Thanksgiving 2019

Time for a breather amid my tales of our trip to Japan . . .

Yesterday was Thanksgiving and, as always, our family met at our apartment. This year we had fourteen, and I decided to repeat my menu of 2018 with few changes. Why argue with success? Here's what I made:

For hors d'oeuvres, I made Michael Romano's great bar nuts from the Union Square Cafe Cookbook, roasted with an inspired combination of rosemary, brown sugar, cayenne pepper, butter and salt,

Union Square Cafe bar nuts

as well as Whipped Feta Dip, from Milk Street, served with fresh pita chips.

Whipped Feta Dip from Milk Street

For some reason, I have been craving tonnato (tuna) sauce lately, the kind used in vitello tonnato. I turned to Marcella Hazan's iconic Essentials of Italian Cooking for her recipe, but altered it greatly to make it into a stand-alone dip, served with little endive leaves for dipping.

Tonnato dip with endive leaves

This was accompanied by Dorie Greenspan's simple but delicious mustard batons and my hors d'oeuve de résistence, Shrimp with Toasted Garlic (Camerones de Ajo) from Tyler Florence.

Tyler Florence's Shrimp with Toasted Garlic (Camerones de Ajo)

This is always a huge hit, especially with my seve year-old great nice and her grandfather (my brother).

For me the actual dinner is less interesting. I made my usual turkey, a version of Julia Childs' deconstructed turkey (which Michael Chiarello's fennel seed rub) cooked over sausage stuffing from The Food Lab (also the source of my gravy recipe),

Deconstructed and carved turkey

accompanied by hashed Brussels sprouts quickly sauteed with lemon and poppy seeds, also from the Union Square Cafe Cookbook (I added toasted pine nuts, which I love, but found they offered little to this dish),

Union Square Cafe's Hashed Brussels Sprouts

and Sweet Potato Gratin from Ottolenghi: The Cookbook,

Ottolenghi's Sweet Potato Gratin

together with my fiery cranberry mostarda, a confit of dried cranberries and cranberry juice, mustard seeds soaked in wine, mustard powder, orange zest, cinnamon and lots of Champagne vinegar, a recipe from Food and Wine.

Cranberry mostarda

For dessert, guests were kind enough to bring a pumpkin pie, a chocolate cake and (yes, it's true) a peppermint cake, but I had to make at least one, in this case Clotile Dusoulier's Flourless Orange and Ginger Cake, a moist masterpiece of a cake suitable for serving friends with celiac disease (my celiac-afflicted friend has become addicted) and for Passover. This is one of my best recipes: it's easy, can be made a day or two in advance and never ceases to please. By the way, I use clementines rather than oranges.

Clotilde Dusoulier's Orange and Ginger Cake

So there it is, a large meal, followed by a good night's sleep and thoughts of what to do next year.

Bobby Jay

What I've Been Cooking - 4

Chocolate orange tart

As is our custom, we spent the end of the year in Paris. We mostly eat out when we're there, and what I cook there is often not very photogenic. In fact, most meals are half cooked and half provided by the excellent traiteurs and charcutiers and fromagers in the neighborhood.

Until Christmas, that is. As is our custom, we invited our Japanese ceramics artists/friends for Christmas dinner.

We started with salted pork tenderloin from the Vosges, which I found at Maison Plisson, not far from where we live and an easy visit during my daily walks. Very tender and perfectly seasoned.

Salted Vosges pork tenderloin

This was followed by Serendipity Chicken Livers, invented by the renowned Dorie Greenspan the day we shopped and had dinner together en famille at her apartment. We were shopping at a very fine volaillerie in the Richard Lenoir market, near the Bastille, when Dorie spotted some gorgeous chicken livers, which she said were a favorite of her husband's. So she bought a bunch and prepared them that day, roughly chopped with various Asian flavors: a wildly successful improvisation! After refining the recipe a bit, she graciously furnished it to me under strict orders not to share it unless and until she published it. So I have jealously guarded the recipte, but I did make and share the chicken livers themselves, and they were almost as great as when Dorie made them. We had them for lunch several times in the days after Christmas.

