Crème Fraiche Verrines

I've written before about some of my language adventures at the supermarket in our town. I told you about the preservatives and the cuisses de canard. But I haven't yet told you about the incident of the crème fraiche. When we first moved here, I went to the supermarket one day looking for whipping cream. All I could find was crème fraiche. Everywhere I looked—crème fraiche. I didn't want thickened, cultured cream, I wanted whipping cream. And there was none to be seen. 

Tea Verrines with Citrus Fruits

This time of the year we’re trying to eat lighter, to counteract the rich foods we ate over the holidays. I saw this recipe on Tartelette’s blog, and bookmarked it right away, knowing that when the blood oranges came in, I’d want to make it.

This is a verrine of citrus fruits and pomegranate seeds in a jelly made from tea. Tartelette made this with white tea and pink grapefruit. It was (of course) gorgeous. I wanted to use a combination of blood oranges and regular oranges for this I also threw in a pink grapefruit, because I had it and because the blood oranges weren’t very red. Not red at all, in fact--just orange with some red specks.

I used a rooibus tea, flavored with bergamot (rooibus Earl Gray). Aside from the fact that I like this tea, it had the body to stand up to the blood oranges. Also I didn’t have any white tea. How can that happen? I have two drawers full of tea of every possible color--green, red, black, but no white. I guess that eliminates me from the tea-collector-of-the-month award. And I thought I was a shoe-in. Tsk.

I used less gelatin in my version, because I like a soft jelly. These were frankly wonderful. I really liked them, and I can see that they’ll become a summer favorite here. The only problem will be finding the blood oranges in the summer. However, we'll have peaches, and peaches can make up for a lot of things.

Tea Verrines with Citrus Fruits

Adapted from Tartelette

2 sheets gelatin

2 cups boiling water

2 Tablespoons rooibus Earl Gray tea

6-8 sugar cubes

8 oranges

6 blood oranges

1 red grapefruit

Seeds from 1/2 pomegranate

• Soak the gelatin in cold water for 10 minutes.
• Add the tea to the boiling water and steep for about 5-7 minutes. Add sugar to taste. I didn’t want to make this sweet, but just to knock the little bitter, sharp edge off the taste.
• Squeeze the gelatin sheets to get rid of most of the water, and add them to the hot tea mixture. Stir to mix well. Leave to cool while you segment the fruit.
• Segment the fruit by cutting the top and bottom off, then slicing the peel off, taking with it a little bit of the fruit. Then, holding the dripping, peeled fruit over a bowl, cut carefully between the membranes to free each segment. Squeeze the remains to extract the juice. You won’t use the juice in this recipe, but it’s great with breakfast.
• Arrange the citrus and pomegranate seeds in 8 verrines, pour the cooled tea mixture carefully over them, and chill overnight.

Enough for 8

Notes:

• I used sheet gelatin, because that’s what I have. I prefer it because there is never that scummy layer at the bottom if you don’t get it dissolved completely. After soaking in cold water for 10 minutes, these dissolve totally as soon as they hit hot liquid. If you only have the powdered kind, I think the conversion is 1 teaspoon powder for one sheet. Don’t hold me to that, but when I see other recipes, that seems right to me.
• To seed a pomegranate without ending up wearing the lovely color of the juice, cut the top off, score it along the sides, and do the rest in a large bowl under water. The seeds sink and the membranes (mostly) float, so it’s easy to separate them.
• The short, broad verrines I used for this hold a cup of liquid if you fill them right to the brim.
• If you don’t have a bazillion verrines sitting around your house (why don’t you?), this would also be pretty in wine glasses, or champagne flutes. If you still have some of the old-fashioned flat bowl style champagne glasses, they would be splendid, I think. Brandy snifters would be nice too. You could, of course, just use a bowl, but what fun would that be?

SCALLOP VERRINES

This is another recipe made from our gift of Breton Scallops. For this one, I wanted something lighter, with some Asian flavors. I had some lemongrass leaves that I thought would go well with the sweetness of the scallops. I also had some crisp radishes for a sharp note and some celery root to round out the flavor.

I didn’t do much to the scallops--they didn’t need much. I rinsed them, dried them well, and ground some pepper over them. This time, I didn’t have a pan with flavored oil ready for them, so I put a little bit of olive oil on the scallops themselves. That way, I didn’t have to use too much oil. It worked well--they seared nicely and had a lovely color.

