Recipes – Page 13 – Nicole Peyrafitte

Le Pot au Feu

Originally Pot au Feu meant an earthenware or a metal cooking pot. Today, it is a common French dish and to me the ultimate winter comfort food. It is very easy to prepare and economical, low cost cuts can be used. It can be prepared in 15 minutes, then simmers all afternoon long filling the house with a marvelous aroma. Several cuts of meat can be used but preferably cartilaginous cuts such as oxtail and marrowbone (I got a beautiful beef shank marbled with cartilage). My mother always combines veal & beef cuts.
Equivalent dishes are: the New England boiled dinner, consisting of corned beef or a ham shoulder, & the Irish corn beef and cabbage.
There are many variations and they are all good, the only one rule is too cook it long enough. What I really like about the French version is the cleanness of the taste. Unless it is homemade, I don’t eat much corn beef, the prepared ones at the store are usually too salty, full of m.s.g and other preservatives. I have added Jerusalem Artichokes in this version, it is unusual and it was a test —the main reason being that I had some in the fridge but I didn’t have any potatoes at hand. No regrets! It added a subtle layer of flavor, I will do it again!
I was curious to price my Pot of Feu –which lasted for three meals. I did the shopping at the Park Slope Food Coop.

Ingredients:
1 (1.42lb) Grass fed Beef Shank bone $6.13
3 small organic carrots carrots $0.55
1 organic turnip $0.31
2 organic leeks $1.37
3 Jerusalem Artichokes $1.85
Total $10.23

already in my pantry:
3 ribs of Celery
1 Onion
3 cloves ( stick them onto the peeled onion)
4 peppers grains 1 teaspon of corse sea salt
Whole grain mustard (moutarde à l’ancienne)
Gherkins (cornichons)

Put the meat, the vegetables (except the potatoes &/or the Jerusalem artichoke) & the spices into the pot and cover with cold water.
Bring to a boil and let simmer gently for 2 to 3 hours. The meat as to be really tender. 1/2 hour before the end of the cooking add the potatoes and/or the Jerusalem artichokes.

Strain the broth onto a soup tureen and have the soup as a first course. If you wish you can add vermicelli or small pasta onto the broth.

Don’t forget to eat the marrow! blow out the marrow from the bone onto a piece of bread, sprinkle with sea salt. YUMMY!

Serve meat, veggies & condiments & Bon Appetit!

[ Pierre’s addendum: & don’t forget to tell your readers that when you have slurped your way through the soup & there is just a little left at the bottom of your plate, you add a good rasade — shot — of red wine, mix it with the soup, put down your spoon, raise the plate with two hands & slurp the mixture down with audible slurping satisfaction noises. It’s called “faire chabrot” which means etymologically “to drink like a goat.” It’s a total pleasure.]

Very Healthy Dinner

A toothache plus a little too much sweets and rich food over the holidays prompted this menu. My mouth is healing really well thanks to the care of Jerome Pindell, our family homeopath for 15 years and his referral to Sandra Senzon, a real Tooth Fairy, who is taking me on the path to save seven of my teeth from extraction! After the time to feast, voilà the time to nurture! Life is a question of balance, isn’t it? This dinner is very satisfying and tasty, not austere at all & it might even fit macrobiotic requirements!

Vegetable Soupe with Miso & Seaweed
Brown Rice & Kim Chee
Baked Apples with Cinnamon & Maple Syrup
Green Tea

Vegetable Soup with Miso & Seaweeds
1 Small Onion
1 Carrot
1 Clove of Garlic
1 1/2 Cup of Cabbage
1 little piece of Ginger
1/2 cup of seaweed (like wakame, soaked and cut small)
All veggies are chopped very small
2 Tablespoons of Tamari
Do not add miso until ready to serve. (Miso looses it’s power when overheated/boiled)
1 Tablespoon of Miso (I like hatcho or red miso)

Coat a pan and sauté the onions & the carrots. When the onions are translucent add the cabbage, the garlic & the ginger. Sauté for a few minutes. Add 4 cups of filtered water, add the seaweed & the tamari. Bring to a boil, lower the flame and simmer for 20 minutes or until carrots & cabbage are soft but not mooshy. When you are ready to serve, mix in the miso and make sure you don’t leave any lumps.
Serve with a cup of steamed brown rice and some kimchi.

