Salad « Tomato Kumato

July 6, 2010

Tomato Salad and My Junior Counselor

Filed under: Salad — Tags: france, paziols, Salad, tomatoes — emiglia @ 9:48 pm

It’s been awhile. I’m sorry… really I am. I had the best of intentions to come on here and write every evening, but when your days start at six and end at midnight or one in the morning, it’s all I can do to finish my freelance articles before passing out face-down on my keyboard. I tried to write a blog yesterday, but I’m not entirely sure it was in English or French, and when even I have no idea what I’m writing, I know that the only thing I can do is down another coffee and step away from the keyboard.

It’s OK, though. I’m back now, with lots of things to share. Mostly, though, I want to tell a story about the two little Turkish girls who appeared at our doorway a few days ago.

It’s astounding to me that less than a week ago, the house had only a handful of teenagers in it, and now it’s filled with children. These two sweet things were the first of the group to come to the house, with suitcases holding matching nightgowns and matching headbands for sleeping. They change their clothes at least three times a day, and they have all sorts of jewelry and perfume that they put on au hasard, as though dinner in Paziols were some sort of fancy outing instead of a family-style spread on the terrace in front of the vines and the setting sun.

Two days ago, the other kids began to arrive, with them a handful of Turkish girls whose French was limited at best. The older of the pair of sisters immediately took it upon herself to be a “junior counselor,” putting them into straight lines with buddies, making sure the younger ones had sunscreen on and translating for those who didn’t understand.

I watched her as we walked to the Fontaine des Eaux, walking on the street side of the sidewalk, the way the rest of us animateurs tend to do, herding the little ones like sheep and carrying their towels and water bottles when they realized how heavy they were.

Coming back to Paziols is always a mix of emotions for me. It’s my favorite place in the world–there’s no denying it. I love everything about the vines, the old roads that wind through the hills, the little hidden spots we’ve found. There’s something about this place that makes me want to be all alone here to cherish it, to be able to sit at the water’s edge and dip my feet into the river that runs so pure that fresh, wild mint grows at its banks. It’s so fresh you could drink it, if you wanted to.

But that’s not how I experience Paziols–not by a long shot. Instead, I’m here with the kids, making sure that they all have a sandwich and a banana and a water bottle, and though it’s strange not to be able to sit and let my thoughts run and flow as freely as I like, to sit as quietly as I do when I’m alone with just a notebook to write down a stray idea that I think might be worth hanging onto, there’s something about seeing the elation on the kids’ tired faces when they realize we’ve finally arrived where we’ve been headed for the past twenty minutes, watching as they descend on the water like a pack of wild animals dying of thirst, that makes me appreciate it even more, as though seeing it through their eyes lets me relive what it was like the first summer I came here, when the trees leaning in over the water were new to me too, when the bridge we now know is there was something we had to discover.

My Junior Counselor jumped in with the rest of them, splashing around and posing giddily for pictures that I took as I waded and prayed that no one would knock me over as I held my camera above my head to keep it dry. She’s just a kid herself, after all: once the fun of newfound responsibility’s allure had faded, she was happy as anyone to wait to have a cookie passed to her and to have someone waiting at the water’s edge with a dry towel.

Still, there’s something about her that makes her different from the other kids: we made our way back home and I descended on the kitchen, as I’m known to do, and she immediately appeared, dressed to the nines, of course, with a sparkly dress covered in sequins and elbow-length cotton gloves.

“Je peux t’aider?” she asked, and as I always do, I looked around for something she could do, some job she could get her hands on so she would feel useful without making me worry about knives and hot oil. The tomato salad, the same one I’ve been making for the past four years, was the perfect thing. And so my little Junior Counselor carefully picked fresh basil leaves from the plant in the garden, added salt and oil–”Tu me dis stop?”–until I told her it was enough, and mixed carefully with a wooden spoon until everything was ready.

She fades back and forth between being nearly an adult to just another little girl. She came with me to pick up peaches from the marchande de pêches, and she immediately grew tired and wanted to be held and cuddled and amused. But as soon as Anne-Marie arrived with the three younger Turkish girls, Junior Counselor was back to giving orders and telling the little ones what they could do to help.

I jokingly call her my mini-me now. She’s taken over some of my daily tasks–she writes the menu on the chalkboard in the kitchen every night and carefully wipes down the whiteboard to write the schedule for the next day before she goes to bed. In the morning, as I cut bread for tartines, she appears and, without even asking, starts setting the table: assiettes, bols, couverts. She shows the younger kids where everything is and helps them to put it in the right place.

And then when she’s done, she comes to where I’m sitting and climbs into my lap and waits for a hug.

“Ta robe est jolie,” she tells me, petting the fabric of my cotton dress. I kiss the top of her head, because with little kids, sometimes all you want to do is kiss and hug them, and all they want is to be kissed and hugged. The Junior Counselor is never far now–she can tell when I’m ready to start making dinner, and she appears, already wearing an apron to cover whatever dress she’s picked out for the occasion.

“Je peux t’aider?” she asks. Even if there’s nothing to do, I find something, just so I can see the look on her face as everything comes together, and I can remember what that was like when I was eleven and things were that new.

Salade de Tomates

This salad is perfect to make with kids, because the recipe is so not exact. Good, fresh tomatoes and good olive oil are key here. After that, there’s no need to worry.

5-6 large, fresh tomatoes, diced
2-3 cloves of garlic, pressed
3 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
2-3 tsp. salt
5-6 fresh basil leaves

Combine the tomatoes, garlic, oil and salt to taste in a large bowl. Rip the basil leaves into the salad and toss to combine. Serve with a smile, and be sure to say “merci” to your junior counselor.

