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.

I reconciled with cinnamon thanks to Rui, my lovely Japanese neighbor. I decided I didn’t like cinnamon after moving to the US, where cinnamon is used in almost every dessert. I think I had a cinnamon overdose and refused to eat anything where I could taste it. Rui, gave me half a loaf of bread she made even though she said it didn’t turn out very well and was embarrassed to give it to me. I gave her fresh yeast a few days earlier, and she used it making this bread. One thing I never told her is that I don’t eat cinnamon and that I have been on a cinnamon rebellion for years. Jamais de cannelle !!! So I politely took the bread and what else to do? since I am polite, I tasted it, even though you could smell cinnamon one kilometer away…I thought well, if I don’t like it, will I be lying and tell her, I love it, or be honest and say, I hate it? Tough call, what would you do? Polite or brutally honest?

I was lucky, it was love at first bite! What a delicious, moist, and soft bread, a pure delight for breakfast with butter and jam. Then I thought “well, for someone who doesn’t like cinnamon, I did a pretty good job finishing it”.

After that happy encounter with cinnamon, I decided to make my own bread…yes with cinnamon…actually, this bread is closer to a brioche than to what we French call bread. It has the ingredients and texture of a brioche. Now thinking about it, we do have a bread that is called “pain brioché” which is something in between a bread and a brioche, so talking about nuances and making people confused, yes the French are the masters of it.

It’s faster to make than a bread or a brioche, you don’t have to prepare it the night before, so it’s a great recipe to have in hands. Essayer c’est l’adopter! To try it is to adopt it.

Ingredients for one loaf

• 8.81 oz (or 250 g) flour
• 0.52 oz (or 15 g) yeast
• 3.7 fl oz (or 11 cl) milk
• 0.35 oz (or 10 g sugar) + 1 tbs
• 1 small egg
• 5 g salt
• 0.88 oz (or 25 g) butter
• 4 tbs raisins
• cinnamon to taste

Preparation

Dissolve yeast in 1/3 of milk. In a recipient mix milk/yeast mixture, sugar and 1/5 of the flour, mix well and let it rest for about 1 hour. Add the rest of the ingredients (except raisins, cinnamon, 1 tbs sugar) and mix well, to form an elastic dough, knead the dough for about 15 minutes.

Form a ball, and let rise for about 2 hours. Flatten the ball to form a rectangle, spread 1 tbs sugar raisins and cinnamon. Roll the dough and let it rise for another hour. Using a brush, spread some yolk on top. Cook in a pre-heated oven at 370F for about 45 minutes.

Thanks so much to everyone who shared its experience with bad hair cuts the other day, not that I felt better when looking at myself in the mirror but at least I know I am not the only one, and that I am not overly picky. It makes me feel like opening a real hair salon with talented stylists. Oh well, one of those things you cannot dwell on for too long, besides hair grows back, and in the meantime, there are always wigs!

I don’t know why but lately I have been losing weight and not eating much…I somehow lost my appetite, j‘ai perdu mon appétit! that does not prevent me from cooking but I eat with less enthusiasm.

I remember my mom preparing herring the French way with potatoes and onions in some sort of a warm salad and I loved it…Herring is very consumed in Germany and Scandinavian countries, but in Northern France too. The great thing about herring is that unlike tuna, it’s not an endangered specie, so you can eat it without any guilt.

I love dishes combining many different textures, but not too many strong flavors or it tends to be chaotic for your palate. This one is among my favorite “egg” dish, just because it has a lot of fresh and crunchy ingredients allied with smooth textures and is a full meal in itself. You don’t need to have anything else…

Its preparation si fairly simple, and does not require to spend an infinite time in the kitchen. Lately, due to my lack of appetite, I haven’t felt like spending hours in complex dishes, and I try to remain “simple”. For those of you who are in the same type of mood, I suggest you give it a try.

You can substitute smoke herring with marinated salmon, it just happened that I saw a familiar herring brand at the store, the same kind I would find in France, and I bought just to read the packaging and felt closer to home.

