Going back to what I like best…making homemade pasta. I made these to my parents when I went visit and they loved it. Marche (where my family is from) and Tuscany are close by regions and have similar cuisines (of course with some variations), So these “pici” also called Pinci, Umbrichelli (little werms?) and are typically Tuscan but familiar in Central Italy as well. My grandmother used to make similar pasta with fava bean flour and with the same sauce, lots of garlic and fresh tomato.

Pici take a while to make, because you have to roll each little strip “striscia” by hand…but time doesn’t count when you get so excited making something you absolutely love. Pici are delicious, they’re a bit chewy because they’re made without eggs, only water, salt and olive oil. So if you like chewy textures, you’ll like those. They could be considered an old cousin of our modern spaghetti.

The dough needs to be knead for about 10-15 minutes, until very smooth and non sticky. Form a  round and regular ball. Then using a rolling pin, roll it flat to about a 5 mm sheet. Cut little strips of about 1 cm width and using your hand roll each strip to form a string of about 3mm (I am sorry I don’t know how to accurately convert it into inches) in this case, the metric system should be used for accuracy. Pici cannot be made too much ahead of time. The ideal is to made them and cook them right away. Pici are long and should not be cut, so it can get a little messy when eaten.

Usually those are served with aglione sauce (aglio means garlic) which is a sauce with fresh tomatoes and lots of garlic, or some meat based ragu. I made an aglione base sauce and added baby artichokes. From now on, this will be my favorite pasta, I simply love its texture, firm and a bit chewy. If you like this type of texture, this pasta is for you.

Ingredients for 2

For the pici

• 0.55 lb (or 250 g) flour
• 0.50 cups (or 125 ml) water
• 1 tbs olive oil
• a pinch of salt

For the sauce

• 2 tbs olive oil
• 5 cloves, garlic cut or crushed
• 8 baby artichokes, trimmed and cut in quarters
• 1/2 glass white wine
• 3 large tomatoes well ripe peeled and cut or 1/2 can San Marzano tomatoes crushed
• cayenne to taste
• salt and pepper
• basil

Preparation

First start making the sauce. In a pan, heat olive oil, then add garlic, stir well. Add artichokes, drizzle with wine, let it cook at high heat for 30 seconds, then add tomatoes. Turn heat down, add cayenne, salt and pepper, cover with lid and let cook until the artichokes are tender and water evaporates from tomatoes.

Make pici as described above. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, then add pici. Cook for about 8-10 minutes. They need to be cooked but still a bit firm. I like my pasta on the hard side, so try them out while cooking and see the way you like them. Drain well and serve with sauce. Mix well. Add basil and parmesan.

It’s seems like a long time since I prepared a savory dish with coconut or vanilla, but lately I have been thinking about vanilla and spices, so I guess I am ready to take a little vacation in the tropics. Anytime summer comes, I just want to pack my bags and go somewhere. My yearly trips to France are not really a vacation, it’s more like family time with everything that it implies. Going home to the city I grew up in is always a great pleasure, but does not make me feel I am on vacation. I think I want to go in a country where I don’t understand the language and feel completely “depaysée” (in a new world), discover new flavors, scents and feel new emotions.

My friend Laurent offered me a book called “La Bonne Cuisine Végétarienne de Babette“, a wonderful vegetarian book written by a French Créole chef, Babette De Rozières, where she presents recipes with a créole flair using tropical ingredients. Her cuisine if full of colors, sunny and vibrant like the islands. After I finished reading that book, I just wanted vanilla…everything needed to be vanilla.

Vanilla blends well with fish and poultry too, one aspect of vanilla is that it’s very delicate, and not strong nor overpowering, unless of course you use a lot of it. It’s better not to add too many other spices or flavors with vanilla, because it’s so delicate that strong spices will kill it subtle flavor.

You can substitute the spinach with some more exotic greens and use yams instead of the sweet potatoes. I used sweet potatoes and coconut, to complete the dish, and I really liked it. It’s fast to prepare as well, so nothing to complain about. Depending on the length of your vanilla beans and size of your shrimps, you might add more than two shrimps on the vanilla bean. My shrimps were quite large so only two fitted.

