Black sapote clafoutis

I'm not really out of my cooking funk quite yet, but two out of three of my black sapotes finally ripened and I did have an interesting recipe prepared for them so it didn't take too much to prod me into action.

So you probably want to know what a clafoutis is. From an American perspective, it's a French version of a buckle. You might also want to know what a buckle is. It's a dish in the crumble family. Depending on how you prepare the floury stuff that goes with the fruit, you can make a crumble, a crisp, a buckle or a grunt. For a buckle, you put your fruit on the bottom of a baking dish and pour over cake batter. For a clafoutis, the batter is closer to a crêpe: looser and eggier mainly.

Traditionally, clafoutises are made with cherries, but you do see them with other fruits, mainly tart berries. And if I had a reasonable amount of fruit to work with I'd whisk some lemon juice into the pulp and go with that. But I don't so I went with my black sapote back up plan which is to mix it 50/50 with a nut butter. Almond by preference, but peanut by what I've actually got on hand. In this case I mixed something like:
1/3 cup black sapote pulp
1/3 cup natural peanut butter
1 Tablespoon honey
1 Tablespoon sugar.
That gave me enough for about a third of a standard batch of clafoutis so I scaled down.

That means the batter was:
a bit less than 1/3 cup flour
1/6 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cornstarch
1 small pinch salt
1 egg
1 1/3 Tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1/4 cup milk [I used cream since I had some some]

As with crêpe batter, I mixed the dry ingredients, whisked in the egg, then the butter then the cream.

Then I poured the batter over dollops of the sapote mixture in a small baking dish and baked at 350 degrees for a half hour until browned and puffy.

I let cool to, if not room temperature, then at least not hot and served with a little powdered sugar or, as pictured, with cinnamon whipped cream.

The baking has brought out the chocolatier aspects of the black sapote, which is certainly not a bad thing in this context, although it makes the flavor a bit less Floridianly exotic. I had hoped the honey would have helped to boost the fruity flavors, but I guess not. The crumbly brownie-esque texture of the fruit mixture contrasts with the lighter moist sponge-cakey texture of the cake bit. Its milder flavor cuts the intensity of the fruit and is mildly sweet and a little eggy on its own. This is very different than how this dish would work with cherries, but it's pretty tasty in its own, heartier way. I'd like to try it with the sapotes unadulterated by peanut butter to see how it goes.

Messing about with crêpes

The first time I made crêpes, after I got the hang of it, I found them to be remarkably easy to make and store and versatile enough to go with most any ingredients you'd want to pair them with. And so, of course, I went nearly a year without making them again. Don't read that sarcastically; I'm serious. The blog demands kitchen drama and crêpes just don't deliver.

It was only this weekend, when I said screw the blog and cooked a bunch of basics to stock up the freezer, that I came back to them. I'm talking about them now so, obviously, I found something of interest, but you've seen the last few posts--it's not much.

That first time I made crêpes I used the Good Eats recipe: mix 2 large eggs, 3/4 cup milk, 1/2 cup water, 1 cup flour and 3 tablespoons melted butter, blend for 10 seconds, add salt and herbs or sugar and liqueur, let hydrate for an hour and then cook.

The blending at least is clearly non-traditional so I did a little research to see if there were other versions distinct enough for a post of their own. I didn't find much--a crêpe's a crêpe all across Europe.
Vietnamese crêpes are interesting, and pretty tasty too, but it's too soon to go shopping again and I haven't got the necessary bean sprouts on hand. They're on the to-do list, though, so you'll be seeing a banh xeo post at some point.

I did find something interesting in a guest post on the Bitten blog, though. Edward Schneider suggested mixing the flour and eggs together and then adding milk until getting to the right texture. He says that this magically eliminates lumps from the batter, which is a nice plus, and I like the idea of being able to judge the amount of milk to compensate for how packed and/or humid your flour is. There was something else of interest in the comments. It seems that the necessity of letting the batter sit for an hour was a point of contention between Julia Child and Jacque Pépin. She said to do it; he said it was unnecessary. When experts disagree, it's best to see for yourself.

So I gave it a shot. Here's the mixed eggs and flour: 1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour and 1/2 cup all purpose.

