Originally this was supposed to be just poached pears in spicy red wine topped with this magnificient pepper…then after some more thoughts, I decided to add a crust under the pears and make it a galette, a rugged and peasant type of galette, full of flavors but yet delicate. I love when dishes are a mix of rustic and delicate at the same time (actually thinking about it, I love when people do have this type of contradiction too!), otherwise it gets too predictable.

My friend Laurent brought me this amazing pepper from France, it’s a Madagascar pepper infused with vanilla and chocolate…and I just wanted to create a little sweet thing where fruits marry this pepper, and this is it. I will make it again and again until I ran out of pepper.

The crust is light and nutritious, a little unusual since I used a very fragrant olive oil instead of butter, and the pears are poached in spicy red wine. This is truly a delicious and fragrant treat, and a third of the calories of the traditional desserts. To be consumed…without moderation!

Ingredients for one large galette

For the dough

• 3 tbs whole grain farro flour
• 1 tbs amaranth flour
• 2 tbs olive oil
• 2 tbs water
• 2 tbs coconut sugar

For the filling

• 1.5 medium red d’Anjou pears, peeled and medium sliced
• 200 ml red wine
• 1 tbs honey
• 2 tbs coconut sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cinnamon stick (optional)
• 1 tbs apricot jam or apricot fruit spread (which I prefer since there is less sugar)
• 1/2 tsp Luna pepper

Preparation

For the dough

In a wooden surface or mixing container, mix flours together, then add the rest of the ingredients and mix well to obtain an homogeneous and smooth dough. Set aside.

For the filling

In a deep pan, mix wine with sugar, honey and vanilla extract (including cinnamon if you like it). Mix well to dissolve sugar. Place pear slices evenly in pan and let cook until cooked but still firm. You want to avoid mushy pears, they’ll be hard to handle. When cooked, drain liquid and let the pear cool down.

Roll dough with rolling pin, about 3-4 mm thick forming a galette, and spread apricot jam or Fruit spread on top. Place pear slices evenly leaving 1.5 inches to form a border. Sprinkle with a little coconut sugar. Bring the sides of the galette back inside.

Cook in a pre-heated oven at 370F for about 20-30 minutes until the galette is cooked. Check to bottom part of if to ensure it’s cooked.

When cooked, sprinkle poivre la luna pepper or any other fragrant pepper on top and eat lukewarm.

Another fruit based dessert, or snack or gourmandise, you name it. I might not have cooked much while in France, but I sure did buy a lot of kitchen gadgets, such as my silicon mini madeleines molds. And since I came back, I baked those madeleines many times. They’re really tiny, about 1.5 inch length, and they go so well as a little “accompagnement” to any fruit based dessert, or ice cream, or simply as is as a delicious little snack.

But this is not about madeleines (I will write a post on mini madeleines soon after this one) and only about a wonderful roasted pear slowly baked with honey, vanilla and orange juice. A very simple dessert, yet elegant and absolutely delicious. You don’t need to serve this pear with madeleines, or whipped cream, but I think for a more “finished” dessert, they do the trick. You need pears that are not too ripe but not to firm either. Pear that are too ripe will cook very fast and will get mushy while cooking and you won’t be able to serve them. So in that respect, it’s better to get them too hard than too soft, that way you can always cook them longer.

For the whipped cream, I used a Siphon, they’re quite handy if you want to make espuma, flavored or fancy whipped creams, such as mascarpone whipped cream, avocado whipped cream, etc… I developed a crêpe menu for a company that makes these siphons and who opened a crêpe joint in Berkeley, so they gave me one siphon. Honestly I would have never thought of buying one, but since I have one now, I use it quite often. Here I flavored the cream with rose water and its delightful and delicate scent blended very well with the fruity flavors of the pear. That was indeed a real treat. Will re-do this dessert with no doubt over and over again…and real soon.

Ingredients for 4

• 2 pears, pealed cored and sliced lengthwise
• Vanilla bean powder
• 2 tbs honey
• 5.07 fl oz (or 150 ml) orange juice
• 1 tbs butter, cut in small pieces
• 1 cup (or about 200 ml) heavy cream
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp rose water

Preparation

Place the peeled pears in a dish, spread honey on top. Add orange juice, vanilla bean powder and butter cut in small cubes on top of pears. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 375 F for about 20 minutes or until the pears are soft but not mushy. Turn pears around during the cooking process and keep pouring juice on top. If the juice decreases and starts to thicken too much, add extra orange juice. When pears are cooked, remove from oven, divide on plates, pour juice on top and serve with cookies, whipped cream, madeleines, etc…

For the whipped cream, place heavy cream in siphon, add powdered sugar and rose water. Shake well. Add cartridge. Place back in the refrigerator to cool.

