DORIE GREENSPAN

Bicycling in Paris: Profiles in Courage and Brioche

Paris is one of the world's greatest walking cities - I'm convinced that's one of the reasons French women have such terrific legs - as well as one of the toughest: cobblestones are unkind and countless staircases can make your knees go weak.  So I was plenty apprehensive coming here this time with a bum foot.  Something happened to my foot and all I could do was hobble a few feet before I'd have to give up - not fun.

But things weren't as glum as I'd feared they'd be thanks to the thoughtful people at the RATP, Paris's metro and bus system.  While the RATP gives no quarter to handicapped people on their subways (the many staircases and long distances you have to walk to change lines makes them a nightmare for anyone not fit enough to be on an Olympic team), they make it easy for hearty city-dwellers to skip public transportation by renting bicycles.

Yes, I had to take the metro to Les Halles and walk a tad to get to the RATP bike shop, but once I was there, patient Malik set me up with wheels tout de suite.

Here are the basics:  you can reserve a bicycle online, but you've got to do it one day in advance.  Bicycles are rented by the hour, day, weekend or week and the rental includes a lock, front basket, babyseat (if you want it) and helmet.  I rented mine for eight days for 39 Euros and I'll be sad to give it back - it's a fun little ride.

What's not fun is cycling in traffic if you're as much of a scaredy-cat as I am.  Happily, most of the major streets in Paris have bicycle lanes; unhappily, cyclists have to share these with buses and taxis.  Still, it's not as difficult as it is in New York. 

Today, I pulled off my biggest triumph:  I crossed la Place de la Concorde, a circle that defeats me even as a pedestrian. 

I would have tried for a better picture, but when the light changed there was no hesitating.

The only reason I attempted the Concorde - I still can't believe I did it (actually, I did it twice: it was a round-trip) - was to see the newly redecorated and reorganized Fauchon.  I mean, would I risk my life for anything less important than pastry?

Christian Beicher, the architect who made Pierre Herme's rue Vaugirard shop a study in gaiety, did the new Fauchon and it's got his trademark many colors.  Whatever snootiness may have surrounded Fauchon is gone and the grand old specialty shop is now as friendly as Disney World and very picnicable - there are lots of ready-to-go salads and main courses and lots of stools and counters for on-the-spot eating.

These days, Fauchon is playing with color in their pastries as well.  They've gone crazy with their eclairs

and here's their new take on brioche

They now have lemon, raspberry and coffee brioche - you can tell which one's which by their cute little color-coded tops.  I brought a cafe brioche home and was surprised to discover that it was filled with a jellyish coffee cream - think Krispy Kreme with finesse. 

Given that I had to face the Place de la Concorde again, I wished I'd liked the brioche more, so the prize would have been "worth the journey," as the Michelin people say. 

What was worth the journey - even if it was just down the street - was my regular lunch in my regular cafe: a tartine viande de Grisons, Swiss air-dried beef on toasted, buttered Poilane bread, at Au Chai de l'Abbaye, my own little Cheers.

The Market at Rue des Carmes and a Recipe

So I am in Paris!  I wasn't supposed to be, but something came up and I had to be - I know, worse things have been known to happen - and this morning I took a stroll through the Saturday morning market at the rue des Carmes, that's in the fifth arrondissement, metro stop Maubert-Mutualite.  (I love that addresses here are always given along with the nearest metro stop - so practique.)

It's definitely spring in the market - you might even say almost summer when you catch a whiff of the peaches.  Here are some of the things I put in my basket:

Roses that actually smell like roses!  They're on my desk, which is just in the entry, and I can smell them as soon as I open the door.  It's odd that rose has become such a popular scent in food these days (there are oodles of rose-scented pastries in the patisseries here), but that real roses no longer have any fragrance.  These are a joy.

I know these look like jumbo radishes, but they're really small spring turnips.  That they're the color of  my roses is just a happy coincidence.  These are mild enough to eat raw, so I'm going to shred the smallest ones and use them as a salad with a light lemony vinaigrette.  I'll cut the larger ones and put them in a vegetable ragout, which will include these:

just-dug scallions (up front) and new garlic, which is so young that it's moist.  Both the flavor and the fragrance of the new garlic are extremely mild, making them easy to use raw. 

