Dunk & Crumble

mollygilbert520

Basil Peach Guacamole

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I have a list. I think a lot of people do, actually. It’s a list of things that, with very little persuasion, I could eat exclusively for the rest of my life and be perfectly content. Cheese, for example. Bread. (Grilled cheese, of course, goes without saying.) Guacamole. Reese’s peanut butter cups.

Once, when I was a kid, I hid all of the peanut butter cups I’d collected from Halloween in a desk drawer in our living room, because, you know, they’d be safe there. I tried to ration them – one peanut butter cup a day… well no more than two, at least – so I’d have enough to be stuffed with chocolate and peanut butter for a full calendar year. I must not have realized that there are 365 days in a year, because I probably only had about 25 peanut butter cups. Which is actually a lot of peanut butter cups, but, as you may have guessed, not quite enough to last you (or me, in this particular case) a whole year. Especially if your dad, who also happens to love peanut butter cups, finds your hiding place. Oh well. At least my mother kept the fridge stocked with cheese.

This week at school we made cheese. Real cheese! And it didn’t even involve live cultures or mold or anything. Apparently with ricotta, all you need is milk, citric acid, and salt;


and, for mozzerella, just some salt and a big hunk of cheese curd. See?


There’s Nadine, working and stretching some curd for mozzerella. Little Miss Muffet would be proud.

We also did a full cheese tasting (complete with pieces of warm baguette from the bread kitchens), during which I discovered my appreciation for sheep’s milk,

and we made pasta (fresh gnocchi and ravioli), which I bet is on lots of people’s “food I’d eat exclusively” list. Probably lots of Italian people, anyway.


All in all, it was a good week at chef school. Cheese? Check. Bread? Check. Peanut butter cups? Working on it. Guacamole? Well, no. I’m not sure that’s covered at the French Culinary Institute. Luckily, I already know how to make it.


Basil Peach Guacamole

I don’t usually mess with the solid foundation of guacamole – avocado, onion, tomatoes, cilantro, lime juice – but sometimes I get curious. Like last weekend, when my aunt Marie and uncle Brad made fish tacos. I was put in charge of making guacamole, and when I saw a ripe, red tomato resting against a fuzzy yellow peach, I decided that they looked too nice together to be split up. I chopped the peach right up with the avocado and tomato and, on a whim, threw in a mess of fresh, chopped basil instead of cilantro. The result? Holy fish tacos – unbelievable.

Note: It’s best to make this in the summer months, when peaches, tomatoes and basil are readily available.

Ingredients:

  • 4-5 ripe avocados
  • 1/2 large tomato, chopped
  • 1/2 large onion, chopped
  • juice of 2 limes
  • 1 peach, chopped into small pieces
  • large handful of fresh basil, chopped
  • salt
  • fresh ground black pepper

Directions:

Cut the avocados in half lengthwise, working around the pit. Remove the large pit carefully, and scoop the avocado flesh out of the skin and into a large bowl (I find it easiest to use a spoon to scrape the flesh from the avocado skin). Mash gently with a fork, until the avocados are good and smashed but not completely smooth in texture.

Add the chopped tomato, onion, and peach, mixing to combine. Add the lime juice and basil, and season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve with tacos or chips, or smear on slices of bread to liven up a ho-hum turkey sandwich.

Makes about 3-4 cups of guacamole.

Choux a la Creme Chantilly (Cream Puffs)

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If I scream, and you scream, what are we all screaming for?

The answer, of course, is ice cream. Or maybe it’s cake. Or it could be tarts. Or caramel, or crêpes, or puff pastry, or custard, or mousse, or soufflé, or… holy bananas, make it stop.

I mean, not permanently. I love ice cream. And cakes and tarts and caramel and crêpes and all those other delicious treats. But I’ve been up to my elbows in pastry all week and I’m not sure how much more I can take before my teeth rebel and deteriorate and my body decides it’s had about enough, thank you, and forces me to collapse into a sugar-induced coma. So there.

It started last Monday with tart dough. There I was, happily mixing and rolling out pâte sucrée, making pastry cream, slicing apples and pears, warming up the apricot glaze. It all seemed so wonderful! So flaky, so sweet, so… innocent!

I should have known better. Next thing I know it’s a week later and I’m hurling caramel ice cream down my throat and wrestling my classmates for the last bite of chocolate mousse. Ahem. Don’t look at me, I’m too ashamed.

…Actually, it’s been sort of a great week. There was an incident involving the indecent hurling of caramel ice cream down my throat, but I’m happy to report zero incidents of chef knife dueling over the last lick of whipped cream. And, to be fair, that caramel ice cream was flipping delicious.

I want to tell you about everything we made at school this week – from buttercream to ladyfingers to italian meringues, but I’m afraid I can’t tell you as well as I can show you. So, here you go… just a taste.