Baked Apples with Cinnamon & Maple Syrup
Core the apples, place them in a baking dish with a little water on the bottom. Pour 2 tablespoons of maple syrup on top. Bake for 20/30 minutes depending the kind of apple you get. I had forgotten how good these are! (for another occasion you add a scoop of vanilla ice cream!)

Cap it all with a good Green Tea & good health to you!

Soupe, Chorba, Çorba, Suppa, Soup, Sopa…..

Soups are made everywhere in the world with all kinds of ingredients. Many appealing adjectives can describe them: healthy, earthy, cheap, restorative, easy to make, filling, convenient, the list is infinite. First lets clarify some terminology:
At the beginning the “soupe” was the bread dunked into the broth. This tradition remains – think for example of how in this country crackers or bread are inseparable from a bowl of soup.

If you are a beginner cook, soups are great to experiment with as it is rather difficult to ruin a soup.
Though all soups aren’t born equal and here are a few examples from the fanciest to simplest:
Consommé: a clarified meat or fish broth.
Bisque: puréed shellfish with cream soup.
Velouté or Crème: vegetable or meat based thickened with eggs yolks, butter and cream
Potage: falls somewhere in between velouté & soup texture and thickness.
Soup: refers to a thick, earthy chunky melange; think of French Onion soup, Bouillabaisse (fish stew soup), and last but not least the Garbure! also the title of my performance The Garbure Transcontinentale/The Bi-Continental Chowder where I cook this original recipe on stage, mirror the ingredients with songs and then share the soup with the audience. I am including the 10-minute video at the end of this post.

Today I will pass on a North African soup or chorba recipe that my partner Pierre Joris learned while living in Constantine, Algeria. This is one of our favorite winter dinners and we always eat it as a “plat unique”, or only course, and eat several plates. Follow it with a salad of fresh oranges with cinnamon, mint and chopped almonds for dessert.La Chorba de Pierre
Ingredients :
for 8 people
2 lbs of Lamb – shoulder cut into small pies & save bones
1 big Onion, finely chopped 1 heaped spoon of sweet Paprika
Salt-Pepper
1 big bunch of Fresh Cilantro/coriander; 1/2 cup finely chopped. The rest of the bunch divided in half. The first half will be tied and dropped in the pot once all the other ingredients and the water will be in. Second half chopped and served as garnish at the table
2 cloves of Garlic, finely chopped
2 quarts of Water
1 diced fresh Tomato in summer; or 1/2 cup of canned organic diced tomato in winter
1 Cup of washed Freekeh (green wheat available at middle eastern markets and some health food stores, Bulgur can be substituted, but will not have as rich and complex a taste)
Harrissa : 1 tube or can (a North African hot red sauce or paste made from chili peppers, garlic, coriander and caraway or cumin. It may also contain tomatoes.You can get Harrissa du Cap Bon by clicking on the link or you can make your own.)
Lemon (2): quartered to serve at the table as garnish

Preparation:

Generously coat a large sauce pan with olive oil –the Le Creuset 7 1/4-Quart Round French Oven is the one we do prefer, a once in a life time investment!– when oil is warm, sauté the onions until translucent. Add the meat and bones, sauté thoroughly. While the meat is browning, add the Paprika, Salt, fresh ground Pepper and the 1/4 cup of Fresh Cilantro, mix well and keep sautéing for a few minutes. When nicely browned add the water and the tied bunch of Cilantro, bring it to a boil, lower the heat and simmer for 1 1/2 hour.
At that point remove the Cilantro bunch and the bones (if you wish). Add the cup of Freekeh and the chopped tomato. Bring to a boil, reduce and simmer for about 1/2 hour or until Freekeh is cooked.
Bring garnishes (Lemon, Harrissa, Chopped Fresh Coriander/Cilantro) & Chorba at the table. Each person fills a plate, adds their desired amount of Harrissa (I use 1/2 a teaspoon but be careful you can always add some but it is difficult to take it out!)
Enjoy: it will warm the cockles of your heart!