I had intended to make a vinaigrette for these, but when I tasted the vegetables with their herbs, I tossed that idea and just used a little bit of mild rice wine vinegar. Perfect!

I like verrines. There’s something about their compact completeness that appeals to me. Maybe because I love little containers. Maybe because I love glassware. I don’t know, but I know that I make verrines whenever I can. They’re just so....cute.

Scallop Verrines

2 radishes

4 cm / 1 1/2 inch cube of celery root

4 cm / 1 1/2 inch celery

6 lemongrass leaves

3 basil leaves

1 tsp rice wine vinegar

8 sea scallops

• Slice the radishes in half, then slice each half in three, making three round slices. Cut julienne from those. This is the size you’ll want to make all of your other julienne.
• Slice the celery and the celery root the same length as your radishes, and julienne.
• Make a chiffonnade of the herb leaves: stack the basil and lemongrass leaves, roll them like a tiny cigar and cut them into thin slices. You’ll end up with shreds.
• Put all of your julienne and herbs in a bowl and add the rice wine vinegar. Stir to mix well.
• Rinse and dry the scallops. It’s important that they be very dry or they wont’ sear well. Grind some pepper over them, and add about a teaspoon of good olive oil. Mix gently to coat the scallops with the olive oil.
• Heat a frying pan till it’s very hot and add the scallops. Cook about 2 minutes each side or until almost done. They’ll continue to cook after you take them off the heat. You don’t want to overcook these or you’ll have little seared chewing gum balls.
• Put the julienne mixture in each of 4 verrines. Top each one with 2 scallops threaded on a pretty skewer or toothpick. Serve immediately.

Enough for 4

NOTES:

• I used lemongrass leaves because I had them. If you don’t have them, you can use any other fresh herb that you have that would go well with these flavors. Parsley, cilantro, dill, fennel, rocket. I don’t think I’d use mint, though.
• Fennel would be a nice addition to the julienne if you have it. You could also add a tiny bit of cabbage or endive. Or bell pepper.
• You could use lemon or lime juice instead of the vinegar. Or white balsamic. I don’t think I’d use the dark balsamic, though, or you’d kill the pretty colors.

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Scallops and Chick Pea Puree

Luck.

You know, I’ve never thought of myself as a lucky person. I mean, I’ve never won any kind of prize. Never won even a small lottery prize, never won anything from Publisher’s clearing house. Never even won at bingo. Once in the Netherlands I held 20% of the tickets for a raffle that had 25 prizes, and I STILL didn’t win anything.

I don’t care. I may not have Lotto luck, but I have Life luck. I found my soul mate, I’ve always found work that interested me, and I have friends who I treasure. One of those, my friend Françoise, invited us to a large house party on New Years Day. The party was at a gite (a sort of large self-catering cottage) in the Ardennes near here. The other members of the party were about 20 friends of Françoise and her husband Jean-Claude. These friends-of-friends live in Brittany, and they normally meet Françoise and Jean-Claude twice a year: in the Loire valley where they meet to buy their wine, and over New Year’s. They came with food and wine and high spirits. They came in a van with a trailer attached to hold the food and the pots and pans. Maybe some clothes too (some of them were very chic). They’ve been doing this for 20 years. We were very pleased to have been invited.

The day began (for us) with lunch. In grand Belgian tradition, we ate sauerkraut with two kinds of sausages and ham. And mashed potatoes. And some strong mustard. And lots of wine, of course, for those who still had a head for it after the night before. We put coins underneath our plates to ensure prosperity in the new year.

It was a wonderful day. Lots of stories--the kind that only old friends can tell about each other, lots of jokes, lots of laughter. The Belgians told French jokes, the French told Belgian jokes, and Dan and I told English speaker jokes.

There was lots of wonderful conversation and wonderful food and we hated it when we had to leave. But leave we had to, and after all the good-byes and thanks were said we headed towards our car. WAIT! we heard, and when we looked around there was one of our new friends coming towards us with a bag of something. It turned out to be scallops. A lot of them. For us, since we wouldn’t be there for dinner. Life luck!

These scallops came from Brittany, fresh frozen and brought carefully in the van or the trailer (I’m not sure which), still frozen. They had been slowly thawed in the cold air outside, protected from marauding cats. And now they were on the way home with us.

Since they had been frozen, I had to use them quickly. There were a lot of them. So Saturday was scallop day at our house. I wanted to see how many ways I could prepare scallops in one day. So look for some scallop recipes coming your way.

