After the Degustation!

Last night my friend Alain Madonna joined us for dinner as part of class at On Rue Tatin.  Alain makes award-winning goat cheese in a small “laboratory” on the grounds of his 16^th century manor house, and he came with a selection of his cheeses for us to sample. 

Before Alain was the area’s premier goat cheese maker he was an ombudsman for farmers.  When one of his clients mentioned he wanted to retire and sell his goatherd, Alain jumped at the chance to change careers.  With the herd came the know-how to make award-winning cheese, and that’s what he’s done for the past fifteen years.

He arrived with a small selection of cheeses - some pure white, some dusted with black ash, some golden with six weeks of aging, and one three-month old specimen that was hard and tasted like a sharp Parmigiano Reggiano. 

He explained how he takes milk warm from the goat, mixes it with rennet and lets it sit for 24 hours, until curds develop. These he drains, and puts in molds for 24 hours, then unmolds and salts them.  Some of them get a dusting of vegetable ash, which inhibits bacterial development, resulting in milder cheeses than if the ash was absent.

Alain’s cheeses, made in small quantity and with great care, never cease to astound. They are so pure, so clean tasting, so mild when young, and so robust once they’ve aged. 

Naturally, there were leftovers.  We took the youngest of those today and made a goat cheese terrine, seasoned with allspice, mint, and tarragon, studded with pine and pistachio nuts, and wrapped in translucent strips of blanched zucchini.

Goat Cheese Terrine...

The result? A light, lovely and refreshing – and rather impressive if I may say so – little first course to set on the table!

FRESH GOAT CHEESE AND PISTACHIO TERRINE

TERRINE DE FROMAGE DE CHEVRE FRAIS ET PISTACHES

1 pound (500g) soft goat cheese, drained

1/4 teaspoon allspice

1 heaping fresh tablespoon tarragon leaves

1 heaping tablespoon fresh mint leaves

The zest from ½  lemon

3 tablespoons pistachios, lightly toasted, coarsely chopped

3 tablespoons pine nuts, lightly toasted

3 medium zucchini, rinsed, both ends trimmed

Extra virgin olive oil, for drizzling

1.  Put the goat cheese into a cheesecloth lined strainer over a bowl, and let it drain overnight, or for at least 3 hours.

2. Transfer  the goat cheese to a mixing bowl. Add 1/4 teaspoon allspice, 1 tablespoon of the olive oil, salt and freshly ground black pepper. Mix until all the ingredients are thoroughly combined.

3. Mince the tarragon, the mint, and the lemon zest together, and stir it into the goat cheese.  Taste for seasoning, and adjust.

4.   Bring a medium pot of heavily salted water to a boil over medium-high heat. Near it, fill a bowl with ice water.  Prepare a draining rack by putting a cotton tea towel on a cooling rack.

3.  Cut the zucchini in thin lengthwise strips.  Add as many strips as will easily fit in the boiling salted water, and blanch just until they soften and turn translucent. This will take 1 minute.  Transfer the zucchini to the ice water.  After about 30 seconds, transfer the zucchini from the ice water to the towel-covered cooling rack, to drain.  Repeat with all of the zucchini strips.

5. To assemble the terrine, line a 2 cup (500ml) terrine or bowl with zucchini strips, leaving them hanging over the edge.  Reserve enough zucchini strips to cover the top of the mold.

6.  When the terrine is lined with zucchini, put one-third of the cheese mixture into the mold.  Top it with all of the pistachios. Top with half the remaining cheese mixture, and top that with pine nuts..  Top with the remaining cheese mixture.  Fold the ends of the zucchini strips over the cheese, and fill in any spots with the remaining zucchini strips.  Refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

7.  To serve, put a plate on top of the terrine, up-end it and shake it so the terrine falls gently onto the plate. Drizzle the terrine with 2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil, season with fleur de sel, garnish the plate with herb sprigs, and serve.  The terrine slices very well, with a very sharp knife.

Serves 6-8 

Blanched zucchini

One of my new zinc sinks!

A dozen years ago or more, when I was considering what sort of sink I needed for my kitchen, I wanted stainless steel.    I’m pragmatic  – while the idea of a gorgeous stone or marble sink satisfies my sense of esthetics, a practical, gleaming stainless steel sink is more to my liking. You drop things in it and they don’t break; it wipes up clean in an instant; it lasts forever. 

