Leek & Shiitake Mushroom Foccacia

Even though Gérard lives and works in a remote area, his home/bakery is clearly a magnet for local food and nutrition enthusiasts, including serious home bakers, many of whom are long-time friends. That is how I met Bob Low, Professor of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Vermont (UVM), who is currently teaching a course on endocrinology and metabolism, including nutrition, at UVM Medical School. Professor Low - an avid home baker and long-time levain aficionado - is interested in the nutritional benefits of levain-fermented bread. From what I understood, he is currently reviewing the existing research. I was all ears, as you can imagine, and can only hope that his synopsis will soon be made available. The conversation around the table was rendered all the more lively by the fact that Gérard poured Sancerre all around and served a marvelous foccacia covered with fragrant and meaty mushrooms (grown nearby) and other local organic produce. Gérard kindly allowed me to share his recipe on Farine.

Ingredients: 1 flatbread (dough made with firm levain; hydrated at least at 80%; containing 30% freshly milled whole-grain wheat, rye and spelt flours) 400 g shiitake mushrooms, stem removed, sliced (oyster mushrooms can be substituted) 1 leek, sliced and parboiled for a few minutes with a pinch of baking soda (to make it tender) 1 large onion, sliced 2 garlic cloves, minced Freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano Olive oil Clarified butter

Method:

1. Sauté the onion in a mixture of olive oil and clarified butter
2. Add the garlic when the onion is golden
3. Cook at very low heat for about 10 minutes (do not let the garlic turn golden)
4. Add the mushrooms and cook about 15 minutes
5. Add salt and pepper to taste
6. Remove from heat
7. Preheat oven at 475ºF/246ºC
8. Slice open the flatbread and drizzle some olive oil on both open faces
9. Spread the mushroom-onion mix on both
   
10. Grate fresh Parmigiano-Reggiano over the mushrooms
    
11. Bake for 15 minutes
12. Sprinkle the cut-up and parboiled leek on top
13. Slice and eat hot with a glass of cold Sancerre. Bliss ensues...

The foccacia goes to Susan, from Wild Yeast for Yeastpotting.

Egg-in-a-cradle

I had some leftover pâte fermentée (old dough) from the Chestnut Flour Bread and I didn't feel like freezing it. So instead I baked 4 little rolls and I made myself this comfort food (I was by myself for dinner). Now that I have tried it, I'll have to do it again... and again. It is just delicious (and very simple to make. If you don't have pâte fermentée or don't feel like baking, just cut up a fat baguette or smallish batard into as many mini-logs as you need, remove some of the crumb and you are in business). I had shaped and scored the rolls in different ways as I didn't know which one would be easier to turn into an eggcup.

The fan shape? The purse?

The tulip?

The tulip (i.e. the one with an X-shaped score) turned out to be the most convenient to open up and hollow out.

What you need is this: bread + fresh eggs + crème fraîche (now that I have attended a cheesemaking class, I make my own and quite frankly you don't need to take the class to know how. You just need the culture which you can get here and a way to keep the cream and the culture warm and snug for 12 hours) + some chives (from the garden or the window sill) + some grated Parmesan cheese. You hollow out the bread, pour in two spoonfuls of crème fraîche, add some salt and freshly ground pepper, cisel some chives over it, break in the egg (if the egg is too large, the white will overflow. Just wipe out the surplus), top with grated Parmesan cheese and bake at 400ºF for about 10 minutes (if necessary, turn on the broiler for a minute or two to brown the top). (I overcooked mine by 1 minute but it was still very very yummy!). Enjoy!

This Egg-in-a-cradle goes to Susan, from Wild Yeast, for Yeastpotting.

