Paris -- Clafoutis Revisited

Apricot-sour cherry clafoutis

It's June and I am in Paris, which means one must eat clafoutis aux cerises, or cherry custard, made by pouring custard over whole cherries (with or without pits, but more on that later) and baking until set and with a lovely color. Every restaurant serves a version, but I have rarely found one that was not a bit heavy.

In 2013, I made Joel Robuchon's version, from Patricia Wells' Simply French, which make the clafoutis into a tart sprinkled with ground up baked pieces of the tart dough. (See my post of June 8, 2013.)

Last year, I made Dorie Greenspan's version, from her wonderful Baking Chez Moi (see my post of June 6, 2014). It was the classic, only I used sour cherries instead of sweet ones and removed the pits despite the traditional view that leaving them adds taste to the dessert. It was fine, but reinforced my view that the classic clafoutis is not the greatest thing ever.

I was invited to friends' for dinner last night and volunteered to make dessert. Thinking I would make an apricot tart, I bought a kilo of ripe apricots at the Sunday market near the Bastille. Then I found some sour cherries and had to buy them, too. As a result, I changed gears and tried to come up with a dessert that would combine the two. And it is June. So I decided to do an apricot-sour cherry clafoutis. Upon rereading Dorie's recipe, I came across her variation (bonne idée), which involves putting a lighter, flourless cherry custard into a sweet pastry shell. I pitted the cherries, cut the apricots into eights to approximate the sized of the cherries, and proceeded to follow the recipe (except that I used Clotilde Dusoulier's simple recipe for the tart dough).

It came out perfectly, as you can see below.

Clafoutis step 1: Clotilde's pâte sablée, prebaked

Clafoutis step 2: add pitted sour cherries and apricot pieces

Clafoutis step 3: add custard and bake

Clafoutis step 4: the finished product (well, almost, see above for the final)

It also tasted great. What's more, my host E was in ecstasy, commenting that he generally hates clafoutis because of the sacré (damn) pits in the cherries. I explained that, as a lawyer, I feared getting sued by someone breaking a tooth on a pit, and therefore have always removed them. While this was only half facetious, the result was good and E kept raving about the dessert.

And another successful recipe from Dorie's Around My French Table.

Bobby Jay

Paris -- Dinner for One

In Paris for a long (5-week) stretch, with J coming in a week. During my one-week bachelorhood, I am cooking some things that I know J will not like or about which I have doubts.

Tonight was an omelet, which J hates, with vinegar, salt and pepper potatoes. The omelet was the non-French one I wrote about last time I was in France (see my May 11, 2015 post for more on this), but this time I made it with a small amout of goat cheese and a HUGE amount of tarragon, my favorite herb by far. Excellent!

Non-French omelet with vinegar, salt and pepper potatoes

The side dish was a new recipe for vinegar, salt and pepper potatoes. These are made by boiling 1/4-inch slices of potato in 100% vinegar for about 10 minutes, then finishing the slices, after tossing in oil, salt and pepper, under a broiler. I would say the dish was a success, but I must admit it was too vinegary for me. Here is a link to the recipe, which I found on myfridgefood.com, if this is of interest. Many commenters thought they had a better way to make this -- generally by adding a little vinegar to the finished potatoes -- but this is clearly the way to go if you like a very vinegary potato (kind of like vinegar and salt potato chips). I used plain white vinegar, and maybe toning it down with a (much more expensive) wine or, better still, malt vinegar would help, but I think this  dish is just not for me.

I finished up with a mixed mesclun and arugula salad with a walnut oil vinaigrette, a smidgeon of goat cheese and some walnuts, topped with copious amounts of thyme. Simple but nice.

Mesclun, arugula, goat cheese and walnut salad

For dessert, you just can't beat apricots and cherries in France in June! (Although I am a little ashamed to admit I also had a disappointing quarter of a piece of lemon cake from a local bakery.)

