11-30-2008
Chocolate Crinkle Cookies
Lazy-Sundayite is a condition that affects me every week, mostly on Sundays but I will have the occasional Demotivated-Mondayite once in a while, which equally sucks. Today energy levels are kind of ground-hugging (au ras des pâquerettes), in imitation of the skyline in NY, so I will swiftly move on to the recipe, a Martha Stewart classic also to be found on this great blog.
A sample of what my voice sounds like today. But not my guitar-playing, unfortunately. Anyone in Astoria offering lessons against cookies?
I have observed that those cookies make the most obnoxious people go all slushy and positive-thinking, Mary Poppins style. Give them a go and chances are you are going to cook a second batch right away.
My fancy schmancy cooling technique, balancing expertly the cooling rack onto the window ledge (no accidents so far).
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate, melted (half unsweetened - half bittersweet for me)
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup Dutch cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 ounces (1 stick) butter, room temperature
1 1/3 cups dark brown sugar, firmly packed (granulated was all I had, it worked out fine)
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract (I omitted it)
1/3 cup milk
1 cup powdered sugar for rolling
1 cup granulated sugar for rolling
Melt the chocolate, and let it cool slightly.
Sift together flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt. Using a mixer, beat the butter and sugar together until they are well combined. Add eggs and vanilla and beat until fluffy. Add the melted chocolate and mix to combine well. With mixer on low speed, or with a spoon, alternate adding dry ingredients and milk until just combined.
The dough should be pretty thick and heavy now. Leave it in the bowl, cover it with plastic wrap and pop it into the refrigerator for an overnight stay. This will turn the dough into playdough. We like that.
Will you choose the pear over the cookie? Don't mess it up sonny (déconne pas, petit).
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Remove the dough when it is properly chilled and using either a tablespoon cookie scoop or just a normal tablespoon shovel up heaping tablespoons of dough and then roll them in your hands to create a ball (about ¾ the size of a ping pong ball). The cooler the better, it will not stick to your handypandies (ça collera pas à tes menottes). Drop it into a bowl of granulated sugar and swirl it around to cover it then transfer it to a bowl of powdered sugar and roll it around again. Place it on a parchment or a silpat lined baking sheet, spacing each cookie about 1.5 inches apart. Bake for about 11-15 minutes. Remove from the oven and let them rest for about 5 minutes, then transfer them to a wire rack to cool.
If you bake it in several batches, refrigerate the dough in between batches to make it easier to shape it into balls.
The little suckers, ready to go spread world peace.
11-23-2008
Pear and almond tart
Have you ever shame-posted? No idea what the concept stands for? Ok, some excellent bloggers have admitted to bad picture days, in the same way most of us will have a bad hair day once in a while. Which reminds me that I need to book a hairdresser's appointment - in the Marais, that is, in order to preserve French glamour (overrated? You decide, in the comment section!). Shame-posting. It's when the post you wrote sucks so much you keep it deep down in the archives of the unpublished, and post it later on, knowing that there will be a couple of more recent posts which will screen off the rout. Several factors may combine: the unsexiness of the veggie used, and the terrible lighting in the room. In a word, do not attempt to blog about brussel sprouts after 11pm, however good it was. Not if you don't want people massively cancelling their RSS subscription and turning their eyes away, squirming in dismay and pity.
Why am I telling all this crap about shame posting? No idea.What? Shame-posting? Haha!
Anyway.
I'm showing me a little shame. Honest, I am.
"So much depends upon a blue crock pot", as WCW said once.
So, this tart. It's great. It's what I'm trying to seduce my future roommates with. Delphine, mon chou, let me know if I had any luck. Delphine - let's call her D to preserve her anonymity - works with me and misses French pastries, bless her. She is also always keen to give something new a shot. In other words she is my new guinea pig, and bless (bis repetita placent) her cotton socks, not a tremendously critical one at that. We like an easily won audience. We are lazy.
I had this recipe for a pear tart with a kind of frangipane cream at the bottom lying around in my notebook, and the reason why it stood out was the suggestion to add crushed pecans in the crust. That talks to me big time (ça me dit grave). The original recipe is French, therefore I had to convert everything into cups and tbsp, and nothing worked out so as usual, please ignore my proportions and use your imagination.
