Every country has its own way of celebrating the holidays with food. In the States, we have our gingerbread, and in France, they have pain d’epices, or spice bread.

Just one more small difference. In the U.S., we eat gingerbread with a big spoonful of whipped cream, and for dessert. Here, pain d’epices is usually trotted out with a first-course with foie gras — the slightly sweet bread strikes a mighty fine balance with super-rich goose (or duck) liver, it turns out. There’s often a tiny spoonful of jam or caramelized onions served on the side, too.

As simple as this looks (and actually is), pain d’epices is one of those things that people seem to get wrong more than right. Over the last few years, I’ve tasted more dry pain d’epices than moist; I’ve had it with chocolate chips, with lavender, and or just as it is, plain, and sweetened with honey.

I pretty much gave up on liking pain d’epices until this summer, when I was at Philou (the Canal St. Martin bistro recently named one of the top 15 in Paris by Le Figaro). There, I was served pain d’epices like no other…sweet, crispy, and toasted, served with some of the best foie gras I’d ever tasted.

So I decided it was time to give this a try at home. I played around with a few recipes and after a few fails, came up with this, inspired by La Pâtisserie des Rêves‘ Philippe Conticini’s version and a few others. It’s actually more cakey than breadlike, but that’s why I like it. I haven’t tried it with fois gras yet, but barring that, I think it’ll work just fine as it is, or toasted with salty butter…

Pain d’Epices (Spice Bread)

Makes one loaf

• ⅓ cup/80 grams of brown sugar
• 1 stick/125 grams of butter
• ⅓ cup/110 grams of honey
• ½ cup/12 cl of milk
• ¾ cup/105 grams of all-purpose flour
• ½ cup/60 grams of sarasin flour/buckwheat flour
• ¼ teaspoon of sea salt
• 1 teaspoon of baking soda
• ¼ teaspoon of ginger
• ¼ teaspoon of cinnamon
• 1-2 teaspoons of quatre epices or pumpkin pie spice
• the zest of 1/2 lemon
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten

1. Preheat oven to 350°F/175°C, and line a 10-inch by 4-inch loaf pan with parchment paper.

2. Melt your brown sugar, butter, honey, and milk in a saucepan over low heat.

3. Whisk together the flours and spices, and add the beaten eggs to this mixture. Pour the melted sugar mixture into this and mix until the lumps disappear — you can do all of this by hand, with a wooden spoon. Pour into the loaf pan and bake for about 35 minutes or until the cake springs back slightly when you touch it. Let cool on a rack. Slice and serve with salty butter, cream cheese, or a bit of jam – or you may want to dust with confectioner’s sugar. So festive and snowlike!

]]> http://cowgirlchef.com/2011/12/06/pain-depices-spice-bread/feed/ 2 http://cowgirlchef.com/2011/05/13/roquefort-crispbread/ http://cowgirlchef.com/2011/05/13/roquefort-crispbread/#comments Fri, 13 May 2011 05:27:47 +0000 epierce http://cowgirlchef.com/?p=4256

I’m not exaggerating when I say that this is one of the best things that I’ve made in a long time — a thin-crusted bread covered in Roquefort crumbles (a lot of Roquefort crumbles, which is why the entire top is green), and baked for just 15 minutes in a super-hot oven.

See how crispy that brown edge is? See how thin? See how cheeeeezy?

My mouth’s watering again, just thinking about the fun of that first bite.

The craziest thing is how this is made — from a batter, not a dough — with vodka as one of the wet ingredients, and then poured into a sizzling hot pan brushed with olive oil and slipped into the oven. The cheese sinks into the batter and cooks right into it — it’s pure alchemy, this is.

I found this recipe in Saveur, and it’s really for what’s called alevropita, or feta tart. Because my feta had just gone south, and I had a brand new chunk of Roquefort in the cheese drawer, so I decided to do a swap. No one would mind, I figured. Certainly not me.

I didn’t intend for X and I to eat the whole thing in one sitting, but yes indeedy, we did.

I think that any good melty cheese, stinky or not, will work here, in addition to the feta. I’ve got a notion to experiment with cheddar and jalepeños, and swap out tequila for vodka, for the next round.

