal amounts of icecream and leftover cranberry sauce.

~~~

* Molasses is a by-product of refining white sugar – the brown in brown sugar if you will. Treacle, from what I understand, is ever-so slightly sweeter, lighter, since it is made of molasses blended with a sugar syrup. They both have the same dark, bitter profile though molasses will produce a stronger effect. However, “trick or treacle” tins with scary pumpkin faces on are adorable. Make your choice accordingly.

~~~

Treacle and pecan tart

makes one 30cm tart, enough for 6-8 people – alternatively, for a higher filling-crust ratio, try a deep 22cm tart ring (although there will be pastry left over)

pastry comes from the River Cafe, filling adapted from Bruno Loubet

350g flour

1/2 tsp salt

175g butter, cold, cut in small cubes

100g icing sugar

1 egg

2-3 tbs cold water

filling:

4 eggs

2 egg yolks

200ml cream

135ml treacle

1/4 tsp resh grated nutmeg

100g pecans

In a food processor, blend the flour, icing sugar, salt and cold butter. When there are only pea-sized lumps of butter, add the egg and water. Pulse several times until it starts to form a dough. Add an extra tablespoon water in necessary. Bring it together with your hands, then squash into a flat disc. Wrap in clingfilm and freeze for 15 minutes or until hard but not yet frozen.

Butter a large, deep tart tin and grate the dough over it, using the largest holes on the grater. Push the pastry up the sides of the tin and gently press to flatten, until roughly even. Save a walnut sized lump for repairing any cracks. Freeze tart for half an hour (helps to avoid shrinking).

Heat oven to 175C. Line tart tin with paper and fill with baking beans – bake for 20 minutes. Remove paper and beans, fill any cracks with leftover dough and put back in the oven for five minutes to let the bottom get a little colour.

Meanwhile, whisk eggs, yolks, cream, treacle and nutmeg until smooth. Pour into tart shell, sprinkle over pecans and pop back in the oven. Bake for another 20 minutes or so, until the filling puffs up and feels slightly springy when you press it.

Let cool – the filling will deflate a little – and serve at room temperature with lots of icecream.

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granny’s oranges and caramel

10 Dec


orange, peeling 1

“Too busy” seems to be a modern malaise. Too busy, an endless motor of the million tasks and self improvements we feel we ought to accomplish every day.

For the moment, I am working a lot. A lot a lot. I get home after work less than eight hours before I have to get up and go again. It means a few choices – more sleep or a drink with friends? a quick run or a lovingly prepared meal? It can be oddly freeing to choose only the people and things that I love most and let go of guilt for the rest.

Eventually after the holidays and the fifty million Christmas logs we have to bake, everything will calm down. Until then I am calling on a bank of favours and having others cook me dinner. The other week I turned up, sleepy, with a bag of oranges, for lunch with a friend. He made me green tea with vanilla and let me yawn as he chopped vegetables and squeezed lemons.

We had an orange-themed meal, shades of sun and baked earth on a grey Paris day. He steamed a sweet-potato and served it halved, a swirl of this year’s green olive oil and a dash of cinnamon on one side, lemon and salt on the other. Then a turmeric, pumpkin and mushroom stew with cardamom rice. It was nourishing, calming food, full of warmth and spice.

orange, peeling 2

Because I couldn’t face any more baked goods, my dessert was an old favourite from my Granny. I sliced a few oranges, with care, into starry rounds and piled them over thick mascarpone. A couple of handfuls of sugar went into a saucepan, left to go brown, the colour of steeped tea. When the caramel smelled as if it might be on the edge of burning, I poured it quickly over the two bowls of oranges and watched it crack hard on the cool fruit. The combination was just right – heavy, juicy winter oranges against thick cream and almost-burnt sugar set into shards. We chipped the caramel off the bowls with our spoons and finished the meal content.