Tarte aux pommes (Apple Tart)

Tarte aux poires à la frangipane (pear tart with almond cream)

Crème au beurre (buttercream)
La génoise (egg foam cake)
Crêpes au citron (crêpes with lemon syrup)

Beignets aux pommes (apple fritters)
Pâte à choux (pastry dough used to make cream puffs)
Choux à la crème chantilly (cream puffs)
Crème caramel (…crème caramel)
Bande de tarte aux fruits (puff pastry fruit tart)

Soufflé au chocolat (chocolate soufflé)

Clearly, I had my fair share of sugary fancies this week. I wish I could accurately describe the deep, slightly bitter, nutty smoothness of the caramel ice cream to you, or the airy, buttery flakiness of the puff pastry fruit tart. The rich smell of vanilla infused crème anglaise, and the delicate pear flavor beautifully enrobed in a soufflé. Sigh.

I have the recipes for all of these things, and I’ll give them to you if you want them, but, for this post, I decided to go with the choux à la crème chantilly. “Shoe a la crem shantee-ee.” …That’s cream puff, to you and me.


Choux À La Créme Chantilly
(Cream Puffs)

Caramel ice cream may be smooth and delicious, and chocolate soufflé may be rich and fancy, but the cream puff holds a special place in my heart. When I was a kid, we used to get them at the Wisconsin State Fair, along with grilled sweet corn and barbecued beef. My parents, grandparents, aunt, uncle and two little sisters would all squeeze around a dusty picnic table on the fairgrounds, right near the barns housing the prize-winning animals, the smell of cows and butter and fresh cream wafting around us. Someone would bring a big tray of freshly baked, Wisconsin cream puffs to the table, and we’d scoop them up and dig in, starting with the light, chewy pastry, quickly moving to the sweet, airy cream. Pretty soon we’d be sloshing whipped cream down our shirts and licking stray dollops from each other’s fingers. And then 2-year-old Casey would fall asleep and 4-year-old Emily would get upset that she spilled cream on her shirt and I, at age 6, would ask if I could please please have another cream puff. …Please?

Ingredients:

For the chouxdough:

  • 1 cup water
  • 110 grams butter (slightly less than 1/2 cup butter), cut in chunks
  • pinch salt
  • pinch sugar
  • 1 1/4 cups flour
  • 4 to 5 eggs
  • extra egg, for egg wash

For the crème chantilly:

  • 1 1/4 cups heavy cream
  • 2 tablespoons powdered sugar
  • vanilla extract

Directions:

To make the choux dough, put the water, butter, salt and sugar into a pot and bring to a boil. As soon as the mixture reaches a boil and the butter is completely melted, take it off the heat and add all of the flour at once. Place the pot back on a medium flame and stir vigorously with a wooden spoon about 30 seconds, until the dough comes together and forms a mass that does not stick to the pan.

Dump the dough into a large, clean bowl. Crack 4 eggs into a separate bowl, and add them to the dough one at a time, making sure that each is fully incorporated before adding the next. You can do this step either by hand with a wooden spoon or in an electric mixer using the paddle attachment. The mixture should be firm but smooth. You’ll know it has absorbed enough eggs when a spoon or finger run through the batter leaves a channel that fills in slowly, and a dollop of batter lifted on a spatula curls over itself and forms a hook. If the dough still seems too firm (if the channel formed by a spoon through the batter takes a long time to fill in), crack the 5th egg, break it up with a whisk in a separate bowl, and add drops of egg until the batter is just right.

Preheat the oven to 350ºF convection (or 400º regular).

Fill a pastry bag with the choux batter, and pipe out small circles of dough onto a sheet pan lined with parchment paper. If you don’t have a pastry bag, you can make one by cutting off one of the bottom corners of a large, plastic ziptop bag. Just fill the bag and pipe the dough out of the little hole. You can make your cream puffs any size you like, just make sure they are all generally the same size.

Brush the circles lightly with egg wash, and bake until the dough has puffed up and is a deep, golden brown. Turn off the convection oven, or lower the regular oven to 300ºF, and leave the choux in for another 5 to 10 minutes to dry out. Remove the choux from the oven when they are dry and feel light and hollow (if you’re not sure they’re completely dry, take one out and split it open. The inside should be bone dry – any moisture will leave you with soggy creampuffs.) Allow the choux to cool before slicing off their tops and filling them with cream.

To make the crème chantilly, beat the heavy cream (either by hand or with an electric mixer) until it starts to thicken. Flavor it with the sugar and a drop of vanilla, and continue beating until stiff peaks form. Be careful not to overbeat the cream, or it will turn to butter. Pipe the cream into the cool, dry choux pastries, and serve immediately.

This recipe makes a lot of cream puffs (roughly 50) – feel free to halve or even quarter it for a more manageable batch of deliciousness.

