April 21, 2006
Frog legs
Mom wanted to eat frog legs while she's here. She also wanted to eat snails, which we had the other day. Frog legs, we decided, are also eaten in the US. More than snails in any case.
Since we had them fried in beurre d'escargot (butter with parsley and garlic) last time, and since we couldn't get any the other day from the local Cambodian restaurant, we had them batter fried today.
It turns out they're better with parsley and garlic. Frog legs do not have a strong flavor. Breaded and fried, they were too bland.
Posted by Mark at 08:28 PM | TrackBack
March 17, 2006
Potential danger in low-carb extremism
As someone who once lost quite a bit of weight with a low-carb diet, I read with interest a BBC News article suggesting that a low-carb diet may cause trouble. According to the article, doctors concluded the Atkins diet was a key factor in one woman's, "ketoacidosis - a serious condition that occurs when dangerous levels of acidic substances called ketones build up in the blood."
They mentioned she'd been eating a very strict diet. "For a month before she fell ill, the woman had lived on meat, cheese and salads, said the doctors."
There's a definite temptation if you're overweight to try dieting. As you get older it's harder to lose by exercise alone. If you're used to overeating, adjusting how you feel about eating is probably even harder. And there are a few of us (not me) who just burn more efficiently or have a slow metabolism.
For those who can exercise heavily, what seems to be working for me is a high-carb, high-activity regimen. If I could adjust how I feel about fullness, and keep away from dark chocolate, I could surely drop a bit more weight and run faster. It's probably something to do gradually, however.
In fact how you eat is no doubt always something you should change only gradually, unless you have some sort of particular problem that must be addressed immediately.
Posted by Mark at 08:04 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
March 12, 2006
Extreme cuisine
For people who wanted to go bungee jumping but then realized they had their parents-in-law coming over for dinner, there's always cooking with liquid nitrogen. Somebody with username nathanm suggests:
LN2 is a great presentation for making ice cream if done as a demo, or done tableside - lots of drama, sort of like doing something flambe at the table just cold instead of hot.
Another recipe that keeps coming up on that thread is frozen vodka, the idea being that you can use alcoholic ice cubes instead of water.
Posted by Mark at 08:42 PM | TrackBack
February 28, 2006
Perfect, except for the seeds
This is not exactly a cooking entry. No cooking is involved. You take a banana you need to eat because you have too many of them getting ripe, and you mix it with a fistful of frozen raspberries.
The mixture would taste even better if the raspberries were fresh, but is nevertheless delicious without any additional ingredients. The texture is better than soft serve ice cream, since the banana makes it exceptionally smooth and creamy.
Except for the seeds. The whole dessert is full of raspberry seeds that stick between your teeth. As the rest of the dessert is so creamy, the seeds stand out more than they do in other desserts such as frozen raspberries with apple sauce.
Any suggestions on handling the seeds?
Posted by Mark at 01:45 PM | TrackBack
December 24, 2005
Dinner for two
Nathalie decided this year we should let the children pick what they want for Christmas dinner. It's easier than trying to get them to eat what we pick, and allows us to enjoy at least part of our dinner.
She wanted me to make something special for us, however. I guess she's making the dessert, and turning out some foie gras on toast for the first entrée. My aim is to make two more dishes not too heavy, quick to prepare, and yet a sort of treat. For the second starter I settled on a salmon tartare, inspired by a recipe from a magazine Nathalie bought. It's a two-layer affair for which you get the tartare layer ready and marinating in advance. We didn't have truffles, but did have plenty of fresh ginger root:
For the top:
2 T walnut oil
1 1/2 T soy sauce
1 t sugar
1-2 T fresh ginger root
Wasabi
200 g fresh wild salmon
Paprika
For the bottom:
1/2 apple
Lemon juice
200 g celeri remoulade
Parsley (as garnish)
In advance you mince the ginger, then mix it with the oil, soy sauce, sugar for the marinade. I added a hint of wasabi since we have some. The salmon you check for bones and make sure it's dry, then chop it roughly into small cubes. The marinade was so dark I wanted a little paprika mainly for color. It should marinate apparently at least an hour in the fridge.