Serendipity chicken livers

For the main course, I made slow-cooked lamb shoulder over pommes boulangère, a classic from Tom Kerridge, the owner-chef of the only pub in the world to hold two Michelin stars. Starting with amazingly good (and expensive) lamb from Boucherie Gardil, on the Île Saint-Louis, what could go wrong? And nothing did.

Lamb shoulder with pommes boulangère

After a light green salad with a perfect Vacherin du Mont d'Or, my absolutely favorite cheese, only available in the winter months, I served a chocolate orange tart from Milk Street TV. Pretty and tasty if a bit too sweet for my taste. (Pictured above.)

We finished with some Armagnac and then more or less collapsed.

Bobby Jay

What I've Been Cooking - 2

While Joan was still in Japan, I received a package of persimmons from a great friend, who had gotten them from her friend in California, who has a wonderful tree. But they came with a stipulation: I was required to make a dish incorporating persimmons to be photographed and sent to the person with the tree for her judgment. Two others were included in the competition, both far more experienced than I; indeed, one has a well-known pastry shop in New York.

I thought about this for a couple of days and decided to make a tarte tatin using persimmons instead of apples. I used the basic techniique from the Confrérie des Lichonneux de la Tarte Tartin (Brotherhood of Tarte Tatin Lovers), with some brilliant additions from Paula Wolfert's The Food of Morocco, namely the addition of dried currants (Wolfert uses raisins but I wanted something less sweet) and orange flower water.

Here's my tarte tatin aux kakis Yamazaki. Quite a beautiful tart, I think,

Persimmon tarte tatin

but the persimmons were a bit mild-tasting for this dessert, being a bit overwhelmed by the bitterrness of the caramelized sugar and the heavily scented orange flower water. If I make it again . . .

When Joan's away I like to bake bread, so I made some levain country rye loaves from Chad Robertson's iconic Tartine Bread.

Levain country rye bread

It is so satisfying to get loaves that look like this, and have that sour taste that can only be found in a genuine levain bread. A serious scheduling problem, since the process takes about 24 hours and has a number of steps, but worth it when it comes out.

Bobby Jay

France -- Traditional Artisanal Products

One of the things I love about France is that you can still find regional items that have been made in the same artisanal way for many decades, if not longer. Walking down the Rue des Archives, I came across Praslines Mazet, which has been making pralines (grilled and caramelized almonds) and chocolates in Montargis (in the Loire Valley) since 1903. Indeed the "veritables praslines"are made daily according to a recipe from 1636 and the company claims the praline is the oldest bonbon in France.

Mazet salted caramel pralines

Although you can buy their chocolates in department stores, there is only one, very appealing Mazet shop in Paris and one in Montargis, and I have become good friends with the shopkeeper, having bought pralines three times this week for people who have been kind enough to invite me to dinner. The pralines come in several flavors: traditional, honey, salted caramel and orange flower. I have tried the traditional and the caramel and they are pretty great. And a good gift because they are not for sale everywhere.

Mazet, 37 rue des Archives

The chocolates are not bad, either, but there are many better ones. Still, gorgeous packaging:

Chocolate bars from Mazet

Bobby Jay

Is it Worth Making Ice Cream at Home?

YES!

I have been making ice cream and, to a much lesser extent, sorbet at home for years. It's easy to do and permits you to tailor your ice cream to your own taste and to take advantage of the wonderful produce you can find at your nearest greenmarket for much of the year. Although there are many books that tell you how to do it, the best I have found is The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz, which has just appeared in a revised an updated version. (Lebovitz, who now lives in Paris, is the author of numerous excellent cookbooks and of the justly popular blog, davidlebovitz.com.)

There are two basic approaches to ice cream: French-style, which is custard based, and Philadelphia-style, which is made with cream, sugar and milk but no eggs. Most of Lebovitz's recipes are for the richer, smoother French-style, but I nearly always use the Philadelphia-style since (i) it is a lot easier and (ii) does not heap egg-based cholesterol atop the already fatty cream and milk. Generally the French-style recipes are easily converted to Philadelphia-style.