And Gariguette strawberries, the season's first berries. They're grown in the Aquitaine region and when they show up in the Paris markets the delight is the same as if a rainbow had suddenly stretched from Notre Dame to the Eiffel Tower!  What you're looking at is the amount you get from two boxes, minus the berries that I ate on the way home.  My plan was to make a compote of these berries, rhubarb and maybe an apple, but I waited too long - the berries, totally irresitible, are gone!  Fortunately, the rhubarb and apple will hold and there's another market with more strawberries tomorrow.

If you've got great berries in your market now - and if you've got more will-power and slightly more patience than I've got - you could serve the strawberries in a simple, very classic, most delicious way: covered with vanilla creme anglaise.   Just pile the trimmed berries (slice them if they're jumbo) in pretty bowls or glasses - if they're fragrant and flavorful, don't sugar them; if you like fleur d'oranger, orange flower-water, you could sprinkle a little over each serving, it's a great match with berries - then pour over the creme anglaise.

Lucky Parisians can buy fine ready-made creme anglaise; for the rest of us, here's my recipe:

Vanilla Crème Anglaise

(Adapted from Baking From My Home to Yours)

Makes about 2 1/2 cups

1 cup whole milk

1 cup heavy cream

6 large egg yolks

1/2 cup sugar

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Fill a large bowl with ice cubes and set out a smaller bowl that can hold the finished cream.

Bring the milk and cream to a boil in a small saucepan.

Meanwhile, in a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan, whisk the yolks and sugar together until they’re very well blended and just slightly thickened.  Still whisking, drizzle in about one quarter of the hot liquid – this will temper, or warm, the yolks so they won’t curdle. Whisking all the while, slowly pour in the remaining liquid.  Put the pan over medium heat and stir without stopping, until the custard thickens slightly and coats the back of the spoon; if you run your finger down the bowl of the spoon, the custard shouldn't run into the track. (The custard should reach at least 170 degrees F, but no more than 180 degrees F, on an instant-read thermometer.) Immediately remove the pan from the heat and pour the custard into a 2-quart measuring cup or a clean heatproof bowl. Stir in the vanilla extract.

Refrigerate the cream until it is very cold, then cover it tightly. If possible, refrigerate the cream for 24 hours before using it – the extra chilling time will intensify the flavor and allow the cream to thicken a bit more.

Jacques Pepin: Chez Jacques/Chez Alliance Francaise

A couple of weeks ago I had the fun of talking to Jacques Pepin about his life and his gorgeous new book, Chez Jacques, on the stage at New York’s Alliance Francaise.  Of course, I meant to tell you about it the minute I got home, but …

Let me start by saying something you probably already know, but I want it out there:  Jacques is as nice, smart, charming and, yes, good-looking in person as he is on television.  Okay, now we can move on.

While I’ve known Jacques and his wife Gloria for about 20 years – I even had his old over-under electric oven in my Connecticut kitchen for a while – I’d never spent as much concentrated time with him as I did the week before our Alliance date.  Of course, most of that time was spent reading, but reading Jacques’ new book is almost the same as being with him in his comfortable Connecticut home; the title Chez Jacques is perfect, the book is that personal.

And I re-read The Apprentice, My Life in the Kitchen, Jacques’ culinary biography and a treat no one should go through life without.  I read The Apprentice from cover-to-cover in one sitting and thought, as I often think at the end of a good novel, one in which I’ve been happy to spend time with the characters: I wish it weren’t over!  It’s a spectacular read and so interesting – this is the true, really true, story of what it meant to be a chef before chefs became rock stars; actually, even rock stars weren’t rock stars when young Jacques was learning how to peel onions!

So, to prep for the interview I: read, read, read; went to hear Jacques speak at my favorite bookstore in Connecticut, R.J. Julia, in Madison, Jacques’ hometown; made the perfect roasted chicken, part of the perfect dinner, from Chez Jacques; had drinks with Jacques and Gloria at our house; and went to dinner with them at Liv’s Oyster Bar in Old Saybrook, CT, a great addition to our limited roster of good restaurants in the area – the chef/owner, John Brescio, is a graduate of the French Culinary Institute, where Jacques is a Dean. 