For the bottom you grate the apple, adding some lemon juice to avoid oxydation. Celeri remoulade is basically grated celery root that you blanch and turn into a salad by adding mayonnaise, lemon juice, Dijon mustard, salt, pepper. You mix the apple with that and build a bottom layer, which I'll do using the preparation ring -- don't know what it's really called -- to make a nice cylindrical pile on the plate, then I'll cover with tartare and garnish with parsley.
For the main dish, I'm doing individual beef tournedos in pastry. By keeping the pastry translucent-thin, I hope to avoid overcooking the meat. Otherwise this is basically boeuf en croute.
2 thick beef tournedos, not wrapped or trussed
2-3 T duck fat
2 small handfuls assorted mushrooms
Parsley
1 clove garlic
1 shallot
1 t dehydrated beef bouillon
1 T cognac or armagnac
80-100 g pâte feuilletée
Well in advance, brown the tournedos quickly on both sides in a very hot, dry, non-stick pan, then take them out to cool. Don't let them cook inside unless you want the beef to be well done.
Turn the heat down and add the duck fat, the mushrooms, parsley, chopped garlic and shallot. Add the beef bouilon and let these cook as the mushrooms lose their juice. Deglaze with the cognac or armagnac and let it catch fire to burn off the alcohol. Turn off the heat.
Roll equal halves of pastry out on a floured board until each is translucently thin. The pastry's not supposed to be a loaf of bread around your meat, just a crust that keeps the juices in. Put the pastry in the pan you'll put in the oven. It'll perhaps be too thin to move once you've added the meat.
Grind your mushrooms and so forth in a mixer to form a paste. Spread this paste equally on the middle of both pieces of pastry, so that each is the same size as the corresponding tournedos. Then put the tournedos on, and close the pastry. I'm guessing that I won't need extra salt and pepper because of the bouillon.
My plan is to cook this in a very hot oven and serve it with more mushrooms cooked lightly in garlic, duck fat, and seasoned with fleur de sel and fresh pepper.
Posted by Mark at 03:46 PM | TrackBack
December 07, 2005
Peanut butter cookies
Here's a recipe I'm trying. Not sure where Nathalie got this one.
1/2 cup softened butter 1/2 cup peanut butter 1/2 cup granulated sugar 1/2 cup brown sugar 1 egg 1 1/4 cup flour 3/4 tsp. baking soda 1/2 tsp. baking powder 1/4 tsp. salt
Mix butter, sugars, and egg. Mix flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt separately. Mix dry and wet ingredients together. Cover and refrigerate for at least an hour.
Heat oven to 375 F (190 C). Roll teaspoon sized balls to flatten with a fork, two strokes at right angles. It seems to work better if you flatten the cookies in the palm of your hand rather than on the cookie sheet. Cook 10 to 12 minutes until dry but not hard.
Posted by Mark at 09:03 PM | TrackBack
November 19, 2005
Homemade pizza
The kids' favorite meal to cook is homemade pizzas. We start with the dough.
About 1 1/2 c warm water 3 tbsp olive oil 1 tsp yeast 1 tsp salt About 4 1/2 c flour
Dissolve the yeast in the warm water with olive oil. Add 1/3 of the flour, and mix until smooth. Add the salt. The kids should still be able to stir the dough at this point. As you add more flour a cup at a time, it becomes too thick for them.
But they can help knead if they wash their hands first. You knead the dough on a floured board or counter until it becomes smooth, elastic, and sticky again. Our kids like to slap it, roll it into a ball, tear it into pieces, and so forth. Once kneaded, the dough needs to rise for at least an hour in a quiet place like a cool oven.
While waiting you can prepare the toppings. Over time I've learned not to add too many vegetables, meat, fish, or cheese to any particular pizza. Each topping goes a long way. Today we have:
4 fresh mushrooms 1 small onion A handful of green olives 2 3-oz. pieces fresh mozarrella 2 artichoke hearts 4 oz. sliced chorizo 4 small hunks cheese Grated swiss cheese Grated parmesan cheese 1 can pizza sauce Garlic powder Basil Oregano Olive oil
We might add some canned tuna if it looks like there aren't enough toppings. I slice everything, except for the grated cheese. Thinly sliced rich cheeses melt about as well as when grated.
I roll the pizza crusts out on the same floured counter where I did the kneading. We always make small personal pizzas for the children, so they can add their own toppings. Usually we have 3 small personal pizzas and two large round ones.
