Whisk: a food blog: classic French cuisine

Showing posts with label classic French cuisine. Show all posts

Monday, July 18, 2011

Oeufs à la Neige (Snow Eggs with Caramel and Crème Anglaise)

This is one of my favorite desserts. It's just poached meringue in custard and caramel. It's simple, bistro food. And each component can be made ahead. Plus it's economical and contains ingredients you would normally have on hand. The egg whites are used to make the meringue and the yolks are used for the custard. There are only three parts to this dessert:

Meringue
Crème Anglaise
Caramel

What’s the Difference Between Snow Eggs and Floating Islands?

There is some debate about the difference between "Snow Eggs" (Oeufs à la Neige) and "Floating Islands" (Île Flottante). I haven't been able to get a definitive answer. Here are the possibilities:

Snow eggs are typically poached in milk while floating islands are baked in a bain-marie.
Snow eggs don’t traditionally include caramel, whereas floating islands often do.
Floating islands may include hazelnuts in the meringue and are sometimes baked in molds.
The names themselves refer to their presentation: snow eggs are shaped like eggs, while floating islands "float" on a pool of Crème Anglaise.

If you know the answer to this naming mystery, let me know.

Recipe: Oeufs à la Neige (Snow Eggs with Caramel and Crème Anglaise)

Serves: 6

Ingredients:

Crème Anglaise

2 cups milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

4 egg yolks

1/3 cup sugar

French Meringue

4 egg whites

4 tablespoons sugar

Caramel

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup water

Instructions:

Prepare the Crème Anglaise: Heat milk and vanilla in a saucepan until just boiling. In a separate bowl, whisk egg yolks and sugar until pale. Slowly pour the hot milk into the yolk mixture, whisking constantly. Return to the pan and heat gently, stirring until thickened. Avoid letting it boil. Cool and set aside.
Make the Meringue: Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form. Gradually add sugar and whisk until glossy and firm.
Poach the Meringue: Simmer water in a wide pan. Drop large spoonfuls of meringue into the water and poach for about 3 minutes on each side. Remove and drain on a clean kitchen towel.
Prepare the Caramel: Heat sugar and water in a saucepan until it turns a golden amber colour. Add 1/4 cup of water to stop the cooking process. Keep warm.
Assemble the Dessert: Pour Crème Anglaise into serving bowls, gently place poached meringue on top, and drizzle with caramel. Serve immediately or chill until ready to enjoy.

You can find the recipe for Oeufs à la Neige (Snow Eggs with Caramel and Crème Anglaise) in the book Le Cordon Bleu at Home (affiliate link).

Tasting Notes
It's my favorite dessert. Sweet. Comforting. Light.

Links
• Video (in French): how to poach meringue

More Oeufs à la Neige
• Whisk: Floating Islands
• La Tartine Gourmande: Pisatachio Floating Island for Benoit
• La Tartine Gourmande: Vanilla, Cardamom Snow Eggs
• Joe Pastry: Floating Islands Recipe

Next Time
Crème bavarois (Bavarian cream) in Charlotte aux Poires, Coulis de Framboise (Pear Carlotte with Raspberry Coulis) page 308

::Whisk::
I'm baking my way through a cooking school curriculum using the Le Cordon Bleu at Home (affiliate link) cookbook. The "classes" are based on the Le Cordon Bleu curriculum found online and used as a guideline. Not all the items in the curriculum are in the cookbook, but most are. Where the items are not in the book, I try to find a suitable substitution.

More to Explore:

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Whisk Wednesdays—Civet de Lapin à la Française (Rabbit Stew with Red Wine)

"The first step in making rabbit stew is catching the rabbit."
— Isaac Asimov

I tasted rabbit for the first time on a restaurant patio in Greece not far from Olympia. It was memorable not only because of the surroundings but also because it was ... a rabbit. I was a little squeamish about making it myself and wouldn't have wanted to break down my lapin from scratch, so I pretended it was chicken and moved past the whole idea of cooking and eating someone's pet.

