Category Archives: french cooking

July 29, 2011 · 6:11 am

Fish en papillote

Cooking en papillote (French for “parchment”) is a wildly overlooked method of cooking in America. It’s an easy method for a quick weeknight dinner that’s also elegant enough for guests. The smell that escapes when the package is reason enough to try it. This works well for salmon and mild-flavored white fish such as snapper, cod and so on. The best part? No dishes. Just throw the paper away. To assure thorough cooking, fish fillets or chicken breast slices less than a half-inch thick. This works best in parchment paper, but you can also use aluminum foil. Choose ingredients to get a flavor you like. For instance, to get an Asian flavor, use sesame in place of olive oil, add lime, cilantro and ginger to the package, and possibly finely sliced water chestnuts.

You’ll need 2 (10 x 12) inch pieces of parchment. I prefer to use the unbleached variety on the roll; it’s available at most supermarkets for less than $3. You can use foil, but don’t use too much vinegar or wine as it may react with the aluminum. Don’t use wax paper; it will become gummy and sort of “melt,” and frankly, no one wants wax with their chicken. Serves two.

Ingredients
2 (4 oz.) piece of fish or thinly sliced chicken breast
4 teaspoons olive oil
Few sprigs of fresh herbs (dill, basil, thyme, rosemary) or a ½ teaspoon dried
1/4 cup of white wine (or water)
Few thin lemon slices
Pinch of cayenne

Garnish (optional): About ½ cup of vegetable for flavor and garnish: shallots, onion, garlic, zucchini, carrot, broccoli, fennel, mushrooms, etc. each finely chopped or sliced

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit or 200 Celsius. Fold each sheet in half.On one half of each paper heart, drizzle half the olive oil (two teaspoons per sheet) and add generous pinches of of coarse salt and pepper. Add the fish and turn over to coat. Place herbs, lemon and vegetables on top of the fish and drizzle some wine over each. Crimp the edges of the parchment or foil and shut carefully to avoid allowing any liquid or steam to escape from the package during cooking. Place the packages on a baking sheet and bake for about 15 minutes. Allow to sit at least one minute, and then open carefully.

Other good papillote recipes:
-Food 52: Shrimp and roasted tomato fettucine
-French Cooking for Dummies: Whole trout in foil
-Sophistimom: Chicken in paper

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July 22, 2011 · 2:18 pm

Moules à la Mariniére

Something big happened in my life recently. Taylor Shellfish Farms opened a store in my neighborhood. I’m a huge fan of, well, any shellfish to be honest. But mussels – moules in French - make me weak at the knees. Combined with fries and a crisp glass of white wine, it’s probably one of my favorite meals ever.

In France, mussels are often referred to as “moules de bouchot,” which isn’t a type but a reference to the way they’re cultivated for harvest. Mussel growers install large posts along the coastline known as “bouchots” on which the mussels cluster. Legend has it that an Irishman Patrick Walton stumbled on this method after being shipwrecked off the coast of France in the 13th Century. In an attempt to catch birds for food, he strung nets from posts he set up in the water. Later, he noticed the posts were covered with mussels. Today, France has about 700 miles of bouchot posts along its coastline, mostly in the Brittany and Normandy regions. In the Pacific Northwest, the most common method for growing mussels is to suspend ropes from large rafts. The mussels attach to the rope, safely hanging above their common predators which tend to hang out on the bottom. That’s how the Taylors do it.

Credit for the winning combination of mussels and fries generally goes to the Belgians, who enthusiastically claim to have invented fried potato sticks and must be constantly irked when the rest of the world – especially Americans – keep referring to them as French fries. (When I lived in London, I lived near a Belgian-themed restaurant named Belgo in which servers dressed as monks offered up pots of mussels accompanied by piles of fries.) But the combination is a ubiquitous menu staple in France.                                                                      

Mussels make for a quick meal. Conduct a wee bit of chopping, eight minutes cooking time and voila, dinner. I like to keep it simple: a little garlic, onion, leek or shallot, a bit of white wine, fresh herbs and a bit of tomato for color. For me, great bread is a key ingredient to assure the sauce doesn’t go to waste. Mussels cook most beautifully when steamed, not boiled, so resist the urge to cook them in too much sauce.

Moules à la Mariniére
If you don’t have shallots, feel free to substitute onion or leek. I sometimes toss in shredded carrots and finely chopped celery, too. For herbs, straight parsley works fine but I like to work in thyme, oregano and basil if they’ve available.

