Fiadone

For a couple of years now, I have been fascinated with Corsica. It all started several years ago during a trip to Paris when I wandered into a tiny restaurant in the 15eme Arr. called Le Beau Violet (92 Rue Entrepreneurs). It was a single room--the chef, Roger, cooked in clear view and frequently smoked a cigarette despite the laws to the contrary. If you wanted to use the restroom, you needed to leave and walk a few doors down the street. You basically eat what Roger gives you (with the occasional choice;) deferring to his judgement is probably best. Several courses later and close to midnight, I finished the meal with dessert and some myrthe liqueur. The final course was fiadone--a Corsican lemon cheesecake made from brocciu (an AOC whey cheese produced in Corsica).

It's hard to find brocciu outside of Corsica, but you can simulate the experience using ricotta. This is a slightly grainy, lemony cheesecake with no pastry shell. And as far as cheesecakes go, it's simple to make and good for a light, summertime dessert. In the first instance, I was guided by Rolli Lucarotti's Recipes from Corsica; Clotilde has also blogged about it. Here's how to do it.

Ingredients

• 500g brocciu or ricotta
• 150g caster sugar
• 4 large or 5 medium eggs
• zest of 1 large lemon
• 1 Tbsp. eau de vie (I used some limoncello) 
• salt

Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 180ºC/350ºF.
2. Separate the yolks from the whites. With the yolks, combine the sugar, zest, limoncello and cheese until smooth. 
3. Add a pinch of salt to the whites and whisk them into soft peaks. Fold some of the egg whites into the cheese mixture, then fold the mixture into the remaining egg whites until combined. 
4. Pour the mixture into a buttered and floured spring form pan. 
5. Bake for 30-35 mins until golden brown on top. Remove from the oven and let cool for at least half an hour. 

Not everyone whips their egg whites--but I think this improves the texture. And with a hand-mixer, it's no big task. 

Fondant à la châtaigne (Chestnut Fondant) Nº1

The location: A square off the Cours Napoleon in the late afternoon, Porto Vecchio, Corsica.

The actors: Two weary, famished hikers coming off two weeks on the GR20, sitting in the shade of Église St. Jean-Baptiste.

The discovery: le fondant à la châtaigne

Here's our first attempt at recreating the experience...


Ingredients:

• 1 can (435g) chestnut purée, unsweetened
• 200g caster sugar
• 3 eggs, separated yolks and whites
• 30g butter, melted
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Procedure

1. Preheat oven to 180ºC (170ºC fan-assisted)
2. In a large mixing bowl, combine the chestnut purée with the caster sugar until well blended. Then add in the butter and vanilla extract, and finally the yolks. Mix until smooth.
3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until they form stiff peaks.
4. Combine egg whites with chestnut mixture until fully incorporated.
5. Pour into baking tins either with baking cups or well-floured.
6. Bake for approximately 25 mins until a skewer comes out almost clean but not entirely.
7. When cooled, remove from tin and place in refrigerator or leave to reach room temperature.

So Michel Roux jr may not like the air bubbles or some of the colours. But he hasn't tasted it. Just as decadent and delicious as the original of Corse. The texture was quite as sticky as the first one, and I don't think that the purée was as smooth. Any suggestions on tweaking the recipe are much appreciated.

Hollandaise --> Eggs Florentine

The poached egg. Slightly less perfect than the oeuf en cocotte, but simpler and healthier. Unless you decide to cover it in Hollandaise sauce, put it on top of some spinach (healthy again, maybe?), and toast. I needed an extra hand in the kitchen.

But first, the Hollandaise Sauce. Once again, Larousse:

Hollandaise. A hot emulsified sauce based on egg yolks and clarified butter. It is the foundation of several other sauces, including chantilly (or mousseline), maltaise, mikado and mustard sauce, depending on the ingredients added. It is served with fish cooked in a court-bouillon, or with boiled or steamed vegetables. The sauce should be made in a well-tinned copper or stainless steel sauté pan; an aluminium pan wil turn it greenish. As it must not get too hot, hollandaise sauce should be kept warm in a bain marie. If it does curdle, it can be re-emulsified by adding a spoonful of water, drop by drop; use hot water if the sauce is cold, cold water if the sauce is hot.

Basically, Hollandaise is an emulsion of butter and lemon using egg as the emulsifier, since lemon (acid) and butter (fat) are mortal enemies in real life. The recipe is finicky enough that it's important to have everything in the mise-en-place ahead of time.

Hollandaise Ingredients
3 egg yolks
1/2 T lemon juice
200 g butter (50 g cold, 150 melted)
salt
white pepper

Method
1. Whisk the egg yolks in a pan (not on the stove!) until they are a lighter yellow. Depending on the color of the yolk to start with (organic eggs may never get to the 'lemon yellow' color our recipe hinted at).
2. Place the pan in a bain-marie and add the lemon juice, whisking continuously. The water should be warm, but not hot. Whisk the eggs until they are the consistency of cream, not thoroughly cooked, but warm.
3. Add the cold butter, take the eggs off the heat, and whisk until incorporated. The mixture should be thickening and pulling away from the pan.
4. Add salt and pepper and more lemon juice if desired, but only by tiny bits at a time.
5. Incorporate the rest of the melted butter bit by bit, whisking, letting the sauce thicken. Keep warm and use immediately.

Eggs Florentine Ingredients
1 piece of toast
1/2 cup of spinach, cooked, with salt and pepper (and garlic powder if desired)
1 poached egg
4 T Hollandaise sauce

Method
If you've gotten this far, you don't need instructions. Just pile it all on and enjoy. :)

Oeufs en cocotte

Since working on the canonical mother sauces has meant we have, at any time, 15-20 eggs in the kitchen, we've been essentially pigging out on eggs for the last two weeks. A quick search will reveal plenty of prettier oeufs en cocotte out there, but ours were delicious anyway.