"Real cooks have hard hearts."
— Marjorie Leet Ford

Sometime last year, I read Thomas Keller's account of "The Importance of Rabbits" in The French Laundry Cooskbook (affiliate link). Keller asked his rabbit supplier to show him how to prepare a rabbit, and his first solo attempt at killing, skinning and eviscerating a rabbit was horrific. "It was a simple lesson," he says after the event, which taught him the importance of each animal's life. From then on, he would not waste any part of the animal.

"I knew that to waste anything was about as close to sin as a chef gets." — Thomas Keller, The French Laundry Cooskbook (affiliate link)

How to Have Hare in Your Stew
After cutting the rabbit up into pieces, it is marinated overnight in red wine and aromatics. Following this marinating stage, the rabbit is removed (at which time you marvel at its purple complexion), dried, and browned in butter. Next, the vegetables from the marinade are strained out, added to the sauté pan, and sprinkled with flour. This mixture is cooked for a bit before adding the rest of the marinade ingredients. All is brought to a boil and simmered for 2 minutes before putting in a hot 425°F oven for about 45 minutes.

While the rabbit is stewing in the oven, get out all the pots and pans you own! One is for boiling the potatoes until tender. Another is for glazing the pearl onions (or shallots in my case). Finally, a third pan is for crisping the bacon before sautéing the mushrooms. These accessories to the rabbit are delicious on their own. I ended up using cinnamon cap mushrooms that I had purchased at the Ottawa Farmers' Market on the weekend.

After the rabbit is cooked, remove the pieces and set aside while preparing the sauce. Strain the liquid, bring it to a boil and reduce it for a few minutes. Add the rabbit along with the onions, bacon and mushrooms and simmer to marry the flavors for about 5 minutes. Interestingly, the sauce is sometimes thickened with the animal's blood! Since I didn't have any leftover blood in my refrigerator (unlike Ms. Glaze at culinary school) I just let it simmer to reduce and thicken without any coagulating agents.

While the sauce simmers, I toasted the buttered bread for croutons. Finally, it is served with a garnish of the ever-common parsley.

Recipe: Civet de Lapin à la Française (Rabbit Stew with Red Wine)

Serves: 6

Civet de Lapin à la Française (Rabbit Stew with Red Wine) mise en place

Ingredients:

3¾-pound rabbit

For the Marinade:

1 medium carrot, sliced

1 medium onion, sliced

2 cloves garlic, crushed

2 whole cloves

20 peppercorns

1 Bouquet Garni

4 cups dry red wine

3 tablespoons cognac

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

For the Stew:

7 tablespoons unsalted butter

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

Salt and freshly ground pepper

2 pounds waxy potatoes (red or white)

36 pearl onions

1 tablespoon sugar

5 ounces slab bacon, sliced ¼ inch thick

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

½ pound button or large, quartered mushrooms, trimmed, rinsed and dried

For the Croutons:

3 slices firm white bread, crusts removed

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

3 tablespoons chopped parsley

You can find the recipe for Civet de Lapin à la Française (Rabbit Stew with Red Wine) in the book Le Cordon Bleu at Home (affiliate link) or here. To see how the rest of the Whisk Wednesdays group fared with their recipe, click here (or check out the sidebar) and then click on each blogger!

Serve with a rich red wine either from Burgundy or the Côtes du Rhône.

Tasting Notes
It has been several years since I tasted rabbit, and I wasn't expecting to like it as much as I did. It was moist and tender, definitely not gamey. It doesn't taste like chicken or pork. It has the meatiness of something in the middle, although the meat on the bone was a portion size fit for a petite person watching her girlish figure. Plus it's lean. In fact, it's leaner than beef, pork, or chicken. The rich, savory, slightly salty sauce and the mushroom-onion-bacon medley were the stars on the plate. And if you don't want to pull a rabbit out of your pot, use chicken.

Next Class
• Soufflé au Comté (Cheese Soufflé) pages 82-83

. . . . . . . . . .

Running total: $1,384.52 + $18.15 (rabbit) + $22.98 (other ingredients) = $1,425.65
($6.85 per serving)

Butter used so far: 12 pounds, 20.5 tablespoons

. . . . . . . . . .