2 tablespoons olive oil or butter
2 to 3 shallots, finely chopped, about ¼ cup
1 garlic clove, chopped
1 bay leaf
½ cup chopped tomatoes
½ cup dry white wine
3 tablespoons chopped fresh herb
3 lbs. mussels
2 tablespoons cream (optional)
Salt, coarse pepper

Prepare the mussels by rinsing well, the trimming off the filaments known as “the beard” with a sharp knife or kitchen scissors. Discard any with damaged shells or do not closed when gently tapped.

Place a pot with a tight-fitting lid over medium heat and add the oil. Add the shallots and stir until softened, about two or three minutes. Add the garlic and bay leaf and stir for another minute, then add in the tomatoes and stir until softened. Add the wine, the herbs, a pinch of salt and crank of fresh black pepper and cook until it reduces slightly, about three minutes. Add the mussels, cover and steam for five to seven minutes, shaking the pan from time to time until all the mussels open. (If any don’t open after cooking, discard.) If using cream, remove the mussels to a bowl, add it to the cooking liquid and let reduce briefly. Serve the sauce and mussels together while very hot.


Oven-fried Frites
My sister has been making this healthy, simple alternative to classic French fries for years. It’s easy to shift the flavor on these. Want truffle fries? Sprinkle with a little truffle oil or salt after cooking. Want something with a kick? Shake on a spicy Cajun spice blend. Be sure to line the bottom of the baking sheet with foil or a silicone baking map to avoid sticking; you can also cook them on a cooling rack settled on a baking sheet, too. I prefer to use Yukon Gold, but your everyday russet works perfectly well in this recipe.

3 large potatoes
3 tablespoons olive oil
½ teaspoon Old Bay seasoning or paprika
½ teaspoon garlic powder
Sea salt, ground coarse pepper as desired

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C). Peel the potatoes and cut into either wedges or sticks. Place in a bowl and coat with the oil and seasonings, then put in a single layer on a lined baking sheet. Bake for 25 minutes, turn if needed and bake another 15 minutes to desired crispness.

French Tip: You can prep potatoes in advance and store in water, but be sure to drain thoroughly and even toss in a clean hand towel to extract excess moisture. Otherwise, the fries will steam from the inside and won’t get crispy.

Find recipes for mussels…
- in a curry sauce at My Cooking Hut:
- fire-roasted, over at David Leibovitz:
- in a saffron tomato sauce at HealthyDelicious

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July 15, 2011 · 11:24 am

Summer Berry Tart

Someone asked me recently why I didn’t study pâtisserie at Le Cordon Bleu. The honest reason? I’m not keen on most sweets and I don’t like chocolate. (Yes, you read that correctly.) If there’s a choice of dessert or a cheese plate, I always go for the fromage. When I started to review restaurants back in the 1990s, I routinely left a report on desserts out of my reviews. I was working then with Tom Sietsema, now the restaurant reviewer at The Washington Post. Tom said, “Kat, you have to write about dessert. That’s the reason why some people go out to dinner.” For years I trudged through all the classic dessert clichés, the endless variations on cheesecake, carrot cake and creme brulée. I died a thousand deaths by chocolate.

Last month, I was a guest chef at Rancho La Puerta in Mexico, a health-focused spa straddling the U.S. border at Tecate an hour from San Diego. As part of the hands-on classes I taught to guests there, I had to develop dessert. The recipe had to fit certain parameters: less than 80 calories a serving, no white sugar, preferably no white flour. I decided to use it an excuse to finally find a dessert that I like well enough to make it routinely. I’ve been making a whole wheat tart crust for ages based on a recipe from Clotilde Dusoulier’s blog Chocolate and Zucchini. I know they grow beautiful berries at the ranch, so after some trials, I developed this recipe as a way to balance out the fresh, sweet flavors of the fruit in a light custard sweetened by honey aided by a savory bite of pine nuts, a twist on a recipe in Patricia Wells’ excellent cookbook, At Home in Provence. My mother says this tart is now her favorite dessert, and I think it’s mine, too.

Mixed fruit tart with pine nuts, thyme and honey
with a whole wheat olive oil crust

This works best in a tart pan with a removable bottom, but if you don’t have one, a standard pie plate will be just fine. The dough makes enough to line an 11- to 12-inch tart or pie pan. Any mix of fresh fruit will work; it’s excellent when made with bananas. Makes about eight servings.

Crust
2 cups (250 grams) light whole wheat flour
       or a 50/50 mix of all-purpose and whole wheat
- 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 1 teaspoon dried thyme
- 60 ml (1/4 cup) olive oil (or the oil of your choosing, provided it withstands cooking)
- 135 ml (1/2 cup + 1 tablespoon) cold water

Filling
1/2 cup (120 ml) heavy cream
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons raw full-flavored honey
1/4 cup pine nuts, lightly toasted, then crushed
Enough fresh summer fruit such as strawberries, peaches, raspberries and blueberries and plums to fill your pie plate or tart tin (typically about 3 cups when prepped)

About a tablespoon of fresh thyme leaves

Preheat the oven to 400° Fahrenheit (200° Celsius).

