by popular demand: trota alla Piemontese

If you've been following us on our FaceBook page, you'll know we've started something of a winter ritual: Champagne Sunday Lunch.  Though I'm not sure it needs to be confined to only the winter.  What about spring?  Summer?  Autumn?  Not only does it have a lovely ring to it, it does definitely help get us through the remainder of the winter doldrums, that post holiday lassitude that is tied to the still short days that quickly grow so dark in the afternoon.  I imagine it will help get us through our fifth season: Mud, and once we hit April and and the farm is back in full swing, we'll need something to  buoy our weary bones. Funny how Champagne does that. 

It is one of the many reasons we love Champagne, and I should specify here  "grower Champagne" or "farmer fizz", the stuff grown and cared for by the producer him or herself, the grower ushering three hundred and sixty-five days of a landscape into a bottle.  No Big House sparkle all about consistency from vintage to vintage here.  We're looking for the differences in vintage, the idiosyncracies, the story.


We also love Sunday Lunch.  It is our Friday (since our "weekend" occurs on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday), the end of our restaurant work week and we generally don't need to be in to the restaurant quite so early in the afternoon, so it allows us to linger at home for a little bit longer.   Sunday Lunch conjurs long mid-day meals with family and friends, homely, tasty food, balast for body and soul for the ensuing fretwork of days to come.  


For our first Champagne Sunday Lunch of 2012, we prepared a dish from the Piemonte, pan-roasted trout with raisins, rosemary, sage, and Balsamic.  We were experimenting with dishes to serve at our upcoming wine tasting dinner with Gian Carlo Nada in February.  The Ada Nada vineyard specializes in Barabaresco and we were trying this trout with their 2006 single vineyard Valeirano.  The dish itself proved to be a worthy companion to the '06, layers of flavor, direct yet searching to meet each other and the palate.  Soul food.  

We've adapted a recipe we found in our library from Italian Regional Cooking by Lotte Mendelsohn with origanal recipes from Bea Lazarro.

For two.  Soak a quarter cup of raisins in warm water.  Chop one stalk of celery, an onion, and a couple of cloves of garlic.  Pour a few glugs of good olive oil to well coat a cast iron skillet and add the vegetables.  Season well with salt and pepper.  (When Italians cook they use a lot of olive oil, so don't be shy.  It is often the secret to the silkiness of their dishes.)  Braise. 

Season well a whole fresh trout, then add the fish to the skillet setting it on top of the soft vegetables. (We filleted the fish first and rested it on top of the braise as if it were still whole).

Sprinkle about a tablespoon of good Balsamic vinegar over the fish, add the drained, plumped raisins, about 2 teaspoons of grated lemon rind, and a couple sprigs each of bruised sage and rosemary. Cook for about 5 minutes on side, then turn the fish and cook for about another 4, or until just done.   

Remove the fish to a platter and cover to keep warm.  Add a little butter and/or olive oil  to the braised vegetables (enough to make the vegetables "saucy" along with the pan juices) and cook down until a nice consistency (this will be a light sauce).  Pour over the warm fish and sit down with a glass of L. Aubrey et Fils Premier Cru Brut NV, or AdaNada Barbaresco Valeirano '06. 

That's what we did. 


-Deirdre

holiday dish redux

We thought to post photos of our favorite meals of 2011, but realized there were enough pix to make a book!  So instead, we'll post some of our favorite dishes of the holiday season.  Everything from classic French souffles to zucchini and lemon pasta to good ole soup and sandwiches....

  Buon anno e buon appetito!
--Deirdre & Caleb

tablescape

As we approach the new year, and we think about setting the table to herald 2012, we look back at a few of our favorite tablescapes from this past year.  La garagista-style.  In this case, a picture seems to be worth more than a thousand of our words....



Here's to sitting down at the table.  Happy New Year!