I met haloumi cheese in the US, I never saw it in France nor Italy. Maybe because France has about 400 kinds of cheeses, so they don’t have any lacking in that category, you can eat one different cheese a day for one year! Isn’t that wonderful? I am wondering how they were able to come up with so many cheeses. Italian cheeses are great but they don’t have as a many varieties as the French. Even though I am not a huge cheese eater like most French people, I really enjoy and appreciate good cheese with great crunchy baguette. But this is not about French or Italian cheeses but about Cyprus and its wonderful haloumi.

The particularity of this cheese is that it can be grilled and as I said comes from Cyprus, that little Mediterranean Island, even though it’s been considered European, it’s closer to Turkey and Syria. The Northern part has been occupied by Turkey since 1974, I guess there must be a heavy Turkish population and influence. So haloumi is becoming more and more popular in the Mediterranean countries. It’s traditionally made with a mixture of goat and sheep milks and has a somehow salty taste. I really like it on salads with pears or grapes, but it needs to be served as soon as you grill it or the cheese tends to become rubbery when it cools down.

Mâche salad is one of my favorite, it’s soft and tender and my parents used to grow it in their garden, so I remember when I came back from school my mom had always a huge bowl ready for me. The good thing is when you buy it, it’s already cleaned, so you don’t have to go crazy cleaning the earth that got inside the leaves. The washing and cleaning process is not an easy one.

Ingredients for 2

• 1.5 cups mâche salad
• 5 oz (or 140 g) haloumi, sliced 1 cm thick (3 slices per plate)
• 1 large pear not overly ripe, peeled and sliced
• 3 tbs olive oil
• 1 tbs lemon juice
• 1 tsp fresh thyme, chopped
• salt and pepper

Preparation

First prepare vinaigrette, by mixing lemon juice, olive oil, thyme, salt and pepper together. Then, grill pears in a grill pan, then set aside. Grill haloumi.

In a plate, place some mâche, top with one slice of pear alternating with one slice of haloumi and drizzle with vinaigrette.

You can make extra vinaigrette and toss some salad in it, then with the rest you can drizzle on top of pear and haloumi slices.

]]> http://citronetvanille.com/blog/2009/11/the-cheese-from-the-pretty-island-mache-salad-with-grilled-pears-and-haloumi-thyme-and-lemon-vinaigrette/feed/ 19 http://citronetvanille.com/blog/2009/10/papillotes-meli-melo-apples-banana-and-pears-with-honey-raisins-pistachios-and-coconut-in-parchment-paper/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=papillotes-meli-melo-apples-banana-and-pears-with-honey-raisins-pistachios-and-coconut-in-parchment-paper http://citronetvanille.com/blog/2009/10/papillotes-meli-melo-apples-banana-and-pears-with-honey-raisins-pistachios-and-coconut-in-parchment-paper/#comments Fri, 16 Oct 2009 05:42:38 +0000 silvia http://www.citronetvanille.com/blog/?p=4582 Méli-mélo de papillotes – Pommes, poires et bananes au miel, raisins, pistaches et noix de coco en papillotes avec glace vanille

Des pommes, des poires et des….bananes!! I have been thinking about those papillottes for so long. I thought about them kept thinking about them, and always made something else…I kept doing that for weeks. Time to stick to the plan! They’re an express dessert and extremely delicious. We tend to forget that quick meals can be exquisite.  Papillottes are so much fun to make and look great when you give one individually to your guests.

Fruit based desserts are light and cooked fruits go deliciously well with spices. Of course, if you like cinnamon, you can add some. I am a big vanilla fan and could use vanilla everywhere. The only place I don’t like vanilla is in perfume. I think it’s way too sweet as a scent but I could drink it! I brought from France some vanilla powder which is basically vanilla beans and pods ground, so the powder is brown like the bean and not white (I have seen it white here) , if you can’t find it, you can add 1 tsp of vanilla extract.

Those papillotes are perfect with apples and pears because they remain firm, and don’t get mushy like peaches or other summer fruits would. Fall just got here and we can enjoy the beautiful fruits it brings along.

Papillote has different meanings, but traditionally it refers to a chocolate candy wrapped in a golden or silver wrap with a personal message included in it. Supposedly it comes from Lyon and they’re consumed during Christmas.

