Dorie Greenspan - On the Road and in the Kitchen with Dorie

Drop In & Decorate: Have Fun, Do Good

2009-11-08T16:13:53Z

Lydia Walshin of The Perfect Pantry is a woman with lots of good ideas and so many of them do lots of good, like her brainchild, Drop In & Decorate, which is now in its eighth year.

The program is brilliant and fun: Bake a bunch of cookies, invite your friends to come decorate them with you and then donate the cookies to a nonprofit group in your community. As Lydia says, "It's a simple idea in a complicated world and something anyone can do."

This year, Pillsbury is donating 50 VIP coupons, worth $3.00 each off any Pillsbury product to be distributed (first come, first served while supply lasts) to anyone who plans to host a Drop In & Decorate event. And Lydia says she'll include a Comfort Grip cookie cutter, donated by Wilton, to people who plan to host cookies-for-donation events.

Contact Lydia ( lydia@ninecooks.com ) for information on free coupons and cookie cutters.

Visit The Perfect Pantry to find out more about Lydia and all that she does.

Go to the Drop In & Decorate site to download a free guide to hosting your own party.

And, most important: Have fun!

Hello, Cupcake! A Peek Behind the Scenes

2009-11-08T00:18:53Z

As some of you may know, Mr. and Mrs. Hello, Cupcake! aka photographer, Alan Richardson, and food stylist, Karen Tack, who worked on Baking From My Home to Yours, are now making gorgeous pictures for my next book. We spent days together chez me before I left for Paris and then, this week, the team moved to Karen's house. The first day I was there, after hugs and kisses and offers of coffee, I walked into the dining room to set up my computer, but got no further than the doorway. I mean, who could get past these shelves? And this is just a smidgen of Karen's stash.

You know how designers have inspiration boards with swatches of fabrics, buttons, ribbons and pix? Well, think of this as Karen's inspiration board. All those bins of candy and cookies, the jelly beans and gummy bears, the vanilla wafers and ginger snaps ... all destined for cupcakedom.

Before I could get the word "WOW" out of my mouth, Karen asked: "Have you seen the sprinkles?"

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I looked around the room, but all I saw was the dining room table, a buffet and a beautiful French carved-wood armoire. Karen opened the large armoire and there they were: sprinkles, sprinkles and more sprinkles.

After 8 hours in the house, I couldn't take it any longer - I asked permission to break into the jellybean bin. I nibbled at the jellies, but I didn't finish them off. After all, I would have felt terrible if Karen and Alan found themselves in short supply of a penguin's foot, or a pirate's pistol or who-knows-what else. You'd be amazed at what they can do with the stuff our mother's always told us we couldn't have.

If you haven't seen Hello, Cupcake!, you must. And for all you Hello, Cupcake fans, more's on the way: What's New, Cupcake? comes out in April.

Out and About in Paris: Random Pix and Pensees

2009-10-31T13:41:53Z

I've got a few odds-and-ends pictures from being out and about in Paris this week, so I thought I'd just put them up.

I love seeing Le Comptoir in the morning when it's still quiet. A few hours later -- and until midnight -- every seat will be filled and the sidewalk will be so crowded with hungry hopefuls you'll have to step into the street to get by.

This morning, on my way through Les Halles to Dehillerin (where, for maybe the first time in my life, I walked out empty-handed), I saw this line-up of Velibs. When I got home, I read in The New York Times that 80% of the bikes are damaged or stolen. I know it must be true, but I hate to hear it.

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At G. Detou, where I not only didn't leave empty-handed, but where I could have used an extra hand to help me get my goodies home, I saw this package in the window. It's 3 kilos, (6.6 pounds) of ready-to-roll all-butter tart dough. Just next to it was an equally hefty pack of all-butter puff pastry. (G. Detou caters to pros and serious amateurs, but I love that if all you want is one rolled-out ready-to-bake butter crust, you can find it in just about any supermarket.) I left G. Detou with a pro-size bag of cocoa nibs and another of caramel bits, a kilo of blanched almond flour, fleur de sel, some black Penja peppercorns, tonka bean powder (I meant to buy the whole beans, but pointed to the powder by mistake), some Edmond Fallot mustards and all of these:

Most of the cans hold sardines (which those of you who've been reading this blog for a while might already know are favorites of mine), but there's also mackerel filets and a rillettes of mackerel with lime, a thoionade of tuna, capers and anchovies and a spread I hadn't seen before - herring, asparagus and Mimolette. I'm not sure it even sounds good, but the tin (it's the one in the upper left-hand corner) was so nice.

It was irresistible not to ask these girls who were sitting on a bench along the Boulevard Saint-Germain if I could take their picture. Even they agreed it was pretty funny seeing themselves squeezed together, each with a pizza box on her lap.

Another look, this time inside, at La Patisserie des Reves (Pastry Shop of Dreams), Philippe Conticini's new place on the rue du Bac.

And speaking of dreams, the entire window of Colette, the trendsetting boutique on the rue St. Honore, is filled with the fabulous flute that Christian Louboutin designed for Champagne Piper-Heidsieck.