So, I began my research. Weeks later, I had all the information I needed to convince me that I could either buy a whole new house or a stainless steel sink – the cost was simply prohibitive.  I turned to a friend in the U.S. who makes sinks.  He’d do it for me, but with the shipping cost, it too was out of the question.

Somehow, I settled on zinc, a wonderful, pliable, beautiful material. If you drop something in zinc sink, it doesn’t break; it wipes up clean, it has no shine but instead a beautiful grey patina.

Fast-forward to a persistent leak in my gorgeous zinc sink a few years ago. 

I got on the phone to zinc roofing companies, to see if they could do the repair.  The response was uniform.  “Quoi? An évier en zinc?”  “What, a zinc sink?”  This was code for “We will not come to your house to fix a zinc sink. We’ve never even heard of a zinc sink.”

I panicked. What was I to do?  A friend of mine knew someone who knew someone, and that someone worked with zinc.  My friend needed some unusual zinc work done too, so she had him come to her house to give an estimate.  He was scheduled to visit mine right after.   She called.  “Get ready for him, Susan. He’s really drunk, but he insists he can do the job.”

He stumbled into the kitchen, and I feared for his health. But once he saw that zinc sink, he sobered right up.  Soldering iron in hand, he did a decent job and my sink stayed dry for three years.

A few weeks ago I was presented with the same dilemma, a hole-y zinc sink. This time, though, I knew where to go. I’d just had part of my roof re-zinced, and the man who did it wasn’t afraid of a sink. 

Welding the zinc

Oh, he complained and huffed and puffed as he snipped and soldered, but he got the job done.  And because he’s an expert, he used heavy-duty zinc, made welds to last, and promised I wouldn’t have to call him back for twenty years.

Vanilla sables, perfect for...everything!

A house without a cookie is a sad place indeed, I thought as I pulled the vanilla sugar from its drawer, got the hunk of unsalted butter from the fridge, and began to measure flour and salt.  I had a hankering for a sablé, a tender butter cookie ideal to offer to the unexpected guest, and  to have on hand for nibbling plain, with tea or – best – dipping in coffee.

I mixed up the dough and as it firmed up in the fridge, I returned to work to find in an email the following question: “Susan, what exactly is vanilla sugar and where do I find it?”

This, I thought, is a sign.  Here I’ve just measured out vanilla sugar – its perfume lingers on my hands -  and I’m once again confronted with this oft-posed question.  It’s time to dispel the mystery.

To make vanilla sugar, all you need is sugar and a vanilla bean.  I flavor five pounds of sugar, because I bake all the time and don’t want to be caught short. I recommend you do the same.  Put the sugar in an airtight container, stick one or two vanilla beans in it, close it up and forget about it for one week. When you open your jar, you’ll be flooded with the aroma of vanilla, and your sugar will be infused with its flavor. That is all there is to it. Now, you have an ample supply to flavor cookies, cakes, custards, and your morning coffee if you like.

Vanilla sugar - note the beans in the bottom right part of the jar - they're ready to remove.

I rarely add a brand new vanilla bean to my sugar, though, because I use vanilla beans regularly to make custards for ice cream, syrups for fruit.  Once those are made, I carefully rinse and dry the vanilla bean, which is still full of aroma, and stick it in my sugar jar. I may have up to ten beans in the sugar at the same time – the more, the merrier.  When you notice that a vanilla bean has turned light brown and dried to a brittle stick, remove it from the sugar – it has nothing left to give.

You can make vanilla brown sugar too, exactly the same way.  The following recipe calls for vanilla confectioners' sugar - I make my own by grinding vanilla sugar in a coffee grinder kept specifically for this purpose.

With vanilla sugar on hand, your pastries will rise to new heights. Does vanilla sugar replace vanilla extract? Generally, yes (except in chocolate chip cookies, where I use both!).

SABLES - NORMANDY SAND COOKIES

LES SABLES DE NORMANDIE

These tender, melt-in-your mouth cookies will become a staple in your repertoire.  They go wonderfully with a fruit dessert, after dinner, and they make a perfect afternoon snack with tea or coffee.  Make and freeze the dough - it will keep well for several months. 