Ricotta Gnocchi

Having recently attended a cheese-making workshop with Ricki Carroll a.k.a. the Cheese Queen (whom Barbara Kingsolver mentions in the most elogious terms in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a book about her and her family's experience of growing and/or making most of their food themselves for one year I read with passionate interest ), I now have a fridge which seems to bloom everyday with a new luscious dairy product. The first one I tried my hand at is ricotta. It is not hard to make: you heat up milk to a specific temperature, cool it down a bit, mix some citric acid into it (some use lemon juice but I haven't tried that yet) and let it set for a while. A few minutes later, you are spooning warm ricotta into a very fine cheesecloth which you then hang over a large bowl (to catch the whey). Whey the ricotta is dry enough for your taste, you refrigerate it. I made it rather dry because I intended to use it to reproduce the gnocchi I knew growing up and had never tasted since. We lived in Paris, close to Avenue Victor Hugo and on the avenue, there was an Italian grocery store (I forgot the name and it no longer exists anyway). It was not inexpensive and my parents only shopped there on special occasions. What I remember most is their gnocchi. Round-shaped and covered with grated Parmesan cheese with a tiny pat of butter on top, they melted in the mouth like fluffy clouds. They were just delicious. Imagine my dismay when I tried gnocchi in this country and found them gummy and mealy. Not the stuff of childhood memories by any stretch of the imagination. So for years and years we lived in a gnocchi-free household, which was fine really. I mean, compared to what goes on everyday in the world, what's thirty gnocchi-less years? But I had an epiphany the other day when I stumbled upon this recipe. The gnocchi I had tried and not liked were most certainly potato-gnocchi and I hadn't known there was another kind. Apparently in Florence (don't you love that city?), they make gnocchi with ricotta. That explains the divine featheriness of my childhood gnocchi. The grocer must have hailed from the city of the Medici or at least from the Tuscan hills which surround it! So I made gnocchi with my homemade ricotta (I pretty much followed the recipe, except that I use half white whole wheat flour and half all-purpose flour) and they were very good. Quickly put together too. The longest part was actually making the ricotta (or rather waiting for the scalded milk to cool down so that I could stir in the citric acid). With store-bought ricotta, it'd be done in a flash. I didn't serve any sauce with it, just freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, a petal of butter and some black pepper. Next time I'll try the Food Network recipe which doesn't include flour. The gnocchi will probably come out even closer to what I remember and I am looking forward to that. Unlike Proust to whom the madeleine came unbidden giving breath and life to a forgotten world, I seem to have to work for my memories. But, hey, they are worth it!

Summer Tortilla

I call this a tortilla because it is a great name that resounds quite well with the passel of teenage grandchildren and friends vacationing here with us on the river (especially if you roll the "r" and pronounce "tortilla" à la mexicaine).
I could have called it "aeggekage" (a flipped-over omelet which my children's Danish greatgrandmother used to make with a bit of flour and lots of chives), except that aeggekage doesn't sound nearly as much fun as tortilla.
It can be enjoyed hot, warm or cold, so that it can be eaten for lunch with a simple green salad or taken along on a picnic accompanied by juicy tomatoes.
Basically it is a kitchen-sink type of egg dish into which you throw whatever you want to clear out of the fridge and it consists of two layers (one starchy and one tomato-y).

Ingredients (for 6 servings):
For the first layer

• 6 eggs
• 5 baked unpeeled red potatoes, cut in small chunks
• 1 small onion, chopped up
• 1 inch of pepperoni sausage, cut in tiny pieces
• 3 slices of left over herb-incrusted pork loin, cut in tiny pieces (ham could be used or any leftover chicken)
• lots of chives
• half a ladleful of sourdough starter (if no starter is available, use a bit of flour and some additional water or milk)
• a dash of water or milk
• salt and pepper
• olive oil (for cooking) 

For the second layer
6 eggs
some leftover unpeeled zucchini (washed, sliced and quickly baked for dinner the night before with olive oil and some crushed garlic)
1 small onion, chopped up
a handful of past their prime cherry tomatoes (obviously the tomatoes do not need to be past their prime but mine were and it was an excellent opportunity to use them), sliced in two lengthwise
some yellow, green and red small sweet peppers, seeded and sliced (mine came from Trader Joe's)
half a ladleful of sourdough starter (if no starter is available, use a bit of flour and some additional water or milk)
1 bunch of fresh cilantro, chopped (if not available, parsley or chervil can be used)
some piment d'Espelette (if not available, paprika can be used), optional and to be used at the very end as piment d'Espelette should never be cooked)
salt and pepper olive oil, for cooking

Method:

1. Drizzle some olive oil in a big frying pan and quickly fry the onion, the pepperoni and the pork
2. Add the potatoes
3. Slightly beat the eggs with the starter and some water or milk, salt and pepper
4. When the potatoes are golden, gently pour the egg mixture over them, taking care to spread it evenly all over
5. When almost completely set, flip the tortilla over (I use a big round plate which I place over the frying pan. I then quickly invert the frying pan over the plate before sliding the tortilla back into it) and continue cooking for barely a minute
6. Slide onto a large plate and sprinkle generously with chopped chives
7. Proceed as indicated above for the second tortilla (no need to wash the frying pan), i.e. quickly fry the onion, then add the zucchini and, a minute later, the tomatoes
8. When the tomatoes look soft, add the egg mixture (eggs + starter + salt and pepper + some water)
9. When almost completely set, add the cilantro and quickly flip the tortilla over
10. Continue cooking for barely a minute
11. Slide on top of the waiting potato layer and sprinkle with piment d'Espelette or paprika (if using)
12. Watch your teenage crowd devour it but be sure to set some aside for yourself as it would be a pity to miss out on this summer treat.