Once the flour was fully incorporated, I added a cup of milk, whipping away to break up that doughball, and then switched to another quarter cup or so of water. (I don't use a lot of milk so I buy those 1 cup shelf-stabilized boxes and didn't want to open another one.) Lump-free it wasn't, but they were doughy lumps, not floury lumps. I could imagine them falling apart if I had let the batter hydrate. But I didn't so they didn't.

Oh, one other suggestion from that post, melt the butter for the batter in the frying pan to save cleaning one more bowl and to get the pan nicely coated for the first crêpe. If nothing else, that's a trick worth keeping.

Here's the first, lumpy crêpe.



No good obviously (although it tasted fine), so I blended the batter and the crêpes turned out nicely thin, light and tender after that. They're a little on the eggy side, though, since I'm using extra-large eggs instead of the called for large. I should add a little extra of the other ingredients to compensate next time. I'm not getting the crisped browned edges I want, but with a non-stick pan, that's difficult to achieve. It's a trade-off.

For the filling, I fried up some cabbage, scallions, ham and added a little chicken stock to moisten and melted in some Havarti cheese for a binder.


Notice how the crêpes are paper thin, but rolled up easily without any tearing. I filled some more with apricot preserves for dessert. It looked about the same except a little lumpier. Both were pretty good. The crêpes themselves were pretty neutral, but that was my choice. I wanted to leave them open to possibilities so I didn't mix any of the accoutrements I mentioned up top into the batter. If I were making them for some specific dish, I would certainly do so.

As for the hour's rest issue, I let the second half of the batch sit while I ate dinner before making the extra crêpes for storage. I can't say I noticed any difference before and after so I'm going to say the rest isn't necessary. Myth busted!

I'm getting a bit tired of all this basic cooking. I should have something more substantive to post about soon.

Pork rillettes (more or less)

That's French for pulled pork essentially. I finally got my hands on a pork shoulder recently and had to decide just what to do with it. Well, there's only one thing to do with a pork shoulder--slowly cook it with a little liquid until it falls apart--but there's the question of what spices to use. I decided to make the French version since the seasoning is minimalistic. If I go the brown sugar and chili powder route I'm pretty limited as to what I can do with the resulting two and a half pounds of meat. If I was serving several people that's not a problem, but this is half a dozen meals for me. I figure if I just make the pork taste like pork to start with, I can always simmer it in barbecue sauce later. It's not like cooking it longer is going to do any harm.

Here's my pork shoulder with the skin and fat layer removed. If I was going for a proper rillettes preparation, I would have left the fat on and maybe added more. The distinction from American-style pulled pork that I glossed over way back in the first sentence is that, for rillettes the meat is very finely shredded and mixed with judicious amounts of the gelatinized cooking liquid and congealed pork fat for a flavorful, unctuous basic charcuterie. But I'm not doing that so off it goes. I'm saving it to make chicharones later.

A rub with salt and three minutes browning in olive oil is all the prep the shoulder needed. Once that was done, I added to the pot a couple carrots, half a large onion (both in large chunks), three crushed garlic cloves, two bay leaves, a few stems of thyme, a small handful of peppercorns and a cup of dry white wine. I put the cover on and then it all went into a 300 degree over for four hours. After three hours I added a chunked potato too. I would have liked to do this in a slow cooker which would have kept the kitchen rather cooler, but I can't find one in a reasonable size. The ones I've seen are either made for two cups of spinach dip or enough chicken cacciatore for the entire church social. I'm going to have to mail order a two quart model if I can find one with decent features.

I turned the shoulder over every hour, but I don't think that's actually necessary. I did it more to check on progress since I hadn't done this before. I only saw real progress towards the correct texture after three hours, but it clearly was going to take that fourth hour for the connective tissue to fully fall apart.


And with the connective tissue gone, and the meat cooled, it was easy to pull apart using tongs or bare hands. For the first dinner I had a pile of the pork along with the vegetables from the pot with a bit of Dijon mustard and some cornichons as the traditional French accompaniments. Pretty darn tasty; I particularly like how the pork tastes like pork with just a little support from the wine and herbs around the edges to let it strut its porky stuff. So to speak.