Ingredients for 4

For the shrimps marinade

• 12 shrimps
• zest of 1 lime
• juice of 1 lime
• 1 vanilla bean scraped
• 4 vanilla beans
• 1 tbs olive oil
• salt and pepper

For the spinach

• 2 tbs olive oil
• 1 shallot, finely sliced
• 1 lb baby spinach
• salt and pepper

For the potatoes

• 2 large potatoes, peeled and sliced 1 cm thick
• 1 tsp cider vinegar
• 1 tbs olive oil
• salt and pepper

For the sauce

• 1.5 tsp butter
• the rest of the marinade
• 1/2 tsp cider vinegar (optional)
• 1/2 tsp honey
• 2-3 tbs coconut milk

Preparation

Place two or three shrimps in the vanilla bean. Mix all the ingredients of the marinade and pour on top of the shrimps. Place in a container and refrigerate for about 30 minutes.

Coat potato slices with oil, vinegar, salt and pepper and broil in the oven until tender in the middle and golden brown on the outside. Keep warm.

Heat olive oil in a large pot, add shallot, let it sweat, then spinach, salt and pepper and keep stirring at high heat until wilted.

Melt butter in a pan. Add shrimps (removing excess marinade) and let them cook at medium heat, add marinade, stir well. Remove shrimps. Deglaze with vinegar, add honey and coconut milk. Let the sauce reduce a little.

Place two slices of potatoes in a place,  top them with spinach, then shrimps. Spoon sauce on top and serve hot.

In was in France for a few weeks and anytime I go home, I have a “blogger’s block”. I get caught in a different kind of life and dynamic and do not feel like cooking nor taking pictures of any kind. Now I am back and of course back to my routine. I still have to figure out why France has this effect on me, maybe because I grew up there and feel like I am not discovering anything new.

Anyway, I have been looking at this recipe for quite a long time and never really decided to make it. I didn’t like its name…anything with sugar on it, makes me cringe. It just make me think of the crunchy sound biting on a sugar cube. Then the picture of this tart looked really good…so it took a windy day (and me having a low energy level to go around the lake with the dog), to go ahead with this project.

I took this recipe from one of my favorite books called “La Cuisine de Bistrot” from Editions Tomawalk and since any recipe I tried from that book has always been delicious, I thought why not this one. Tarte au sucre is a specialty from Northern France.

I was trying to find what we call in French “sucre cristallisé” which is a sort of coarse and thick sugar whose grains don’t dissolve and remain crunchy even after baking, the grains are slightly bigger than regular sugar. I didn’t find it, so I used regular sugar instead. If you used coarse sugar as the recipe mentions, you will have a thicker and crunchier crust on top. In my recipe, the sugar dissolved and melted so the crust it formed is thin and not that crunchy.

This tart has the soft and moist texture of a brioche, with a thin layer of custard and topped with a crunchy layer of sugar. It definitely has a very interesting composition. I will make this again with a different kind of sugar.

Ingredients for 6

• 1/2 lb (or 250 g) flour
• 3.5 oz (or 100 g butter) + 1 tsp for the mold
• 1 oz (or 30 g) powdered sugar
• 4.4 oz (or 125 g) crystallized sugar
• 0.35 oz (or 10 g) yeast
• 7 tbs (or 10 cl) lukewarm milk
• 7 tbs (or 10 cl) heavy cream
• 1 egg + 3 yolks
• a pinch of salt

Preparation

Cut butter in small cubes. Dissolve yeast in lukewarm milk. Pour flour and powder sugar in a container. Dig a hole in the center and add milk (with yeast), then add an egg and salt. Mix well all ingredients until a you obtain an homogenous dough. Incorporate butter and knead the dough. Cover dough with a towel and let rise for 2 hours.

Pre-heat oven at 392F. Spread dough on a floured surface, then place in a mold (deep dish) previously buttered. Sprinkle the dough with half of the crystallised sugar.

Beet the yolks and cream until foamy, then pour the mixture on top of the tart. Sprinkle with the remaining of the crystallised sugar, then place in the oven and cook for 30 min.

Remove tart from the oven and let cool before serving. You can serve it with vanilla ice cream.