Roquefort Crispbread

Adapted from a recipe in Saveur magazine

INGREDIENTS

4 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons vodka
1 egg
1 ¼ cups flour, sifted
¼ teaspoon sea salt
⅛ teaspoon baking powder
5 oz. Roquefort, crumbled

Heat oven to 500 F.

1. Put a 10″ x 14″ rimmed baking sheet in the hot oven for 10 minutes, or while you make the batter.

2. In medium bowl, whisk together 2 tablespoons of the olive oil, egg, vodka, and 1 cup of water. In a separate bowl, whisk the flour, salt and baking powder. Pour the wet mixture over the dry and whisk until smooth.

3. Pull the hot pan out of the oven and brush the other two tablespoons all over the surface and sides. Add the batter to the pan, using a spatula to evenly distribute. Sprinkle the cheese all over the batter, and slide into the oven for 20 minutes (or a little less if you’re using the convection setting).

Slice and serve or just tear into pieces.

Would be great with feta, as it was originally intended, or any other great melty cheese. I’m using cheddar/jalapenos/tequila next time.

I am not a muffin person.

In fact, the last thing that I ever want, even if I’m 10-seconds-from-passing-out, is a fluffy, soft muffin, with its cartoony dome top — dotted with nuts, fruit, or perhaps both — and promise to deliver some sort of satisfaction.

Yet here I am, pushing this – a muffin — on you today. But it is not like other muffins.

Wait just a minute. Let me go get one right now so I can eat one as I type the rest of this post.

OK, I’m back.

This muffin has a little story, so bear with me. Now, as many of y’all know, I was recently in Texas, and also in Santa Fe, which speaks to the cowgirl in me like no other place in the world. I went to New Mexico with my best friend Melanie, who kindly decided to drive  - it’s only 9 hours, which is nothing when you’ve got months of catching up to do. We drove straight through to Amarillo, stopped for green chile cheeseburgers at the Golden Light Cafe, and pulled in on a Monday night. We spent the next couple of days discovering new places, revisiting some old favorites, and uncovering some not-so-new spots that I’d not known about (which you can read about in the story that I wrote for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram here).

The morning that we were going to drive back to Texas, Melanie and I stopped at Aztec Café, naturally, for a couple of XL lattes for the road, then pulled into Sage Bakehouse down the street for a little breakfasty snack to go along with.

Melanie bought a cream cheese-filled pastry (which she did not share, by the way), and I lingered over the selections, which were mostly of the croissant and pain au chocolat variety, two things that I have plenty of back here. Then a man walked up to the counter and ordered the ugliest, dark browniest muffin that I’d ever seen. He said that he came in to buy these all the time. That they weren’t too sweet.

I was sold.

I got my peanut butter and jelly muffin, hopped in the car, and we began our drive east. It wasn’t puffy on top. It wasn’t fluffy, either; rather, it was kind of dense. It was even a bit overcooked and crunchy around the edges – a mistake, I imagine, but it gave the muffin top a bit of a peanut butter cookie texture — which I really liked. It was also not too sweet, as he promised. I thought about this muffin all the way back to Texas, and when I returned to Paris, I kept thinking about it.

I remembered that the woman in the bakery told me that the owner was Andrée Falls, who opened the restaurant Parigi in Dallas decades before. I met Andrée Falls in 1990, when I wrote my first food story for The Dallas Morning News. It was about how chefs are influenced by their mothers, and she and I sat down and talked for a long while. Afterwards, she gave me a thin, hand-bound cookbook, “Parigi.”

I still had the book, its pages stained from years of use, on my bookshelf here in Paris.

On page 80, there it was. Peanut Butter and Jelly Muffins. How did I miss these before?

I made these late the other afternoon, knowing very well that muffins are usually not an afternoon thing. But when they came out of the oven, I couldn’t resist. Then I had dinner. And another muffin. For dessert.

Because I am not a muffin person.

Peanut Butter and Jelly Muffins

Adapted from “Parigi” by Andrée Falls

Makes 9 regular-size muffins

INGREDIENTS

1-2 tablespoons butter (for greasing pan)
1 large egg
2 oz./1/4 cup butter, melted and cooled
½ cup brown sugar
½ cup peanut butter*
1 cup All-Bran cereal
1 cup whole milk
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon sea salt
½ cup plus 1 tablespoon jam (I used Bonne Maman’s raspberry, but you may use the jam of your choice)

1. Preheat oven to 375. Generously grease a muffin tin with butter (1-2 tablespoons should do it).

2.Pour the milk and All-Bran cereal in a bowl and let rest for a few minutes.