The next night I tried it in a barbecue sauce with cornbread and, since I haven't got any sweet pickles, more cornichons. That's not half bad either.

I've still got well over a pound of this left, despite insesent snacking. Is there anything else to do with it or should I just douse it with sauce and serve it on a roll with some cole slaw?

Parisian bagels

I wish I could remember how I came across this recipe. I wasn't looking for bagel recipes; I can't imagine I'd settle on a Parisian one if I was. It comes from a radio show I've never heard of, adapted from cookbook I've never heard of, from a recipe by someone I've never heard of. Perhaps some blog I have heard of pointed to one of those three?

Anyway, if you're interested in any of those here's a link. And here's the recipe. It looks complicated, but it was actually pretty simple and quick as bread recipes go. The cook's notes are from the original. Everything went so smoothly, I don't think I have any notes myself.

"JO GOLDENBERG’S PARISIAN BAGELS

Now, how elegant is this?! A French bagel! Actually, in Paris there is a huge Jewish community (more than half of all of France’s 500,000+ Jews live in Paris) and the MOST famous bagel restaurant-deli is that of Jo Goldenberg at 7 rue de Rosiers. It’s a Paris institution less than a mile from the famous Cathedral of Notre Dame.

Our listener Caryn started all of this (be sure to check out her picture – and her bagels’ picture - on the “Look at Us” page – menu at left) and the subject proved so interesting that the recipe is our feature this week. It turns out to be lots of fun to make bagels – and not difficult at all.

To make things even easier, the making-a-rope technique for shaping bagels, used by professional bakers, is NOT the one we’re using here. It’s very difficult to make that rope of dough perfectly even in thickness, as it wraps around the baker’s open hand, being rolled back and forth expertly. For the home baker, this recipe simply calls for making a ball of dough, then pushing a hole through the center – you’ll see, below. There are also some Cook’s Notes, and a few suggestions for variations (this recipe is for plain water bagels) in case you’d like to make onion or sesame or poppy seed or other flavors….variations follow the recipe…more of the "fine points" will be discussed on the show.


MAKES 10 LARGE BAGELS

3 1/2 cups (approximately), bread flour [or substitute all-purpose flour]
2 packages, dry yeast
3 tablespoons, sugar
1 tablespoon, salt
1 1/2 cups, hot water (120-130 degrees)
3 quarts water
1 1/2 tablespoons, barley malt syrup [or substitute sugar in the same amount]
1 egg white – beaten with 1 teaspoon, water
topping of choice, if any (see Variations, below)
cornmeal for sprinkling on the baking sheet


Make the dough: In a mixing bowl (or the bowl of an electric mixer) measure 3 cups of the flour and stir in all the remaining dry ingredients. Pour in the hot water, and stir vigorously with a wooden spoon (or with the flat paddle attachment of the electric mixer at low speed) and beat for about 2 minutes.

Add the remaining half-cup of flour, a little at a time, stirring by hand. When the batter becomes thick and heavy, attach the mixer’s dough hook (if using) or lift the dough from the bowl and place it on a lightly floured work surface for kneading by hand.

Knead the dough: Knead the dough at medium low speed on the mixer – or by hand (using a push, turn and fold motion, energetically) for about 10 minutes – or until the dough is firm and solid when pinched with the fingers. Add flour as needed if the dough is sticky in your hands, or sticks to the sides of the mixing bowl (if using electric mixer).

First Rising: When dough is kneaded enough, place it in an oiled mixing bowl, cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap, and set aside at room temperature until it has doubled in volume – about 1 hour.

Prepare water bath: Near the end of this rising time, bring the 3 quarts of water to the boil in a large saucepan. Add the malt syrup or sugar; then, reduce the heat and leave the water just barely moving – at a slow simmer.

Shape the bagels: When the dough has doubled in volume, turn it out onto a lightly floured work surface and punch it down with extended fingers to remove excess gas.

Divide the dough into 10 pieces (each will weigh about 3-4 ounces). [I halved the recipe and made my bagels on the small side so I ended up with six.] Shape each piece into a ball. Allow the balls to stand and relax for a few minutes – then flatten each one with the palm of your hand.

