Here's a surprisingly simple, delicious pie for luncheon or breakfast that you can whip up in under an hour. It works best if all ingredients are at room temperature when you begin.
France
This is a base recipe for a number of classic French white fish recipes. I use sole here, but you could use the same recipe for any white fish: cod, hake, flounder, haddock, etc. This works with trout too.
This is the classic seasoning used in French pates and terrines served cold. The proportions vary widely among chefs; this one is from Jane Grigson's excellent Charcuterie. Some use almost equal parts of the spices, but Larousse Gastronomique uses more than twice the amount of pepper that this recipe calls for.
Quatre-epices means four spices, but of the four traditional spices, three are always used (pepper, clove, and nutmeg) and then the fourth is either cinnamon or ginger, depending on your taste and how you're using it. I like to use cinnamon with a pork pate.
This is the classic cassoulet recipe lightly adapted to the American kitchen from the master recipe published by the Grande Confrérie du Cassoulet de Castelnaudary.
Cassoulet is a legendary dish of white beans and mixed meats from Languedoc in southwestern France. Much has been written about it, and much confusion has ensued.
If you're a real cassoulet nerd, you know that there are three "authentic" cassoulet recipes: this Cassoulet de Castenaudary (considered the original), the famous Cassoulet Toulousaine, and the Cassoulet de Carcasonne, which includes lamb.
And if you're a cassoulet nerd of the fanatical variety, then you need to know about D'Artagnan's annual Cassoulet War in New York City!
Here I'll do my best to present something authentic and cookable.
I think no drink has more romantic lore than the Absinthe Cocktail! There's a lot of romance and mystery to poke through here to get to the simple truth that foodies need, so:
- Absinthe is legal in the USA
- There's a lot of untraditional absinthe available, with great marketing behind it. Lucid is a good example of a sweetened non-traditional absinthe.
- True absinthe is high-proof and very bitter, not sweet at all
- That's because it's supposed to be used in the fashion of this cocktail
- In the late 19th century, a Swiss farmer drank a liter of straight absinthe, then he killed his family with an axe.
- It wasn't the wormwood in the absithe, it was the insanely high blood-alcohol content plus whatever domestic, familial, and congenital issues he was burdened with
- BUT Pernod et fils and other makers of Marc and Pastis, losing market share to "the Green Fairy", pounced upon their disorganized, home-grown rival, with bought politicians
- So for a century people thought that the wormwood in absinthe makes you mad, when the truth of the matter is that any dope who starts his day with a liter of high-proof alcohol and a history of domestic abuse is not your typical consumer.
This delicious quiche highlights the little Maine shrimp, with some layers of complexity added by sauteed mushrooms and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese in a cheesy quiche-custard.
The little Maine shrimp are hard to find, but worth the search. I got a pound of them frozen, cleaned and ready to cook at Pinkham's Seafood in Boothbay, Maine.
Mushrooms add a great note to all manner of crustacean dishes - shrimp, crab, and of course lobster. Mushrooms also feature prominently in Russian cuisine, so in this recipe I bring in a Russian note with a pinch of dill.
For cheese I used the fine Italian Parmigiana-Reggiano for the warmth that it brings. In hot weather I might try a ricotta, but I made this on a rainy, blustery Mother's Day so the king of Italian cheeses was called into service.
This is a wonderfully strange and delightful recipe that requires intimate knowledge of the main ingredient.
You braise new spring peas in a little liquid for a comparatively long time. This means the tiniest spring peas would be overdone, but fully mature summer peas lack the sweetness of their adolescent kin, and it's that sweetness that so perfectly complements the peculiar choice of lettuce as a seasoning.
On the day of an exciting election in France, we had our friends Kurt & Debbie over for a feast from Burgundy.
I love the cuisine of Burgundy, and not just the celebrated wine. When we toured France in 2015, we drove from Lyon in the south to Dijon in the north and back again, through Beaujolais and the Cotes de Nuit to the Cotes d'Or.
We drove past vineyards large and small, with gorgeous old manor-houses and rustic outbuildings and other structures that made no sense to us. Among the vineyards on hills poorly suited for grapes were farms producing beautiful produce.
Burgundy is known for food of all kinds. The inhabitants of the medieval gray stone buildings of Dijon in the north are fond of cheeses, pork, mushrooms, cream, and of course mustard.
At the southern end, just past Beaujolais, is Lyon, the culinary capital of France. There is a long tradition of courtly fare, but for this feast, I focused on the well-known hearty country fare.
We enjoyed:
Pate en Croute is nothing more than a pate baked in a crust, but it looks fabulous! The first trick is to find a mold - after that, the rest is easy.
All you do is line the mold with pastry and then bake the pate. The melted fat stays inside, topped up with aspic. You can make this with the Pate de Campagne but I think the pastry treatment deserves a finer pate like the one below.
This is the common blend of spices used in making French pates. You can substitute ginger for cinnamon, and white pepper for black pepper, depending upon the meats in the pate.