My favorite French dish

Apologies for the crummy photo. I'll take another next time!

From the first time she made it, I have adored my wife’s coq au vin – not that I don’t adore other things about her, too! Making it plays to her strengths, too. She’s great with “stew-like objects” where she can prep everything, put it all together and then step back. Ala minute cooking is not her forte.

This is provincial French cooking at its best. To be really faithful, you need a rooster, but that can be tough unless you know a farmer who raises poultry. Since this fowl will be on the elderly side, it needs slow cooking at a low temperature for a long period to come out tender. While that’s admirable (and well worth the effort of finding a stewing hen), most people don’t want to bother with that. I’ve done it, and it is fantastic, especially what the slow braising does to the sauce using my cast iron Dutch oven. The recipe given here is for using a good-size roasting chicken.

For me, the whole peppercorns make this dish with a bit of very nice heat when you bite into one. Vicki and one of our sons generally pony up with most of their peppercorns, which I don’t mind at all. We’re also blessed with our home-smoked bacon, which adds another whole layer of flavor.

Julia Child made this dish famous in the US, but our recipe is a bit easier and quicker to put together. Vicki generally takes the skin off the chicken pieces these days which keeps a good deal of extra fat out of the sauce, but it’s also not quite as tasty, in my opinion. A good suggesting might be to keep the skin on some of the pieces like the legs, wings and maybe one of the thighs.

It’s important to brown the chicken well. This also adds a lot of flavor. Once you’ve dismembered the chicken, wash it thoroughly and get it thoroughly dry so it browns well. If the two breasts are on the large side, I suggest cutting them in half. They’re easier to manage on the plate and if you have a hearty eater at table, he or she can just have both halves.

We’ve been serving spelt pasta with this lately and it stands up well to the rich sauce. You won’t need as much, either, because it’s more filling. Try it. Any Italian grocer will have it, as well as health food stores or supermarkets with a health food section.

One other thing: as with most stews, this is always better reheated. Keep that in mind for your next dinner party, although you want to be careful with overcooking it.

Bon appetit!

Coq au vin
Serves 4-6

INGREDIENTS
1 3 lb chicken cut into pieces or chicken parts, skinned if you want
3 Tbs olive oil
¼ lb thick-sliced smoked bacon, cut crosswise into 1/4-inch lardons
1 cup onions, chopped
½ cup carrots, grated
2 tsp garlic, minced or pressed
3 Tbs all purpose flour
2 Tbs fresh parsley, minced
2 Tbs fresh chervil, minced or 2 tsp dried chervil
3 fresh or dried bay leaves
1 Tbs fresh thyme, minced or 1 tsp dried thyme
1 Tbs black peppercorns
¾ tsp salt
1½ cups full-bodied red wine (burgundy is traditional)
1½ cups mushrooms, sliced
2 cups baby carrots

METHOD
1. Preheat the oven to 325°. Have all ingredients at room temperature. In a heavy pot such as a Dutch oven, sauté the bacon in 1 tablespoon of olive oil over low heat until the fat is rendered. Remove the bacon with a slotted spoon and set aside.

2. Add the onions, grated carrots and garlic to the fat, sauté over medium heat for 3 minutes. Remove from the pot with a slotted spoon and set aside.

3. Add the rest of the olive oil, and sauté the chicken pieces until they are lightly browned on all sides, taking care not to crowd them. Remove them from the pot and set aside. Drain any remaining fat from the pan and discard.

4. Return the vegetables to the pot, add the flour, parsley, chervil, salt and peppercorns. Sauté for 1 minute over medium heat, stirring frequently.

5. Add 1 cup of wine, stir well. Reduce the heat to low. Tuck the bay leaves into the mixture. Arrange the chicken parts on top of the vegetables, pour the remaining wine on top of the chicken. Cover tightly. Place in the oven.

6. After 30 minutes, stir everything thoroughly, making sure the chicken pieces are turned over in the sauce, then add the baby carrots to the pot.

7. Fifteen minutes later, add the sliced mushrooms and the bacon pieces to the pot, stirring them in as best as possible. Add more wine if necessary or it’s gotten too thick. Cook 15 minutes longer.

On the lookout for a fantastic out-of-the-ordinary hors d’oeurves?

We don’t entertain all that often, but it seems that whenever we do, we spend the most time trying to figure out what to serve while we’re sitting around before dinner. The ideal thing to serve is something that doesn’t need last-minute cooking, so when everyone arrives we can just bring the hors d’oeurves out of the kitchen.

We have some tried and true recipes, but one can’t keep serving those to the same guests. Our grilled mussels are always a favorite, but they can’t be made in winter or when the weather is wet.