With your thumb, press deep into the center of the bagel and tear the depression open with your fingers. Pull the hole open, pull it down over a finger and smooth the rough edges. It should look like a bagel! Form all of the bagels and place them on your work surface.

Second Rising: Cover the shaped bagels with wax paper or parchment paper. Leave them at room temperature just until the dough has risen slightly – about 10 minutes (this is called a “half proof”). [Cook’s Note: If the bagels are allowed to rise too much during this “second rise” – they will not sink when put in the simmering water; but, if that should happen, just pretend that they DID sink – and cook them for the same 1 minute as described below. The difference will be unnoticeable to most anyone.]

Prepare the baking sheet: Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. [Cook’s Note: If using a convection oven, reduce the heat by 50 degrees.] Grease a baking sheet with shortening (or use a non-stick baking sheet, or line a baking sheet with “Silpat” or similar material) and sprinkle the baking sheet with cornmeal.

Water-bathing the bagels: Into the gently simmering water prepared earlier, slip one bagel at a time (use a large skimmer, and gently lower them into the water). Simmer only 2 or 3 bagels at a time – do not crowd the pan. The bagels will sink and then rise again after a few seconds. Simmer gently for one minute, turning each bagel over once during that time. Lift each bagel out of the water with the skimmer, drain briefly on a towel, then place each bagel on the prepared baking sheet. Repeat until all bagels are simmered, drained and on the baking sheet. [Cook’s Note: Thanks to the malt syrup or the sugar that was added to the simmering water, the bagels will be shiny as they come from the water.]

Baking the bagels: If toppings are desired, (see “Variations” below) now is the time to add them, by sprinkling the desired topping over the bagels. Brush each bagel lightly with the egg-white-water mixture first, then sprinkle the topping if desired – or leave unadorned, for water bagels.

Place the baking sheet on the middle rack of the preheated oven for 25-30 minutes. When the bagel tops are a light brown, turn them over to complete baking. This turning-over step will keep the bagels in a rounded shape, instead of their being flat on the bottom. When brown and shiny, remove the finished bagels from the oven.
Place the bagels on a metal rack to cool.

Variations:
Toppings may include: coarse salt, shredded onion, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, caraway seeds, or other flavors of your choice. Sprinkle toppings over before baking bagels, as described above. [I made sesame, salt, onion and everything bagels. All out of poppy seeds.]

Another tasty treat: slice each bagel crosswise into 4 thin rounds. Return the rounds to the oven and bake the rounds until dry throughout, and just beginning to brown – about 20 minutes. Remove the rounds from the oven, immediately butter them and salt lightly – then return to the oven for about 5 minutes until the butter is absorbed by the rounds. Serve hot or at room temperature as a snack.

Recipe adapted from Bernard Clayton’s New Complete Book of Breads (Simon and Schuster)"

And here they are:


The outsides looks great, but inside, that's not quite what the inside of a bagel should look like. After taking a bite, the crust has just the right crunch then chew you want in a bagel. My jaw hurts which means either I did this right (This is Jewish food: all joy brings pain.) or I should stop putting off my dental check-up. On the other hand, the inside just squishes to nothing. That part needs work. The flavors are good though, even through the onion and sesame, cream cheese and tomato (no lox today; making the bagels was a spur of the moment decision and you have to travel to find good lox.) you can taste the distinctive warm, hearty and slightly sweet bagel flavor. Not bad at all for a first try.

I do want to improve the insides, though, so a little more research is in order. ... Done. Here's what I've learned:
* First, my dough wasn't stiff enough. A good bagel dough should be very hard to work. That should give a denser crumb in the final product.
* Second, my bagels were puffy because the simplified forming method gets out fewer air bubbles than the traditional method of rolling them out into a rope and then joining the ends.
* Third, the recipe I used had a particularly short poaching time in the sugar water. An extra minute or two would cook the outer surface more, increasing its chewiness and keep it tight so the dough couldn't rise in the oven, further reducing its puffiness.
* Fourth, a more traditional recipe uses malt syrup or powder instead of sugar, both in the dough and in the water. I'm not entirely clear how that effects the result, but the bagels I had in New York certainly used it so it couldn't hurt if I'm trying to match them.
* Fifth, a slightly higher baking temperature will get them crunchier, and
* Sixth, mixing some of the toppings into the dough isn't a bad idea.

