French Fridays

It was nice to have an easy side dish this week. And let me tell you, these beans are as delicious as they are easy.

Bacon makes everything better.

Last week: orange-almond tart
Next week: short ribs in red wine and port

Tagged as: cooking, French food

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This tart is my new favorite recipe from Around My French Table, Dorie Greenspan‘s newest book. (If  you’re new to this site, I’m cooking my way through AMFT with a group of cooks over at French Fridays With Dorie.)

I had never made a tart with almond pastry cream. And you know what? It is the real star of this tart.

As a matter of fact, if you made this tart with only the pastry cream and no oranges, no one would complain.

But the oranges are beautiful and add a wonderful, subtle bitterness after they’ve been baked.

Yes, this is my new favorite.

Next week: pancetta green beans
Last week: basque potato tortilla

Tagged as: cooking, French food

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I’m not a fan of potato-egg dishes, and I wish I had made one of the other variations of the tortilla: the onion-herb, the mushroom, or the spinach-green onion tortilla. But it was incredibly easy to put together, and I’ll be adding this to my arsenal of easy supper or lunch dishes.

I used my new Stirsby to cook the potatoes and onions. It’s a great tool … easier to use than a wooden spoon. I’ll be using this bad boy often.

Next week: orange-almond tart
Last week: chicken b’stilla

Tagged as: cooking, French food

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As I gathered the spices for the chicken b’stilla, I thought of the ancient spice trade routes and the influence those traders had on so many cultures. The aromas of the spices in this dish, especially as you’re making the sauce for the filling, are amazing.

I can imagine the excitement that some home cooks must have felt when they discovered the flavors of new spices from other parts of the world. What did the French cook think the first time she smelled cinnamon, ginger, or saffron? Or the Indian cook the first time she smelled coriander?

The chicken b’stilla, a Moroccan dish, is a perfect example of the blending of flavors from different regions of the world: ginger, from South Asia; coriander, native to southern Europe, North Africa, and southwestern Asia; cinnamon, from Southeast Asia; and saffron, from southwestern Asia. And all together? They smell like Morocco.

What are the chances?

Next week: basque potato tortilla.
Last week: michel rostang’s double chocolate mousse cake (skipped).
Two weeks ago: gnocchi à la parisienne.

Tagged as: cooking, French food

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There are four eggs in the pâte à choux for this gnocchi.

Yes, you read that right. You use cream puff dough to make Pariesienne gnocchi. And, of course, béchamel sauce and melted cheese.

Other than, “Oh, man,” here is what I was basically thinking when I first read this recipe:

“Turn the page. Just skip this French Friday. Don’t even read the whole thing. Move on. There’s nothing to see here. I mean, cream puff dough, béchamel, and Gruyère cheese? The holidays just ended, for Pete’s sake. Haven’t you had enough? In the name of all that is good and holy, don’t do it!”

But I had to try it.

If you really think about it, it’s not all that different from macaroni and cheese.

Besides, it gave me a good excuse to try out one of my Christmas gifts from Jim: a rounded-bottom saucier. I used it to make the dough and the béchamel for this dish.

And I love to make this particular dough and this sauce. They are so easy, delicious, and versatile. How could I not want to make a dish that calls for both?

If you’ve never made cream puff dough, you really should. The possibilities for it seem almost endless: cream puffs, éclairs, zeppole, profiteroles, gougères, and, as it turns out, gnocchi.

Here, you have the option of resting the dough for up to two hours. I let it rest for about an hour, and then continued on to make the béchamel, grate the cheese, and make the gnocchi. All of the steps were simple, but it was time consuming.

Why is it so challenging to photograph saucy, cheesy, white food when it’s so damned easy to eat it?

And trust me, this was easy to eat. I loved its silky creaminess. It’s really too bad that neither of the boys would eat more than a few bites of it. I’m sure next week will be a different story.

In two weeks: chicken b’stilla.
Next week: michel rostang’s double chocolate mousse cake (skipped).
Last week: parish mushroom soup.

Tagged as: cooking, French food

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There used to be a fabulous little restaurant on the first floor of the Pioneer Building in downtown Saint Paul: Cedar Street Café. It was run by two marvelous women: Marie Jean Proulx and Karen Stephens. The Café opened shortly after I started working in the building in 1986, and my co-workers and I were regulars there for the ten years it was open. (We still mourn the loss of that Café, but we’re happy to have copies of the cookbook Marie Jean and Karen published a couple of years after it closed.)

One of the soups served at the Café was mushroom barley vegetarian soup. I steered clear of it. I liked mushrooms well enough, but mushroom soup was something I thought I could have gone through life without ever having tried and been perfectly happy.

I was wrong.

When I finally tried it, I regretted not having tried it much sooner. I don’t know if it was the mushrooms or the sherry.

(It was the sherry.)

Hey. Did you know that button mushrooms are also called Paris mushrooms? Pretty fancy name for such a humble, unassuming mushroom. And I admit, I was tempted to use baby portabellas, but I resisted and bought the buttons.

I’m glad I did.

Dorie’s mushroom soup is just as good a the Cedar Street Café soup.

It’s started with butter, onions, and garlic. Then a little more butter and the mushrooms. After the liquid from the mushrooms evaporates, you add a half cup of wine. And when that wine hits those mushrooms, the aroma is … intoxicating.

The soup is ladled over a little salad of thinly sliced mushrooms, parsley, chives, scallions, salt, and pepper.

Nice touch, Dorie!

I finished the soup with a little dollop of crème fraiche.

Jim loved this soup and said it was his favorite of the French Friday recipes so far. I loved it too, but I’m not sure what I loved most about it.

(It was the wine.)

Next week: gnocchi à la parisienne.
Last week: speculoos (skipped).
Two weeks ago: leek and potato soup

Tagged as: cooking, French food

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I made the fennel variation of Dorie’s leek and potato soup. I added an extra potato, because even though “leek” comes before “potato” in the name, it’s the potato that draws me to this soup.

I’m always amazed by how much dirt comes out of these bad boys. (I flipped them over to shoot them.)

The fennel added some very subtle, sweet undertones.

I topped each bowl with croutons and fried sage leaves.

Have you ever eaten fried sage leaves? They have an interesting flavor. My kids tried them: one liked them, the other didn’t.

They both loved the croutons.

In two weeks: paris mushroom soup.
Next week: speculoos (skipped).
Last week: spiced butter-glazed carrots.

Tagged as: cooking, French food

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