bleudauvergne

Sometimes you can find them at the end of November, they do time a few for that time of year.

I was on the edge of my seat looking at all those super museum photos, Chris, especially those copper pots and pans! I love that! Enjoy your walk!

Really looks great! Next time you come through Lyon be sure to post in the ISO thread!

I'd do it if I had a freshly hunted hare. Yes.

As noted in the first post, I have moved this thread from the France forum to the Cooking forum for further posts on recipes that we prepare from Paula's book.

Hmm I was going to say the same thing. So sorry for not checking in earlier on your blog, Chris! It looks like you are having lots of fun! Thank you for taking the time this week for us! What's for lunch?

Don't worry, Anna! I suspect it will take awhile to work our way through the entire book! I recently decided to do the Rognons de veau poeles au confit d'echaolotes, Veal Kidneys Garnished with Shallot Confit, on page 278. The recipe calls for very fresh veal kidneys, and I was able to get one from the butcher. He at first said he didn't have any but then remembered that they were carving up a calf that day and could give me one. Since I was only cooking for two, I accepted this. I arrived and he removed the kidney from the carcass and showed it to me. The kidneys for this recipe should be left intact and whole. My butcher asked me if I wanted the kidney prepared, and I said yes, but didn't realize what he meant by that. What the butcher does to prepare them is to open them up, flatten them out, and remove the fat deposits from the inside. I caught him when he was about halfway done, so he had already cut it open. I explained what I was doing so he did his best to keep it in tact. I called another butcher to see if he had any, and he said he did. Comparison by sniff test of the kidneys from different sources gave me an important lesson on how to identify a very fresh veal kidney. The very fresh one smells clean and has no unpleasant odor at all. Make sure that the kidneys you use for this dish smell clean and fresh. (I chucked the other one - there was a very big difference!) The thing that attracted me to this recipe was the simplicity. The confit of shallots was easy to do and I did mine in the oven in a bowl rather than on the stove top. Finished shallots ready for caramelization before serving: Normally the kidneys are not split down the side, and cooked in one piece. But we make do with what we can get! While the kidney is resting, the shallots are finished. The dish was tender and flavorful, although my presentation was a bit messed up by my not being able to thinly slice the kidneys on a diagonal for a better presentation. I could completely visualize Paula's description of the final serving process, and plan to do it right next time! My husband and I both felt the dish was excellent in flavor. I think I may have gotten away with serving them more rare than I finally did serve them. In fact next time I might caramelize the shallots in another pan while the kidneys are cooking, to make sure I don't have to let it sit too long. I felt that the kidney continued to cook in its own heat while it was resting. My recommendations: Don't let the butcher touch the kidneys because you want to remove the fat that you can while keeping it in tact be able to pan fry them whole. Save the duck fat you've used for the shallot confit because it takes on a wonderful flavor and can be used for other things. Timing is delicate so have your guests seated at the table when you put the kidneys in the pan, you want to work fast at the end to make sure this arrives at the table warm. Don't forget to heat the plates! We do this at our house by spraying a stack of plates with water and heating them in the microwave for 30 seconds on high, then wiping with a dishtowel. I give this recipe a serious thumbs up! Can't wait to do it again!

Wow I'm so sorry that you're going through that. You'll cook again no doubt about it. The question is, is this not cooking causing you a lot of concern and adding to your stress? Are you putting a lot of pressure on yourself because of it? Changes in routine in particular, in combination with whatever stress level you're dealing with can leave open a whole lot of chance for cooking routine to fall to the wayside. Don't get discouraged and think that you'll never feel the urge to cook again, though. I think we all have our moments of inspiration and low times as well. Something I always try to do is just be receptive to the inspiration when it comes, and not worry too much about it waning for whatever reason. During this in-between time, take advantage of what you can do, the tasks, the steps you can store and save for when you really are in the mood. For example just throwing a chicken and some herbs on and making a batch of chicken stock, or clarifying a batch of butter, or putting one of my spice mixes together, tasks that make things easier to cook later, always revs up my cooking engine. Also taking the time to look at my old notes and prepare an easy old favorite is always a comforting way to ease myself back into the habits. That and invite people to dinner... That way you'll not only cook but clean your house too!