On each crust I spread the pizza sauce, then dust with parmesan, garlic, basil, and oregano before adding toppings. It seems to work better if you put the cheese on next, before the rest.
We cook these in our oven turned all the way up, preheated. It usually takes about 15 minutes, but that no doubt depends on your oven. Let them cool a minute or two before slicing. Enjoy.
Posted by Mark at 05:20 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
November 13, 2005
Cookies
Emma made cookies with me. We poured too much stuff in the muffin papers and they overflowed during cooking.
But Emma still enjoyed making them. She was very proud. I didn't manage to get her to do something between a very forced smile, and no smile at all.
Posted by Mark at 04:34 PM | TrackBack
November 10, 2005
André & Michel Quenard
Debra and Matt wanted to go wine tasting. We were received by Mrs. Quenard.
She didn't have any of the Mondeuse Vieilles Vignes left, but Debra wanted white anyway. The Chignin Vieilles Vignes that she liked best has a marked aroma of ripe apple, with mineral and apple tastes.
I also bought some Chignin Bergeron that reminded me of the 2003 Chablis from the wine fair last December in Grenoble. Fruity and round but light. The regular Mondeuse smelled of black pepper. I'm sure it'd be good with duck, or roast beef, or perhaps game, but also with gratin dauphinois, diots, or just ham and saucisson.
We'd been here all this time without venturing out to taste local wines. I guess I always feel like I have too much white in my cellar, not enough dark reds.
Posted by Mark at 08:53 PM | TrackBack
Turnips
Turnips are one of the vegetables that I hardly ate before living in France. It's a shame not to eat turnips at least occasionally. They're good vegetables and quite satisfying.
One way I make prepare them is like this:
6 medium turnips 1 tbsp. cooking oil 1 tsp. lemon juice Fleur de sel (or ground rock salt) Fresh pepper
Peel the turnips and dice them. The pieces should be small, not too thick. Heat the oil in a big, non-stick pan. Add the turnips and fry them gently until they start to carmelize, and have lost most of their volume. The pieces should be tender.
Deglaze with lemon juice. Pour into a serving dish, and add salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot.
Posted by Mark at 08:40 PM | TrackBack
October 29, 2005
Soy vermicelli and shrimp
Nathalie figured we could eat soy vermicelli if I'm carbo loading. These were 60% soy, 40% potato. Very starchy.
150 g soy vermicelli 200 g frozen cocktail shrimp 2 cloves garlic 2 oz. shitake mushrooms 1 medium-small onion Soy sauce 1/2 tsp. ginger Bouillon 1 jar chop suey vegetables Cilantro 1 1/2 tsbp. cooking oil
- Cook the vermicelli and rince them with cold water so they stay separated.
- Dice the garlic and onion, and the ginger if it's fresh.
- Heat the wok.
- Drain the chop suey vegetables.
- Put the oil in the hot wok and add the garlic, onion, ginger for a minute.
- Add the shrimp, still frozen, then the vegetables and mushrooms.
- Season with soy sauce and bouillon, including a tbsp. or two of water if necessary.
- Add the cooked vermicelli and stir fry.
- Pour out on the serving plate and sprinkle with cilantro.
Turned out surprisingly good. I only stopped after 2 3/4 helpings.
Posted by Mark at 08:01 PM | TrackBack
October 18, 2005
Making the right mistakes, part III
This one's about dill pickle slices, and this is a wrong mistake. This morning at 6:45 am putting delicious slices of dill pickle Nathalie made herself into my ham sandwich for lunch seemed like a good idea. By 1:10 pm when I ate the sandwiches, I found out it was a bad idea. The sliced tomato didn't make the bread soggy, but the pickles sure did.
Posted by Mark at 11:11 PM | TrackBack
October 14, 2005
Gastrobiking
Cleaning out my Inbox -- think Aegean stables -- I save from deletion a great link Matt sent: Gastrobiking. Unfortunate that many of their internal links break.
Posted by Mark at 03:40 PM | TrackBack
October 09, 2005
1999 Montus
Nathalie had confit de canard on the menu for lunch today, so I opened a bottle of 1999 Montus. I was worried that I'd be opening it too early, but in fact it's delicious now. Very smooth, plenty of flavor, some of the tastes reminded me of the cherries in the syrup I made for cornmeal pancakes with Emma this morning.