The holidays are coming, Cinderella.

Paris Sweets: New Ways with Old Faves

2009-10-28T09:06:43Z

Philippe Conticini is back on the Paris pastry scene and he's back with a bang. His new shop, poetically named Patisserie des Reves (Pastry Shop of Dreams), is on the chic rue du Bac, just a minute away from Le Bon Marche department store and supermarket, and on the day we went it was jammed, which is the way I'm told it is all the time. The look of the shop is ultra modern, even space-age-ish, and the women who are there to take your orders on their tablet computers are wearing little white dresses that look like a melange of Correges (sans the short white boots) and Star Trek (sans the bizarre make-up). Even the pastry cases seem a little out-of-this-world. At center stage there's a round double-decker table with the day's offerings displayed under huge bell jars, which are lifted and lowered using a system of stainless steel pulleys. It's stunning and also a bit disconcerting, since the jars are refrigerated and the condensation that mists the glasses makes the pastries -- and the tickets that tell you what they are and what they cost -- hard to see.

But even if you press your nose against the foggy jars, you might have trouble knowing what you're looking at -- nothing is quite what you expect here. The treat under the jar above is a Tarte Tatin, not just deconstructed, but reconceived.

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Here it is (in a single-serve size) with its companion treat, a chocolate eclair tucked into a chocolate tube. As you can see, even the packaging (and there was a lot of it) is different. The pastries rest on a piece of foam core and are kept in place with picks topped with Conticini's logo.

The eclair didn't win me over -- I thought its pretty chocolate wrapper made the pate-a-choux soggy, but I did like the chocolate mousse interior. The Tarte Tatin, on the other hand, was a winner, even if there was nothing about it that was true to the original.

In Philippe Conticini's reading of the dessert, each of the elements is prepared separately (not at all the way you make a Tarte Tatin -- if you're interested, I've got a more traditional recipe in Baking From My Home to Yours, page 312). The base is a piece of perfectly made, beautifully baked puff pastry (which I'm almost positive was caramelized). On top of the pastry are confited apples, thinly sliced apples, brushed with butter, sprinkled with sugar and baked at low heat for a loooooooooong time. (Pierre Herme taught me this recipe and we put it in Desserts by Pierre Herme, where we called it 20-Hour Apples. The recipe, as Pierre told me, is well known and old -- Edouard Nignon wrote about it more than 100 years ago.) And, to finish it, there's a strip of hazelnut streusel. It was great.

Friends whose taste I love -- including Kerrin Rousset, Helene Samuel and Apollonia Poilane -- told me the thing to have is the Paris Brest. Next time ...

Also new are these macarons a la rusk from Sadaharu Aoki. They're the shells that would normally be filled to make macarons, brushed with butter, sprinkled with sugar and baked again, so that they're drier and crunchier than macarons. In other words, they're macaron biscotti. And they're fun.

Finally, Pierre Herme has two new macarons that are worth trekking across town to taste: Chuao chocolate with cassis (nothing short of amazing); and rose with quince. Sorry, I only thought to photograph them after I'd already eaten them. It's another "next time," I'm afraid.

Avant Comptoir, The New Kid on the Rue

2009-10-24T11:24:04Z

It's not that I don't love the Upper West Side, the New York City neighborhood I've lived in forever, it's just that what happens in my Paris neighborhood (the sixth arrondissement) is unfailingly so much more delicious.

Michael and I arrived in Paris late yesterday morning. We opened our apartment door, settled our bags and discovered that we had no hot water in the kitchen and no heat in the apartment and that M. Fix-it wasn't answering his phone. Because I'm not in Paris full-time, I always expect that there'll be 'something' to greet us: a letter from the tax people saying we missed a deadline; a letter from the bank saying we missed a deadline; a letter from the electric company saying we missed the meter-reader ... you get the picture. But no heat and no hot water? Especially when we'd spent six hours the last time we were in Paris waiting for M. Fix-it to come and give the heater its annual spruce up.

The way I see it, faced with such problems, there's only one thing to do: Shop. And since the only kind of shopping I really like to do is food shopping, we grabbed our market bags and set out. But we'd only gotten to the end of our street when we ran into Yves Camdeborde, the exuberant and incredibly talented chef-owner of Le Comptoir, one of my favorite restaurants in Paris.

]]> Running into Yves is part of what makes life in my corner of the sixth so wonderful and, happily for me, I run into him often, since he seems to always be around, even at 8 am, when I'm on a sleepy-eyed bread run and he's bright and fresh and dressed in a crisp white chef's jacket. Yesterday, when we saw him, he was out on the street greeting the early-birds who'd nabbed seats at Le Comptoir and asking the people who were waiting outside to be patient. One bear hug and two seconds later, he was leading us by the hands to show us his new baby: Avant Comptoir, a sliver of a place that, even though it's been open just six days, is already being called a tough spot to get into.

