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WISHING ALL OF YOU LOVE, PEACE AND JOY, GOOD HEALTH AND MUCH HAPPINESS, GREAT FRIENDS, FULFILLING WORK AND LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS OF GOOD THINGS TO EAT
xoxoxDORIE
(PS. What you're looking at is something very good to eat: it's Pierre Herme's Flocons d'Etoiles, a chocolate mousse, caramel, fleur de sel and meringue cake for the New Year)
It was particularly nice to be in the Boulevard Raspail market this morning. The sun was shining -- at one moment it was so bright that I was squinting through my sunglasses -- the temperature was mild and it seemed like everyone at the market was in good cheer.
Certainly the butcher who was sipping a coupe of Champagne between chops to his chickens was in high spirits. After I shot this, he asked me if I took the picture because of the chickens and, when I confessed that it was the glass of champagne that had caught my eye, he grinned, put his hands up in the air and said, "C'est la fete!" And it really did feel like a party.
While I think the vendors in this Sunday market are always nice, they're always a bit harried - the lines can be endless at many of the stands and the merchants, many of whom are the producers as well, don't always get the chance to chat the way they'd like to and the way you'd like them to. But today, it was calm.
Calm enough that when I ran into Louisa Chu, she of Moveable Feast, we could actually walk the center aisle side-by-side, talk, catch up (it had been a while since we'd seen one another) and stop for a photo.
Last week, the Sunday before Christmas, when I was shopping in the market with Patricia Wells - and taking a picture for amazon.com's editor's blog -- it was all we could do to find a square centimeter of space
While it was the food stalls that were jammed before Christmas, today, the day before New Year's Eve, it was the wine shops and any place selling Champagne.
After we left the market, Michael and I walked over to La Grande Epicerie, Paris's chicest supermarket. I had no problem picking up the flour and vanilla that I needed, however, had I wanted a bottle or two of bubbly, I 'd have had to wait my turn, and wait, and wait -- you could barely get near the bins. Happily, there was another -- faster -- way to satisfy that craving for Champagne: Dom Perignon had set up a little bar
What a great thing to do! How festive! How fun! How French! I think every supermarket should have a Champagne bar. Stop & Shop are you listening?
This week's Baking with Dorie recipe on Serious Eats is one that's perfect for the holidays: a type of pain d'epices, or honey cake, from Parisian pastry wizard Pierre Herme. While it's not at all like my chocolate-gingerbread (last week's recipe), there's something about the loaf that makes me think it's my American gingerbread's long-lost French cousin.
Pain d'epices is a holiday must in France and Pierre's, not surprisingly, is terrific. If you make it -- and I hope you will -- try to make it the day before you want to serve it: The flavors really come into their own after a day's rest under wraps.
TYPO ALERT: While it may be changed by now, there was a typo in the original recipe. The correct amount for the water, the first ingredient is: 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons water. I'm very sorry.
A couple of days ago, my friend Laura Shapiro (she who wrote the terrific biography of Julia Child) sent me an email saying, "I hope you're having a wonderful time and hearing French Christmas Muzak everywhere and eating the meringue mushrooms off the buche de noel, which is certainly what I would do if allowed."
Well, of course I'd pick the mushrooms off the buche and munch them greedily, but this year there are no mushrooms to pull off the logs - at least not on the logs of Paris's best-known patissiers. This season's logs are sleek, shiny and very sophisticated. (Not at all like the adorable plump snowman from Dalloyau above.)
And, as is deliciously true every year, each shop has lots of different kinds of cakes to choose from. Here's just a little sampling of 2007's treats.
For those who love chocolate, there's this sparkly, elegant buche from Claire Damon of Des Gateaux et du Pains
La Maison du Chocolat's classic Christmas offering
And chocolatier Jean-Paul Hevin's boxy buche
Vanilla got the royal treatment from Pierre Herme
and from Fauchon, where their Baroque Buche had a very bridal feel
And if you wanted something more colorful, you could head to Laduree, which has been celebrating the ballet this season
Or to Dalloyau, where the cakes get more and more playful with each collection
And here's the buche we'll be having in a couple of hours (it's coffee and it's from Pierre Herme)
If only I could share it with each and everyone one of you...
Wishing you all a joyous Christmas, one filled with warmth, love, friendship and, of course, lots of good things to eat.
Since it 's minutes before Christmas, my Baking with Dorie recipe on Serious Eats is for a holiday classic: gingerbread. My version is made as a tall square cake that can be cut in cubes and it's got melted chocolate as well as chopped chocolate and fresh ginger inside it, and there's a delicious chocolate glaze on top of it. Not really classic, but really, really good.