3. In a stand mixer, mix together the egg, melted butter, brown sugar and peanut butter. Now add the milk and cereal to this.

4. Whisk the flour with the baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add this all at once to the rest of the ingredients and stir only until combined. Don’t overmix.

5. Fill the muffin tins with 1/4 cup of the batter, spoon 1 tablespoon of jam on top, and fill with another 1/4 cup of the batter. Bake for 30 minutes or until the top feels firm and is slightly brown and crunchy around the edges.

*I used creamy Peter Pan peanut butter because that’s all I had. The original recipe calls for crunchy, which I think would be best. Crunchy peanut butter is impossible to find in France, and I plan to add 1/4 cup of crushed salted peanuts to the batter the next time I make these, which will be soon.

Sage Bakehouse
535 Cerrillos Rd.
Santa Fe, NM
505-820-SAGE

If you’ve never had this seemingly unlikely combination, then let this be the year that you do.

Strawberries and cream, strawberries and balsamic, strawberries and chocolate (yawn), we know you. You’re good, but you’re exactly what we expect. You’re predictable.

This spring, why not do the unexpected? Take the car instead of the plane. Order something at dinner that you’ve never tried – and can’t pronounce. And instead of reaching for the powdered sugar, crank that pepper mill right over those strawberries.

You’ll thank me for this.

I first tried this killer combination a few years ago, when I first moved to Paris and had dinner with X’s cousin and his wife. I don’t remember what was served for dinner, but I remember the dessert. Strawberries, passed around the table, family-style, in a large bowl. Then the pepper mill. That was it.

It’s important that the strawberries be the juiciest and sweetest that you can find. Here in Paris, I’m crazy about the strawberry candy-like Gariguette and the Mara des Bois, but wherever you are, go for the sweetest of the available berries, so they’ll contrast nicely with the heat of the pepper.

I’ve always felt like the arrival of strawberries is one of the first signs of spring – it’s a bit like getting to open that first present on Christmas Eve, knowing that there are other gifts to come. So here’s a big welcome to le printemps, and a hideeho to the rest of the Twitter #LetsLunch bunch, all of whom have posted spring-like small bites today.

Cheryl’s Popia: Singporean Summer Rolls at A Tiger in the Kitchen

Emma‘s Radish Phyllo Cups at Dreaming of Pots and Pans

Karen‘s Sushi at Geofooding

Linda‘s Breakfast Cookies at Free Range Cookies

Cathy’s Dandelion Bread Pudding with Sundried Tomatoes and Gruyere at ShowFoodChef

Bite-Size Black Pepper-Strawberry Scones

Makes 30 1 ½ – inch scones (or can be rolled into a circle and cut into 8 larger triangles)

INGREDIENTS

2 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon sea salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
⅓ cup sugar
4 tablespoons butter, cold
2 large eggs
⅓ cup cream
4 oz. fresh strawberries, cut in 1/2-inch pieces
1 tablespoon lemon zest
fresh cracked black pepper

Preheat oven to 425 F.

1. Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, sea salt and pepper in a bowl put in a food processor and pulse one or two times.

2. Add pats of very cold butter and pulse 3 or 4 times, or until you see large and small pebble-like (not bam bam) pieces of butter throughout.

3. With the motor running, add the eggs one at a time, then the cream and lemon zest.

4. Turn dough out onto a floured board, smashing it down a bit so it’s a large, flat disc (about 1/2-inch thick). Put the strawberries on the dough and very gently fold the other half of the dough on top. Press down so the dough comes together, but not so much that the strawberries get smashed. Key here is to have a light touch and not to overwork the dough at all. Pat the dough until it’s 1 inch thick, and using a 1 1/2 inch round biscuit cutter, cut out the scones. Place on a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet, crank the black pepper mill over all of them, and bake for 15 minutes, or until they begin to brown on top.

Serve immediately with butter, jam, whipped cream — or, as I often do, all three.