--Deirdre and Caleb

secret gardens

1.: jardin lapin ouvrier, 14th arrondisement

I've always thought of Paris as a green city, meaning there are so many groomed parks with wide lawns and varied borders and little landscaped niches everywhere.  There are allées with arching lime trees and graveled walks. In some parks there is an extravagance of roses, a profusion of asters, or an horitcultural biodiversity.  Not only is this a city of architecturual beauty and grandeur, but one of landscape architecture elegance and grace.

I was in a shop in Montreal.  On the shelf was a little book called Secret Paris.  Knowing I would be in that city in just a few weeks, I flipped through the pages.  The booked opened to a section about Paris gardens.  Not just the beautiful gardens we already knew about in the Luxembourg, or Bois de Bologne, or the King's herb garden at the Jardins des Plantes, or at Rodin's museum.  But social, communal, working neighborhood gardens.  Part of our quest in the city this visit has been to wander through the arrondisements and find these little gems.  Our map has been laid out by www.jardinons-ensemble.org.

-Deirdre

looking for the real BoJo

La Cave des Papilles is on the rue Daguerre, a lively pedestrian street full of cheesemongers, butchers, fishmongers, bakeries, traiteurs, and vegetable shops.  It holds down a corner of Daguerre and a street called Lalande, and is probably one of the most thrilling wine shops I've ever been in.   Bottles upon bottles of wines made by small producers, young and old, men and women, who make their wines in small quantities and hold themselves to both traditional and honest standards.  There are pots of pâté and foie gras, handmade jams from a farm in the south.  There is a tasting on offer tonight, and for that there are beautiful baguettes and a rather impressive loaf of country pâté  as well as a bowl full of rillettes.  Six bottles for the tasting are lined up.  

It's the third Thursday in November, which means that the newest of the new wine from this year's vintage in Beaujolais will be released.  Here in Paris, there is a typical excitement, though excitement might be too strong a word, maybe more of a typical expectation.  It is the day the Beaujolais Nouveau will arrive and it's the same day it's been arriving for the last thirty years, and it's a good day to find cause for celebration.  Café bars and little bistros all over the city have planned tastings.  Most begin at five o'clock in the evening and go till nine or ten, some will go on late into the evening.  Many will be pouring Beaujolais Nouveau from George DuBoeuf, but others will be pouring something a little different.

Beaujolais Nouveau (referred to as BoJo here in the city) has a slightly less than savory reputation.  People seem to like the idea of it, but not really like "it". The wine is so young and so many of the industrialized brands use chaptalization (adding sugar for fermentation purposes when the natural sugar content is low and to back sweeten), designer yeasts (there is a little bit of an "in" French joke going around right now in the wine community about a yeast used to create a slightly banana flavor fro BoJo.  "Want to see my banana?" and all that...), and a heady dose of sulfite to stop fermentation and stabilize.  As a result, what is supposed to be a particularly authentic wine, a real experience of wine ready to drink so close to the end of harvest has become commercially and chemically changed, or like the French word, derangé, deranged.

I've never had real BoJo and have been particularly interested in searching it out as I see so many similarities between the Marquette growing in so many vineyards in Vermont and the Gamay grape.  For the past two years, after our own harvest, our young red wine has been fresh, lively, fruity, and well, rather lovely.  Couldn't we have our own Nouveau tradition? The quest, as there must always be a quest, has been to find true Beaujolais Nouveau in a sea of imposters.

It doesn't take long to find the venue for which I'm looking: La Cave des Papilles (that would be The Cellar of the Tastebuds) which specializes in natural wines.  They are having this tasting of several producers of BoJo as well as a Nouveau from the Loire and 

Côtes de Rhône for comparitive puproses.  They started opening bottles at eleven in the morning.  We think to arrive at around six in the evening.  Music starts at seven.

