Mastering the Art of French Cooking Class, November Edition

We held our second Cooking With Julia class at Jewett Farms Studio this past Friday. To see what happened at our first class, check this post here. The menu for Friday was centered around Carbonnades a la Flamande: a braise of beef and onions with beer. We started with mussels topped with an escargot-style butter, enjoyed super-creamy mashed potatoes with the stew and had a gorgeous salad alongside. Dessert was a light souffleed lemon tart.

The class had a few returning faces from the first class and a number of new folks joined us as well. It was a great night, made that much more delicious with local meat and produce from Tendercrop Farm (check out those gorgeous lettuces!) and wines selected by our friends at New England Wine and Spirits.

Elena, from Jewett Farms, and I were too busy this time to take many pictures so unfortunately I don't have any pictures of the finished mussel dish or the dessert, but they were delicious.

Here's a group of folks putting dollops of escargot butter on the mussels. The mussels were steamed first, then laid back into their shells before getting gratineed with the escargot butter. One nice feature of this dish is that it's composed of multiple make-ahead parts. You can make the butter days ahead (even weeks ahead if you freeze it!), steam the mussels the day of your party, top them with the butter and then keep them in the fridge until it's time to broil them. We made them in large communal dishes, but you could use small individual gratin dishes and they'd make a really nice presentation at a dinner party.

Greg and Christian both gave their all when it came to separating the eggs we needed for the tart. Michelle showed off her great folding technique on the tart base. The fun thing about this lemon tart is that the filling is actually a lemon souffle. You get a nice lemony hit but without all the richness of a traditional lemon curd-based tart. When the tart came out of the oven it had a perfect (alas, unphotographed) domed top. It sank a little while we ate our dinner, but was still wonderfully creamy and light when we finally got down to the business of eating it!

Tomato Pie

Okay, so you've made sauce, filled your freezer, eaten a caprese salad every day of the last week ... just what do you do with those tomatoes?

This recipe won't use up your entire stash, but it's a nice lunch or dinner idea. The leftovers reheat well too.

The idea is to make the top and bottom crust out of biscuit dough. You layer tomatoes, cheese and herbs as the filling. Bake and eat. It's easy and if you're fearful of biscuit-making, it may ease your anxieties on that front too.

The recipe I use has been lifted from Laurie Colwin's book More Home Cooking (more on that below).

Tomato Pie

Biscuit Crust

• 2 cups flour ( I used 1 cup each of white and wheat flours for this batch)
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4-6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter (more butter makes a richer crust)
  
• 3/4 cup milk

(I'm writing this for the non-biscuit makers out there - the biscuitophiles among you know what to do.) Fear not. Biscuit making will take you five minutes. I swear.

Put the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Cut the butter into little cubes and toss them into the flour. Toss the butter cubes (with your hand) around until they are coated in flour.

Now you're going to "cut in" the butter. Some people use knives, a pastry cutter (special equipment alert) or such implements to do this, but I use my hands. With your clean hands (you've already washed them right?) reach into the flour and butter and rub the flour into the butter cubes: pull some flour/butter onto one hand and then rub rub rub more flour and butter into that hand. As you rub, let the flour and butter fall into the bowl. You're rubbing the flour and butter together. The goal is to have a crumby-crumbly blend of butter and flour. Trust. This isn't that hard and some people get all freaked about it. Your great-grandmother did this and that was way before the age of Cuisinart and the Food Network.

When the flour and butter are blended and what's in your bowl looks shaggy and breadcrumb-like, stir in the milk. You will end up with a wettish biscuit dough.

See. Five minutes. Or so. Now you can make the pie ...

Tomato Pie Construction

• 1 batch biscuit dough made with 2 cups flour (see above)
• 2 pounds tomatoes, sliced
• handful of herbs, chopped
• 1/2 cup grated cheese (parmesan, cheddar, romano, etc.)
• 1/4 cup mayonnaise

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

Pat half of the biscuit dough into a 9" pie pan or baking dish. It is easy to do this if you dampen your hands with cool water: the dough won't stick.

Layer sliced tomatoes over the biscuit dough. Sprinkle chopped herbs and cheese over the tomatoes. Dollop little squiggles of mayo over the top of that (to be honest, I don't think this does much, but Laurie says to do it, so I do).

Take the other half of the biscuit dough and flatten it over the top of the tomatoes. Depending on the size of your dish, you may get a full top crust or a more cobbler-type top. This dish was bigger, so I laid smaller pieces of the dough over the top and let the tomatoes peek through.

Bake for about 30 minutes. Let sit 5-10 minutes before eating; those tomatoes will be hot!

You can also make this with canned whole tomatoes (1 large can, drained) when you can't find good fresh ones. The textures are different, but the flavors are great.


More Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin. This book and its predecessor, Home Cooking, are composed of essays Laurie Colwin wrote for Gourmet magazine in the nineties. They are comfortable, cozy books, sometimes a wee bit too cutesy I'll admit, but they are great to curl up with for inspiration or companionship. Nothing in these books is outside the ability of a beginning cook and Laurie is nothing but reassuring.

Both are actually still in print, praise be. Find Home Cooking and More Home Cooking here. The recently released collection Alone in the Kitchen With an Eggplant is named after an essay of Colwin's.

A Scoopendous Trifecta

The ice cream puns are just going to keep coming, sorry 'bout that. Here's a pic of the three frozen treats I made from The Perfect Scoop this weekend. There were all fantastic in their own ways.

The Vanilla Frozen Yogurt was really the star (it's in the 3:00 position in the picture). It took no effort at all to make. You whisk together yogurt, sugar and vanilla. Chill and freeze. That simple. Phenomenally good. I used Stonyfield Farm whole milk yogurt.

Also extremely good, but requiring a little more effort was the Honey Lavender Ice Cream. You steep lavender blossoms in honey and strain. Make a custard with yolks, milk and a little sugar. Add the honey and cream.

The Strawberry Rhubarb Sorbet is also great. You cook rhubarb with a little sugar and then puree it with ripe strawberries. Done.

Now come the really easy part: eating all this ice cream! Everything is wonderful solo; you can really taste each flavor's nuances. But, if I was going to be combining flavors ... the sorbet and yogurt are almost better when eaten together. The honey ice cream eaten with the yogurt reminds me of yogurt drizzled with honey. The only not-so-great pairing was the sorbet with the honey ice cream. The sorbet's bright flavors clobbered the honey flavors over the head.

Go buy yourself a copy of the book and get freezing!