Make a "brisée" crust by sanding with the tip of your fingers 5/3 c of AP flour, a fattish 1/3 of a cup confectioner's sugar, a couple of pinches of salt, and a stick and 2 tbsp of butter. It's easier if the butter is at room temp. To that mix, add the precise following quantity of crushed pecans. You have bought a 5 oz sachet of "Candied Pecans (Lightly Sweetened)" from Trader Joe's. You have eaten about two handfuls of pecans with D at work. About half a handful on your way back home. Now, from what is left in the bag, save 16 whole halves, and roughly chop the rest. The chopped bits go in the crust mix, the whole ones will decorate the surface of your pie. Add a little cold water (huh, a tbsp perhaps? I eyeball it - je fais ça au pif), and gather the dough into a ball. Pop it in the fridge while you make your almond cream, turn your oven on at 320°F.
The proportions for the cream are mostly random again (doing penance right now - putting on my camel hair shirt as we speak). Combine a heaped 1/3 of a cup of confectioner's sugar with a smallish cup of almond flour and a teaspoon of corn starch. Add a whole egg, whisk it in, add 1/2 a stick of butter, melted, a pinch of salt, a dash of vanilla extract, and whatever you managed to salvage from the fabulous and glossy greek yogurt you bought earlier on that day, I'd say three heaped tbsp. Cream/buttermilk/half and half would do too. I think.
This is more of a "in your face" kind of shot.
Press the crust dough straight inside the tart pan with your tiny fists, stab it a couple of times with a fork (chourinez-la deux trois fois à la fourchette), and blind bake for 20 minutes.
Pour the almond cream on the bottom, add two pears cut in eighth in a pretty pattern and arrange the pecan halves as stylishly as you can manage. FYI, I should have used canned pears instead of rock-hard ones from the crap greengrocer (le marchand de fruits et légumes nul à chier). They felt like quinces and they weren't by any means tender after 35' in the oven.
Pop the whole thing back in the oven for 35 more minutes or until you are happy with the look of it. Let it cool, subway it to Brooklyn, try to seduce your new flatmates.
Pick me! I'm a great roommate!
11-22-2008
Flourless chocolate walnut cookies
You can find a hundred excuses to bake those cookies. In my case, I saw its name and realised I had indeed run out of flour. That sucks doesn't it (c'est râlant, hein). Next time I have flour, I'll go for gluten intolerance.
This one is for Peter from Kalofagas. You need to come back to NY soon, man.
It's a François Payard recipe that has featured multiple times on the blogs as well as in the NY magazine. I was intrigued by the unequal results people got from this recipe. I think what's key here is to keep a critical eye on the texture of the batter as you add in the egg whites. It should be thick and glossy, like a brownie batter. I obtained such a texture with only three egg whites, not four, but then again, different kitchens, different results.
Also, if you plan on feeding your cookies to sweet-toothed colleagues, make smaller mounds than what Payard suggests and you get more than double the amount of cookies (and they are still a reasonable size, I promise). Besides, they are really sweet and I am not sure you could make it through an entire Payard-size cookie without having to prebook a dentist appointement.
So - the recipe, with my tiny modifications.
2 heaped cups of roughly chopped walnuts
3 cups of confectioners' sugar
1/2 cup + 3tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 tsp salt
3 large egg whites
1 tbsp vanilla extract.
Toast the walnuts in your oven for 9 minutes at 350°F. You may sit in the oven with your walnuts if feeling chilly. If nibbling to kill time, make sure you still have enough to complete the recipe, since waluts really make those cookies outstanding.
Get out of the oven, put on your puffer jacket and mittens. Turn oven temp down to 320°F.
In a mixing bowl, whisk the cocoa powder, sugar, salt and toasted and cooled walnuts to combine. Whisk in the whites (go with three first, then see if you need to add a fourth), and the vanilla-r-extract (<= intrusive "r" sound, as my charming phonology teacher used to call it), until batter comes together as a moist (but not damp if you've followed) goo. No need to overbeat, matey (mélange pas trop fort, mon pote).
One of the objects on the plate isn't a cookie. It's a saltcellar I nicked from my flatmate.
Yet another meagre attempt at food styling.
Spoon over silpats or baking paper - 12 heaped mounds if you aim at Frankie Payard's jolly rotundity and a cavity-ridden dentition, 26 if you are planning to feed more revellers.