Bobby Jay

New Cookbooks -- Two Takes on Genius

I have just read two very interesting cookbooks: Bar Tartine: Techniques and Recipes, by Nicolaus Balla and Courtney Burns, and Kristen Miglore's Food52 Genius Recipes: 100 Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook. Both are good reads, but they could not be more different. The former is a fascinating study of techniques and how they can be put to use to create interesting innovative food, but most of the techniques are beyond the space, resources and time of even sophisticated home cooks. I doubt that I will make more than a handful of dishes from it. Food52 Genius Recipes, in contrast, is a compendium of great recipes: out of the 130 or so recipes (some extras are set out in the margins) I want to make about 100 -- really! -- and probably will actually get around to 50. This is a book to cook from.

One great plus for both books is that measurements are given in US volumes but also in metric weights. Food52 Genius Recipes goes a step further and gives oven temperatures in both Fahrenheit and Celsius, so I can use the copy I bring to Paris without the pesky need for conversions.

Bar Tartine

Founded by rockstar baker Chad Robertson, of Tartine Bakery fame, and his wife Liz in San Francisco's Mission District, Bar Tartine has a cult following and turns out unique food reflecting influences from all around the world, but mostly Asian and Hungarian, reflecting the backgrounds and eclecticism of chefs Balla and Burns.

The first half of this beautifully photographed book is a fascinating explanation of many techniques that Balla and Burns employ at Bar Tartine: fermenting, preserving, dehydrating, pickling and preserving. For the restaurant this results in a reserve of pure and wonderful homemade products that are used in the recipes, many of which are set forth in the second half of the book.

But this is not an easy book to cook from, because the recipes call for the ingredients covered in the techniques portion of the book. For example, "Rooster Boil" prepares a big old chicken with, among other things, onion brine, homemade sweet paprika, charred arbol chiles, burnt bread powder, homemade chicken broth (at last something I have), home-dried tomatoes and dried zucchini. Similarly, the brilliant sounding "Sunchoke Custard with Sunflower Greens" incorporates kombu dashi (again, something not hard to make), sunchoke oil, mushroom reduction, homemade hot paprika, poached sunflower seeds, and sprouted amaranth seeds. You can use store-bought substitutes for some of these, of course, but then you won't have a dish that is what the real Bar Tartine is about. It is clear why the book is subtiled "Techniques and Recipes" rather than the reverse.

So I will be putting Bar Tartine on the shelf and wistfully thinking about how nice it would be to have an enormous pantry to store the ingredients from the first half of the book and to have a small restaurant to put them to use in the recipes from the second half.

Food52 Genius Recipes

This book is a whole 'nother story. Also lavishly and instructively photographed, it contains more than 100 recipes nearly all of which are appealing and accessible to a home cook. Many are classics by eminent earlier (Julia Child, James Beard, Marcella Hazan) and current chefs, and many are destined to become classics. Before I bought the book I had made Marcella Hazan's "Tomato Sauce with Butter and Onions," Union Square Cafe's "Bar Nuts," Dorie Greenspan's "Marie-Hélène's Apple Cake," Jim Lahey's life-changing "No-Knead Bread," Marian Burros's iconic "Purple Plum Torte" and a variation of Claudia Roden's "Orange and Almond Cake," all to great effect. Since buying the book, I have made "Classic Guacaomole" from Roberto Santibañez (wonderful!) and Daniel Patterson's ingenious and easy (and good) "Poached Scrambled Eggs." Tomorrow I plan to make Rose Levy Beranbaum's "Blueberry Pie" with some Bobby Jay modifications, and next week I am going to try José Pizarro's "Salt-Crusted Potatoes with Cilantro Mojo." That will bring me to ten recipes from this book. Get the idea?

And who wouldn't want to try Roger Vergé's intriguing "Fried Eggs with Wine Vinegar," a new take on "English Porridge from April Bloomfield, Edna Lewis's "Shrimp Grits" or Roy Finamore's "Broccoli Cooked Forever"? This is a random sample.

As you can see, I LOVE this book, and plan to buy 10 copies to give as gifts when I'm invited to dinner (or not).

In sum, two ways to appreciate genius. One -- Bar Tartine: Techniques and Recipes -- worth reading for fun and inspiration, the other -- Food52 Genius Recipes -- worth reading, too, but also for mapping out your next year of cooking.

Bobby Jay