14 février 2008
Bells and whistles, or some thoughts on innovation
"Bells and whistles" is an English expression that I, as a native French speaker, have always loved for its evocative power. It has no good equivalent in French. It sure came to my mind one afternoon of last week, as I sat with my lovely friend A. and a cup of hot chocolate at the Angélina tea room on rue de Rivoli, Paris. The thick, hot liquid was a welcome relief from the cold outside (and from my very bad idea to have lunch in the Jardin des Tuileries, inspired by the bright sunshine of that day).
As we came in, we passed by a large tray of colorful pastries. The one that looked the most like a chocolate éclair was a very pretty thing indeed. But it was not called "éclair", it was called Marc or Antoine or Daniel, or another male name, I forgot which one. My luck, I thought — it so happens that I'd love an éclair, right here, right now, on the spot. And so we ordered that, with a cappuccino, a hot chocolate and a croissant.
That éclair that was not really an éclair inspired today's post, which will (hrm hrm, please bear with me while I drink this glass of water) be on the topic of classicism and innovation.
What makes a thing (work of art, recipe, etc.) become a classic? It is not necessarily a question of style. It is mostly the fact that the thing has proved its own worth; in the case of a recipe, that it has reached its point of completion, whether that completion is of the simple kind or of the complex kind. Take the chocolate éclair as an example: the chocolate éclair is a classic pastry. Why has it become a classic? Because, in its own category, and provided that it is properly made, the chocolate éclair is perfect. One day, it reached its maximum point of development and stayed there. Its perfection has been achieved. No need to add anything to it, or remove anything from it. Of course, if you wish to work on its elements, you may do so as long as you remain inside the limits of its perfect form — choux pastry, pastry cream, icing, elongated shape; it has to remain an éclair. Use different flavorings, for instance: coffee, vanilla. It has been done, and quite a lot. You may even go further: blackcurrant, lemon, raspberry, even violet. Sure, you may make violet-flavored éclairs, and the like. They will not be as plainly classical as the chocolate or coffee éclair, and it will depart from classicism insofar as the experimentation — raspberry, violet, lavender — will not give very satisfactory results. You will hear: "Nice experiment and worth trying I'm sure, but all things considered it is not very good to eat and after all there's nothing like a good old chocolate éclair." (By the way, many thanks to La Maison du Chocolat for fully understanding this fragile, and very misunderstood, notion of classicism and for making the best chocolate éclairs in Paris, sans bells and whistles.)
(Update of October 28, 2008: the éclairs from La Maison du Chocolat, unfortunately, have shown signs of weakness lately. The chocolate éclairs that kick every other éclairs' ass are to be found at the chain stores Cacao et Chocolat. I'll go back to that in one of my next posts.)
The proof of the pudding being in the eating, the eating of this Charles, or John, or Ebenezer — which was not really condescending to be an éclair because it contained so much added innovation, and therefore thought itself much higher — made me think strongly of classicism and innovation. The following evening, I heard someone say this: Innovation kills creativity. I agree to some extent. It does invalidate and even incriminate most of today's discourse on cuisine and pastry, but I agree nevertheless. As time goes by, I feel a more and more frequent urge to cry out to some chefs or pastry chefs: "For God's sake, stop innovating!" And even sometimes I would like to tell them: "Aside from innovating, what can you do?" I am only too aware of the fact that some would have nothing to reply.
Some restaurant guides and a certain type of food journalism are partly responsible for what I call the deviance of innovation, but they are by no means the only culprits. Zeitgeist is the criminal here. Many are brimming with innovation without having, beforehand, asked themselves a few questions about values and basic quality. Once, attending a conference, I heard Cornélius Castoriadis talk about technological or scientifical innovations that, sooner or later, proved to be ethically dangerous. He said: "Just because you can do something does not mean you have to do it, but it seems, these days, that as long as you can technically do something it is enough of a reason to rush to its material actualization." Hear, hear, cooks, chefs starred or not, creative pâtissiers! There are days when the only thing one does not want to find is bells and whistles. When the only thing you want is something classical, and executed the best possible way. Why forget that?
Indeed, bells and whistles were blossoming abundantly all over my Marcel, my Jerome or my Maximilian, which was not an éclair (if you have followed me that far) but was sort of based on one. It was a reinterpretation of the éclair, but watch out — an innovative, creative reinterpretation. One half of the thing — lengthwise, please take note — was covered with chocolate icing. The other longitudinal half was chocolate crumble. The inside, which should classicaly have been filled with chocolate pastry cream, was a hyper-rich, über-dense mousse, with one or two added layers the composition of which I forgot, only because there were too many things inside and outside this piece of pastry. Bells and whistles. Too many elements, too many textures, too many tastes, too much richness, and the whole thing had a way of staying on your stomach. Not that the cake was actually too heavy, but its mental conception was tiring for the mind. There is something about the simplicity — the classic simplicity — of the éclair that relaxes your brain and, I am sure, furthers the pleasure of eating. Why is this equation, simplicity of the concept/sensory pleasure, so frequently overlooked?