Posted by Mark at 08:44 PM | TrackBack
October 06, 2005
Chocolate
While looking for the carrot cake recipe for Joanne, I noticed my cooking category never took off. Running hasn't displaced eating, but has displaced cooking to some extent in the list of things I spend time doing.
What's taken over from if I'm still eating? Fruit, bread, leftovers, but mainly dark chocolate. Dark chocolate is perhaps the main reason I still weigh about 82-83 kg instead of 79-80 kg, which would be better for someone 189 cm tall running marathons. A 10 g square of very dark chocolate contains 50-55 calories, more than half as fat as butter.
Posted by Mark at 09:04 PM | TrackBack
August 04, 2005
La Grignotte
Antoinette had us go to La Grignotte in Le Sappey for lunch, in honor of both Frank and Linnea being in town. A little expensive for lunch but delicious.
Everyone but me seemed to be having large fantastic salads with mountain ham, cheeses, but augmented with lots of interesting little tidbits. By 1 pm I was hungry so ordered duck breast which came basted in honey-orange sauce, with tiny green beans, a gratin dauphinois in which they'd hid pieces of salt ham, and a few nice side objects like a brochette of onions, tomatoes, and zucchini that seemed to be confit.
Recommended, but you should ride up there to the col de Porte beforehand to deserve it.
Posted by Mark at 08:21 PM
July 16, 2005
American style, part II
Emma lost the weight she seemed to have gained. So to celebrate she baked chocolate chip peanut butter cookies with Mamy Teena:
Yet Emma ate fewer than her brother and her sister. And her dad, too.
Posted by Mark at 03:18 PM
Miller Bakery Cafe
Nath and I went to the Miller Bakery Cafe in Gary last night for dinner. The food sure seemed delicious to us. We both had some fish and Nath also had penne with a very full flavored wild mushroom light cream sauce. Casa la Joya Chardonnay with the meal.
The neighborhood's a little less classy than the menu, however. At one of the two liquor stores across the street from another a woman was asking for our change. On the way in we got turned around in the wrong direction and saw two adult toy stores and three "gentlemen's clubs" within about a mile and a half.
Posted by Mark at 03:10 PM
May 22, 2005
Vegetables
Got into a sort of argument with Nathalie over vegetables. Like nearly everyone with children, and lots of people without children, we don't eat enough vegetables. Nathalie took it as a personal affront, because she does most of the cooking. She sees cooking purely as a chore, and eating mainly as a chore. You can see by the way she throws the settings on the table that she wishes she didn't have to do it. I'm probably mainly worried about not losing enough weight, although my running's going so badly right now that it doesn't matter.
It's not entirely clear why we're this tense. Some of what's making it worse: vacation, visiting, driving around the Cote d'Azur, Nathalie looking for a job, the approaching end of white collar jobs like mine in "expensive" locations (i.e. the western world) meaning I have to figure out how to reconvert myself without losing income, Nathalie's headaches from a stiff neck, my headaches also from spinal misalignment, the children, fatigue, a bad mattress, the looming routine, etc.
Vacation always leaves me tense. If you don't come back from time off with hopes so dashed you're suicidal, you must like Böll's story about the fisherman relaxing on the beach. You may find it means something, something about the second law of thermodynamics.
Colette organized a visit to Beaufort for this afternoon. Timothee and Emma were excited about that. Children have very low expectations. Even so, they spend a lot of time disappointed.
My head hurts. I decided to stay here. Nathalie was mad enough about the vegetables she didn't say goodbye.
Posted by Mark at 02:24 PM
May 20, 2005
How to cook
Nath said she likes to eat fish at restaurants because it's cooked correctly. I wondered why so many cookbooks focus on recipes, rather than how to cook many foods people typically eat when they're in the mood to go so far as to read about it, rather than just make what they know how to cook.
Perhaps we haven't looked for cookbooks in the right places. Instead of buying recipe books, we should look in the section of the bookstore where they keep the textbooks for beginning cooking students.
Posted by Mark at 10:00 PM
April 30, 2005
Out for dinner
Nath and I went out to eat last night with Vero and Ludo to a place in Apremont. Good company and conversation, and nobody competing for attention!