La Fontaine des Eaux–Paziols

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May 16, 2010

Festival Frolicking and Salade Nicoise

Filed under: Fish, Restaurant Reviews, Salad — Tags: cannes, pool beach, Salad, salade nicoise — emiglia @ 7:42 am

I’ve been holding out on you all, and I’m sorry. I have a job at one of the most glamorous events in the world, and I haven’t even posted any pictures of famous people or reviews of Wall Street or the new Robin Hood. For shame.

: Not-so-famous people climbing the red-carpeted stairs for a 4:00 premiere.

Well, I’m sorry to disappoint… but I haven’t seen any famous people, and the only films I’ve seen have been shorts at the Short Film Corner in the basement of the Palais. You see, my job, as most people who work in entertainment are bound to tell you, is not all that glamorous. I use a fairly ancient internet connection (seriously… it reminds me of my old AOL 2.0, when we had to disconnect the phone to go online) to post videos of red carpet and press conference footage that I get from my colleagues who actually go to these events and film them. They call out the names of famous people to get them to look their way, and I edit the clips into one-minute segments and post them online for the world to see. See? Boring.

So yesterday, I decided I had to do something fun. Well, that, and my roommate here au collège (the same school I stayed at when I passed my DALF almost three years ago), who is at the festival solely for the parties, decided that she was going to do something fun, and I felt lame trudging back to work again. Instead, I took the liberty of a long lunch, as people often do here in France, and walked from the Palais down to the Palm Beach Casino, at the end of the Croisette. There, at the de luxe Pool Beach, you can rent a transat (lounge chair) for 30 Euro and spend the afternoon being treated like a celebrity–or at least someone very, very rich and important.

We started with a bottle of rosé, the perfect beverage for a beach day, even if Cannes is a little bit cooler than it has been in past years (we wrapped ourselves with towels to stay warm and let the rosé do the rest). I then ordered a salade nicoise avec thon mi-cuit, which is a nicois salad with seared tuna–an absolutely delicious meal, especially when eaten off your lap as you stare off into the cool blue Med.

I was lucky that my friends had arrived early to snag us seats by the shore–most of the transats are closer to the pool that give the beachside restaurant its name, where a DJ was spinning electronica and house and dancers were high on platforms near the pool, a pool that people were keeping their safe distance from, as the wind was picking up, and no one wanted to be left in the cold.

We people-watched from our chairs for awhile, as a group of pipol (celebrities (that I didn’t recognize)) came in off a little put-put boat and picked their way carefully along the pontoon until the arrived on the beach, greeted by the hostess who somehow managed to pull off leopard-print high-heeled ankle boots, even two inches deep in sand.

As for me, I was more than happy to remain barefoot, sipping my glass of wine and watching everyone around me, that is, until 4:00, when the grey skies that had been looming to the west suddenly rolled in, bringing a couple of raindrops that had us up and out of there in a hurry.

Some were not so quick to leave, as they created tents of parasols and waited out the storm. We were lucky enough to snag a cab in the parking lot, and so I headed back to work at the Palais, where people were huddled under umbrellas as they watched those ascending the red-carpeted stairs for a 4:00 film. I was more than happy to get back to the safety of our dry office in the basement of the Palais, where my headphones and editing software were waiting for me. OK, so I’m a geek–what do you want from me?

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April 28, 2010

Haddock with Roasted Tomato Salsa

Filed under: Fish, Salad, cheese — emiglia @ 11:44 pm

When I was growing up, the Childhood BFF and I were inseparable. We met in preschool, and soon enough I was taking weekend refuge at her house–the home of an only child is like a sanctuary for the oldest of four, and I spent more weekends at hers than at mine, singing along to old Beatles’ records and riding around Bridgehampton in the back of her father’s antique Ford.

In middle school, though, we started growing apart, as middle schoolers tend to do, and by the time I went to high school and then college, I had nearly completely forgotten about our plans to be neighbors for life–college roommates and married at the same time, to live together and raise our children together forever.

It wasn’t until that summer–the summer four years ago when I was a waitress on Long Island, the summer I started this blog–that we got back in touch. It had been 7 years since we’d really spoken, but, lonely and bored without my boarding school friends, I tracked her down on MySpace (before the obsessive days of Facebook) and took a chance by reaching out and sending a message.

“Omigod,” I got back, what I now know as her constant refrain. She met the Hampton Jitney when I came in for my Tuesday off that week, and we sat at a table by the window in Starbucks for hours, finishing one another’s sentences as though the past near-decade had never happened at all.

After that, I was a staple at her house again, waltzing back in as though I’d never left. We spent our nights wrapped up in blankets in the pull-out couch in her living room, huddled together as we watched reruns of Everyday Italian and Unwrapped and 30-Minute Meals.

“How weird is this? That we’re both into food?” I asked. It was the summer after my attempts at recreating Italian classics, the summer after the Childhood BFF had started her journey into Japanese cuisine.

“I have to show you something,” she said, opening a browser window on her iBook. “I found this great site called Slashfood. It’s a food blog.”

“A what?”

Yep… four years ago, it was the Childhood BFF who introduced me to this world of Wordpress and macro settings and recipe writing, just like she introduced me to the world of John Lennon, uncooked pasta as the perfect snack, Baby-Sitter’s Club books, puffed rice with sugar, sleeping in on the weekends… The simple but important things in life.