When it came time to interview Jacques, I had a ton of questions and then, even though we had an hour or so of stage time, barely a minute to ask them.  Not surprisingly, Jacques doesn’t need an interviewer!  He’s got so many good stories, and he’s sooooooooooo charming, that all he really needed me to do was say, “Here’s Jacques!” and then, 45 minutes later, make the T-sign, whistle and shout, “Time’s up!”

Well, I might not have gotten to ask Jacques my questions, but here are just a few of the Jacquesian pearls I culled over the week:

• Be miserly – use everything in the kitchen.  This is the dictum that informs the delicious Fromage Fort (click for the recipe) that you’re very likely to be served with drinks chez Jacques: it’s a spread made from leftover bits and pieces of cheeses and it can be served hot or cold.


• 
  Keep your leftovers, but don’t just reheat them, they’re often disappointing the second time around – try to use them to make something new.


• 
  You can judge a chef, a restaurant (and, by extension I’d guess, your own skills) by the roast chicken, a dish that Jacques says expresses simplicity and quality.  When Jacques is teaching at Boston University(he and Julia Child started the culinary program there), he tests the students’ skills by asking them to roast a chicken.

• Even using the same recipe and the same ingredients, each cook’s dish will taste different:  your mood affects what you cook.  (I always believed this and it was nice to have it confirmed.)


• Develop your taste memory; it’s more important than recipes.

• The recipes that matter are the ones you share with family and friends; the reason to cook is to share the food you’ve made: food tastes better when it’s shared.  (Knew that also – bet you did too.)

Thank You Ari and Friends

Ari, she of Baking and Books, just posted a 10-question interview with me that I had a ball doing because she asked such great questions. 

Merci, gracias, grazie, danke and thank you, Ari, for choosing me to kick-off your interview series.  And many, many thanks to everyone who read the interview and left such warm and wonderful comments on Ari’s blog and here on mine.

As I said in the interview, I am deeply touched – and completely astonished – by how encouraging and generous foodlovers in the blogosphere have been. I’ve only just entered this world, but there isn’t a day when I am not amazed by the fact that, even though we have never seen one another and even though it’s unlikely that we’ll ever meet or talk, we are part of a community. So, maybe in addition to thanking you and Ari, I should add a note of thanks to the inventors of the internet. I hope they’ll consider themselves greatly thanked as well.

More Better Butter: Advice from Elle Magazine

Flipping through a French Elle magazine this afternoon, here’s what I found:  An article about butter!  It says that recently, “les food addicts” have been chasing after good butter (sound familiar?) and it declares The Five Commandments for Perfecting Your Butter Attitude.

According to Elle magazine, we should:

1. Search out artisanal butter

There is a buttermaker in Brittany named Jean-Yves Bordier who has become as famous for his butter as Pierre Herme has become for his pastries.  Bordier’s butter is made with organic cream, cultured, churned in small teak churns and shaped by hand between wood paddles.  With good reason, Elle tells its readers to look for his butter or to order it from the source.  (Fromagerie Jean-Yves Bordier, 9 rue de l’Orme, 35400 Saint-Malo; Tel: 02-99-40-88-79.)

Elle also mentions Echire as a premium-quality artisanal butter.

2. Don’t compromise on quality

Elle’s credo : It’s better to have good butter less often than to have average butter everyday.

3. Respect your butter

Take care of your butter when you get it home by keeping it well wrapped or in a butterkeeper (butter picks up every odor in the refrigerator); take it out of the fridge 10 minutes before you want to use it, so that its aromas can develop and its texture can soften; and, ideally, have the butter “raw” or stir it into a dish at the last minute.

4. Try flavored butters

Once again, Elle suggests Bordier butters, which, in addition to being made sweet and salted, can also be found with seaweed (sooooooo good with oysters!) and smoked salt.  For those of us who can’t buy such butters at the corner market, I guess we can read this to mean that we should try making our own seasoned or compound butters.

5. Broaden your butter horizons

Elle encourages its readers to go beyond cow-milk butters and, for example, to try butters made from sheep or goat milk. 