Before Avant Comptoir, Yves had used the space as a creperie and sandwich shop and there were loyal crepe lovers who were afraid that when the new place opened, they'd be deprived of their lunchtime favorites. Not to worry. The front quarter of Avant Comptoir is still a creperie and you can still get great sandwiches and waffles, but it's the back space -- less than ten feet of it, I'd say -- that's got people talking. (Take a look at what Wendy Lyn wrote in The Paris Kitchen and Barbra Austin in Serve it Forth.)

There's a zinc bar, which five people who like being close to one another can share with a tub of Bordier butter, crocks of homemade cornichons, pickled chanterelles and pickled peppers, a platter of big, gorgeous artichokes and a basket of deeply browned mini baguettes. And there's a counter for eating -- and drinking, of course -- along the back wall. Hanging from the ceiling are tempting hams and dried sausages and trimming the ceiling are the names of the people who produced them, among the luminaries, Yves' brother, the noted charcutier Philippe Camdeborde.

On the menu -- the cover of which is the pig above -- there's charcuterie, of course, including slices of fat (I don't know what else to call it) from joue du porc (pig's cheek) with the same lovely ivory color and voluptuous texture as lard de colonna and several small cooked dishes, tapas, really. Not to be missed: Iberian ham croquettes (once fried, the ham dissolves inside its crispy shell -- too bad I just used the word voluptuous, it would be perfect here, too); a finger of a croque monsieur made with deeply flavorful shredded beef (boeuf effiloche); and this scallop. It's a big, plump one, run through with a skewer of thyme, cooked perfectly on the plancha and served with great olive oil, a little aged balsamic vinegar and a drizzle of herb coulis.

This morning, while I was walking around, I ran into Eric, the man who manages Avant Comptoir (Le Comptoir regulars will recognize him from the restaurant). He asked if I'd be coming back today and I thought I caught a wink. Coming back? While I'm here, I think it will be hard to keep me away.

Dessert for the Park Avenue Potluck Celebrations Virtual Dinner Party: Mary's House Oatmeal Cookies

2009-10-20T22:35:29Z

I was delighted to be asked to be part of the virtual dinner party heralding today's publication of Park Avenue Potluck Celebrations: Entertaining at Home with New York's Savviest Hostesses for so many reasons: 1) I've known its co-author, Florence Fabricant, for years and, for as long as I've known her, I've admired her work in The New York Times and in cookbooks; 2) I love that the profits from this book benefit The Society of Memorial Sloan-Kettering, a charitable and service organization for Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, a research and treatment hospital, as did Florence's first Park Avenue Potluck book; 3) it tickles me that Kelsey Banfield, The Naptime Chef, who asked me to join the party, worked on the first Park Avenue Potluck book when she was on staff at The Society of Memorial Sloan-Kettering and that it inspired her to start her blog and a new career in food; and 4) I got another great cookie recipe.

The cookies are called Mary's House Oatmeal Cookies (recipe below) and, while the name might not mean much to you now, after you bake a batch you'll understand completely: it would be easy to have these sweets become the 'house cookie' in any house.

]]> Unlike back-of-the-box oatmeal cookies, these are not made for the cookie jar - they're too delicate. They're a lovely combination of soft in the center and lightly crisped at the edges. They're a little reminiscent of lace cookies and a lot like a cookie you'll want to have whether you're sipping something warm or alternating bites with spoonfuls of ice cream. And they're perfect after dinner, say the Park Avenue Potluck Celebrations dinner, for example.

To see what everyone's bringing to this potluck, visit The Naptime Chef. To buy a copy of the book - and thereby make a contribution to Memorial Sloan-Kettering - click here. And to see the recipe for Mary's House Oatmeal Cookies, just keep reading.

MARY'S HOUSE OATMEAL COOKIES
From Park Avenue Potluck Celebrations, by The Society of Memorial Sloan-Kettering and Florence Fabricant

Makes about 24 cookies (see my notes below)

1 1/2 sticks (6 ounces) unsalted butter, softened
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups quick-cooking oats
1 cup raisins

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Use a little of the butter to grease 2 cookie sheets (see my notes below).

In a large bowl, sift together the flour, cinnamon, salt, and baking soda. In a separate bowl, cream the butter and gradually beat in the brown sugar, then beat in the granulated sugar. Beat in the egg until the batter is smooth. Beat in the vanilla and 2 tablespoons water. Fold in the flour mixture, then the oats and raisins. Drop scant tablespoons of the batter onto the baking sheets, placing them about an inch apart.

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes until slightly browned.

Remove from the oven and cool the cookies on the baking sheets for about 10 minutes, then transfer them to wire racks to finish cooling.

My Notes:

I made these both with regular oats, because that's what I usually have in the house, and with the quick-cooking oats the recipe calls for - quick-cooking oats make a better cookie.

Instead of buttering the cookie sheets, I lined them with parchment paper for one batch and used a silicone baking mat for another, just to make clean-up faster.

I used a 2-teaspoon scoop to spoon out the dough and I left about 2 inches of space between each mound of dough - these are spreaders.

Using the 2-teaspoon scoop I got more than 50 cookies out of the batch and they were all munched happily - and quickly.

