Posts tagged brunch
The tartine for busy days – Tartine with sauté dandelions, grilled tomatoes, poached egg, olive vinaigrette
Apr 1st
Une tartine pour les jours chargés – Tartine aux pissenlits, tomates grillées et oeuf poché, vinaigrette aux olives
What do you do when you have dandelions in the refrigerator, no time to cook and a huge craving for dandelions? Well, you can make this lovely tartine. I did not feel like having just a plate of sauté dandelions, so tartines are always a great way to combine greens and other vegetables, and top it off with a poached egg.
Ah my beloved dandelions, did you know that the word dandelions came from the French “dent de lion” or “Lion tooth” because of the dented sides of the leaves that look like lion’s teeth? so “dent de lion” became dandelion!
I loved the wild ones, and I used to go pick them up in the field with my parents and eat tons of them when I was still living at home. I think that time of ramasser les pissenlits et les manger (dandelions pick up and eating) is part of my best memories. If I start doing that here, people would think either I am homeless or insane. My neighbor’s garden has tons of dandelions, and I have been staring at them for a while but obviously I don’t see myself going there with a knife and start digging their garden. The farmed dandelions are not as bitter and the leaves are a lot longer, so I prefer from far the wild ones.
I could not find the exact English for word tartine, it is typically French, basically a slice of bread with a bunch of different things on top, or a simple tartine de beurre, which can be a delight if you have great bread and salted butter. Tartine cannot be translated by toast which is mostly made with American style bread (loaves style). So I will leave tartine as being a tartine.
When grilling the tomatoes, do not over-grill them or they’ll get mushy, just one or two minutes each side. The olive vinaigrette adds a final delicious touch to the tartine.
For 3 tartines
- 3 slices of country bread
- 1 bunch dandelion
- 1 garlic clove, crushed
- 3 tomatoes, sliced
- 3 eggs
- lavender salt
- sea salt and pepper
For the vinaigrette
- 2 tbs olive oil
- 2 tsp balsamic vinegar
- 2 tbs kalamata olives, chopped
- 1 garlic clove, crushed
- 1 tbs parsley, chopped
- salt and pepper
Preparation
Wash dandelions. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, add dandelions and cook for 5-7 minutes until tender. Remove from stove and drain. Let it cool and squeeze with your hands extra water.
Heat olive oil in a pan, add 1 garlic clove, stir well and add dandelions, adjust with salt and pepper, and sauté to coat dandelions with oil and garlic.
In a grill pan, grill tomatoes. Remove from the grill and sprinkle with lavender salt and pepper.
Poach egg in water.
Grill each side of bread and top with dandelions, then add tomatoes, and egg. Add vinaigrette on top.
Now it's the goose's turn – Farro brioche with goose egg and orange blossom water
Nov 21st
C’est au tour de l’oie de pondre – Brioche d’épeautre à l’oeuf d’oie et eau de fleur d’oranger
I went to whole Foods again this morning, and I decided to buy a goose egg after the last week experiment with duck eggs. Instead of another omelette, I wanted to try and bake with them since I heard so many wonderful things about how delicious pastry you can get with the use of goose eggs. They’re larger and even richer than duck’s eggs, and more expensive, since one costs $5. I know my mom used to make pasta with those, my uncle in Italy has geese and always gives her some of his eggs, and I don’t think there’s anything that can please her more that that.
So going back to my Whole Foods story, I arrived at the cash register and the cashier had no idea how much they were, so I told him $5 each and he did not believe me, so he proudly decided to give it to me for free. He said there is no price, so it’s free. I like that principle. Oh well, I rarely get free stuff, so I for once I left happily holding carefully my egg in my hand since it was so big, it didn’t fit anywhere and I certainly did not want to break it.
I had made brioches a while ago that turned out really well, so I took that recipe, making some changes to quantities and ingredients but still using the same technique of letting it rest overnight in the refrigerator, and adding some flavors to the dough. Et voilà ma belle brioche!
I think I will have to get used to baking more since this neighborhood I moved into, there are absolutely NO bakeries, and that is a big bummer. There is one a couple of blocks down but I looked at the bread and pastries and they don’t look very appetizing at all, so I will have to either drive miles to get bread or do it myself. I am no baker, and it takes time to make good bread so not sure how that will work. Call me crazy but the other thing I do when I go into a bakery, is look at the cleanliness of the windows. If the windows are dirty, it’s not a good sign of cleanliness of the overall bakery and I walk away.
Goose eggs can very a lot in size, and they’re about the equivalent of 3 regular eggs. Mine was very big and the yolk amazingly huge, so my brioche quite rich. I added half farro flour that I am in love with. I also used Écorce d’orange en poudre, (orange peel powder) I bought in France. I’m sure you can find something similar in the US, probably in some health food stores. The brioche is deliciously perfumed with orange blossom water and rich while being light at the same time. So yes, goose eggs make great pastries and brioches.
