Fig Fest 2009

Every year around this time I stage my own mini Figapalooza. I don’t know why I feel my private fruit festival should be named after the kind of musical event I never even close to attended. (I once took a Megadeath loving boyfriend to see Boris Godunov, and in college I drank little bottles of gold-flecked Jägermeister instead of beer at a Phish concert, which I think tells you something about my knowledge of rock concert etiquette.)

Back to my figs. Truly, I have never found anything more perfect to do with a fresh fig than eat it straight out of the paper bag on the way back from the market. But they can’t all go that way. So they end up gracing salads, garnishing deserts, placed on coffee saucers like bon bons – anywhere I can stick a fig – a fig is stuck.

This kind of raw consumption is handy for the quickie lunches I’ve been making lately – particularly autumn salads. While juggling baby, visiting parents, marketing brainstorms and a new book proposal, I’m trying desperately to preserve the French tradition of eating real meals. A big beautiful salad is my best solution. This month, heads of red Bibb lettuce, tart apples, pine nuts, goat cheese toasts, hard boiled eggs, pesto chicken breast, and dill-tossed avocados have all made their way into the shallow, bone china bowl I prefer. I keep meaning to buy chicken livers (figs and liver, yum). All to be topped, bien sur with slices of deep purple fig. It’s sometimes the only civilized thing I manage to do for myself all day. (That, and a quick sneak into the bathtub while Augustin is napping.

Our new friend Amanda came for dinner on Sunday night. Whenever she visits from NY, she is my junk food fairy - this trip, she came bearing candy dots - the tiny kind stuck to the paper strip. My mother once sent me a care package at boarding school with a whole roll of these. My RA was impressed. My mother must be very cool to send candy laced with LSD. (How was I to know? My knowledge of drug etiquette is right up there with the rock concerts).

When Augustin was born, Amanda sent over an Obama onesie. Fist raised, he is clearly a supporter. We waited until just before she arrived to put it on - enough people having been shitting on the president this month, no reason for our son to add to the pile.

I made rabbit with hard cider and honey and a celery root mash. For dessert, slices of fresh figs dressed up these spicy chocolate pots. I used my basic chocolate custard (a riff on Nigella Lawson - my favorite high sass/low maintenance hausfrau), but I wanted a bit of a kick, so I infused the milk with a teaspoon of Raz el Hanout - a melange of spices used in North African cooking. The result was a rich chocolate cream with a hint of pepper, cardamon and clove. Served in espresso cups with tiny silver spoons (thank you, mother), it was an elegant dessert with a minimum of fuss.

The Basics of Fig Fest Autumn Salad

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 ½ teaspoons balsamic vinegar
Good pinch of coarse sea salt

2 good handfuls of red Bibb lettuce, washed and dried
1 or 2 fresh figs, skin on, cut into quarters or eights

Add the ingredients for the vinaigrette to the bottom of a large salad bowl. Whisk together with a fork. Toss the salad to coat. Transfer the dressed salad to a clean plate or shallow bowl. (Do yourself a favor, don’t get lazy and eat out of the mixing bowl. You are not a piglet, you are a person – and pretty presentation will make your day better.) Top with a layer of fresh figs and any of the ingredients below. Enjoy!

1 avocado, sliced and tossed with fresh dill and a bit more balsamic vinegar
1 chicken breast, tossed with good quality pesto sauce, a sprinkle of pine nuts and slices of tart apple
Slices of soft goat cheese (on their own or laid on a thin piece of sourdough bread and grilled under the broiler)
2 hard boiled eggs, sliced, topped with fresh dill or chervil
3-4 chicken livers, quickly seared in olive oil (I know this kills the no dirty pots idea – but it’s only one tiny frying pan…)

Serves 1

Spicy Chocolate Pots with Fresh Figs

6 oz. best quality dark chocolate (70% - I use Valrhona or Green & Black’s), chopped
½ cup heavy cream
½ cup whole milk
1 teaspoon best quality raz el hanout (available in specialty shops and Middle Eastern groceries)
1 coffee filter
1 egg

1 or 2 fresh figs, quartered

Put the raz el hanout in a coffee filter and staple it shut. Heat the milk, cream and raz-el-hanout to just below boiling, then turn off the heat an leave to infuse for a few minutes. Remove the coffee filter, reheat the milk to just below boiling; add the chocolate, stir to combine.