Somewhere, perhaps in the Guide nutritionnel des sports d'endurance, it is written that the very same food is less liable to make you gain weight or to cause digestive troubles if you eat in a pleasant setting and enjoy your meal, than if you are stressed out when you eat. So we'll have to do this more often. For health reasons, of course.
I'd forgotten how much I liked frog legs breaded and fried in butter with plenty of garlic and chives. Need to try that at home again. Last time we had them here at home my mom was visiting.
Posted by Mark at 06:11 PM
April 20, 2005
Montus
Nath and I went to see Alain Brumont whose St. Bernard weighs 80+ kg and is named after the grape, Tannat, used to make Madiran wine. We bought more Montus 1999 (ready to drink) and 2001 (keep in the cellar a couple of years to let the tannins mellow). We also bought more Vendemiaire 2000, and a little vin de pays "Les Menhirs," which cannot bear the name Madiran as it's only 80% Tannat. Also tasted the 2002 Montus, but it's a bit out of my price range, and would be a shame to keep for 10 years in my cellar unless I close off the room where I keep the wine from the rest of the garage in a more permanent fashion.
Posted by Mark at 08:56 PM
March 28, 2005
Leg of lamb
While on the subject of things to eat, let me tell you how we did the leg of lamb for Easter.
If you cook leg of lamb in the French style, rare to medium rare, you may find it stays too rare next to the bone. Nathalie had a 2 kg leg that I therefore deboned using a utility knife Mom gave us as a present. Proceed carefully, and keep the knife very sharp. Leave the lamb out so it's at room temperature when you cook it. The meat cooks more uniformly, medium around the outsides, medium rare at the core.
To get the meat ready for the oven, rub herbs all over the leg. Don't salt the meat until after cutting it. Do apply liberal quantities of coarsely ground pepper, herbes de provence, and garlic powder -- not garlic cloves, and place the leg in an oiled dish that'll go in the oven. You can oil the leg a bit, too, to get the herbs to stick. Form a roast of the leg in the dish, fat side up. You may want to pull the end of the calf through the place where the bone was. If you don't have to wash your hands with plenty of soap before continuing, you probably didn't apply enough herbs and oil.
Next, preheat the oven as hot as it will normally go. While it warms up, peel enough cloves of garlic to cover up the corners of the dish not covered by lamb leg. Put the dish in the middle of the very hot oven, close the door, and turn the heat down to hot. The idea -- rough equivalent to browning -- is that high heat crisps up the outside of the meat, but you don't want to leave it so high that it burns or gets dry.
Leg of lamb needs to cook about 15 minutes to the pound in this style, so our roast yesterday cooked for an hour. After the cooking's done, turn the oven off. Lamb needs to sit for a few minutes before you slice it.
Put the lamb on the cutting board and prepare the sauce with all the garlic cloves by adding something vinegary and salt to taste. You can also use plain water if you're going to serve mint sauce. I used liquid from pickled cherries.
If you want to stay in the French style, also serve flageolets (essentially green bean seeds) heated in a pan with olive oil, garlic, pepper, and salt, potentially some tomato paste, finished with a tablespoon of vinegar, and with duchesse potatoes. You'll also want red wine with plenty of flavor and character. Get all your vegetables ready, the wine opened, sauce in a dish, everyone at the table. Then slice the lamb thin across the grain, arrange the slices on a platter, and sprinkle with fleur de sel. Get it to the table before it cools.
Posted by Mark at 08:10 AM
March 25, 2005
What's this salad?, part II
Dad has the recipe with lemon juice and tomato juice. He sent it the other day:
The substrate:
- 1 small head of Boston or Bibb lettuce
- 1/3 cup walnuts - toasted
- 1/4 cup parmesan
The salad dressing:
- 1/4 cup salad oil
- 3 Tblsp tomato juice
- 1 Tblsp lemon juice
- 1 tsp grated onion
- 1/4 tsp each salt, pepper, sugar, dried basil
I'd still go for finely chopped shallots rather than onion if you can find shallots.
Posted by Mark at 08:31 PM
March 22, 2005
Shallots
While trying to remember how we spell échalote in English, I noticed Shallot.com, an entire site devoted to shallots. If I ever had to move away from France for a while, shallots would definitely be one of the things I would miss quickly.