The herring comes just smoke, you need to marinate it in mixed herbs and olive oil for a few hours or overnight to infuse it in some aromatic scent and decrease its smokiness.

Ingredients for 2

• 2 eggs
• 2 brioche slices
• 2 smoke herring fillets (marinated in olive oil, lemon juice and mixed herbs such as dill, thyme, parsley, etc…)
• 1 red onion slice cut crosswise
• 1 carrot, shaved in ribbons
• 1 Belgian endive, cut crosswise in thin strips
• 1/2 radicchio, cut in strips
• 1 scallion, chopped

For the avocado cream

• 1 avocado
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1/3 cup vegetable broth
• 1 tbs plain yogurt
• 1 pinch cayenne
• salt and pepper

For the vinaigrette

• 2 tbs olive oil
• Juice of 1/2 lime
• 1/2 tsp extra strong Dijon mustard
• salt and pepper

Preparation

Marinate herring with herbs, lemon juice and olive oil overnight or at least for a few hours.

In a grill pan or skillet, grill onions. Set aside. Start preparing the avocado sauce by mixing all the ingredients with an immersion blender, adjusting broth quantity if the sauce is too thick.

Using a ring mold, cut brioche in circles and grill each side on a grill pan.

Combine endives, radicchio, carrot ribbons with vinaigrette. Toss well.

Cook egg sunny side up, and using the same ring mold where you cut the brioche, cut egg in a round circle. Add salt and pepper.

Place salad at the bottom of a plate, add brioche toast, herring some onions, top it with egg, some onions and scallions. Serve with avocado cream on the side, or sprinkle some on top of the egg (before adding scallions), and serve.

]]> http://citronetvanille.com/blog/2010/05/the-no-guilt-fish-brioche-toasts-with-smoke-marinated-herrings-grilled-onions-and-egg-avocado-sauce/feed/ 45 http://citronetvanille.com/blog/2010/04/tart-for-those-who-dont-like-desserts-tart-brioche-with-coconut-fromage-blanc-and-pineapple-2/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=tart-for-those-who-dont-like-desserts-tart-brioche-with-coconut-fromage-blanc-and-pineapple-2 http://citronetvanille.com/blog/2010/04/tart-for-those-who-dont-like-desserts-tart-brioche-with-coconut-fromage-blanc-and-pineapple-2/#comments Thu, 29 Apr 2010 16:38:54 +0000 silvia http://www.citronetvanille.com/blog/?p=10161 La tarte pour ceux qui n’aiment pas les desserts – Tarte briochée à la noix de coco, fromage blanc et ananas

My good friend Ute came for dinner, she is German, I am Franco-Italian and we have exactly the same tastes, likes and dislikes as far as food and cuisine is concerned. We love the same flavors and dishes so it’s really a pleasure to cook for her, I don’t have to think for days about the menu. We both don’t like sweets too much but agree that a meal needs to end by a dessert, so I had to come up with something that would be filed in the dessert category without being too sweet.

When planning a dinner for picky people which becomes more of a headache than a real pleasure, it’s a sign that your guests are food un-educated, which is not the case for Ute and she is definitely my favorite guest to have around. Voilà, j’ai trouvé mon dessert! et en plus c’est léger!

Originally were supposed to try a new restaurant called George known for its seafood specialty dishes, then the rain started to pour and even though je ne suis pas en sucre as we say in French (I am not made out of sugar therefore will not melt), we decided to not go out…because after all I might melt, well the mascara will since the wind broke all my umbrellas.

For those who are not much of a sweet tooth and who like light desserts, this one is really for them. I loved it even better the day after while it was chilled. No heavy frosting, not a lot of sugar, just natural, fresh flavors due to the fresh pineapple and coconut milk.

I love to use fromage blanc in this dessert, but hard to find in the US, so I mainly substitute Fage Greek yogurt in any recipe requiring fromage blanc, either the 2% or the regular and it works perfectly. I used brioche as the “crust” instead of a regular pâte brisée or pate sucrée which resulted in a moist and semi-soft texture crust which also absorbed the coconut/fromage blanc mixture. You can serve it with some vanilla ice cream if you want, but I kept it “light”.