It's also easy to make and - ta-da: freezable. If you wanted to, you could make the cake now, ice it and freeze it until you're ready for it. You'd have one less thing to do when the going gets going on Monday and Tuesday.
This recipe comes from Baking From My Home to Yours. And the beautiful photograph (don't you want to be wherever that cake is?) was taken by Alan Richardson.
Menu for Hope, the worldwide bloggers' campaign to raise money for the World Food Program, wraps up today. We're going to top last year's total of $62,000, but we'd love to top it BIG and can if we get a little push today. To see what prizes you can win, go to Chez Pim - Pim's the creator of this wonderful event. Then, when you've found the prizes you really, really want (everyone has been so generous, you'll probably have a hard time narrowing down your choices), go to Firstgiving and purchase your raffles (they're $10 each). (You can read about my prize here.) Today's the last day, so you've got a few more hours to jump in and make a contribution. Good luck!
I know this won't surprise you, but I've got a lot of cookbooks. I mean not just a lot, but a lot-a lot, as in lots going into the several hundreds. (Actually, my husband says there are over a thousand weighing down the shelves we thought would be unbendable and he's better at numbers than I am.) As soon as I got married, I started buying cookbooks. I bought them then because I needed them: I'd hardly scrambled an egg before our marriage. But, as soon as I started cooking, I started buying books for the pleasure of them - the discovery of new dishes, new worlds, new voices - and I've never stopped.
Books are my favorite gifts to give - I always give them for engagements and weddings - and, of course, my favorites to get. So, in this season of giving and getting, I thought I'd make a list of books that would make great gifts and great gets.
It turns out that this is a very special list because all of the books on it were written this year by friends. 2007 was a great year for cookbooks! And it was a pretty terrific one for friends, too.
I made this list from memory, so if I've forgotten anyone or any book, I'm sorry.
I can't imagine a book on this list that wouldn't make a cook very, very happy, so I hope a couple of them find their way down your chimney. I'm hoping for a few of them myself.
I'm lucky to have such talented friends and we'd all be lucky if we had their books.
OOOPS! I was afraid this was going to happen. I missed one of the best books of the year:
If you're over the age of 5, you've probably sung about figgy pudding - or will be singing about it next week. But have you ever tasted it? Or, better yet, made it?
If you've always wondered about the dessert - sometimes called Plum Pudding or Christmas Pudding - you're not alone. A little while ago, Michele Norris, host of NPR's All Things Considered, called me because she, too, was having a figgy pudding wonder moment. Which explains how I ended up in her terrific kitchen in Washington, DC making the above.
I know it looks like a fruity Bundt cake (it was baked in a Kugelhopf pan), but it's really a very boozy steamed pudding. It's got tons of fruit - figs, of course, and raisins, cherries and cranberries, too - and a significant amount of rum and brandy. (You'll have to card your guests before you serve them even a forkful.)
If you're as intrigued as Michele and I were with the pudding, just click here. There's more information about the dessert and my recipe, of course. And you can email the whole kit-and-caboodle to yourself or your favorite puddin' head. You can also listen to the broadcast and hear how much fun we had making - and eating - this hearty sweet.
If I've got my calendar straight, this week should be crazy busy with shopping, holiday parties and cookie exchanges. Cookie exchanges, for those of you who've never been to one, are a wonderful American invention in which every guest is asked to bring large quantities of his or her favorite cookie, so that the delicious cookies can be exchanged for everyone else's delicious cookies. If all goes right, at the end of a good cookie swap you go home with a fabulous variety of oodles of great cookies.
I recently created four cookie-swappable recipes for AARP The Magazine - including Almond and Currant Tea Cakes, Coffee-Hazelnut Biscotti, Sweet and Savory Roll-ups (think savory rugelach) and the pictured Cherry and Spice Brownie Bites - and, just for good measure, I added the recipe for my all-time favorite World Peace Cookies. I also included some tips for hosting an exchange.
If you jump on this idea now, you might be saved when Santa comes down the chimney looking for his milk and cookies.
This photo was taken by Jim Franco.
Please, don't forget that the MENU FOR HOPE raffle is open until December 21. You can read all about Menu for Hope and the World Food Program that we're supporting at Chez Pim's, where you can also see all the prizes. There are wonderful prizes available, including mine -a signed copy of Baking that I'll give to you over coffee and cake if you live near me in New York, Connecticut or Paris - so I hope you'll go to Firstgiving and buy a raffle ... or two ... or three. Thank you, and merci, too.
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