Now, the Childhood BFF and I are grown-ups–long past the days we were inventing concoctions in the kitchen on our own fake cooking show (modeled after Jacques Pepin and Wolfgang Puck–she did the accents). We used dry ingredients–salt, pepper, sugar, vinegar, dry rotini–we weren’t allowed to touch the stove. We took handfuls of dry spaghetti when we went on drives with her parents, plotting our futures in the back seat. Sometimes, I let myself get lost in time for a little while, and when I come back, I have her over for dinner.

We text each other excitedly all day as we wait for the moment when we’re both liberated–she from school and me from work. We go to the Gristedes and peruse the aisles, finishing one another’s sentences yet again as we throw things into our basket.

We get home and make fun of one another, of the way we explain our motives in the kitchen, because we’re so used to being with people who don’t know, and we know. “I add orange juice to the roasted tomatoes-”

“Yeah. The sugar and acid. Like with a really good-”

“Tomato sauce.”

“You want these sliced or chopped?”

“Sliced. The texture is better-”

“For caramelized onions.”

It’s nothing fancy or haute cuisine–fish, tomatoes, bread and salad. But as we choke on our laughter and spear apples with gorgonzola, I remember eating dinner at her mother’s table, our “R-rated” carrot rounds slick with oil flying from our plates and onto one another’s, and I’m happy for moments like this, when I don’t have to worry about being outside my own head, because someone knows me well enough to climb into it with me.

Haddock with Roasted Tomato Salsa

2 cups cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
1 shallot, minced
1/2 red onion, chopped
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. olive oil
2 tbsp. orange juice
freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp. Italian seasoning

2 filets haddock
salt and pepper
1 tsp. olive oil

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Toss all the ingredients except the black pepper and Italian seasoning on a baking sheet, and bake until the tomatoes have released their juices and shriveled slightly, about 1 hour. Stir every 15 minutes, and if the sugars begin to burn, add a bit of water to the pan. When cooked, season with pepper and Italian seasoning.

Season the haddock on both sides with salt and pepper. Preheat a small frying pan over medium-high heat, and add the oil. Cook the haddock 2 minutes per side and remove to plates. Top with the tomato salsa.

Frisée Salad with Gorgonzola and Apples
3 cups frisée lettuce
1 apple, sliced
2 Tbsp. gorgonzola (or other blue cheese) crumbled
1 shallot, sliced
1/2 red onion, sliced

2 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
1 Tbsp. white wine vinegar
salt and pepper

Toss all salad ingredients together in a large bowl. Whisk the olive oil and vinegar together and season to taste with salt and pepper. When ready to serve, toss the salad with the dressing.

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January 21, 2010

Au Revoir

Filed under: Salad, cheese — Tags: goat's cheese, lardon, paris, Salad — emiglia @ 4:08 pm

“When you went home this time, I had a feeling you weren’t coming back,” he says when I tell him, finally. I’ve only just admitted it to myself: the next step is saying it out loud, and who else to say it to than my best friend, this extension of me who, by now, knows everything about me, just because I needed someone for this exact purpose: to hear the truth said out of my very own mouth so that I can finally start to believe it myself.

“I didn’t,” I reply. “But I ran out of options.”

“I know.”

***

When I lived in Paris, I very rarely did things that most people consider to be “Parisian.”

My visits to the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay were relegated to the handful of weekends I had out-of-town visitors who clambered to see the famous paintings I took for granted. My strolls through the Jardin de Luxembourg were the exception, not the rule, of my daily excursions to God-knows-where. And while my friends and I were known for uniting on most evenings over a bottle (or five) of wine, these were enjoyed barefoot on the floors of our apartments, scattered across the city, and not at the Café de Flore as we waxed on about existentialist theories clad in black and berets.

Why, then, am I overcome with the overwhelming urge, now, to watch any and every movie about Paris and reminisce. I watch La Maman et la Putain and imagine myself at les Deux Magots smoking endless Gauloise cigarettes with Jean-Pierre Léaud, though I never sat for even one minute at the famous brasserie, forgoing it for cheaper dive bars further down the Seine. I am glued to my screen as Chansons d’amour plays before me, and I imagine myself having Sunday lunch in la Bastille even though I know my true Sunday lunches were, more often than not, either taken in Breuillet at Alex’s parents’ hotel, or else not at all, as we slept off Saturday night’s events well into Sunday afternoon.

When I left Paris, I forbade myself from doing any of these things in my last few days there. I didn’t want to have “one last” walk around my favorite neighborhood of Montmartre, “one last” meal at the brasserie that Emese and I had visited countless times. My last trips to spicy soup, to the cinémathèque du Quartier Latin, to the vintage shops in the Marais… I wanted all of it to be genuine, for the memories I associated with these places to be real, and not that forced reminiscence that comes when you leave a place, trying to accumulate memories, like so many souvenirs. That is, after all, the word in French for memory: un souvenir.

“Comment peut-on s’acheter un souvenir ?” I often asked myself as I watched people purchase handfuls of cheap trinkets with “Paris” emblazoned on them to stuff in their suitcases and bring home. How can they be attempting to buy memories? I had judged it pathetic and sad and therefore forbade myself from what I judged as similar strolls down memory lane. Trying to glean all that was esoterically Paris in a last-minute dash attempt was lame and sad and wrong, especially when I was so convinced that I would return. Paris, after all, was my home. I had a plan, a way that I would force my dreams to come true… I just hadn’t laid all the groundwork yet.

“When you went home this time, I had a feeling you weren’t coming back,” he said, and as I heard it, my heart broke.