As many of you are aware, Paula Wolfert's new edition of The Cooking of Southwest France, Recipes from France's Magnificent Rustic Cuisine has been recently released. For those in the France Forum who are not aware of Paula's influence in the English speaking world, Paula's original edition in 1983 of The Cooking of Southwest France was a first in many ways: Her work was the first to introduce to average American home cooks on a grand scale the concept of French regional cuisine. Not only was it an introduction, but a warm and friendly beckon for us to join her as she worked her way through the Southwest of France and its treasures that took American home cooking by storm; easing us into an anecdotal but at the same time thorough and rigorous approach to a careful selection of recipes from the Gascogne Languedoc and Guyenne. Many of us have cooked through Paula's original book and of course many are delighted that she has taken the time to return to the region in her new edition. She has revisited, refined, and expanded on the original tome, continuing the stories she began in her original edition, with the addition of 60 new recipes, and an expansion of her regional coverage to include the Auvergne. Susan Fahning (aka snowangel), Elie Nassar (aka foodman) and I would like to start this thread in which everyone is invited to join us in cooking our way through Paula Wolfert's new release. This thread is the place to include your notes, and share with us photos of recipes you have prepared from it. This thread will begin in the France forum and eventually be moved to the Cooking Forum. A group of eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters members were asked to test certain recipes for this new edition, and we hope those who tested recipes will share their cooking notes for any recipe that appears in the final edition. This is a "cooking with" thread, so please concentrate on the recipes in the final edition and save general discussion of the testing process itself for the upcoming eG Spotlight Conversation with Paula Wolfert, which will take place from 14 to 18 November, 2005.

Cafe Constant is a place that does not take reservations, so you might go there.

Here's my attempt at Amandine. It tastes exactly as fi describes it (luscious!), but the looks... A bit messy on the execution and not puffy enough to be even close. Oh well, if at first you don't succeed... As compared to the original: Who is going to try next?

That's a nice story. I made some cookies for French co-workers one time and most of my cookie recipes call for salt in the dough, in fact when making toll house (the famous American chocolate chip) cookies I always add just a little extra. I never thought much about it, but my co-workers all remarked on how nice it was to have a little salty taste mingling with the chocolate. What a great thing to do for someone craving chcolate cake, by the way, making them one. You beating those egg whites with the cranky thing reminds me of the time I made chocolate mousse for my then boyfriend with a hand whisk in a plastic bowl. My arm was stiff for a week, but a very nice memory because he thought it was alright.

Is this recipe that was given to you of the quatre-quarts type or of the sablé type (the true gâteau breton)? It seems that amandine cake was "a dense sponge", i.e. rather of the quatre-quarts type. ← Well, this one is a kind of sable, but if you look at the pic of the Amandine upthread, I think it comes pretty close. When it's nice and fresh it is actually quite soft, and sort of cakey and thick. We'll see. The creme patisiere and the cake dough are in the frigo resting. I'll put them together just before I get dinner on.

I've gone out for the ingredients I was missing, and my fromagere had this, which I will use for the cake. While I'm letting it warm up to room temp, I would like to talk about this kind of butter. On the package it says that it is matured au levain naturel, which means what? I know that the traditional baguette is made with a special levain, but have never much thought about butter matured au levain, anyone have any insights on that? The salt content is 3%: 1% sel de guerande and 2% fleur de sel. So if you are making this at home and don't have access to this kind of butter, would it be ok to add 3% fleur de sel or sea salt? For this equivalent of 2 sticks butter, that would be about 7.5 grams, or 2 level teaspoons of coarse sea salt.

Thank you, ptipois, points well taken. What I plan to do to create the Amandine is a Gateau Breton for the cake, a recipe given to me by a woman in Ploemel, and then for the inside, P. Wolfert's filling for Gateau Basque, which is a pastry cream that is flavored with Armagnac, fleur d'orange, anisette, dark rum, almond extract and a hint of lemon zest.

Alright, the weather has cooled here, and it is my husband's birthday. Two good reasons to make this amandine cake today.

Sounds like a very interesting topic, definitely do keep us updated!

I guess the reasons why people don't travel has been pretty much well covered. But what about the reasons they do? I couldn't afford to spend a year abroad when I was in school. But I was desperate to go. So I joined the Army right out of school and after some years getting into trouble I found myself working in Germany, where I basically ate in the mess halls, and to get me out of their hair they sent me on a mission to Holland. In my early 20's, I had taken the cheapest train I could get out of Rotterdam just to see something, and I was in Delft in the Netherlands and wandering around lost, it was raining. I found this little cafe and ordered some brie on toast, which looked to be the most benign thing on the menu. Now I was in Holland, and I didn't care that I was ordering French cheese, I thought I was going to get what I knew to be brie (which was what you could get back in the early 90s in Central New York, which was something like colorless velveeta.) So I got this hot piece of toast with the brie with crust and all, melting all over the top. I sniffed it suspiciously as I brought this thing to my face and I inhaled for the first time the aroma of warm ripe brie. I ate it in large bites, amazed and reeling with a heady sense of joy, and ordered another one, and this time sprinkled pepper on it. I cannot describe to you the feeling I had at that moment. I wrote an entry in my diary about it. Are Americans in general looking for culinary adventure? It depends on how much a person's culture is open to differences and curious about what's out there. I remember once meeting a couple in an airplane from Paris to New York, a very nice couple, who complained about the food in France, and how the Mcdonalds just wasn't the same, and would they please just open up a Burger King there. I thought to myself - well, it's a good thing they're going home then isn't it? Paris is not for them. But at the same time, we have to admit that there are still a whole bunch of people who have had a taste of what traveling can offer them in terms of adventure to the palate, and are hungry for more. I don't think that, for example if gastro-tourism were to really take off and we had the huge majority of Americans crawling the globe looking for authentic this and authentic that, it would homogenize things, no way. Styles come and go and that Asian fusion thing came and went here in France. People take a fancy to things all over the world and then drop it just as quickly once it becomes cliched. In my opinion homogenization is more likely going to come with an infiltration in the food supply channels, where then we'll see a complete change in what people cook at home, thus in a culture overall. But that has nothing to do with tourism.