So we’ve come full-circle – have a butter tasting!

Better Butter: A Tasting and A Recipe

The amazingly talented Molly Stevens (she of All About Braising) organized a butter tasting at the IACP conference last week and, once again, my favorite butters in the tasting turned out to be the butters I always favor in a tasting, proving both the butters and I must be pretty consistent.

Most of us don’t normally “taste” butter, we use it in baking, cooking or as a bread-topper, but I started tasting butter and studying butter about 7 years ago, after the legendary breadbaker, Lionel Poilane, didn’t want to give me his recipe for his great butter cookies, Punitions, for my book, Paris Sweets, because he didn’t think they’d fare well with American butter.

The good news on the cookie front was that when I arrived in Paris with a pound of Land O’Lakes unsalted butter in my bag and made the cookies with M. Poilane, he pronounced them good enough to be published (see below).  But, in talking about butter, Lionel Poilane set me on a quest for good butter and the search to understand how and why butters differ.  (I wrote about this years ago for The New York Times.  Unfortunately, you have to be a Times Select member to read it.)

Molly did a terrific job of presenting butter in 3 categories:

• Sweet
• High fat
• Cultured

Just to make it easy, sweet butter is what most supermarket butters are.  By law, American butter must be 80% butterfat, and this is what generic supermarket and premium butters like Land O’Lakes come in at.  Ari Weinzweig of Zingerman’s in Ann Arbor (another presenter in the tasting) made an interesting point when he noted that most butters naturally have 82% butterfat, so manufacturers remove fat to be at the lowest level of the standard.

In case you were wondering, butterfat is a very good thing in butter – the more butterfat you have, the less water you’ve got and the better the butter will be for baking and cooking.

High-fat butter usually has at least 82% butterfat.  This is the amount of butterfat in Plugra and it’s also the legal minimum amount of fat for butter in France (unless it’s salted, which can have up to 2% less fat).

Just because a butter has more butterfat doesn’t automatically mean that it has more flavor.  Flavor comes from:

• The cream – and its flavor will be dependent on the type of cows and what they’re eating
• Culturing

Cultured butters are la crème de la crème of butter and pretty unusual in the States.  To get cultured butter, a natural culture – think yogurt or crème fraiche – is added to the cream, then the cream is allowed to ferment for about 18 hours before it is churned. 

Clearly, this is a slow and expensive way of making butter and, to add to the expense, most buttermakers who culture their cream go the extra mile and churn their butters in small batches.

If you’re like me, as soon as you taste cultured butter you’ll be hooked.  It has a subtle but seductive tang to it – again, think crème fraiche – and, because it has less water, a texture that is noticeably different, more velvety, than beurre ordinaire. 

Molly said that she found that the high-fat cultured butters really showed their stuff in saucemaking, compound butters and, because of their lower water content, pie crusts.  I’d add that their flavor makes a difference in simple sweets, like shortbreads and plain butter cookies (see the recipe below).

So here’s what was on that butter tasting plate pictured above.  From 12:00 going clockwise, there’s:

• Land O’Lakes
• Pastureland, made by a cooperative in Minnesota
• Kerrygold Irish Butter, a cultured butter
• Kerrygold Irish Salted Irish Butter, also cultured
• Echire, a small production cultured butter from France with 84% butterfat
• Vermont Butter and Cheese Co, a small-batch cultured butter with 86% butterfat
• Vermont Butter and Cheese Co butter with sea salt crystals, also cultured, with a butterfat content of about 84%
• Goat’s milk butter – which accounts for its white color

My favorites: The butters from Echire and the Vermont Butter and Cheese Co. butters.

To finish the tasting, we nibbled on Lionel Poilane’s Punitions made with three different butters.  Here’s a picture taken in the wonderful Poilane bakery on the rue du Cherche Midi the afternoon we baked the cookies together.