For example, I adopted Lebovitz's French-style basil ice cream recipe and made Philadelphia-style rosemary ice cream,

Rosemary ice cream

just as years ago I made lemon verbena ice cream with the same method using Clotilde Dusoulier's proportions.

And that illustrates another use of Lebovitz's book. Once you master his simple method (either syle),you can adapt other people's (or your own) recipes in a flash, with a near-certainty of success.

The book also contains many recipes for sorbets, sherbets and granitas with copious mix-ins that Lebovitz suggests as pairings at the end of his recipes. Though I am not big on mix-ins, he has a great array of easy-to-prepare items, and suggests many accompaniments, that would turn an ice cream or sorbet into a complete dessert.

Of his chocolate sorbet, Lebovitz writes "This is the perfect chocolate sorbet -- it's very rich, dense and full of bittersweet chocolate flavor, and it's one of my all-time favorites." Based on this and my love for the cacao amer sorbet at Berthillon in Paris, I decided to give it a try. I used Ghirardelli's 60% bittersweet -- my go-to bittersweet chocolate for baking -- and it came out great.

Chocolate sorbet

Not quite Berthillon quality, but then, whose is? Next time I plan to go a little more bitter and will try Valrhona's 70% Guanaja. l can hardly wait to try it.

Today I found the season's first rhubarb at the farmer's market, so I made Lebovitz's strawberry-rhubarb sorbet with his recommended rhubarb compote. A lovely sweet-tart way to take advantage of this short-lived crop, although the strawberries are far from those that you find in mid-summer.

Strawberry-rhubarb sorbet with rhubarb compote

 The Perfect Scoop has so many wonderful sounding recipes that it is difficult to choose which ones to mention. But here are the ones I plan to try over the next few months:

• Labneh ice cream with pistachio-sesame brittle
• Tiramisù ice cream
• Lavender-honey ice cream
• Panforte ice cream
• Dried apricot-pistachio ice cream
• Prune-armagnac ice cream
• Orange-szechwan pepper ice cream
• Super lemon ice cream
• Toasted coconut ice cream
• Mocha sorbet
• Chocolate coconut sorbet
• Apricot sorbet
• Cherry sorbet
• Raspberry-rosé sorbet
• Spritz sorbet

Not counting ginger ice cream (my absolute favorite, which I keep around most of the time), green tea ice cream, vanilla ice cream and several others that I made from the first edition of the book.

I am not a fan of granitas, except from street vendors, so may pass on all the recipes in that section, although some sound great (mojito granita). Also, I have not yet moved on to the sauces and mix-ins, but definitely do intend to try Lebovitz's lean chocolate sauce, mocha sauce, creamy caramel sauce, candied citrus peel, wet walnuts (nostalgia for my late father), fudge ripple, stracciatella and croquant. I have other recipes for most of these, but Lebovitz is unusually reliable; his recipes are well-conceived, well-written and extensively tested.

If you've ever thought about making ice cream or sorbet, do it this summer, and get The Perfect Scoop today.

Bobby Jay

Ottolenghi's Newest Cookbook: Sweet

I have written over the years about the wonderful cookbooks of Yotam Ottolenghi, who first got me excited about Middle Eastern food. I have read and cooked from all of his books -- The Cookbook, Plenty, Plenty More and Jerusalem -- with one exception. The exception is Nopi, which contains recipes used in the restaurant of the same name where Ramael Scully is the chef. The recipes in Nopi look too complicated and intimidating to be of much appeal to me, although I hope someday to have a go. But I digress. Ottolenghi's newest book is Sweet, written with Helen Goh, an Australian woman who is, above all, Ottolenghi's principal dessert chef.

When I read a cookbook, I write down or put stickies next to the recipes I really want to try. Here is my annotated copy of Sweet, where I marked 24 items in the "must try" category.