Apple Tart with Strawberry Compote

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Just as it always does, summer is moving too fast. When did it become mid-July? Just yesterday it was the beginning of June and I was learning to flavor stocks and chop vegetables, and today I’m knee deep in organ meat. Organ. Meat. I’m talking about veal kidneys, sweetbreads (oh, they sound delicious, but don’t be fooled – sweetbreads have nothing to do with either sweets or bread; they are the thymus glands of veal, young beef, lamb or pork), calf’s liver, tripe (that’s the stomach lining of a cow, for those interested), and lamb’s tongue. The proper name for these tasty treats is offal, and it’s pronounced just like it sounds. And tastes.

I know it’s sort of hip to enjoy eating offal, and I’ll admit that liver does have its merits (mainly in the form of my Gramma Inez’s chopped chicken liver – more on that another time), but what can I say? Ingesting animal entrails just isn’t really my thing. But, as Chef S. likes to say, “tough luck on you.” So, on Friday I put on a clean chef’s coat, suppressed my upchuck reflexes, and started the day by boiling and peeling lamb tongues. Les langues d’agneau. Sounds much better in french, n’est pas?

It was nasty. The tongues were the worst. Any preparation that starts with: “eliminate the larynx and disgorge the tongue under cold running water” is bound to be sort of gross, but I’m not sure I can accurately describe the extent of the grossness. Suffice it to say, of all of the wretchedly gross things in the world, the act of peeling off the outer skin of a poached lamb’s tongue has got to be up there. And I mean up there. Yech.

The sweetbreads weren’t much better. One of the prep instructions is: “using a finger, eliminate any nerves or cartilage.” Uh huh, yeah, I’d love to stick my fingers into a smelly lump of thymus nerves. I thought you’d uh, never ask. And yes, we did make a heaping plate full of veal kidneys (a.k.a mushrooms in mustard sauce),

but if anyone brought them over to the Level 1 kitchen, I don’t know. I’m not trying to make any Level 1 vegans cry.

So, like the first half of summer, offal day at school came and went, and I’m happy to say that I did try every dish we made on Friday: sautéed kidneys with mustard sauce, grilled and pan-fried sweetbreads (actually, the pan fried ones taste sort of like chicken nuggets… not bad for thymus glands), sautéed calf’s liver with caramelized onions, and lamb tongue with spicy sauce. I may have whimpered and gagged a little bit, but I did it, and it’s over. In the words of Chef S., “and blah blah bah, blah bah, and dat’s the end of dat stoh-ry. Now make me a clean-up, get reed of dis zoo.” Gladly.

This week begins a seven-day stretch of pastry at school – everything from pâte brisée to sorbet to soufflé – and I couldn’t be happier. To celebrate this sweet turn of events, I thought you might like to make an apple tart with strawberry compote. I promise, there’s nothing awful about it.

Apple Tart with Strawberry Compote

Ingredients: For the Dough:

  • 1 and 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 7 tablespoons butter, very cold, cut into small pieces
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 egg mixed with 2 teaspoons water

For the Strawberry Compote:

  • 1 large container of strawberries (about 16 ounces), hulled and chopped
  • 2 tablespoons sugar
  • juice of 1/2 lemon
  • 2 tablespoons water

For the Apple Filling:

  • 2-3 apples (I used Granny Smith)
  • juice of 1/2 lemon
  • 2 tablespoons melted butter

Directions:

First, make the dough. Sift together the flour, sugar and salt in a bowl. Mix the cold, cubed butter into the dry ingredients using two forks or clean fingertips, until the butter is incorporated and the mixture has a sandy texture. Form a well in the butter-flour mixture and add the egg/water mixture into the well.


Begin to combine the liquid into the flour-butter mixture, being careful not to overwork the dough (overworked dough leads to tough, heavy crust). If the dough seems too dry (if it’s too flaky and won’t stick together), add a few drops of ice-water (only a few small drops at a time!) until it comes together.

Gather the dough, form it into a flat disc, and wrap in plastic wrap. Chill in the refrigerator at least 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, make the compote. Put the strawberries, sugar, water, and lemon juice in a sauté pan over medium-low heat, and cook slowly under a parchment paper lid, until the strawberries are very soft and have exuded their juices.


Preheat the oven to 425ºF. When the dough is thoroughly rested and chilled, roll it out on a floured surface and gently press it into an 8-inch tart pan. Spread the strawberry compote in an even layer on the bottom of the pastry shell.



Cut the apples in half, and core them. (Some people like to peel them first – one step too many for me, but if you prefer peeled apples, by all means, go for it). Slice the apples in very thin slices horizontally, and arrange them decoratively on top of the strawberry compote, making sure to place the slices very close together (the apples will shrink in the oven, so be generous with the little slices).