For whatever reason, now isn’t the time. I have to accept it, because there’s honestly nothing else I can do about it. For whatever reason, the universe has come together to decide that right now, in this moment, I will not be in Paris. My parents have made it easy for me to stay in New York, I’ve cut all major ties with the people who used to pin me to that city that I so fell in love with. Funny, how quick I was to try to leave when it was within my control, and now that it’s been taken from me, I feel as though I’ve been broken up with.

I can plan and pray as much as I want, but even I’ve come to terms with the fact that September in Paris is not in the cards for me.

I’m not sorry about those last few days in Paris: sure, it would have been nice to take one last walk along the Champs-Elysées, to pop the cork of one last bottle of cheap Champagne in front of the Eiffel Tower. But on the other hand, it’s nice to only have those genuine memories, the ones I created when my days in Paris seemed limitless. It’s nice to have left Paris, not by saying adieu, but au revoir, until we meet again.

I can’t say for sure when that will be. I like to think it will be sooner rather than later, that now that I’ve committed myself to staying in the States, the perfect opportunity will arise, as it often does when you’re least expecting it, and I’ll be back at Charles de Gaulle airport once again, walking out into that cloud of billowing cigarette smoke to find a taxi who will take me to my familiar péripherique, to where I can finally see all those twelve-story buildings that make up the blocks of the city that stole my heart away from New York.

But I can’t say for sure when that will be, or if Paris will ever be my home again. I don’t think my mother thought, when she left Paris more than twenty years ago, that her last flight out would be the last time she would call it home, but now she’s a New Yorker, through and through, and she won’t live there again.

I guess my only regret is the fact that I had it: for one brief moment, I lived in Europe, everyone’s dream. My backyard was the Boulevard St-Germain, my playground the Jardin de Luxembourg. I snacked on baguette and quenched my thirst with Bordeaux. I lived in France, and it’s gone… at least for now.

I’m embracing everything that is, now. I don’t want to feel this sort of regret when, someday, I leave New York or Argentina or anyplace else for that matter–this irksome itch that says that maybe, just maybe, I didn’t take full advantage of the fairytale life I was leading. I am living every day for today, because I never know when the “last day” will creep up on me again, and I’ll be left, once more, with mere memories of a place and a time that used to be normal, of a place that was, for a moment, my chez moi, my everything, my home.

As for the food, I offer you today something that I no longer have access to: one of those perfectly French things that can be picked up at your local Monoprix along with the milk and eggs, but that once you’re back in the States is a remarkable delicacy : Cabrichaud au Lardon.

If you, like me, now, don’t have access to this perfect specimen of cheese, get some bacon and wrap it around flattened rounds of goat’s cheese. It’s not exactly the same, but it will still be delicious.

Salade de Cabrichaud au Lardon

1 package of Cabrichaud au Lardon OR 4 rounds goat’s cheese and 4 slices of bacon. (To prepare: flatten the goat’s cheese gently with the palm of your hand. Wrap each slice in raw bacon.)
1/2 head green leaf lettuce
1 peach
2 tsp. olive oil
1 tsp. cider vinegar
1/2 tsp. Dijon mustard
salt and pepper

Heat a nonstick frying pan over medium heat. Add the cheese to the pan and cook without moving, two minutes per side.

Meanwhile, combine the oil, vinegar, mustard, salt and pepper in a jar with a lid. Shake to combine.

Toss the lettuce with the vinaigrette in a large bowl, and then distribute between two plates. Section the peach, and arrange the slices amongst the greens. Remove the hot cheese from the pan and place on top of the bed of greens. Serve immediately with a cool glass of white Bordeaux.

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January 11, 2010

Carrottes Râpées

Filed under: Salad — Tags: carrots, Salad — emiglia @ 11:08 pm

I get this odd sort of satisfaction from performing relatively mundane everyday tasks. I used to think that it was linked to language, that it was the satisfaction of employing phrases I had practiced over and over again in class in the real world.

“Combien coûtent les tomates?” I would casually ask the market vendor at Place Maubert Mutualité, even though I have mountains of tomatoes sitting on my counter at home.

“Donde se puede alquilar un bici?” I would finally ask the lady who works at the front desk at my language school in San Sebastian after practicing in my head over and over, even though I probably wouldn’t end up renting a bike: I like walking too much, even in the rain, and if I ride a bike, I won’t be able to wear my dresses, which are better in the rain… the hems of my jeans get too wet.

“Deux baguettes, ’sil vous plait,” with a smile and an obligatory five-second conversation about the weather to the woman who runs the tiny épicerie in Paziols.

I had taken this explanation for my otherwise strange elation at asking these simple questions in stride; I had become aware of the fact that when I walked away from a social situation with a tiny smile on my face, the smile was a result of the use of my languages, pretty much the only thing I can do on a daily basis that makes it all seem worth it: the years and years I spent studying grammar (or pretending to) and asking everyone I knew to please, please, please correct me so that I could finally end up here–a place where I feel confident asking anyone pretty much anything in French or Spanish… though I may have to call blinds “the things that cover the window” in Spanish, and I’ll always ask for seven or nine of something in French so that they don’t have to hear me say “weet” instead of “uit,” pronouncing the number like a bread ingredient because I can’t for the life of me get my lips to make that sound (a high front rounded vowel, for those of you who care), at the beginning of a word. I have no problem saying “tu,” but I won’t say “huit.” I won’t.

