tomato_kumato

When it’s berry season back at home, all that means is that we buy more berries. They are cheaper; we buy more. That’s all.

Not so for apricot season in France.

Apricot season here means that there are apricots sold by the crateful on the side of the road.

Apricot season here means that there is an apricot festival. (Read all about it here, at my travel blog.) ALERT: Shameless pimping of my own blog.

Apricot season in this house means apricot jam, and tons of it. The kids have all rotated in and out of the atelier de cuisine, where Patricia has been teaching them how to make apricot jam. Each kid gets a small pot to take home, and the rest, we dutifully eat every morning.

And sometimes in the evening, atop bowls of fromage frais.

Sometimes I have to pinch myself to remind myself that it isn’t a dream. I live in France, and here, everyone loves food just as much as I do.

As we like to say around here, it’s super-chouette.

Patricia’s Confiture aux Abricots (adapted from Vitpris)

1.4 kg apricots
1.8 kg sugar
20 cl water
one packet (37.6 g) Vitpris*

*Vitpris is a fruit-pectin based product that helps make jam set properly. It basically cuts down cooking time. If you can get your hands on some, it’s great.

Wash the apricots. Take out the apricot pits. Cook the fruit slowly over low heat with the water, covered, stirring gently every once in awhile with a wooden spoon, until the fruit has broken down.

Mix two tablespoons of the sugar with the packet of Vitpris. Sprinkle this mixture over the fruit. Bring to a boil for three minutes, and the add the rest of the sugar. Bring the mixture back up to a boil and boil for three minutes. At the end of cooking time, remove the foam from the top with a skimming spoon.

To eat immediately, simply ladle into clean jars, cover them and turn them upside down until they cool.

EDIT: I have been asked to inform you by Alex (also known as the guy in the picture below) to inform you that Bastille Day is a misnomer. The actual fête nationale in France is called Fête de la Féderation, or Federation Day. Bastille Day was judged as being too bloody a day to remember. Federation Day is a lot prettier. Please inform your friends. Thank you.

Yesterday was Bastille Day (EDIT: Federation Day) here in France, and so the night before (or the veille), we all went to the barbecue (grillade) in the center of the town of Paziols. The usually abandoned space near the pétanque courts was transformed, with the help of long folding tables and strings of twinkle lights, into a beautiful space for a fête.

First, there was the food, which is what you are all here for, I suppose.

There was an apératif of the local muscat (we’re right near Rivesaltes, famous for its sweet white wine.) There was red and white table wine served, without ceremony, in picnic-style pitchers. There were meters of white baguette.

There was an entrée of melon and jambon cru (prosciutto), served with even more muscat poured into the vacant space in the melon for the adults amongst us.

There were pork chops and mustard.

There were also sausages, wedges of Camembert, ice cream and peaches, and though I grabbed a peach at some point during the night, by the time the sausages had come out, we had other things on our minds.

There was dancing.

And more dancing.

And more dancing.

Our time here in Paziols is usually broken up into very specific time slots. We have two different “ateliers” or workshops every day, plus an afternoon and evening activity, and three meals. The first activity starts at 10:00, which means that breakfast starts around 8:00.

Breakfast during the week, as it is in most houses, is a rotating affair, where people sit down to bread, Nutella, jam, tea and coffee in between their other morning activities. At the breakfast table, there are only eight chairs for twenty-three people, but we sit, eat and move with such facility that there is no problem with the lack of seats. There is no exception to this rule, except for Sunday.

Sunday, we have “grasse matinée,” literally translated as “fat morning.” On Sunday mornings, people are allowed to sleep in, and at around 11:00 A.M., when everyone is showered and ready, we all sit down, together, at the table outside that is usually reserved for lunch and dinner.

We order viennoiseries and specialty breads from Tuchan, and so Sunday morning breakfast is croissants, pains au chocolat, brioche, croissants aux amandes, anise bread, la couronne (white bread baked in the shape of a crown), chaussons aux pommes… and whatever else looks good in the morning.

All of it is sliced and placed on platters, and milk and water are heated for chocolat chaud, tea and coffee. Finally, after the table is set and everything is prepared, we all sit along the long table, speaking French and sharing a (stereo)typical French breakfast.

I am back in France. It’s strange and nice at the same time… on the one hand, I’m bored so easily and happy to visit new places, but on the other hand, there’s something about France that brings me back every time.