On Parade: A Real Recipe for My Chili-Chicken Sandwich

2009-10-18T20:08:32Z

Do you remember this sandwich? It's the one my son, Joshua, and I concocted after our Southeast Asian trip. Based on a Vietnamese banh-mi, we had what became our prototypical sandwich in the night market in Luang Prabang, Laos. When The Kid and I returned, we made versions of this sandwich just about daily -- and we're still making and loving the sandwich.

Once just a sketch, now, almost a year later, I've committed the sandwich to a recipe, which you can find in today's Parade magazine or here, on the Parade website. (The picture of it is gorgeous -- don't miss it and the photos for the other two easy Asian-dinner recipes.) It wasn't easy to wrangle the ingredients into something a little more orderly than an arts-and-crafts project, but it was fun and the results are awfully tasty.

]]> The 'official' sandwich is in no way an authentic banh-mi (nor do I expect everyone to follow it to the letter and I'm so fine with that), but it's got the banh-mi's soft bread and strong flavors, chili sauce and mayonnaise, and, for some heat, in addition to the sriracha, I've layered in slices of jalapeno pepper.

And these days, I either oven-bake chicken breasts for the sandwich or poach them. To poach four chicken cutlets, bring about 6 cups of salted water to the boil with a smashed clove of garlic and about 4 slices of ginger. If you'd like, you can add a point from a star anise and a splash of soy sauce and/or sesame oil, but these are really embellishments and in no way essential. Slip the cutlets into the 'broth', lower the heat to a gentle and steady simmer and let the chicken poach until it is opaque at the center. Don't toss the poaching liquid -- it makes a delicious pick-me-up sipped from a mug.

You can use this same method for poaching chicken on the bone. Poach the pieces for about 15 minutes, turn off the heat and then leave them in the pot -- they'll finish cooking as the broth cools.

Whatever kind of chicken you use, I hope you'll make the sandwich and, as you did with the original sandwich, tell me about your variations.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Allspice Crumb Muffins

2009-10-13T12:16:06Z

This week, Katye of Grandma's Kitchen Table got to choose the recipe that the Tuesdays with Dorie bakers would make and post on their blogs today. It's a big responsibility to be the chooser and when you read Katye's post, you'll see that she not only took it very seriously, she added a bunch more responsibilities to the task, including finding a recipe that would be "kid-friendly" and one that "would make the house smell like fall or get one in the mood for the upcoming holiday season."

With her list of must-haves, she chose the Allspice Crumb Muffins (you can find the recipe on Katye's blog or on page 16 of Baking From My Home to Yours) and loved them (phew!) and, judging from what I've seen as I've whizzed around the web checking bakers' posts, so did lots of other TWDers.

It always thrills me when the TWD bakers like the recipes they make, but that they like this recipe makes me particularly happy, since I think allspice is a flavor that deserves a little more love and attention than it normally gets.

]]> Katye was right in thinking that these muffins would have the aroma of the holidays to come, since allspice is one of the spices that often gets added to pumpkin pie and might even get mixed into mulled wine or cider. Thought to taste like a combination of cinnamon, nutmeg and clove, hence its name, allspice looks like a large dark peppercorn and, even though it's not a true member of that family, it's delicious added to a whole-spice mélange made up of black, white, green and rose peppercorns.

Like the flavors it is thought to encompass, allspice is not a wallflower addition to a recipe, so use it sparingly: just a pinch is enough to make an impact and provide a touch of mystery to a dessert. For me, allspice leans more toward clove than to cinnamon or nutmeg and this tendency makes me want to freshen it by pairing it with citrus. I listed the grated zest of 1 lemon as an option in the Allspice Crumb Muffins - hope you'll use it. Let me know.

The above picture shows the original photo of the muffins taken by Alan Richardson for Baking From My Home to Yours.

A Butter Tip-Sheet + A Recipe for Brioche

2009-10-08T14:17:52Z

I've written about butter many times, in my books, here on this blog and in The New York Times, but the subject fascinates me and I can't imagine that I'll ever be done with it. What brings me back to it this time is comments readers made on my kouing-amann post. It all started with Robert W wondering if he'd be more successful making kouing-amann - a yeasted laminate (folded and rolled) dough - using a European, higher butter-fat butter. And it continued when Styopa suggested using a 'dry' butter and Romina chimed in to say she uses high-fat butter to make kouing-amann in her bakery.

All this talk put me in mind, as sweet talk often does, of conversations I've had with Pierre Herme, (friend, co-author and le roi of French pastry). Shortly after Pierre and I met, we were discussing puff pastry and he asked: "Do you make your dough with winter butter?"

"Winter butter?" I'd never heard of it and hadn't a clue what it could be.

]]> As Pierre explained it, winter butter is made with the milk cows produce when the majority of their feed is hay rather than fresh grass. Winter butter is pale, almost white (not golden like spring and summer butter), dry and excellent for puff pastry. So excellent, in fact, that Pierre said they stockpile the butter in their freezers so they'll have it on hand in the 'off' seasons.