Their recipe of the week at Shallot.com is a pâté. But another nice recipe with shallots is fried shallot vinaigrette which you cool and pour over mâche. I don't know what mâche is in English, but it looks like this:
1-2 finely chopped shallots Salad oil Wine vinegar Salt, fresh pepper
First you heat the oil until it starts to smell, then you take that off the heat and drop in the shallots. You need a deeper pan than you think because otherwise the oil splatters. The shallots should brown. You may even need to heat the oil a little more, depending on how much you use.
Next you grind on the pepper while the oil is still hot to get the flavor of the pepper. Finally you add the vinegar and salt. The vinegar will evaporate a bit in the hot oil, so be careful not to add too much.
Posted by Mark at 09:32 PM
What's this salad?
Several of us had lunch at Antonia's today. She had me bring salad, so I made my variant of the one Mom makes with parmesan, walnuts, tomato juice, and some other ingredients. The dressing for a head of lettuce was (approximately -- I really only measure exactly when baking):
1/3 cup wine vinegar 2/3 cup salad oil 1 large shallot, finely chopped 2 tbsp. Maggi Arome 2 tbsp. liquid from pickled garlic Freshly ground pepper Walnut meats Grated parmesan
Maggi Arome is one of those seasonings based on soy sauce with other flavors that give it a sort of nutty taste in salad dressing. I pickled the garlic cloves in sugar water and vinegar plus Alsatian pickling spices (mustard seed, coriander, bay leaves, red pepper, anise, etc.).
What's the name of this salad?
By the way, the same vinagrette (without the walnuts and parmesan) works quite well over grated carrots with a little celery salt, which is the other salad I brought.
Posted by Mark at 09:14 PM
March 13, 2005
Brumont's Vendemiaire
We had our other bottle of Vendemiaire Octobre 2000 Pacherenc du Vic Bihl from Alain Brumont's Château Bouscassé. Brumont bottled the wine 500 ml at a time. A dark golden white with lots of fruit and caramel, the Vendemiaire's only downside is the overly strong aroma of oak cask. You may have trouble stopping at just one glass.
Posted by Mark at 07:55 AM
February 13, 2005
Choucroute
If you feel like eating a big Sunday dinner when it's cold out, but don't feel like working hard to cook one, choucroute may be what you want to make. Michel and Colette like it, so it's what we had today at noon.
Traditional recipes for choucroute have you start by frying sauerkraut in onions and lard. That makes it unnecessarily greasy.
I start at least two to three hours before we want to eat by covering the bottom of a heavy pot with sauerkraut, topping that with an onion stuck with cloves, a few cumin seeds, a bay leaf or two, juniper berries, cracked peppercorns, coriander grains like the ones you'd use to make pickles, and a little bit of thyme. Then I layer on peeled carrots, potatoes, pieces of salted or smoked pork, and any sausages that can cook for the duration, like saucisses de Montbéliard. To top it off, I shake on some dry garlic and wet the whole dish down with Riesling. Not too much Riesling, but enough that it won't all evaporate while you cook the choucroute.
The trick is to cook it covered, slowly enough and long enough that the potatoes and carrots are done when most of the wine has evaporated. Some recipes have you add lots of wine and broth as well. Those cooks may be preparing their vegetables on the side and finishing the choucroute with the top off. Otherwise they'd be cooking the vegetables to mush and ending up with the whole dish swimming in broth.
If you like, add a tablespoon or two of butter 30 minutes before it's all done. 5 minutes before the end, put some knacks on top. The kids are more likely to eat something like a hot dog anyway. For large quantities in big heavy pots, you can turn the heat off when you've added the knacks.
Make sure you have both mustard and horseradish as condiments.
Some people put out pâté or sausage as a starter, but that's overkill. I served a starter salad of tomatoes, lettuce, and corn, topped with a few scallops cut into slices and fried quickly in a hot pan with almost no oil. I shouldn't have used corn. Flavor's too strong. But I'd run out of the palm hearts I wanted to use and didn't have much lettuce. Scallops work well on a salad with malt vinegar dressing. It all goes well with good Riesling.
Plan a light desert.
Posted by Mark at 03:12 PM
December 26, 2004
Cookies
Emma and I made chocolate chip cookies today from a French recipe Nathalie found on the web.
We followed the recipe meticulously. I cannot remember the last time I did that. The cookies turned out almost perfect. They have crusty surfaces and edges but the centers melt in your mouth, the butter clogs your arteries instantly, and the brown sugar shifts your pancreas into high gear.