A number of years ago, we were browsing through cookbooks looking for something new for an upcoming dinner party when we happened across something really quite fantastic in Lulu’s Provençal Table a source of a number of our favorite recipes – including grilled mussels (moules à la Catalane) and ratatouille – two recipes we’ve already featured on AMFAS.

Today’s recipe is called pissaladière, something best described as a French version of what the Italians call a “white pizza”, since it has no tomatoes. The dish seems to have originated in southern France, and it’s often found as street food, being served room temperature from carts around markets.

At first reading, the ingredients seem a bit of an odd fit in the same dish, but believe me, the combination is inspired, and as long as your guests appreciate anchovies, I guarantee they won’t fail to be impressed – and surprised. The tender, buttery crust and the sweetness of the almost-dissolving onions work perfectly against the salty jolt of the anchovies and the fruitiness of the olives.

Often pissaladière is made with a bread dough much like that used in Italian pizza, but Lulu’s recipe uses a pâte brisée which I think works better with the flavor and texture of the onion base. You need to only use salt-packed anchovies for this. We once made it with those filleted anchovies that come packed in oil in little tins, and frankly, the result was very disappointing. The choice of olives is also important and niçoise seems the best choice here.

Learn from our mistakes. Stick to what the recipe calls for to avoid disappointment! You may have to work a bit harder to source the exact ingredients, but it will prove worth it. Salt-packed anchovies can be found at good fish monger, especially those with a more southern European bent. The nice thing is that they keep practically forever in a tightly closed container in your fridge. (We generally keep a half-dozen on hand.) Niçoise olives can be found at any shop specializing in good olives. Do yourself a favor and buy pitted ones if you can – unless you have a good olive pitter.

Another thing: pissaladière is best when freshly made and served warm-ish, but I think you’ll discover that’s not a problem since it usually disappears rapidly.

Pissaladière
Serves 8

INGREDIENTS
2 cups all purpose flour
¾ tsp salt
10 Tbs cold butter, diced
4 Tbs cold water (approx.)
4 Tbs olive oil
2 lbs sweet white onions, thinly sliced
salt
pepper
8 whole anchovies, rinsed and patted dry, then filleted
½ cup Niçoise olives, pitted
olive oil

METHOD
1. Sift the flour and salt together into a mixing bowl, add the diced butter. Rapidly crumble the butter and flour together between your thumbs and fingertips. Above all, don’t overwork the pastry. Add enough water to gather the pastry into a ball. Wrap in plastic, and refrigerate for at least 1 hour before rolling out.

2. Warm the olive oil in a heavy sauté pan, add the onions and salt, and cook covered over very low heat, stirring occasionally, for an hour or more, or until the onions are so soft as to form a semi-purée. Remove the lid and continue to cook until much of the liquid has evaporated; the onions should remain uncolored. Season with pepper.

3. Preheat the oven to 375°. With the palm of your hand, flatten the ball of pastry on a generously floured surface, sprinkle over with plenty of flour, and roll it out to a thickness of approximately ⅛". Roll it up on the rolling pin and unroll it onto a large baking sheet. Roll up the edges and crimp them.

4. Spread the onion purée evenly over the pastry, press the anchovies and olives into the purée, then drizzle a bit of olive oil over the surface.

5. Bake for 30 minutes or until the edges of the pastry are golden and crisp. Let it cool a bit before cutting into two- or three-bite sized pieces, making sure each has a few olives and some anchovy filet.

Note: To filet a whole anchovy, use a sharp paring knife and start just in front of the tail, gently lifting the meat from the backbone. If you work slowly, you should be able to peel of most of the meat in one go. If you don’t get it all, simply pull off any that remains with the tip of the knife or your fingers. Then, flip the fish over and repeat on the opposite sides. If there are any large bones at the front end where the head was removed, pull these off with your fingers. The rib bones are so tiny you don’t have to worry about any that remain in the meat. Once you’ve done a few, it gets pretty easy.

Meanwhile, back in France…

Back in town again after a trip down to the States for a book signing in Ann Arbor, MI, and an appearance at Bouchercon (the big crime writing conference) in Cleveland, I was in severe cooking withdrawal. With yesterday being Thanksgiving up here in Canada, I was out in the kitchen making the usual turkey dinner. We’d gotten an absolutely delicious, Mennonite-raised bird from our friend Nick at Gasparro’s down on Bloor Street.

But that’s not what this post is about.

One of the things the French do very well are salads. It’s not the sort of thing one automatically thinks of when one is contemplating French cuisine, but during our trip to Paris in the fall of 2008 to research the novel I was writing (The Fallen One, which has just been released), we had some absolutely terrific cold plates of exquisite greens, vegetables and other nice things. To be honest, we never had anything evening approaching a bad one.

Beauvais’s rather odd-looking cathedral. That’s all there is!