I wonder how much of the differences are Paris vs. New York and how much from over-simplification for the home cook (something you really need to look out for if don't know where your recipes are coming from). They all seem to be easy fixes for next time, although I may have to go to a brewing supply store for the malt. Still, even without those refinements, these bagels are easily the best I've had in Miami. Of course, fresh from the oven counts for a lot. The real test will be how they freeze, defrost and toast. [And the result: eh. Not bad; could be better.]

CSA week 14 wrap-up, week 15 start-up

A lovely day for a walk today so I went my pick up spot on foot. As I expected, it was a little awkward carrying the box back, but the wagon I thought I'd need is probably overkill. I have a shoulder strap I think I can clip on that should make things a little easier for next week.

But, before next, there's last week. I'm pretty happy with my efficiency as I managed to use just about all of my CSA vegetables and didn't have to buy much to supplement them--just some mushrooms for the kale soup.


The green peppers went into the simple beef with black bean sauce stir fry I mentioned a week ago. It looks pretty good in that pictures, but I think I should have made the effort to get the fermented black beans and make the sauce from scratch. The pre-made didn't have the punch I was looking for. Lee Kum Kee is usually such a reliable brand, too. Maybe it was just the lack of MSG.


I also said I was thinking of finally doing something with the strawberries. I thought about making a sorbet, but instead I decided to try making a sabayon to top them. Pretty simple stuff, really. Take two egg yolks, 2 Tablespoons of powdered sugar, 4 Tablespoons of dry white wine, whisk them for ten minutes over gentle heat and you've got sweet, wine-flavored foamy egg yolks which actually are a pretty nice topping for berries--no argument here. I've read that you can fold in whipped cream and then put it under a broiler for a "glaze". I'm really not sure what that means, but I saved half to try that later today.


That brings us to this week's share.

Normally, I start in the corner and work my way around the picture, but the elephant in the room is a bunch of rainbow chard big enough to feed an elephant. I think maybe I'll try a gratin again as the first one I made back in January could use some improvement. Should be enough for a second dish too.

And speaking of reworking disappointing dishes, I wouldn't mind making turnip cakes again with the daikon. Since the browned outer bits were the best part last time I might make them again but much thinner. I seem to recall thin disc-shaped turnip cakes I've had as dim sum that were a somewhat different recipe but a quick search isn't turning up a recipe.

The squash isn't enough to do much with. I've been meaning to cook a chicken to create enough bones and scraps so I can make my next batch of chicken stock so maybe I'll roast the squash along with that. It might be nice with a pesto, too. I bought pinenuts to make one with last week's parsley but didn't get around to it so that's still a possibility.

The mizuna is best raw or lightly steamed so want to go minimalistic with it. I might just use it and the lettuce in a salad or two or as a rice substitute under the various leftover saucy dishes I've got in the freezer. It would be obvious to use the grape tomatoes in that salad, but I'd like to find something a little more interesting to do with them. I'll have to give that some thought.

That leaves the grapefruit. Plenty there for a sorbet, but I'd have to add some other flavors to keep things interesting. There are a couple intriguing recipes for grapefruit ice cream out there, too. Maybe a sherbet with coconut milk...I'm not entirely certain of that flavor combination. I'll have to do some testing on that.

CSA week five - Swiss chard and turnip gratin

The lentil soup I made yesterday only used half my chard--most of my leaves and none of the stems--so I had enough to try out Sandrine's suggestion of a gratin. Well, not quite enough, but I planted one of the turnips we got back in week one and its leaves have grown so large it's been blocking light to other plants in my herb garden. A quick look on-line found turnip gratin recipes that were close cousins to the chard gratin recipes I found so it was easy enough to split the difference. I used as my base a chard gratin recipe from The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters and a turnip gratin by chef Alain Passard as plagiarized and lightly modified by Joe DeSalazar on his blog here.

I didn't measure anything or pay close attention to the time so here's kind of a sketchy description of what I did.