I’m in Paziols again… and it’s amazing to be back. The pattern of life is really different this year. Firstly, we have more kids. Twelve more, to be exact, and the little ones from last year are the big kids this summer. Secondly, we have Patricia, Anne-Marie’s sister, here as a full-time cook. Which is nice, when you’re cooking for twenty people. Cooking for twenty people scares me.

But my first night here, I did it. I made spaghetti Carbonara (never done that before) for twenty people (also never done that before). And it was good. Really good. I’m not too sure how that happened, but I loved it.

But it’s different from making regular Carbonara.

It takes fourteen eggs.

It takes a kilo of bacon.

Which makes more than a cup of bacon grease.

It takes two kilos of spaghetti.

And it takes two American sous-chefs, of course.

Spaghetti Carbonara for Dix

Boil a massive pot of salted water. Cook two kilos of spaghetti. Meanwhile, cook 1 kilo of bacon, chopped. Drain the grease, and, in two reserved tablespoons, cook two onions, chopped. Add the bacon back to the skillet and keep hot. Whisk fourteen eggs together with salt and black pepper. Add 1 heaping tablespoon of crème fraîche. Add the hot spaghetti and hot onions and bacon to the bowl of eggs, stirring to toss and cook the eggs. Serve with grated cheese on the side.

Leftovers are great placed into a baking dish, topped with 1 cup of grated emmental cheese, and baked in a 350 degree oven until the cheese is melted.

As I’m leaving France tomorrow for a month, I thought it only appropriate to do a French-themed post today, and what is more French than pastry?

These are pastries I ordered at a café in Nice with my friends: a millefeuille, a chocolate éclair, and some sort of apple shortbread type thing. Oh, and hot chocolate, which in France seems to often be just that: that cup was essentially full of melted chocolate, and my friend who had ordered it had to ask for a cup of hot milk to mix with it.

Something I’ve noticed about the French and their desserts is the emphasis on elegance. Whereas in the States we will frequently bake a batch of cookies, a sheet cake or a fruit crumble for dessert, in France, desserts are usually purchased at a bakery. It’s hard to even find ingredients like baking soda or baking powder, or even cupcake liners and cookie cutters. The apple dessert pictured above is probably the least typical of all of these desserts: the decoration on top of the millefeuille is always perfect, the line of chocolate frosting on top of the éclair perfectly straight. The desserts look the same no matter where you buy them.

There will always be something very comforting about a slightly less-than-perfect chocolate chip cookie straight out of the oven, but I’m learning to appreciate the comfort in having a perfectly decorated chocolate ganache cake purchased and plated instead.

Wow… after a lot of difficulty, I’ve finally participated in my first Daring Bakers Challenge… and I loved it!

The challenge this month was for French bread. “Perfect,” thinks I, “I live in France!” Plus, I figure it won’t be too difficult, considering that I’ve made bread before.

I made my little baby bread ball, stuck it in the oven with the light on (thanks for the tip!) And let my kitchen steam up with the smell of bread dough.

Of course, it wasn’t nearly as easy as I thought it would be. The shaping at the end, especially, proved to be rather difficult, as is pretty obvious from my pictures. The tip in the recipe about putting a pan of water and ice in the bottom of the oven to create steam worked wonders for the crust, and the taste was good, which is what counts.

In the end, I definitely learned something, and I’m feeling much more confident in my bread-baking skills. Who knows… maybe bread will become a new part of my regular repertoire?

I’m so glad I participated in this, my first challenge! Be sure to check out the other Daring Bakers’ posts as well!

I’ve been given the official go-ahead that it’s safe to tell you about my new job! I now work for a site called wcities.com, where I write Paris restaurant reviews. In honor of this announcement, I decided to post a restaurant review that I’ve been meaning to get up here for some time… Le Serpent Qui Danse.

The name of this restaurant is taken from a poem by French writer Charles Baudelaire. It’s in the 11th arrondissement, kind of far away from a lot of touristy destinations, but it’s totally worth it.

In reality, this sort of food is not very Parisian. A lot of food that comes from other places in France has somehow found its way to Paris: the Lyonnais bûchon, the Marseillaise fish house, and the Savoyard raclette and fondue restaurants. Nevertheless, many people who come to Paris want to sample “traditional” French food go straight for the pot of melted cheese… and this is where capitalism settles in for the long haul.

The majority of fondue and raclette restaurants are decorated in a typical Savoyard/Swiss fashion: as chalets. The authenticity stops there. Mostly what you get served is a pot of thinned, melted cheese and a few cubes of bread which, I can tell you from personal experience, is not what is served in the Alps.