Sweet with "must try" recipes tabbed

Some examples: amaretti with honey and orange blossoms; orange and star anise shortbread ;Persian "love cakes"; tahini and halva brownies; rum and raisin cake with rum caramel icing (see below); prune cake with Armagnac and walnuts; parsnip and pecan cake with aniseed and orange; apple and olive oil cake with maple frosting; coconut, almond and blueberry cake; Helen's version of lemon and poppy seed cake; flourless coconut and chocolate cake; ricotta and hazelnut cheesecakes; chocolate tart with hazelnut, rosemary and orange; fig and pistachio frangipane tarlets; apricot and thyme galettes with polenta pastry; lemon, yogurt and juniper berry ice cream; and saffron and pistachio brittle.

You get the picture: non-conventional adaptations of classic cakes and other desserts, with unexpected spices and syrups that take them to new places.

I have only had time to make the rum and raisin cake with caramelized rum icing, and it was a delicious beauty.

Rum and raisin caske with caramelized rum glaze from Sweet

As I get through the "must try" recipes, I will probably return to this book for another post or two.

Bobby Jay

Apples and Honey and Nuts for Rosh Hashanah

Apple tart with honey caramel and walnuts

We were invited to a dear friend's for Erev Rosh Hashanah dinner. I volunteered to bring dessert.

Mindful of the tradition of eating apples and honey and, I thought, nuts at Rosh Hashanah, I decided to bake a tart that would incorporate all of these ingredients.

I started with a slightly sweet tart shell, from a recipe by the new Milk Street television series. (Milk Street is a new magazine, TV, podcast, book, etc. food empire founded by Christopher Kimball, who founded Cook's Illustrated and left about a year ago.) I pre-cooked it with pie weights and then without until it was slightly brown inside

Then I made a honey caramel, made by cooking down honey, then adding a little salted butter and cream. No recipe: I just faked it.

I chopped some walnuts, and toasted half of them for four minutes in the microwave. I left the other half raw.

Then I peeled and cut some Gala apples into wedges, which I microwaved for three minutes to get some of the water out.

To assemble, I heated the caramel and spread some on the inside of the tart. I added a thin layer of toasted walnut pieces, and then the apples. I glazed the apples with apricot jam and then sprinkled raw almond pieces on top. I baked the tart until it seemed ready (the apples were soft), brushed on a little more apricot jam, and put it under a broiler for one minute, to char the apples and crust.

Finally, I reheated the remaining caramel and splashed it over the tart after it had cooled completely.

Et voilà! One of my prettier efforts. Served with some simple whipped cream, it tasted pretty good, too.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Bobby Jay

Chocolate Babka

This was the month of chocolate babka.

Chocolate babkas cooling in baking pans

Inspired by my success making challah from Uri Scheft's Breaking Breads, I decided to try making Scheft's chocolate babka. His babka, available at Breads Bakery, is credited with starting a babka craze.

Sheft presents two kinds of babka dough: basic and advanced. I used basic, which is a fairly simple to make yeast dough, which is turned into babka after resting a day in the fridge. Advanced, which is what Sheft uses at Breads Bakery, is a laminated dough, made by folding butter into the basic dough - using the same method as one uses to make puff pastry or croissants - and then waiting a further 24 hours. I'm sure the advanced makes a better (flakier and even richer) babka, but the one made with the basic dough is utterly fantastic.

Once you have the dough, you roll it out and then spread a pound (literally!) of Nutella and a third of a pound of chocolate chips on top, then roll it into a long cylinder, cut that into four pieces and braid them together, making two loaves. A three-hour rise in two bread pans and you are good to go.

Close-up of chocolate babka

Chocolate babka interior

I made chocolate babka twice, once to give a loaf to an ailing friend, and the second time for Joan to sserve to clients at  her Japanese art gallery. An unqualified hit each time!

Now I am faced with a dilemma: for my next project, should I go for broke and try the advanced dough, or try a cinnamon raisin-walnut or a rum raisin and cheese babka next? I will probably go for the advanced, just because the challenge is irresistible. I'll report back either way.

