Mon Petit Chou

"It calms me down right away, the quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there...  If I could find a real-life place that made me feel like Tiffany's then I'd buy some furniture and give the cat a name."

                                                                                   - Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's

As Tiffany is to Holly Golightly, Willams-Sonoma is to me.  When the mean reds rear their ugly little heads, off I go to the venerable house of cookware.  Nothing is more soothing than seeing order in its merchandise and civility in its salespeople.

So wasn't I thrilled to be invited to attend a cooking class at the E. 59th St. location.  And it was to feature a new cookbook -- Paris to Provence.  How could I say no.  Bien sûr,  save me a seat, s'il vous plaît.  Simply j'adore the idea. Just j'adore it.

Lesson plan was laid out on a chalkboard. Curious page numbers were written next to the items to be covered.  They were recipe pages from the recently published cookbook (our textbook for the class).  I marveled at the touch of academia in a retail setting.

The smell of puff pastry shells straight from the oven floated like sirens to weary sailors. They would be led to an island.  Yes, it was just a kitchen island, but a banquet table was placed before it - a lovely summerscape of sunflowers, lemons, and linen.

Seated to my left was a pretty, soft-spoken research veterinarian.  I asked her what brought her to such an event.  She smiled and said a friend of hers suggested it.  The friend thought she was a terrible cook.  Is it just her or do you hear it from other friends?  She confessed, "It's pretty unanimous."  Her ability to accept criticism so well amazed me.

When I think of French cooking lessons in France, I imagine very critical, ruthless professors depicted in movies from Sabrina (original) and Julie and Julia.  Would I have survived Le Cordon Bleu, in 1912, 1954, or even now?  Would I have a meltdown and scream, non Monsieur, you are mad! I cannot crack zee egg in zee way you want me to.  I prefer zee guillotine! 

So let us be grateful for our American French cooking instructors  ~  Ivana Giuntoli and John Ochse.  The harmony they worked in was noteworthy.  I was to later find that this was the first time they had taught a class together.  It was calming, engaging, and enjoyable.  Even when one unwittingly took another one's Gruyère, there was no awkward who-stole-my-French cheese moment.  They laughed it off as Jacque Pepin would.  Seamless.

It helped that there was a good deal of attention to their mise en place.   A delightful phrase, mise en place, was explained as an integral way to prepare for the cooking.  It is the process of measuring out the ingredients, arranging them, as well as pre-heating the ovens, and so forth.  One's mise en place can be the very thing that determines if the cooking will be enjoyable or misérable.  

Effortlessly, we glided from savory puff pastry, to Pistou a la Provençal (imagine French minestrone), back to another savory pastry dish.  And what would be a French dinner without crêpes.  We are told that the famous Crêpe Suzette was named after a girl dining with the Prince of Wales in 1896 at a Monte Carlo restaurant.  

There is little question that the dish was made purely by accident as the chef himself made an account of it in his autobiography.  It was an accident waiting to happen anyway.  If one is handling a pan with Grand Marnier over a hot stove, some of the liqueur will jump into the fire, creating a fantastic flame.  Add an ability to quickly recover and improvise with showmanship, and voila! ~ Crêpe Suzette is born.  

However, there is a gray area on the namesake.  1896 was during the Belle Époque.  So it is plausible to think Suzette was a courtesan.  Some stories say she was a mistress, some note her merely a child -- perhaps a daughter of the Prince (future King Edward VII).  I'll take the latter because the real flame in his life was Alice Keppel.  

It does make one wonder.  If Alice had dined with him on that particular night at Café de Paris, the dish would've been named Crêpe Keppel.  So lesson to be learned:  never decline a dinner invitation from your sweetheart - it could change history.  

And speaking of sweethearts, a term of endearment used by the French is brought to light.  "Mon petit chou" is often lost in translation and thought to mean "my little cabbage".  But there is another "chou" which refers to a type of pastry.  As far as affection is concerned, that is the only chou that fits. 

But I demur.  "My little cabbage" sounds adorable.  Terms of endearment are endearing because they sound so silly.  So what if Americans run around tweeting and texting, "my little cauliflower", "my little brussel sprout" ?  Where is the harm?

Ready to shrug off the distinction between chou this and chou that, I bite into my first savory puff pastry, the gougère, and I gasp.  Oo la la.  It is like a cloud of yumminess I cannot explain.  The unbearable lightness of chou.  

Because I can see myself trying very hard to resist eating them all.  I cannot get enough of chou, you, mon petit chou!  I changed my mind.  Calling someone "my little cabbage" is no way to treat a person so exquisite, so rare... so divine as the chou of all choux.  

For your next cocktail party, try serving gougère and look for the reactions in your guests' faces.  You chou'd try it at least once.