There’s a plucky, eccentric American who sells home-baked English muffins at the organic market on Boulevard Raspail on Sundays, and they are as thick as three hockey pucks stacked one on top of the other, and they are absolutely delicious. For a while, I was there every other week, buying up a dozen or so, but I finally broke the habit and now I can’t remember why.

I also can’t remember exactly why I decided a few days ago that I must make English muffins and I must make them now, but I did, and it launched three days’ of buying flour, then more flour, and proofing and watching videos, and making them yet again.

Four times. I made English muffins four times; well, three, if you don’t count the first batch, which was ruined because there were bugs in my flour, which I only discovered, naturally, after I’d mixed everything together.

First, I made Michael Ruhlman’s recipe, which called for white flour and baking powder added at the end, and I ended up with a fairly tasteless muffin, but that’s because I’m not crazy about white flour — but I wondered how the muffins would turn out without baking powder. So I made them again, this time, with the CIA recipe for muffins, and these (photographed above and below) are the result — crispy on the outside, slightly holey on the inside muffins — but I was still concerned because, one, the recipe made a sticky (rather than smooth, breadlike) dough, and two, it only made 4-6 muffins and the recipe promised 12. So I made the same recipe again, and again with wheat flour (I love the nutty taste), and even added a bit of bread flour to thicken up the dough. I cut the dough into 12 pieces, but ended up with 12 tiny muffin balls, and not what you see here. So, as far as I can tell the “makes 12″ business in the original recipe (which I’ve amended) is just crazy-talk. You’ll get 6 muffins here, enough for breakfast, and if you want more, then I’m suggesting that you double the recipe.

One other thing. Watch the heat, and keep it low. Otherwise, the muffins will cook too quickly and you’ll have crispy outsides and doughy insides.

My suggestion: make the dough the night before you want to eat these and simply cook them up on the griddle, then split them with a fork (very important), toast them, and have them for breakfast.

Whole Wheat English Muffins

Adapted from a recipe by the CIA

Makes 6 muffins

INGREDIENTS

1 package active dry yeast
1 cup warm water
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon butter, softened
2 cups whole wheat flour
½ cup bread flour
¼ cup yellow cornmeal, or as needed
1 tablespoon corn oil, for greasing skillet

1. Place the yeast and warm water in the bowl of a mixer and let stand until foamy, about 5 minutes. Add the sea salt, honey and butter and with the dough hook attachment, mix on low speed.

2. Add the flours and mix until all of the ingredients are blended, then increase the speed to medium-high until the dough is smooth, about 5 more minutes. Shape the dough into a ball, and put it in a lightly greased bowl, cover it with a towel, and let it rise for 2 hours in a warm (but not too hot) place. (Note: you can do all of this in advance, and let the dough rise overnight.)

3. To make the muffins, punch down the dough, and divide it into 6 pieces that you’ve shaped into discs. Set aside for 30 minutes.

4. Put the cornmeal in a shallow bowl or on a plate. Cover the top and bottom of each disc with cornmeal and cook in a lightly greased skillet over medium-low heat. Each side will take about 5 minutes. Let cool on a rack completely.

5. To eat the muffins, use a fork to split them open and toast. Add tons of salty butter and jam. Repeat.

For Christmas morning this year, I’m making fluffy, buttery Mandarin orange scones, which I’ll be slathering with (even more) butter and strawberry jam. Why scones, you might be wondering, and why now?

Well, I say, why not?

Scones are merely the snooty British cousins to our beloved buttermilk biscuit (which is what I usually have on Christmas morning), and instead of gravy, you add heaps of clotted cream (or more butter) and some sort of jam. They take way less time than biscuits to make because there’s no rolling – you just press the dough into a fat disc with your hands, cut it into eight pie-like wedges, and put them on a cookie sheet.

They’re so easy, you can have a pan of scones in the oven in less than 10 minutes from start to finish, and put them together while you’re waiting for the coffee in your French press to steep (Potentially useless factoid: my mom insists that coffee must steep for 10 minutes exactly, in a French press, and I believe her. We both use annoying digital timers to insure a proper brew.). Honestly, these scones are so zip, zip, it is done, as my dad would say, I don’t know why I don’t make these more often.