If you want to have your own taste test, here’s the recipe:

French Butter Cookies/Les Punitions

From Paris Sweets, adapted from Lionel Poilane

Makes about 50 cookies

1 1/4 sticks (5 ounces; 140 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature

Slightly rounded 1/2 cup (125 grams) sugar

1 large egg, at room temperature

2 cups (280 grams) all-purpose flour

Put the butter in the work bowl of a food processor fitted with the metal blade and process, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed, until the butter is smooth.  Add the sugar and process and scrape until thoroughly blended into the butter.  Add the egg and continue to process, scraping the bowl as needed, until the mixture is smooth and satiny.  Add the flour all at once, then pulse 10 to 15 times, until the dough forms clumps and curds and looks like streusel.

Turn the dough out onto a work surface and gather it into a ball.  Divide the ball in half, shape each half into a disk, and wrap the disks in plastic.  If you have the time, chill the disks until they are firm, about 4 hours.  If you’re in a hurry, you can roll the dough out immediately; it will be a little stickier, but fine.  (The dough can be wrapped airtight and refrigerated for up to 4 days or frozen for up to 1 month.)

Position the racks to divide the oven into thirds and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (180 C).  Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Working with one disk at a time, roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface until it is between 1/8 and 1/4 inch (4 and 7 mm) thick.  Using a 1 1/2 –inch (4-cm) round cookie cutter, cut out as many cookies as you can and place them on the lined sheets, leaving about 1 inch (2.5 cm) space between them.  (You can gather the scraps into a disk and chill them, then roll, cut and bake them later.)

Bake the cookies for 8 to 10 minutes, or until they are set but still pale.  (If some of the cookies are thinner than others, the thin ones may brown around the edges.  M. Poilane would approve.  He’d tell you the spots of color here and there show they are made by hand.)  Transfer the cookies to cooling racks to cool to room temperature.

Keeping:  The cookies can be kept in a tin at room temperature for about 5 days or wrapped airtight and frozen for up to 1 month.

Back from Chicago

My last view of downtown Chicago.

I'm just back from Chicago - at last! - about 36 hours, 5 flight reservations, as many cancellations and a pair of totally clogged ears later - arrrgh! 

My book did not win the IACP award in the Baking and Desserts category, but a book that looks interesting did:  Bread Matters, by Andrew Whitley, which talks about the state of bread in England and includes recipes.  It's a British book, not available here yet, but maybe gettable soon. 

Sure it would have been great to win and sure it's a cliche to say that winning isn't everything, that it's an honor to be nominated, but you know what?  It really is an honor to be nominated by your peers and it really is pretty swell to be surrounded by friends and colleagues who are rooting for you.

Many, many thanks to everyone who crossed their fingers for me.  Do you think you could continue to keep them crossed until the Beard Awards roll around?

Oysters at Shaw's: A Chicago Afternoon

I was sitting at the bar at Shaw's Crab House in Chicago this afternoon having a perfect lunch - six oysters*, one chopped salad and a glass of Sauvignon Blanc - pondering the many ways people dress their bivalves.

I'm from the purist school:  I like oysters straight up, solo, pristine.  Oh, maybe, if the spirit moves me, I'll squeeze a drop or two of lemon juice over them, but mostly I want nothing to get in the way of me and their flavor.

This is the way oysters are often served in Paris, where the accompaniment of choice is dark bread and salted butter.  Sometimes there'll be a mignonette sauce as well.  Mignonette is a mixture of Champagne vinegar, minced shallot and coarsely ground black pepper.  It's tart, really, really tart, and because it's so puckery I've never gotten why it should be good with oysters, but it certainly has its fans.

At Shaw's, where the oysters are exceptional, they're served with lemon wedges, a cup of cocktail sauce with a dollop of horseradish at its center, and a cup of mignonette sauce that's been turned into a granite. Even frozen and flaked I don't want it near my oysters, but there's no denying that mignonette granite is a brilliant idea.

So there I was eating the meat of my oysters with a fork, slurping the oyster juice straight from the source, and using my knife to scrape up any little piece of the muscle that might have been left in the shell.  This is a practice I learned from M. Jacques, the all-knowing maitre d'hotel at Le Dome in Paris, who saw those nubbins in my shells one night and came over to show me how to liberate them.  "They are so good, you shouldn't miss them," is what he said as he scraped.