You can use individual deep molds or a large one, I prefer individual portions, it feel like everyone gets a whole full dessert and is a controlled portion.

Ingredients for 6

• 6 slices of brioche (or enough to cover one large dish)
• 250 ml coconut milk
• 400 g Fage Greek yogurt
• 60 g sugar
• 60 g coconut, shredded
• 1 egg
• 1 tbs golden raisins (soaked in rum)
• 6 slices pineapple (core removed)

Preparation

Cover the bottom of the molds with brioche ensuring there is no space in between each slice of brioche.

In a pan, heat coconut milk and reduce a little. Remove from heat, add fromage blanc, egg and sugar. Mix well. Add coconut flakes. Mix all ingredients to obtain a smooth texture.

Pour on top of brioche. Add pineapple slices and sprinkle with raisins.

Cook in a pre-heated oven at 370F for about 30-40 minutes, until the mixture has thickened. Remove from the oven, let it cool. Sprinkle with powdered sugar. Eat at room temperature or chilled.

I am not sure this can be called pudding, but a friend of mine came for dinner some time ago and I served her this as a dessert, and she said with enthusiasm “Oh Silvia! j’adore ton pudding!!”, so I figured she must knew what she was talking about and decided to call this a pudding. Is it a pudding, technically speaking? I don’t know.

I am not really a sweet tooth (I’m sure you are doubting this statement due to the quantities of desserts I made lately) but I do enjoy fruit based desserts like this one…and do take great pleasure to make them maybe even a little bit more so than eating them. The great thing is that I have the sweetest, kindest, and most adorable neighbors anyone can dream of, who happen to have a passion for desserts and sweets, so that is the perfect world. I bake, they eat. Everyone is happy. Actually I haven’t baked too often recently, but I promised them I will. I am always delighted to please anyone and more so someone I really appreciate, like my neighbors.

Those are small bites, so you can serve about two or three each, they’re light and always a pleasure to have a after a heavy meal. I think no matter how heavy a meal is, something sweet needs to be served, even if it’s fruit. We have a saying in French” Il faut toujours laisser une petite place pour le dessert” (you always need to leave a small space for dessert) but I know, the size of the space depends on the sweetness of your tooth!

I had a lot of mangoes and a whole coconut that needed to be used, but this dessert works with other fruits as well, like pineapple, peaches, and pears too! Any fruit can be combined to coconut which to me is like a magic ingredient. If you don’t have a whole fresh coconut, the dried one works fine. I also made brioche again, so instead of just eating it for breakfast, I used it in the pudding. Try a pudding with brioche instead of the bread, the texture is softer, and I just love the idea that I am biting in a slice of brioche instead of bread. Muffin silicon molds would be perfect for those bites

So if you don’t live on the Islands like me, but feel like taking a trip there, you can start with this dessert, the coconut and mango will definitely give you that feeling.

Ingredients for 6 mini puddings

• 2 eggs
• 3 tbs sugar
• 7 tbs coconut milk
• 2 oz milk
• 3 tbs shredded coconut(fresh or dried)
• 1 tbs rum
• 3 slices brioche
• 1/2 mango, peeled and cut in small slices
• 5.20 oz (or 150 g) sugar for the caramel

Preparation

In a mixing container, mix eggs, sugar, coconut milk, milk, shredded coconut (or coconut flakes), rum.

Cut brioche slices in rings about 1 cm thick and the size of your mold.

Start making caramel. Let sugar melt in a pan at medium heat and let it brown to desired color (do not burn, the caramel will be dark and bitter).

Divide the caramel in the molds, add mango slices, then brioche and pour egg mixture. Fill to the top of the mold.

Cook in a pre-heated oven at 375F until the top of the brioche is golden brown (about 20 minutes)

Remove from the oven, let them cool. Flip puddings over (with the mango slices on top) and serve at room temperature with vanilla or caramel ice cream.