Ingredients
1 egg, preferably at room temperature
1/2 T heavy cream
five drops of truffle oil
black pepper and salt

Method
1. Boil some water and preheat the oven to 375˚.
2. Crack the egg into a ramekin.
3. Add the cream, truffle oil, salt and pepper, being careful not to break the yolk.
4. Place the ramekin into a larger, ovenproof pot, and pour the boiled water about halfway up the side of the ramekin.
5. Place egg in the oven for 11-12 minutes, until white is done but yolk is still runny (we still haven't succeeded in getting it cooked just right...)


Eaten with toast or by itself, this is one of the most delicious forms of egg I've ever had!

Poached Eggs over Spinach with Sauce Velouté (Ravigote)

This might not look the most appetizing in photos, but trust me, this tasted delicious.

Ravigote sauce has this sort of cryptic and scary entry in Larousse:

Ravigote. A spicy sauce served hot or cold but always highly seasoned. Cold ravigote is a vinaigrette mixed with capers, chopped herbs, and chopped onion. The hot sauce is made by adding velouté sauce to equal quantities of white wine and wine vinegar, reducing with chopped shallots; it is finished with chopped herbs and served particularly with calf's head and brains and boiled fowl.

Essentially, the cold version is a herbed vinaigrette that lends itself to mussels, veggies,, and salad in general.

We couldn't find a more exact recipe for warm ravigote anywhere, so we used this opportunity to practice a velouté and then go crazy with some leftover spinach and eggs and a package of smoked salmon I accidentally carried with me in my bag all the way to London and back while British-Librarying the whole day.

Velouté Ingredients
75 g butter
75 g flour
1.5 litres chicken stock

Cooking procedure
1. Melt butter with flour in a pan to make a blond roux.
2. Add chicken stock and bring to a boil, cooking for up to 30 minutes.



If I could do it again, I'd halve the white wine vinegar and put in a bit more white wine to compensate for the lost flavor. The sauce ended up very tart, and although I liked it a lot (sauerkraut, pickled beets, and mustard being some of my favorite foods), I don't that many people would.

Ravigote Ingredients
75 ml white wine vinegar
75 ml white wine
5 shallots
2 cloves garlic
1 T Herbs de Provence
pepper

Ravigote Procedure
1. Chop the shallots and garlic and let sweat in some butter for about 5 minutes.
2. Add white wine and vinegar to a stockpot, and simmer to reduce a bit.
3. Combine shallots and garlic to liquid, and add herbs.
4. Reduce to ~50% the original volume, and add to the velouté.
5. Reduce slightly more if desired, and add pepper to taste.

Summer of Sauces - Béchamel

More than halfway through the summer, we're finally tackling the first on our list of the canonical French Sauces, and one of the most straightforward ones, too. Named after the Marquis de Béchameil (1630-1703), the chief steward of Louis XIV, it was originally a velouté with heavy cream, and, in addition to nutmeg, also included bay leaf and onion as flavoring. Now, however, it commonly refers to a white sauce with simple seasoning. We were looking for a challenge, though, and our bechamel became the base of a Gruyere cheese soufflé...

Ingredients
40g (6T) butter
40g (3T) flour
200 mL (2/3 cu) milk
salt
pepper
nutmeg


Procedure
1. Melt the butter in the pan on medium heat.
2. Add flour, salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Stir frequently on low to medium heat to create a blond roux.
3. Add the milk, and heat to a simmer but not to a boil while stirring constantly. The sauce should thicken in 6-8 minutes.

Kiwiburger

After going into overdraft on my Lloyds' account due to a Gourmet Burger Kitchen version of this very burger--and consequently owing the bank upwards of £400--and after a move into my new apartment that left me a) tired, b) longing for red meat, and c) eager to try out my new kitchen, I decided to try this complex-tasting yet simple-to-assemble burger.

A warning, though: at almost six inches tall, it's almost impossible to eat without a knife and fork. Still, if you can wrap your mouth around this sweet and tart mound of protein and veggies, you'll never go back to a normal cheeseburger ever again...

For one burger, you need:
1 hamburger patty
2-3 slices of pickled beets, sliced about 1/4 inch thick
1 slice of pineapple, about 1/2 and inch thick
Cheddar cheese (enough to cover one bun)
1 egg
1 slice of tomato
1 hamburger bun (I used a challah roll because I had it on hand, but a crusty sourdough roll is ideal for this hulking sandwich)
Salt and Pepper and Mayo and Ketchup to taste

1. Begin cooking the hamburger patty in a frying pan on medium heat. Salt and pepper both sides of the burger and squeeze out some of the juices as it's cooking.

2. Cut the pineapple, beets, and tomato into the appropriate sizes if you haven't done so already. I only had a whole pineapple in my kitchen and was afraid I wouldn't be able to hack it (literally!), but my large Dehillerin knife was up to the task!

3. Place cheese on bottom of half of bun and microwave for about 30 seconds, until melted.

4. Depress the pineapple slices into the cheese--this will keep them from slipping quite as much.

5. Just before the burger is done, fry an egg in the same pan, salting and peppering to taste. Flip it, and cook until the yolk is runny, then tip it over onto the hamburger and put the burger on the pineapple. The stack is getting taller...

6. Carefully place the beets and tomato on top of the egg, and the bun on top of them. If the yolk breaks, even better! This isn't a delicate sandwich, so you might as well get used to it early on!

7. Ketchup up and eat away!