Pour the melted butter over the tart, and bake it in the 425º oven for 10 minutes. Lower the heat to 350ºF and bake for an additional 50-60 minutes. When it’s ready, the apples should be soft and brown on the edges, and the pastry should be golden brown.


Serve warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, or room temperature with a dollop of cold whipped cream.

Makes one 8-inch tart.

Jane Bursky’s Tumbled Tomatoes with Mediterranean Herbs

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Um, hi. Is anyone still here? It’s been awhile, I know – let me catch you up.

School-wise, since fish day, we’ve covered shellfish (I ate my first raw oyster! It was slimy. And lemony and fresh tasting. I didn’t not enjoy it. I also ripped apart a live lobster, poached it and ate it with a sauce américaine. I still feel sort of bad about that) as well as roast chicken, duck à l’orange, roast pork, grilled chicken and steak, poached veal, braised lamb shank, and chicken simmered with horseradish cream sauce. I also passed the Level 1 practical exam by chopping a mean macédoine of carrot (among other things) and am now officially in Level 2. So, you know, that’s good.

I’d like to tell you more about chef school, or maybe even give you a recipe, but I’m feeling distracted by tomatoes. You see, everything we’ve been making at school is delicious and fancy and french, but most of it is also very heavy and rich and wintery. And that’s all well and good, you know, when it’s the winter and you’re looking for a hot, bone-sticking meal, but it’s finally starting to feel like summer around here, and I can’t help but shift my focus to cooler, sweeter, juicier pastures. And what’s summer without tomatoes? Those swollen red and yellow skins, firm and fleshy, luscious and bright, with the scent of dirt and sunshine – they’re the consommate beacon of summertime eats. So, I could give you the recipe for a delicious veal stew in cream sauce, but wouldn’t you rather have the recipe for Jane Bursky’s tumbled tomatoes instead? They’re cool and fresh and taste like summertime on the patio. Eat them with some crispy bread and a few slices of sharp cheese, and I’d call that dinner. Yum.

Jane Bursky’s Tumbled Tomatoes with Mediterranean Herbs

I usually balk at the idea of storing tomatoes in the refrigerator – nothing ruins the fresh, juicy taste of a tomato like refrigeration – but with this recipe, the time in the fridge seems to enhance the tomato flavor by giving the herb crust time to do its work. The crust draws out the tomato’s moisture, leaving the little ruby spheres with a concentrated flavor of fresh tomato. Thanks, Chef Jane!

Ingredients:

  • 1 tablespoon herbs de provence
  • 1 teaspoon coarse sea salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon dried or dehydrated garlic (if you can’t find this, use garlic powder)
  • 2 pints cherry tomatoes

Directions:

Use a mortar and pestle or a coffee grinder to mix the seasonings together and pulverize them slightly. If you don’t have a mortar and pestle or coffee grinder, just skip this step.

Wash tomatoes in cold water and drain, but do not dry them. Put the tomatoes in a large bowl and toss them with the herb mixture until they are evenly coated. Refrigerate, tossing and “tumbling” in the bowl occasionally, until all the water is evaporated. The herb and salt mixture will form a crust on the tomatoes. Serve chilled.

Note: the tomatoes keep for 2-3 days, UNCOVERED in the refrigerator. The drier and crustier the salt and herb coating, the better they taste.

Makes about 4 cups of tumbled tomatoes.

Trout a la Grenobloise

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It seems I’ve already started week three of chef school. Where did week two go? Time is flying, and I am exhausted. In a really, really good way.

So far, we’ve covered methods of food preservation (includingduck confit and gravlax), mayonnaise, hollandaise, bearnaise (and all of those other ‘naises), simple, mixed and composed salads, vinaigrettes, the potato (apparently there are a gazillion ways to prepare and serve potatoes – it seems baked, boiled, steamed, puréed, sautéed and fried is just the beginning. Yesterday was potato day, and, while “potato day” sounds fun – french fries! potato chips! mashed potatoes! – if I have to wash, peel, shape, boil, fry, sauté, mash or even look at another potato… Ahem. Let’s just say I’d be quite happy to never see another of the pesky tubers again. At least until Thanksgiving). Anyway, there’s also fish. We’ve started to work on fish. Which brings me to today.

Today, Chef S. began our lesson by giving us some sage advice about being a chef. Being a chef, he said, is very hard. “Thees beeznees will squeeze you like a leh-mon.” So, he continued, it is important to remember and appreciate the beauty of the food you’re working with – how it looks, how it smells, how it tastes. “Always reemembehr how beautiful it is, ze food you are working weeth.” He then proceded to scoop out the eyeballs of a fresh striped bass with a melon baller. Hm. A few more chops to the poor bass’s fins, head, spine and entrails, and thus began fish day.

It actually wasn’t so bad. I tried not to think about Nemo and apologized profusely as I took a filleting knife to my own striped bass and, after successfully filleting the little guy and cooking him in parchment (en papillote) with fresh vegetables, I felt very little remorse about gobbling him right up. He was delicious. Sorry, Nemo.