When I get to feeling too busy, I take a breath and remember that lunch, those kind of lunches, and remind myself of the snippet of poem on my bedroom wall:

I do not mind living

like this.  I cannot bear
living like this.
Oh, everything's true
at different times

in the capacious day,
just as I don't forget
and always forget

half the people in the world
are dispossessed.

-Stephen Dunn

I am lucky to be busy with work, to pay my rent. I can choose to be calm or stressed. And the capacious day includes time for work and oranges and friends.

orange, peeling 3

Granny’s oranges with caramel

serves two tired people

3 oranges

100g caster sugar

100g mascarpone

Choose large, juicy oranges. They should feel heavy in your hands, like a good grapefruit does, and not polystyrene-light. Slice off the top and bottom and cut off the peel on the sides, careful to follow the round shape to take off all the white pith and not the fruit. Slice cross-ways to get those bicycle-spokes patterns.

Scoop mascarpone into two bowls and pile with orange slices. Throw the sugar into a small, heavy-bottomed saucepan (this is important, for it will let the sugar melt evenly and not just burn on one side) and heat on high. Watch it carefully as it melt into a clear syrup, then starts to bubble and go brown. Do not stir, but you can swirl the pan gently if one side is cooking faster than the other. Have your oranges ready. When it really smells like caramel – like creme brulee – tilt the pan and note the colour of the syrup at the thinnest part. It should be brown as mahogany. (I like my caramel to taste a little burnt.) Tip directly, and quickly onto the oranges. Done.

It should take less time and effort to make the caramel than it did to read that paragraph. If it were to go wrong, just soak the pan in water and try again.

(Nothing to be afraid of, Rachel!)

 

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instant porridge, or, how to get up early in the cold, dark winter

30 Nov

instant porridge

Currently waking up at 5.30 a.m. which is painful to say the least. Obviously I never have time for breakfast before I leave the house, but am miserable without it. This is the way I stay sane and on time for work:

  1. Make sure charming flat-mate has ear-plugs so she won’t be woken by your clattering around – guilt will only make you more nauseous.
  2. Consider going to bed in tomorrow’s clothes, instead leave them in a neat pile on the floor.
  3. Have a delicious bowl of oats, coconut and cinnamon waiting in the microwave – hit start as you take a two minute shower.
  4. Add half a hastily chopped banana and spoon into a jamjar.
  5. Use jar as a hand-warmer unti you can stomach the idea of breakfast – whether at bus-stop. on the underground or at your desk.

