DORIE GREENSPAN

Friands from Oz, Financiers from France

I recently got an email from a food friend asking if I knew anything about Australian friands.  I was pretty sure I knew zip, but I was intrigued by the word because I knew it in French.  Kind of.  I knew the word friandise, which refers to a small delicacy – think petit four – and I thought I knew the word friand as another name for a financier.  I planned to do a little research, but before I could pull down a single book, I found Australian friands in the May issue of Bon Appetit.  I felt just like I did when I was a child, when as soon as I’d learn a new word, I’d see it or hear it.

In fact, the Bon Ap recipe was for a small cake that was clearly related to the French financier, one of my all-time favorite pastries.  I love everything about financiers, from their history and their name, to the way they’re made and the way they taste.

The financier is a pure-bred Parisian, having been created in the late nineteenth century by a pastry chef named Lasne, who had a shop on the rue Saint-Denis near the Bourse, the city’s stock exchange.  Lasne had a bead on his clients:  he knew that they were rich, discriminating and always in a hurry, so he designed his little unglazed cookie-cake so that it could be eaten without a knife, fork or spoon and without risk to suit, shirt or tie.  It was an early and classy form of fast food.

Financiers are as rich as the bankers they were named for.  They’re made from ground almonds, sugar, unwhipped egg whites, flour and an enormous quantity of melted butter, which is cooked until it is golden brown.  And, in keeping with the theme, the cakes were originally baked in rectangular pans, so that they ended up resembling ingots.

These cakes are sweet, tender and beautiful in their simplicity.  They have a nutty flavor from the browned butter and are perfect, served without any accompaniment or fuss, with coffee or tea. 

And they’re amenable to additions. They’re great with berries (not strawberries, because they’re too watery) and they’re happy to be made in whatever molds you have available.  You can make them bigger (I’ve made 8-inch round financiers, glazed them with ganache and called the dessert a torte) smaller, boat-shaped, square or round. 

Actually, for years, before I invested in rectangular financier molds, I made the pastries in mini-muffin pans and pressed a sliver of fruit into the batter.  Maybe I was Australian in another life because, as near as I can figure it, friands from Oz are made in small mini-muffin-like pans and usually have fruit in the batter.

If anyone from Australia wants to weigh in, I’d love to hear from you.

In the meantime, here’s a recipe for a classic French financier, one I learned to make from Parisian pastry chef/bread baker Jean-Luc Poujauran.  Feel free to play around with it or even to Australianize it.

FINANCIERS

Adapted from Paris Sweets, Great Desserts from the City’s Best Pastry Shops

Makes 12 cookies

1 1/2 sticks (6 ounces; 180 grams) unsalted butter

1 cup (200 grams) sugar

1 cup (100 grams) ground almonds

6 large egg whites

2/3 cup (90 grams) all-purpose flour

Put the butter in a small saucepan and bring it to the boil over medium heat, swirling the pan occasionally.  Allow the butter to bubble away until it turns a deep brown, but don’t turn your back on the pan – the difference between brown and black is measured in seconds.  Pull the pan from the heat and keep it in a warm place.

Mix the sugar and almonds together in a medium saucepan.  Stir in the egg whites, place the pan over low heat, and, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, heat the mixture until it is runny, slightly white and hot to the touch, about 2 minutes.  Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the flour, then gradually mix in the melted butter.  Transfer the batter to a bowl, cover with plastic wrap, pressing it against the surface of the batter to create an airtight seal, and chill for at least 1 hour.  (The batter can be kept covered in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.)

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C).  Butter 12 rectangular financier molds (these were tested in 3-3/4 x 2 x 5/8-inch [10 x 5 x 1-1/2-cm] rectangular molds that each hold 3 tablespoons), dust the interiors with flour and tap out the excess.  Place the molds on a baking sheet for easy transport.

Fill each mold almost to the top with batter.  Slide the molds into the oven and bake for about 13 minutes, or until the financiers are golden, crowned and springy to the touch.  If necessary, run a blunt knife between the cookies and the sides of the pans, then turn the cookies out of their molds and allow them to cool to room temperature right side up on cooling racks.

A Drinking Kind of Place

I just had lunch with a friend who suggested we meet at the upstairs cafe/bar of a charming but worn hotel on Long Island Sound.  I mean really on the Sound - if the cafe weren't on the upper deck, you'd worry that your shoes might get wet when the tide came in.  The location is remarkable, the cafe less so.

Our date was for noon, but I was there a bit early, so I took the time to press my nose against the window and look out at the water.  It's a grey, blustery and wintry-cold today, making it especially nice to be seeing the icy water from the shelter of a warm room.  Then I looked around for a table with a view, scanning past the big bar and around the large open room, which resembles nothing so much as the rundown rec hall of an old summer camp.  Even though my eyes were looking for a two-top, my brain seemed to be registering something else:  the fact that there were about 15 people in the room and all but two were drinking.  A quick look turned up wine, a few martinis and more than a few Bloody Marys. 

Somehow, seeing people knocking back brandy at 6 am in the markets of France never struck me as odd, but pre-noon non-weekend martinis on Connecticut's shoreline had a different feel, something Cheeveresque.

"Yeah," it's like this," my lunchmate said as she settled in.  I thought she meant that the cafe was just a drinking kind of place, but no, the "it" she was referring to was the American Northeast.  She's convinced that mid-day drinking is a regional trait.  So being lifelong Northeasterners, along with our Cobb Salads we ordered a Sam Adams for me and a Bloody Mary for her.

Jean-Louis Dumonet SnAKS at SAKS

This is Jean-Louis Dumonet, a master chef and the man who's making Saks Fifth Avenue - in both New York and L.A. - a cool place to head for togs and tartines, fabulous open-faced sandwiches on the best bread a tartine's ever seen: imported-from-Paris pain Poilane.   Click here (go to the post of April 4, 2007) to read more.

Champagne Dreams: Veuve Cliquot + Karim Rashid

Once again, I found myself in the Time-Warner Building riding the escalator up to Bouchon Bakery (these days, I seem to have a meeting there at least once a week), but this morning I was stopped en route by a vision in pink.  There – untouchable behind a formidable velvet rope – was a curvy love seat, its two sleek, sexy lounging compartments connected by a champagne bucket holding a bottle of Veuve Clicquot Rosé.  No surprise, really, since it was Clicquot that had asked Karim Rashid, the endlessly talented designer, to imagine this dreamy piece of furniture. 

Marketing, marketing, marketing, I know, but one look and I wanted to jump the rope, settle into the settee and sip a flute with … with someone very sauve … maybe someone tall, dark and very handsome … maybe Sean Connery, circa early James Bond.  The whole thing threw me into Cinderella-going-to-the-ball mode.

Thank goodness there were Bouchon goodies waiting for me upstairs. Who knows how hard it might have been to give up Sean otherwise.