Prepare the crust: Grease the pan lightly or coat with cooking spray. Combine the flour, salt, and herbs in a medium mixing bowl. Add the oil and mix it in with your fingers until the olive is distributed evenly. It should have the consistency of coarse cornmeal. Add the water, mix until absorbed, and then knead lightly by hand until the dough comes together into a ball.

Turn the dough out on a lightly floured work surface. Sprinkle a little flour on the dough and a rolling pin, and into a circle large enough to fit your tart pan. Do this by turning the dough slightly every time you roll it, adding a little more flour underneath and on top when it seems on the verge of becoming sticky. Avoid overworking the dough.

Transfer the dough carefully to line the bottom of the prepared pan and trim the excess. If you’re using a traditional French tart pan, you can just run a rolling pin across the top to trim it against the sharp edges. Let it rest in the fridge for 25 minutes while you prepare the fruit and the filling.

Prepare the fruit and filling: Wash, pit, trim or slice the fruit needed, and cut into roughly similar sized pieces. Combine the cream, eggs and vanilla extracts in a bowl. Add the honey and whisk to blend. Toast the pine nuts lightly and stir into the cream.

Get the crust from the fridge. You’ll probably notice small white dots in it. That’s good. It means the olive oil and the dough are chilled through. Prick the crust with a fork. Neatly overlap large chunks of fruit in circles around the edges, working toward the center.

Pour the cream filling carefully around the fruit. Sprinkle the herbs on top. Place in the center of the oven and bake until the filling is firm and the pastry is brown, about 40 minutes. The fruit may shrivel slightly. Remove to a rack to cool.

French Tip: Press the crust into the pan with a small remnant pie of dough. It provides more uniform pressure and you’ll avoid piercing it with your fingers by accident.

Other fruit tart recipes I like:
-Bake or Break: Fresh berry Tart
-The Gourmet Project: Tart with marscapone
-Smitten Kitchen: Strawberry lemon tart
-Cheeky Kitchen: Super quick berry tart
-Gluten Free Goddess: Gluten-free berry tart
-You’re Gonna Bake it After All: Berry tart with sweet cookie crust

Amazon: My favorite French gadgets

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July 8, 2011 · 4:40 pm

Salade Niçoise

I first encountered Salade Niçoise in a romance novel, when a beautiful protagonist perched at a table under a striped umbrella on an immaculate beach in Cannes waiting for a murky character. The server brought her a bracingly cold glass of chablis and a crisp Salade Niçoise. At this point, the author abandoned the entire plot to wax poetically about the pungent olives, crisp green beans and plump tomatoes for at least two pages. I don’t know what happened to the character. I put down the book and picked up The French Chef by Julia Child. Age 14, I made it sans anchovies and with green olives a couple of days later. At age 34, while living in London, I fled to Cannes for the weekend alone for the sole purpose of recreating that scene. As I sat under a striped umbrella, alone with a glass of wine waiting for my salad, I wondered whatever happened in that book?

In the heat of summer, or what passes for it in the Northwest, Salade Niçoise is one of my go-to dishes. Tomatoes, green beans and greens are fresh and plentiful and the rest of the dish comes from the fridge or pantry, namely eggs, olives, capers, anchovies and canned tuna.

However, the latter is a point of contention. There’s a raging debate about the use of fresh versus canned fish. Even Dorie Greenspan writes in Around My French Table that a French friend implored that she “not go all modern and use fresh tuna.” The second line of my notes on the dish from Le Cordon Bleu read: “Always canned tuna, packed in oil.” (I think it was The Gray Chef from Sharper, a culinary purist.)

Auguste Escoffier, the man who codified French cuisine described the dish as “equal quantities string beans, potato dice and quartered tomatoes. Decorate with capers, pitted olives and anchovy fillets. Season with oil and vinegar.” Note the glaring lack of tuna, canned or otherwise, in the description. Another point of contention: Should the ingredients be cordoned off into ghettos, the green beans to one side, the potatoes to another? Escoffier generously allowed that the arrangement of vegetables were “subject to no rules, merely a matter of taste.” I mix it up.

When tuna is the star, don’t reach for Starkist. Splurge on a Mediterranean variety, or better yet, a sustainably caught albacore such as the brand I use here in Seattle from the fishing boat St. Jude. After years of making and eating Salade Niçoise in several countries, I’ve come down to this variation on Julia’s classic. Nothing wrecks this salad faster than bland, cold potatoes, so I prefer the classic approach to flavor them in their own right first as a potato salad (photo right). Escoffier didn’t mention lettuce, either. I’m partial to a simple butter lettuce or a fresh arugula. The latter has some bite which adds depth to the salad. I’m sure that’s going to get me into trouble with the purists.

