12-31-2008
Cassata Siciliana
Fed up with the traditional French cuisine I've been inflicting on you lately? We'll come back to it, don't worry *smirk*. Instead here comes a slice of Sicily. Four slices of génoise biscuit, actually, with ricotta cream, grated chocolate and loads of candied goodness.
In the buff (à poil). Sexy thing.
I have been blessed with the Infallible Génoise Touch©, a quality envied by princes and laughed at by cretins. My mom goes on and on about how she once baked a rock-hard brick out of a génoise because she folded the flour in too energetically. So far I have been preserved from such a curse, let's keep it this way, shall we.
Traditional Cassata is usually covered in marzipan, but I thought that trading it for chocolate, in this festive period, would be a lesser evil. Some bloggers went for a Chantilly approach and weren't flogged on Times Square for that (I can't think of a worse torture. Except maybe being pilloried on Times Square on New Year's Eve). You can also spike the cream with orange-flavoured alcohols such as Triple Sec, Grand Marnier or Curacao, and even soak the sponge cake with a syrup made with one of the aforementioned. You booze-head (espèce de poivrot).
Génoise was made by whipping 4 eggs, 125g of sugar, and a fat pinch of salt in a warm bowl until it tripled in size, and then by folding in (gently, in case you don't have the IGT©) 100g of sifted flour and 25g of corn starch. It was baked in a lined deep rectangular pan known to the French as "moule à cake", for 30 minutes at 190°C. No conversions in cups and Farenheits for you today. After it had cooled, it was sliced in flour longitudinally. With a serrated bread knive. Not as inconsequential a detail as you may think.
I prepared the cassata cream by whipping a pound of ricotta cheese with 2tbsp of sugar and 2tbsp of mascarpone, and mixed in diced citron and orange peel and about 70g of grated chocolate. Do yourself a favour darling, freeze the chocolate beforehand and you won't get sticky fingers from grating it.
When the cake is cool enough, layer it with the cream straight on the serving plate, ice it with marzipan/chocolate/Chantilly cream, and refrigerate for 24 hours.
I said cassata, not cassanta. Besides Christmas is, like, way over (ça fait un bail que c'est fini, Noël).
Get your fluffy mittens off my cake, you old fogey (vire tes mouffles velues de mon gâteau, vieux croûlant).
12-27-2008
Schwobebredele
Stuck in your kitchen due to excessive snowing? Get your circus cookie cutters out and hark the call of the (Alsacian) wild.
boost up the bass baby
National Geographics (cf Les Photographies de la vie sauvage
Williams Sonoma makes those wicked cookie cutters, but they have been discontinued recently - alas. I must have grabbed one of the last boxes, and golly (sapristi) I'm damn glad I did. Hours of endless fun if you ask me. They are beyond funky. Once you get the trick with the embossing spring thing, it's a piece o' cake (quand t'as pigé comment le bidule à ressort marche, c'est les mains dans les poches). They now do cutters with the same mechanism, but for Christmas ornaments. Boooo. Hm, there's a huge discount. I guess it's OK then.
and that of tigers preying on cranes
As for the recipe, I got mine from Suzanne Roth's anthology of Alsacian bredele, those Christmas cookies every Alsacian woman feels compelled to bake around the Advent season, in quantities which could probably give diabetes to most of the third world.The witty subtitle to "Les petits gâteaux d'Alsace" is--as you my polyglot readers may have guessed-- "S'Bredlebuech".Shall I add that Suzanne is a little bit of a star in Alsace. Think of her as the Alsacian Nigella. At the very least, cup-size wise.
Now, in an attempt to disorientate you a tad further, here is a recipe for "Schwobebredele", also called "Himmelgestirn" in some parts of Alsace. Such a pleasant and melodic dialect don't you think. I guess I could call them "Christmas almond cookies" but really where's the fun.
Pygme giraffes have been proven not to be a myth.
A day ahead, prepare the dough by combining 1/2lb of soft butter (add salt if using unsalted butter), with 1/2lb of sugar and 1/2lb of almond meal. Then add two eggs, one heaped tsp of cinnamon (adjust to taste), a little bit of lemon zest, and a shot of kirsch (yes, this is Alsacian, and yes, have a shot of it yourself while you watch your processor doing all the work - cheers! [G'sundheit!]). Then add a pound of flour and mix until just incorporated. Refrigerate 'til the morrow.