When you look at the ingredients of this pesto, you might think, it will be too strong especially with the mint and pecorino. When you taste it, you realize that it is indeed fragrant but delicate. I used some whole grain linguini made with red winter wheat but any short pasta such as penne or rigatoni would work fine too. Looking at the picture, it feels like I went crazy with the quantity of pesto, which I think I did. I had some extra I didn’t want to store in the refrigerator so I added it to the pasta, which was a little too much.

I added cooked asparagus to the whole dish, which added a little extra texture. For an alternative to traditional pesto alla genovese with basil and parmesan, try this one.

A little note on pecorino, I noticed in the US, the main pecorino kinds you get are either pecorino romano (from Rome) or pecorino sardo (from Sardinia), but there are so many kinds of pecorino in Italy, the word pecorino is quite generic and only tells you it is made out of  sheep milk (pecora). There are five types of pecorini whose production is very controlled and protected “denominazione d’origine protetta“: Pecorino sardo, pecorino romano, pecorino toscano, pecorino siciliano and fiore sardo.

Spring is just around the corner and what better to celebrate it than with this fresh dish full of colors and flavors!

Ingredients for 2

• 7 oz (or 200 g) of pasta
• 8.8 oz (or 250 g) fresh peas (or frozen)
• one handful of fresh mint
• 3 tbs raw walnuts
• 1.7 oz (or 50 g) pecorino
• 2 tbs meyer lemon juice
• olive oil
• salt and pepper

Preparation

Start preparing the pesto. If peas are frozen, defrost in a microwave or let it thaw at room temperature. Then mix all the ingredients in a mixer until smooth, adjust with salt and pepper.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add pasta, stir and let cook until al dente. Drain and mix well with pesto. Serve hot.

]]> http://www.citronetvanille.com/blog/2013/03/lets-celebrate-spring-linguini-with-fresh-pea-pesto-mint-and-pecorino/feed/ 1 http://www.citronetvanille.com/blog/2013/03/who-would-have-thought-vegetable-pot-au-feu-du-sud/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=who-would-have-thought-vegetable-pot-au-feu-du-sud http://www.citronetvanille.com/blog/2013/03/who-would-have-thought-vegetable-pot-au-feu-du-sud/#comments Thu, 21 Mar 2013 04:13:37 +0000 silvia http://www.citronetvanille.com/blog/?p=15764 Qui l’eût cru? Pot-au-feu végétarien du Sud

 I remember reading about this recipe in a French magazine such as Femme Actuelle or Elle à Table, but it’s been a while ago and I don’t remember so I have been making it from memory, which is certainly not exactly the same as the original. It’s nonetheless delicious. Anything vegetarian is very appealing to me and especially a meat dish like pot-au-feu. Pot-au-feu which is as emblematic as the Eiffel Tower. It’s a traditionally beef dish cooked for a long period of time in a broth with vegetables and herbs. Usually the broth is served separately (sometimes cooked with pasta) and the meat is served on the side too, with moutarde de Dijon or other condiments. It’s a very popular dish in France and always enjoyed with family and friends since there always too much meat left.

Now pot-au-feu is not my favorite dish, and I love to find some vegetarian alternative to some heavy traditional dishes.

If you look at the ingredients of this pot-au-feu, it has definitely a Southern French flair, with Pastis and fennel, how can it not?

This vegetarian pot-au-feu can be eaten as is and it does not need anything on the side, other than a simple green salad. The broth is infused with saffron, pastis and herbs therefore very fragrant and make this dish very colorful and vibrant.

I cooked it in my clay pot at low heat and turned out delicious.

Ingredients for 2-3

• 2 tbs olive oil
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 2 sprig thyme
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 pinch saffron
• 1 large fennel bulb, cut in 6-7 quarters
• 2 medium size artichokes, trimmed and cut in quarters
• 3 medium size yukon potatoes, cut in quarters
• 1/2 meyer lemon, seeds removed and cut lengthwise, then in two
• 1/3 cup Pastis
• 1 cup broth
• salt and pepper

Preparation

In a large pot, heat olive oil, then add garlic, thyme, bay leaves, saffron. Stir for a few minutes until fragrant. Add vegetables, pastis and broth. Cover with lid and let cook for about 30 minutes at low heat until vegetables are tender.

