Winter Skies, Kitchen Aglow

The final installment of That Cookbook Thing II, a community review of various recipes in Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck's Mastering The Art of French Cooking, Volume One, brings us to desserts. The French are perhaps the most renowned for their desserts, particularly those involving pastry. Our final group sampling comes from the essential chapter Desserts and Cakes, in which one is introduced to fundamental baking techniques as well as what goes into making quintessentially French tarts.

Central to the art of baking are the various binding requirements of eggs, sugar and cream or milk required for pastries and pastry cream. The latter is more intricate for all it takes is a difference of temperature, quantity or inclusion of one or two different ingredients to go from a creme anglaise to a frangipane pastry cream. While short on theory, Child et al. provide enough information in order for you to succeed in baking heavenly tarts. The idea is to get you into the kitchen, not to weigh you down to the point of inertia.

Dessert tarts typically comprise of three elements: pastry shell, pastry cream and fruit. Of course, there are various pastries and creams from which to choose in order highlight one's chosen fruit(s), and this is where the French truly transcend the expectations of a simple dessert.

The tart that we were supposed to make is a flambeed cherry tart. While the cherry season has just begun in New Zealand, I was not able to find any. So, I decided on dried figs, which were still plump and responded well to reconstituting in red wine. Besides, figs are just as much a part of French life as cherries. The tart, finally, took a detour, ending up with more of southern flavour than a south-western one. Never mind. It is still a fruit tart, and you know I love tarts (Samantha Jones of Sex and the City included).

In making the tart, Child et al. suggest two possible tart shells and pastry creams. There is no discussion on which works best; therefore, the reader is empowered to create an instant repertoire - keep your fruit the same, and just change out the shell and cream. The pastry shell options are sweet short crust and sugar crust. I opted for the sugar crust, as it provides a firmer finish (depending on the amount of sugar used). As for the pastry cream, the options are a custard filling or an almond custart. I have an absolute adoration of almond custard (aka frangipane), so there was no debate. In combination with the figs, I was salivating from the first beating of the whisk - this is fruit tart ne plus ultra.

The tart fits a 25cm/10" tart pan. Overall, I used considerably less sugar than recommended.

Tarte aux Figues
(Largely based on Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, and Simone Beck's first volume of Mastering the Art of French Cooking)

For the sugar crust pastry shell:

1 3/4 cups flour
4 tablespoons sugar
1/8 teaspoon baking powder
7 tablespoons butter, diced
1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon of water
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1) Mix together flour, sugar and baking powder in a medium bowl.
2) Rub butter into the flour mixture with the tips of your fingertips until sand-like granules are formed. Touch as lightly and deftly as possible. (Believe me, you will get that hang of it if you make pastry tarts enough times.)
3) Mix in the beaten egg and vanilla and bring entire mixture together.
4) On a lightly floured surface, knead the mixture into a ball.
5) To fully blend the mixture, use the heel of your hand to press small sections of pastry in a quick smear of approximately 15cm/6"(this process is known as fraisage).
6) Form into a disc and wrap in clingfilm for approximately 30 mintues.
7) Preheat oven to 190 C/375 F.
8) Roll out disc on a lightly-floured surface.
9) Place pastry into a prepared (lightly filmed with butter and flour) tart mold. Cover with foil and baking beans, then bake for 6 minutes.
10) Remove foil and baking beans, prick base of the tart base, bake for a further 8-10 minutes. Keep an eye on the rim of the shell, for it might blacken (due to sugar content). It is wise to place foil around the rim, as I have done in the past but neglected to do on this occasion.
11) Remove from oven and from mold, and let cool on a rack, during which time it will also harden.

For the figs:

1 cup red wine
2 tablespoons lemon juice
4 tablespoons sugar
3 cups dried figs, halved if large

1) Boil red wine, lemon juice and sugar.
2) Add the figs.
3) Simmer for 5-6 minutes, then off the heat and let figs steep in liquid for approximately twenty minutes.
4) Drain figs (no need to reserve liquid).

For the frangipane (almond custard):

1 egg and 1 egg yolk
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup boiling milk
1 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 cup almond flour (pulverised almonds)
2 tablespoons cognac (or kirsch or brandy)

1) In a bowl, beat egg and egg yolk, gradually adding sugar.
2) When the mixture is pale yellow and forms ribbons, beat in the flour.
3) Add milk in a very thin stream.
4) Over medium heat, pour contents back into pot in which milk heated (to save on dishes, you understand), stir slowly, whipping all the time.
5) When the mixture becomes lumpy, beat vigorously until a paste is formed, all the while over the heat to cook the flour. Be careful not to burn the mixture on the bottom of the pot.
6) Off the heat, add butter, vanilla and almond extracts, almond flour and cognac. If you are not using it immediately, clean the sides and dot top with butter to prevent a film from forming over the frangipane.

To assemble the tart:

1) Fold drained figs into the frangipane.
2) Spread figs into sugar crust tart shell.
3) Preheat broiler/grill in oven.
4) Sprinke 1 tablespoon sugar over surface.
5) Place under broiler for 2-3 minutes to caramelise the sugar.
6) Optional: Throw 1/4 cup cognac, kirsh or brandy over surface of tart, alight and present to table.