I know that some people like that. And it is a good thing. I know that some are truly interested in bells-and-whistles cuisine or pastry. I know that some restaurants may lose or gain one star on matters regarding innovation (<-- cool) or classicism (<-- uncool). However my personal feeling is that I would have preferred, sitting at Angélina's, a good, dumb, well-prepared chocolate éclair than this complicated, artsy pastry.
Am I a despisable reactionary trying to choke our chefs' precious creativity and freeze the course of time?
Or am I only pointing out that there is something sick and sterile in this blind rush forward?
Novelty is permanently sought. It has become an obsession. As Pierre Gagnaire said the other day at the OFF3 festival, creative chefs backed by the Gault-Millau guide in the late 80s did condemn to death hundreds of wonderful cooks who "made terrines". And he sounded really sad about that. When the interviewer pointed out that creative cooking was precisely what he, Gagnaire, was doing at that very period, he answered: "Of course we did. Without thinking. Without ever looking aside, God forbid! But such were the consequences."
Who, these days, asks themselves only once if innovation is really a vital need?
For I realize that true innovators are rare. Even rarer than you think. For one Ferran Adria, how many slightly off-the-point followers? Count them. One egg yolk suspended in mid-air, surrounded by its own white sublimated as a foam or some other textureless, airy thing? Great! What is it for? As for me, whenever I have met true innovators and creators, I identified them as playful and pleasure-loving, not as led by competition or the expression of their ego. And any "innovation" that was not the work of these rare people seemed dull and repetitive to me. The human capacity for innovation is limited and less important than is commonly believed. Man moves and progresses leaning on cultural marks. He easily overestimates his capacity to depart from those marks and enter the unknown, the unmade. Most of the time, as he believes to be treading on virgin snow, hundreds of yettis have already stomped all over the place and yaks have shat in every corner. Man is not that much of an innovator. At least, not so much of an innovator as guidebook editors would like him to be. Innovation means coming up with Citizen Kane, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon or Sondheim's Assassins. You cannot expect the same feats from thousands of cooks toiling under the Michelin's stern gaze. Innovation is not something that is welcome. It is never accepted immediately after it appears. It requires some time to get used to it. It is not something you can expect and certainly not something you can demand. It does not appear where you want it to. And thus it is absurd to promote it as the highest value, a mental automatism which at length threatens the art and culture of cooking — and pastry — and (more dramatically) puts good chocolate éclairs in the category of endangered species.
Do you think I am being mean? Unfair? Oh, do not worry one bit, any more than I do on what this article should bring about. I am certain that its consequences will be very limited and that there will always be a whole bunch of people to celebrate the delightful inspiration that has led a creator to imagine, from a basic and classical (chuckle!) chocolate éclair, a whole sublime palette of tastes and textures, going so far as dividing the éclair in two lengthwise to sprinkle half of it with an exquisite chocolate crumble, and concealing in its choux heart amazing layers of sinful, rich, melting, powerful chocolate, sustained by… (etc.)
Yes, bells and whistles are the thing, no matter what I say or do, which I am thankful for (I'd feel very guilty if it were not so). However I am increasingly wondering about the notion of innovation in cooking, on our true need for it, on its actual value and meaning, if it does have one.
Edit: in a later post on the OFF3 festival, I will resume this meditation on innovative cooking and pastry.
07 décembre 2007
At last, Love Apple Farm has a blog!
In case you didn't know already, I am happy to inform you that Cynthia Sandberg and Love Apple Farm — that really cool biodynamic vegetable garden associated with chef David Kinch's Manresa restaurant in Los Gatos — have their blog at last, Grow Better Veggies.
Do not fail to visit it regularly. You will find a lot of vegetable eye candy, Cynthia's adventures as a passionate vegetable grower, and plenty of useful tips and information on the lovely art of growing good things.
Here at Ptipois' we're all fans of Love Apple Farm and Manresa. Below are links to this blog's posts that are dedicated to them:
1. The Spring's serial: Alain Passard at Manresa
2. The way of the radish
3. The leek's path
4. Vegetable portraits
5. The tao of carrot
I also should add that the Manresa-Passard saga is far from over on this blog. See you later, then. Meanwhile, go drool with desire while viewing the heirloom tomatoes on Cynthia's blog.
20 novembre 2007
La Table du thé (2)
Let us resume our stroll through the pages you will not find in the book. Today, China. Three dim sum recipes, and some boxed text concerning a famous Cantonese food specialty, were excluded. You will find them below, in this post.
Among the photographs, those by Isabelle Rozenbaum were taken on May 25, 2007, during a tea demo and tasting held at the restaurant L'Orénoc, at the hôtel Méridien Étoile, boulevard Gouvion-Saint-Cyr, in Paris, by Jing and Sébastien from the Cantonese company Jing Tea Shop.
On my first night in Canton (November 2006) we dined at Tian Rong, a restaurant near the teahouse. All the dishes were delicious, particularly a crispy lacquered pigeon which was so good that I asked the recipe from the owner of the restaurant, Mr. Chen Weixiong. After he most amiably gave me all the information I needed, up to and including the mysterious herbs that went into the fragrant stock, he asked me about the French ways with pigeon. You may see the famous pigeon below. The chopsticks are Jing's.