Filet de Truite Sauté à la Grenobloise
(Sautéed Trout with Lemon, Capers, and Brown Butter)

Adapted from The French Culinary Institute, Level 1, Session 11

This dish looks and sounds like it belongs with your best dress, but it’s actually easy enough to make on a weeknight (assuming you don’t have to fillet the trout yourself). In a pinch, this recipe would probably work with any white fish (halibut or chilean sea bass would be nice), but if you can get deboned trout fillets with the skin on, I highly recommend it. I didn’t think I liked eating fish skin until today – as it turns out, crispy trout skin is sort of great.

Note: this recipe asks you to suprême a lemon, which is a fancy way of saying “remove the skin/pith and cut out the individual lemon segments.” If you don’t want to bother doing this, please don’t (I won’t tell Chef S). Just squeeze a liberal amount of lemon juice into the browned butter and onto the cooked fish. Voilà! Still delicious.

Ingredients:

  • 4 trout fillets, skin-on, small pin bones removed
  • 3 slices of white bread, for croutons
  • a few tablespoons butter
  • 3 tablespoons canola oil
  • 2 lemons
  • 2-3 tablespoons capers
  • a few tablespoons of chopped, fresh parsley
  • salt and freshly ground pepper
  • 1 cup flour, for dredging

Directions:

Cut the bread into little cubes, and sauté them in butter until they are golden brown. Drain on a paper towel and set aside.

Peel the lemons and cut out their individual segments (suprêmes). Chop up the lemon segments into small pieces and reserve as much lemon juice as possible.

Cut each fillet in half. Salt and pepper the fish fillets, and dredge them in flour, shaking off the excess.

Heat oil in a frying pan over medium heat and place the fish fillets in the pan, skin side down. The fish should sizzle when they hit the pan – if they don’t, increase the heat. When the skin side is nicely browned and the sides of the fish have turned opaque, flip the fillets and cook until the second side is done, about 1 minute.

Remove the fish from the pan and place them on a clean paper towel to drain any excess oil. Place 2 pieces of fish on each plate and sprinkle the croutons, lemon pieces, and parsley on top of the fish.

Wipe any excess oil from the frying pan (be careful, the pan will still be hot), and place 3-4 tablespoons of butter into the pan to brown. Over low to medium heat, cook the butter, swirling the pan, until it starts to turn brown (warning: this happens very fast, and browned butter doesn’t take long to turn into burnt butter, so be careful and take the pan off the heat as soon as you see any browning taking place). Add the capers to the browned butter and swirl (be careful here, too – the capers will sizzle and some butter may try to jump out of the pan). Immediately pour a bit of browned butter and capers over each plate of fish. Enjoy with a side of rice or veggies, and plenty of wine.

Serves 4.

French Onion Soup

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Well readers, it’s finished. C’est fini. Week 1 of culinary school. It began on Tuesday morning. I woke up well before my alarm and showed up to school way too early, and as I changed into my official chef’s whites in the locker room, I was grinning from ear to ear. How cool is this? I thought to myself. I have chef’s whites! I’m wearing chef’s whites! Hah! Eat your heart out, Bobby Flay.

…It was then that I looked in the mirror and realized that, between the checkered pants, the white neckerchief and the white cotton cap, my “awesome!” chef’s whites made me look like a clown in a snow suit. Ah well. At least everyone else would be wearing the same thing.

I marched upstairs to the level 1 kitchen and took my place at an empty station. I looked around the big, industrial kitchen filled with stainless steel pots and pans and countertops, sizing up my classmates and trying to resist the urge to burst into uncontrolled laughter from sheer nervousness and excitement. Just then, a round-bellied man in a tall chef’s toque and a thick french accent called everyone up to the instructor’s station at the front of the class to begin.

And so we began, and I’ll tell you, it was a hell of a week. We met our chef instructors – Chef S., our lead chef, the round-bellied frenchman, and Chef W., our chef instructor, a tall, lean American. Chef W. began by warning us of the dangers of the kitchen, using words like “horribly disfigured for life” and “I don’t even want to think about it,” and Chef S. began teaching us the correct way to chop vegetables, explaining that you should never mix carrot trimmings with turnip or onion trimmings, (“no eefs, buts, or anytheeng,”) lest you want everything to turn into “a freakin’ zoo.” Noted.

On Wednesday we met Chef T., who gave us a lesson on food safety and sanitation, mostly by regaling us with horror stories of food poisoning and industrial processing plant standards and national food-born epidemics. I learned all about viruses and parasites and bacteria, and about how I (and you, too, dear reader) have probably been exposed to more of these things than is nice to think about. I learned that it’s important to ask questions about where my food comes from and also to stay away from the street vendors who sell soft pretzels.