I'm sure you've guessed by now, but you can only get winter butter from buttermakers whose milk comes from grass-fed cows. In other words, don't expect recognizably different winter butter from your supermarket brand, since most commercial buttermakers must strive for year-round consistency.

But dryness isn't the only factor that's important when you're considering butter for a pastry in which everything depends on it. You've got to consider fat and acid, too.

Butter is composed of fat, a negligible amount of milk solids and water and, to state the obvious - again - the more fat, the richer the butter. The amount of fat changes how the butter feels in our mouths and how it works in our doughs. How it tastes has to do with the quality of the milk and the buttermakers' finesse.

By law, in America every butter (except salt butter) must contain a minimum of 80% butterfat, while in France that minimum is 82%. While a 2% difference might not sound like much, just remember, whatever is not fat, is water. Interestingly, many of the best butters in France (butters like Echiré, which are AOC, Appellation d'Origine Controlée) contain 84 - 86% butterfat, as does the American butter from Vermont Butter & Cheese Company.

The acid in butter is less talked about than the fat, but it's no less important in terms of taste and the way it works with dough. In fact, a butter rich in lactic acids will have a very different taste from 'regular' butter, a taste which comes from 'culturing' or fermenting the cream before it is churned into butter. Think crème fraiche and you'll have an idea of the kind of tang that cultured butter has.

Culturing butter is slow and therefore expensive. The cream is allowed to ferment (cultures, like those used to make yogurt, are added to the cream) for hours before it is turned into butter. Churning this cream (which really is like crème fraiche) produces a butter with real flavor, one that lasts in a way that uncultured butter doesn't, and a level of lactic acid that - and this I also learned from Pierre Herme - improves the way some butter/laminate doughs, like those for croissants and kouing-amanns, as well as other yeasted doughs, develop. And, of course, whatever you bake with them will be richer and have more flavor. Butters that are cultured, and there aren't very many of them in the States, will say 'cultured' on the label. (Again, there's Vermont Butter & Cheese Company butter and butter from the Straus Family Creamery in California.)

If you want to do a little taste test, try making my Bubble-Top Brioches (pictured, just out of the oven, at the top of this post), which were in this month's edition of The Baker in Bon Appetit. You can read the brioche story here (it's always fun when I can get my husband, Marie Antoinette and butter into one article), find the recipe here, and get a bonus recipe for the Brioche tarte-au-sucre, shown above in a photo by Aya Brackett taken for Bon Appetit.

Kouing-amann, Half-and-Half Macarons and an Afternoon in Alencon

2009-10-01T21:23:23Z

On one of the afternoons of our working holiday at Chateau de Saint Paterne, Michael and I took the five-minute ride to Alencon to have a walk around. We arrived just after the 'official' lunch period, a two-hour block during which you have only yourself - not the parking meters - to feed. (I love that in towns all over France, metered parking is free between noon and 2 pm - it's so civilized.) Almost as soon as we started our stroll, I found Michael with his nose pressed against a pastry shop window. The object of his attention? A kouign-amann (kween-ya-monn), an icon of Breton baking, a paean to butter and a pastry that deserves to be better known.

The pastry - it's really viennoiserie and meant for morning munching - is made with a yeasted dough, like a croissant dough, that's wrapped around a block of butter and then rolled and folded a couple of times, but each time it's rolled, it's rolled in sugar, rather than flour. When the dough is cut into squares, its corners folded in (like a pinwheel), and baked, the sugar caramelizes, coating the kouign-amann all over and forming a somewhat firmer coating on the base (it's the base you see in the photo). So you get a sugar crust on the outside and then that wonderful, soft, buttery, stretchy dough inside. It's truly a marvel and one of Michael's favorite treats.

]]> So in we went and out we came, kouing-amann in hand. By the time we crossed the street, the butter was already making a little patch on the waxy bag. But it didn't matter because we weren't going to need the bag for long. We sat on a bench on the street, took a few bites and sighed and sighed. "Go back and tell the chef how good the kouing-amann is. Go back," urged Michael. Michael doesn't speak French (although beware - he understands just about everything), but you don't have to speak French to have the right idea and it's always the right idea to acknowledge work really well done.

Because the shop had only just opened after the lunch break, it was the chef who'd sold us the kouing-amann and the chef who was there to accept our compliments. Well, one thing led to another and before we all knew it we had spent an hour together. The chef's name is Jacky Pédro and he's a third generation pastry chef. If you stop by the shop, look at the pictures of young Jacky with his father and grandfather. Here he is, in front of the oven, which, no surprise, I fell in love with immediately. It's the only oven in Pédro's kitchen.

While Michael and I were in the kitchen with Chef Pédro we nibbled our way through his specialties, including his caramel au beurre salé (soft salted-butter caramel), a cookie made by piping langue du chat batter into a small ring and then filling the center with nut-caramel, and these macarons. The macarons interested me because you can consider them a hybrid sweet. They are part old-fashioned macarons, like the ones made in Nancy or, my favorites, the ones made by Mme. Blanchez in Saint-Emilion, and part modern, very Parisian macarons. Like the old-time macarons, they have almond paste and are a bit chewy, and like the new macarons, they also have whipped egg whites and ground almonds and a little crunch in the shell.

