cooking.with.gas

Uninspired

Do you suppose that the great chefs ever wake up some mornings completely unispired? I don't know, but I can't imagine Paul Bocuse having that kind of problem. I suspect he just has to head over to La Halles here in Lyon and whatever brief blank moment there might be completely disappears.

Not so with me. I don't know what it is lately, the heat, the move, but I have completely gone off cooking. And off eating, for that matter, I just have no appetite beyond the rare craving for watermelon or a cup of tea first thing in the morning.

Most of the time this wouldn't be a problem, because The Other eats in the cantine at work, so soup or salad for dinner really is rather appropriate, since he's had his big meal at lunch time.

But to be honest, I'm tired of eating salads, I don't feel like soup, and The Other said he was going to just get a sandwich out for lunch, so I do have to come up with something for dinner tonight.

And I don't feel like my usual store of easy recipes...fresh pasta with roquette and feta, homemade pizza with fresh veg on the top...I don't feel like making it, I don't feel like eating it.

So I need a fresh, fast idea. Something easy to make, something I can easily get the ingredients for, something that would actually tempt me to want to eat my dinner.

Though part of me says if chefs don't suffer from this problem, then maybe it's a good idea to make a reservation for dinner.

Oops, forgot to mention...

I forgot to mention the other day that Eric Kayser has a book coming out this fall:

100 % pain : La saga du pain enveloppée de 40 recettes croustillantes
by Eric Kayser and Jean-Claude Robaut.
Éditeur : Solar (23 octobre 2003)
Format : Broché
ISBN : 2263034455

You can check it out at amazon.fr

Bread and Roses

Some days you sit down in front of the keyboard and think you know what you want to write about, and then you do a little search on google and the next thing you know, you're off in a slightly different direction.

What I was thinking about this morning was bread. Specifically, bread from the Boulangerie Kayser in Paris. The Other and I were in the City of Lights over the weekend, and twice bought sandwiches from Kayser (though I will confess slight disappointment over the fact that the chicken sandwich no longer had real roast chicken in it, but chicken slices. Good quality slices, but slices. Perhaps this is because of the August holidays? One can only hope...)

Yesterday, along with lunch, we bought some of the seasonal fare Kayser is known for -- in this case, a pain aux myrtilles (blueberry bread) and some petites figues (buns with fig in them). Kayser is known for producing interesting breads using seasonal ingredients, and the results are always worth trying. A bread featuring turmeric was one of the best ones I've tried in recent years.

Usually I come home with a half a tourte, the lovely bread used to make my favourite sandwiches, a bread reminiscent of a pain de compagne, but moist, chewy, a bread to sink your teeth into.

But then I clicked on google. I was searching for a little more information about Kayser, and discovered the seemy underbelly of the Parisian baking world, or, rather, the seemy corner of it that runs the length of the rue Monge. For it would appear that a bread-baking bruhaha brews on rue Monge.

According to an article that appeared in Le Nouvel Observateur, a fervent rivalry exists between two bakeries on the rue Monge: the first Kayser, founded by Eric Kayser in 1996; and Le Boulanger de Monge, founded by Dominique Saibron in 1999.

I've certainly frequented the former, and now I'm curious to visit the latter. More fascinating to me, though, is the central position bread holds in French life. I must do more research about this, but I'm almost afraid of what I might find when I slice through the crust...

Picky, picky, picky

I am. Picky. Especially when it comes to ice cream/sorbet.

It's not that I don't eat industrial ice cream -- I've been known to enjoy a few Hagen-Daas flavours, and a very few Ben and Jerry's flavours are on my all-time favourite list.

But in my heart of hearts, I know that Real Ice Cream is made by artisans. Craftsmen of cream. And I make a point of trying to find the best sources of great ice cream wherever I am.

The Other and I were in Geneva on Saturday. It's so hot here that little can get done at all, so we decided to go away for the weekend. The Fondation Gianadda in Martigny is a wonderful art museum/gallery that currently has an exhibit of works by Paul Signac on, so we decided to take advantage of a coupon for a free night at a hotel chain we frequent to go and visit it. We had a choice of two hotels: one in Thonon-les-bains, my preference, except for the fact that it isn't air conditioned; and one at the border between France and Switzerland at Geneva. With Air Con.

Not a difficult choice.

Geneva is only about an hour and a half away from home, so we drove to the hotel, then went into Geneva to pick up some diet 7-Up, which isn't available in France. We parked the car, we headed to the supermarket.