When we returned home, we spent a lot of time discussing the food we’d experienced, and I kept commenting on a salade composée, especially. Was it found at a fancy restaurant with 3 Michelin stars? Nope. We were out in Beauvais, a sleepy backwater market town in Picardy, northwest of Paris, a place so quiet that they started building a grand cathedral 800 years ago – and never finished it! It’s quite a strange place that goes more up than out.

The salad was found at a restaurant that I decided to use as a setting in my novel for a pivotal scene: Café Victor.

A salade composée is just what it sounds like: everything is laid out artistically on the plate with an eye to colour and texture, as well as flavor. While the traditional way to add the dressing is to do each component separately, letting some things marinate longer than others, and then assembling the salad, most people just lay out their work of art, then carefully dribble a classic French vinaigrette over everything so nothing is disturbed. The way this dish looks is nearly as important as how it tastes.

Since researching it, and trying every one I come across on any menu, I can say that what goes in is very much a free-for-all. The recipe I’m offering today for this classic is the combination my wife Vicki favors, and to be honest, at the height of summer on one of those scorching days where you almost don’t want to eat, I can’t think of a better luncheon choice or first course. With a crisp white wine and crusty bread, I can’t think of much better. Try it and see if you don’t agree.

Salade Composée
Serves 4

INGREDIENTS
1 head Boston lettuce
4 strips prosciutto, thinly sliced (this is definitely not traditional, but bear with us. It’s fantastic.)
12 spears asparagus
4 hardboiled eggs, quartered lengthwise
12 slices 
roasted red peppers, approximately 2" long and ½" wide
1 large vine ripened tomato, cut into 8 wedges
12 whole Kalamata olives, pitted
some fresh tarragon leaves
“a bit of” red onion, thinly sliced
3 Tbs tarragon white wine vinegar
7 Tbs olive oil
1 tsp Dijon mustard
salt & freshly-ground white pepper to taste

METHOD
1. Place the strips of prosciutto on a lightly oiled baking sheet. Broil until crisp. Let cool. Meanwhile put the salad plates you’re going to use into the freezer to chill them completely.

2. Steam the asparagus until just done but certainly not soggy. We usually pop it in the freezer to cool it quickly.

3. Pull off 8 whole lettuce leaves from the head. Wash and pat throughly dry. Place two on each plate.

4. Arrange the vegetables and prosciutto on the lettuce. Sprinkle the tarragon leaves over the salad.

5. Whisk together the vinegar, oil and mustard. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

6. Carefully drizzle the dressing over the salad.

Note: To give this a bit of southern French feel, you might want to include a couple of salt-packed anchovy filets. I like a small piece of these with a quarter of the hardboiled eggs, but that may be just me…

And now for a short break in Germany!

I’m getting ready to hightail it out of town tomorrow for the States for a spot of book promotion and won’t be around for several days. I had planned on dovetailing my previous entry (confit de canard) with one of my favorite recipes: cassoulet, since it uses confit as one of its ingredients. Problem is, the recipe is rather long and involved (and somewhat difficult, truth be told), and I just don’t have time to get into it today. But I will, so stand by for that one!

Today, I’m going to share one of the Blechta family’s favorite summer recipes, Peach Kuchen. It’s a recipe we inherited from my mom, and I’m pretty certain that she got it from her mother. How far back it goes is anyone’s guess, but I’ll bet it’s pretty old.

Judging by the name, it must originally come from Germany where her people were from a few generations back. All of us make it at least a few times when those fantastic local, tree-ripened peaches show up. This just isn’t worth making with peaches that haven’t seen a tree for several weeks. Get the best peaches you can find. Usually, they’ll need a day or two on the counter to get to that perfect stage of ripeness.

My sister Lynette is the queen of this particular dish. There was one summer year’s ago when she seemed to produce one every night for about 2 weeks. Not that anyone complained! It turns out best when the peaches are really ripe. That way the skins come off easily. My suggestion is to use one of the thicker-skinned freestone peach varieties. That way they’ll skin easily and you’ll be able to pull the fruit off the pit with your fingers or with minimal knife work.

We generally serve this two ways: with vanilla ice cream or with whipped cream. Either way is quite nice, but some good homemade whipped cream tastes best in my opinion.

We’ve also shared this recipe with lots of people who love it as much as we do. Now it’s your turn. Do yourself a favor and make two!

Elsie’s Peach Kuchen
Makes 1 8-inch kuchen

INGREDIENTS
2-4 peaches, depending on size
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1/4 cup sugar
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/8 tsp salt
1/8 tsp baking powder
1 lemon rind, grated
1 egg, slightly beaten
2-3 Tbs dark brown sugar

METHOD
1. Preheat oven to 375°. Have all ingredients at room temperature.