Our hour together was such a lovely and unexpected interlude and another lesson in how food - and my husband's good advice - can lead to sweet adventures.

Coco Before Chanel: Film, Fashion and France

2009-09-25T13:34:50Z

I'm like a little baby when it comes to travel - as soon as whatever I'm on starts to move, I fall asleep. It means that there's no lively chatter when I'm in the passenger seat, but it also means that I won't complain about whatever music the driver wants to play. And while I usually manage to stay relatively alert until a plane takes off, on this last Paris-to-New York flight, I was not just awake, but wide-eyed, thanks to Air France's good taste in in-flight films. For two hours I stared at the small screen attached to the seat in front of me, fully absorbed in the life of Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel, beautifully portrayed by Audrey Tautou in Coco Before Chanel.

This is a gorgeous film with such sweeping views of country and sea, city and style, that you could almost sense the pictures pushing the borders of the small screen. Even so, the quality of the cinematography, story, costumes and acting was so very high that it was impossible not to appreciate its pleasures; impossible, too, not to be left longing to enjoy it in a theater, and I had the chance this week when Atout France, the French Government Tourist Office, showed the film in an avant-premiere (a preview). Now I'm here to report that Coco Before Chanel easily stands up to a second viewing.

]]> The film tells the story of the early - and not-at-all easy - life of Chanel before she was the world-famous fashion designer we now know. And in the film you get a feel for the independent, actually rebellious, designer she would become.

I remember seeing a documentary about Chanel on French television and being surprised to learn that she was the first person to put women in pants, to use Jersey as a woman's fashion fabric, to insist that clothing have pockets (so practical) and, most important, to think about a woman's comfort at all times. You get a clear sense of this in Anne Fontaine's film and it's fascinating in light of where fashion has gone since - and thanks to - her.

And it's not just a girls' film - I know this because I took a quick little survey of the men in the audience. That Atout France treated us to champagne before the screening, and that some of the guests sipped throughout the film, had nothing to do with everyone's good cheer.

Atout France has put together a terrific web page with a video preview as well as links to all the places in France that are important in the film.

I'm loving this season because, with both Julie & Julia and Coco Before Chanel, France is getting the star turn it deserves.

Of Mustard and Steak-Frites at Brasserie Balzar

2009-09-20T23:15:20Z

Sometimes working in Paris on an American deadline is a deal - those are the times when you're behind and the 6-hour time difference gives you, well, six more hours to catch-up; and sometimes it's not - those would be instances when you're working in real-time with editors in New York. And so it was one of those real-times when Michael and I finally got off the phone, shut-down our computers, looked at the clock, saw that it was 10:15pm and realized that neither one of us wanted to start rustling up dinner, no matter how easy the rustling would be. And that's how we found ourselves sitting down to steak-frites at Brasserie Balzar, a legendary place so close to our apartment that by 10:30 we were sipping our first glass of rouge.

It's also how we found ourselves finishing our last glass of wine as the waiters were straightening up for the night, clearing the tables of salt and pepper shakers and gathering the mustard pots for refills. Seeing the small pots with their classic wooden spoons bumping up against one another on a side table made me think of an experience I'd had when I was giving a talk about eating out in Paris to a group of Americans lucky enough to have been transferred to the city.

]]> We were deep into the question-and-answer period when a woman raised her hand and asked, "What's up with the mustard in this place? Everywhere I go, the waiter brings out mustard."

She was right, although I'd never really thought about it. Where an American might reach for ketchup, a French person opts for mustard. Mustard with steak, for sure, often with an omelet and sometimes with fries.

Mustard is the national condiment and, while the best-known mustard is named for the Burgundian city of Dijon (actually, Dijon Mustard refers to a specific style of mustard, one that's smooth and sharp), mustard's origins aren't French: mustard was probably brought to France by the ancient Romans.

Knowing a good thing when they tasted it, the French started manufacturing their own mustard and by medieval times it was a kitchen staple. Pope John XXII, living in Avignon in the 14 th century, established the "Pope's First Mustard Maker," and two centuries later, Louis XIV, the Sun King, took to traveling with his own mustard pot in tow.

In fact, mustard pots are still traditional wedding presents in France and you can still bring your own little pot to shops like Maille for a refill.

Until someone creates whimsically decorated ketchup pots in porcelain, and until there are chic ketchup boutiques in Paris, it's a good bet that every café condiment tray will continue to come to the table with salt, pepper and moutarde, to which the French would say, tant mieux, so much the better.

Tales of Julia: Part 4/Julia's in the Details

2009-09-14T17:18:03Z

Every time I scrape the last little bit of anything out of a bowl, I think of Julia.