Ingredients:
1/2 bunch chard, mostly stems
1 large turnip with half it's leaves (the rest having been previously sautéed in butter and olive oil with anchovies and capers and served over papparadelle), peeled
fresh breadcrumbs
melted butter
more butter
2 ounces pancetta
1/2 large onion, chopped
2 teaspoons flour
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup cream
2 to 4 ounces finely grated melty cheese (I used an edam-esque cheese called Amadeus)
seasonings to match your cheese (I used fresh thyme, pimenton and nutmeg. I've never used pimenton and nutmeg together before but it works. Thanks Joe.)

0. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

1. Separate the chard and turnip stems from the leaves. Wash everything and roughly chop. Chop the turnip bulb too.

2. Heat a big pot of water to a boil. Salt as if you were cooking pasta. Add stems and turnip bulb. Return to boil and simmer two minutes. Add leaves. Simmer three minutes more. Drain, cool and gently squeeze out any extra liquid.

3. Meanwhile, prepare a cup or two of fresh breadcrumbs, toss with melted butter, salt and other appropriate seasonings. Bake in 350 degree oven until golden and crisp, tossing regularly. Five to ten minutes.

4. Melt some more butter in that big pot. Add onion, pancetta and spices and cook over medium heat 5 minutes until onion turns translucent. Stir in green and heat through. Add flour and stir until it's all moistened. Add milk, cream and cheese. Stir until cheese is melted and cook for 5 more minutes. The sauce should be enough to coat but not excessive beyond that. After five minutes it should be slightly thickened. Check for seasoning.

5. Butter a medium baking dish and add the chard/turnip mixture. Dot with a bit more butter and cover with bread crumbs. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 to 30 minutes. There isn't enough sauce to visibly bubble when it's done, but you should be able to hear it.

Serve hot as it clots when it cools. This would probably make a good side dish with red meat as it's got a creamed spinach sort of vibe going, but I found it a little unsatisfying on its own. No big flavors here, but the flavorings I chose nicely compliment the mild vegetables without overpowering them. I can see how this could be easily jazzed up into a full-fledged casserole, but the chard and turnips would get lost so better to leave it as is and let it be a supporting player.

Making Crêpes

No fancy, exotic or unique recipes today. Today I'm interested in technique. Can I successfully make crepes? I've done it once before but that was fifteen years ago and I had both a proper crepe pan--the fancy domed sort--and someone who knew what she was doing guiding me. Today I've just got my small non-stick frying pan, but I understand that that should suffice.

My first choice when I'm trying something new is to use an Alton Brown recipe. He's got one for crepes, happily:

Good Eats Crepes

Ingredients

* 2 large eggs
* 3/4 cup milk
* 1/2 cup water
* 1 cup flour
* 3 tablespoons melted butter
* Butter, for coating the pan

Directions

In a blender, combine all of the ingredients and pulse for 10 seconds. Place the crepe batter in the refrigerator for 1 hour. This allows the bubbles to subside so the crepes will be less likely to tear during cooking. The batter will keep for up to 48 hours.

Heat a small non-stick pan. Add butter to coat. Pour 1 ounce of batter into the center of the pan and swirl to spread evenly. Cook for 30 seconds and flip. Cook for another 10 seconds and remove to the cutting board. Lay them out flat so they can cool. Continue until all batter is gone. After they have cooled you can stack them and store in sealable plastic bags in the refrigerator for several days or in the freezer for up to two months. When using frozen crepes, thaw on a rack before gently peeling apart.

*Savory Variation Add 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/4 cup chopped fresh herbs, spinach or sun-dried tomatoes to the egg mixture.

*Sweet Variation Add 21/2 tablespoons sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract and 2 tablespoons of your favorite liqueur to the egg mixture.
____

You might have noticed that he doesn't specify a type of flour. Given the short mix time it probably doesn't matter much, but just to be on the safe side I decided to use low-gluten pastry flour, whole wheat specifically for a bit of extra flavor.

He doesn't say how much butter either. I just rubbed the end of a stick of butter around the pan a bit; it is a non-stick after all.

Here's my first attempt with a carefully measured 1 ounce of batter. It looks a little skimpy for my pan so I'll go up to a full 1/8 cup next time, which is easier to measure out anyway. The bubbling means the pan's too hot--easily fixed. And some trouble with the flip.