I’m making these for Christmas because not only are they quick to put together, as I’ve mentioned already eighteen times, they’re gonna be great road snacks (albeit sans the jam, cream, and all that jazz). Because of Rosedog’s paw injury (and endless trips to two different vets), X and I are getting a late start on our planned trip to Biarritz, which is about eight hours of straight driving. I’ve got a feeling that the road food along the A10 on Christmas day is going to be scarce to nonexistent, so I figure a sack of big biscuit triangles can’t be a bad thing to have on hand — well, ever.

This is my basic scone recipe, with the zest of Mandarin oranges added as a bit of zippedy do – and yes, Austin people, I got the idea for these from the orange scones at Jo’s Coffee, Lou Lambert’s place on Congress next to his sister Liz’s Hotel San Jose. Last time I was in Austin, I sat outside at the tables at Jo’s one morning and because it was already a boiling hot 80-something degrees, had a jumbo iced coffee – perhaps one of the best iced coffees ever, I might add.

One more thing. I know that it’s become trendy to glaze scones with a Royal icing of some sort, and you may certainly do this if you must, but I’m not a fan of anything sticky on top of my scones, because it just makes them messy to eat. I can’t remember if the Jo’s scones had any sort of glaze on them or not.

As I write this, the snow is coming down yet again, in a powdered sugar mist. I don’t know if we’re going to have a white Christmas this year or not, but it’s certainly been a white December around here, and a frigid one at that.

To all of you, I send you the warmest of wishes for the holidays, and big ol’ Texas hugs.

Thank you for your enthusiastic support, your comments, and all of your encouragement. I couldn’t do it without y’all, and I’m truly so grateful.

Joyeux Noel, everyone!

Mandarin Orange Scones

INGREDIENTS

zest of 2 Mandarin oranges
⅓ cup sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon sea salt
4 tablespoons cold butter, cut into small pieces
2 large eggs
⅓ cup cream
2 tablespoons large-grain decorating sugar, for top (optional)
Preheat the oven to 425 F and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

1. In a small bowl, rub the Mandarin orange zest with the sugar with your fingers — this way, the oils will perfume all of the sugar.

2. Combine the sugar and zest with the flour, baking powder and salt in the food processor and pulse a time or two.

3. Add the pats of very cold butter (I often freeze the cut cubes in advance) to the mixture, and pulse three or four times, or until large and small pebble-like pieces throughout.

4. With the motor running, add the eggs one at a time, then the cream.

5. Turn dough out on a floured board, smashing it down with your hands so it’s a large, flat disc, about 1-inch thick. Cut into 8 pie-like wedges and place on parchment-lined cookie sheet. Bake for 15 minutes or until the scones begin to brown.

Serve immediately with whatever tickles your fancy –salty butter, whipped cream, jam — or, if you’re like me, all three.

Cowgirl Tip: These scones are wonderful the day they’re made, but like biscuits, they’re also terrific as leftovers — simply slice in half and pop into the toaster. Then, add butter, jam, as usual.

“Don’t take this out of the oven before it BURNS. When it’s done, the top will be black.”

So say the instructions for cooking this traditional French “cheesecake,” made with fresh, Frenchy goat cheese instead of good ol’ American Philly, and cooked until it looks like something that you forgot about while you were on the phone with your best friend, discussing whether or not to buy the new Freelance boots this fall, or wait until les soldes in January.

It’s the ugliest cake you’ve ever seen.

Once again proof that you can’t judge a livre by its cover, this awful-looking gateau, my dear readers, is something like you’ve never tasted before — a wonderfully dense, yet at the same time light “cake” that works as well for breakfast as it does with an after-dinner drink, which is how I first tasted this (and which I’ll get to in a second). There is an outer “shell,” and a soft inside, much like, well, a certain kind of sea side-crawler.

Literally called “crab cheesed,”  this cake has nothing to do with crab except its traditional rounded top and rounded bottom shape, which I believe can only remain so in super-hot magic ovens manned by goat herding French men who’ve acquired the recipe and the know-how to make it puff and stay that way from whispers, secret handshakes, and a recipe kept under lock-and-key.

Otherwise, it’s a poof-and-fall situation.