When we were taping Baking with Julia, I had what I thought of as the best seat in the house, a bedroom on the second floor of Julia's Cambridge Victorian house. The room was referred to as The Red Room, because red was the predominant color in the paintings - works by Paul Child - that hung on the walls. It was also the make-up room, which meant that when I came in, at about 7 am, I'd find Julia reading The Boston Globe and The New York Times and watching the morning news and having her hair done. It also meant that I got to chat with all the baker's as they got fluffed-up before taking their star turns. And, it meant that when everyone was downstairs, I got to sit at my desk with the split-screen monitor, the one that showed me everything the three cameras were shooting.

I didn't miss a single thing and, sitting up there alone, I got to giggle out loud without disturbing the shoot, and I got to play a little game with myself, the one in which I waited to see how long it would be before Julia would give the baker her little "let's not waste this" talk.

]]> Every time a chef would scrape something out of a mixing bowl and into a pan, Julia would wait one beat, then she'd look in the bowl and either ask the baker why he or she hadn't used every last bit of the batter, or she'd grab a spatula and scrape the remains out herself. And, as she'd scrape, she might say something like, "You chefs might be able to waste a little batter, but not us home cooks." And when Julia got done scraping, there wasn't a streak left for licking.

I didn't think of it then, but when I look back on it I'm a little surprised that the chefs were so profligate - it certainly went against the grain of old-school training, in which every bit of food was used, accounting, I'm sure, for the creation of a million vegetable soups and trifles.

It's also not a particularly French way of doing things and, while Julia wasn't French, she was trained in France, a France still feeling the effects of World War II. To this day, French people 'of a certain age' talk about finishing whatever food is on their plates and will say that either they or their parents remember what it was like when food was scarce. In fact, a few weeks ago, when I was baking in Paris, I poured the sugar from the box into my canister and was about to toss the box when a friend took it, tore open the top and poured the last little teaspoonful of sugar into the jar. I must have looked a little surprised because she said, "This just proves I'm French - I can't let anything go to waste."

I don't think it's French - I think it's smart. And I think it's Julia-ish, too.

Jams on Parade, Lemon Curd, Too

2009-09-10T14:26:56Z

No sooner did I get into my first kitchen than I wanted to make jams. Even then, never having done so much as scramble an egg, jams seemed to epitomize for me all that was homey - and all that would make a home. And then I started reading ... by the time I'd read a handful of recipes, all of which came with warnings that warranted skull-and-crossbones illustrations, I couldn't fathom how generations of jam-makers hadn't killed off major swaths of the jam-eating population. Somewhere, usually at the top, every recipe mentioned botulism. My response: Head to the supermarket and settle for whatever jam they had.

Happily, you can't keep a curious cook down and, once I got over the fear of killing my new husband and all our friends with trichinosis, the disease the recipes threatened would strike if your pork wasn't cooked to the hockey-puck stage, I was determined to beat back the specter of botulism.

And I did. And in the process I learned just how easy - and even quick - it can be to turn a bowl full of fruit into a jar full of jam. For proof, click over to Parade Magazine's site for my recipes for Strawberry-Ginger and Blueberry-Peach Refrigerator Jams. (You'll also find a nice recipe for Lemon Curd.)

]]> In fact, all you really need to make great jam is good fruit, 30 minutes or so to stir and spoon and some very clean equipment. (When it comes to canning, cleanliness is next to godliness.)

When you're getting your gear together, it's best to choose jars made specifically for canning because the glass is thick and made to withstand the pressure of boiling. And always start with new lids. Wash the lids, put them in a saucepan of cold water, bring the water just to the simmer (you don't want to boil the lids), remove from heat and keep the lids in their water bath. To process the jams, you'll need a deep pot that's 3 inches taller than your jars; put a rack or a triple layer of paper towels in the bottom.

If you're going to make refrigerator jams, meaning you're not going to process them for long-term storage, you don't have to be as picky about the kind of jar and you don't need standard canning lids. Just give your jars and their lids a good scrubbing, rinse them really well, put them in a pot with enough water to fill them and bring the water just to the boil; turn off the heat.

Whatever kind of jam you're making, you'll need a heavy casserole that holds at least 5 quarts for cooking the fruit. Put a saucer in the freezer for testing the jam and, if you've got them, have jar tongs at hand. (I often use silicone oven mitts.)

Jams for storage usually have about twice as much fruit as sugar, by weight. So, if you've got two pounds of berries, you'll need 1 pound, or about 2 cups of sugar. When I'm making refrigerator jams, I often use less sugar and I'll often cook the jam to a looser consistency. These are variables you can play around with.

But here's a key point: Even though it's tempting to make a lot of jam at once, it's a mistake - 8 cups of fruit is about the max. Use more and you might end up having the jam overcook before it sets.

Cook the jams while stirring, stirring, stirring. Don't walk away - at the beginning, jams have a tendency to bubble up and you need to be around to stir down the seething fruit; and at the end, they can stick and scorch, a sorry state.

When the jam looks like it's thickening, test it: Drop a little on the cold plate, freeze the plate for 1 minute, and then poke the jam. I like to have my jam lightly set - it will set more during its 5-minute calm-down period. If you like a firmer jam, cook it until the chilled drop wrinkles when you push it gently with your fingertip. Remove the pot from the heat and let the mixture sit for 5 minutes, a hedge against having all the fruit float up to the top of the jars.