When talking about hachis parmentier, most French people think beef and potatoes which is the traditional dish. The English equivalent is “shepherd’s pie” (another version here). I like to keep traditional dishes traditional and not change them around, but I would call this a “variation” of the traditional dish.

I don’t eat red meat and sweet potatoes and yams are more nutritious than regular potatoes since they seem to have more fibers and vitamin A than regular potatoes, so a good reason to consume them. This parmentier would be a healthier variation of the traditional one…and as delicious if you like fish of course.

It’s not rare to find hachis parmentiers made with chicken or duck confit nowadays and most restaurants do serve variations too.

Ingredients for 4

• 1 lb cod, diced in about 1 inch pieces
• 1/2 lb yams, peeled and cubed
• 21.16 oz (or 600 g) mixture of sweet potatoes and yukon gold potatoes, peeled and cubed
• 1/2 lb wild mushroom mixture (shitakee, chanterelles, etc…), cut in medium sized pieces
• 2.11 oz (or 60 g) butter
• 3.38 fl oz (or 10 cl) milk + extra for cooking the potatoes
• 1 garlic clove, crushed
• 1/2 small onion, finely sliced
• 2 tbs mixed chopped herbs (basil, parsley, chives, tarragon, etc…)
• 2 tbs olive oil
• 2 tbs breadcrumbs
• salt and pepper

Preparation

Cook potatoes and yams in milk at low heat until tender.

Heat 1 tbs olive oil in a pan, add onion and let it sweat for about 10 minutes, add mixed herbs and cod, salt and pepper and let cook until cod is ready. In another pan, heat 1 tbs olive oil, add garlic and stir for a few seconds until fragrant. Add mushrooms at high heat and let cook for a few minutes.

Mash potatoes and put them back in the pot, add milk, butter, salt and better still stirring.

In individual buttered ramequins or a large buttered dish, place one layer of the fish mixture, top it with mushrooms, then with a generous amount of potatoes. Sprinkle with a thin layer of breadcrumbs and cook in a pre-heated oven at 270F for about 20-25 minutes or until the top is golden brown.

I had some leftover pâte brisée that I didn’t want to throw away, so here we go…of course, you can replace mussels with scallops or shrimps. This is just very easy to make and the use of those mini tarts are versatile. I ate eight of them for lunch with a salad, but obviously those types of bites are more appropriate for entertaining as a pass-on appetizer or on a buffet display, than as a main course…besides no one would eat those as a main course, unless very hungry and nothing else to eat.

I have to say that I am still hungry so I could have easily eaten some extras, but no no, let’s stay moderate especially when pâte brisée has some nice amount of butter, like this one. Usually I make dough with olive oil, but this one is the traditional pâte brisée. Well, a small amount of butter never killed anyone, so let’s be kind to butter and not demonize it.

This is a very short story: 1) Left over pâte brisée, 2) little time to cook and 3) hunger, there is nothing else and nothing exciting behind those tartlets. Well, yes there are my adorable and colorful mini molds I brought back from France. They are quite small, about 1.5 inch diameter, you can see the mussel fit right in.

Ingredients for about 30-40 bites or 6 people

For the pate brisée (traditional)

•  8.8 oz (or 250 g) flour
• 1 yolk
• 4.4 oz (or 125 g) butter, diced
• one pinch salt
• a few tbs water

For the filling

• 30-40 mussels
• 2 tbs fromage blanc or thick yogurt such as greek yogurt
• 6.7 fl oz (or 20 cl) crème fraȋche
• 1 tbs parsley
• a few drops of meyer lemon juice
• salt and pepper

Preparation

For the pâte brisée

In a mixing container, add flour, yolk, a pinch salt, water and butter. Mix all ingredients together carefully to incorporate butter but do not mix too much or the dough will break apart when rolling it. Form a ball, and wrap in plastic. Let rest in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes.

For the filling

Heat olive oil in a pan, add mussels, stir for a few minutes, then add yogurt and cream, lemon juice, parsley salt and pepper. Stir for a few more minutes, then remove from heat.

Roll dough in a flat surface and using a cookie ring, cut out circles to fill your molds. Add one mussel in each mold and fill it with cream/yogurt mixture.

Cook in a pre heated oven at 370F for about 20 minutes or until the tartlets are nice and lightly brown.