Bobby Jay

Valentine's Day at Home

Joan and I are never home for Valentine's Day, but this year we were. So I decided to make a special romantic meal for the two of us, incorporating some luxury ingredients that I don't use every day.

We started with slices of foie gras from Comptesse du Barry, from a can but still delicious, served on toasts from my recent challah efforts. Traditionally brioche toast is used, but challah, though a bit less rich, is pretty similar. Served with Champagne Gosset Brut Grand Reserve.

For the appetizer, tiny Nantucket Bay scallops sauteed on skewers and glazed with a sauce of soy sauce, white pepper and red wine vinegar, courtesy of the great Joël Robuchon (from Simply French, written by Patricia Wells). Served with a simple salad of micro greens from the Sunday farmer's market behind the Museum of Natural History, dressed with a thinned version of the same glaze.

Then a simplified version of poulet en demi-deuil (chicken in mourning), so named because a layer of black truffles cooked under the skin is thought to resemble a widow's mourning dress. Buttered and roasted in foil with a little cognac and Madeira in the cavity. Not as truffly as you might expect, but delicious and succulent in any case; a simple cooking method that I might try again. Served with buttered egg noodles and sauteed asparagus wrapped in prosciutto. A nice Côte-Rôtie Brune-et-Blonde de Guigal1999 accompanied the main course.

Truffled roast chicken, egg noodles and prosciutto wrapped asparagus

Finally, a decadent chocolate dessert -- Rose Levy Beranbaum's Choccolate Oblivion Torte, made with only three ingredients; Schaffenberger's 62% chocolate, eggs and butter. No flour, no sugar. Instead of cutting wedges I cut out rounds with a heated cookie cutter. Served with crème fraîche, raspberry sauce and raspberries. A pretty presentation, including the red notes appropriate to Valentine's Day.

Rose Levy Beranbaum's Chocolate Oblivion Torte

I hope you, too, had a happy Valentine's Day, no matter what you were doing or eating.

Bobby Jay

Tarte Tatin with a Twist

I made Tarte Tatin for guests the other day, and it was probably my most successful effort to date. I used the official version from the Confrerie des Lichonneux de Tarte Tatin for a classic beginning (see my post of January 16, 2016 for the recipe and illustrations). Just before covering with the puff pastry crust, I added raisins soaked in orange flower water, an idea found in Paula Wolfert's excellent The Food of Morocco. Ms Wolfert states that she tried in the book to avoid "nouvelle cuisine Morocaine" but could not resist the combination of Moroccan tastes with a French classic. And it worked! The orange flower water, raisins and buttery caramelized apples were a perfect combination.

Tarte Tatin with orange flower soaked raisins

And here's a close-up that I shot with my new macro lens (which I am enjoying using):

Tarte Tatin with orange flower soaked raisins - close-up

Not easy, but then not impossible either, as  you can see from the recipe, and a stunner every time.

Bobby Jay

Asia Week Macaro(o)ns

It's Asia Week in New York, which means that J is having a magnificent show of contemporary and modern Japanese ceramics. To keep her many clients satiated, I typically make macarons, those finicky but heavenly French meringue cookies with cream or ganache fillings. This year I made matcha (Japanese green tea) macarons filled with white chocolate ganache, one of J's and her clients' favorites. I employed a new (for me) technique this time, using Italian meringue, which involves adding hot sugar syrup to mounted egg whites, rather than French meringue, which includes only powdered sugar. While the Italian meringue is more difficult to create, it is easier to work with and bakes more predictably than the more brittle French meringue.

Matcha macarons with white chocolate ganache

When the macaron supply became exhausted, I baked a batch of matcha and coconut macarOOns, simple confections made of coconut, sugar, a little flour (not all recipes have this, which is why people serve them for Passover), and egg whites. Here I added a bit of matcha powder to half the batter to achieve the two-part effect. (Thanks to Stephanie Le's excellent iamafoodblog for the concept.)

Matcha and coconut macaroons

While not as elegant as macarons, macaroons are easy to make and fun to eat.