This truly is a heady and wonderful combination, a complete success. The tart shell is sturdy and sweet, the figs heady and plump, the almond custard and booze rounding our the flavours of the tart with interest. While there are a few steps to building this tart, not one of them is difficult - and only the last optional step is potentially dangerous. I found that this tasted just as good the next day with a perfectly hot cup of strong black coffee, but I have a love of sweet goods late in the afternoon (I must be Central European at heart).

That Cookbook Thing II has been a wonderful experience for me to get to know a classic cookery text. Whilst I have not proceeded to engage in it to the nth degree as Julie Powell of the famous Julie/Julia Project, I have made a connection to Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck's masterful text. This is a great text for the home cook, for its sole purpose is to really train the reader to produce quality meals at home. The tips are insightful and the organisation of the great selection of recipes is practically unparallelled. This is a user-friendly guide for those of us who love French cooking.

Labels: Book Review, Fig Tart, Figs, French, Fruit tart, Julia Child, That Cookbook Thing II

There are two walkways from different major arterial roads that lead down to my home nested in a valley between somewhat steep ridges. Opposite one of those walkways is house that has its territory marked with deciduous trees - Japanese maples. Their leaves begun to turn a gorgeous russet early last week. While most of the cookery book literature I read celebrates the new beginnings that are associated with Spring and Easter, in the Southern hemisphere, and particularly in New Zealand - practically at the bottom of the world - it is a time of reflection.

I do not recall many religious explanations for the way the world works as a child, but I have a vague recollection of Easter being presented to me as a time of renewal and cleansing. I remember looking out the large aluminium-framed windows of one of my primary school's prefabs to see nature seemingly on the verge of dying. It didn't make sense in my little six-year-old head, then: renewal. The cleansing bit I got - my memory is full of many wet childhood Easter weekends. Beyond that, I couldn't make the association, and so I didn't.

I do not know how the religious signifcance of Easter is reconciled through food in New Zealand. A reconciliation is surely required for all the various denominations of the various religions and faiths to show unity across the globe, is it not? In New Zealand, one does not eat the young Spring lamb, but rather those that are six months older (and more preferable to taste, in my mind). There are no delicate salad greens, but the beginnings of hardy greens. As for fruit, gone are most of the juicy Summer berries, but there is the very short fig season and the entry to three months of feijoa heaven. The figs, at least, can be worked into some Northern representation of the importance of Easter.

As an atheist adult, Easter is mainly a special time of year for those who work a regular week in New Zealand (or for anyone, really), as it is the only public holiday in which a day off work is tacked onto either side of the weekend - heck, even most of Auckland's stores are closed for large chunks of the holidays (some open on the two major days, Good Friday and Easter Sunday, and risk paying a fine or being prosecuted for it). Mostly, Easter allows for a relaxing getaway without having to use one's annual leave in order to enjoy the last of the Summer sun. Sometimes, Easter weather is pretty miserable, so having hot cross buns and hot chocolate is a good way to go. (Having said that, this weekend has been rather glorious.)

I'm not bucking my own tradition, though, for it is all I have left to tie me to the Easters of my past. Gone are the all the kids playing together in my cul-de-sac - families do not know/trust each other anymore. Gone is the novelty of the Easter Show (now usually seen as a lame excuse for a temporary amusement park). And with Easter occurring earlier, it seems, gone is the gloomy weather. Despite the change, I still find myself munching on chocolate and fig-filled hot cross buns, drinking homemade mochaccinos (without the steamed milk)...all the while watching The Sopranos.

Hot Cross Buns
(adapted from Nigella Lawson's Feast: Food That Celebrates Life)

See recipe from my post on Hot Cross Buns last year.

I made a few modifications:

I did not use any orange zest, but rather increased the amount of cardamom pods used to steep in the once-boiled milk. I halved the cinnamon and increased both the nutmeg and ginger. Most of the fruit used was dried figs. I substituted one egg for a couple of tablespoons of milk, as necessary to bind the ingredients together. Encased in half of the buns is one square of dark, bitter chocolate.

As you can see, I didn't bother with marking the crosses on the buns except for the indentations made with the back of a butter knife. Store-bought buns always have beautiful looking crosses, but I suspect the firmness is attained by using gelatine, which I prefer not to use except for the odd occasion of making jelly or panna cotta. And while mine are tiny and not heterogeneous in shape, they taste more grown up than the commercially-produced, timidly-spiced buns sold in stores. Further, the combination of fig and chocolate feels more grown up - I could have made these more contemporary, I suppose, by steeping the dried figs in lapsong suchong or earl grey tea and then shaping the balls into squares. Perhaps next year?

I do not profess to be a great drinker of hot chocolate, especially not virginal ones - I prefer it with coffee or a hint of brandy. What I do love is the romantic associations: Winter getaway to a chalet, a buffer to the coldest of polar southerlies beating against windows...However you make it, insist on using the best-quality chocolate you can lay your hands on, for it is the principal ingredient here. The following recipe serves two.