This slang expression, Tu l’as eu dans le baba! (you need an exclamation point), is mainly used to express a failure, or when you expected something you didn’t get. It’s somehow a funny expression, used quite often. But baba is also a dessert, baba au rhum is a traditional rhum cake served with whipped cream (but you can serve it with fruits also)…and yes there is a little history behind it, because it involves Nancy my hometown. When recipes like this one are traced back 300 or 400 years, sometimes it’s difficult to really be 100% certain where the inspiration or the original recipe originated. It might have been someone who came back from a trip and “imported” the idea or the recipe from a foreign country, then developed it in its own country.

As far as baba au rhum is concerned, it’s linked to King Stanislas Leszczinzky (king of Poland) and also Duke of Lorraine in the XVIIIe, brought back the idea from Poland in his Luneville castle, then the recipe started to evolve a bit over time.

This was my first try at baba au rhum, usually pastries are my second choice when I have to eat something, I love to serve a great pastry after a meal when I have guests over, but not being a sweet tooth, I don’t go into some baking spree. Once in a while I like to try out baking new things, but salt is my element not sugar. The recipe has been inspired by the book called “La cuisine des bistrots” from edition “Tomawalk’. Even though baking time said 25 min, I think according to your oven you have to adapt it, and not over cook the baba, or it will get hard and difficult for the rum syrup to soak it. Next time I will decrease baking time. Then of course, you can add quantity of rum you like, it’s all up to your tastes!

Ingredients for 6 babas

For the batter

• 3.17 oz (or 90 g) butter + for molds
• 3.38 fl oz (or 10 cl) milk
• 3 eggs
• 7.76 oz (or 220 g) flour
• 0.35 oz (or 10 g) yeast
• 1 tbs sugar

For the syrup

• 8.81 oz (or 250 g) sugar
• 1 tbs rum
• 1.41 oz (or 40 cl) water

Preparation

Dissolve yeast in lukewarm milk and let it rest for 10 min.

In a mixing container, mix flour, eggs, sugar and mixture milk/yeast. Mix well until you obtain an elastic batter. Soften butter at room. temperature. Let the batter rest for about one hour in a warm area. After the batter rested, incorporate soft butter and mix until the batter becomes smooth.

Butter molds, then divide batter in them, filling them in half. Let it rest for another hour or so.

Preheat oven at 390F and cook for about 20-25 minutes. Don’t overcook or the babas will turn hard and difficult to absorb the syrup.

When babas are cooked remove from oven and let them cool on a cookie rack.

Prepare the syrup, mix water with sugar and bring to a boil for about 15 minutes. Remove from heat and add rum.

Place babas in a deep plate and pour 2 tbs of hot syrup. Let the babas absorb the liquid, then proceed a few more times until the babas are well soaked. Place babas in refrigerator until ready to serve. Serve with whipped cream.

Let’s pursue our polenta adventures with this rustic dish that can be made with leftover polenta. I don’t like to throw away food, but I don’t like to eat something that is leftover just because it’s a leftover, it needs to be good and flavorful. Rather than throwing away solid and somehow plain polenta, let’s turn it into something delicious.

I grew up with potato gnocchi so these polenta gnocchi are not something I inherited from my mom, beside they are a specialty from Trentino region (or Trentino Alto Adige) where they eat lots of polenta) which is located in the North-East of Italy close to the Austrian, Swiss and Liechenstein borders. They serve polenta gnocchi often with wild mushrooms and melted cheese sauce. You can use whatever you like on the gnocchi, it’s all up to your tastes (of course, I wouldn’t put melted chocolate on top!) but any tomato sauce, seafood or cheese based sauce would work fine. You can substitute ricotta salata with parmesan or pecorino too.

The sauce is vegetable based, I wanted to stay on the light and simple side with carrots, celery and zucchini with a tomato sauce enhanced by some cayenne or peperoncino.

I have to say that I find these gnocchi to be lighter than potato gnocchi and quite delicious and such a great dish when you don’t know what to do with leftover polenta.