Canton-style pigeon at the Tian Rong restaurant, Guangzhou.
"I pick a 350-g pigeon, about one month and a half of age. The bird should be gutted from the rear end, without opening the belly. I make a stock with water and the following spices and herbs: dang gui (Chinese angelica), xiang ye (pandan leaves), cao gua (black cardamom), hua jiao (Sichuan peppercorns), ba jiao (star anise). I boil the stock long enough for the spices to impart their flavor, then I add the pigeon and I poach it in the simmering stock until the juice that runs out of the bird is no longer pink. I drain the pigeon, I hang it by the neck or by the feet, and I air-dry it until the skin is quite dry.
"In a wok, I heat a large quantity of oil. No peanut oil! (Note: in Canton, peanut oil is cold-pressed and is used for seasoning), no sesame oil, but good frying oil. I deep-fry the pigeon in that oil, which should cover the pigeon completely and not be too hot. When the skin is crispy, I lift it out of the oil and I hang it again, or I put it in a colander, then I baste it with boiling oil until the skin is very crispy.
"I have a secret for an even crispier skin: before hanging the pigeon for the first time, I soak it briefly in a mixture of red vinegar and water.
"If dang gui has too powerful an aroma for you, you may replace it with wulong tea - tieguanyin or a Wuyi tea -, or with a rose-flavored pu-erh.
"You may also use this recipe on duck, goose or small chicken."
Photo © Isabelle Rozenbaum
Here are now the three recipes.
Seafood congee
Congee or juk is a Southern Chinese rice soup, generally eaten at breakfast. Rice is slowly cooked in a large quantity of water or broth. Shortly before serving, other ingredients are added.
Serves 4 to 6
Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 1 1/2 hour
Teas: all oolongs, red teas, pu-erhs.
Perfect match: keemun, ying de.
100 g long-grained white rice
1,5 to 2 litres water
2 inches peeled ginger
2 cloves garlic, lightly crushed
2 star anise
10 white peppercorns
1 handful dried shrimp
salt, freshly ground white pepper
The seafood garnish
4 plump oysters
8 raw shrimp
4 shelled scallops
200 g cleaned cuttlefish
4 small sole fillets
1 small bunch fresh coriander
soy sauce
2 level teaspoon cornflour
1/2 lime
2 scallions
1 knob peeled ginger
2 tbsp sesame oil
1 tsp Chiu Chow chilli oil
Rinse and drain the rice. Put it in a large pan, add the water. In a muslin bag, put the sliced ginger, garlic, star anise, white peppercorns and dried shrimp. Tie the bag with a string and add it to the rice and water. Bring to the boil, lower the heat, cover with the lid slightly ajar to keep the rice from overflowing. Cook for about 1 hour and a half on low heat, stirring from time to time. The rice should be soupy, like thin porridge. When the rice is cooked, remove the muslin bag, squeeze its juices into the rice and discard.
While the rice is cooking, take care of the seafood and aromatics. Shuck the oysters, keeping any water. Shell and devein the shrimp. Cut the cuttlefish into squares and cut parallel slits onto their surface in a crisscross pattern with a small sharp knife. Cut the sole fillets into pieces. Marinate all the seafood, including the scallops, in a little soy sauce, cornflour, reserved oyster water and a few drops of lime juice.
Clean and finely chop the scallions and coriander. Finely shred the ginger. Arrange them in small bowls.
In a small bowl, mix 4 tbsp soy sauce, the sesame oil and the Chiu Chow chilli oil.
5 minutes before serving, add the marinated seafoods and simmer gently until they're just stiff. Correct seasoning and add 1 tsp freshly ground white pepper.
Serve in bowls with Chinese soup spoons, along with the sauce and the condiments.
Photo © Isabelle Rozenbaum
"Pancake" fried dumplings
This is a little-known variation on jiaozi or gyôza. Dumplings are first pan-fried, then a thin batter of flour and water is poured over it and left to crisp up.
Serves 4
Preparation time: 30 minutes
Cooking time: 16 minutes
Teas: all oolongs, pu-erh.
Perfect match: oolong tieguanyin.
60 g lean pork meat
60 g raw chicken breast meat
6 shelled raw prawns
40 g blanched bamboo shoots, chopped
2 scallions, cleaned
60 g bok choy or spinach leaves, blanched in boiling water, squeezed dry and finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, peeled
15 g finely grated ginger
24 gyôza skins
50 g flour
sesame oil
Special equipment: food processor; large nonstick sauté pan or frying pan with a tight-fitting lid; large, flat serving dish.
Selling wheat noodles on a Shanghai market.
Finely chop the pork, prawns, scallions, bok choy leaves, garlic and ginger in a food processor. For a better texture, you may chop each ingredient separately with a knife, then blend them all together briefly to mix them well.
Using the gyôza skins, make small elongated dumplings, dampening the edges of the skins to seal them well.