Maybe if I use tongs?






Darn.


A long wooden spatula?






Dang.


Two spatulas together?






Drat.


What if I add more batter. Would the extra thickness improve the structural integrity?






$%#*&!


How does Brown say to do it? "and flip." Lots of help there. No time to check the video so I'll just pile them up.

In between each pile of crepe is the filling: baby spinach, scallions and finely chopped ham, a bit of salt, a bit of pepper, Parisien Bonnes Herbes mix, pan deglazed with a dry white wine. Plus some finely grated havarti cheese. Not the most attractive dish, but not bad. The texture of the crepes is spongier than I expected and maybe they should be crispy around the edges? Eh, still tasty.

That episode on Good Eats is on YouTube (You'd think the Food Channel would complain about that.) so I can see how the flip is supposed to be done. Huh, tossed like a pancake. My pan isn't very new; maybe the non-stick is getting a bit less non- in its old age.

Let's see if I have better luck using the second half for dessert. I want to add a Tablespoon of sugar so I decant the batter into a bowl and I notice a whole lot of sludge on the bottom. The batter separated during the hour in the refrigerator and all the flour was on the bottom. Those weren't crepes before; they were omelets! No more of that. Now I can mix it up between scooping out portions to cook.

There's a noticeable difference in texture right away. The batter is denser, but it spreads thinner. The heat's too high again but the crepe isn't sticking. I don't want to risk picking it up and I'm not the best flapjack flipper out there so I dump it out onto a plate and then slide it back into the pan. Here it is:

Much better looking, whole for one thing, translucently thin and crispy around the edges. And it's not a fluke either. Next one comes out thin too and I can even flip it in the pan. And it keeps on that way as they pile up.

There are three changes here:
1. The higher flour/liquid ratio
2. The Tablespoon of sugar
3. A substantially lower cooking temperature (I lowered the heat to medium low and increased the cooking time by 15 seconds.)

I think #1 is the reason for the improved texture. #3 is why I didn't get any more crispy edges after that first one. I don't know which fixed the sticking problem. My guess is #1 but verification will have to wait for the next time I make this.

The filling for dessert is an apple, sliced thin with my mandolin, fried up with a little butter and a generous dollop of leftover caramel sauce from my last ice cream. [link] I had envisioned tidy layers of apple slices but I have an unerring ability to pick the mealiest apples on offer--organic or industrial, farmer's market or supermarket, no matter the varietal it never fails--so it began falling apart while I was slicing and disintegrated the second it hit the pan. No matter, at least the cooking is bringing out what little flavor it has.

Here's the result:

The crepes are thin, light, tender and tasty. No longer crispy on the edges though. The apple/caramel sauce matches well too. I wonder if there's some way to get the full stack hot without overcooking the crepes? I found that everything cooled to room temperature quite rapidly as I made the next crepe.

But temperature aside, these are pretty good crepes and really not hard at all once I got over the initial difficulties. I wonder how crepes got their reputation for trickiness. I have more trouble with pancakes and I've been trying to figure those out for years.

CSA week 19 - ratatouille de Provence

Heavens, are there a variety of ratatouille recipes out there. Most times when I do my pre-cooking research I find two or three recipes cut and pasted all over the web (without proper attribution I might add). Not with ratatouille. With the exception of the (really cool) version created for the eponymous movie, every recipe I saw was different.

The recipes fell into two general categories with mention of a third version that nobody makes any more. Classically, you cook up eggplant, squash, peppers and tomatoes in four different pots and then combine them once they're each done just right. I haven't the pots, burners or patience to do that. The standard version is to simmer the eggplant, squash and peppers all together, adding the tomatoes late. And then there's the roasted variant where you lay the four vegetables out on a baking dish and stick them in the oven. That last one was tempting, but I decided that it wasn't really a proper ratatouille and for my first try at the dish I wanted to not stray too far from the Platonic form.