2. Dip peaches in boiling water for 3-5 minutes to loosen skins.

3. Skin and slice peaches into eighths.

4. Cream butter, then add sugar, and beat until fluffy.

5. Add flour, salt, baking powder, lemon rind, and egg, and mix well.

6. Press the batter into an 8" pie pan with a fork and arrange the sliced peaches on top. A spiral design really looks nice, but concentric circles are easier.

7. Bake for 20 minutes, sprinkle with brown sugar and bake for another 15 minutes. Watch that the crust doesn’t get too brown. Let this cool a fair bit so it will set up, but it should still be slightly warm.

My favorite duck recipe: confit de canard

When I wrote about Brasserie Julien, the Paris restaurant that features in my new novel, The Fallen One, I promised our recipe for confit de canard which I enjoyed there that day. Today’s post fulfills that promise.

Just out of the oven and ready to be “canned” for storage.

I know, probably because of the fancy French name and the perception that French cooking is complicated, that most folks wouldn’t tackle making duck confit, but it really is not difficult at all, and the rewards are a dish of really exceptional flavor.

The making of confit is seen as a speciality of Gascony and was simply a way to preserve meat in the age before refrigeration. The idea is simple: salt cure a piece of meat (generally duck, goose or pork) with herbs and spices for flavoring, then poaching it slowly in its own fat until it’s tender and practically falling off the bone. After that, the confit is completely submerged in the fat in a sealed jar. In a cool, dark place, it will keep for several months. We feel a few month’s aging in the back of the fridge improves the flavor.

Anyway, that doesn’t sound difficult, does it? Actually, the only difficult thing (or rather expensive if you’re just buying it) is getting enough duck fat assembled to cook the dish. In a pinch, we’ve just used lard and it has worked out well enough. Generally, we just save up all the fat from roasting a few ducks and we’re good to go.

The standard way of serving the dish is to remove it from the fat, then heat in a frying pan until the meat is warmed and the skin nice and crispy. There are two standard accompaniments. One is potatoes fried up in the duck fat and the other is red cabbage slowly cooked with apples and red wine. My suggestion is to do both! At Brasserie Julien, the confit was served with écrasé de pommes (see my post two before this one). But crisp potatoes that have been fried in duck fat is utterly decadent and utterly fantastic. You simply must try it at least once.

Confit de Canard
Serves 4

INGREDIENTS
4 duck legs
½ cup kosher or pickling salt
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp fresh thyme leaves
freshly ground black pepper
4 bay leaves (fresh if possible)
1 qt rendered duck fat

METHOD
1. Mix together salt, garlic, thyme and a good grinding of pepper. Rub this mixture into each duck leg on all sides.

2. Lay the duck legs in a glass dish, skin side down and place a bay leaf on each leg. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate 24 hours. Some recipes say 36 hours. We feel this makes the confit too salty.

3. Remove the legs from the container, thoroughly rinse off salt mixture and pat legs completely dry.

4. Preheat oven to 220° and melt duck fat on the stove over low heat.

5. Place legs in a pan large enough to fit them in one layer, but small enough to not have much excess space. Cover the legs with the melted duck fat.

6. Place in oven and bake for at least two hours. Traditionally, you can tell the confit is ready when you stick the meat deeply with a toothpick and it slides out easily. Depending on the duck, this may take over three hours.

7. You can eat this right away or store it in the refrigerator for up to 6 months. The flavor will improve over this time. We usually leave it for at least a month. If you are going to “age” the confit, put the legs in a container where the legs will be completely covered by the fat by at least ½". We use quart mason jars which will hold 2-3 legs, depending on size. Seal tightly once cool and put it in the fridge.

8. To serve, take the confit from the fridge and melt the fat by placing the container(s) in boiling water (make sure you loosen the lids). Remove the duck legs from the fat carefully so they don’t fall apart.

9. In the bottom of a cast iron or other ovenproof frying pan, heat the legs, skin side down for around 15 minutes in a 350° oven. Then turn on the broiler and brown the legs, skin side up until they’re a nice mahogany color. Careful! It can burn quickly.

Possibly the most French of dishes

I’ve been running my own unscientific poll the past few days to find out what’s the first dish that pops into someone’s mind when I mention the phrase “French food”. So far I’ve asked 21 people – and not all of them gourmands, either. Twelve have answered quiche, which doesn’t really surprise me.

So that’s what today’s posting is all about, specifically quiche, the famous French custard and cheese pie.

As is usual with country foods that have been around a long time, getting to the roots of this dish is a long and winding road. It originally had no cheese, the base was a bread dough and there are doubts that it actually originated in the disputed région on France’s border with Germany. Whatever is the case, this dish had become indisputably popular around the world. As it’s spread and different chefs have got in on the action, a myriad of things have been added (spinach, tomatoes, different cheeses, mushrooms, etc), but for a traditional quiche lorraine (the most famous variation), it seems the recipe should include eggs, cream, bacon, and cheese. According to purists, if you use Gruyère cheese it becomes a quiche au gruyère. If you add onions or leeks, it then becomes quiche alsacienne.