On Thursday we tackled stocks, from chicken to veal to beef to fish and back again. In french: fond de volaille blanc, fond de veau brun, marmite, and fumet de poisson. We also got a nice treat when some students from the level 2 classroom brought by a dish for us to sample: a plate of mushrooms in mustard sauce. We all grabbed spoons and scooped up the mushrooms, chewing thoughfully and swallowing slowly to better appreciate the flavor. Not bad, we agreed. Thanks, level 2 students!

After all of us (including the one pseudo-vegan student in the class) had tried the mushroom dish, a giggling Chef S. informed us that, rather than a plate of mushrooms, we had all just consumed a plate of veal kidneys. (Zey are veel keedneeys! Hahaa!)

Apparently it was offal day in the level 2 kitchen, and hazing day in level 1. Cool.

I know that in roughly a month it will be our turn to initiate a new class of unassuming level 1 students on offal day, but for now I’d like to forget the offal (awful?) incident and tell you how to make french onion soup (gratinée à l’oignon). It goes down much smoother than kidneys, anyway.

French Onion Soup
From level 1, session 5 of the French Culinary Institute

Ingredients:

  • 2 Tbsp butter
  • 2-3 onions, thinly sliced
  • salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
  • 1 heaping Tablespoon flour
  • 1 garlic clove, finely chopped
  • 1/2 cup sherry or white wine
  • 1 quart chicken or beef stock, or a combination of both
  • 1/4 french baguette
  • 1 cup emmenthaler or gruyère cheese, grated

Directions:

Place a large soup pot over medium heat. Melt the butter in the pot and add the onions, letting them cook and soften for 20-30 minutes. Once the onions are soft, increase the heat and continue to cook for 5-10 minutes, until the onions have caramelized and are a deep brown color. Season lightly with salt and toss the flour over the onions, stirring to combine. Add the garlic and cook for 2 minutes.

Add the sherry or wine and let the mixture reduce for a few minutes. In the meantime, bring the stock to a simmer. Add the hot stock to the onion mixture, bringing to a simmer, and cook at a low simmer, covered, for 20 minutes. Season to taste with more salt and pepper. Preheat the broiler to 400º F.

Cut the baguette into slices, and place the slices at the bottom of a heat-proof serving bowl. Ladle hot soup over the bread slices, filling the bowl to the rim, and sprinkle a healthy layer of cheese on top of everything. Place the bowls on a sheet pan and place in the broiler for about 5 minutes, until the cheese is brown and bubbly. Serve immediately.

Serves soup for 4.

Aunt Marie’s Healthy Homemade Granola

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When you’re a little nervous, there’s something relaxing about the rhythmic motion of stirring, and the smell of warm peanut butter and toasted oats wafting through the kitchen. Tomorrow is my first day of school, and I’m a little nervous. My uniform is laid out – chef’s coat, checked pants, neckerchief, apron, hat, side towel, black leather shoes. I’ve gone over chapter one in the big binder, learned words like épluchage and a l’étuvée, packed my notecards and pencils and pens. And I’ve mixed a big batch of homemade granola.

More specifically, this afternoon I mixed up a big batch of my Aunt Marie’s homemade granola. Even if you’re not a little nervous, I suggest you make some yourself. It’s crunchy and healthy and naturally sweet, and it was made to be scooped over greek yogurt with fruit and honey, or tumbled over a bowl of creamy vanilla ice cream. All you have to do is stir and bake and cool, and voila – toasty granola, calm nerves, happy tummy. And, hopefully, a good first week of chef school…


Aunt Marie’s Healthy Homemade Granola


There are no real set quantities for this recipe – basically, you’ll need enough raw oats to cover the bottoms of two 9×13 metal baking dishes, and enough of everything else to sprinkle liberally on top. If you’re particularly fond of a certain ingredient, go ahead and pile it on. If you’re not so fond of another, skip it (I won’t tell my Aunt Marie, even though she does know what she’s talking about. She just wrote a book, for goodness sake! Check it out here.). Just enjoy the sprinkling and stirring, and the wonderful smell of sweet, toasty nuts and grains. This makes a lot of granola, so feel free to half the recipe, but it also freezes beautifully, so don’t be shy about making the whole batch.

Ingredients:

  • Raw Oats
  • Ground flaxseed
  • Ground wheat bran
  • Unsweetened flaked coconut
  • Raw pumpkin, sunflower and sesame seeds
  • Slivered or sliced almonds
  • dried cranberries (or small dried fruit of any kind such as raisins or dried cherries)
  • toasted pecans
  • ½ to 3/4 cups of canola oil
  • ½ cup of natural peanut butter
  • ¼ cup of honey
  • 1 tbsp of cinnamon

Directions:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

Spread a thick layer of raw oats onto the bottom of two baking dishes (9×13), then sprinkle plenty of flax seed, wheat bran, coconut, almonds, and seedson top of the oats (roughly a handful or so of each), and stir until the oat layer is flecked through.