Out and about today I asked for a tourtiere in a kitchen boutique (I wouldn't call it kitchen supply because it was really a dish shop with a few accesories... ) and was shown this: And this method of baking it with the lid on really makes a good deal of sense when dealing with the aspect of crust that overcooks at the top. So you can prepare a tourte, bake it in the oven until it's almost done, and then in the last 10 or 15 minutes you can remove the cover to get the top brown / or gratineed depending on if you covered it with pate or not. Now I wonder if this does away with the necessity to pre-bake the crust? With the ones I cook open in the oven, I always have to cover the edges with foil and it's bothersome. But with a lid... And why is this one so deep?

From what I understand tourtieres were at one time made from clay. Does anyone know of anywhere in France that still produces cermaic tourtieres? Paula, it's a very pretty toutiere. Interesting to note that they cover them in the Southwest with a layer of pate. Do they cut air vents in the top? What's the common shape or the vent, if they do?

Al, you should be able to get your tickets at the door. I haven't been to the Paris events to know how crowded they can be. The itinerary looks interesting, please keep us updated on your experiences there!

Sure, honey.

Last June I had my 'tween niece come along with her older teen sister (who was to stay for a longer period) to spend a week with us. She was so incredibly drawn to the topic of food I decided to get her in on a special dinner. We chose Magret de Canard, mainly because her mother had ordered a pan seared goose breast in a restaurant earlier in the week which was out of this world, and she knew her mother would like it. The first thing we did, that afternoon, was to take a look at a series of recipes, from Puck, Child, Wolfert, Olney, and Louisette Bertholle. I did not make her read them all (that would be drudgery!), but I appointed her as note taker, and scanned them as I usually do when deciding what to do in the kitchen, with a lot of commentary. Then, I gave her some points to write down. She slowly wrote down some simple points of similarity between the recipes, and we discussed together the similarities and differences between them. We took a snack break and then began to talk about what we'd serve in terms of veggies and what she liked to eat, and together we planned how we were going to plate the meal. We drew pictures and exchanged ideas. (I wish I'd kept that piece of paper! She took that home as a souvenier) Then we went back to the duck. It was time to write down abbreviated notes for her recipe and her game plan for the kitchen. (I would handle the rest of the meal and ensure that the timing was right to get everything out on time.) Here are her kitchen notes : I instructed her on every step and kept her very busy in those 15 minutes while the duck prep was taking place - I was the one to slice them and plate (while she placed the final chevril garnish and took the plates out.) The dinner was a great success. She and I both had a really wonderful time. She took photos, I'll have to ask her if I can have copies.

Yum it looks so delicious, where did you have it and what did they call it? Basically when you make these tartes or tourtes, not sure what to call them, you can use just about anything that comes to your market basket. In this one, there was some nice sorrel, young leeks, young red onions, parsley and chevril. Add some creme fraiche, and it's a casual lunch. This one didn't look so good but it tasted very good. These kinds of tartes are really common in little tea house type places here in France, and served with salad. I'd love to hear more about what you've seen served and in what region, because it seems that everywhere I go in France I see them, but each place puts their own regional twist on them.

Certain individuals can do this. It takes an approach that must be constantly changing to consider the present. It's that method (or lack of method) that sometimes can't be put into words that I see in Clark Wolf's roundtable posts here. He reads the pulse of the past and imagines where this will be going, and then makes forward thinking short term predictions in the present. It must be very exciting being so close to the fiber. Knowing that decision being made today are going to have an impact, because they do at the level where he practices his vocation, must be exhilerating. I know that French institutional changes in the way that restaurants came to be run in the 70s and 80s is definitely only an itty bitty part of the whole. But at the same time the trickle down effect from that revolution was far reaching. As for today, I'm hoping very hard that America is living in a revolutionary time when it comes to an awareness of food, and that something big is happening. But at the same time I wonder if everyone at every time has that impression, and we all feel that way when we reach, say, our late-30s.