Each time I’ve tried to make this cake, it caves in like a souffle that the oven door’s been slammed on. After a few tries, I’ve given up on the cute domed top, which, I must tell you, hasn’t hurt the taste or texture one single bit.

I first tasted this when I was visiting my pal Kate Hill in Gascony last year, who, after dinner one evening, escorted me past the fig tree heavy with fruit, over a little wooden bridge and onto her barge/living quarters, where she poured me a glass of Gascon gold (aka Armagnac), and sliced off a hunk of this strange-looking cake with a burned top crust, toasty brown bottom, and soft insides.

Oh my gawd. What is this? I exclaimed, noting, too that the Armagnac was the perfect foil to this very uncheesecakey crab cheesed.

Tourteau fromage! said Kate, raising her glass and giving mine a clink.

We had a slice, and then another. Or three. I can’t remember. But what I do remember is that cake stuck with me, and from that point on, I searched for it, wherever I went.

Turns out, this cake usually comes from a fromager, or cheese shop, and not a patisserie, and even so, I couldn’t find one in my neighborhood, or anywhere around Paris, even. I went to every cookware shop in Paris that I knew of and one by one, asked them if they had the mold for this exotic cake, and each one told me that non, they did not. I searched for recipes on the internet. None of them made sense. I gave up. The ellusive cake was not to be mine, I finally decided.

Two months later, I found myself (along with X and Rosedog) in the west of France, in the region of Poitou, which, it turns out is France’s goat cheese capital, and the heart of crab cheesed land.

It was Christmas, and we were on our way to Biarritz, and we’d decided to spend the night halfway along the journey, about 4 hours southwest of Paris, in the tiny village of Vallans, near Niort. We pulled into the little chambre d’hote just in time for dinner, and after homemade aperitifs, a creamy vegetable soup, rabbit braised in pinot noir, and creme brulee with cognac for dessert, we had 10 different kinds of goat cheese.

The next morning, over coffee, Bruno, the owner, who in a former life had been a pastry chef, and I were discussing different cakes, when I asked him if he knew about this little gateau.

He smiled and walked to the kitchen and returned with a little cookbook, weathered by age and with its corners curled up. “Recueil de Gastronomie du Poitou et de la Vendee: 90 Recettes Simples” by Annick Demouy Birand and Clemence Biraud-Cousin.

I asked Bruno how this cake was traditionally eaten, and he told me that it’s often something that’s served at weddings, with champagne or rose.

Until I get invited to a French wedding in Poitou, I’ll just keep making my own. And eating it with coffee, in the afternoon, or in the morning, for breakfast. Or after dinner, if I’m on a barge in Gascony, with Armagnac, too.

Right now, if you’ll excuse me, I think that I hear a piece of crab cheesed calling my name.

Tourteau Fromage

Adapted from “Recueil de Gastronomie du Poitou et de la Vendee: 90 Recettes Simples” by Annick Demouy and Clemence Biraud-Cousin (1977)

INGREDIENTS

1 recipe pate brisee sucre, recipe follows
6 eggs
350 grams/12 oz. fresh goat cheese
170 grams/6 oz. sugar
85 grams/1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
pinch sea salt

1. Make the pate brisee sucree, and press into a 9 1/2-inch springform pan, going up the sides about 2 inches. Don’t worry too much about this being perfect; it’s meant to be rustic. Put the crust into the fridge for a half-hour, at least, while you make the batter.

Turn the oven on to 250C/450F.

2. In two small bowls, separate the egg whites from the yellows. In a clean, dry bowl, whip the egg whites until they hold a stiff peak and set aside.

3. In large bowl, mix together the goat cheese, sugar, pinch of salt and egg yolks. Add the flour little by little, just until it’s combined. Fold in the egg whites, and pour the mixture into the crust-lined springform pan.

Cook for 35 minutes or until the top begins to burn. When it starts to smoke, you’ll know it’s ready. Just let it cool completely before slicing.

Cowgirl Tip: You might want to turn off the smoke alarm before making this. Seriously.

Pate Brise Sucree (Sweet short pastry crust)

Adapted rom Kate Hill’s “A Culinary Journey in Gascony”

INGREDIENTS

1 cup flour
¼ teaspoon sea salt
2 tablespoons sugar
¼ cup butter
¼ cup ice water

1. Put the flour, salt and sugar in mixing bowl or food processor. Add the cold butter, sliced into pats, and mix or pulse until mixture is crumbly.

