November 05, 2004
The Very Best Tarte Tatin Recipe
Speaking of Gourmet Magazine, they did a fabulous edition in March 2001 focused on the "insider secrets" to Paris. They asked local, long time residents to divulge their favourite places, shops, restaurants, and things to do. There were articles on up-coming neighbourhoods and great pieces on Picasso's Paris, recreations of dinner's past. Since I was on my way to Paris, it was such a rich compendium of timely information that I had no choice but to pinch it from United's SFO lounge just minutes before the boarding call sounded. No moral quandaries there.
It turned out that this particular edition would prove specially significant to me. You see, for my 30th birthday, which was in March of that year, Toby took me on a surprise trip to Paris. (Yes, I know that he has let the entire male side down for setting such a dangerous precedent. Too bad.) But what made the trip even better was that he managed to convince about eight of our friends from Canada, the US and Europe to join the celebration! It was truly magical. In fact, so enraptured we were with the city, we started window-shopping for real estate and said out-loud to the universe that we'd love to live in Paris one day. Well, as fortune would have it, the universe worked much faster than we expected: just six months later, serendipity struck, and we had moved lock, stock and barrel to the City of Light, Love and of course Food!
(Not our picture -- I'd never use doilies to plate anything -- but some random googled item that looked about right. Thanks for that.)
This magazine of course came with us in the move, and served my explorations and orientation to Parisian delights well. It then languished for a bit in my magazine pile until Toby's wonderful aunt Gill rediscovered it while visiting us. In particular, she found this fantastic recipe for Tarte Tatin, a classic French apple dish, which is hard to do well. Even in restaurants here it's often this sickly, insipid mush and not worth the calories.
However, the accompanying article demystified all of this, explaining the "dos" and "don't's" of the process. So armed with this knowledge, Gill and I tried our hand at this one night. Needless to say, it turned out remarkably well. After successfully inverting the creation from our cast-iron pan -- always a moment of truth -- we were delighted to find the apples perfectly caramelized and not too mushy, and the pastry flaky. I have since replicated this several times, both at home and on the road in strange kitchens. Gill has reported one semi-success, mainly because she didn't cook the apples on the stove top long enough to get the caramelization going (a key trick!) We both subsitute normal, home-made tarte pastry for the puff pastry. I have also used more apples than what they call for, sometimes as many as ten, which means it's good to have a voluntary kitchen slave around to do the dirty work (e.g. peeling the many apples) for you!
So, if you are pining for one of the best apple desserts around, try this recipe and you'll get good results!
TARTE TATIN (from Gourmet March 2001)
Serves 8
Active time: 30 min
Start to finish: 1 1/4 hr
Ingredients
1 frozen puff pastry sheet (from a 17 1/4-oz package), thawed
1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
7 to 9 Gala apples (3 to 4 lb), peeled, quartered lengthwise, and cored
Special equipment: a well-seasoned 10-inch cast-iron skillet
Instructions
Preheat oven to 425°F.
Roll pastry sheet into a 101/2-inch square on a floured work surface with a floured rolling pin. Brush off excess flour and cut out a 10-inch round with a sharp knife, using a plate as a guide. Transfer round to a baking sheet and chill.
Roll pastry sheet into a 101/2-inch square on a floured work surface with a floured rolling pin. Brush off excess flour and cut out a 10-inch round with a sharp knife, using a plate as a guide. Transfer round to a baking sheet and chill.
Spread butter thickly on bottom and side of skillet and pour sugar evenly over bottom. Arrange as many apples as will fit vertically on sugar, packing them tightly in concentric circles . Apples will stick up above rim of skillet.
Cook apples over moderately high heat, undisturbed, until juices are deep golden and bubbling, 18 to 25 minutes. (Don't worry if juices color unevenly.)
Put skillet in middle of oven over a piece of foil to catch any drips. Bake 20 minutes (apples will settle slightly), then remove from oven and lay pastry round over apples.
Bake tart until pastry is browned, 20 to 25 minutes. Transfer skillet to a rack and cool at least 10 minutes.
Just before serving, invert a platter with lip over skillet and, using potholders to hold skillet and plate tightly together, invert tart onto platter. Replace any apples that stick to skillet. (Don't worry if there are black spots; they won't affect the flavor of the tart.) Brush any excess caramel from skillet over apples. Serve immediately.
Cooks' note: Tart can cool in skillet up to 30 minutes. It can also stand, uncovered, up to 5 hours, then be heated over moderately low heat 1 to 2 minutes to loosen caramel. Shake skillet gently to loosen tart before inverting.
- Nicole
November 03, 2004
Gourmet Cookbook: 60 Year Anniversary Edition
There is a wonderful radio interview on NPR's Fresh Air with Ruth Reichl, editor-in-chief of Gourmet Magazine. (October 5, 2004) It's about the newly issued, The Gourmet Cookbook, which "includes more than 1,200 recipes culled from 60 years of the magazine's back issues." As Reichl notes, Gourmet Magazine spans an incredible band of time when America transitioned from being an agricultural based society to the present post-industrial environment. This makes this book part anthropological study of how food in America has evolved since the 40s. (Also read her article on the Epicurious website.) Sounds like a worthy member of any cookbook collection. Xmas pressie anyone?