But being back in New York, I realize that i’ts not a linguistic thing… not at all. There’s no reason I should be proud of my ability to speak English, and yet I live for asking the train conductor, “Does this train stop at Princeton Junction?” I love when people ask me for directions and to send them on their way, “Just make a right on 8th avenue, and head uptown four blocks.” What is it about these tiny, simple things that I love so much? I don’t know. My theory has been debunked, and all I can do now is enjoy it.

I shouldn’t enjoy making carrottes rapées this much either. This traditional French salad is nothing more than shredded carrots and vinaigrette… it’s simple and not terribly exciting, but I love making it anyway. I love making it because of the way we called it “raped carrots” (a little off-color… sorry) when we first moved to France. I love it because I’ve eaten it in every city in every region of France I’ve lived: it’s eaten in the north, in the south, in Paris… everywhere. Mostly I love it because it’s simple, and I think that’s as good a reason as any to love something.

Carrottes Rapées

3 large carrots, grated
1 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
the juice of 1/2 lemon
salt and black pepper
1 tsp. dried basil (this is not traditional, but I like it)

Combine all of the ingredients in a large bowl and toss to combine. Allow the salad to sit for at least fifteen minutes, covered, before serving. Can be kept, covered, in the fridge for up to three days.

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September 8, 2009

Tomato Salad

Filed under: Salad — Tags: tomatoes — emiglia @ 4:55 pm

I don’t know when my home stopped being my home.

It seems as though it just happened yesterday, in a split second, that moment before sleep and awake and suddenly it was gone. But I know that’s not how it was, because if it were, I would be able to say when and why.

For me, home has become something else: the real world, the hungover morning spent piecing together the bad decisions of the night before. Some people say–make that most people–that you have to go home at some point: bars close, clubs kick you to the curb, your coat hastily retrieved from the coat check, and you start passing the early birds on their way to work or decked out in full spandex for a quick morning jog as you contiue your bleary jaunt through the city during that odd time of day that seems normal to most people but that you thought you would never see…

But how lovely a thing–to continue running on fumes, to go without sleep, to allow last night to continue into this morning without a break, to never let the party end. Because once the music stops, when you see it all in the morning through the stark and clear lenses of the daylight and dismal working folk, you start to wonder if what you’re doing is what you should be doing. You start to question, asking yourself how much longer you can continue dancing all night and smoking all day and sharing furtive and illicit kisses with people you barely know… or people you perhaps know just a little too well. Someone pulls the plug at some point, someone brings the house lights up, and you’re left standing with nothing but the clothes on your back and the money you managed not to spend wondering if you’d rather go home or wander the city streets instead.

I’ve been gone a long time. I’m sorry, but then again, I’m not. Paziols took a lot out of me, both with regards to my cooking and to my writing, and going home really does put things into perspective.

I’m back to my regular gallavanting ways, however–I don’t think this party is ever going to end. This time, I’m in San Sebastian-Donostia on the Basque coast of Spain. I’m surfing, tasting tapas and eating tomatoes–back home they were the last of the season, but here, the season seems to continue all the time–and I’m dancing my way home along the coast every night.

Emiglia’s Perfect Tomato Salad

1 kilo tomatoes (I like to use a variety of red, orange and yellow tomatoes on the vine and kumatoes, but use whatever looks good… even cherry or grape tomatoes)
2 cloves garlic, pressed
1-2 tsp. salt
2 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil (use the good stuff here)
2 tsp. dried basil
1 tsp. dried oregano
1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
1 green onion, minced

Cut the tomatoes in eighths and place them in a glass or plastic bowl (no metal). Add the rest of the ingredients, including the washed vines of the vine-on tomatoes if you used them. Toss to combine. Allow to sit, covered, at room temperature for an hour. Remove the vines and toss once more before serving.

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August 9, 2009

Quiche

Filed under: Eggs, Pork, Salad, Vegetarian Main Dishes, cheese — Tags: quiche, quiche lorraine — emiglia @ 10:22 am

We drive up the path, and even though I’ve been self-consciously wedged between my boyfriend’s mother and one of his best friends for the past several hours as we rode the straight-shot highway from the north–Paris–to the south, I can’t help squirming in my seat, causing the close physical contact I’ve been trying to avoid this whole time as I knock manouche #1’s elbow three or four times, craning my neck to see around him, to drink in everything.

Memories stream back into my consciousness as the reality sets in: grapevines, tiny winding roads. Castles so old I can’t even fathom it. Familiar signposts leading to even more familiar locations–I smile as I remember, not even having realized until this very moment that I had forgotten–the names of winemakers in the region, of nearby cafés, of the champion rugby team.

This feeling used to only come from Long Island–the only true home I had for years: the feeling of something, of some place, that is just so inexplicably right.

When I left Paziols last year, I wasn’t sure I would be coming back–plans were crumbling and rebuilding themselves left and right: a for-sure move to Argentina slowly became a quick jaunt to Spain, and a firm decision to leave Paris at the end of December was fading away as I realized that maybe I would be able to face my 18-month itch–that need I feel to move every year and a half–that maybe someone was more important to me than that feeling, that need, to move on.

But I was back–and, in spite of myself, in spite of the fact that I was dejected about the loss of my almost-job in Africa, despite the fact that I had no real idea what I would be doing at the end of the summer, I was back in Paziols for five weeks, and I allowed myself to be happy about it.

I have turned Paziols into a true home over the past few weeks–a metamorphosis that you, my readers and internet confidantes (no better kind) have witnessed as it unfolded, slowly creeping in around the edges, the way the midday sun here creeps into the cool and breezy mornings so that you don’t even notice until you realize you’re gulping down diabolo menthes by the glassful.