Bobby Jay

Paris - Organic Chocolate Mousse

I like chocolate mousse, but J does not. I'm not sure how that's possible, but there it is. As a result, I never make it, despite having many many recipes in French cookbooks, magazine cuttings and internet posts.

One of my guilty pleasures in Paris, especially when I'm here alone, is the organic dark chocolate mousse that can be found at Monoprix and at bio (health food) stores. The amazing thing, for a store-bought product, is the list of ingredients: chocolate (42%), eggs, butter. That's it, no preservative, thickener, gelling agent, stabilizer. Well, perhaps the most amazing things are really the taste and texture, which are excellent and quite adult. (The mousse is so thick that it's actually hard to clean your spoon, either with your mouth or in the sink.) Or maybe I just become a child again when I eat them.

Ready-made chocolate mousses, left from bio store, right from Monoprix

When in Paris, go to a supermarket and buy one to keep in your mini-fridge in case of emergency.

Bobby Jay

Paris - ECLAIRS!

There is a big resurgence of eclairs in Paris, mostly due to the efforts of Christophe Adam, whose credentials include stages at an amazing array of famous pâtissiers, and who was named "Pâtissier de l'année" by the famous Pudlo guide for 2014.

A classic eclair is not a very humble thing, consisting of choux pastry stuffed with luxurious pastry cream and/or whipped cream or chibouste (pastry cream plus whipped egg whites) and generally dipped in icing or chocolate. They are pretty delicious. But the eclairs that Adam makes and sells at Éclairs de Génie, in the now fashion oriented part of the Marais, are a whole 'nother thing. Here a picture or two will tell the story better than I ever could:

ÉCLAIRS!

MORE ÉCLAIRS!

STILL MORE ÉCLAIRS!

And they taste good, too! Sophisticated flavors abound, and almost keep up with the spectacular appearance of the éclairs.

Éclairs de Genie, 13 rue Pavée, Paris 75004 (Métro St.-Paul).

Bobby Jay

Still Summer

Summer may be winding down but the farmers' markets are bursting with late summer fruit and vegetables.

For dinner the other night, I celebrated heirloom tomatoes . . .

Heirloom tomato salad with mozzarella di bufala and torn basil

and apricots.

Apricot pistachio tart

What a pleasure to cook with great fresh ingredients like these!

Bobby Jay

Lemon Verbena Ice Cream Recipe

In my post of August 6, I described a lemon verbena sorbet that I had made, with a recipe from Clotilde Dusoulier, of Chocolate & Zucchini fame. As I said, it became icy and more of a granita than a sorbet after a few hours of freezing.

Lemon verbena ice cream with strawberries

Inspired by the refreshing taste, however, I decided to try to make a lemon verbena ice cream. Using Clotilde's proportions, and David Lebovitz' (The Perfect Scoop) can't-miss method for Philadelphia style (eggless) ice cream, I came up with the following recipe, which has the same herbal quality as the sorbet but a smooth and luxurious texture:

Bobby Jay's Lemon Verbena Ice Cream

(Adapted from Clotilde Dusoulier and David Lebovitz)

Ingredients:

• 2 cups heavy cream
• 1 cup milk
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 18 grams (2/3 oz) fresh lemon verbena
• 30 grams (c. 1 oz) limoncello (optional but helps the texture)
• dash of salt

Procedure:

1. Heat 1 cup of cream, the milk, the sugar, the salt and the lemon verbena until the sugar melts and the mixture is bubbling around the sides. It should be about 175 degrees fahrenheit.
2. Remove from heat, cover and let stand for 1 hour.
3. Pour the mixture through a strainer into a bowl containing the remaining 1 cup of cream and the limoncello. Cool the bowl in a larger bowl with ice water, then place in the refrigerator for a few hours or, preferably, overnight.
4. Freeze using an ice cream freezer, following directions.

Simple to make, almost as refreshing as the sorbet/granita, but with a voluptuous texture that pairs perfectly with summer berries or stone fruits.