The Summer Tortilla goes to Susan, from Wild Yeast, for Yeastpotting.

Crêtes-de-Coq (Oven-Baked Meat Patties)

Pour lire ce billet en français, cliquer ici

Odile, my paternal grandmother, called these patties crêtes-de-coq (literally, rooster crests), probably because of their fan shape. I've trawled for that name in Google and only came up with recipes using actual rooster crests. So maybe she made up the name or maybe she got it from the aunt who raised her and taught her to cook.

Odile was born and grew up in the Tarn in southwestern France, a region with a rich culinary tradition (but then what part of France doesn't have a rich culinary tradition?)...

...and she had a magic touch in the kitchen, probably the only place where she was truly happy. Away from it, she was dour and embittered, emotionally crippled by the series of hard punches life had thrown at her. She was a tough grandma, unyielding and distant. Hard to love. But in the kitchen, she smiled. She would call out to us when we arrived on our weekly Sunday visit, lift up pot lids, open the ovens for a minute giving us a glimpse of the baking apple croustade, a peek at the roasting home-raised chicken, offer a spoonful of her hare civet, a forkful of the terrine she was slicing. As a child the kitchen was the only place where I felt safe with her (elsewhere her tongue was sharp and her bite ferocious). Now I realize that cooking was probably the only way she could express love and that she took great pleasure and comfort in watching us eat what she made.
Her crêtes-de-coq were sublime: she rolled out a butter dough, cut out rounds with an inverted glass (actually she let us take care of that part and we loved it), put on each a spoonful of whatever meat had been leftover from other meals, chopped up with onions, herbs and maybe a little garlic, folded them over, crimped the edges with a fork and deep-fried them to fragrant crispiness. We could never get enough of them.
She never used a cookbook (didn't even own one) and regrettably never wrote anything down, leaving us with nothing but memories of her feasts. I have made my grandma's crêtes-de-coq for my kids as they were growing up when I still owned a deep-fryer and didn't think twice about the amount of fat and butter in a recipe. Now that the Man has to watch his cholesterol, though, I had to look for another way and his birthday dinner offered an excellent opportunity to try my hand at a lighter version. He loved them and, as my grandma before me, I took great pleasure in seeing him devour them.
These little patties make an excellent tapa, especially if served piping hot with crisp French cornichons (sour pickles) but I would settle for some with a mixed green salad any night of the week and call it dinner.
I am not posting exact weights for the filling as I pretty much used whatever leftover meat I could find in the freezer (I had chicken thighs and sweet fennel sausage), added some parsley and basil from the garden, some onion and garlic, chopped up everything and wrapped it in bread dough.
Anything can be used that won't leak and make the patty soggy, including chopped up greens (Swiss chard with crumbled feta and fresh mint for instance) and mushrooms (but I would cook those first to make them yield their water) with leeks, etc.
For the dough, I hand-mixed: 

• 500 g of flour
• 250 g of water
• 11 g of olive oil
• 10 g of salt
• and 4 g of instant dry yeast until smooth and pliable.

I let it rest 90 minutes before rolling it out thin with a rolling pin.

Then I cut out circles with an inverted glass and went to work.

Once the crêtes were ready, I painted them with eggwash (i.e. an egg beaten with some milk), pricked them with a fork and baked them for 25 minutes in a 425F/218C pre-heated oven.

I had dough and filling left over but when I reassembled the pieces of dough and tried to roll them out again, they were not so compliant anymore. So I gave them to my 4-year old granddaugher who promptly put them to good use...

...and I made pan-fried "sausages" of the remaining filling. They will be scrumptious cold with a salad or in a sandwich.

As for my granddaughter, she opened up the crêtes-de-coq, extracted the filling and threw out the crusty wrappers: "I like meatballs without bread", she said, handing me the empty shells. I smiled at her. She was creating her own memories...

I hadn't thrown away the leftover dough after my granddaughter was through playing with it but stored it in the fridge overnight thinking she might be happy to play with it again in the morning. However this morning I found it had relaxed again and fermented some more and it now smells so delicious that I am just going to incorporate it as a pre-ferment into my next batch of bread. Never waste anything if it can be helped. This too I learned from my grandmother.

These crêtes-de-coq go to Susan, from Wild Yeast, for Yeastpotting. This week's Yeastspotting will be hosted by Iamafoodblog.