More to Explore:

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Whisk Wednesdays—Cailles à la Normande (Quail with Cream and Apples)

Here is a challenging recipe. First, you need to find quail. [Plus you need to forget how tiny and cute they are.] Then, you need to have veal stock in your freezer or make some, which means finding veal bones that are just as difficult to source as quail. [Plus you must get over your guilt about veal.] Next, you need to find fatback, or "pork back fat" as my butcher called it. If you can, you must find crème fraîche, or make it yourself the day before, which I forgot to do. Finally, you have to find Calvados, an apple brandy from Normandy in France. I'm sure all these ingredients are much easier to find in the heart of France and not in the Canadian Shield of Ontario.

Luckily, Ottawa has a wonderful butcher (Glebe Meat Market) where I was able to buy "jumbo quail". [They still look tiny to me.] Plus I have veal stock in the freezer that I made recently. A different butcher (The Butchery) always carries fat back, so I bought more than I needed the last time I was there. As for the Calvados, on one of my foodie field trips last week, I was in Quebec and stopped in at a wine store. Just as I was about to purchase a large bottle of Calvados, I saw they had minis! The only thing I can't buy locally is crème fraîche, and I should have made my own. I used heavy cream instead, and my sauce wasn't thick enough.

After you have all the ingredients, making this dish isn't hard and only requires a baking pan for the apples and toast and a roasting pan for the quail.

Here's a quick summary of the steps:
Bake lemon- and butter-rubbed apples.
Toast buttered bread.
Season quail with salt and pepper.
Tie fatback onto quail breast.
Sauté quail.
Roast quail and set aside.
Flambé Calvados.
Deglaze pan with crème fraîche and veal stock.
Reduce sauce.
Broil sugar-sprinkled apples.
Garnish with chopped parsley.

Recipe: Cailles à la Normande (Quail with Cream and Apples)

Serves: 6 (picture shows half a recipe)

Cailles à la Normande (Quail with Cream and Apples) mise en place

Ingredients:

6 quail, necks removed and reserved

Salt and freshly ground pepper

1 thin slice fatback, 12 by 5 inches

6 small Golden Delicious apples

½ lemon

5 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

6 slices firm white bread

3 tablespoons unsalted butter

2 tablespoons Calvados or domestic apple brandy

½ cup crème fraîche or heavy cream

¼ cup Brown Veal stock

1 tablespoon sugar

1 tablespoon parsley, chopped

You can find the recipe for Cailles à la Normande (Quail with Cream and Apples) in the book Le Cordon Bleu at Home. To see how the rest of the Whisk Wednesdays group fared with their recipe, click here (or check out the sidebar) and then click on each blogger!

Tasting Notes
Quail are tiny. This sauce needs crème fraîche. The best part was the Calvados. I'm glad I bought more than one mini of Calvados so that I can enjoy Le Trou Normand with the remaining bottles and pretend I'm in the heart of Normandy.

Next Class
• Pintade à la Cévenole (Guinea Hen with Mushrooms and Chestnuts) pages 187-188 {You can substitute Duck breast if you like.}

. . . . . . . . . .

Running total: $1,142.78 + $9.49 (quail) + $9.09 (other ingredients) = $1,161.36
($3.10 per serving)

Butter used so far: 9 pounds, 30 tablespoons

. . . . . . . . . .

::Whisk Wednesdays::
We're cooking our way through a cooking school curriculum using the Le Cordon Bleu at Home (affiliate link) cookbook. The "classes" are based on the Le Cordon Bleu curriculum found online and used as a guideline. Not all the items in the curriculum are in the cookbook, but most are. Where the items are not in the book, we try to find a suitable substitution. Find out more here.

. . . . . . . . . .

More to Explore:

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Whisk Wednesdays—Entrecôte Lyonnaise (Steak, Lyonnaise style)

Entrecôte Lyonnaise (Steak Lyonnaise Style) – A Classic French Recipe

This next class is all about grilling and browning. And again it's another steak (entrecôte is traditionally a rib steak) that's smothered in onions, à la Lyonnaise. One dictionary said that Lyonnaise means "cooked with onions". And this recipe has lots of onions. Eight of them for a full recipe. Some are used with the potatoes as a side dish and the rest are used on the steak.