When my lunch was finished (alas), I turned and saw a guy with a NY Yankees cap just starting on his platter.  He worked his way clockwise through the oysters, methodically draining each one of its juice, even shaking the shells a few times to make sure they were dry, carefully concocting a mix of cocktail sauce and Tabasco, then quickly eating the oysters and washing each one down with a single gulp of Coke.

Across the bar from him, three twenty-something guys from Mexico were attacking their big platter of oysters with great relish.  Two of the three drained off the liquor; all three topped their oysters with salt, pepper, Tabasco and lime (I wonder if they're on to something with the lime - I want to try it); and they each chased them with something different: one drank Coke, one had a cocktail that looked like a sunset over the Florida Keys and the last man drank a Corona.

Everyone seemed happy but, even though portraits of Julia Child, a true oyster fan, were hung in the bar, no one finished their oysters the way Julia used to.  After Julia had gotten every little bit of juice from the oyster, she'd return the shell to the tray with the kind of triumphant clack you'd make if you were laying down a winning domino.  Shells went back to the tray upside down and with good reason.  As Julia explained:  "Turn them over and you know they're finished - saves you the disappointment of pulling up an empty."

*The oyster platter had one of each of the following:

• Fishers Island
• Sunset Beach
• Quilcene
• Blashke Island
• Fanny Bay
• Olympia

The Muffin Man of the Boulevard Raspail Market

These are the handmade English muffins that Michael Healy, a long-time American-in-Paris, sells every Sunday at the organic market along the Boulevard Raspail.  Raspail, one of only two organic markets in the Paris system of weekly street markets, should be on your must-visit list even if you don't have a local kitchen. 

It's a narrow, lively market with a very old-timey village-fair  feel to it.  When you go, I'd suggest that you start at the end of the market near the rue du Cherche-Midi and buy a leek and potato galette (pancake) from Les Gustalins, the stand just to the right as you enter. You can't miss it - first you'll catch the aroma of the galettes, then you'll see the long line of regulars impatient to get their weekly fix hot off the griddle.  Once you've got your fingers wrapped around a galette, then you can stroll, munch and ogle the fabulous fruits and vegetables, fish, birds of every feather (many still with those feathers) and truly tantalizing cheese stands. (Don't miss the goat cheeses at Philippe Gregoire's adorable stand.)

Midway through the market, you'll come to Michael Healy, whose English muffins are the gold standard in muffindom.

Click here to read about The Muffin Man and his wares (scroll to my post of April 11).

French Chocolate Brownies

Julia Moskin’s got a terrific story about Brownies in the Dining section of today’s New York Times and I’m delighted that she’s included my recipe for French Chocolate Brownies.  I’m crazy about these brownies and love the story of how they came about.

The first time I made the recipe I was in Paris, preparing dinner for friends and thinking I was making a fondant for dessert.  Fondant, a creamy chocolate cake, is one of only a handful of sweets the French make for themselves at home.  I made my fondant in a square pan (not usual, but not so far-out) and added rum-flamed raisins (again, not usual, but not heretical either).  I cut the cake into squares and got the following reaction when I brought it to the table:  “Ooh, brownies – splendide!”

Fondant? Brownies?  Who was I to argue?  Maybe my friends assumed that if an American was offering them a soft, thin, crackle-topped chocolate cake cut into squares, it had to be brownies.  It didn’t really matter to me.  I liked the recipe in Paris and I liked it just as much when I re-tested it in the States.

Because Julia Moskin is a brownie-purist – she’ll allow nuts, but that’s the limit on add-ins – she understandably clipped the raisins from the recipe.  Without raisins, the brownies are a creamy, profoundly chocolaty tender treat; with them, they’re all that with a touch of exoticism tossed in.

If you want to add raisins to the brownies, here’s how to do it:

RUM-FLAMED RAISINS, for French Chocolate Brownies

(Adapted from Baking, From My Home to Yours)

1/3 cup raisins, dark or golden

1 1/2 tablespoons water

1 1/2 tablespoons dark rum

Put the raisins in a small saucepan with the water, bring to a boil over medium heat and cook until the water almost evaporates.  Add the rum, let it warm for about 30 seconds, turn off the heat, stand back and flame the rum.  When the flames have died, set the raisins aside until needed.  Right before you’re ready to put the brownie batter in the pan, fold in the raisins.