Mix the canola oil, peanut butter, honey and cinnamon in a microwave-safe bowl, and microwave on high for about 1 minute until warm and blended. Divide the warm peanut butter mixture between the two pans and stir well into the dry ingredients.

Bake the mixture in the preheated oven for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until toasty and golden. Cool granola thoroughly before storing indefinitely in the freezer.

Makes about 6-8 cups of granola.

They Make Us Wear Hats

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I know it’s sort of (ahem, um, definitely) dorky to post twice in one day, but I can’t help it – I’m too excited. You know how earlier I mentioned that my status as a student wasn’t official until this afternoon? Well, this afternoon happened and I am officially a student at The French Culinary Institute. Yaaaay! I mean, uh, whatever man, that’s cool.

This afternoon kicked off the experience with orientation, and I must say I’m feeling quite happily orientated. At around 2:30pm, the new culinary and pastry students gathered by the bar at L’Ecole (the FCI student-run restaurant below the school itself), everyone glancing around nervously and making awkward small talk with their neighbors. Just as we were all starting to run out of shallow banter (And your name is? It’s nice to meet you! Where are you from? Oh, Dallas! Neat! I’ve, uh, never been there), we were herded upstairs to get our “Hello my name is” nametags and materials and watch a presentation on what we can expect from the next six months.

Below is a list of things I learned:

1. Class starts at 9:00 am sharp.
2. Missing class is a bad, bad thing to do.
3. People steal things from the locker room, so buy a lock if you want to keep your stuff.
4. Nail polish, perfume and jewelry are strictly prohibited while in class. Crap.
5. The uniform is, uh, not cute. They make us wear hats. And neckerchiefs (whatever those are). The coat, however, is sort of awesome.

After the presentation, we were shuffled towards a long table gleaming with glasses of wine and gorgeous appetizers and told to please mingle. More awkward conversation ensued, but the wine definitely helped, and I happily drank my wine and ate smoked salmon puffs and chocolate apricot cake bites and even managed to make a friend or two. General success! I consider myself (and you, now, fine reader) officially orientated. Class begins on Tuesday, so stay tuned. For now, check out my very official-looking chef’s coat:

Eh? Eh? How cool is that? It says my name and everything! It almost makes up for the neckerchief. Almost.

Strawberry Rhubarb Crumble

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I live by myself. I don’t think we’ve talked about this yet, but it’s a fact that makes itself apparent all the time these days. For example, I am reminded that I live alone when I find myself singing country music at unreasonable volumes, watching Sense and Sensibility two times in a row, flinging my clothes off in the middle of the room before a shower, and eating ice cream straight from the carton (ahem. Not that I do that.) I daresay most of these activities are unsuitable when there are roommates to consider (though, I confess, I often ate ice cream straight from the carton while living with Kath in Boston. She was the best kind of roommate, in that the violation of ice cream cartons didn’t seem to bother her. Thanks, Kath.) At any rate, these days I find myself in the position of being able to engage in all of these anti-roommate activities, and I must say that I quite enjoy it. I mean, who wouldn’t want to watch back-to-back showings of Sense and Sensibility?

There is one problem, though. Though I can take my clothes off without abandon and listen to whatever music I want at whatever volume I prefer, I cannot by myself eat two full cartons of fresh strawberries from the Union Square Green Market before they go bad. I have tried, and it just can’t be done.

Enter: Emily and Casey. And JBursk. Em and Case are my two younger sisters, and they were here visiting over the weekend. JBursk, as you may remember from my faux-halibut post, is my favorite neighbor. She’s also the person with whom I spent roughly 7 hours on Thursday, watching good (read: bad) television and eating a tub of strawberries. Now, before you yell at me for spending 7 hours on a weekday watching television and eating berries, I’d just like to remind you that I am a student, and thus do not have to go to an office and “work” during the week. Which I think is pretty great, for now. (Actually, I’m not technically a student yet, but will officially take on student status this afternoon. More on that later.)

At any rate, many strawberries were consumed on Thursday, and that was only the beginning. After JBursk and I spent Thursday popping strawberries straight from the carton, there was still a sizeable mound of the red berries left on my counter. Emily, Casey and I decided to take care of that problem with something called strawberry rhubarb crumble. Thank goodness. I mean, I was thisclose to having to throw out a carton of moldy strawberries! …Whew. Living alone is nice, but that was a close call. Thank goodness for weekend sister visits, and thank goodness for strawberry rhubarb crumble.