(PS  I then melted the remaining sorbet, reduced it a bit, and saved it as a lemon verbena syrup: perfect over vanilla ice cream or fruit or mixed with sparkling water. It would probably also make a great sweetener for iced tea.)

Bobby Jay

Navettes d'Anise

Navettes d'anise

A friend recently gave me a lovely book, Cuisine Niçoise, by Hillary Davis, which contains recipes from -- you guessed it -- Nice, including her favorite cookies, navettes d'anise. I resolved to make a batch.

There was no photo of these boat-shaped cookies in the book, so I searched the internet and found plenty of photos and many recipes, with surprising variety. While the ones in Cuisine Niçoise use anise seeds, anise extract and vanilla extract, many call for orange flower or rose water, either alone or in combination with anise. In any event, I followed the recipe in the book and came up with very crispy, strongly anise-flavored biscuits that are good by themselves but even better when dipped in red wine (or vin santo, I imagine).

Bobby Jay

Homemade Chocolates

When the weather gets bad, some people make cookies, some make brownies, I make chocolate.

Using a pound and a half of Barry 72% Cacao Venezuela that I bought in France, I made an assortment today, including mendiants each covered with a slice of candied ginger, a half hazelnut and a half or whole pistachio nut, depending on size. I was hoping to make them as beautiful as the ones from La Petite Rose, our favorite Paris chocolatier (they use Valhrona). Here you can see that I did not quite succeed -- theirs is the beautiful one with candied orange peel at center left -- but mine are not bad for an amateur.

Mendiants. The perfect one from La Petite Rose is at left center.

The other items were hearts filled with little griottes (Morello cherries) that I got from a jar of preserves from the La Chambre aux Confitures, fluted flat-topped cones filled with toasted hazelnuts, and little disks and leaves of pure chocolate.

Assorted homemade chocolates

Inside of a griotte-filled heart

I tempered the chocolate using Sherry Yard's microwave method, gradually melting the chocolate in short bursts at 50% power until I reached 115 degrees, then adding unmelted chocolate, waiting until the chocolate cooled to 85 degrees and reheating to 90 degrees. For the last step I used my sous vide cooker so I could hold the chocolate at the right temperature until I was ready to use it. As you can see, this method produced shiny chocolate that (you'll have to take my word for it) snaps when bitten.

It is fun and surprisingly easy to do this, and the results are impressive.

Bobby Jay

Tarte Tatin Revisited

I'm still not jaded when it comes to Tarte Tatin. Although it's not my favorite dessert, it's great for company because (i) everyone loves it, (ii) it's really impressive and (iii) it can be made ahead.

So I recently made one with what I thought was the official recipe, sanctioned by the Confrérie des Lichonneux de Tarte Tatin, a French society that is devoted to this delicacy (only in France: consider the AAAAA - Association Amicale des Amateurs d'Andouillette Authentique).

Here's the result, which was very lovely but a little watery: slightly under-caramelized.

I posted this on Facebook and had a surprising number of comments and questions. One asked for the recipe so I embarked on a search to make sure what I had used was in fact "official." It turned out that it was not, but rather a (very significantly simplified) adaptation published in the New York Times. That led me on a hunt for the real original, which in turn took me to French web sites. The Confrérie's web site does not have the official version, but I found a site that gives a recipe that purports to be the vraie chose.  Adventurous French-speakers can find this at Sabine . . . En Quête de Cuisine.

My quest was not over, however, as Sabine's recipe was in French and had a couple of steps too many. So I hunted until I found a reliable version from Dorie Greenspan that was published in Fine Cooking in 2010. Dorie's recipe is very similar, though in more detail, to the one I used, which is set forth below.