It seems bizarre that I only got here five weeks ago: I feel like I just got here, but at the same time, I feel as though I’ve been here forever. The house feels as though it has my imprint on it–my place at the table, in the chairs by the bookshelf, in my bed by the window in the attic–no place has seemed so right in a long time.

The past few days have been peppered with talk–talk of making programs in Paziols a more permanent thing. My heart skips a beat as I plan–my default setting–plan for adult classes in winemaking and cuisine, coordinating groups with lessons at the boulanger in Cucugnan. I imagine what it would be like to live here all the time–to welcome, not only two groups of children every summer, but other groups, other people, throughout the year. To share Paziols with even more people, and to get to know it better myself. I know it’s just a dream, just a haze in the distant and indefinite future, but for me, it already feels so real I can taste it.

And taste it I will… in time. For now, it’s goodbye again: goodbye to the light pink rosé we’ve been drinking all summer, to the fresh cheeses that sit upon our table every day. Goodbye to fresh baguettes every morning and three or four heads of lettuce consumed every day.

It’s goodbye to the tomatoes we’ve come to love–the ones that I dressed simply with garlic, basil, olive oil, oregano and feta cheese and made into the quintessential summer salad here in Paziols–the one that was missed the day I ran out of tomatoes and didn’t think anyone would notice.

It’s goodbye to perfect summer dishes that I loved to make and typical winter dishes that I sweated over but made anyway because you can’t come to southwestern France without tasting classic cassoulet.

This quiche was a lunchtime standard this summer, one that I could throw together over my shoulder as I spelled out directions slowly and carefully in French to sous-chefs unsure of the meanings of the words dorer, demi and ajouter.

It’s easy enough to throw together quickly for a crowd, but tasty enough to serve with a simple green salad as a classy summer dinner, for quiche, like so many things French has become synonomous with class back in the States, where I’m headed tomorrow. As for me, it’s just a synonym with France, with everything that has been my life for the past two years. And, like everything else, I find it simply delicious.

Quiche Lorraine
5 eggs
25 cl. crème fraîche
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. black pepper
1 pinch fresh nutmeg
400 g. lardons
2 onions, diced
1 refrigerated pâte brisée
1/2 cup grated emmental cheese

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Combine the eggs, crème fraîche, salt, pepper and nutmeg in a bowl until well combined and smooth. Set aside.

Heat the lardons in a skillet over medium heat. When they begin to release some grease, add the onions. Cook until the onions and lardons are golden brown.

Roll the pâte brisée out in a tart pan. Spread the lardons and onions over the bottom, and pour in the egg mixture. Sprinkle the emmental cheese over the top.

Bake for 15-20 minutes, until the top of the quiche is golden. It will puff up slightly, but don’t worry: as soon as you remove it from the oven, it will fall back into place. Serve with green salad simply dressed with homemade vinaigrette.

Vegetarian Quiche
5 eggs
25 cl. crème fraîche
2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. black pepper
1 tsp. dried basil
1 pinch fresh nutmeg
1 tbsp. butter
1 tsp. olive oil
1 carrot, diced
1 onion, diced
1 stalk celery, diced
1 red pepper, diced
1 orange pepper, diced
1 refrigerated pâte brisée
1/2 cup grated emmental cheese

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Combine the eggs, crème fraiche, salt, pepper, basil and nutmeg in a bowl until well combined. Set aside.

Meanwhile, heat the butter and olive oil over medium heat in a skillet. Add the vegetables and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened and golden, about 10 minutes.

Roll out the pâte brisée in a tart pan. Spread the vegetables over the bottom, and then pour in the egg mixture. Sprinkle the emmental cheese over the top.

Homemade Vinaigrette
1 tsp. French mustard
50 cl. cider vinegar
50 cl. extra virgin olive oil
50 cl. sunflower oil
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. black pepper

Place all ingredients in a clean jar with a lid. Shake to combine. Taste for seasoning. Use to dress clean, cool lettuce just before serving.

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July 19, 2009

Normal

Filed under: Pie, Salad, Side Dishes — Tags: garlic, lemon, paziols, radishes, tarte au citron, tomatoes — emiglia @ 11:59 am

It’s incredible how quickly something that was foreign and bizarre can become a natural and normal part of your daily life. It’s even more strange how quickly something that used to be normal can seem so far away.

I live in Paris: I’m used to it by now, used to saying it, used to going about my daily life with La Poste and Champion and the Paris métro as frequent players in my day to day. But when I first moved to Paris, everything seemed new and exciting and shiny. I craved the days where I would get to say to someone, nonchalantly, of course, though I was jumping with excitement on the inside, “I live in Paris.”

After three months back in the South, Paris–and everything that goes along with it–seems so far away. Gone are days filled with minutes that were just for me. Gone are afternoons of walking around and discovering new things. Gone are early evenings of apéro and Le Grand Journal–the news program I slowly became addicted to over the last few months of being in Paris.

Normal, now, is dinner at nine on the terrace. Normal is buying enough potatoes to feed an army without blinking an eye. Normal is throwing ten or so packs of jambon cuit into the caddy at the supermarket–it doesn’t matter if we don’t have sandwiches planned on the menu… they’ll get eaten by someone eventually.

Normal is translating every five seconds what someone around me is saying into another language. Normal is trying to find ways to reword the French jeux de mots printed on the inside of Carambar wrappers, that French candy that gets devoured the minute I walk into the house with a pack.

Normal is running into the woman who runs a program for French teenagers in our tiny town while in line at the tinier supermarket. Normal is upping the count for dinner from 17 to 25 when we decide to have these guests over just a few hours before we plan to sit down to eat.