Ingredients for 2

For the gnocchi

• 1 cup leftover polenta
• 3 tbs flour
• 1 egg

For the sauce

• 1 garlic clove, crushed
• 2 basil leaves, chopped
• 1 tbs olive oil (+1 for drizzling at the end)
• 1 carrot, diced
• 1 celery stick, diced
• 1/2 zucchini, diced
• 5 tbs crushed tomatoes
• cayenne to taste
• salt and pepper
• ricotta salata

Preparation

For the gnocchi

In a wooden board mix polenta, flour and egg and mix well until the mixture is smooth and non sticky. If sticky at a little flour. Proceed like you would for regular potato gnocchi. Cook like regular gnocchi in a salted boiling water. When the gnocchi come at the surface, remove from heat and drain.

For the sauce

In a pan, heat olive oil, add garlic and stir until fragrant without burning the garlic. Add all the cut vegetables, basil. Cover and cook at slow temperature until the vegetables are cooked but still a bit firm. Add crushed tomatoes, cayenne, salt and pepper and cook until the sauce thickens a bit and water evaporates.

Pour sauce on top of gnocchi, decorate with ricotta salata and drizzle with some extra olive oil. Serve very hot.

My Friend’s Julia mom, Florence a delightful lady from Paris came for a visit to the Bay Area during the holidays. She is an attorney in Paris but cooking is her hobby when she has time to spend in the kitchen. She wanted to learn some new tricks and recipes she could use while having her large family and friends for dinner (she has six children and and seven siblings).

While in San Francisco, I took her shopping to Berkeley Bowl and then spent the rest of the day preparing a four course meal for the rest of the family who joined us for dinner. I promised that my next recipe would be just for her, I wanted to make something easy, that could be a perfect canape, or appetizer for her large gatherings. Et voilà, c’est fait! Florence je pense que vous apprecierez ces canapés faciles à faire, goutûs et avec une pointe d’originalité.

Florence had all the qualities to be an excellent cook, she is curious, has lots of energy and is an excellent listener, so maybe good attorneys are great cooks after all!

These crostini can also be served an appetizer with a small side of green salad, you can of course adapt their size to the occasion. For canapes use, make them a slightly bit smaller than if you would serve them as an appetizer.

For an easy process, use express polenta, the one that cooks fast.

Recipes for me are versatile and are just ideas, you don’t need to replicate them exactly. For example here if you prefer to use roasted red peppers, you could. I like to combine different textures, so that’s why I made a coulis, just to complement to grainy texture of the polenta, the leafy spinach and crunchy and sweet shrimp.

If you read French, La cuisine du marché avec Silvia is a little note written by Florence to describe her little cooking experience in San Francisco. Lovely isn’t it?

Ingredients for 12 canapés

• 1 pint water (or 500 ml) salted water
• 4.4 oz (or 125 g) pre cooked polenta
• 12 shrimps, uncooked
• 12 slices pancetta, thin sliced
• 1 garlic clove, diced
• 1/2 bunch kale, stems removed

For the roasted red pepper coulis

• 1 large bell red pepper
• 1 garlic clove
• 1/4 tsp cumin
• 1 tbs olive oil
• cayenne pepper to taste
• salt and pepper

Preparation

For the polenta

Bring a pint of water with salt to a boil. Pour polenta gradually, and stir well for about 3 minutes until the polenta thickens. Remve from heat and spread over a flat food surface in about 1/2 inches (1 cm) thick circle. Smooth the surface with a spatula. Let it cool and refrigerate for about one hour until the polenta is hard. Using a round 2 inches (or 4 cm) cookie cutter, cut polenta disks. Sprinkle with olive oil and broil under broiler or grill until the top is golden brown.

For the kale

Remove stems from kale and cut in about 2 inches pieces. Heat olive oil in a pan, add garlic clove and stir, add kale and cook until it wilts, adjust with salt and pepper

For the shrimps

Wrap one pancetta slice around each shrimp. Saute in olive oil until both sides are golden brown.

For the coulis

Place pepper under broiler, and char broil until the skin darkens. Proceed the same way on all sides. Remove from oven, let cool. Peel and remove seeds. Cut in small pieces and mix in a blender with garlic, oil, cumin and cayenne pepper. Adjust with salt and pepper.

Place one kale leaf on top of polenta, then add shrimp and top it with pepper coulis. Serve hot or warm.