1½ cups plus 2 tablespoons (13 ounces;400g) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (140g) vanilla confectioner’s sugar

1 large egg, lightly beaten

3-3/4 cups (500g) all-purpose flour

Pinch of sea salt

½ teaspoon baking powder

For rolling the sablés:

½ cup (100 g) vanilla sugar

1.  In a large bowl or the bowl of an electric mixer, using the paddle attachment, mix the butter until it is soft and pale yellow.  Add the confectioners’ sugar and mix well. Add the egg and mix until it is blended.

2.  Sift the flour, the salt and the baking powder onto a piece of parchment paper and add to the butter and sugar mixture and mix well.  Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and divide it into six pieces.  Roll each piece into a log that measures 1-inch (2.5cm) in diameter. Sprinkle the vanilla sugar on a flat work surface, and roll each log in the sugar to coat it evenly.  Wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours and up to 24 hours.

3.  Preheat the oven to 425 F (220 C).  Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

4.  Cut the logs into 1/4-inch (.75 cm) thick rounds, and set them on the prepared baking sheet, leaving about ½-inch between each sablé.  Bake in the center of the oven until they are golden at the edges, 7 to 8 minutes.  Remove from the oven and transfer them to wire racks to cool.  Repeat with the remaining dough.

Makes about 7 dozen sablés

The other day an email dropped into my mailbox, with the subject line “You’re IN!”

This was from my friend Timothy Nishimoto, who is the percussionist and a major singer for my home-town (Portland, Oregon) band, Pink Martini. He gets me tickets to concerts when the band is in Paris if seats are free; there were few this time, and this was last-minute access.

When my daughter came home from school, flushed with the joy of being on spring break (an entire five weeks since she’d been on pre-spring break - French schools have a LOT of breaks), I pointed her in the direction of a snack, then told her she needed to dress up because we were going to Paris to see Pink Martini.

“M-o-o-m,” she huffed. “That’s adult music.” 

My head snapped up from my serious job of rinsing radishes as part of her – and my – pre concert snack.  “You like Pink Martini, we get to go to Paris, you get to carry your new purse,” was my response.

Her frown persisted as she nibbled radishes with bread and butter, so recalcitrant she forgot to dip the radishes in fleur de sel first. 

“We’ve got front row seats and passes backstage,” I said.  “You’ve got half an hour. If we have time when we get to Paris we’ll have sushi for dinner.”

That did the trick.  She ran upstairs, and twenty minutes later descended in a cloud of perfume, make up applied, accessories in place, her new “sac” hung gracefully over her young shoulder.  She looked entirely French. I don’t know how she does it.

Pink Martini gives a great concert. Each member of the fifteen-plus band is a classically trained musician; they sing in every language on the planet; they write much of their own music;  they lean towards the fun, sometimes goofy, almost always happy.

Pink Martini on stage at the Grand Rex in Paris

By the third song Fiona was standing up with the crowd, pulling me up alongside her to clap with gusto.  She didn’t stop moving for two hours, and when we went backstage, which at the Grand Rex is down about fifteen snaky flights of ancient stairs, she was star struck to meet everyone she’d just seen on stage.

We didn’t get the sushi; the radishes were our dinner.  She didn’t care, and neither did I. Every day includes dinner. Only those rare special ones include Pink Martini.

You are familiar with my favorite spring snack, but here is a little reminder:

RADISHES WITH BREAD, BUTTER AND SALT

1 bunch radishes, rinsed, root end trimmed, all leaves but one pretty one left on the radish

Unsalted butter

Freshly baked bread, white or whole wheat, cut into small, fairly thick slices

Fleur de sel

1.  Thickly butter a small slice of bread.  Dip a radish into the fleur de sel. Take a bite of radish, then a bite of buttered bread. Close your eyes - you'll experience paradise. 

Vegetables from Baptiste's farm

Those of you who have been to class at On Rue Tatin have eaten his marvelous vegetables; many of you have sat at the table and tasted wine with him, and others have received a kiss on both cheeks when visiting him at the market. And now, he's on the pages of the New York Times. T hat's right, it's Baptiste, the air-guitar playing "maraicher" who grows the finest vegetables I've ever tasted, and sells them with a big fat smile to boot!

Read all about it!