Gougère 

Recipe from Paris to Provence, by Ethel Brennan and Sara Remington 

You will need: 

1 cup of water

6 tablespoons of unsalted butter

4 large eggs

11/2  cups of grated Gruyère 

1 cup of all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon of water, lightly beaten with 1 egg

1 teaspoon of salt

1/2  teaspoon of pepper

Instructions:

1.  Preheat oven to 425°F.

2.  Combine 1 cup of water, the butter, salt, pepper and stir in medium heat until the mixture comes to a boil.

3.  Add the cup of flour and mix with a wooden spoon into the sauce until a paste forms.

4.  Remove from heat and make a well in the center.  

5.  Crack an egg and incorporate into the mixture.  Repeat with the other eggs.

6.  Blend in 1 cup of Gruyère until the mixture is smooth.  Reserve the half cup.

7.  Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or nonstick mats.

8.  Dip a spoon in a glass of cold water and scoop a generous teaspoonful.

9.  Push each dollop onto the baking sheet with fingertips.  Repeat, dipping the spoon in the glass of cold water in between scoops.

10.  Brush the top of each mound with a little of the eggwash and sprinkle with the reserve Gruyère.

11.  Bake for 10 minutes, then reduce to 350°F.

12.  Bake for another 15 minutes until the choux pastry turns golden brown and crunchy.

13. Pierce the gougères with a wooden skewer (to vent) and turn off the oven.

14.  Leave them in for 10 minutes and serve warm or at room temperature.

  Happy Bastille Day! ~e

Sinner Sinner, Chicken Dinner

This is a nod to FL Fowler, if such an author exists.  Because Fifty Shades of Chicken had me cracking up one cold winter's day.  And, it led me to read a bit of the original.  I was to never read Fifty Shades of Grey.  No literary merit, I clucked.  Past winter, women in the workplace were spreading it around like it was Luther's Bible in the Holy Roman Empire. 

I'll skip this trilogy I'd tell the ladies.  My fifty cents on fifty things:  I don't need to pour over several hundred pages to know what I know.  It's about Novice and Master;  Cat & Mouse;  Dumb & Dumber.  I get it.  I'm sure it's about some control-freak and all his pervy, sordid ways.  Squalor is okay, it's the unimaginative that brings out my ornery temper.  I ended my diatribe.   

Well, it was a grey February and I paid a visit to my neighborhood bookstore.  And there it was, the parody cookbook.  Fifty Shades of Chicken.  Fifty ways to cleave your lover.  The cover was genius.  A chicken tied up.  I could relate.

Thanksgivings, I make a Contingency Bird.  It is some type of fowl prepared in case the first plan falls through.  The past year was a Cornish hen.  I had nothing to tie the hen with, so I made do with a pair of black, thin shoelaces (never used).  At the end, it looked like a dish for an S & M theme party.  It was weird, it was great.  And I suspect it went to Milano, my neighbor's greyhound.

To laugh at a parody, one must of course, know the original very well.  Aye yey, I will have to read Grey after all.  I stood in the bookstore, opened up both Chicken and Grey and started to compare notes.  It was hilarious.  I was snickering at the self-effacing Chicken and the self-effacing Grey girl.  I looked at the jacket of Grey to see how it was catalogued and it read Erotica.

Erotica?  Noooo.  Fifty Shades of Grey is hardly arousing in that manner.  The publisher must have had a boozy lunch.  It was better filed under Comedy.

Flipping between pages of Chicken and Grey, I was enjoying myself way too much for a bookstore.  I felt a pair of eyes from my 5 o'clock.  It was an older gentleman.  I felt a bit of unease one has when spotted in the Adult section of a video store.   (Gosh, kids today who stream Netflix for Dora or Diego will never know that feeling).

Accustomed to looking peculiar, I flashed a smile at 5 O' Clock, "My mother told me never to truss an old bird."  Good riddance.

The recipe names in Chicken alone are funny.  But they are really good recipes.  Suffice it to say, chicken dinners have now moved on from wholesome Americana to exotic Erotica.

I remember having lunch at a diner in Burbank years ago with a cousin.  She came to the States in her teens and quickly became an expert illustrator for children's animation features.  Spielberg had approached her to see if she would work for his then newly formed animation company.

She was regaling me with how she chose between Disney and this new thing called Dreamworks based on flow conditions of freeway traffic.  Life can be very simple for citizens of Los Angeles.

The waitress came to take our orders.  As English was very much her second language, my cousin ordered "Finger Chicken".  The waitress, in her impertinence, hissed, "It's Chicken Fingers!"

"Whatever it's called, just bring it over."  I had to smile, because it was so her to never suffer fools. That, and chicken fingers - when you think about it - makes less sense as chickens have no fingers.

As a tribute to EL Fowler and all former ESL students who are forever changing our dynamic vernacular, I give you  # 51.

FINGERED CHICKEN 

"Turn off your Samsung Galaxy, Chef.  The only things digital I care for are fingerlings and nothing else will do. "

"Why Miss Hen, aren't we demanding."