- Nicole
Thai Coconut Cream of Spinach
We had another south-east Asian dinner party the other day, hungry as we were for the soul-warming tastes from this part of the world. We were long due for this reprise. But the occasion was also an excuse for a féte to introduce new friends, especially a couple, journalist Elisabeth Eaves and her diplomat boyfriend Leslie who are newly arrived to Paris. The timing was doubly good since this also coincided on the eve of Canadian Thanksgiving, an event we've often neglected being so far away from our native land, but nonetheless a lovely and important time in that it acknowledges the bounties of the harvest season, something which all of us regardless of culture and country can celebrate.
We served a mixture of Indonesian, Malaysian, and Thai dishes. The Indonesian dish, always a crowd pleaser -- and now a speciality of Toby's -- was a tangy Beef Redang which we slow cooked in an unbeatable gravy of coconut milk, lemon grass, fresh red chilies, tamarind juice, ginger and garlic. The best recipe we've found is in Sri Owen's Classic Asian Cookbook, the "Beef Rendang Dry Fried" version.
Other dishes included a Rujak, a Malaysian spicy fruit salad and a Steamed Acorn Squash with Onion Malay Jam, a recipeI snipped from a cooking magazine which featured dishes that travelled with their Malay traders to places like Sri Lanka and South Africa, where they use pumpkin instead. This was also an homage to our unconventional Thanksgiving dinner.
I served two of my own adaptations as well. A stir fry of Eggplant, Dried Shitaki Chinese Mushrooms, and Red Peppers flavoured with fresh red chilies, ginger, and kecap manis -- an Indonesian sweet, viscous soy sauce that has a wonderful taste. However, the recipe my friend Pamela asked for was my adaptation of a Thai Coconut Cream of Spinach garnished with hard-boil eggs, cilantro, and crispy garlic chips, a dish I once had in a small village north of Chiang Rai, cooked for me by the mother of my driver back when I was still living in Singapore and often visiting Thailand for business. Here is the recipe, which I had to improvise, straining to re-create and remember many years later. Regardless of its authenticity, it's very tasty and a good vegetarian dish to offer guests .
Ingredients
- 1 medium onion or 3-4 shallots
- 3-4 cloves of garlic
- A large handful of cilantro
- 3-4 tablespoons of fresh ginger grated
- 4-6 tablespoons of Red Thai Curry Paste
- 1 stalk of lemon grass (optional)
- Pinch of salt
- 4-6 cups Frozen Spinach, or double that if using fresh spinach
- 1 can of Coconut Cream or Extrait de Coco de Lait. (Regular coconut will suffice but it's not as tasty.)
To Garnish- 4 hard boiled eggs**
- Chopped Cilantro
- Juice of 1 lime to taste
- 20+ Thin slices of garlic fried golden
* In Paris, you can get these at the wonderful Tang Freres in the 13th or in the Asian super-marches in Belville.
** To cook perfect hard-boil eggs -- vibrantly golden, moist, and not overcooked with green rings around the edges -- we use Alice Water's fail-safe technique: Bring some water to a vigorous boil, and then immerse the eggs using a slotted spoon, cooking them for no more than 8 minutes. Make sure to put the timer on! Then cool them under running cold water or in an iced plunge bath.
Process
If you have a blender, make into a paste the first ingredients: onion, garlic, ginger, cilantro, curry paste, lemon grass. To blend smoothly, just add a few tablespoons of water and oil. The blender really works the best consistency-wise. However, if you don't have a blender, finely chop the ingredients or use a mortar and pestal, which is the traditional way -- what I saw the mother of my driver do on the floor of her outdoor kitchen -- but this is harder work!
The next step is to fry the paste or chopped ingredients in a heavy saucepan in a few tablespoons of vegetable oil until soft. Add the spinach. I just put it in frozen because I can't be bothered to defrost it before hand, but it will be faster if already thawed and drained.
As things cook, stir the spinach and blend with spice mixture as it thaws and releases water. This can take 15-20 minutes if frozen. After it has thawed and mixed well, add the coconut milk and blend until smooth. Cook for an extra 10-15 minutes. Taste for seasoning and serve in a nice bowl.
Before serving, stir in the lime juice. To garnish, cut the hard boiled eggs in half and place on top of the spinach with a handful of cilantro and slivers of red pepper or fresh red chili peppers and the garlic chips.
- Nicole
Welcome to Table Notes
Definition of Community: Middle English communite, citizenry, from Old French, from Latin commnits, fellowship, from commnis, common.]
Welcome to Table Notes, the foodblog of Nicole-Anne Boyer and Toby Paterson and friends. (We hope to add contributers so let us know if you are interested!)
After years living and working in different ports of call -- Singapore, San Francisco, Vancouver, BC and now currently Paris, France -- we've learned that the best way to form community is around a dinner table. Flowing wine, beautiful food, lots of laughter, and great stories is all that it takes to reaffirm old connections and make new ones: the recipe for the good life so simple, a much needed respite from a increasingly complex world.
In following our culinary bliss, we've collected lots of good things to cook from different people, cultures and cities which serendipitiously have turned out to be fabulous eating places. The success of food blogs has now inspired us to create a virtual meeting place where good memories, recipes, and handy cooking tips can be shared amongst our friends, family, and with other kindred foodies. No more need to write down the recipe because it will all be here! Indeed, one of the most attractive things about food blogs is the connectivity they're creating between food lovers, whether they be many time zones away or within the same city. We look forward to being part of this growing community. Happy eating!
- Nic and Toby