Who needs Lotto luck, eh?

This recipe would make a nice appetizer. In fact, it DID make a nice appetizer. I used canned chickpeas, because for some reason the dried ones aren’t available in my supermarket right now. They were fine here.

This recipe might look familiar to you. It’s basically this soup with less liquid in it. The extra liquid then becomes a sauce to drizzle over it all at the end.

Scallops and Chickpea Puree

1 can chick peas

4-5 sage leaves

2 Tablespoons olive oil

4 bay leaves

1 small shallot, chopped fine

1 dried hot pepper

1 Tablespoon tomato paste

1/4 cup white wine or tart apple juice

4 large scallops

chopped parsley to serve

• Heat the chick peas with the sage leaves in a pan.
• In a small skillet, heat the oil and add the bay leaves and the shallot. Crumble the hot pepper over it. Cook over medium heat till the shallots are soft and translucent.
• Add the tomato paste and the white wine or apple juice and cook on high heat till the liquid is almost all gone.
• Remove the bay leaves and scrape the contents of the skillet into the beans, and cook for another 5 minutes or so.
• Pour the beans and the liquid into a tall, narrow container, then pour off about 1/2 cup of the liquid and some of the chickpeas. Liquify the rest of the chickpeas and the liquid. You want something with the consistency of thick mashed potatoes. Or hummus.
• Rinse and pat dry the scallops. They need to be dry or they won’t sear properly. Without cleaning the skillet (you want that skim of infused oil that’s still in there), put it back on the heat and turn the heat up high. When the pan is hothot, cook the scallops for about 2 minutes on each side. If you overcook them, you’ll have chewing gum.
• To serve, put some of the puree on a serving dish, add a scallop and a chick pea. Sprinkle with chopped parsley, spoon some of the reserved liquid over it, and serve while hot. Or you can take a lot of photos of it and eat it cold like we did. But I think hot is better.

Enough for 4.

Notes:

• This would also make a nice verrine.
• This puree also makes a nice spicy dip for chips or veggies.
• If you do as I do and crumble the hot pepper with your fingers into the hot oil, be sure that you don’t wipe your eyes afterwards. The oils from the pepper will be on your fingers. It’s no use trying to wash it off--it’s not water soluble. It’s oil soluble, so the easiest way to get it off your fingers is to pour a little oil over your fingers and rub the oil into them well. Then rinse, and pour some dish soap directly on your fingers and rub them again. Rinse well. Now you can rub your eyes.

LEMON POTS

I found a recipe for lemon cream pots, and I knew I had to try it. I kept trying to imagine how it would taste. I also wanted to find a lemon cream recipe that I could use as a base for other flavors. I’ve been thinking for a while about some flavor combinations I’d like, and here was my chance.

Here’s the basic recipe *:

Here are the flavor combinations I’ve been wanting to try:

Lemon and Basil. This is the current darling flavor mix here with the pastry and chocolate makers here. I wanted to try to replicate it.

Lemon and Lavender. I don’t think I’ve ever had this combination. Maybe there’s a reason? In any case, I wanted to try it.

Lemon and Cardamom. I love cardamom, and I love lemon. Would they go together?

So, to begin, I had to infuse the cream base in the recipe with the non-lemon flavors. For each one, I used 1/2 cup / 125 ml heavy cream.

• For the cardamom, I added the seeds from 6 cardamom pods, crushed. I heated the cream to the point where it was just starting to steam, and then set it aside to cool. When it was cool, I strained out the cardamom seeds. I had planned to leave them in overnight, but the flavor was already pretty strong, so I strained them out. I chilled the cream overnight.

• For the lavender, I added 1 tsp dried lavender flowers to the cream, and heated it to the point where it was just starting to steam, then set it aside to cool. When it was cool, I strained the flowers out, again because the flavor was already pretty strong, and chilled it overnight.

• For the basil, I didn’t want to heat the basil leaves, so I chopped them fine, added them to the cream, and chilled them overnight. I used 10 of the tiny new leaves at the top of the plant. I strained the basil leaves out the next day before heating the cream. The flavor of the basil wasn’t as strong as I thought it should be. If this turns out well, I will use more leaves the next time.