La Garbure Trancontinentale-The Bi-Continental Chowder
a performance written, cooked, filmed and sung by Nicole Peyrafitte.
Video Elizabeth Germa

Dîner de Fêtes / Festive Dinner

Les Croquettes de Morue sur un Lit de Verdure
Salt-cod cakes served with greens

Le Chapon de Noêl aux Marrons
Stuffed Christmas Capon with Chestnuts
&
Les “Racines” d’Hiver Braisées
Braised Winter Root Vegetables

La Crème Paysanne
&
Les Pescajous du Luchonnais

This is a festive winter dinner menu I made several time. I wrote it many years ago for a series of cooking classes untitled “The Demystification of French Cuisine” that I taught at the Café Capriccio Cooking School in Albany N.Y — someday I will retrieve my notes on that topic and will share them with you. Meanwhile here are the recipes for this menu. I think you will agree that it is a well balanced, not heavy, fun to cook & fun to eat menu! So try it and let me know. I have also included some historical background for dinner conversation!

First Course:
Les Croquettes de Morue sur un Lit de Verdure
Salt-cod cakes served with greens

Morue, a.k.a. baccalaú or salt-cod, is my favorite fish. I like the texture, the taste, the convenience, the flexibility. The use of cod can be traced as far back as the Upper-Paleolithic. And closer to us there is evidence that Basque fishermen came to the coast of Newfoundland to fish for cod way before Columbus had set foot on the American continent. Their first motivation had been to catch whales, but then they switched to fishing cod. It was safer and more lucrative.
There are many different ways to accommodate salt-cod; today we will make croquettes. This is a basic recipe that you will be able to reuse with other ingredients.
I like to serve the “croquettes” with a tossed mixed green salad dressed with a simple vinaigrette. (see my famous simple salad)

Ingredients:
1 small chopped red pepper
1/2 chopped Jalapeño pepper (optional)
1 cup chopped fresh parsley
2 eggs
1 bay leaf
3 cloves of garlic
1 whole medium onion
1 chopped medium onion
2 grated (raw) big russet potatoes
1 tablespoon saffron
salt and pepper to taste

The day before:
Rinse the filets and soak in plenty of cold water for about 12 hours, changing water three or four times.

The next day:
Place desalted cod, one onion and one bay leaf in a stock pot with plenty of water, bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Drain and discard onion and bay leaf.
Mix all raw ingredients in a bowl, shred the cod in it. Mix it well. Shape the mixture into little cakes, use a ramekin if texture is too loose, and fry in a hot pan in olive oil about 5 minutes on each side (but that is going to depend on the thickness of the croquettes. I usually eat the first one to check texture and seasoning, and to judge the doneness).

Entrée
Le Chapon de Noêl aux Marrons
Stuffed Christmas Capon with Chestnuts
&
Les “Racines” d’Hiver Braisées
Braised Winter Root Vegetables

Our main course is going to be a capon stuffed with chestnuts, sausage and all kinds of delicacies. Capon is such exquisite poultry that it is saved for special occasions. Good, real capons are rare and difficult to raise and therefore difficult to get. Capons are a very ancient tradition: the creature came to us via the Romans, and the Romans learned how to fatten chickens from the Island of Kos in Greece — were Hippocrates (460-377 BC) lived and worked. The people from Kos, unlike the Romans, kept their chickens inside and gave them only selected grains and milk so they were getting fat quickly and their flesh incredibly delicate. Everybody in Rome started doing the same, keeping their chickens inside and so on, but it got to the point where so many people were doing this that Consul Caius Favius was obliged to pass a decree forbidding this practice for sanitary reasons. So now all the chickens were put back in the streets where they were easily distracted and didn’t focus on eating anymore, so they were not getting fat. Along came a veterinarian who had the idea to castrate the chicks so they would get bigger — and it worked!
Today we will serve the capon with winter root vegetables — they are delicious though much neglected and I also believe in using seasonal produce.

