April 12, 2012
Candied Orange Slices
Drouant is a century-old Paris restaurant with a majestic Art Déco interior and private dining rooms where the jury for the Prix Goncourt, the most prestigious book award in France, convenes each fall to deliberate.
Beyond that literary glamour, Drouant also serves an excellent cuisine, and one of the features that have turned us into regulars is the poulet-frites that is offered for lunch on Sundays: a farm-raised roasted chicken served with ...
"Candied Orange Slices" continues »
December 14, 2011
Easy Candied Almonds and Hazelnuts
If there was a candy making for dummies book (what am I saying, of course there is one) this recipe would deserve a prominent spot.
No sugar thermometer, no elaborate trick, very few opportunities for a major burn (unless you really apply yourself). Just a bit of boiling, stirring, and baking, and still these minimal efforts will yield something delicious that anyone will recognize as candy.
The technique was brought to my attention by a post...
"Easy Candied Almonds and Hazelnuts" continues »
December 22, 2009
Chocolate-Dipped Hazelnut Marbles
[Billes de noisette au chocolat]
As a small gift to celebrate the holiday season, I give you this recipe drawn from my cookbook. It appears in the mignardise chapter, in which I give recipes for sweet bites to serve at the end of a meal -- in place of, or in addition to dessert, with coffee or tea.
For these particular treats-on-a-stick, you'll make your own hazelnut marzipan (wait, come back! it's really easy, I promise!), shape it into smal...
"Chocolate-Dipped Hazelnut Marbles" continues »
January 31, 2008
Guimauve à la Rose et au Chocolat
[Rose and Chocolate Marshmallows]
Guimauve is the stuff clouds are made of. It has the soft and cottony flavor of childhood, and resistance is futile when I spot the pretty pastel cubes in pastry shops.
Rarely am I disappointed, but I do have to mention this one recent time when I bought an assortment from Pain de Sucre and got mostly weirdo flavors nobody in their right mind would want in their marshmallows -- I'm talking chicory and whiske...
"Guimauve à la Rose et au Chocolat" continues »
March 15, 2007
Honeycomb: Now What?
When I was in New York City a few weeks ago, my flight landed in early afternoon on a Saturday. By the time the cab dropped me off on the sidewalk of my hotel it was mid-afternoon, and clean sheets and a plump pillow were a tempting proposition, but I resisted. The only anti-jetlag strategy that has ever worked for me is to fight sleepiness and stay active until the local clocks give me permission to pass out.
In this case I had quite a few ho...
"Honeycomb: Now What?" continues »
November 8, 2006
Dried Pears
[Dried Pears]
I oven-dry tomatoes all through late summer, when I can lay my hands on cheap and tasty specimens, and I like to apply that method to pears in the fall, too: the drying sublimates the pear flavor into a hauntingly sweet concentrate of itself. This does mean it is a good way to cut your losses on below-average pears, but for superb results you should of course use superb pears. The technique works best with fruits that are ripe bu...
January 5, 2006
Coussin de Lyon
[Chocolate Pillow from Lyon]
Like many French kids, I practically learned how to read with bande dessinées, the Belgian/French take on comic books, and a large chunk of my general culture comes directly from them. Although I had too many favorites to name just one, the classic Astérix was certainly among them. It is one of those incredibly multi-layered bande dessinées that you can read at any age, filled as they are with puns, references and ...
January 25, 2005
Abricots au Chocolat
[Chocolate Dipped Apricots]
What would you do with melted chocolate leftover from making orangettes and florentins? Throw it out? You have got to be kidding.
No. The wise thing to do was rummage through my kitchen cabinets for something that would be nice and dippable. And I thus unearthed, oh joy, the large bag of dried apricots I had bought for my Apricot Sticky Toffee Pudding. These little orange nuggets keep remarkably well, and they we...
"Abricots au Chocolat" continues »
December 31, 2004
Shortcut Orangettes
In addition to the florentins, my little food gift packages for the holidays included orangettes, those little strips of candied orange peel dipped in dark chocolate.
I called these shortcut orangettes because I made them with candied orange rind I had bought at Ali Baba's Cave for Bakers. I could have called them Cheater's Orangettes too, but I thought it somewhat disparaging. You could candy your own of course, it's excellent karma: I mysel...
"Shortcut Orangettes" continues »
December 27, 2004
Florentins
Last year was my first time making food gifts for the holidays. My chocolate truffles and my mendiants were such fun to make and were so well received, that I was determined to repeat the experience this year. For a few weeks before Christmas I toyed with various ideas (all carefully written down for future reference, I hope I have long years of food gift giving ahead of me), and these florentins were among the elected ones.
Florentins are sma...
December 21, 2004
Petits Fruits en Pâte d'Amande
When I was little and my grandmother was still a young and energetic seventy-something, she came to our house for lunch every Sunday. Now that I am older I'm guessing that this tradition must have been a bit of a strain on the adults from time to time (surely lazing around in your pajamas till noon must have been a tempting occupation too), but to us little girls, this very regularity made it comforting and blissful: le dimanche, Mamy déjeune à...
"Petits Fruits en Pâte d'Amande" continues »
October 6, 2004
Pâtes de Fruit
Today is my father's birthday. And as has been the tradition for as long as I can remember (and probably long before that), one of his gifts will be his favorite treat, a big assortment of pâtes de fruits.
Pâtes de fruit, literally "fruit pastes", are firm pieces of sweet fruit purée, a bit like jam made solid, rolled in sugar and cut into various shapes, generally squares or rectangles. The quality is highly variable -- I remember the loathso...
July 3, 2004
Les Niniches de Quiberon
When I was a child, my family spent a week in Brittany every year during the spring break. The place where we went most often was Carnac, on the South coast of Brittany, a little town famous for its stunning prehistoric menhir alignments. It was always quite a gamble on the weather, as that time of year has equal chances of being brightly sunny, or grimly overcast and even thunderous. But I would be hard-pressed to choose the kind of weather I ...
"Les Niniches de Quiberon" continues »
April 2, 2004
Fruits Déguisés
[Dressed-up Fruit]
And what are fruits déguisés you ask? Most people would tell you that they are a traditional Christmas confection, in which dried fruits (dates and prunes mostly) have their pit replaced with a piece of brightly colored pâte d'amande (almond paste).
To me however, fruits déguisés are much more than that : they are one of my earliest culinary joys. When I was five, my kindergarten teacher had us make some as a gift for our ...
December 27, 2003
Truffes au Chocolat
This year for Christmas, I made chocolate bites of two kinds to give to my family, and bought small confectioner's crystal bags at a professional store to put them in. I also wanted to make little tags to tie around the bags. I bought delicate ivory paper, beautiful green leaves made of very fine thread, and some silver yarn. I cut out rectangles of paper, wrote "Chocolate & Zucchini" with colored pencils on them, and sewed each rectangle to a ...
"Truffes au Chocolat" continues »
December 26, 2003
Mendiants
I have always loved the idea of giving out food gifts. As with any handmade present, it seems a very personal way to show you care, and that you love the person enough to spend a few hours making something nice for them. Last year, I didn't plan for it early enough to make it happen : Christmas is always a busy period, and we had just moved into our apartment a month before. But this year, I thought about it well in advance, took care of the ne...