2. Stir in ice water and mix quickly. If you need more, just add the tiniest bit at a time. You only want the dough to come together in a ball in your hands.

3. Roll out dough in a circle about 1/2-inch thick. Place in fridge for a half hour before rolling out.

I don’t know where I’ve been — have I missed the savory muffin movement? — but in Paris, it’s not that uncommon to find muffins and breads with all sorts of veggies stuffed inside.

When I first saw a recipe for ratatouille muffins (which this one’s based on) in Elle a Table magazine last year, I thought, Hmm, what an interesting idea. I need to try this someday. Since then, I’ve seen breads stuffed with just about every veggie imaginable, including whole pieces of broccoli (which looks really nice when sliced).

With summer around the corner, I thought that these would make nice hors d’oeuvres, especially in miniature. I love the combination of eggplant, feta, and tomato, and added some Kalamata olives, too, because I had a few on hand, and fresh basil.

You really could do whatever you wanted with this — add zucchini and make it really ratatouille-like, or swap out asparagus for the eggplant, or whatever you’re in the mood for. I used feta to keep the Mediterranean vibe, but any other cheese would work. I like that the batter is easy to mix up, and uses olive oil instead of butter — they’re kind of like France’s answer to cornbread muffins.

Eggplant, Tomato and Feta Muffins

Makes 16 regular size muffins

INGREDIENTS

1 large eggplant, sliced into 1/4-inch pieces
1 pint (16 oz or 450 grams) cherry tomatoes, halved
6 oz feta (150 grams), crumbled
15 Kalamata olives, pitted and chopped
10 leaves basil, chopped
3 small leeks, sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup (220 grams) all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon sea salt
3 ½ oz (10 cl) olive oil
4 large eggs
3 ½ oz (10 cl) whole milk

WHAT YOU DO

Preheat oven to 400F/200C

1. Lay the sliced eggplant on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper (this will keep the eggplant from sticking). Put the cherry tomato halves on another parchment-lined cookie sheet, too. Drizzle the cherry tomatoes (not the eggplant) with a bit of olive oil and sprinkle a bit of sea salt and pepper on top. Roast the eggplant, then the tomatoes. Each will take 15-20 minutes. Set aside.

Turn the oven down to 350F/175C.

2. While you’re roasting the eggplant and tomatoes, in a medium skillet, drizzle about 2 tablespoons of olive oil and add the leeks and the garlic. Turn on medium-low and cook until the leeks begin to soften, about 15 minutes. Set aside.

3. In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

4. In a medium bowl, beat the eggs, and add the milk and olive oil. Add the flour mixture and combine. Gently fold in the veggies and garlic, olives, feta, and basil. 

With a spoon or scoop, put batter in lined muffin tins, filling just under the top. 

Bake for about 20 minutes or until muffins are a bit firm to the touch. Serve warm or room temperature.

On the plane ride back to Paris, I was thumbing through the latest issue of Bon Appetit, which featured a piece on Ireland written by the actor Andrew McCarthy.

What caught my eye was the portrait of a woman with her just-baked Irish soda bread in front of her – resilient and no-nonsense, she reminded me of my ex’s sweet Aunt Mary, who had a tough-as-nails interior, twinkly blue eyes, and a soft Irish brogue.

A longtime widow, Mary lived in the tiny, three-cottage hamlet of Lisduff in County Roscommon, and despite a back injury that caused her to have more of a bent-over than straight-up posture, many times a day, she’d go out back and carry in a large, blue plastic bucket, filled with cylindrical, log-like pieces of dried turf, which she’d stuff into the stove for heat – and cooking. One of her specialties, besides turnips and boiled cabbage, was Irish soda bread, which she called simply “cake.” Slathered with creamy Irish butter and strawberry jam, it was the perfect snack with our morning tea.

I hadn’t thought about Irish soda bread in years.

The recipe in the current issue calls for a mixture of wheat and white flour, along with brown sugar, but I wanted to make something more Mary-like – a simple white soda bread. So I researched and found this recipe in an older issue of Bon Appetit – and it was absolutely perfect.