Ingredients for 2 papillotes

• 1 golden apple, peeled and sliced
• 1 large pear, peeled and sliced
• 1 large banana, sliced
• 1 tbs unsalted pistachios
• 1.5 tbs golden raisins
• 1 tbs honey
• 1.5 tbs grated coconut
• 1 tsp vanilla powder

Preparation

In a mixing bowl, add all fruits together, then add honey, vanilla powder, raisins, coconut and pistachios. Mix well. Place in a parchment paper, wrap tightly so no air can get in and cook in the oven for about 20 minutes at 375F. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

Not that I particularly love to celebrate my birthday as a great or special day at all, but it’s the nostalgic side of me that talking. I like to do something different every year because I want to remember it the following years. I don’t like to see time go by, so every year for 12 October, I do something I remember…Year after year, I look back and I think about that particular time. I think it’s a family disease, we are all so nostalgic in my family, probably because when you leave your country, you tend to get attached to what reminds you of your past where you grew up. I don’t know.

Those cakes do not remind me of my childhood but they’re so good that I used them as my birthday cakes. I am not crazy about traditional birthday cakes, nor their overly sweet icing. We call those manqués, basically a manqué is a cake with butter, a topping but needs to have a certain thickness.  I had some ripe pears that were left out after the chocolate crêpes, and wanted to use them in something sweet.

Those little cakes are great for breakfast, they have a particularly soft and velvety texture that melts in your mouth and they’re filled with a mixture of healthy wholegrain flours. I had some chestnut flour that I absolutely love in desserts, it gives a sweet nutty taste that would give any cake a very unique touch.

Usually for breakfast I don’t have anything too sweet, just some toasts with jam and coffee, not really cakes. When I am in France I get croissants and pains au chocolat for the first couple of days, then after the croissants orgy, I go back to toasts since they’re less heavy in butter.

I figured those manqués would better be served for dessert with some whipped cream but this morning I had no more bread left, so one of those cakes did the job, and honestly it’s a wonderful breakfast treat. From now on, I will make them for breakfast, beside you can keep them for a few days in a plastic container, they do not dry up at all.

Ingredients for 4 individual cakes

• 2 pears, peeled and sliced
• 70 g butter, melted
• 2 eggs
• 80 g wholewheat flour
• 50 g chestnut flour
• 50 g white flour
• 100g light brown sugar
• 2 tbs heavy cream
• 3 tbs blackberry jam
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Preparation

In a mixing container, beat eggs and butter for a couple of minutes until the mixture becomes smooth. Add cream, then add eggs, flours, vanilla extract, cream and baking powder progressively.

Butter individual deep molds (like ramequin type) or if you have silicon molds, even better. If you don’t have any individual molds, you can also use a larger deep dish one. Place nicely pear slices at the bottom of each ramequin, then divide batter equally between each of them.

Cook in a pre-heated oven at 376F for about 30 minutes. Let it cool for about 10 minutes, and unmold. Warm jam in a small pan until it gets a little more liquid, then add jam on top of each manqué and serve.

Don’t we all love crêpes? They’ re so easy to make and always a great pleasure to share with friends or just when you have a crêpe craving. You can flavor the dough and enhance them with fruits, jams, sugar, etc… I was stopped at the traffic light this morning just in front of Ti’Couz which is a popular crêperie Bretonne where they serve traditional galettes bretonnes made with buckwheat flour. This restaurant is packed from Monday through Sunday and most of the time, there is a line out the door since they don’t take reservations. If you ever end up in San Francisco one of those days, you might want to check it out, besides it’s not an expensive place.

So here we go again, I stop in front of this restaurant for 3 minutes, and I started to have a craving for crêpes…those days anything gives me a craving, I don’t know if this is a condition, but there should be a name for it.

Usually crêpes are served with cider. We drink some lightly alcoholic dry cider that is different from what you get in the US and not as sweet. It’s the perfect drink combination with crêpes and you can just smell the wonderful scents of Normandy and Britanny.

In France, everyone knows how to make crêpes but everyone has its own trick on how to make a perfect and light batter. Some people add beer to make them “airy”. I never quite managed to make them jump out of the pan, up in the air, and back in the pan…lacking practice.

What is better than pears and chocolate? maybe banana and chocolate…well if you want you can substitute pears with banana, it should work as well.

I caramelized the pears and flamed them with rum…chocolate, pears and rum go wonderfully together. Then the final touch is the whipped cream flavored with almond extract that gives this crêpe dessert a little twist. You can serve it with vanilla ice cream as well.