This brioche is simple, quite unpretentious and low-key, light, fluffy but nonetheless very tasty, just like we enjoy to have on some mornings with butter, jam and strong coffee. There are many versions and kinds of brioches, you just have to play around with quantities of eggs, flour, sugar butter and yeast, but the technique is always the same: a “pâte levée“, a “rised dough” . Pâte levée technique consists of preparing the dough the night before with a yeast, then refrigerate it overnight. The cold will enable the dough to ferment slowly in a cold environment, therfore acidity developed by the cells of the yeast will give more flavor to the ingredients and a better aspect to the dough due to the reinforcement of the tenacity of gluten.

Anyone who has been to France knows what brioche is, it’s probably as famous as Eiffel Tower, baguette and croissant. After brioche tressée that tastes more like Pain au lait (milk bread?) that I have been making for a while and the extra rich Farro brioche with goose egg, I went back to a more simple and traditional version of brioche. Retour à la simplicité.

Basically its origin goes back to Middle Ages in Normandy where similar “rised dough” have been retraced. Brioche is not considered a bread in France but a viennoiserie, which is slightly different. Techniques of making viennoiseries are similar to those of making bread but since they have more fat and sugar content, they’re considered more like pastries.

On Friday evenings when I realize I have nothing left for the Saturday morning breakfast, I start making one of those brioches, yes it needs to be prepared the night before and needs to rise in the refrigerator overnight for a light and fluffy dough. I am afraid you cannot cut any corners if you don’t have a bread-machine and will have to wait for the day after to enjoy it.

Breakfast is sacred in my little world and getting up in the morning with nothing to eat is not an option! Even though I have been living in the US for many years, I am not used to the brunch concept, I guess it’s hard to change habits. Brunch is a little confusing, it makes sense if you get up at 11 am but not if you’re up at 7 am like me and have breakfast as early as 7:30 am, call me boring but I like to stick to my traditional coffee, bread, jam and butter in the mornings. Et non, on ne se débarasse pas de ses habitudes comme ca! (no, you don’t get rid of your habits so easily!).

I have been playing around with ingredients quantities, putting less sugar than required because I love jam on my brioche slice so it’s sweet enough for me but you can certainly add more sugar in the dough if your tooth is sweeter.

Ingredients for 6 people

• 10.58 oz (300 g) flour
• 1.5 cup lukewarm milk
• 1.41 oz (40 g) sugar
• 2 eggs
• 3.17 oz (90 g) butter
• 1 dose dry yeast or fresh yeast
• 2 pinches salt

Preparation

Place flour in a mixing bowl, add dry yeast (if using fresh yeast, needs to be dissolved in milk), sugar. Mix well all ingredients.

Add one egg, milk and salt and gradually mix all ingredients. When the dough has thickened, add the extra egg. Knead the dough to incorporate the egg. It might be sticky at the beginning, but keep kneading.

Add butter at the end and mix until the dough becomes elastic but not too sticky. Let it rise for 3 hours. Then, knead a little to remove the “air”.

Place in the refrigerator overnight with a plastic warp, and preventing air from getting into the container.

In the morning, remove dough from the refrigerator, knead slightly and cut in 4 equal parts and form little balls. Place each ball in a greased rectangular baking pan loaf.

Let it rise for an additional hour and cook in a pre-heated oven at 365-370F for about 40 minutes.

Let it cool and enjoy plain or with your favorite jam. I don’t usually add extra butter, since the dough has already some, but you can!

I woke up this morning with a text message from my best friend in France, Chantal. Her message was “Impossible de t’appeler pour l’instant – Pense a toi – Ta Bichette qui t’aime” literally translated by “Cannot call you right now – Think of you – Your bichette who loves you”. I think I am giving quite a lot of private info here (I tend to be somehow reserved to talk about that kind of stuff) but I really miss her, especially all the girlfriend stuff we use to do while in France. So I figured I would make something that reminds me of her and just for her. She never checks out my blog because she does not understand English even though she is a great cook and loves to eat. Whenever I go home, we always keep a night out to try a new restaurant. Our two last picks were bad ones, so it ended up as a laughing party. The chef came out of the kitchen to talk to the guests and was all dirty, looked like he had a mud fight with a cow, beside the food was lukewarm borderline cold but still served with a bell-shaped cover “cloche” (usually to keep the heat). That was kind of the joke of the evening. I think it was the first time I wrote a bad review, especially for a restaurant that calls itself a “restaurant gastronomique”.