Normal is throwing several dozen sausages on the grill and preparing a few pounds of tomatoes for a salad.

Normal is selecting about seven cheeses for a cheese board, knowing everything would be gone by the end of the night.

I’m aware, somehow, that soon this will all seem faraway and hazy, in the same way that Paris has become. I know that once I’m back home in the States this August, Westhampton and driving everywhere and taking the New York City subway will be my new normal, and I know that that too will fade when I leave after just one short month for Spain. I know that this is the essence of the life that I have made for myself, and I know that normal, for me, will never be just one thing.

But for just a few weeks, I like to pretend that this is the way that my normal life will always be, that mornings of making French toast in bulk and evenings of serving up tart tarte au citron will always be a part of my day-to-day. I know that it’s a lie, but even for me–”tell me like it is, even if it hurts”–I’m going to tune out the whisper that tells me that I’m just kidding myself, have another glass of Muscat de Rivesaltes and hide behind the chirp of the cicadas for just a little longer.

Tomato Salad

6-8 on-the-vine tomatoes in various colors, vines reserved
1 spring onion, minced
2 cloves of garlic, pressed
3-4 Tbsp. olive oil
salt
1 tsp. dried basil

Cut the tomatoes into chunks and mix in a glass bowl with the onion, garlic, olive oil, a generous amount of salt and the basil. Add the vines and allow to marinate at least one hour outside the fridge. Remove the vines and toss before serving.

Tarte au Citron

4 large eggs, cold
1 1/4 cup sugar
1 cup fresh lemon juice
1 Tbps. fresh lemon zest
12 Tbsp. butter, cold
2 refrigerated pâtes brisée

Prebake the pie crusts in a 350 degree oven until just crisp, 5 minutes.

Whisk the eggs, sugar and zest together. Heat in a double boiler until the eggs begin to foam. Add the lemon juice, bit by bit, whisking constantly. When the mixture has the consistency of loose lemon curd, remove from the heat and mix in the butter.

Pour the filling into the crusts and heat under the broiler until just set. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Comments (4)

June 16, 2009

Citrus Salad

Filed under: Salad, cheese — Tags: citrus, endive, feta, grapefruit, orange, vinaigrette — emiglia @ 5:06 am

When I was younger, I was very, very good at playing “pretend.”

I’m actually still fairly good at it, although I don’t have very many people who are still willing to play with me. When I was younger, though, I was the oldest of four kids very close in age, which, as any oldest kid knows, makes you the “boss” for a good long 2-3 years, and I was fairly awesome and orchestrating large and complicated games of “pretend.”

Mostly, we played “school,” or “pioneers in the Wild West.” Sometimes we played “tame the Indian,” but that was only fun if you got to be the Indian, climbing all over things and acting like a savage… not if you got to be the cowgirl taming the Indian. (Sidebar: yes, I realize that my games were not terribly politically correct, but I’m pretty happy that I wasn’t politically aware at seven. If you’re pissed about my games… I don’t know. Flame me in the comments or something. I’ll probably ignore you. I wish I was still politically unaware enough to feel OK playing tame the Indian, because it was an awesome game.)

Anyway, this is all to say, I need you to play pretend with me today. I need you to pretend that this picture does not look like:

a) a radioactive salad,

b) a salad from a 1960s cookbook,

c) extremely unappetizing.

OK? Can you pretend that with me? Good.

Ignore the fluorescent endive… come back to the words… listen to me… trust me…

This is an awesome salad.

Whenever I make salad, I put vinaigrette on it. I don’t have the time or energy to make another kind of dressing, and I don’t have the inclination or fridge space to have bottled dressing on hand. With me, it’s vinaigrette or nothing.

But sometimes, vinaigrette can be overwhelmingly acidic, which is where this comes in. Instead of a traditional acid source like vinegar (duh) or pure lemon juice, this salad takes advantage of the fruit segments tossed with the endive and feta cheese for a slightly sweet and not at all overpowering dressing.

In the picture above–wait… no… don’t scroll back up: focus on me–I used an orange, but I’ve done this with grapefruit and with a combination of both as well. Basically, you want to supreme the fruit over the bowl you’re going to use to prepare the final salad. If you don’t know how to supreme fruit, here’s a nice video tutorial.

All the juice and fruit segments will be collected in the salad bowl, which you can then use to make the rest of your dressing. If you decide to use a grapefruit, you probably don’t need any more acid, but if you’re using only orange, you might want to add a bit of lemon juice for just a hint of a pucker factor.

And that’s it! Please, ignore the photo. Just make the salad. You won’t regret it.

Citrus Salad

1 grapefruit, supremed
1 orange, supremed
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1/2 tsp. Dijon mustard
salt and pepper
3-4 endives, halved and sliced
2 oz. feta or goat’s cheese, crumbled

In the bottom of a salad bowl, supreme the fruit. To the juice, add the olive oil, mustard, salt and pepper. Stir with a fork to combine, taking care not to break up the fruit.

When ready to serve the salad, add the endive and toss with the dressing and fruit to coat. Top with the crumbled cheese and extra pepper if you like. Serve immediately.

Comments (2)

June 5, 2009

Summertime

Filed under: Chicken, Salad — Tags: arugula, balsamic, chicken breasts, tomatoes — emiglia @ 7:15 am

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’m going to have to mention this once more: I’m a nomad.

Constantly moving through the years, from the time I was very small and the moves were with my family, one apartment after the other, one move a year until moving was normalcy and staying still was not. Moving to California and back, that unsettling feeling that was “coming home” after a year, an important year where I felt as though I’d grown up, and then being forced back into a shell I’d outgrown.