Mix the flour with enough water to get a thinnish batter.
Cover the bottom of the pan with a thin layer of sesame oil. Lay the dumplings side by side in the pan, sealed side up. Put on medium heat until the oil sizzles frankly, then pour the batter into the pan (not over the dumplings!), cover the pan and, holding the lid with your hand, tilt the pan in a circular motion so that the batter spreads onto the whole surface. Cook on moderate heat for 15 minutes, keeping the pan well covered.
After 15 minutes, the batter should be fried and golden brown like a crêpe; its edges should be curling away from the pan. Pour a little more sesame oil between the crêpe and the pan, cover and cook for 1 more minute.
Turn the "dumpling pancake" over onto a large, flat dish. The lacy crêpe should be on top and each guest should break it with their chopsticks to pick a dumpling.
Shanghai, pork butchers at the market.
Orange-flavored beef balls
The secret in this recipe lies in the lengthy, patient kneading of the forcemeat.
Serves 4 (12 balls)
Preparation time: 35 minutes
Cooking time: 12 minutes
Teas : oolong shui xian, green pu-erh, red teas (keemun).
Perfect match: Earl Grey.
1 strip orange or mandarin peel, dried or fresh (if dried, it should be 2 inches long; if fresh, double the quantity)
3 fresh shiitake mushrooms
10 cl boiling water
150 g chopped lean beef
20 g chopped fat bacon
2 fresh or canned water chestnuts
3 blades of Chinese chives, cleaned
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp cornflour
2 tsp sesame oil
2 tsp light soy sauce
2 tsp oyster sauce
2 tsp Shaoxing cooking wine
3 ou 4 Chinese (Napa) cabbage leaves, only the tender part, leave out the ribs
salt, freshly ground white pepper
Special equipment: food processor, a stainless steel steam cooker or a wok equipped with bamboo baskets for steaming.
Shanghai.
If you are using dried orange or mandarin peel, soak it for 10 minutes in boiling water, then drain it. If you are using fresh peel, carefully remove the white part. Chop finely.
Clean the mushrooms, remove stalks, wipe the caps with damp absorbent paper. Chop finely.
If you are using fresh water chestnuts, peel them and rinse them clean. Just drain and rinse the canned ones. Chop them finely. Also chop the Chinese chives and the garlic.
Chop the beef and the fat bacon in a food processor so that it is very finely ground; blend for a few seconds. The forcemeat should be smooth, but retain a bit of texture.
Mix all the ingredients in a large bowl. Add the cornflour, sesame oil, soy sauce, oyster sauce and rice wine, salt and pepper. Knead by hand for 5 minutes to remove air bubbles and make the forcemeat very soft and slightly sticky.
Oil your hands, or wet them, and shape the forcemeat into 12 round balls.
Line a heatproof plate with the Napa cabbage leaves. Arrange the balls on top, put the plate in steam cooker or bamboo basket, and steam for 10 to 10 minutes. The beef balls should be quite firm. Serve hot with tea.
Shanghai.
Photo © Isabelle Rozenbaum
Photo © Isabelle Rozenbaum
09 novembre 2007
La Table du thé (1)
My book La Table du thé was published in September by éditions Minerva. With photos by Isabelle Rozenbaum, food styling by Lissa Streeter, layout by Laurence Maillet. Isabelle already devoted a blog post to it.
You will also find a very fine article on Thierry Richard's blog Chroniques du plaisir.
The book is based on a simple principle: eating and entertaining over tea, not just for light snacks but for meals in their own rights. Tea offers at least as many tastes, fragrances and flavours as wine does, which makes it a wonderful and much overlooked opportunity for setting up meals, lunches, dinners, brunches, tasting menus, etc. There are examples in several cultures. Such a meal built around a certain number of teas may also be an improved form of tea tasting.
Photo © Isabelle Rozenbaum
Over the years, my travels have taken me to some tea-loving countries: the British Isles, China, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Morocco, Turkey, the US (indeed, in spite of a reputation earned in other countries from the memory of the Boston Tea Party, North Americans do drink a lot of tea). Tea cultures are not always built on tea alone: in some regions, they include food, and special cooking styles are conceived around tea drinking (kaiseki in Japan, yum cha and dim sum in China, krueng wang in Thailand…). Likewise, the mezze of the Near East and the zakuski of the Russian area, though not originally associated with tea, prove to be excellent tea foods. Whether I was able to draw my inspiration from true traditional tea cuisines or picked dishes that were particularly suited to tea, choosing the recipes for the book was never a problem.
The book contains recipes as well as tea-related tips and tricks, plus a lot of advice on tea-food pairing. I am only beginning to explore that aspect of tea culture, and I hope to work with chefs on that subject. Recipes are organized in chapters based on the main tea regions (China, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, India, samovar regions (Central Asia, Turkey, Iran…), British Isles, United States, Morocco). In the final part of the book, you will find menu suggestions and a small list of addresses.