Le Chapon de Noêl aux Marrons
Stuffed Christmas Capon with Chestnuts
(You can find capon at the very fine purveyor D’Artagnan. A 12 pounds Capon will feed about 12 people.)

Ingredients:
1 Capon
1 Cheesecloth
1/2 stick Butter

Farce/Stuffing:
1 LB very good Bacon (no nitrates)
1 LB thin Sausage (plain)
1/2 LB ground veal
1 LB Mushrooms
25 Chestnuts cooked and peeled
2 medium onions diced
1/2 cup Armagnac (or cognac)
2 eggs
1/2 cup chopped Parsley
Salt & Pepper to taste
Lightly sauté onions, then add mushrooms, then bacon, then sausage, then 1/2 of the chestnuts. Flambé with the Armagnac. Place in a bowl, add the ground veal, the parsley, the eggs, salt and pepper. Mix well and stuff the Capon and saw it back.

Roasting:
Preheat Oven to 450 º
Butter or oil the roasting pan, place the capon in the oven and roast at this heat for 30 minutes. In a sauce pan melt 1/2 stick of butter and let it cool. Reduce the oven temperature to 325º, baste the capon with pan juices, and drape it with a piece of cheesecloth, soaked in the melted butter. Roast the bird, lifting the cheesecloth and basting every 20 minutes for about 2 1/2 hours or until thermometer registers 180ºF and when juices run clear when thighs are pierced with a skewer. Then remove from oven and from pan and let stand while you make your “jus.”

Jus:
1/2 cup Armagnac (or cognac)
2 cup chicken broth
2 finely chopped Shallots
30 Chestnuts
Remove all fat and burned pieces (if any) from roasting pan. Put the pan on top of a warm burner. Spread shallots in the pan and move around quickly. Flambé with 1/2 cup of Armagnac (make sure the fan is off when you flambé). Add the two cups of chicken broth, make sure all the caramelized juices are lifted off the bottom of the pan then add the chestnuts. Let simmer gently for a few minutes. Carve the Capon, display on a nice dish with the stuffing. Transfer the sauce to a dish, and serve!

Les “Racines” d’Hiver Braisées
Braised Winter Root Vegetables

This is a very simple dish that will enhance the flavor of your capon.
When I want to be fancy I “turn” the vegetable into olive shapes. Otherwise I cut them into 1/2 inch dice.

Use carrots, turnips or rutabagas, and parsnips -celery root is also an option. Put all your roots in a roasting pan with a little butter and water, salt and pepper, and braise at 300º in the oven until tender but not mushy!

Dessert:
La Crème Paysanne
Light Custard
&
Les Pescajous du Luchonnais

Do you still have a little room for dessert? Sorry, but I will skip the bûche de Noël —
I am not very found of it, I find it too sweet after such a meal. The pescajous will probably remind you of fried dough, they literally mean “little fishes.” This delicacy is unheard of beyond a 25 mile radius of my home town. Pescajous are served on all religious holidays. The biggest challenge about them is to be able to fill up a basket before anybody sees you making them. If just one person sees you, believe me, it will take you a long, long time to fill up that basket! Unless you can convince the little scavengers to wait for the crème paysanne to dunk them in!

Crème Paysanne

Boil 4 cups of whole milk then flavored with vanilla and rum.
In a bowl, separate 12 egg yolks from the whites. Reserve the egg whites and put the yolks in a bowl with 1 1/2 cup of sugar; whisk until it forms a ruban. Gradually add the warm milk. Mix well, keeping the pan on a very low heat and stirring continuously -making a figure 8- with a wooden spoon until the cream coats the spoon. Let cool off, and keep it in the refrigerator; cover to avoid skin formation.