At Le Serpent Qui Danse, the raclette cheese is brought out on a traditional melting apparatus. Basically, there are two heaters on either side of the wedge of cheese, which the diners can arrange closer or farther away from the wedge according to their eating speed. Melted cheese is scraped from the wedge onto plates of boiled potatoes, pickles and meats. This is where Le Serpent Qui Danse proclaims its authenticity.

You have a choice of meats including a pork-free and vegetarian version (not too sure what that entails…), but when I was in the Alps I always had ham, so ham is what I ordered. Our waiter, however, was certain that there was something better, and, alongside our order, he brought a free plate of dry-cured beef. He was right.

Britney and I stuffed ourselves full of cheese, bread, meat and salad that day, and while it was a thoroughly overwhelming gastronomic experience, I would most definitely do it again.

Yes, dear reader, I’m back. It’s been an interesting month. You’ll hear all about it in the next few posts, which consist not only of the recipe for Gratin Dauphinoise (finally, Dylan, like I promised), but with stories from Mexico, Toronto, back home in New York, and Paris.

The Canadian’s back, and I can’t help smiling. I made him a huge batch of chili before I left, because he would be arriving in three days to spend three long weeks here alone. It lasted precisely 14 hours. Needless to say, he learned to survive on his own, and I have the pleasure of being cooked for every once in awhile, which is always nice. His favorite thing to make me is stir fry, but yesterday while I was napping off the jet lag from New York, he went out and got me sushi so I would have something waiting when I got home.

OK, enough of this mushy stuff. Back to the food. Or should I say, the potatoes that cause swooning. I had to make two of these casseroles when my mother’s family came for Christmas, and they were devoured alongside the crown roast of pork that my mother prepared for Christmas Eve dinner (yeah, I know, you’re not supposed to have meat on Christmas Eve. I’ve always loved the idea of doing a traditional Italian fish supper for Christmas, and you can bet that when I’m running the holiday, it will be nothing but Zuppa di Pesce and Bacala, but while my mother runs the show, her word is law.)

All this meandering brings me back to the point: my potatoes. This gratin was the first thing I ever invented successfully, and now it’s a staple around the holidays. That being said, it is a staple only around the holidays precisely because you don’t need “cheese with a couple of potatoes thrown in,” as my uncle calls it, every day of the week. Regardless, it’s delicious, and you’re lucky, because if any of my family was web savvy enough to read a blog, this recipe would not be up here: I can’t have my Christmas cooking participation rendered obsolete!

Gratin Dauphinoise

5 large yukon gold potatoes

3 cups of grated cheese (I use a combination of gruyere and emmental)

1 egg

1 cup each whole milk and heavy cream

nutmeg, salt and pepper

Grease a glass baking dish with butter or oil, and then place one layer of thinly sliced potatoes along the bottom. Sprinkle salt, pepper and nutmeg over the potato layer, and top with a layer of grated cheese. Follow with another layer of potatoes, this time sprinkling the layer just with black pepper. Continue alternating layers until you reach the last layer of potatoes. Reserve some of the cheese for the top of the gratin. Sprinkle salt, pepper and nutmeg over the top layer of potatoes. Set aside. In a saucepan, heat the cream and milk together until hot but not boiling, and add another sprinkle of nutmeg. Temper the liquid with the egg, and pour the entire contents of the pan over the gratin. Top the gratin with the reserved cheese. Cover with aluminum and bake at 350 F until the potatoes are soft, about half an hour. Remove foil and turn up the oven to 425. Bake until topping is golden brown. Cool slightly before serving. Note: recipe can be prepared and baked at 350 and the last step can be reserved until just before serving.

When I lived in France, I kind of expected to be eating gourmet food all the time. This was not the case in this working-class family from the North. Sure, I learned my gratin dauphinoise recipe from them (sorry about all the teasing… Dylan has told me I have to share this recipe, and as soon as I make it and have some pictures, it’ll get up here), and they had one of those fun little individually sized raclette machines that everyone over here seems to have, but really, there was a lot of high-quality soup from a box, a couple of pasta dishes thrown together, an amazing cheese platter, a rotisserie chicken on their son’s birthday, and these potatoes.

Sure, when they had them, it was a white porcelain bowl of new potatoes and a side dish of sauce, along with a plate of high quality ham, but it’s the sauce that matters, not the presentation, so instead of serving myself a dainty portion of potatoes, I make one big potato and add the sauce, mashing it up in a bowl.