Part way there, we started seeing folks walking along eating ice cream. Most of them had it in cups, and the cups were all the same, so they were all coming from the same place.

Then we saw the line-up. Now, a line-up, in my book, usually means that it's worth getting interested in.

The Other pointed out that it was stinking hot, and it was the only ice cream place.

We decided to take a chance, once we looked at the flavour list. There were the usual suspects, but there were also some very interesting flavours and combinations.

I got a small cup, with pineapple/basil and campari/orange. The Other chose caramel and milk chocolate.

All were really good -- mine were both sorbets and very refreshing, not overly sweet, although I think the pineapple/basil could have used a smidge less of the basil.

The milk chocolate was nothing less than perfect. Interesting, too, because I found an article on the web (in French) about the difference between artisinal and industrial ice cream, and it quotes the owner of this little gem (Gelateria Gelato Mania), Paolo Sottile.

Sottile was asked about his ice cream making, and then if there was a flavour that he was particularly proud of. Not surprisingly, he was proud of all the flavours, but especially of the chocolate.

Oh yeah. The chocolate was Very Good. It's easier to come up with unusual flavours, but harder to make a standard favourite, like chocolate, that stands out from any other chocolate out there. But the chocolate at Gelato Mania does.

Did I mention Geneva is only an hour and a half a way? We will definitely be returning to Gelato Mania again before we move back to Canada.

Gelateria Gelato Mania
Rue des Pâquis, 25
1201 Genève

Apricot Kernals

My fascination with apricot kernals started last summer -- The Other had brought me back a copy of Regan Daley's cookbook In the Sweet Kitchen: the Definitive Guide to the Baker's Pantry on a business trip back to Canada.

Now, I'll confess that since living in France, I do much less baking. For one thing, I have fewer people to bake for. As well, there are such an amazing array of delectible treats at local patisseries, which haunt virtually every corner (much in the way a doughnut shop haunts corners back in Canada....ahem...)

And even at the supermarket, you can get high-quality baked goods made with real ingredients (butter, eggs), so there really is little incentive to bake.

Though, the availability of already prepared pastry in the supermarket has pushed me into making tartes both sweet and savoury. I will miss these terribly when we move back to Canada...

Neverthless, every once in a while one has a craving for culturally instilled baked goods. Cookies, brownies, muffins, and suchlike.

Now, combine this with a respect for seasonal and locally-produced materials (something I'd lost living in North America, something I found difficult to cope with when I first moved here, but something I now have great respect for). I can't help wanting to take advantage of things. I eat them fresh, I love to cook with them.

One of the great things about Daley's book is that slightly more than half of the book (tome, really, it weighs in at almost 700 pages) is devoted to the ingredients used in baking. There are descriptions of everything -- creams, flours, sugars, fats, eggs, leavenings, flavourings -- not to mention the pages devoted to baker's tools themselves.

Add to that the recipes themselves -- Daley is a prominent Canadian pastry chef, who worked most notably at Avalon, and the book was nominated for a James Beard Foundation Book Award, and won the International Culinary Professionals Best Cookbook of the Year award. The range from the simple to the sublime, and when I learned I would be moving back to Canada, I was at least comforted by the fact that although I wouldn't have ready access to crème fraîche, I'd be able to make it myself, thanks to Daley's book.

So there I was, one day last year during apricot season, reading Daley's chapter on Stone Fruit, in which she wrote:

Apricot pits are the small, almond-like centres of apricot stones. Rarely if ever called for in North American recipes, they are a wonderful source of flavour. In fact, Amaretto, the famous almond liqueur, is made from a combination of bitter almonds and apricot pits. Save the stones during apricot season and experiment a little. Finely grated, the pits add a delicious accent to desserts such as cakes, frangipane fillings for tarts and other pastries and muffins. They have a delicate, slightly floral Amaretto-like flavour, which complements apricot, peach, almond and citrus flavours beautifully, and they can be used anywhere ground almonds are combined with fruit. Use a hammer or cleaver to carefully crack open the stones. Grate the pits on the finest side of a box grater and use one or two for a standard frangipane or cake recipe.

Thus, the seed was planted. Though I have to say, don't try the hammer or cleaver idea, I did that, and didn't find it all that efficient. I'll explain later the alternative I found.

To read more:

Daley, Regan. In the Sweet Kitchen: the Definitive Guide to the Baker's Pantry. Toronto: Random House Canada, 2000.