Ingredients for 2 brioches
- 1/2 lb (or 250 g) white flour
- 1/2 lb (or 250 g) farro flour
- 1 large goose egg
- 1 cup (or 250 ml) milk
- 1 regular egg yolk for topping
- 2.82 oz (or 80 g) butter, soft and diced
- 2.82 oz (or 80 g) sugar
- 1 tbs orange blossom water
- 1 tsp orange peel powder
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp beer yeast dissolved in 4 tbs lukewarm water (or dry yeast)
Preparation
In a large mixing container, mix both flours, add sugar and salt. Make a whole in the center and add egg, orange blossom water and orange peel powder. Mix well and gradually add milk, vanilla extract and yeast. At this point, you will obtain an elastic dough. If the dough is too liquid and sticky, add flour. Knead well. Add butter incorporating it carefully to the dough but do not over knead or “heat” the dough. Let it rise for about 2 hours.
Knead again and place in in the refrigerator overnight. Knead the dough again, then cut dough in two equal pieces, then cut again each piece in three . You should have six little dough balls. Grease two loave pans and place three pieces of dough in each pan, and let it rise for another additional 2 hours.
Baste top of each loaf with egg yolk, and cook in a pre-heated oven at 370F for about 30 minutes. Check once in a while to see the top didn’t burn. Remove from the oven and eat lukewarm with jam or as is.
My finger got stuck in the jar – Ebelskivers stuffed with Nutella
Oct 24th
Mon doigt s’est coincé dans le pot- Ebelskivers à la nutella
Well, I would have never thought to make something with Nutella…Usually, I don’t cook with Nutella, I just eat it from the jar, and when the jar is half empty, I use my fingers. No worries, I do not stick my finger in any jar that I serve guests, in case you are wondering, that would be quite un-hygienic.
I had this conversation with Mary from Keep Learning Keep Smiling not that long ago. She admitted she loves condensed milk so much probably as much as I love Nutella that she likes to lick it from her fingers which I thought was funny. She gave me the idea to write a post about it. I don’t eat Nutella that often, I buy a similar organic Hazlenut-coconut spread that seems to be healthier, but still Nutella is an institution, so sometimes I buy it to serve it with crêpes because I have a friend who would not eat crêpes without it. I am not sure Nutella is made to be cooked, it’s a pâte a tartiner, and usually those spreads don’t do well at high temperatures. So I figured I had to use it in a recipe where it does not cook that much.
So looking at my pile of pans, I saw this ebelskiver pan I bought a while ago when I worked for that family with two kids…they loved those little balls (all kids do) with raspberry stuffed in the middle. If you have kids, they will go crazy for those ones. Ebelskivers are Danish (Dutch too have their own version), they look like round donuts but are not fried, they’re filled with all kinds of things, raspberries, jam, cheese, etc… I filled half of those with Nutella and half with blackberry jam, so if you are a Nutella fan, you will love those. I don’t think I need to give you a description on how delicious they are when Nutella melts in the heart of those cute little balls. It’s easy to imagine.
Usually I stick to French and Italian cuisines since I grew up with those and I don’t adventure myself in Dutch or Scandinavian cuisine or other ones I have not been exposed to. I think to understand a cuisine, it’s important to understand its culture, its country, its traditions. Those ebelskivers are an exception to the rule, because they are something in between donuts and pancakes and that I grew up eating bignè. The batter is close to a pancake batter with some slight changes.
The little trick is that you need a specific pan…but that pan is available in many US stores, so no this is not a fancy pan I brought back from Europe, I bought mine at Bed, Bath and Beyond.
Ingredients for 12 ebelskivers
- 4.23 oz (or 120 g) flour
- 1 tsp palm sugar (or other raw sugar)
- 1 egg
- 5.74 fl oz (or 170 ml) milk
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 0.50 oz (or 15 ml) oil
- vanilla powder
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Preparation
In a mixing bowl, mix flour and baking powder together. In another bowl, beat egg yolk and sugar vigorously, then add milk and beat until the mixture gets smooth. Add vanilla beans and powder. Add oil. Mix well. Add gradually the egg/milk mixture to the flour, stirring constantly until you get a smooth batter. Beat egg white until it get stiff, then incorporate to the mixture.
Heat the ebelskiver pan, greasing each hole with very little oil. Pour some batter in each hole. Do not fill the whole to the top since the ebelskivers tend to rise. When the batter has risen up to the top of the hole, check the bottom to see if the ebelskiver has turned golden brown. At this point, add whatever you want in the middle. You can add a piece of fruit (I love them with a raspberry), some jam, nutella, etc…Then using two bamboo sticks, turn each ebelskiver on the other side. To make sure they’re cooked, stick a stick inside and remove to see if the batter adheres to the side of the stick. If so, decrease heat and continue cooking and checking color and making sure they don’t burn.
Remove from pan, sprinkle with powder sugar and serve hot.