The French also like to peel their potatoes (Britney recently shared with me that they also peel their nectarines… bizarre), but I like chunks of peel in my mashed potatoes. The family I stayed with looked at me as though I was crazy when I simply poured the yogurt sauce over my new potatoes and squashed them slightly with the tines of my fork, as they painstakingly peeled each tiny potato, slicing them into small chunks on the plate before pouring the sauce over the white flesh, the peels pushed to the very corner.

I like things the way I like them. My heat is off because I’d rather not pay for it, so I’m in my bed wrapped in two duvets, studying for exams. I don’t want to go grocery shopping, and I have to clean out my fridge. Potatoes are what are available, so potatoes I shall eat.

Pommes de terre au yaourt (serves one)

Boil one potato for about 20 minutes, or until a fork goes through without resistance. (Alternatively, you could steam the potato, but I don’t have a steamer.) Meanwhile, combine half a cup of fromage frais (or plain yogurt, for those of you in the states) with a tablespoon of good dijon mustard and a teaspoon of dried chives. Mix with a fork and add the potato. Use the tines of your fork to mash the potato into the sauce. Consume. Leave the dishes for later.

It’s a really good thing I got interested in cooking, or else I would have spent all of last July eating stuck-together spaghetti with a bit of jarred sauce.

Let me explain.

As those who have been following this blog for a reasonable amount of time may know, I spent this past July helping an old French tutor jump-start a language program in Southwestern France. She and her brother bought a house in the tiny town of Paziols, an hour away from Perpignan. She, her nephew Alex, Alex’s sometimes-present father Wolf, four of Anne-Marie’s brightest early-teenage students and I went down to the old vineyard house this summer for the month to experiment, to see what could be done in the area and to make plans for next year, when she will run two programs, one in July, one in August, with the help of Alex, me, and some of the kids who were campers last year.

Tangent. Back to the ratatouille. You see, when we arrived all bedraggled (this was right after my backpacking trip through Western Europe), and drove the hour out to the house, there really wasn’t anything to eat. Alex made a pot of pasta, but didn’t use enough water and overcooked it (can’t blame him… he’s French. His mother has been cooking for him for his entire life). That and some cheese was our dinner, and I knew right away that things were going to have to change. I need my vegetables.

Later on, I spoke with Anne-Marie, cautiously bringing up the idea of teaching the kids how to make some typical French dishes while we were there. She loved the idea and asked for suggestions, and the first thing that my vitamin deprived body thought of was ratatouille. She and I set out for the tiny épicerie, and she picked out some of the best summer vegetables. We got home, she pulled out an apron, and handed it to me.

What?

Apparently, this Frenchwoman considered herself a New Yorker. She made a mean quiche Lorraine, but I was going to be making this ratatouille… if I could figure it out. I started slicing the vegetables semi-confidently, wondering how in the world I was going to pull this off. OK. Think. Think like Alton Brown: food is science.

Onions in first, sweat them a bit, bring out the natural sweetness. A little garlic… hell, who am I kidding? A lot of garlic. I need all the help I can get. Then the eggplant… that takes longer than zucchini… right? Oh well… it’s seared now on both sides and nice and brown, so in goes the zucchini. That’s brown… now some tomatoes. How many? Who knows. I add two, then three, mush them down and try to create some semblance of a sauce. I cheat and reach for the tomato paste because it doesn’t look like enough, and then I toss in a few more tomatoes, just to be safe. Also because I ate half of the first ones while I was slicing them… they were summer tomatoes, and I couldn’t help it. Herbes de provence, salt and pepper. And then Alex is over my shoulder.

“Tu sais cuisiner?” You know how to cook?

“Un peu.” A little. Sometimes I set off the fire alarm, and I’ve undercooked chicken and had to throw it back under the broiler. I keep that tidbit to myself.

“Ca sent bon.” Smells good. It does, like onions and garlic. I wish I could taste it, but the kitchen is too central to do it without anyone catching me, so I feign confidence, prod a piece of zucchini with a fork, and declare it done.

Apparently, the ratatouille went over well: I decided what to cook for the rest of the summer. Anne-Marie taught all the kids to make mayonnaise and salad dressing from scratch, but all summer, my greatest pride was still in that first dinner. I still don’t use a recipe for ratatouille… every time I make it in my tiny Paris kitchen, I remember my experiment in the house in Paziols, and I feel like a real cook… before I burn cupcakes while I’m giving myself a manicure again.