In a small bowl, lightly beat the egg with a fork. Pour into the chocolate mixture and whisk immediately until combined. Fill 6 espresso cups, chill for a few hours of overnight. Remove from the fridge 10 or 15 minutes before serving. Serve with a tiny silver spoon and a few slices of fresh figs on the saucer.

Serves 6

Pastry on the Brain

It’s been a doughy two weeks in Paris – much pastry, French and Algerian, professional and homemade.

I made my first without-baby outing when Augustin was 3 weeks old (forgot the pictures – bad mommy), to go to, of all things, a board meeting of the Cornell Club of Paris. As luck would have it, I was sitting next to a new arrival – a tall, blond, half-Swedish pastry chef (sorry gents, she’s engaged to a lovely Frenchman). She is working at Dessirier, a brasserie in the 17th. She began describing their Baba au Rhum, served with poached dried fruit – which sounds worth a trip in itself. She sounded slightly frustrated by having to make French classics all day, but I’m hoping to scam a lesson in how to make proper crème patissiere.

My next post baby outing was to meet Bob, fellow foodie and blogger (Bobby Jay on Food)– at Le Bague de Kenza, the best Algerian bakery in Paris. (The pyramids of pastries and marizpan above are their creations. Bob arrived with a doudou (that’s French for baby blankie) for Augustin, and an exquisite little sachet of pates de fruits for me. I am still shocked when I eat these delicate candies - they taste like (and are made with) actual fruit. I grew up as a sincere lover of Chuckles, Sunkist fruit gels, fruit rollups and Jujubees; who can resist a new friend bearing classy fruit chews?

We ordered a sampling of pastries and went through two pots of sweet mint tea – enough sugar for a diabetic coma. La Bague de Kenza has a cookbook – we sampled the pastry on the cover – called a Bourse de Kenza, which looks like a little sack of gold, tied with a string and stuffed with honey soaked almonds with a touch of orange flower water.
I was editing the galleys for my book this week, so this is my last chance to tweak any recipes before Lunch in Paris is published in February 2010. I’ve been retesting my chouquettes; the simple things are always the trickiest to transcribe. Chouquettes – essentially empty cream-puffs sprinkled with small pebbles of white sugar – were my first and most beloved Parisian breakfast. When I started coming to Paris for the weekend (10 years ago, OMG) G. would go hunting in the morning, while I was still face down on the pillow. He would return with a small wax paper bag, crimped at the edges. Inside were perfectly puffed chouquettes – chewy on the outside, hollow in the center – like biting into a sweet breeze. I’ve been playing with the salt in my recipe. I’m having trouble with the conversion between coarse and fine grain sea salt. I think it’s perfect now. At least for my palette.


My third pastry encounter this past week was slightly more disconcerting. Let me say this: I’m never wearing an Empire waist dress ever again. I was walking down the street and a homeless man called me fat. That’s right. Up til now, I’ve been feeling pretty good about the post-natal pounds. I’m back in my regular jeans (not my tiniest pair, but hey, it’s only been 5 weeks). The dress in question is not even a maternity dress, just a DKNY black wool number that gathers under the bust. When you are twenty, this sort of outfit makes look like you are filming a Jane Austin movie, at 35, apparently, all it says is “soon-to-be-breastfeeding”.

It happened like this: It was 6:30 pm, I was on my way to a meeting, and I hadn’t eaten all day, so I grabbed something from the boulangerie and ate it right out of the little square of paper while I was walking down to the metro at Republique. As I was crossing the street, the homeless man who stands by the bank machine muttered “Attention aux kilos” – Pay attention to your pounds. I turned around in disbelief (I could have gotten hit by a car, by the way), and there he was on the curb, shaking his finger at me. Maybe I was asking for it, as the French never eat and walk at the same time, and it was 6:30pm, so clearly I was spoiling the sacred French ritual of dinner with my forbidden pastry. But only in Paris do people feel morally obliged to mention this stuff to you on the street.

When I got to the party, three well-meaning older women asked me if I was pregnant. The dress is going in the garbage.

My Beloved Chouquettes

Adapted from LeNôtre: Faîtes votre pâtisserie (Flammarion, 1975)

Chouquettes in Paris are dotted with small pebbles of white sugar called sucre perlé; you can get the same effect at home with a last minute dusting of powdered sugar.