Bake for 14 minutes if going for the more-the-merrier option, 16 if making cookie monsters. The surface crackles and becomes glossy. I made three batches, and experimented on the peeling off of the cookies from the silpats - be warned, they are sticky, even on a silpat, which is a first for me.
*if greasing up the baking sheets, the cookies spread more, they lose that nice thickness and subsequent chewyness. But they come off easily. Shame, though (dommage, non).
*if not greasing up the baking surface, you can go with two options. After waiting for the cookies to have cooled down you can do it samurai-style with your offset spatula, scraping them off with vigour and precision. Or you can set your baking tray over a tray of smaller or equal size filled with steaming water, and leave it there for a couple of minutes. That worked well.
See the macaron-like feet of those cookies? Unexpected but always exhilarating.I get amused by inconsequential details, it's my inner child speaking.
Note that kept in a metal box, they keep for three days if adequately hidden from workmates, and I even find that their texture improves over time. They remain nice and chewy. Thanks for sharing Frankie.
Finishing on thanks and autocongratulation, I am so delighted I got to meet a bunch of bloggers in NY last Thursday and over the week in general (Rachel, Stacey, Giff, Peter and Stéphane)! Good food makes good friends. That's my word of wisdom for tonight. Sleep tight, kiddos (au dodo les petits).
11-17-2008
Brussel sprouts with pomegranate molasses dressing
It so happens that my restaurant buddy Edgar and I went to this funky Lebanese place somewhere in the middle of Manhattan (I was starving so much after a long concert that the precise location remains a little fuzzy – besides it was night time and all avenues look the same to me).
With the panache imparted to him by his Tripolitan origins, Edgar ordered a number of dishes, all equally delicious (O the octopus, and O the falafels!) which were hastily gobbled down. As I laid back after an amazing dessert, feeling a little full perhaps, one dish really stood out, which I wouldn’t necessarily have expected in a Lebanese restaurant.
Sprouts are not bitter, they’re lovely. Besides, they’re in season and they are my new best friends.
It was a platter of roasted, almost caramelised Brussel sprouts, with halved fresh grapes, toasted walnuts, drizzled with a fig purée dressing, and a white sauce which must have been part yoghurt, part tahini. The combination was divine. In case your only memory of Brussel sprouts is that of your school dinners, please reconsider this noble vegetable through this (feeble) attempt to recreate this magical dish.
Henri Jean Antoine RODET (Botanique agricole et médicale, ou, Etude des plantes qui intéressent principalement les médecins, les vétérinaires et les agriculteurs, Paris [1857] (1872), 53) goes even as far as declaring : “These buds, or small apples, constituted of young leaves of a very tender and delicate nature, make for a highly regarded delicacy.”
Would you believe me if I told you the picture doesn't do justice to the dish? Shitty lighting is what is it.
Trim
and
halve longitudinally 20 Brussel sprouts, put them in a bowl and toss
them with some olive oil
and a good pinch of salt. Place them cut-side down on a baking tray (I
used a silpat), and roast them in a preheated oven (400°F) for about 25
minutes, or
until the top leaves have become nicely browned and crisped up into a
nice
crust.
Toast in a frying pan two handfuls of walnuts until fragrant, set aside.
In a bowl, prepare the dressing by combining two teaspoons of pomegranate molasses (that’s where having a Lebanese buddy comes in handy – you get the stuff straight from Beirut, woohoo) with two teaspoons of olive oil and a little salt. I guess a splash of lemon juice would have been nice, but I didn’t have any, so I added a few drops of water to loosen the dressing a bit.
In a large bowl, combine the crispy sprouts, the toasted walnuts and the dressing, and breath in, you’re about to have a Brussel sprout sensation. It’s that good.
Of course, if you have grapes, yogurt and tahini at hand, feel free to customise the recipe, I have the feeling it can’t go wrong anyway.
You will also love to know this bit of gossip from Alfred SMEE (Mon jardin, Paris (1876), 103-104) : “The Brussel sprout is doubtless the most useful [cabbage] in a private garden. […] In Scotland, Brussel sprouts are usually sown in August, in order to be harvested the next year.”
Even Scots plan their Brussel sprouts harvest far ahead. Surely that’s an indication of how good they are.
11-16-2008
Shichimi togarishi
Thanks to great friends and sponsors, I'm about to resuscitate the old blog.
Always overdo shichimi. It clears your sinuses.
Stay tuned!