Roll it out, flouring abundantly your countertop and your rolling pin, until you reach a thickness of about 1/4 inch. Cut out your funky animals. Make a pig's ear of the first two (foirez les deux premiers) but keep going until you get the knack of it. It's rewarding. If you have a yolk standing in your fridge, use it to glaze your cookies.
Pop them on a Silpat or some baking parchment, and cook for about 10 minutes at 325°F. Keep an eye on them.You want them to be slightly darker than in the picture. Toasted, if you like, not burnt though.
You big softy you. I bet you "ooooh"-ed.
12-19-2008
Chili, cake, flan tart and ribeye
All in one shitty photomontage.
Lucky bastards.
12-12-2008
Grand-Mère Blanc's Poulet à la Crème
I see some of you have been in a naughty mood recently, landing here with Google requests such as "How to seduce my flatmate" and "Brussel sprout dessert". Now I'd like to point to you that although I don't have definitive answers for either of those problems, I am about to find out whether the pear tart previously featured on this blog did the trick. I will let you know.
For Brussel sprouts, I would recommend a Tatin approach. Caramelise the bottom of a manqué or Tatin pan (what the heck [y a pas à tortiller], pomegranate molasses will doodledo), arrange the sprouts, season well, precook the little dudes for 20', cover with puff pastry and tuck in the edges (hospital corners please), bake 20 more minutes, et voilà, Brussel sprout dessert. Have I tried it, no. I bet it's fab.
On with the naughty mood - I have been secretly baking at my workplace in the past. Secret-wise, it wasn't a success. I had this fun recipe where you mix flour, baking soda and a can of beer (I'm only human, how could I not try it) and you get a loaf. It's fun, it's fast, and the recipe is on the back of my wholemeal flour packet. Or here. The embassy smelled of warm beer throughout the morning. Then of warm bread. Pretty cool, I'd say. People were walking around with fluttering nostrils and puzzled looks. A little like rabbits.
Today, secret poulet à la crème. Again, hard to shush. For about 7 French gourmets:
One chicken and a couple of extra thighs; 7tbsp butter; one fat onion; a dozen button/white/Paris mushrooms; 2 garlic cloves; a glass of white Bourgogne (a Mâcon-Fuissé here), a dash of lemon juice, a tied bunch of herbs (thyme, bay leaf, rosemary), about a quart of heavy cream (I know, I know).
Cut up the chicken in bits if your butcher hasn't. Slice off the thighs and snap the joints,then cut horizontally through the ribcage to get the breasts and cross-cut to free the wing/breast combo from the bottom (which you will not discard but save for broth. Winter is coming guys).
This time, it wasn't Colonel Mustard who'd dunnit.
Cut the guy some slack, will you (lâchez lui la grappe deux secondes).
Flip over, split the sternum lengthwise to have two separate breasts, then cut off the wings at the "elbow" joint. The ribcage is still attached to the breasts, it doesn't matter. More flavours, more bits to nibble from. Less work (ahh - I got your attention there). Season the pieces with salt and pepper.
Cooking poulet à la crème in an Upper East Side office. Improbable yet tasty.
Then melt the butter in a large pan (I used two medium-sized ones), and colour the chicken on all sides (leave the skin on, you're have stopped counting calories a long time ago). Halfway though the colouring process, add the cloves of garlic, which you will have smashed (écrabouillé) with the flat side of a large knife, the onion cut in large wedges, the mushrooms cut in four, and add the herb bunch. Don't let the butter burn.
Deglaze with a generous splash of wine, scraping the bottom to get all the good bits (although your arteries will say otherwise), let it reduce for a bit. I then transfered all the chicken pieces and veggies to my larger pan and doused the whole thing with the cream. Stir to combine the juices, and leave to simmer on medium heat for 25 to 30 minutes. Prepare rice, or fresh pasta, in the meantime.
At the end of the 30 minutes, spoon out the 'shrooms and the chicken, and add the juice of about half a lemon to the sauce. It won't curdle on you, pinky-swear (juré craché). Taste, adjust seasoning. Leave it to reduce a little longer if you want a thicker consistency. If you're Mrs/Mr Fancy Pants, dish the rice in a large hollow platter warmed in the oven, then arrange the chicken pieces on top and spoon the cream sauce over them. Rejoice and give thanks for George Blanc's granny.
If you're not Mr/Mrs Fancy Pants, scramble around for some plastic cutlery, paper plates and plastic glasses, and have a picnic in the meeting room of the fourth floor. Down the rest of the bottle.
Yum. Miam.