Confused yet? Welcome to the world of French cuisine.

As a luncheon dish, I think it’s unsurpassed. Accompaniments can be simple: a tossed green salad and a glass of dry white wine work for me. In France, quiche is often served cold. It’s thicker than you’d expect and the crust seems more like a secondary thought. It’s delicious, but not quite what I (and a lot of other North Americans) enjoy best: hot or at least warm and with a healthy top edge to the crust.

Since my recipe today includes leeks, I guess I’m leaning to quiche alsacienne, because I think they add a lot to the overall flavor. I won’t turn up my nose to this dish without leeks or onions, but if I had to pick, the dish would include onions. I like to use the milder Emmental cheese, which isn’t even French, so I don’t what the heck you’d call my recipe

On to the kitchen!

I must let you know that I make a really good short-crust. It’s flaky and tender and tastes wonderful. My shortcoming is that the top edge often collapses a bit during baking, so don’t expect my photo to look like it just came out of the kitchen of a 50-star restaurant in the heart of France. I’ll hold off on that recipe for another blog post, so the recipe below just says “one short-crust recipe”. Supply what you like: store bought or homemade.

Rick’s sort of Quiche Lorraine/Alsacienne/Suisse/Whatever (it still tastes fantastic!)
Serves 4-6

INGREDIENTS
3 smoked bacon slices (we use our own home-smoked bacon which is heavenly)
½ cup leeks, the white & light green parts sliced thinly
1 cup grated Emmental cheese
3 eggs
1½ cups cream
¼ tsp salt
¼ tsp nutmeg, freshly grated
freshly-ground white pepper
1 shortcrust recipe

METHOD
1. Preheat oven to 450°. Roll out a pie crust into a deep 9" pie pan.

2. You’ll need to blind bake the pie crust to keep it from becoming soggy when the custard is added and cooked. Do this by pricking it all over with a fork, then baking it for about 4 minutes or until the surface is opaque.


3. Cut bacon into ¼" pieces and sauté these in a frying pan over medium low heat so the fat renders out completely. When nearly crisp, remove and drain on paper towels. Reserve the drippings.

4. Cook the leeks until tender in 1 tablespoon of the bacon drippings.

5. Cover the bottom of the partially-cooked shell with bacon, leeks and cheese. (Can be made ahead to this point.)

6. Beat together eggs, cream, salt, nutmeg and pepper then pour gently into the pie crust. Mix lightly with a fork to spread things out again.

7. Bake for 15 minutes at 450°, then reduce heat to 350° and bake another 15-20 minutes or until a knife stuck into the quiche comes out clean.

8. Let the quiche cool for 10-15 minutes to set more firmly. Serve warm with a tossed salad and a good dry white wine.

Hint: Only reheat quiche in the oven. Microwaving will ruin the crust!

Eating out in Paris

During our 2008 research sojourn in The City of Light, we did keep costs down by cooking as much as we could in our limited kitchen. To be truthful, a lot of it involved buying and then heating prepared foods. From the street market at the bottom of the hill, we bought a rotisserie coquelet (small chicken) with potatoes carrots and onions cooked in the juices (lovely), rabbit in mustard/creme sauce (even more lovely), and our favorite “hotel room cold meal”: sausage, paté and other charcuterie, handmade cheeses, sliced raw vegetables and all washed down with a red from the south of France, all hot-grape flavors and only 2.50 euros.

We only ate out a few times, and this was mostly when we couldn’t be carrying food with us. We had a rather unmemorable dinner in a small local restaurant and another when we visited Beauvais, a provincial town north and west of Paris that figures in the plot of the novel I was researching.

The main dining room at Brasserie Julien. Sumptuous, is it not?

But we did have one very memorable meal, a lunch actually, in a Parisian landmark from La Belle Epoque, Brasserie Julien. It’s located near the theatre district on a street that begins with a large triumphal arch. I mean this thing is huge and looks as if someone pushed a few buildings to the side and plopped the thing right down on the street. To be honest the area is a little dodgy but the restaurant itself is a real charmer. Each table has its own coat stand, topped by a large light, there are mirrors all over and art nouveau glasswork and paintings.

When we were there midweek, the place wasn’t all that busy and our waiter and the maitre’d were attentive and excellent…but this is beginning to sound more like a restaurant review than I’d like it to.