To process the jams, pour the water out of the jars and put the jars on a heatproof surface. Fill them with jam, leaving 1/2-inch of headroom, and clean the rims; seal with a lid. Put the jars back in the canning pot (keep them upright) and add enough hot water to cover them by at least 2 inches. Cover the pot, bring to the boil, then boil gently for 10 minutes. Turn off the heat and carefully - very carefully - remove the jars, keeping them upright. Let the jam cool to room temperature.

Check the lids - they should be flat or concave and they should stay that way when you press their centers. If the seal looks iffy, refrigerate the jars rather than store them.

If refrigerator jam was what you were after in the first place, fill the jars, clean the rims, seal them and then turn them upside-down on a heatproof surface. I was told to this the first time I made jam and I've been doing it ever since. (I've decided that it truly seals the jam, but I might have made this up.) When the jams reach room temperature, turn them right-side up (you might have an airspace on the bottom of the jar, but the jam will eventually work its way down and fill it) and refrigerate them.

For more on canning and another recipe, see my friend David Lebovitz's post on apricot jam.

PS: I'm sorry I didn't think of this earlier. Kevin West of Saving the Season has a gorgeous and really informative site that's devoted entirely to canning. Even if you don't can, you should visit the site for the beautiful illustrations and Kevin's stories; if you do can, you'll find wonderful recipes.

Chateau de Saint Paterne: Paradise on a Deadline

2009-09-06T13:45:45Z

August is the calmest month in Paris. Just about everyone is on vacation, and those who aren't on vacation have either been on vacation, are going on vacation or have vacation on their minds. There have been times in August when I've gotten on the number 95 bus to go shopping and have half expected someone to wave a little hanky and call out "Bonne Vacances!" in my direction.

Famously, when the French go on vacation, they really go on vacation, as in out of town for three, four or even five weeks. And, quelles horreurs, they're frequently even almost out of touch -- off they go into the wilds of La France Profonde, only to be heard from when they can find an internet cafe. Just writing this last sentence makes me feel twitchy and reminds me that as much as I adore France and the French, I'm still an American.

And so, Michael and I took an American vacation: we packed up what my friend Stephanie calls our menage a trois -- that would be Michael, moi-meme and our computers -- and drove off into the sunrise for a two-day getaway to the beautiful Chateau de Saint Paterne in Le Perche (in Normandy).

]]> It was just what the doctor ordered and probably what my editor would have ordered if she'd known that my plan was to spend our vacation giving my book's manuscript its last read-through before sending it off to her.

The Chateau dates from the 15 th century and has been in the de Valbray family for 500 years, although the warm, welcoming and adorable Charles-Henry de Valbray, his wife, Segolene, and their three little boys are the first of the family to ever make the place their home. Charles-Henry and Segolene, both educated in America, have Gallic grace and charm and Stateside friendliness, an unbeatable combination. They are terrific hosts and he's a superb cook. In fact, dinner at the Chateau -- more about this in a minute -- would be reason enough to take the 2 1/2-hour drive from Paris.

While we did venture out to explore Alencon and its market and have a sweet lunch at Maison de l'Horbe in the town of La Perriere, mostly Michael sat outside and read and I stayed in our gorgeous room, pretending I was the chatelaine and working. Our windows were the two long ones on the right and they looked out over the huge garden, so I felt a little like a princess in a tower, albeit a princess on deadline. (Trust me, I've been on deadline in far worse circumstances.)

And then, at 8pm, we'd descend the wide winding staircase for cocktails in the salon with the other guests, a lively group -- the people we spoke to came from France, America, England, Australia and Hong Kong -- all with one thing on their minds: What would Charles-Henry make for dinner?

I wish I had pictures, but the beautiful dining room is lit only by candles and I opted to enjoy the lovely meal while it was hot rather than to try to figure out the settings on my camera. Next time ... But I do remember the menus:

Dinner Number 1: Foie Gras Mousse (more like an emulsion) topped with Asparagus Mousse (also more like an emulsion); Quail en Cocotte, rather like my chicken in the pot, each little bird was tucked into a cast-iron cassolette and roasted with preserved lemons and baby fennel (I'll be making this later this fall, for sure); cheese and salad; and Apricot Tarte Fine, a strip of puff pastry baked with perfectly ripe apricots (I had a dream about it that night).

Dinner Number 2: Ceviche Salad with Vietnamese Flavors (Charles-Henry has spent a lot of time in Vietnam); Gigot d'Agneau and Provencal Eggplant, Tomato and Zucchini Tian; cheese and salad; and warm Chocolate Fondant, its center lava-like.

Simple, lovely and so delicious.

If you can't get to Chateau de Saint Paterne, but you read French, you can cook Charles-Henry de Valbray's food chez you: he's got a really good cookbook.

And, just in case you're wondering, I met the deadline! (Well, most of it...)