Strawberry Rhubarb Crumble

Crumble. The name alone is rustic and sweet. It says “I’m unfussy yet delicious. I’m sweet from my strawberries and tangy from my rhubarb. I’m warm and comforting yet light enough for summer nights, and I’m phenominally easy to make.” Speaking of, this weekend is apparently the last weekend for strawberries and rhubarb at the Union Square Green Market, so you only have a few days left to solve your own excess strawberry crisis with a delicious crumble. Godspeed.

Ingredients:

  • 1.5 cups fresh strawberries, washed and halved (or quartered, if they’re big guys)
  • 1.5 cups fresh rhubarb, washed and cut into 1-inch pieces
  • Sugar, to taste (the amount of sugar depends on the sweetness of the strawberries. If they’re super sweet, use less sugar. If they’re a bit tart, use more. I used 2 tablespoons for fairly sweet strawberries)
  • 2 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice
  • 1 cup flour
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
  • pinch of salt
  • 8 Tablespoons (1 stick) butter, separated

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix the strawberries, rhubarb and sugar in a medium baking dish (roughly 8 x 12). Squeeze lemon juice over fruit, and mix to combine.

In a medium bowl, mix together the flour, sugar and salt. Use two forks or a pastry cutter to mix in 6 tablespoons of butter, until the clumps of butter are as small as peas in the batter. Pour the crumble mixture over the fruit in the baking dish, and use your fingers to crumble the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter over the entire dish. Bake for about 40 minutes, until the fruit is warm and bubbly and the crumble is golden brown.

Serve immediately, preferably with a large scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Serves 6-8.

Mediterranean Bread Salad with Chickpeas

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As most of you know, this past weekend was Memorial Day Weekend. You probably know this because, instead of going to work on Monday, you spent the day paying homage to our American heroes and celebrating the beginning of summer by eating juicy burgers, drinking cold beer, and slurping ice cream at various picnics and backyard barbecues. A pretty wonderful holiday, in my opinion. This year, my family decided to take a trip to Charleston, South Carolina, for the long weekend, where we skipped the traditional Memorial Day fare of burgers and dogs and focused mainly on pulled pork. And coleslaw. And lemon icebox pie.

We ate all this at Jim and Nick’s, and if you’re ever in Charleston, I highly recommend a trip. You could also take tours of the old Plantations and the famous Fort Sumter (the site of the start of the Civil War), if you’re so inclined. We did most of that, but when push comes to shove, my family is less historically inclined and more gastronomically inclined (really, can you blame us? Just look at that pie, for goodness sake). Basically, our trip to Charleston consisted of a few horse-drawn carriage tours and way too much food.

As it happens, we were sampling some (more) local cuisine one day at lunch, and I noticed that one of the salads on the menu boasted “chic peas” as an ingredient. This intrigued me greatly. I have never heard of chic peas, but they certainly sound like a very elegant and stylish pea, don’t you think? Anyway, I was pleased to hear my mother order the salad featuring chic peas, and was itching with anticipation to learn the identity of such a fashionably named legume. Lo and behold, my mother’s salad was brought to the table, and I finally learned that a chic pea is… actually just a misspelling of the word “chick pea.” Garbanzo bean. What a letdown.

At any rate, my sister and I shared a good laugh over the orthographical error of the chic pea, and when I got back to New York yesterday and found scant little in my pantry, I decided to open a can of my very own chic peas as inspiration for a quick, thrown-together-from-the-pantry dinner. Not quite as good as Charleston barbecue, but chic enough for me.

Mediterranean Bread Salad with Chick Peas

This is a take on traditional bread salad, or panzanella, which usually incorporates day-old bread scraps, tomatoes and olive oil. I use crumbled pita chips instead of stale bread, and I pair it with a mix of bright Mediterranean flavors, including tomatoes, olives, chick (chic) peas, cucumbers, and lemon juice. For a thrown-together, no-cooking involved dinner, it’s pretty darn satisfying. I ate the salad as a stand-alone meal, but it would be delicious served alongside some grilled chicken or fish for a more robust lunch or dinner. Keep in mind, this is more recipe guide than actual recipe – I guessed on most of the measurements, and the ingredients themselves are merely suggestions. Feel free to add or subtract certain veggies, or, for extra chic-ness, throw in a handful of feta cheese… you little salad stylista, you.

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup canned chick peas, rinsed and drained
  • 1/2 cup cherry or grape tomatoes
  • 1/2 large cucumber, chopped
  • 1/4 cup mixed olives, chopped (I used a Greek mix)
  • 1/2 cup pita chips, lightly crumbled into bite-size pieces
  • 2 Tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 Tablespoons lemon juice
  • 1 Tablespoon balsamic vinegar
  • salt and pepper, to taste

Directions:

Mix together the chick peas, tomatoes, cucumber, olives, and pita chips in a bowl. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and drizzle with olive oil, lemon juice, and balsamic. Mix until incorporated, and serve immediately if you want the pita to stay crunchy.

Serves 1 for lunch or dinner, 2 if eaten as a side dish.