Salade Niçoise

Serves four as a main course.

Thyme-lemon vinaigrette
1/2 cup olive oil
2 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon mustard
1 teaspoon dried thyme
Coarse salt, ground black pepper

Potato Salad
1 lb. Yukon gold or new potatoes, quartered
2 tablespoons dry white wine
2 tablespoons chicken stock
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
1 tablespoon minced shallot

salad components
1 cup, about 6 ounces, cooked green beans
1 cup halved cherry tomatoes
4 ounces butter lettuce, arugula or other simple greens
1/2 cup pitted black olives, such as kalamata or Niçoise
3 or 4 hard-boiled eggs, roughly chopped or quartered
12 anchovy fillets
7 oz. can tuna, packed in olive oil

Prepare the vinaigrette:
 In a small bowl or jar, mix the lemon juice, olive oil, thyme, two pinches of salt, coarse ground pepper and shake or whisk together until emulsified. Set aside until needed.

Prepare the potato salad:
Steam or boil the potatoes just until tender. Cut into bite-sized pieces while still warm and toss gently with the white wine and stock. After a few minutes, toss again.Toss half the vinaigrette with the potatoes, chopped parsley and shallots.

Finish the salad:
Arrange the cooked green beans, tomatoes, lettuce, hard-boiled eggs and olives in a bowl. Toss with the vinaigrette. Arrange the elements onto four plates, top each with the anchovies and tuna.

French Tip: To keep the green beans crisp and retain bright color, boil briefly just until tender, then plunge into an ice bath.

Other Salad Nicoise recipes I like:

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March 28, 2011 · 4:59 pm

PCC Cooking Class: Southern French

Registration starts today for the summer line-up for PCC Cooks here in Seattle. I’m a huge fan of the co-op, and I’m delighted to note that I’ll be doing my first cooking classes with them this June. I’ll be teaching some fundamentals of flavor and classic technique while exploring the light, healthy cuisine of southern France. You can find details on my classes plus check out the other excellent courses offered by PCC here in the greater Seattle area, including their fundamentals coursework. Knife skills, anyone?

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September 21, 2009 · 12:39 pm

Do the French appreciate Julia?

Does it matter? A recent story in the The New York Times notes that despite her canonization as the unofficial ambassador for French cuisine in this country, most French people haven’t heard of Julia Child.

In a way, it makes sense. Her book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, was always intended for an American audience. It was never translated to French for one obvious reasons — in theory, the French know how to cook their own cuisine.

I bought a copy in London in 2002 and that copy wasn’t translated to English, either, meaning that it had no specific shifts for UK cooks such as gas marks and English measures. Consider that on Amazon.co.uk, there are only three reviews for the seminal work, two posted by Americans living abroad. On Amazon in the United States, there are 134 reviews.

One thing that you learn as an expat is that celebrity — especially television celebrity — doesn’t always travel. I used to scratch my head in the market check out at the cover of OK magazine in London, since I didn’t recognize most of the people on the cover. After living abroad for a couple of years, I couldn’t recognize most people on People magazine, either. (Who is Jessica Simpson, and why is she famous again?)

The NY Times noted: “In an interview
in the French daily newspaper Le Figaro last week, [Meryl] Streep said:
“What surprises me is that the French don’t know her at all. While for
Americans, she was one of the best ambassadors of France … since
Lafayette!”

But that’s the thing about ambassadors. They aren’t often known as well in their home countries as they are abroad, unless something goes wrong. London newspapers routinely reported on the American ambassadors to the United Kingdom and to the United Nations when I lived there. Can you name the American ambassador to the United Kingdom?

In her lifetime, Julia Child was recognized officially for her work distributing her love for French cuisine to the world’s largest economy by the French government, which awarded her the Légion d’honneur, or Legion of Honor. And of course, despite her issues with Madame Brassart, the battle axe at the helm of Le Cordon Bleu during her tenure, the current owner Andre Cointreau loves her. A beautiful portrait of her hangs in a coveted position in the hallway up to the kitchen.

Although Julia loved France, I wonder if she would be bothered whether they cared or not. I think she reveled more in the fact that people took her teaching to heart, evidenced by books battered by years of companionship in the kitchen. When I offered her my own tattered copy of Mastering the Art of French cooking for her to sign back in 1994, she laughed with glee at the duct tape reinforcing the spine. “Now, THIS is what I love to see!” she exclaimed.

The irony is that at the same time that Julie & Julia introduces a whole new generation to Julia Child, it may also be introducing her to the people whose cuisine she championed for more than half of her life, too.

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