There you have it – get out the door in nine minutes flat, and feel warm, well-fed and a liitle bit smug, at least until morning tea.

~~~

Instant porridge

serves one tired girl for about two weeks

1 kg rolled oats

100g dessicated coconut

100g sultanas

2 tbs cinnamon

2 big pinches salt

optional: lots of bananas

maple syrup, almond butter, cream…

Stir all dry ingredients together. Add extra dried fruits, nuts, whatever takes your fancy. In the evening, tip 1/2 cup oat mix and 1 cup water into a large breakfast bowl and leave in the microwave. (It does taste better with milk but it tends to boil over while you are in the shower. Bonus: soaking oats overnight is good for digestion.)

In the morning, hit 2 minutes medium-high on the microwave and get dressed. Then hurriedly chop half a banana and stir into porridge with optional extras. Tip into jam-jar, leave house. Do not forget keys, wallet or spoon!

paris restos: boco

12 Nov

Only the French are this good at transforming the ready-made into an art form.

Three courses, designed by three-star chefs, for only €15. In a city where a plain jambon-beurre baguette and a can of fizzy drink will set you back at least €8, this is amazing.

Boco is a play on bocaux, jars or goldfish bowls. Each starter, main course and dessert comes in a sleek glass jar that can be sealed for takeaway or heated instantly to eat in. Of the chefs (whose faces can be found on stickers on the jars they designed) I only know the patissiers. Michalak and Conticini are big-hitters: the former is a world champion, the latter owns of my favourite corners of Paris, La Patisserie des Reves. His rice puddingdid not disappoint: real vanilla, whipped cream and a marmalade caramel elevated the humble pudding above its usual bistrot status.

All of the jars, sweet and savoury, have clearly been created for a visual effect: tomato and fennel “tiramisu” shows off its colourful layers, marinated tuna sits on a pale green courgette flan. The desserts too play with the presentation: strata of pear compote, maple mousse and maple jelly look elegant and taste subtly sweet.

I was thoroughly impressed by the perfect poached eggs with star-anise spiked lentils – the yolk stayed runny even after a blast from my microwave.

Everything is bio, or organic, and freshly prepared. If the jar size portions leave you a little hungry, grab some of the giant sourdough loaf sliced on the counter or an extra three-star chocolate chip cookie.

At lunchtime, the menu du jour is only $15. Even better, if you take away, they let you keep the glass jars to smarten up your fridge. But you will certainly want to come back for another visit; Boco is the best of France and the best kind of fast food.

Boco - 3, rue Danielle Casanova, 1er - metro Pyramides (open for lunch and dinner, closed Sunday)

or 45, Cour Saint-Émilion, 12e – metro Bercy (open everyday for lunch and dinner)

rustic chocolate chip cookies

6 Nov

With a large helping of pomposity, I was about to begin:

“There are certain recipes one just doesn’t tinker with. One wouldn’t dare to reduce the sugar or butter, add a handful of nuts or a wayward splash of rum without honouring the original, at least for the first batch.”

David Leite’s chocolate chip cookies should have been one of those special cases. The gold standard – like Jim Lahey’s “No Knead Bread” – tried and loved by all. Unfortunately, I could not find standard bread flour in my local French supermarket. Brioche flour, whatever that means. Flour with added yeast for bread machine, no. Running late for Japanese class, I grabbed “rustic” bread flour and stuffed it in my bag amid textbooks and a chocolate-stained uniform.

In the end, the flour turned out to be much more grey and full of seeds than I had anticipated. Whole-wheat and grainy. In a recipe that promises over half a kilo of chocolate, there is really no point in healthifying. These, the consummate cookies, should be relished for their choco-laden quality, for the research that Leite put in to finding the perfect ratio.

(The mix of bread and cake flour is in order to up the gluten, which ought to make for more chewy cookies. The resting time – 24-72 hours – allows the flavours to meld and deepen. And the obscene amounts of chocolate? Well, they are full of huge chunks of it, that remain melty between the crisp edge and soft centre.)

But the butter and brown and white sugars were already a pale cream colour, the vanilla was waiting on the counter. So in went the “rustic” flour. Noble principles be damned.

There is a half batch waiting in the fridge. Just a taste of the sweet-salty dough around a stray square of chocolate (with a not unpleasant seedy texture) made me regret not going the whole cookie hog.

Update: test cookies have been baked with a sprinkle of fleur de sel (fancy sea salt) on top. They are pretty damn good. The rest of the dough is in my freezer, waiting patiently in golf-ball sized portions. (I cannot honestly deny eating several balls of frozen dough. )

Clearly extensive cookie research is necessary to determine the world’s best cookie. A certain New York version comes to mind, a chocolate and walnut monstrosity that I guarded jealously from even the cutest squirrel in Central Park. But for now, these rustic whole-wheat-but-definitely-not-healthy extravagantly chocolately cookies are my gold standard.

~~~

Rustic chocolate chip cookies

from David Leite 

makes 24-30 enormous cookies, so feel free to halve the recipe – for the chocolate, buy a bar of plain dark chocolate that you would happily eat on its own, 70% cocoa solids is best

240g plain flour

240g whole wheat, grainy bread flour

1 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 tsp salt

285g butter

285g light brown sugar

224g granulated sugar

2 large eggs

2 tsp vanilla extract

570g dark chocolate (70% cocoa)

sea salt or fleur de sel for sprinkling

Sieve the flours, baking powder, soda and salt together. Cream the butter and sugars until pale, add the eggs one at a time and beat well until combined. Stir in vanilla, then flour mix. Chop the chocolate very roughly to leave large postage stamp size chunks and stir it in.