I am happy with the finished work. Isabelle's photography imparts a quiet, warm and cozy atmosphere to it. I imagined it as a starting point for imagination and curiosity, an incitation to venture beyond its contents. Tea is known to help daydreaming, and through daydreaming, poetry and creation. Chinese poets are familiar with that. If some readers decide to organize their own tea parties with recipes and tea tips from the book, and reach that dreamy, contented state that is so typical of tea meals, I will have reached my goal.
There have been two signatures for this book; one at Librairie La Martinière-Le Seuil on September 27, another one at Librairie La Cocotte on November 8 (see flyer below).
I intend to devote a few blog posts to this book, not only to promote it but also to publish (with the permission of my editor) a few recipes that could not be included in the final layout.
Slicing a piece of ankimo (marinated monkfish liver) at Librairie La Martinière-Le Seuil,
during the book signature of September 27.
According to the order of the chapters, I will start with Japan and the only Japanese recipe that could not be squeezed into the book: a recipe for gyôza.
Gyôza
Gyôza skins may be purchased frozen in Asian food stores. Unlike wonton skins, which are square and yellow, they are round and white. The recipe for wonton skins below may be found in the book; it can be used for all sorts of stuffed dumplings.
Gyôza skins
Serves 4 (24 gyôza, 250 g dough)
150 g all-purpose flour
17 cl boiling water
You will need a Chinese rolling pin, which you can make by cutting a 30-cm length of a 3-cm wide round-sectioned unpainted wooden stick.
Add the boiling water to the flour and mix with a spatula, then knead by hand until you get a smooth, firm dough. Roll it into a long, 2,5 cm-thick cylinder, cut it into 2,5-cm long chunks. Using the rolling pin, roll each one into a thin, translucent disk.
If you make the gyôza skins some time ahead, stack them on top of each other with squares of parchment paper in-between, put the stack into a Ziploc bag and freeze.
Gyôza
225 g Chinese (Napa) cabbage, only the tender part of the leaves (not the ribs)
salt
225 g finely ground pork
20 g fresh ginger, peeled
3 large garlic cloves, peeled
1 scallion
3 tbsp strong Japanese soy sauce
3 tsp sake
1 tsp sugar
1 tbsp sesame oil
24 gyôza skins
vegetable oil
12 cl dashi
The sauce
15 g sugar
5 cl rice vinegar
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 small red chilli, seeded
15 cl light Japanese soy sauce
1 tbsp sesame oil
Finely chop the Napa cabbage, put it in a colander, sprinkle with 1 tbsp salt, mix well and let rest for 30 minutes. Squeeze it with your hands to expel all moisture.
While the cabbage is resting, make the sauce: melt the sugar in the vinegar on low heat, then let cool slightly. Finely crush garlic and chilli, add them to the vinegar. Add the soy sauce and sesame oil.
Grate the ginger and garlic for the filling. Clean and finely slice the scallion.
Put the cabbage in a bowl, add the pork, ginger, garlic, scallion, soy sauce, sake, sugar and sesame oil. Mix thoroughly. Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour.
Make the gyôza: drop a spoonful of filling onto the middle, bring the edges of the dough together and press them right above the filling to seal them well. Proceed this way until all
the ingredients are used up.
Heat 2 tbsp oil in a nonstick sauté pan or in a cast iron skillet with a lid. Lay the gyôza in it; they should not touch each other. Fry for 2 or 3 minutes on medium heat until the bottom of the gyôza is light golden. They should not burn. Add the dashi, cover and steam for 6 minutes, not more. If the dashi evaporates, add a little more, or a few drops of water. If there is too much liquid, take the lid off and let it evaporate. Finally add 1 tbsp oil and let the bottom part of the gyôza brown for 1 to 2 minutes. Serve with the sauce.
29 août 2007
Working for butter
When asked about the secrets of fine cooking, Escoffier would reply: "There are three secrets: butter, butter and butter." Today, we will investigate the deeper secrets of fine cooking. We are going to work for butter.
In French, "working for butter" means "working for nothing", which sounds to me regrettably inaccurate, for butter is not nothing. Butter is a treasure. Working for butter is a noble job.
Get lost, Grande Épicerie, luxury lipids for food snobs, media-cherished butters that distract the attention from more modest but no less remarkable foodstuffs. For me — a Norman, i.e. someone you can't fool when it comes to butter —, the ultimate butter was to be found in some supermarkets of South Finistère (Brittany). I had discovered it a couple of years ago, double-wrapped in paper, which seemed like an indication of special care. Nevertheless the discreet packaging did not reveal anything of the treasures inside: a light, airy texture, of a natural matte yellow with buttercup tones; the welcome crunch of a few grains of sea salt, and above all a taste — rich, fragrant, flowery, slightly musky, reminiscent of warm brioche. A butter of such quality I had only found years ago, in a fortified farm in the Bessin (Normandy), not far from the D-Day beaches which are not generally visited for butter. Fortunately, the Breton address was on the wrapping paper: someday, I promised to myself, I would visit the GAEC (agricultural compound) of Saint-Coal and learn more about that butter.