Stove-top Mochaccino
(Adapted from Tessa Kiros' Hot Chocolate in Apples for Jam)

3 rounded tablespoons ground coffee beans
1/2 cup water
2/3 cup chopped 70% cocoa-solid/bittersweet chocolate (Ms. Kiros suggests semisweet)
1 1/2 cups milk
1/2 cup (heavy) cream
1 teaspoon icing/confectioners' sugar
unsweetened cocoa powder or ground cinnamon to dust on top

1) In your coffee vessel, make a pot of coffee. I have a moka pot, and this small quantity of coffee takes almost seven minutes to make, to I suggest getting on with it first.
2) Over medium heat, bring the chocolate and milk to just below boiling point, at first stirring with a wooden spoon to ensure the chocolate fully melts and does not catch on the bottom of the saucepan, then whisk to ensure smoothness.
3) In a bowl, whisk together the cream and icing sugar until thick. Ms. Kiros advises not to make it stiff, but I like it to float like an island, cool and creamy gulps in between hot and dark ones.
4) Pour hot coffee and chocolate into cups, stir together.
5) Gently spoon the cream on top.
6) Sprinkle a small amount of cocoa powder or cinnamon on top, if you wish.

Labels: Chocolate, Easter, Figs, Hot Cross Buns, Nigella Lawson, Tessa Kiros

This month's Weekend Cookbook Challenge, started and maintained by Sara at one of my daily blog addictions - i like to cook - is being hosted by Paige at chef-girl.net. The instructions are just as I like them: loose - make a dish of any description to pair with a DVD of a movie or tv show. It didn't take me long to decide what to watch because MGM recently reissued a double-billing: Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring.

These two Marcel Pagnol novels were adapted for the screen by Claude Berri, who also directed the films, and Gérard Brach. They are cautionary tales with biblical undertones that are set against the backdrop of what is often today still regarded as paradise: Provence.

This, however, is not the Provence most of us know. Its endless golden, rolling hills - often the epitome of Summer - are, here, the setting for greed, captured in the landscape through drought and unabating heat. In Jean de Florette, Gérard Dépardieu, playing the titular role of the hunchback, arrives in the provençale countryside with his loyal wife and adventurous daughter, after having inherited a large plot of land with a water source. What he doesn't know is that the spring has been sealed by his neighbours, the dim-witted though single-minded Ugolin (Daniel Auteuil) and avaricious entrepreneur César Soubeyran (exquisitely portrayed by Simone Signoret's husband, the elegant Yves Montand). The neighbours help the well-intentioned tax collector-cum-organic farmer to his ruin with the expectation of purchasing his land for their carnation venture. Manon des Sources sees Jean's daughter, Manon (portrayed by then ingénue, now international film star, Emmanuelle Béart) exacting vengeance on the conspirators.

This isn't meant to put you off your food, of course, for the landscapes are stunning, as are the village scenes: the farmers gathering in sunlit cafés despairing at their poor harvests, afternoon pastis under the shade of leafy trees, the gentlemen playing pétanque in the town square...In this oppressive Californian heat, and I proffer in any temperature, it is easy to be romanced by the azures and yellow ochres of la vie provençale.

The location of the source of life, as in the Garden of Eden, is amongst life-affirming trees. In this case, it is the fig tree. To eat while watching this film, I, thus, offer baked figs. This, to my mind, is the best way to have figs if one is to do anything to them - that is to say, not have them right off the tree. My usual additions to this Nigella Lawson recipe are a tart berry - this time red currants - and thyme (though, today, I couldn't find any in the fridge or on the spice rack; if you happen to have some, chuck in a tablespoon of fresh thyme or half a tablespoon of dried thyme). My substitution, as seems to be typical this Summer, is pistachios for almonds.

Broiled Figs
(Closely following Nigella Lawson's Forever Summer, in which they are described as Figs for A Thousand and One Nights)

12 Turkish or Mission figs (if medium-to-large, otherwise add more, as I did)
1/4 cup/55g unsalted butter
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon vanilla sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons rosewater
1 1/2 teaspoons orange-flower water
4 stems red currants
2 1/4 cups/510g mascarpone cheese
1/2 cup slivered almonds, toasted

1) Quarter the figs without pushing your paring knife through the base of each fig. The key is to leave them open-mouthed. Place them cosily in a baking dish that can withstand the heat of the broiler.
2) Melt butter in a saucepan before adding the cinnamon, sugar, and garden-scented waters. Stir to combine and pour over the figs.
3) Pull red currants from their stems with the tines of a fork and scatter over the figs.
4) Fire up the broiler, and once it is fierce, put the figs under it and blister them for a few minutes.
5) Serve figs with a dollop of mascarpone and strew with almonds.

Not only does this capture the heat of Provence, where figs are abundant, but its magical properties, by way of the waters, lift one on the cloudless skies of Summer. This is the perfect dish to which one should watch the exquisite Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring. After the viewing, knock back a pastis and contemplate the philosophical debates addressed in these films.

Labels: Figs, Nigella Lawson, Weekend Cookbook Challenge