Wrap in clingfilm and leave dough to rest in fridge for 24-72 hours. Because it will become very hard, it might be easier to roll it into golfball-sized balls before refrigerating. Even store half in the freezer for a future instant cookie date.

When ready to bake, heat oven to 170C. Widely space a few cookie balls on a large baking tray and sprinkle a tiny dash of sea salt on each. Bake for 17-18 minutes. Stop when the edges are crisp but the middles look underdone. Let cool for 10 minutes then remove from tray onto a wire rack.

Consume when still warm for the pockets of melted chocolate.

upside-down pomegranate cake

3 Nov

More post! Lucky me. A black and white postcard of Clint Eastwood, and an envelope full of recipe cuttings. Something about having a paper copy is instantly more appealing to me. It makes me want to run to the kitchen, prop the recipe up in the toaster but still manage to smudge it with butter.

Digression. I like post and paper and also pomegranates. (Things beginning with P.) Apart from adding a jewelled touch to fancy salads, pomegranates have never seemed to me an obvious ingredient for baking. They are pretty on their own, red seeds hiding in the hard orb. Like pistachios, the pleasure comes in cracking them open and popping out the insides.

The picture for this recipe really showed off the fruit: a sparkling ruby slipper-made-cake. A layer of pomegranate seeds that melded into a buttery yellow cake with the help of a deep red caramel. It tastes just as it sounds. The cake itself is dense and rich with butter, just a touch of vanilla, the caramel-pomegranate top sweet but tangy.

We had it for afternoon tea, still warm. It was admired all round.

And now, a pomegranate peeling tip pinched from Smitten Kitchen (this is clearly a day for Ps): fill a clean sink with cold water. Score the pomegranate skin as if you were going to cut it in quarters, but just pull it apart with your hands and let it fall into the water. Crumble the seeds gently to separate and remove the inner membranes. The latter will float to the top and the seeds will sink. Scoop out the floating debris with a sieve and chuck out. Then scoop out and drain the seeds.

That was too many words for a simple concept. You get the idea: no explosions of scarlet pomegranate juice, no seeds squashed in the cutting. No fiddling.

Just like this cake, no fuss, delicious reward.

Upside-down pomegranate cake

from a French magazine of which I only have the initials CWF; they recommend POM juice or to halve a pomegranate and squeeze it like an orange

1 large pomegranate

for the caramel: 

150g sugar

100ml pomegranate juice

1 tsp lemon juice

for the cake: 

150g butter, melted

3 eggs

120g sugar

150g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp vanilla essence

Heat the oven to 180C. Melt the butter in it at the same time if you are being efficient.  Grease a large round cake tin and line it with baking paper.

Peel and de-seed your pomegranate. In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, bring the sugar and pomegranate juice to a boil. Let it bubble away merrily for 5 minutes or so, until you only just start to smell caramel. (The colour is deceptive because of the juice.) Off the heat, stir in the lemon juice and tip into the cake tin. Swirl to coat the bottom evenly. Sprinkle your pomegranate seeds on top.

Whisk the eggs and sugar until thick and pale. Sift the flour and baking powder and stir into eggs, with melted butter (not too hot) and vanilla. When smooth, pour into tin to cover caramel/pomegranate seeds.

Bake for 35-40 minutes. When the cake has risen, come away from the sides of the pan and turned a nice golden-yellow, you should be done. Check with a skewer. Let it sit for 10 minutes, then run a knife around the edge, place a plate over it and turn upside down. Peel off the paper, replace any stray seeds.