The tasting itself is everything from educational to intriquing.  The wines, which come from various parts of Beaujolais, have similarities but also strong differences.  The wines are light by nature with fruit and excellent acidity.  They have a yeasty almost nutty element to them.  They vary in texture, some being more ethereal and others almost weighty.  They are curated perfectly, moving from the lightest style to the richest--though rich is never really a word to use with BoJo.  Hints of cherry, tar, iron, and something a little sauvage. The producers shown: Karim Vionnet, Jean-Claude Lapalu, Raphael Champier, Michel Guigner, Christian Ducroux, the Paire family of Domaine de Pothiers (the Loire offering), and Marcel and Marie Marchaud (Côtes de Rhône), all farm organically or biodynamically and believe the less intervention in the cellar the better.  All the wines were fermented on wild yeast, no chaptalization, and little or no sulfite at bottling. 

At six in the evening, there are a handful of gentlemen in the shop discussing how to place these Beaujolais Nouveau in relation to the ubiquitous M. DuBoeuf's selection.  By seven, it is tight standing room only, and a lot of people move out on the street corner with glasses and bottles in hand.  The music, a kind of Klezmer jazz mix-up reminiscent of Dixie bands in New Orleans holds court out on the street.  We meet a Canadian chemistry professor well-familiar with La Cave and in the city teaching for the month.  His brother-in-law lives in Vermont.  We spent the evening talking about Paris, economics, wine, and the woes of the world, the woes greatly tempered by how the wines charm us, and the rousing tunes.

On the street, a series of images pass like a film using the lens of this new wine.  This is why there are people crowded here on the corner--because of the Beaujolais Nouveau.  To celebrate something not quite tangible, to feel--while in this city--the rhythms of harvest and the countryside, to salute your neighbors.  Women walk by in skirts carrying bouquets of flowers, a dog barks in admiration for the music, a scooter buzzes by, a woman on a bike rings a bell.  An older lady hangs out her apartment window from up above.  A man in a wheelchair rolls close to the tuba player moving his head to the sound.  A man kisses a woman on both cheeks in greeting.   

--Deirdre

  

How to cook potatoes in a Paris apartment...

Or, ‘This could be the start of something good’

I love the lowly potato, and have no wish to argue semantics about ‘lowly,’ so I’ll stop there and get to the point. You know what I mean anyway, so whom are we kidding? Potatoes just can’t be beat, right? Just thinking about them makes me want to make them so that I can eat them, especially this way, pan-roasted until just ever-golden-so, with a mix of creaminess and crispiness, to put on top of a salad, alongside a leg of duck confit, or a few discreet slices of steak, or even some pickled herring or grilled sardines. You see what I mean? Potatoes! Let’s go people!

The procedure: Like most things done with potatoes, this is a simple procedure, but it requires a little attention, so just read through all the way, then go do it, no peeking back. Then do it again, and again, and again, until you are making the best damn potatoes you could hope to find right in your own kitchen. With practice, you'll know just how many potatoes to use to fit your pan. And invite friends over.

Begin with a few medium-sized potatoes, scrubbed and glowing, and slice them in half, then slice those halves crosswise into slices just thinner than a pencil. Remember pencils? Wooden sticks--with a dark substance stuck down the middle and a number ‘2’ printed on the side-- that we used to use to write clever and frobidden (new word!) notes which we would pass to our friends – or perhaps enemies—in class at school? No? Then put down that knife and go out and find a pencil to refresh your memory, then we can continue… All set now? Ok, keep that pencil close by where you can see it: potato slices no thicker than that pencil. But not too thin, for crying out loud. Keep the slices together, as if the half potato were still in one piece, and pause here to oil your skillet, which you will begin to warm at this point.

I use cast iron, unless I am making these taters in our friend Meg’s apartment in Paris, where she has this unusual skillet with a textured high-tech surface that distributes the heat just so and doesn’t scorch. And as for fat in the pan, I use extra-virgin olive oil, nothing fancy. Unless I have duck fat on hand. (After all, ducks were invented so that potatoes could be cooked in their fat. Confit is just a happy by-product.) If vegetable oil is what you have, or butter, or bacon fat or lard (I don’t want to hear any trashtalk about honest to goodness, non-hydrogenated, lard), then that is what you should use.