But even within that general description no two recipes agreed on the ratio of the various vegetables, the cooking times or the details of the seasoning. In the end, I settled on two different particularly interesting recipes to work with. This one that added niçoise olives, Dijon mustard, red wine and herbes de Provence for a distinctly regional flavor, and this one for it's methodical, lab-tested procedure. I recommend checking out the Cooking for Engineers website in general when puzzling out a new dish. Along with Alton Brown's oeuvre and McGee's On Food and Cooking, it's a great resource for cutting through the kitchen lore to what you really need to do to make the recipe work. For instance, there was no salting and purging the eggplant as many recipes reflexively call for; doing that helps the eggplant stay firm which I didn't want and doesn't really do anything to cut bitterness which modern varieties of eggplant don't suffer from anyway (unless you buy the really old spongy ones which you should know better than to do).

I split the difference between the two recipes and came up with a trick of my own. I decided that the tomatoes from our share were too nice to cook so I used canned tomatoes and boosted the flavor with tomato paste. One other thing I learned that all the recipes agreed on was that there's no such thing as too much ratatouille so I used as much vegetation as could fit in my dutch oven. Most recipes use more eggplant than squash so I went with that and then used both bell peppers I had bought. The 14 oz can of tomatoes seems standard for the dishes that use canned I didn't use one of my 28 oz cans of fire-roasted tomatoes which is a shame as that would have added some nice extra flavor.

Here's what I ended up with:

1/4 cup EV olive oil
6 garlic cloves, sliced thin
1 medium onion, sliced thin
1 Tablespoon tomato paste
1 14 oz can chopped tomatoes in juice, with tomatoes and juice separated. Squeeze the tomatoes a bit to get 2/3 cup of juice total
1 large eggplant, 1 inch cubes
2 small or 1 large summer squash (about half the weight of the eggplant), 1 inch cubes
1 red bell pepper, 1 inch pieces
1 green bell pepper, 1 inch pieces
1/2 cup dry red wine (something Provencal preferably, of course)
1/2 cup pitted niçoise olives (which I had to pit myself I'd like to point out)
2 Tablespoons herbs de Provence (from Spice House)
2 Tablespoons Dijon mustard (Dijon isn't particularly near Provence. If you can find Provencal mustard, use that instead.)
fresh thyme, parsley and basil
salt and pepper to taste (more than you think you need, probably)


1. Heat olive oil on medium high heat in large pot or dutch oven. Add garlic before it's fully up to sizzling temperature to ensure it doesn't burn. When it becomes aromatic add the onion and fry until onion is softened and slightly browned, around 10 minutes.

2. Stir in tomato paste and cook briefly. Add tomato juice, scrape up any browned bits. Add eggplant, squash and peppers. Stir well and cook for 10 minutes stirring occasionally.

3. Add tomatoes, mustard, wine, olives, herbs, salt and pepper. Stir well and cook for 15 minutes stirring occasionally until most of the liquid has evaporated, the peppers are just done, the eggplant is starting to get a bit mushy and squash, tomatoes and onions have completely disintegrated. (A lot of recipes call for longer cooking times and a big bowl of mush. Do what you like. You might even start the peppers first so they don't end up so much firmer than the other vegetables.)

4. Adjust seasonings and serve.

There. It's pretty easy when you hide all the chopping in the ingredient list.

And the end result? It's eggplant, squash, tomatoes and peppers; if you like them, you'll like this. Actually, I don't overmuch, but the wine, olives and mustard do add some complexity and I'm finding (as I think many have) that ratatouille is compulsive eating (possibly because the lack of protein makes it not terribly satisfying). It's supposed to be better tomorrow, which makes good sense for a stew like this, good with eggs and good cold with hearty bread. I'll add an addendum when I give that a try.
...
OK, it's Wednesday now and I had some cold ratatouille for lunch. First off, the flavor was better at room temperature than refrigerator temperature to my mind. Second, the flavors continued to meld and change over time. Yesterday the mustard flavor was a bit too strong when the ratatouille was cold, but today it's retreated a bit into the flavor mix. There's just enough background flavors from the herbs and mustard to keep the vegetables subtly French. That was my main goal in including them in the first place as these particular vegetables could easily be in an Italian dish and that's not what I was aiming at. So, on the whole I'm pleased. Now I just need to see how well it survives freezing.