I don’t remember what Vicki ate (fish, if memory serves), but I ordered duck leg confit, something I’d never had. To quote Soupy Sales, my brains fell out with the first bite: full on duck flavor seasoned discretely with thyme, bay leaf, garlic, and I believe a bit of juniper berry. It had been fried to crisp the skin and was placed on pommes écrasé (potatoes mashed with a fork and mixed with olive oil). Oh yeah, there were some green beans, too. Our wine was the house red from bordeaux and quite excellent. Our dessert was a sampler plate of that day’s offerings.

Our dessert plate. Small portions and all exquisite.

Okay, we’re in Paris. It’s expensive to eat in Paris, right? Not here and not on that day. It probably would have cost us about 120 euros at dinnertime, but we got out of there for less than half that and I would have gladly paid more.

I’m running a bit out of time here. The launch for The Fallen One is this evening and I still have a lot of things to get ready. When I return, it will be laden with the recipe we got from another French source for making duck confit at home. It’s easy, but a bit time-consuming. However, the results are well worth any effort. In a word, it will make a spectacular dinner for anyone you care to impress.

When an abundance of summer vegetables overtakes you, take the French way out!

As part of our series on French food this month to celebrate the launch of my “French” mystery novel, The Fallen One, I’m going to look at one of our favorite recipes to make at this time of the year. When you’re tripping over ripe vegetables in your garden, what do you do?

If you’re French, you probably consider making Ratatouille, a fantastic vegetable stew! “Peasant food” it may be considered by those snooty Parisian restaurants, but it is honest, tastes wonderful and not difficult to prepare.

Having just gotten through our annual tomato sauce party yesterday with 6 really good friends (over 100 liters produced), I’m of course thinking of tomatoes. These are one of the key ingredients in ratatouille. Other commonly grown garden vegetables go into it as well: onions, zucchini, eggplant and peppers.

Have these out back and wondering what to do with all of them? Today’s posting can help.

One of my early blog postings here was about a favorite recipe: Grilled Mussels. This recipe comes from a fantastic cookbook, Lulu’s Provençal Table by Richard Olney. A favorite of mine to just browse through – it really is a lovely volume – we noticed early on that it had an interesting recipe for Ratatouille.

Having made this dish for years in a sort of haphazard way, just throwing things in that happened to be around –  with haphazard results – we were intrigued when we found Lulu’s take on it. First of all, her recipe looked pretty rigorous, but it also had an interesting approach: each of the vegetables were to be cooked separately, then combined for a final simmering.

It is a bit more work, certainly, cooking the dish in this manner, but the results are spectacular. Each ingredient stands out more, the textures are marvelous, and the flavours, especially after some mellowing in the fridge and reheating, get better and better. After our first try, we quickly declared this our Official Recipe.

If you make it, I’m confident you’ll feel the same way!

Lulu’s Ratatouille
Serves 6-8

INGREDIENTS
2/3 cup olive oil (the good stuff only!)
1 lb large sweet onions, split in two, then finely sliced
1¼ tsp salt
6 large garlic cloves, peeled and finely sliced
1 lb zucchini, quartered lengthwise and cut into ¾" sections
1 lb firm, young or baby eggplant, cut into ¾" cubes
1 lb tomatoes, peeled, seeded and quartered
3 large sweet peppers (1 each of red, green and yellow), grilled, and cut lengthwise into 
narrow strips, juices reserved*
2 bay leaves
3 fresh thyme sprigs, tied together
salt & freshly-ground pepper to taste
2 Tbs olive oil

METHOD
1. In a wide, heavy 8-10 quart pot, cook the onions in 3 tablespoons of the olive oil, covered, over very low heat, for at least 30 minutes, or until they are melting and simmering in their own juices, but uncolored. Remove the lid, raise the heat, and cook, stirring regularly, until they are uniformly light golden brown. Add ½ teaspoon of the salt, garlic and the prepped zucchini and continue to stir regularly.

2. Meanwhile, in a large frying pan, sauté the eggplant in 4 tablespoons of the oil with ½ teaspoon of the salt until the pieces are softened. Add them to the pot with the onions and zucchini.

3. Add more oil to the frying pan if it is nearly dry. Over high heat, add the tomatoes and ¼ teaspoon of salt, and sauté, shaking the pan and stirring constantly until the liquid has evaporated. Remove them from the heat before they start to disintegrate, and add to the pot with the other vegetables.

4. Add the peppers and their juices to the pot, plus the bay leaves and thyme. Simmer over low heat, uncovered, for about 2 hours, stirring from time to time, until all excess liquid has evaporated and the vegetables are coated in a syrupy sauce. Adjust the seasoning.

5. Serve warm or at room temperature. This dish benefits from 1 of 2 days of refrigeration in order to allow the flavors to ripen. Bring to room temperature and stir in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil at the last minute.

*Special note: If you’ve never grilled peppers before, it’s really simple. You can do it in the kitchen (okay) or outside on your barbecue (better) or over a wood fire (best). Here’s how to do it.