Serve with crème fraîche or sour cream to balance the rich texture. Still good kept in a tin at least 3 days later. (I cannot verify further for it is All Gone.)

cardamom meringues with flaked almonds

30 Oct

The lack of ‘story’ for these meringues is perturbing me a little, for they were some of the best just-thrown-together-cookies I have made in a long time. Egg whites, sugar, almonds, cardamom. Left in the oven to dry out overnight, wrapped in cellophane and blue ribbon the next morning to give to our favourite fruit lady in town.

Obviously, I stole one to taste, that is how I know they were (though I say so myself) really good.

Meringues make excellent presents: they look pretty, are simple and adaptable and will keep well in an airtight tin. These ones shatter on the outside to reveal a slightly chewy, nutty centre. The almonds take a backseat to the strong scent of cardamom, which makes them just out of the ordinary. Delicious with strong coffee, just a puff of sugar on the tongue and a lasting perfume of spice. They would be even more spectacular made into larger nests, filled with blackberries and whipped cream for an autumn dinner.

~~~

Cardamom meringues with flaked almonds

makes 20 – from an idea by Joy the Baker

2 egg whites

40g caster sugar

40g icing sugar

40g ground almonds

5 pods cardamom, ground

1/2 tsp vanilla essence

40g flaked/slivered almonds to decorate

Sieve the icing sugar and almonds together with the cardamom.

In a large (preferably metal) bowl, whisk the egg whites with a teaspoon of caster sugar until they start to become frothy and white. (This is 100 x easier with an electric whisk.) Gradually add the caster sugar a spoonful at a time until it’s all gone. Keep whisking until it forms a pillowy fluff, satiny smooth.

Gently fold in the almond/icing sugar mix and the vanilla. Try not to deflate the fluff! Scoop blobs onto a baking-paper lined baking sheet and sprinkle them with flaked almonds.

Bake at about 120C for an hour or so, then turn off the oven. Leave the meringues in there for at least another hour, best overnight. Keep in an airtight tin.

paris restos: nanashi bento

26 Oct

Everything at Nanashi Bento is simple and understated: the bare floors, the square white plates that fit together like Japanese lunchboxes, the neat staff aprons. The food: mixed grains, honey-roast vegetables, soy-marinated grilled duck or tofu. Everything, that is, except the clientele. In the heart of the haut Marais, this modern canteen attracts gallery owners, models, all-round artsy types dressed in uncomfortable trousers, perhaps a short kimono, certainly with asymmetric  haircuts.

That is to say, come for the fresh, healthy food (people-watching is a bonus). Enjoy a bento style lunch, with fish, meat or vegetarian options. Add sesame seeds and soy sauce, mop it all up with the dark sourdough bread. It is my favourite kind of modern food, the kind that takes inspiration from different cultures (in this case, France and Japan) but not just because. The wild duck with sour cherries and quinoa made sense, it was not just a haphazard combination thrown together and masked with drizzles of this and that. The fresh sushi rolls made with a small taste of foie gras turned out to be an excellent idea.

Peek over the kitchen counters by the entrance and choose a dessert from the Japanese pastry chef. Her pannacotta was one of the best I have ever tasted – made with black sesame paste, the cream was silken smooth and only just set. As grey as a moody sky, adorned with two blackberries and a raspberry, it was even beautiful in its simplicity. The next time we arrived for lunch at 2pm, they had sold out of pannacotta. Disappointed, I settled on another favourite, a matcha cheesecake. Not normally a fan of cheesecakes – too stodgy – but I love matcha (pure green tea powder) and trusted that it would have the same lightness of touch. It lived up to expectations, creamy but not rich. It had the same minimalist style too: one square of pastel-green cheesecake with a thin layer of whipped cream and a sole blueberry. No frills, nothing to hide the pure taste and aesthetic.

Nanashi Bento: recommended by pastry chefs and arty types from France and Japan.

Nanashi Bento – open every day for lunch and dinner (for which reservations are recommended) and takeaway

74 rue Charlot, 3eme – tel:  09 60 00 25 59 (click link for other locations)

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