Whatever fat it is, use enough to cover the bottom of the pan, and don’t be too skimpy if you can help it. Now season the pan well with a few pinches of salt, and then lay in the assembled, sliced potato halves, and push them over like fallen dominoes, arranging them as needs be if you have to squeeze in the last few slices. (If you have to, just toss the last few slices on top and let them fend for themselves. If the pan isn’t full, either push out the slices to cover more of the pan, or slice another potato. They come out better, usually, if the pan is full.) A couple more pinches of salt over all, and a splash of water down the inside of the pan, then fire it over medium-high heat, lid on, and keep it at a fast simmer for about 12 to 15 minutes. The lid helps drive the heat into the middle of the potatoes faster, but once the middles are cooking, take that lid off or so that the vapor can escape and the slices can begin to get crispy on the bottom. Keep the heat at a steady but quiet simmer and cook perhaps another 10 to 15 minutes until tender all the way through when you test them with a knifepoint. When they are done, you should be able to lift out a whole serving in one piece, so that each person gets a sort of potato accordion on their plate.

(OK, here is where I have to say, in the interest of full disclosure, ‘unless…’) ...unless your skillet and/or stove make it really difficult to slowly pan roast something without scorching the bottom. In that case, put those slices of potato into a small pot of just enough water to boil them, crank up the heat, salt the water well, and boil until the slices are just barely done, or almost so, just don’t overcook them. Drain them and let cool enough so that you can transfer them to your oiled roasting skillet, tediously arranged as described above, well salted. The trouble is worth it, I promise. Finish them to crispy perfection, no lid.

Too many boiled potatoes for your pan? Well done! Store them in the fridge until tomorrow, when you will dress them in vinaigrette to go with your omelet or facsimile thereof. Oh, what pleasure from pennies, my friends, pennies! Potatoes! Let’s go people!

Why ‘in a Paris apartment?’ Because we ate these potatoes at one of my favorite places of all-time, la Tourelle, here in Paris (where I am writing this in the middle of a jet-lagged night), and where I found Meg’s pan and began making them myself, because I just didn’t want the goodness to stop.

--by Caleb

departure and arrivals

Fall has left along with its abundant cultivation and harvest.  Late autumn has arrived and the farm has been put to bed for the season.  Except for the greenhouse which thrives with buckhorn, arugula, radicchio, and escarole.  We are rich with parsely and thyme, and we are suddenly rich with that other Time as well.  We are in Paris which could be defined as a suspension of Time. 

While we have departed from our normal cares and responsibilities, we are still followed by ritual.  And I don't mean only us.  We are all followed, or even haunted by ritual, even when we have detached from our usual universe and landed ourselves somewhere foreign.  We all crave the unknown or the new, yet we yearn for what has been and what will continue to be.  The first thing Caleb and I do when we arrive in this city, for we have had the good luck to arrive here often, is buy flowers.  Paris, of course, is rich with flowers, just like we are rich with parsley and thyme.  For many, it might be ritual enough to just buy flowers, any kind of flowers.  But our ritual also involves what kind of blossoms we procure because they are always the same blossoms: ranunculus.  The only departure here might be the color of those flowers depending on the time of year and the mood.  

I've been buying ranunculus in this city for the last fifteen years, which somehow feels like a millenium.  Maybe that's because in those fifteen years we have crossed a millenium.  And I remember well the origin of this ritual, which was before the end of one millenium and the start of another. Caleb and I had come to Paris together after I had finished graduate school.  After a week, he had to return to work at the restaurant and I stayed on in the city to complete some research.  I watched him wave good-bye with bags in hand and descend down the metro stairs at the Place Voltaire.  The place suddenly opened into a wide plane full of everything and nothing.  Behind me was a flower shop.  I bought a bunch of yellow ranunculus to take back to the apartment I had taken for the month.  Ever since, every sojourn in Paris begins with a handfull of the papery double blossoms akin to both roses and anenomes.

Yesterday, we bought magenta ranunculus from one of the fleuriste on rue Cler. We departed the street with bags of chipoltalas sausages, white beans, leeks, a raw milk tomme, a bottle of wine in one hand, the cone of flowers in the other.  We have arrived.


-Deirdre