It was not particularly easy to approach the farm: first, I was naturally reluctant to disturb people while they're working, unless they invite visitors to do so in a "green tourism" program. Also, organizing the visit from Paris was not easy. This butter is rare and apparently produced in small quantity. There is very probably a fragile balance that I should respect. I found it preferrable to proceed gently. A famous Parisian chef, to whom I had told about the butter, did not manage to have any shipped to him. Then one day, in this month of August, after a phone call, the lights suddenly went green.
So, off we go to Guilligomar'ch.
This is not milk but sweet, tasty buttermilk straight from today's churning.
The farm of Saint-Coal is, as Fulbert-Dumonteil would write in his cheerful purple style, "nestled in a casket of lush greenery". Slightly silly as it is, the expression is justified. This emerald-green, hilly, magnificent landscape feels like you have been brought a few centuries back. Intact bocage, unspoiled countryside, the clean fresh smells of nature and farm animals, peace and serenity: why this butter is so exceptional, we seem to have the beginning of an explanation. The compound is surrounded by a large surface of grassland and cereal fields, all belonging to the farm. Seventy Prim'Holstein cows graze in perfect tranquillity a thick, fast-growing, vitamin-rich grass. In Winter, they feed on a large quantity of hay mown on the farm and of cereals equally grown on the premises. No fodder is bought. Through self-sufficiency, a thorough control of the quality is achieved.
After being separated from the milk, cultured and matured, the cream goes into a mechanical churn to be turned into butter. In this churn, you may see the product of one day's milking — forty-four kilograms, slowly kneaded by the paddles and by hand. This butter, which has already been rinsed and salted, is now undergoing the draining process.
The water pouring out of the churn drain has the grey color of coarse Guérande sea salt used for the salting.
The last handful of salt is added right before the end of the kneading, just for the crunch.
A little more handling and the butter is ready.
The contents of the churn are scooped by hand into three buckets...
... to be carried to the conditioning room where the butter will be moulded and wrapped.
Here is one of the traditional wooden moulds where the Saint-Coal butter loaves will be shaped. Two sizes — 250 grams and 500 grams — are used.
The base and the body, made of two pieces, are assembled.
The butter is kneaded into the mould and the surface is levelled. A flower pattern is engraved into the flat bottom part of the mould. When the body will be removed and the flat bottom turned over, the raised pattern will appear on the surface of the butter.
Voilà!
Conditioning is a fast process: it takes the crémier only a few seconds to mould a loaf of butter and a few more for the lady farmer to wrap it up in the first sheet of paper. It all goes so fast that I have trouble taking clear pictures.
A crate is filled in the course of a few minutes.
After the 500 g loaves are all wrapped, 250 g loaves are taken care of. I now understand why my Parisian chef was unable to order that butter: he should have come all the way to the farm to fetch it. Saint-Coal has a refrigerated truck of small capacity, and does not deliver beyond the limits of two départements: Finistère and Morbihan, and mostly in supermarkets (or directly at the farm), with other products — lait ribot (cultured buttermilk), crème fraîche, yogurt, fresh farmer's cheese and gros lait (a type of refreshing, slightly gooey sour cultured milk).
One restaurateur, so far, has been serving the wonderful Saint-Coal butter (and proudly mentions it on the menu): Loïc Le Bail, at the hôtel Brittany in Roscoff.
Through this post, I meant to attract your attention on the fact that the most exceptional products are not necessarily the ones with the largest media exposure. Unknown by the world of luxury food travel, they are not often raved about by rich food tourists and glossy food magazines. They are not stylish and their makers do not wish them to be. Half-hidden in the heart of the countryside, wonderful stuff is produced, and if you are not extremely attentive, if you are not ready to accept that some inconspicuous wrappings around supermarket items may conceal miracles, you are likely to miss some of the best things in life.
I also meant to share with you my admiration for the work done at Saint-Coal, for these people's love of taste and quality, the care they bring to every detail. I was struck, as I discovered the farm, by the way the means were accurately adapted to the results: a large piece of land to produce enough hay and cereals to feed the cows, the cows have plenty of room to roam and feed on what they please, their unharried lifestyle is good for the milk. No insane growth objectives, no hubris, and no fake touristy folklore either. Above all, no concessions are made to the urban taste of the ruling classes, which is not only fickle but also, frequently, flawed (as an example, hardly any "baguette traditionnelle" ever tastes traditional for who has known the taste of true traditional baguette). A fragile balance had to be achieved to maintain this quality; it certainly was not easy to reach it and I am sure it is not easy to maintain: the people at Saint-Coal should be praised for that. That day, I had not only come to the farm to learn about butter. I also learned one or two things about wisdom.
17 août 2007
A gift, and a Homeric home remedy made from it
Isabelle is back from the island of Amorgos (Cyclades), with a present that moved me deeply. It showed how much she understands me, or how much we are alike. Gathering wild plants for me on a Mediterranean island is the kind of attention that makes me melt with gratitude. Isabelle's gift is a large bunch of Amorgian wild sage. This is priceless; not just the thought — the plant also.