Bigger moves followed, a reaction to that feeling that I now know as the definition of that oft-quoted adage, “you can never go home:” summer camp, France, boarding school. University in Canada, then Cannes, then here, to Paris, with lots of semi-homes in between. When “going home” became sleeping on the couch in my family’s final apartment (I sometimes find it funny that my parents finally decided to start moving just as I started), putting myself to sleep by listening to old Daria episodes play on Noggin at night.

This wasn’t “home,” and neither was my dorm at boarding school or my apartment in Toronto. Home was, home has always been, not a place but a time: summer on Long Island.

My birthday, June 7th, always fell right around the time that private schools were letting out for summer, and some years, if it fell just right, that first morning of waking up in my room, the only room that had ever felt like mine, my room on Long Island where the sun shone in through the windows and made everything–the flowered wallpaper, the red-checked quilt, the familiar powder blue carpet–seem bright and right, if the planets were in alignment, that first morning of summer would fall on my birthday.

In the winter, I slept with my windows shut and curtains closed, my mother’s rule, but in the summer, I had control over the shades that covered the three glass-paned windows of my room, and they were forever raised. I could see the tree, our tree, the climbing tree that had been my home for summers in elementary school, directly outside my window. Sometimes, a squirrel would mistake the mosquito screens outside my window for a climbing apparatus, and I would be shocked awake by the pitter patter of claws scurrying up the screen.

Summertime was home for me, where days blended and blurred together, where time was all relative to the sun: every day was a beach day, lunch of sandwiches and iced tea on the boardwalk, afternoons spent floating in the ocean, permanently attached to my boogie board. Pruny fingers shucked corn on the patio, and dinner was nearly always local fish: clams and mussels in my mother’s paella, simple grilled swordfish or “pink” fish–salmon, sole with lemon and butter and bread to soak up the sauce.

Every once in awhile, there was a change in routine, when the day was too long to even imagine eating at home, when all our friends from the beach didn’t want to separate after a long day of playing and running. We would shower at the beach, a strange feeling of walking back up the boardwalk with clean, damp hair, wrapped in a towel, back to the lockers where we would change and head out to the cars that had been baking in the sun all day. We piled in–it didn’t matter who was riding with whom, because we were all going to the same place: Baby Moon.

Baby Moon is an Italian restaurant, the Italian-American comfort kind, filled with good food and huge portions and noise. It’s a Long Island institution, a restaurant that has remained through years of opening and closing, the only restaurant I can remember from my childhood that still exists, its sign proudly advertising its location along the Montauk Highway.

Baby Moon is famous for pizza, for massive dishes of pasta you could never finish on your own. In the winter, when we came out for the weekend, I would sometimes try to tackle a dish of spaghetti and meatballs or my favorite rigatoni Bolognese, but in the summer, after a day in the salt and the sand and the sun, all I wanted were light, clean, simple tastes of summer, and so I always ordered the same thing: grilled balsamic chicken served over salad with tomatoes and red peppers.

It came with a side of spaghetti with marinara sauce, which I always passed on to someone else: with a group that big, there’s always someone else to take the stuff you don’t want. Instead, I concentrated on my own plate, something so simple and so delicious. The simplicity made it, I knew it even then, before I knew how to talk about food or even what the differences in cooking styles were. I just knew that “grilled chicken” meant this charred, smoky flavor that I associated with summer, that the tomatoes were perfect and ripe and red, that the lemon and balsamic dressing was just tart enough for me to crave more.

I didn’t go home last summer: I went to Barcelona instead. I love European cities in the summer: there’s an almost repulsive smell of baking pavement and garbage and people that should turn me off, but it doesn’t… I crave it. But not nearly as much as I crave summer back home, summers of corn on the cob and Baby Moon, summers that make me ache, summers that, a part of me knows, are gone forever.

I’m still in Paris, and God only knows what this summer will bring. My birthday will be spent here in Paris, even though I thought I would be somewhere else by now, somewhere baking hot. My plans are up in the air, something that makes me uncomfortable and nervous for no reason. But I do know, for sure, that on August 10th, I will be headed home. Until then, I’ll content myself with making my own balsamic chicken salad, eating it in front of my own opened window, French doors leading out to our pseudo-balcony, and pretending, when the sun and breeze wake me in the morning, that I’m home again.

Balsamic Chicken with Arugula Salad

1 boneless, skinless chicken breast
1/4 cup plus 1 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar, separated
2 tsp. olive oil, separated
a few handfuls of baby arugula
1 endive, chopped
two tomatoes, sliced
jarred red peppers
1 quarter lemon
salt and pepper

Place the chicken breast in the 1/4 cup of balsamic vinegar in a shallow dish. Allow to marinate for 15 minutes, turning halfway through.

Rinse and prep the salad ingredients, salting the lettuce (this is the secret that makes restaurant salads taste so good). Heat a grill, grill pan, or frying pan over high heat. Brush the chicken breast with one teaspoon of the oil.

If grilling, grill the chicken breast until grilled through and charred. If using a grill pan or frying pan, cook the chicken breast over high heat, flipping after two minutes, so that both sides are charred and browned. Reduce the heat to low and cover, cooking until cooked through, about another minute or two. When the thickest part of the chicken breast feels slightly firm to the touch (like a well-done steak), it’s done.

Place the salad greens, tomatoes and peppers in a bowl. Dress with the remaining oil and vinegar, the lemon, and salt and pepper to taste.

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