The next day, I took each of these three mixtures as well as some plain cream and did the same thing to each of them:

• In a small pot, I added 1 Tablespoon of sugar to the cream, then heated it to boiling. I boiled it, stirring, for three minutes. Then I removed it from the heat and added 1.5-2 tablespoons of fresh squeezed lemon juice to it, adjusting the amount according to taste. For the mixture made with the plain cream, I added about a half teaspoon of lemon zest.

• I then poured the mixture into small pots and let it cool, after which I put it in the fridge for 3-4 hours.

VOILA! Here they are!

Aren’t they pretty?

But now it’s time for the REAL question: how do they taste??

• Lemon. the lemon cream was bitter. Very bitter. Inedible, in fact. I should have strained the lemon zest out of it--there was too much in there.

• Lemon and Basil. This was bland. The basil flavor was lost, probably in the cooking. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t special.

• Lemon and Lavender. This was good. It was a little bitter, but I think it was for two reasons: the lavender was too strong and my lavender is last year’s. With fresh lavender a little less strong it would be better.

• Lemon and cardamom. I tasted this one with trepidation. You know how you always want people you like to like each other? Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don’t. In this case, they liked each other. This one was very good. I was very happy with this combination.

Overall, though, these were a disappointment. The flavors I was looking for were underlined by a strong flavor of sweetened condensed milk, which is frankly not something I like very much. If it's diluted with key lime juice and spread over a graham cracker crust, ok. In pots with lemon and lavender, not really. I probably shouldn’t have been surprised by that, given that I cooked sweetened cream to reduce it...

All-in-all, I’d consider this a partial success. The lavender and lemon has potential, the cardamom and lemon is good, and the lemon and basil still needs work. The base lemon cream wasn’t a hit in my opinion. I’ll try these flavor combinations with another base, though.

* Note: I am normally very careful to give credit for recipes, because I hope others will do the same when they use mine. In this case, however, because the end result wasn't a success, I have elected to not share the source of this recipe. The original source liked it very much, and I wouldn't want to rain on anyone's parade.

'Nother Note: I had the darndest time photographing these--all the photos turned out fuzzy. I changed the background, I changed the lighting, I changed the spoon. Even with the lemon zest and lavender seeds are sharp, the little pots seem fuzzy to me. And the spoons! They’re tiny curved mirrors. Can you see me in them? Any advice here would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

PANNA COTTA: A Vanilla Revelation

I have seen recipes for panna cotta for years, and frankly, I didn’t understand the point of it. Sweetened cream, set with gelatin? Eww. But when we were in Siena several years ago, I tried it for the first time. OH. MY. This is definitely something whose description doesn’t do it justice. Not at all. It’s just--well, wonderful.

It’s the perfect light dessert after a rich meal. It’s just the right touch of sweetness, balanced by the vanilla. When you add berries as I have, you have a light, sweet/tart dessert, the perfect end to a perfect meal. What more can you ask?

Personally, I can ask more. Call me greedy. I can ask that it be easy, and this is that. It takes only a few minutes to prepare, and I make it in little verrines, so that I don’t have to un-mold it. This presentation is not only pretty but it’s also (even better) almost totally do-ahead. I usually have an Italian almond cookie to put on the side, and maybe a pretty edible flower.

Ingredients

1/4 cup heavy cream

1/4 cup milk

1/4 cup (scant) sugar

1/2 vanilla bean

2 sheets gelatine (3.5 - 4 g total)

To serve:

Strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries or any other tart berry macerated in sugar to draw out the juice.

1. Soak the gelatine sheets in cold water while you prepare the cream. Put the cream, milk, sugar in a saucepan.
2. Cut the vanilla bean in half lengthwise and scrape out the seeds. Add these to the cream mixture, and whisk to break up the vanilla seeds.
3. Squeeze the water from the gelatine and stir it into the pan with the hot cream/milk.
4. Heat gently till just beginning to steam--don’t let it boil! Don’t even let it simmer. Keep it gently steaming for about 5 minutes to allow the vanilla to steep.
5. Pour into 4 small verrines or pretty glasses, and chill for 8 hours or overnight. To serve, spoon berries and their juice over the panna cotta and add a dab of whipped cream if you like.

Serves 4 if they like it and 10 if they don’t.

Variations:

• Make this in a larger bowl and unmold it onto a plate at serving time. Surround it with berries or fruit coulis and serve.
• Make individual servings in small cups and unmold each of them. This is really pretty, especially if you have some pretty dessert plates.
• Use rosewater or lavender instead of vanilla for a delicate, floral perfume.