It is an exceptional kind of sage, with a powerful and sweet aroma, deeper and more complex than that of common garden sage. It grows all over the island but the best is found in the Western part, in the Langada hinterland. Another interesting plant, Origanum tourneforti, is also common there: small-leaf oregano, better than common oregano. Saying that Greek islands are rich in aromatic plants is a truism. On one of the Small Cyclades — I forgot which —, a baker sprinkles his bread with wild sesame seeds gathered on the hills nearby. The flora of Ikaria gives the island a unique smell — and celebrated honey. But this sage, with this characteristic smell, I found only on Amorgos.
Back home, I spread the sage sprigs on a cloth and let them dry for an hour or two. But I soon decided to strip them of their leaves: even if the plant is not completely dry, its richness in essential oil acts as a preservative. Not wishing any of this manna to go to waste, I prepared a tea with the leafless stalks in a Lebanese briki.
The fragrance of this tea reminded me of a recipe I wrote down the last time I was in Amorgos — years ago.
Shortly before I left the island, I went out for a walk in the hills to stock up on herbs. On my way, I met a restaurant owner and his wife. Like me, they were gathering their herb supply for the Winter. We started chatting about plants, and they told me this particular sage was a powerful medicine for the respiratory tract. And the gentleman gave me a recipe for an old home remedy.
"Take one paximadi, pour some strong sage tea over it and wait for the bread to soak it in. Then ligo meli, ligo ladhi — goodbye sore throat."
Paximadi is a thick slice of wholewheat bread which is cooked in pre-cut loaves especially for that use. They are dried in a low oven like rusks and sold in packs. Hard as a rock, a paximadi is always soaked with some liquid (wine, oil, stock, vinegar, vegetable juice from a salad) before being eaten. It is an extremely old type of food, described by Patrick Leigh Fermor in his book Mani — Travels in South Peloponnese. Ligo meli is a little thyme honey. Ligo ladhi is a little oil, from the sea of silvery olive groves covering the hills down to the shore.
Paximadi, sage, honey and olive oil. The recipe must have been there for thousands of years. Each one of those ingredients was already known in the days of Homer. They played a prominent part in the basic diet, the xirofagia ("eating-dry") that was the daily sustenance of Helladic islanders from the Bronze Age to the tourist invasion — a lifestyle that modern marketing techniques have made profitable through the so-called "Cretan diet". Let us not linger on that. I prefer to remember, through this age-old remedy, the story of that old Greek man who was asked by a Roman visitor how he got to remain so strong and so handsome at such an old age. This was his reply: "Olive oil and honey inside; olive oil outside."
11 juillet 2007
A truffade in Pierrefort
Before I can post a proper report of Les Européennes du Goût, which took place in Aurillac (Cantal) last weekend, I had to solve a few technological problems. We left Aurillac shortly after my last cooking demo, around 5 PM, and off we went, to Pierrefort in the rain. B. had proposed to take the scenic route, but the Plomb du Cantal remained stubbornly wrapped in clouds. We did see a lot of yellow gentian in the fields and noticed it was calf season. Somewhere along the way, Salers cows made way for the Aubrac cows. The rain was moderate when we arrived in Pierrefort. We settled down, B. lit a fire in the fireplace, gathered food for tonight's dinner, and then a gigantic thunderstorm fell on the village. A thick curtain of rain and even some slate. I worried about the cows, who had seen worse.
This door knocker in Saint-Flour bears no relationship with the current story whatsoever, but isn't it beautiful? (And so does the door it rests on.)
That night, we had two blackouts. The first one happened before it was quite dark, so B. could fix dinner without difficulty. The second one forced him to get the candlesticks, hence the utter romanticism of our dinner — sausages, lentils. Not just sausages and lentils: real Auvergne sausages (thick-ground, tasty) and local brown Planèze lentils, small, firm and delicately flavored. Next morning, all telephone lines were down and so was the Internet. Slowly, the situation went back to normal but the Net connection wasn't restored before Tuesday morning. Add to this my painstaking attempts to connect my Airport to B.'s local network: two long phone calls to Orange, many restarts and a password of seventy-two-thousand diacritic characters (or so it seemed to me) to enter a dozen times, it took no less for me to be online again by midday.
So you will understand that we need to regain some energy. Which is precisely what we did for lunch, with a truffade from B.'s expert Auvergnat hands.
While some fresh herbs, shallots and vinaigrette await the salad greens, B. cuts a large chunk of the local tomme, which is the early version of cantal cheese — one-day old curds, mandatory for the preparation of aligot and other local delicacies.
Yeah, this is the greengrocer's bill stuck under the salad bowl. Well this is called food styling. Agreed?
This is what the tomme is supposed to look like before it is thrown into the frying pan.
And this is what it looks like when it is. B. has pan-fried some thinly sliced potatoes with a bit of diced fat bacon — good local fat bacon, aged, slightly rancid, full of flavor — and proceeds to get one side of regularly, nicely browned and crispy potatoes. When these, later, are found inside the truffade, they are much appreciated.