This takes all of five minutes to put together, and cooks up in no time at all — it’s magically delicious!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone.

Irish Soda Bread
Bon Appetit, 1996

INGREDIENTS

3 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
¾ teaspoon sea salt
1 ½ cups buttermilk

WHAT YOU DO

Preheat oven to 425.

Lightly flour a baking sheet. Mix flour, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. Add just enough buttermilk to form moist clumps. Gather dough in a ball and gently form a 6-inch diameter by 2-inch high round loaf. 
Place on baking sheet, and cut a 1-inch deep “X” across the top of the bread. (Why do we do this? To let the devil out!)

Bake until bread is golden brown and sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom, about 35 minutes. Transfer to rack to cool.

As I was reaching down for a box of lentilles du Puy in the Franprix the other day (and quickly, so I could secure the next place in line, in front the mink coat-wearing woman with the full basket who was closing in on my lead), I saw a big ol’ sack of split peas, right there, on the veeerry bottom shelf, just looking at me, all forlorn-like.

I thought to myself, Hmmm, I’ve got that hunk of bacon in the freezer that the cute, flirty blue-eyed butcher at the Ternes market gave me awhile back, and it would be the perfect thing to make that cheap-o sack of split peas sing, so I hastily threw the peas into my basket and snagged my place at the register. (Take that, Birkin bag lady!)

I made these in the slow cooker, and it’s just so dang simple that I wasn’t even thinking about posting this recipe — but when I played around and added some caramelized onions, and drizzled the hazelnut oil…and then, made the little Roquefort Breadsticks, I thought, yikes, I gotta tell everyone about this.

The caramelized onion/hazelnut/Roquefort threesome is a killer combo, and turns that old drab bowl of pea soup into something else altogether.

It sounds so fancy, doesn’t it? Perhaps — gasp — a little bit French. (I know. It’s starting to seep into my bones, the Frenchiness.) But listen, the peas take no time — I mean, no time at all — to put together. And the oil, that’s just the one and a half seconds it takes to drizzle, and the breadsticks, like the onions, take about 15 minutes. So I’m talking about nothing, really, time-wise, if you’ll just get these babies going at night, say before you start watching “Law & Order” and fall asleep by the third commercial, you can have this fabulous soup for lunch the next day.

Split Pea Soup with Caramelized Onions, Hazelnut Oil & Roquefort Breadsticks

Serves 6

INGREDIENTS

1 pound split peas, rinsed and picked over

1 medium onion, 1/4-inch dice

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 big hunk bacon or ham

sea salt

pepper

olive oil

1 medium onion, 1/4-inch dice

1 recipe Roquefort Breadsticks, recipe follows

hazelnut oil

WHAT YOU DO

1. In a medium skillet, drizzle a bit of olive oil and add the onions and garlic. Turn the heat on medium-high and cook until the onions begin to become translucent, about 5-10 minutes.

2. Put the onion-garlic mixture in a slow cooker, add the split peas, the hunk of bacon or ham, and cover with water by about 3 inches. Turn on low heat for 4 hours. (If not using a slow cooker, simply cook on the stovetop on low heat for about an hour.)

3. Drizzle a bit more olive oil in the skillet and cook the other onion until it’s golden brown. Remove these onions from the skillet, and save for the garnish.

To serve, spoon the soup in a shallow bowl, add some of the caramelized onions, and drizzle with hazelnut oil. Add a Roquefort Breadstick, too.

Cowgirl Tip: Lardons, bacon, or ham would be a nice garnish for this soup too, along with a swirl of creme fraiche.

Roquefort Breadsticks

Adapted from the Barefoot Contessa’s Cheese Straws recipe

INGREDIENTS

1 package puff pastry

4 ounces Roquefort , crumbled

cracked pepper

WHAT YOU DO

Preheat oven to 350.

1. Roll out the puff pastry onto a flat surface, and cover with bits of Roquefort. Give the pepper mill a pass over the dough, too.

2. Gently press the Roquefort crumbles and the pepper into the dough. With a pizza slicer, make as many strips as you can, about 1-inch wide. Twist them and lay them out on a greased cookie sheet or one that you’ve lined with parchment paper.

Bake for 10-12 minutes.