½ cup whole milk
½ cup water
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, diced
¾ teaspoon coarse sea salt (or 1 scant teaspoon fine sea salt)
1 ¼ teaspoon sugar
1 cup flour
4 eggs (total weight of approximately 250 grams or 9 oz.)
¼ cup powdered sugar

Additional powered sugar for decoration

Preheat the oven to 425 °F.

In a heavy bottomed saucepan, over low heat, combine milk, water, butter, sugar and salt. Bring just to a boil, turn off the heat and add the flour while stirring continuously, until flour is incorporated and the dough comes away from the sides of the pan. It will look like a lump of marzipan.

Quickly add two eggs and stir to incorporate.

Quickly incorporate the remaining 2 eggs, stir until smooth. The batter will be thick and sticky. It can be refrigerated for up to a day.

Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper. Using two teaspoons, dole out heaping dollops of batter, widely spaced. You should have about 24. (If you have space in your freezer, you can freeze the individual puffs at this point. I wouldn’t recommend freezing and thawing a big lump of batter.)

Bake one sheet at a time. Before you put them in the oven, sprinkle each puff generously with powdered sugar. No need to break up the lumps in the sugar, it's actually better if some of it doesn't melt.

If baking immediately: Bake for 12 minutes at 425°F. Then turn down the heat to 400, and bake for 12 minutes more with oven door slightly ajar (I stick a wooden spoon in the door to hold it open just a crack.)

If baking straight from the fridge: 15 minutes at 425°F, 12 minutes at 400°F with door ajar.

If baking from the freezer: 17 minutes at 425°F, 12 minutes at 400°F with door ajar.

You’ll want to watch them the first time, every oven is different. Grab one out of the oven to taste if you like (I always do). They should be fully puffed and highly colored – don’t worry if the sugar caramelizes on top or underneath.

Eat right out of the oven or cool on a wire rack. If you like, dust with powdered sugar just before serving.

Makes approximately 24 chouquettes

Late Bloomers

September is my favorite month at the market – everything seems to converge – peaches are still sun-warmed and juicy, tomatoes are at their round and ruby peak, and the marble-size mirabelle plums are making their first appearance – as are the Muscat grapes – so purple they are almost black – hanging in perfectly Dionysian bunches at the market stands.

I found another end of summer treat when Augustin and I made our first BabyBjorn outing to the Saturday market – I was just in time to catch the last zucchini flowers. I discovered these large, bright yellow blossoms the summer of my wedding – like so many sun-soaked things, we must have eaten them for the first time in Italy, stuffed with ricotta; then I came home to Paris and recreated something similar with local ingredients. I stuff my zucchini flowers with fresh goat cheese and a bit of chopped mint, then roll them in a slick of olive oil and bake them in a medium oven. No one would call the flavor of zucchini “intense”, but somehow the flowers retain all the garden-y aroma without releasing the water that often makes zucchini such a bland and troublesome ingredient.

Augustin was three weeks old on Friday, and people seem to be waiting for us to throw him out the window. Why do people take such pleasure in telling you their child horror stories? Before I got pregnant, young mothers came up to me at parties, and seeing I had no toddler on my hip, said sardonically: “Enjoy it while you can.” When I was pregnant, everyone said, “Enjoy yourself – you’ll never sleep or go to the movies again.” Now, when we say the first few weeks are going well, everyone comes back at us with “Enjoy it now, it gets much harder.”

Is this some kind of hazing ritual, like the mythical sorority sisters who circle your cellulite with a permanent marker? Do you have to be miserable to join the cult of parenthood? Non-parent friends seem equally mystified: “Aren’t you supposed to be tired?” Granted, G. goes back to work tomorrow – so I haven’t yet had the experience of going it alone. True, we’ve had fun feathering the nest together. So maybe I’ll be miserable tomorrow. I’ll get back to you.

Frankly, Mommyville thus far hasn’t been quite the ordeal I imagined it might be. As usual, in my overthinking way, the anticipation was more grueling that the reality could ever be. During my pregnancy, I was unsure about many things. Did I have the requisite patience, or selflessness, to be a good parent? How could I possibly love someone I’d never met? Until the moment he was born, there was part of me that was going through the motions – preparing a room for a very honored houseguest – albeit one who was likely to overstay his welcome by a good 18 years. But now that he’s here, it seems the most natural thing in the world. He’s mine. And it feels like he’s been here forever. It’s true what they say about the sour milky smell of his hair and the weight of tiny body, lost in sleep on my shoulder. Something is blooming.