He stirs with a spatula, then he leaves the pan on low heat for a few minutes so that the cheese forms a crust. This crust holds the potatoes and gives the truffade its shape, that of a loosely folded omelet.
Serve a few strips of tender Auvergne ham with this...
You must have a salad with truffade: freshness, crispness and acidity should balance the dish's richness, already enhanced by the slight sourness of the tomme. This is Auvergnat art at its most delicious.
And this is when I stopped taking pictures.
20 juin 2007
Disinformation: TV show caught red-handed
The fact that there is one food-oriented channel on French cable TV is, unfortunately, not enough to make this channel worth watching. If, when I zap channels, I sometimes stop on Cuisine TV, out of sheer goodwill, I am not long in deciding that there is a limit to heroic behavior and I can't squeeze the remote fast enough, hoping to land on a corny French film from the '60s, or on anything by Jean-Pierre Melville, or on any other watchable cinematic media.
To begin with, few things in this world are more worth slapping than the cheap dubbing system used on food shows bought by French TV from Britain or Australia; I do not know the exact technical term used to describe this calamity, but roughly it is done by toning down the hero's voice and overdubbing it with a silly, exceedingly cheerful French voice trying to sound "natural" by using a vulgar tone, filled to the gills with translating errors and factual blunders, and always out of sync (long enough for you to hear a tiny bit of the original speech and realize that the translation sucks big time). Add to this a few colloquial expressions so misplaced that after a while you no longer know whom you'd like to punch their head in the most — the cook showing off on the screen or the team in charge of the translation. What makes it worse is that you're watching one more leek blowjob from a famous culinary sexbomb (and then the world realized that men loved TV food shows, how wonderful!) or, once more, a lispy young chef stirring the arrabbiata sauce right after taking the wooden spoon out of his mouth. If the show is from the French-speaking world, things are not much brighter. Chef hosts look real chummy but I'm not sure our popular culinary culture will fare better from absorbing the wonders of pâté chinois, streamlined poutine or yet another bolognese-lemongrass-marshmallow fusion with shredded red bell pepper on top. I will not even mention the French shows. Out of pure charity.
Except today. I'll mention them just a tiny bit. During one of my absent-minded zapping sessions, this is what I saw on the food channel.
I didn't make a note of this nice young gentleman's name. But what I'm interested in right now is the products. I do not know if you recognize them, at the bottom of the photo: green things. They are fennel bulbs, with the trimmed stalks and small tufts of young leaves that normally the vegetable comes complete with.
And then, I see the cook cut out one of those young shoots, shred it and sprinkle it onto his dish. What is he doing? Shredding young fennel shoots, as you will answer. Even if you didn't major in botany, that is likely to be your conclusion.
Well we are wrong! His comment leaves no doubt: once taken off the fennel bulb and sprinkled on the dish, fennel shoots become "little dill leaves".
Congratulations, this is even better than badly dubbed French on English: badly dubbed French on French.
Zap!
20 avril 2007
Manresa-Passard (5): the tao of Carrot
This chapter of the Manresa-Passard series will follow the path of carrots (and spinach) to two different dishes. So let us go back to Love Apple Farm and the woody Santa Cruz hills, where, early in the morning, David is picking rainbow carrots with the moral support of a quiet and attentive companion.
Young spinach is also gathered.
I suppose it's useless to comment on those lovely carrots' name.
Round, pale-colored heirloom carrots soon join their purple friends.
This morning's crop, including a large vat of fresh spinach, is sent to Manresa's kitchen. Vegetable cooking, says David, is so much maintenance! So much sorting, cleaning, washing, trimming, peeling, etc. There's far more work in a kitchen like Manresa's, devoted to vegetables as it is, than there is in a more carnivorous kitchen that, on the other hand, does not rely so much on home-grown products. A much overlooked fact.
I have a chance to fully realize that as I decide to wash, sort and trim the spinach. It is, indeed, the best way I have found to take pictures in the kitchen without being too much in the way. With both hands in cold water, I pick, tail and drain, and when I see something interesting, I quickly wipe my hands on my apron and click away.
For instance, I can take this portrait of Julie as she checks the vin jaune for the lobster broth.
And I can watch the preparation of all the carrots: this morning's crop for the dessert and other carrots for the purée.
The cleaned roots will be slowly boiled with rosemary sprigs under a protective layer of paper.
Julie blends and sieves the carrots.
Here is Alain Passard's amuse: spinach (my spinach!) with hazelnut oil, toasted sesame seeds, puréed carrots with orange juice.
And his dessert: carrots in araguani chocolate sauce.
13 avril 2007
Manresa-Passard (4): vegetable portraits
Before we go on with our menu, let us have a closer look at some of the wonderful vegetables grown by Cynthia Sandberg at Love Apple Farm for Manresa restaurant.
Purple kohlrabi, top and bottom parts.
Bok choy.
Parsnip tops, proudly wearing a few prunus petals.
Pea flowers.
Young potato plant growing in a bucket.
The flower shoots of an Italian type of broccoli.
And cabbage, the fractal-loving vegetable.
Romanesco.
(To be continued...)