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November 9, 2008 Seems I've been changing hats at the speed of a whirling dervish, and feeling quite dizzy, I must confess. Add to that the euphoric
atmosphere of the last week... What a week, what a new day, as the very recent song by Will.i.am declares. Watch the video...
Well, it's now finally time to touch down and send out a new newsletter. One thing I've been so busy doing is revamping my website.
I hope you'll take moment and walk through the new layout and pages. By the end of the year I'm hoping to add a series of group
classes that will start around springtime in Paris, the Loire Valley and perhaps even in Torino, Italy.
Now on to food... I realize the season's all but over and most green tomatoes have been plucked off the vine. I ran out last
week to grab up the last of the harvest from Gilles Flahaut's vegetable stand at the Marché d'Aligre in Paris's 12th arrondissement
so I could cook up this savory tart recipe I came up with last year, photograph it, and send it all your way. If you can find no more
green tomatoes at your marketplace (I apologize for not getting this to you sooner), I guess you'll have to put the recipe away 'til
next year. There's something so intriguing about the tart, citrus flavor of green tomatoes roasted in a crumbly, buttery pie dough
and served garnished with a fresh-mint-infused extra-virgin olive oil and a sprinkle of chopped roasted hazelnuts. That burst
of fresh mint with the zingy flavor of the green tomatoes makes for a surprisingly scrumptious savory voyage. I keep the tomatoes
undressed - no cheese, no eggs, no milk - just wearing a thin veil of extra-virgin olive oil. Since green tomatoes cook quite rapidly,
to achieve the crunchy brown aspect, I cook the tart at a pretty high temperature on the upper oven grate. I hope you'll try out
my invention out and let me know what you think. Quite nice to dig into with a 2006 Chinon Clos Guillot from Bernard Baudry,
a fresh, pure expression of the Cabernet Franc grape.
An important note: Tomatoes should never be put in the refrigerator, as that almost instantly destroys the flavor. As Russ
Parsons stresses in his wonderfully informative book How to Pick a Peach : "Cold temperatures wreak havoc with tomato flavor.
Temperatures below 60 degrees reduce the aroma-creating volatiles in the fruit." Now we know why they're a summer fruit! Just
keep them in a cool place out of direct sun. Being a climacteric fruit, they continue to ripen after being picked - and are more than
often picked "mature" green: at the moment the gel around the seeds begins to soften. If you want them to ripen more rapidly,
place them in a closed brown bag, away from direct light; the ethylene gas produced by tomatoes to promote ripening will
become more concentrated and speed up the process.
And I'll leave you with this inspiring video and NY Times article about the urban farmer Will Allen from Milwaukee and his
Growing Power project.
The recipe is below. |
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Savory Green Tomato Tart - serves 6
For dough:
2 1/2 cups unbleached flour, sifted
4.5 oz. room temperature sweet butter
For filling:
2 lbs green tomatoes
4-6 tBsp extra-virgin olive oil
For mint olive oil:
7-8 tBsp extra-virgin olive oil
6 tBsp fresh mint leaves, chopped
Couple handfuls of hazel nuts, roasted, skinned and coarsely chopped.
Unrefined sea salt and freshly ground pepper -Wash mint leaves, dry well, and chop fine. Add to 7-8 tBsp olive oil, with a generous pinch of sea salt. Stir and put in a very warm
place for 3-4 hours (on an oven pilot or near a low flame, for example) or warm oil over low heat until nicely warm and pour over
mint. Let stand for 3-4 hours to infuse. You can also make the mint oil the night before and set in a nice warm place.
-Roast hazelnuts in oven preheated to 300 degrees F till browned and skins are blistering, 15 minutes or so . Watch carefully so
they don’t burn. Roll up in a towel and let steam for 1 minute then rub the nuts in the towel to remove the loose skins. (Don't worry
if some of the skin doesn't come off.)
- Sift flour into large bowl. Make a hole in the middle and add butter cut into pieces and a generous pinch of salt. Mix together,
rubbing the flour and butter between your hands until the mixture becomes granular. Add 3-5 tBsp cold water and mix lightly
with a fork
till absorbed. Gather together into a ball. Wrap in Saran wrap or put in a covered bowl and place in the refrigerator for 1-2 hours.