Pescajous du Luchonnais

4 cups of flour
a pinch of salt
2 teaspoon Yeast
3 Eggs ( yolks separated and whites will be beaten)
1/4 cup melted butter
1 cup Milk
1 cup Sugar
2 teaspoon Vanilla and Rum

Put flour, salt, sugar in a bowl.
Proof the yeast in a little bowl.
Beat the egg white.
Mix egg yolks, vanilla, rum, butter and proofed yeast. Mix this into the flour mixture and add the beaten egg whites slowly.
Let the dough rest and rise for a couple of hours.
When ready to cook, heat 1 quart of oil (safflower or peanut oil) in a wok.
Turn the dough onto a generously floured surface, cut small pieces with a knife and shape by hand into 2 inch squares, 1/8 inch thick, and dip them into the hot oil fry them until golden (a few minutes are sufficient). Fry no more than 4 or 5 at a time and you will get best result if you keep moving then around in the oil with a skimmer. Take them out and place on an absorbent paper towel to remove excess oil and start piling them up in a basket; Sprinkle caster sugar as you go along; they are better warm, and do not forget to dunk them in the crème paysanne!
Bon Appetit!

A Winner for the Winter (II) : Cabbage Roll

Cabbage Roll with Ginko Nuts — Cabbage Roll with Gingko Nuts

“Chose promise, chose due”, voilà the cabbage rolls with ginkgo nuts recipe. I have had stuffed cabbage or chou farci in many ways but the *japanese* cabbage roll became one of my favorite versions. I suspect this dish being part of the yoshuku tradition, but I haven’t yet found much info on it, even in the very good book by Katarzyna J. Cwiertka “Modern Japanese Cuisine: Food Power & National Identity”. This book was recommended by one of the members of the ASFS list server (Association for the Study of Food & Society). I have posted a new inquiry to the list server about cabbage rolls in Japanese cooking and about ginkgo nuts.

On that topic: I have been instructed by my daughter-in-law‘s mother not to eat more than 4/6 ginkgo nuts a day. When I asked why, the answer was: “That’s the way it is”. I insisted and was told that I should just accept it. Moi!? Curious as I am? Though this made me think that I too grew up with similar beliefs that I never questioned and do apply all the time! Among them, passed on by my grand mother, grand father & mother:
“Pèle la poire à ton ami, pèle la pêche à ton ennemi.”
“Peel a pear for your friend, peel a peach for your foe”.
“L’Orange le matin c’est de l’or, à midi de l’agent et le soir du bronze”
“Orange in the morning: gold; mid-day: silver; evening: bronze”
I do peel my pears and rarely eat oranges after 3pm! That will join the list “to be investigated”.

Meanwhile lets make the promised rolls with the right amount of gingko nuts! (My recipe is a variation from this internet recipe)
Ingredients:
8 to 10 savoy cabbage leaves
1 lb ground pork
about 40 ginkgo nuts
4 to 8 shitake mushrooms
1 small onion
1 carrot
Salt and pepper to taste
2 to 3 cups chicken or beef or veal stock
1 tbsp soy sauce

Remove core of cabbage leave and parboil the leaves for a few minutes in simmering water. Drain and reserve.

Roast the gingko nuts in a medium hot a skillet until skin detaches. Let cool and rub off the skin.

Dice onions, shitake mushrooms & grate carrot.

Mix all the ingredients with the ground pork. Salt & pepper to taste.

Divide stuffing for 8 or 10 leaves and fold carefully into each leave.

Warm up stock and soy sauce in pan, place the rolls and simmer gently until cooked (20/30mn).
Serve with brown or white rice & poor some broth over. This makes a light, delicious, heart warming dish that freezes well. If you make it let me know.
Bon Appetit!

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