 

You will need:

1 three pound chicken

2 teaspoons of Himalayan salt

1 teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper

2 tablespoons of soft organic butter, unsalted

3 teaspoons of grated garlic 

2 tablespoons of olive oil
5 fingerling potatoes

2 tablespoons of fresh rosemary, thyme, and parsley, snipped into tiny bits

1 long piece of twine

Instructions:

1.  Cut up the fingerling potatoes into cubes.

2.  Rub olive oil over the fingerlings cubes.

3.  Sauté in a pan and add olive oil along the way to prevent burning.

4.  When the potatoes are still a bit hard to the bite, turn off range.

5.  Cover potato cubes with butter, salt, and some of the herbs.

6.  Rub the chicken, cavity and all, with the butter.

7.  Rub the chicken, cavity and all, with salt, pepper, and rest of the snipped herbs.

8.  Pack the herbed fingerlings into the cavity - as much as possible.

9.  Truss tightly and refrigerate overnight.

10.  Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.  Place a rack in roasting pan and rest chicken on top.

11.  Roast 30 minutes on each side.  Drizzle olive oil throughout roast as needed.

12.  Continue to roast up to an additional 30 minutes until the chicken is fully cooked.

Here comes summer.  Baste yourself with SPF 30 and don't forget to turn over   ~e

A Fish Named Sushi

A young woman was encouraging a hefty-sized man on how to lose weight.  She said she was starting to eliminate meat from her diet.  I always listen to these announcements with amusement and a little cynicism as I have no particular stand on diet anymore.  I'm no longer a die-hard vegan, not a die-hard macro, micro, or even paleo.

Though the paleolithic system has its appeal... I always wondered if a diet of berries, twigs, and wild game would morph me into Raquel Welch from "One Million Years B.C."  But each time, I know scanty animal fabrics are not my thing.  And the only consistently primal act in my bag of antics is calling my mother when I'm upset.  So again I nix the idea and reset focus on the new vegetarian in town.

She was going to eliminate everything that had moved.  What about milk, eggs, and cheese?  She really didn't get caught up with the details.  She didn't have any ethical issues.  She said, "I am giving myself permission right now not to eat any flesh foods."  A new mantra kicked into my self-talk -- "I am giving myself permission..."  It was quite liberating.

Like I was giving myself permission to read a neighbor's Post just once.  The issues were piling up and I wanted to see what Cindy Adams had to dish about that day.  Her column made sure not to miss out on the horse-burger scandal.  She reminded that horse-meat was such Good Eats in other places that she was once shown a heaping plate of equine delight as the honorary guest.  Most likely, her neigh to that tray was made with with the utmost tact.  But true to form, she told her readers, "Thanks but no thanks to eating Seabiscuit's cousin."

Indeed the horse-meat at the UK Burger King was a double-decker.  First, the obvious mislabeling factor.  No more jingles about the "all beef patty, special sauce, lettuce, cheese", lest the sauce is also put to question. 

Secondly -- and more the reason -- we confer great personality and a certain mystique to the horse.  To name a few , there was Trojan, Black Beauty, Mr. Ed, Seabiscuit, and following in his hoof-steps -- Secretariat.  Now that horse really lived.  He had a brilliant career.  He had heart.  We worried about that heart. Was he taking Atenolol?  We concerned ourselves with how he spent his days in retirement.  Enough apples and green pastures?  He had a book, a movie, and royalties... Jeez, he was more self-actualized than many women in his hay-day.  Working housewives were wondering why their glass ceiling was lower than the roofs on some of Secretariat's barns.

But for the others -- the cow, the chicken, the pig, and the fish -- it seems they can never exist in the realm of Maslow's Heirarchy as the horse.  Heck, they can't even fully escape the food pyramids.  And the one that is highly encouraged for consumption is the fish because it's touted as the best anti-inflammatory flesh food (look at the Eskimos, experts say), replete with protein, omegas, minerals, and vitamins D and B12.  It's easier to digest.  It satiates without stuffing.

So unless a fish was recognized for accomplishing something exceptional, like synchronized swimming for instance, we find it hard to confer a nobleness of spirit, let alone, unique personalities.  Not until an ambitious fish comes along and makes a name for himself, people will still order a halibut just for the halibut.

Thus, a fish must do something grand.  Be the best geek-fish and win a Nobel Prize in Science for figuring out how to clean the world's aquatic.  Only then comes veritable joy to all other fishes in the deep blue sea.

Or perhaps it may be in the Arts.  There may very well be an actress-fish who hears the call of Esther Williams.  Her little gills pump a bit faster with every thought of becoming the next sensation in aqua-musicals.  First come the water shows, then Hollywood, and ultimately, her very own swimwear.  She loses weight.  She gets her face done.  She signs on with Starkist Talents.  And before she heads to each audition, her pygmalion agent would holler, "Tell 'em Charlie sent ya!"

It's March, still bleary, but spring that clock fwd & have a Happy National Nutrition Month! ~e