"OFFICIAL" TARTE TATIN

(Adapted from the Confrerie des Lichonneux de Tarte Tatin, via New York Times)

Ingredients		Directions
·       8 tablespoons butter, at room temperature ·       1 cup sugar ·       6 medium Gala or Golden Delicious apples, peeled, cored and cut into quarters ·       1 thin ( 1/8-inch) sheet puff pastry, cut into a circle 12 inches in diameter (I use regular pâte brisée).		1.     Spread butter evenly in a 10-inch tarte Tatin mold or heavy 10-inch nonstick ovenproof skillet. Spread sugar as evenly as possible on sides and bottom of pan. Beginning at edge of pan, arrange apples peeled side down in concentric circles, fitting apples closely together. 2.     Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place pan over high heat, and cook without stirring until sugar caramelizes and turns dark golden brown, 15 to 20 minutes. Remove from the heat, and press gently on the apples with a wooden spoon to help fill any spaces between them. Cover the apples with puff pastry, overlapping the rim of the pan. Bake until the pastry is golden brown, about 30 minutes. 3.     Remove tart from oven, and allow to rest for 5 minutes. Cover pan with a large plate, and quickly invert tart; remove pan. Serve hot or warm

Try one or more recipes for this classic, or send me your own!

Bobby Jay

If It's June, It's Clafoutis aux Cerises

Clafoutis aux cerises

My wonderful French teacher Caroline is moving to Florida and I am désolé. Among other things, she has shared in my interest in food, especially but not entirely French cuisine, and requested that I make her a clafoutis aux cerises before her departure. Resistance being futile, I complied.

In France, June is the month when spectacular cherries are abundant, and virtually every restaurant serves clafoutis to take advantage of them. A clafoutis essentially consists of fruit over which a pancake-like batter is poured, which is then baked. It is sometimes made as a tart and sometimes just baked in a heatproof dish. I opted for the tart, because I love making tarts, and found a recipe from the legendary Joel Robuchon, in Simply French, the master's collaboration with Patricia Wells. One of Robuchon's twists is to powder the tart with ground-up baked morsels of the tart dough, which you can see in the photo above. I was pleased with the result, and so was Caroline and some of her colleagues who came by to partake of the tart. However, I plan to go with a simpler, more classic and less intimidating version next time.

I am off to Paris next week, where the cherries are better than the ones we get from the West coast this time of year, and where I will no doubt sample a few versions of the real thing.

Bobby Jay

Castagnaccio - Italian Chestnut Cake

Castagnaccio

I was looking over my "To Cook Soon" file recently and came across David Rocco's recipe for castagnaccio, a traditional Italian chestnut cake. I compared it to another recipe in my file and this seemed to be the better one.

Castagnaccio is incredibly easy to make, has almost no fat or sugar and is gluten free; I was looking forward to recommending it to my celiac-suffering friend. So, using chestnut flour from Kalustyan's, wonderful rosemary from my friend Susan and unbelievably sweet raisins from our California based friends Nami and John, I set out to make the perfect castagnaccio. Which I might have done. It was beautiful, as you can see from the picture above.

The problem: castagnaccio is not really a cake at all (no leavening) and has a weird taste. It reminds me of the chestnut filling for seasonal sweets in Japan, but is less sweet and comes in an enormous quantity rather than pretty little bites.

While I can't exactly recommend it, if you're a chestnut fanatic, you might give it a try. The recipe is set forth below.

Bobby Jay

Castagnaccio

(David Rocco)

This is a very Italian, not-sweet pastry, best eaten with some vin santo. Probably originally for Italian grandmothers in the late afternoon rather than for dessert.
Serves  6-8
Ingredients		Directions
- 400 g chestnut flour - 30 ml sugar - Pinch salt - 500 ml water - 60 ml extra-virgin olive oil - 50 g raisins - 60 g pine nuts - Leaves from a rosemary sprig - Zest of 1 orange		1.     Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. 2.     In a mixing bowl combine the flour, sugar, salt, and water. Whisk the batter well until the batter is silky smooth in consistency. 3.     Add the olive oil to a nonstick pie pan and heat in the oven for 5 minutes. Once the oil and pie pan are hot, add the batter. Smooth out the batter evenly. Sprinkle the raisins, pine nuts, rosemary and orange zest on top. 4. Bake the cake for 10 to 15 minutes, or until the top is golden.