Boiling and frying the potatoes
First I boiled some potatoes in their jackets (skins). After they were almost done, I took them out and let them cool before peeling them. (I cooked all but one potato too long so the next stage of finishing them was tricky.)

Then, I cut the almost-cooked potatoes into slices and fried them in a bit of butter and oil. In a separate frying pan, I fried one of the onions in butter and oil. Finally, at the end, I tossed the onions and potatoes together.

Here's a video showing how to make lyonnaise potatoes.

LYONNAISE POTATOES.
For lyonnaise potatoes chop an onion fine; fry it brown in a tablespoonful of butter; add another tablespoonful to the iron spider after the frying, and let the butter become very hot. Then cut six whole boiled potatoes into thick or half inch slices, and lay them in the spider, which should be ample enough to hold them without lapping over another. Let them fry brown on both sides, tossing them occasionally to prevent them burning. Sprinkle a tablespoonful of parsley over them, and serve at once. They should be very hot when brought on the table.
— from a cookbook called Recipes Tried and True, 1894.

Grilling the meat
Grilling doesn't use much oil, just enough to keep everything from sticking to the pan or grill. Grilling is high, fast heat and barbecuing is low, slow heat. Watch this video.

Grilling is another dry heat cooking method where the heat source is below the meat being cooked. You can use gas or charcoal grills, or even a George Forman grill. I scraped the ice off the barbecue cover and used the barbecue to grill the meat on a medium-high heat.

However, before I did that, I seared the steaks in a frying pan on the stove so that I would have some tasty bits (fond) to add flavor to the Lyonnaise part of this recipe ‑ the caramelized onions.
Here is some information to determine when a steak is done. After the steaks were finished cooking, I removed them to a warming plate.

Caramelizing the onions
This is the best part. The smell of onions cooking on the stove is a crowd-favorite. After searing the steak, I added the onions with more butter and cooked them until they were golden. Then, I seasoned them with salt and pepper and added the rest of the ingredients (wine, vinegar, and the stock) and cooked this until all the liquid had evaporated and the onions had absorbed this entire rich flavor.

Here's a video showing how to caramelize onions.

Recipe: Entrecôte Lyonnaise (Steak, Lyonnaise style)

The ingredients shown in the photo are for a half recipe (serves 3).

Entrecôte Lyonnaise (Steak, Lyonnaise style) mise en place

You can find the recipe for Entrecôte Lyonnaise (Steak, Lyonnaise style) in the book Le Cordon Bleu at Home (affiliate link). To see how the rest of the Whisk Wednesdays group fared with their recipe, click here (or check out the sidebar) and then click on each blogger!

Tasting Notes
I loved the side dish of potatoes and onions, and I loved the caramelized onions on top of the steak. I'm picky about beef. If it's not tenderloin, I don't tend to like it. Next time, I'll buy a better cut of steak, but this is an easy and delicious meal with the right cut of beef.

"We may live without poetry, music, and art;
We may live without conscience, and live without heart;
We may live without friends; we may live without books;
But civilized man cannot live without cooks."
‑ Owen Meredith

Next Week (November 19)
• Gratin Dauphinois (Potato Gratin with Garlic and Cream) page 498

Lyon is said to have the highest ratio of restaurants to people anywhere in France.

. . . . . . . . . .

Running total: $849.06 + $22.57 (steak) + $1.49 (potatoes) + $2.67 (onions) = $875.79

Butter used so far: 8 pounds, 11 tablespoons

. . . . . . . . . .

::Whisk Wednesdays::
We're cooking our way through a cooking school curriculum using the Le Cordon Bleu at Home (affiliate link) cookbook. The "classes" are based on the Le Cordon Bleu curriculum found online and used as a guideline. Not all the items in the curriculum are in the cookbook, but most are. Where the items are not in the book, we try to find a suitable substitution. Find out more here.

. . . . . . . . . .