I thought about going out and jumping rope for half an hour after eating a couple, but I'm supposed to be going into an easy week.
Posted by Mark at 06:21 PM
December 21, 2004
Carrot cake
On this, the darkest day of the northern hemisphere year, I've come to work bearing carrot cake. It's atonement for sharing the box of German Christmas goodies Frank sent from Hamburg immediately after its arrival last Friday afternoon. I didn't realize so many writers were out of the office.
Adapted Evelyn's traditional recipe for local ingredients. Here's the source:
2 cups sugar 1/2 tsp. salt
3 cups flour 1 1/2 cup veg. oil
2 tsp. soda 4 eggs
2 tsp. baking powder 1 cup nut pieces
2 tsp. cinnamon 4 cups (1 lb.) carrots
Peel and grate carrots. Mix dry ingredients. Add
oil, eggs, nuts, and carrots. Batter will be heavy
and hard to mix. Bake in 9 x 13 greased pan at
350 degrees for 50-55 minutes or until done.
I buy cream cheese icing.
My prime substitution was levure chimique for the baking powder and soda. Cream cheese icing is probably illegal outside the US, since laboratory tests have shown it transubstantiates directly to unsightly bodyfat in anyone less fit than Lance Armstrong. I made some myself by mixing an obscene amount of confectioner's sugar with cream cheese (65% de matière grasse). After melting the mixture atop the warm cake, I sprinkled extra ground walnuts over the top.
Who knows if my European colleagues will be physiologically able to eat this without scraping off the icing.
Posted by Mark at 08:13 AM
September 23, 2004
Quince jam
Karine, one of the lead Directory developers, got about half our quince.
She gave me a jar of quince jam today. Quite good, though almost too sweet. Luckily Nathalie made waffles for the kids' dinner, so it was just the right day to receive a gift of quince jam.
Emma and Diane loved it. We finally had to take the jar away after Diane stuck her whole hand in it trying to get a fingerful.
Posted by Mark at 09:38 PM
September 13, 2004
Quince harvest, part III
We ate quince mousse for dessert this evening.
It's tasty. My stomach feels like I ate half a bowling ball.
Posted by Mark at 08:41 PM
September 12, 2004
Quince harvest, part II
We haven't eaten the mousse, yet. It tastes good, though perhaps a little too sweet. After you push the quince through the sieve, and cook the pulp with brown sugar and lemon juice, it becomes quite thick, more like paste than sauce.
If you're going to try the recipe, you may want to use the microwave rather than the oven to cook the quince. I cooked quarters 40 minutes in the oven and they were still hard. 4 more minutes in the microwave turned most of them to pulp.
Posted by Mark at 09:22 PM
Quince harvest
Today we picked the quince on our tree. We got about 55 between maybe 150 and 750 g, with most I would say about 300 g. Quince are typically quite large, and much harder than most fruit. I had to leave 3 at the top that I couldn't easily get to on the ladder.
Although I don't have any rum in the house, I'm going to make Spuma di Mele Cotogne (quince mousse; ingredients quince, brown sugar, lemon juice, cream, and rum) from a recipe Dad found on http://www.foodtv.com/.
Nath's hairdresser and my colleague Karine already took orders for all the quince. They're perhaps thinking of jams and quince paste rather than mousse. Quite popular fruit around here.
Posted by Mark at 05:58 PM
July 03, 2004
Weekend of wine tasting
Nath, Stu, and I are taking a two-day trip to 6 wineries in the Cotes du Rhone, some around Valence, some south of Orange. No more email before tomorrow night.
Posted by Mark at 06:15 AM
June 04, 2004
When you run out of flour
Monkfish was on sale today, so that's what we ended up having for dinner.
I was inspired by a recipe for medaillons de lotte au parmesan, but had no flour. So we used cornstarch. It turned out probably better than with flour, although instead of coating the floured (cornstarched) fish in egg, then rolling it in parmesan, I just added some shallots at the end, then finished by sprinking salt, pepper, and parmesan over the top.
The pieces of monkfish were cooked just enough and stayed chewy but tender. Delicious with zucchini baked in basil and olive oil, and a few dauphine potatoes.
Posted by Mark at 11:05 PM