Chantal and I met when we were 15 and in high school together. We had the worst laughing “Crisis” in German class, our teacher was just very uptight, not friendly and had no sense of humor…and Chantal and I were always kicked out of the class due to our non-stop laughing fits (crises de fou rire). She kicked us out once because my shell earrings were making noise when I would move my head. How silly is that? I think some teacher really lack pedagogy and should be more friendly, that would motivate kids to learn. Besides, when not very appealing and pleasant to look at, a double dose of pedagogy is a MUST.

Chantal offered me last December a wonderful dessert book (she knows I am not a pastry chef) “Desserts et Délices de Lorraine” “Desserts and Delights from Lorraine”, It’s a very unusual book, most of the recipes don’t have quantities, they say “same amount of this, or double the amount of that”. The recipes are traditional, peasant and very very ancient rustic recipes from Lorraine dating from before 1700 when we still had a king (not that I care). No pictures, just cute cartoons. she knows I love unusual books and she could not have found a better one. I have a friend Ute from Germany coming for dinner and since Lorraine is bordering Germany, that will make her feel somehow home, well thinking about it, I hope not since she hates Germany very much, and home is not the place she wants to be.

This dessert has a brioche taste, since the ingredients are similar to a brioche and made with compressed yeast, but the twist is that there are poached plums in it (I had to substitute poached plums to preserved mirabelles, local Lorraine plums since I had none) and the cake is topped with a crumbly mixture. So technically it’s not really a brioche. I love it, and guess what? It is easy and on ne peut pas le rater (you cannot spoil this cake). So I will certainly make this again.

I used compressed yeast instead of the granulated one, never saw that before I came to the US. In France or Italy we all use the compressed yeast (levure de boulanger or levure de bière) which is fresh yeast, we call it “Baker’s yeast” or “Beer yeast”, because bakers (boulangers) and beer brewers (brasseurs) use it in either bread making or brewing. I love its soft texture, its smell and you’ll get top results for bread making or other types of dough. If you can’t find this yeast, I would use the dry kind.

Also the original recipe calls for 1 tsp cinnamon, but considering my relationship with cinnamon, I used vanilla powder instead. I’m sure cinnamon lovers will enjoy that addition.

Ingredients for 6-8

For the cake

• 8.8 oz (or 250 g) white flour
• 1 egg
• 0.88 oz (or 25 g) granulated sugar
• 2.26 oz (or 70 g) melted butter
• 2.36 fl oz (or 70 ml) milk
• 0.5 oz (or 15 g) compressed yeast or 1 dose of dry yeast
• poached fruits such as plums, peaches, etc…
• vanilla extract

For the crumbs

• 1.76 oz (or 50 g) flour
• 0.88 oz (or 25 g) almond meal
• 0.88 oz (or 25 g) granulated sugar
• 1 oz (or 30 g) soft butter
• 1 tsp. vanilla powder or cinnamon

Preparation

Dissolve yeast in a little milk.  In a mixing bowl, mix flour, egg, sugar, milk, melted butter, vanilla and yeast. Knead the dough for about 10 minutes until it turns into a nie a smooth consistency. Place in a container, cover with a towel, and let it rise in a warm area for about 30 minutes.

Bring a 2 cups of water to a boil with 2 tbs honey and add diced plums (1 1/2 inch pieces) for about 3 minutes. Drain.

In the meantime, mix all the crumb mixture together with your hands. Don’t make thick crumb like you would for a crumble, but thin instead.

Work the dough again, removing all the fermentation. Butter a deep dish pan, and spread dough with your hands in it. Add plums to the dough, making sure to press them down into dough and not leaving them on the surface. Add crumb mixture and let the cake rise again for an additional 30 minutes.

Cook in a pre-heated oven at 375f for 30 min.

Let it cool and sprinkle with powdered sugar. Serve lukewarm.