More to Explore:

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Whisk Wednesdays—Velouté Agnès Sorel (Cream of Chicken Soup)

Velouté Agnès Sorel – A Classic Cream of Chicken Soup

White soup. White stock. White chicken. White button mushrooms. And a touch of pink from the ham. This is Velouté Agnès Sorel, a cream of chicken soup. Agnès Sorel was a mistress of French King Charles VII in the 1400s and this is one of several dishes named after her.

This could also be the soup mentioned in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice:

“As for the ball, it is quite a settled thing;
and as soon as Nicholls has
made white soup enough
I shall send round my cards.”

1. Make Stock
The first step is to make stock. Since I’m currently not in my kitchen with access to all the chicken stockpiled in my freezer from earlier lessons, I made some fresh chicken stock to start this soup. {I’m visiting family and friends in Saskatchewan and having fun raiding all the cupboards for food props!} Although the first thing I was supposed to do was truss the chicken, it came that way from the grocery store so I just had to plop it into my sister’s large stock pot.

2. Prep Garnish
Next, I prepped the mushrooms and ham (since tongue, which is mentioned as an alternative, is not something I really want to eat!), slicing them into julienne. When the chicken was poached, I sliced off the breast meat and cut it into julienne too. Still practicing that julienne!

3. Make Liaison
The last step is to make the liaison, which is a mixture of cream and egg yolks that thickens the soup and adds a richness of flavor. This is the trickiest part of the recipe since the eggs can curdle. Slowly whisking some hot stock into the cream and egg mixture is key. After “tempering” the cream and egg mixture by bringing it up to a similar temperature as the stock, I combined the rest of the stock and liaison in the pot. Then, I stirred and stirred and stirred and watched it carefully on the heat to thicken it a bit more. I was careful not to let it boil, but it never thickened as much as I expected it to.

Although the name of this soup says that it is a Velouté, there is no flour in the ingredient list to make a blond roux. I imagine if I added 2 tablespoons of flour, it would be a thicker soup, but the soup doesn’t need to be thicker.

“it is the duty of every housekeeper to learn the art of soup making”
~ Fannie Farmer in The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (1918) ~

Recipe: Velouté Agnès Sorel (Cream of Chicken Soup)

Ingredients for Velouté Agnès Sorel (Cream of Chicken Soup)

You can find the recipe for Velouté Agnès Sorel (Cream of Chicken Soup) in the book Le Cordon Bleu at Home (affiliate link). To see how the rest of the Whisk Wednesdays group fared with this week's recipe, click here (or check out the sidebar) and then click on each blogger!

Tasting Notes
This was a delicate, smooth soup that absorbed a smoky flavor from the ham. The chunks of chicken, mushrooms, and ham made it meal-worthy. I added more salt to boost the flavor, but it was a creamy, delicious soup that I’d love to make again. Coriander instead of parsley and coconut milk instead of cream and a few other Thai ingredients could quickly turn this into one of my favorite Thai soups: Tom Kha Gai!

Next Week (July 30)
• Bisque de Langoustins (Langoustine Bisque) pages 185-186

. . . . . . . . . .

Running total: $482.99 + $17.49 (stock) + $5.80 (soup) = $506.28

Butter used so far: 6 pounds, 14 tablespoons
. . . . . . . . . .

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Monday, July 18, 2011

Oeufs à la Neige (Snow Eggs with Caramel and Crème Anglaise)

Ingredients:

Instructions:

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Whisk Wednesdays—Civet de Lapin à la Française (Rabbit Stew with Red Wine)

Recipe: Civet de Lapin à la Française (Rabbit Stew with Red Wine)

Ingredients:

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Whisk Wednesdays—Cailles à la Normande (Quail with Cream and Apples)

Recipe: Cailles à la Normande (Quail with Cream and Apples)

Ingredients:

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Whisk Wednesdays—Entrecôte Lyonnaise (Steak, Lyonnaise style)

Recipe: Entrecôte Lyonnaise (Steak, Lyonnaise style)

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Whisk Wednesdays—Velouté Agnès Sorel (Cream of Chicken Soup)

Recipe: Velouté Agnès Sorel (Cream of Chicken Soup)

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