Ingredients for about 5-6 crêpes

For the crêpes

• 2.47 oz (or 70 g) flour
• 0.52 oz (or 15 g) sugar
• 1 egg
• 5 fl oz (or 15 cl) milk
• 1 tbs unsweetened cocoa

For the pear filling

• 3 bartlett pears
• 1 tbs sugar
• 1 tbs butter
• vanilla powder
• 1.5 tbs dark rum

For the almond whipped cream

• 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
• 1 tsp powdered sugar
• 1/2 tsp almond extract

Instructions

For the crêpes

In a mixing container, mix flour with egg and sugar then gradually add milk. Mix well to obtain a smooth consistency. Add cocoa powder. Mix well to obtain a smooth batter. Let it rest for one hour.

In the meantime, prepare the whipped cream. Add sugar and almond extract to the cream and whip it. Place in the refrigerator while the crêpes get ready.

Make crepes using a non stick pan. Slightly butter the surface of the pan and pour evenly batter to make a thin crêpe. Turn on the other side.

For the filling

Peel the pears and slice them into thin slices (about 5 mm slices). Melt butter in a non-stick pan, add pear slices and brown them on all sides, then sprinkle with sugar. Let them caramelized. Pour rum and flame.

Fill half of each crêpe with pears, fold the other half on top. Then fold in quarters. Place some whipped cream on top and serve.

That goes not only for hair products, but for food too!

Crème caramel or flan aux oeufs, or crème renversée, they’re all the same things. I think the English translation would be custard, but I am not going to use it, because it sounds weird to me, not a name for a dessert but more so for a gardening tool.

Please don’t think that I am pretentious, but it is true that I have never failed making a caramel. I did fail in many other cooking experiments, but caramel was not the one, it always worked fine for me…until last year in France. I wanted to make a crème caramel for a friend’s party, and it turned out a complete disaster. I used all my mom’s sugar, tried four times in a row, and that darn sugar would crystallize. I had to run to the supermarket, bought tons of the top sugar, (I was convinced there was something wrong with her sugar), came back, tried again twice and it did not work either, so I was convinced there was something wrong with her pans. Obviously there was something wrong with me and still cannot figure out what. I was just so irritated that I threw everything away the egg mixture, milk, everything went in the sink. That was unbelievable that after six tries, it would not work.

The first time I made caramel after that disaster was today. Now I get the caramel phobia, and thinking, OK it will crystallize again, so I was ready for it. I was staring at the sugar in the pan, waiting to see formation of crystals. The sugar started to melt and colored beautifully, I could not believe it. I have absolutely no idea why when in France I just could not manage to make a caramel. That is a mystery, since I proceeded exactly the same way as I usually do. Everyone gave me all kinds of explanations and reasons…but since I did exactly the same thing, I don’t understand it. My theory is that since cooking is somehow like chemistry, I assume there were some chemical reactions involved which I was not aware of.

This crème caramel has a little twist, the pears and the orange blossom water which gives it a very nice kick. It’s a very easy dessert to make (of course if your sugar does not crystallize) and very light sweet touch after a multiple course meal.

As you can see, my crème caramel is overcooked because of the holes around it. If the water boils, it will create those holes. It does not affect the taste of the crème though, but it gives it some weird-looking aspect. To avoid this, you might want to check and make sure the water is not boiling and decrease the temperature accordingly.

Ingredients for 4-6 individual crèmes caramel (depending on the size of your ramequins)

For the crème caramel

• 1 pint (or about 500 ml) milk
• 3 eggs
• 2 yolks
• 1.41 oz (or 40 g) sugar
• 1 large pear, peeled and sliced
• 1 vanilla bean cut lengthwise
• 1 1/2 tsp. Orange blossom water

For the caramel

• 200 g sugar
• 1 tbs water

Preparation

For the caramel, place sugar in a pan with 1 tbs of water and let it melt slowly without stirring. When it has reached a nice dark golden color, distribute caramel evenly in ramequins. Place pear slices in caramel and set aside.

Place milk, in a pot, grate beans from vanilla beans and add to the milk, add sugar and heat for about 2-3 minutes until the sugar has melted. Do not let milk boil, it just needs to be lukewarm.

In a container, mix eggs thoroughly and add milk, keep stirring until the mixture gets homogenous and smooth. Add orange blossom water.

Fill the ramequin with milk/egg mixture. Place ramequins in a large tray filled with water and cook in a pre-heated oven at 370-375F for about 50 minutes. Let it cool and place in the refrigerator for about 3-4 hours.

Serve upside down. You might have to use a knife to enable the crème caramel to detach itself from the sides of the ramequins.