- Roll out dough on a floured surface to fit a 9-inch pie plate, lay across the pie plate and crimp the edges.
- Cut green tomatoes into 1/4 inch horizontal slices then in half. Toss with 4-6 tBsp olive oil, 1 tsp unrefined sea salt and freshly
ground pepper. (Best to do this just before arranging them in the pie plate so the juices remain in the tomatoes and not
at the bottom of the bowl.) Arrange the tomatoes, one by on, on top of the dough in a circular pattern, two layers thick. Cook
in oven preheated to 425 degrees F for 20 minutes.
Let cool slightly and serve garnished with a tablespoon of the mint olive oil and a sprinkling of roasted hazelnuts. |
November 26, 2008 As Isabel Allende puts it in her wonderful book Aphrodite: A Memoire of the Senses, “Handling food joins the sense of touch
with the basic pleasure of satisfying the appetite.” Yes, cooking is a patient occupation! So I thought for this – late – Thanksgiving
recipe I’d give this simple - yet demanding in patience - Chestnut Soup recipe. If you’re still in search of a starter for your Thanksgiving dinner, you can run out and buy some fresh chestnuts (they’ ll probably be from Italy since Chestnut trees are,
sadly, quite rare now in the States due to a blight at the beginning of the 20th century) and sit around the table with friends
and/or family and get them ready to be transformed into this velvety, succulent liquid dish.
As for food news, here are a couple tidbits: The European Commision is scraping rules that have kept forked carrots, curved cucmbers and other strange fruit from inhabiting the produce sections of markets. Can you imagine government employees
policingvegetable stands and measuring out punishment to those daring to sell a crooked courgette? Here’s a good BBC article
on the subject And if you have the itch to getsome hands-on experience growing organic foodand, here’s a wonderful
organization, a world wide network that allows volunteers to live and learn on organic properties around the globe: WWOOF.
And finally, the Urban Homesteader who, along with his family, has been transforming his ordinary city lot in Pasadena into
an organic permaculture garden that supplies them with food year around. Check out the website and this interesting video
on their urban farm. A blessed, succulent Thanksgiving to you all! The Chestnut Soup recipe is below. |
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Fresh Chestnut Soup - serves 4 1 1/2 lbs fresh chestnuts (in shells)
1/2 cup each celery, carrot, onion, finely chopped
1/4 cup finely chopped turnip (optional)
3 fresh flat-leaf parsley sprigs, chopped
2 fresh bay leaves
1 rosemary sprig
3 tBsp extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 cup Madeira
Unrefined sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Orange-rosemary olive oil:
Zest of 1 orange
20 rosemary leaves
4 tBsp extra-virgin olive oil - Carve an X on the flat side of each chestnut with a sharp paring knife. Put chestnuts in a large bowl, cover with water and let soak
for 1/2 – 1 hour. Drain and spread chestnuts in a roasting pan and roast in oven preheated to 400 °F for 15-20 minutes, or until
the shells are brittle and have curled back from the X. Remove from oven. When cool enough to handle, peel off outer shells
and inner brown skins of chestnuts with a knife. Crumble them and set a side.
- Heat olive oil in large saucepan over low heat, stir in celery, carrot, turnip and onion. Cover surface of vegetables with a piece
of wax paper and let vegetables sweat for 10 minutes. Remove wax paper, add 1 liter (4 1/2 cups) water, bay leaf, bring to a boil,
reduce heat and simmer covered for 10 minutes. Add crumbled chestnuts and rosemary sprig and simmer covered for another 10
minutes. Add sherry and simmer uncovered for 3 minutes. Remove from heat, add parsley, and stir. Purée soup in a blender (be
careful when blending hot liquids). Add salt and peeper to taste and more hot water if soup is too thick.
- For orange-rosemary olive oil:
Heat olive oil over low flame till nicely warm to the touch - but not boiling, pour over orange zest and rosemary leaves in a small
bowl or ramekin. Set aside to cool slightly.
Garnish soup with a drizzle or two of the seasoned oil and freshly ground black pepper. |
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