Zucchini Flowers Stuffed with Goat Cheese and Fresh Mint

12 zucchini flowers
3 oz fresh goat cheese
1 egg
Salt and pepper to taste
2 packed teaspoons of chopped fresh mint
Extra virgin olive oil

Preheat oven to 350˚

Lightly beat the egg, crumble in the goat cheese, mash together with a fork. Add salt, pepper and mint.

Stuff the flowers with a small amount of cheese mixture, no need to take out the stamen. Twist to close.

Cover a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Pour a small amount of olive oil onto the sheet and spread it around with your fingers. Roll the stuffed flowers through the oil until lightly coated.

Bake for 12-15 minutes until lightly browned and fragrant.

Serves 2 as an appetizer or part of a light dinner

The sushi at the end of the tunnel

This week has been a fiesta of forbidden foods. Every single thing I couldn’t eat during my pregnancy has been paraded, with great ceremony, through our kitchen: raw milk cheeses, jambon cru, saucisses seche, foie gras – and of course, the sushi. After the scary fish loaf at the hospital I was longing for my post-natal sushi with the eagerness of 12 year old awaiting her first kiss. At the sight of the plastic take-out container, dainty was thrown aside, I was transformed into a ravenous polar bear – I could have ripped the raw fish from the bones myself and chomped down every morsel, blood and guts dripping from my jaws. As it was, I made due with chopsticks – very convenient for eating with one hand (while cradling a baby in the other), which I seem to be doing a lot of at the moment.

Nigella Lawson has this incredibly tacky but morbidly fascinating passage in her cookbook, Feast, where she describes finding a page on the website of the Texas Department of Corrections, listing convicts’ last meal requests (a lot of fried chicken and ice cream). All I could think of as I bit into the coral folds of raw salmon: if this is the last thing I put in my mouth on God’s green earth – well, that’s just fine with me.

Fish loaf aside, the hospital was a very good experience. The next time I feel like ranting and raving about France, I need to remember my 6 days in the maternity ward, in a single room (a whopping 367 Euros extra on our private insurance), with a team of smiley and incredibly competent midwives and nurses encouraging us all the way. I came home and immediately called my American mommy friends to find out how they survived when they were turned out of the hospital 48 or even 72 hours after childbirth. Now I know why American parents read so many baby books – to prepare themselves for the deep end.

Augustin was the star of the market this week – greeted with shouts and coos by the fishmonger, the melon man (he was certain from day one it was a boy), and of course the cheese lady. Our cheesemonger, a bleach blond granny with a fondness for pink parkas, was among the first to know I was pregnant. One Saturday in early December I came up to the stand and said. “I have a friend coming for dinner tonight. She’s pregnant and can’t eat raw milk cheese.” She sold me some Comte, and a surprisingly good Saint Nectaire made from pasteurized milk. Then I came back the next Saturday with the same lame excuse. She looked at me and nodded knowingly. Clearly, she had seen this look on the faces of a thousand women – women who were about to be deprived of creamy spoonfuls of Mont d’Or at Christmas dinner and the violet veins of Roquefort for 9 months. She didn’t confront me directly, but complicity was clear: the cheese lady and I had no secrets.

So it was with joy in my heart that I loaded up on Domaine de Bresse – a mild blue cheese made with goat’s milk and a Montbriac – already oozing from its ashy crust. Next I headed for the stand from Auvergne – and asked them to slice an entire saucisse seche – a dry but slightly chewy sausage – that I could now nibble – gasp - with an actual glass of wine. There is something about the mellow saltiness of smoked pork (the pickled tang of the giant capers I ate throughout my pregnancy was no substitute). I couldn’t wait. I plucked a red, fat speckled round right off the scale.

Friends have been coming round to meet the baby – and unwittingly contributing to my forbidden feast. Katherine and Sylvestre – two kids ahead of us – returned from their trip to the Dordogne with a jar of foie gras and a bottle of Montbazillac for a very adult picnic. We toasted to Augustin’s health, and I secretly toasted my return to the land of all things raw and yummy.