If you’re doing it in the kitchen, your broiler is probably easiest. On the barbie, put the peppers right on the fire (charcoal or propane). On a wood fire, let it get to the point where you have good embers and throw the peppers on. Using tongs (long ones are best outside because it will be really hot), turn the peppers until they’re totally charred on all sides.

Next, put them into a pot with a tight lid and leave them for 10 to 15 minutes. This will loosen the skins. To remove the charred skin – and working over a bowl to catch the juices – pull and rub and it will come off. For any stubborn bits, use a sharp knife to pull it away. Still over the bowl, cut out the core and the seeds and any ribs inside the peppers, and you’re done. Strain those juices you’ve caught (they add a marvellous, smokey flavor) and carry on with the recipe.

Here’s a link to the winery Lulu and her family own: Domaine Tempier. It’s well worth a visit.

Heading away from tomatoes and Italy for a while

I’m sure everyone reading this blog will be pleased to hear that we’re taking a break from our focus of the past two months – with another focus: France and French cooking. This is also a bit of BSP (Blatant Self-Promotion for those not in the book writin’ game) since this month sees the release of my eighth crime fiction novel, The Fallen One.

You see, a large part of the novel is set in and around Paris. Being the type of person I am, Vicki and I had to go there and scope out the locations that I use in the book on a 9-day trip in autumn 2008. As Vicki expected (having been there a few times before) I fell in love with The City of Light.

In order to save money, but also just as much to really experience the city, we rented an apartment in the 13th Arrondissement near Butte aux Cailles. Our one-room apartment turned out to be just perfect for us, so perfect in fact that I eventually used it for the climactic scene of the novel.

In an amazing example of convergence, it just so happened that the large road down the hill from us, Boulevard Auguste-Blanqui near Place d’Italie, hosts a big street market on Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. It appears magically on the sidewalk before dawn and disappears by 3:00 in the afternoon. The result of finding this lovely resource on our doorstep was that we had the perfect place to buy nearly everything we would eat during our stay.

There were stalls of fruits and vegetables picked the day before. One of my favorite places was a cheese monger, or should I say a group of artisanal cheese-makers, who pooled their resources to present their wares with a different person in attendance each market day. We bought the best roquefort I have ever eaten, not too salty and sold at the absolute peak of perfection. Just down the row was a fish monger selling catches that were made the night before, fish so fresh, all you could smell was the sea. I expected them to start moving.

And I shouldn’t neglect to tell you about the prepared foods. A Spaniard was cooking and selling paellas right out of the largest paelleras I have ever seen. The smell was intoxicating. Another stall had rabbit in mustard sauce. My favorite sold rotisserie poultry of all kinds: ducks, small turkeys, capons, coquelets, game hens, all cooked on large electric rotisseries. The best part was that, at the bottom, collecting all those fantastic drippings, were chunks of potatoes, carrots, sliced onions and peppers. Everything was cooked to perfection, ready be brought home hot and enjoyed immediately.

To say the least, even though we didn’t have a real kitchen, just a coffee maker and a combination toaster oven/microwave, we managed to make some fantastic meals with the booty from our forays to the market down the hill. The piéce de résistance was a Dover sole we bought from our new “favorite fish monger”. His brother had caught the sole he was displaying the night before. You can’t get fish this fresh anywhere but within a few miles of the sea. We had him clean it, bought some fingerling potatoes, baby spinach, a knob of sweet creamery butter, rosemary, parsley, almonds, and a head of garlic.

Back at the apartment, I cooked everything in shifts, first the potatoes, roasted gently with rosemary leaves and stems (for extra flavor), then the spinach, wilted with a bit of butter and minced garlic (try doing that with a pocket knife!), finally the almonds were toasted with some more butter. Everything was kept warm on a plate that we put on the top of our little oven. Finally I was ready to broil the fish — gently and just enough. You don’t want to ruin something this precious by even a minute too much cooking! The real trick was actually undercooking it to the point where I could put everything back in for a final heating-through without the fish going past the point of no return.

The cooking gods (probably Julia Child and Escoffier) were smiling down on us that night because we sat down to a meal of “sort of sauteed” Dover sole, perfectly cooked (by dumb luck more than anything) with buttered toasted almonds, roasted new potatoes and wilted spinach, all washed down with an exquisite bottle of Pouilly Fuisse we’d bought for under 4 euros. It was probably the best meal I’ve ever turned out, perfect in every detail. Cooking it was a horror show to be sure, but the memory of of doing it makes us chuckle now.

Only in Paris…

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Stay tuned for more memories of Paris, and some of our favorite French recipes (and we have some good ones!) in the coming weeks.

The Tomato Lover

I’d like to welcome our first guest blogger here at AMFAS. It’s my good friend and fellow crime writer, Vicki Delany. Her popular Constable Molly Smith series (including In the Shadow of the Glacier and Among the Departed) have been optioned for TV by Brightlight Pictures. She also writes standalone novels of psychological suspense, as well as a light-hearted historical series, (Gold Digger, Gold Mountain), set in the raucous heyday of the Klondike Gold Rush.

Vicki’s newest book is More than Sorrow, a standalone novel published by Poisoned Pen Press. In a starred review, Library Journal called the book, “a splendid Gothic thriller.”

Having taken early retirement from her job as a systems analyst in the high-pressure financial world, Vicki is settling down to the rural life in bucolic, Prince Edward County, Ontario where she rarely wears a watch.

Be sure to visit Vicki at www.vickidelany.com, www.facebook.com/vicki.delany, and twitter: @vickidelany. She blogs about the writing life at One Woman Crime Wave (http://klondikeandtrafalgar.blogspot.com)

__________________

The Delany Fields

I am not a farmer. Here’s an example of my attempt to grow tomatoes.

Fortunately, I don’t have to be able to grow them.

Since moving to Prince Edward County four years ago I’ve become a staunch locavore. There are some foods now that I will only eat fresh and in season. Tomatoes are the best example. I’ll stuff myself with tomatoes of every type from August to October, make soup and pasta sauce for the freezer. The rest of the year, I’ll only buy the ones in the supermarket, and then reluctantly, if I’m going to cook with them. They’re grown for looks, and durability, not for good eating, and why spoil your taste buds on something that isn’t up to scratch?

Asparagus I’ll eat all of May, when I can buy them from the farm down the road, the rest of the year I can do without. Same for berries – mainly blueberries and raspberries. Particularly when those berries freeze so well when fresh, it’s not necessary to buy the imported ones in the middle of winter. I have a great recipe for blueberry muffins that I make stacks of in the late summer and freeze. When they come out of the freezer in mid-winter, the berries taste as good as when they were picked.

Every Labour Day weekend, Vicki`s Veggies Farm (absolutely no relation to me!) puts on two days of tomato extravaganza. The farms grow something like 350 different varieties of heirloom tomatoes, and for the tomato tasting, they`ll lay about 120 of them out on trestle tables on the lawn. Until a few years ago I didn`t know tomatoes came in such variety of colours, sizes and tastes.

Vicki’s Veggies’s unbelievable spread of heirloom tomatoes.

Because I’m a writer as well as a tomato eater, soon after moving to the County, I decided I’d like to write a book set here. I don’t think I considered anyplace other than on a small-scale organic vegetable farm. Vicki showed me around her farm and talked to me about running the business and growing tomatoes. That book, MORE THAN SORROW, is a contemporary thriller with a backstory of the Loyalist settlers on the farm. It’s being released this week by Poisoned Pen Press, so I took a table at the Tomato Extravaganza to get the word out about the new book. I sold a pile of books. In fact, I sold out.

Here are some links for locavores and those just wanting good food, raised or grown sustainably.

Vicki’s Veggies: www.vickisveggies.com

JC Nyman Farms: nymanfarms.com Where I buy my eggs, chicken, and pork. They also make maple syrup from trees I can see from my house.

Hagerman’s Farms for produce of all kinds. A family farm for over 100 years: horntripmagazine.com/2010/11/sneak-preview-hagerman%E2%80%99s-farm-105-years-later/

Portland Bridge Pickling Society: http://www.facebook.com/PortlandBridge?ref=ts Doug and Carolann had the table next to me, and I kept sneaking over for tastes of their spreads and pickles, all made from County grown produce.

Here’s a recipe for pasta with cherry tomatoes that I make several times a week when the tomatoes are at their best:

Vicki Delany’s Cherry Tomato Linguine
Mix up the quantities depending on taste and number of people being served.

INGREDIENTS
1 green onion
1 clove garlic
Copious amount of fresh cherry tomatoes. If they are large, slice in half.
Handful of fresh basil leaves, roughly chopped
¼ to ½ log of goat’s cheese.
½ cup white wine (already open for sipping while cooking, I am sure)
1-2 cups of arugula, roughly chopped.

METHOD
1. The sauce cooks very quickly so have the linguini started before beginning.
2. Heat olive oil in a saucepan. Add sliced green onion and chopped garlic. Cook on medium until soft and golden in colour. Add tomatoes and cook for three or four minutes, stirring. Tomatoes will go soft and wrinkly.
3. Add basil and arugula and cook, stirring until arugula begins to shrink.
4. Add goat’s cheese and stir until melted.
5. Add enough wine to loosen the sauce (about ½ a cup). If you don’t have, or don’t want to use wine, use pasta cooking liquid.
6. Salt and pepper to taste
7. Toss sauce with pasta.
8. Eat.