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Thanks and don't miss Marie-Eve Berty's cooking lessons in participation with the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF)!


Take care and eat well.

Bread and Cherry Tomatoes

Summer is ambling to a close and the garden’s offerings are fresh and fragrant. Cherry tomato plants are welcome invaders, who entwine themselves everywhere. Looking for the red spots and gathering them is a feast for the nose before becoming one for the palate. It makes me want to bathe in the sun and stock the heat. Nothing is better than a lazy lunch, where the picking takes longer than the preparation. Such Provencial classics as pan bagnat (literally wet bread) furnish the inspiration. At every corner of the streets of Nice, you find sandwiches made out of tuna, tomato, salad soaked in olive oil and vinegar. I prefer a salad made of cherry tomatoes, beets and peaches seasoned with a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Do not forget to soak your bread in the juices left over.

Summer Salad

Ingredients:

6 beets

1 lbs (500g) cherry tomatoes

4 ripe peaches

Basil leaves

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

Salt and pepper to taste

Several slices of fresh country bread

Material:

Aluminum foil

Salad bowl

Remove the tops of the beets and rinse the roots.

Wrap each root in a foil. Add a drop of olive oil and bake in the oven at 360F (150C) for about an hour or until easily pierced with a knife. When cool enough to handle, remove the skin and slice the vegetables.

Wash the cherry tomatoes and remove the stems.

Peel and slice the peaches. Discard the pit.

Toss the fruit and vegetables in a salad bowl. Add oil and vinegar.

Layers the washed basil leaves and roll them in a tube. Snip with the scissors over the salad bowl.

Serves 2.

The longer the salad stays in the sun, the better it will taste.

Healthy and savorful barbecue

With summer comes the urge to barbecue. I must qualify this statement by precising that some people are immune to the temptation, most notably my husband. I have recently checked one of his excuses for not falling prey to the quasi universal appeal of outside cooking and found it sorely lacking. Barbecues, according to him have nothing on ovens. To prove him right, manufacturers have been rolling out barbecues that are in effect exterior ovens. Their only advantage, to my eyes, comes from the rotisserie they are equipped with. Unfortunately, they do not provide the incomparable flavor that only comes from cooking on red embers.
I now seem to contradict myself, as, in previous postings, I have been cautioning against Maillard reaction and its potential carcinogenic effects. Keeping this in mind, I propose two methods to evade the threat while keeping the taste. The first and essential rule is to never place the meat directly in contact with a flame. Should it happen, when the grease from the meat falls onto the embers and provokes a flare, it is imperative to remove the meat, and sprinkle a handful of coarse salt to put out the fire. You have to be careful not to stand to close to the pit, as the grains of salt jumps around and may hit you. The second technique borrowed from Japan is even healthier. Use the leaf of a tree to protect the meat In Takayama where I ate Miso Beef grilled on dry chestnut tree leaves, the server brought an hibachi to the table and let us each grill the marinated beef. My inclination to barbecue albeit with a protection has a second more practical origin. Two years ago, foraging in some vegetable garden catalog, I foolishly purchased some raifort roots. Since then I have been cursed with the invasive plant. Being a persistent cook, I force fed cooked raifort leaves to my unsuspecting family with mixed results. Even I had to concede that the leaves remain tough. This is how I struck on to the protective but non-edible usage of the plant. The leaf actually adds a mustard flavor to the meat. If you do not have raifort leaves, kale or vine leaves are good substitutes. The best cut for this dish happens to be cheap and to contain the right amount of marbled flesh: beef sirloin tips emulate pampered Japanese beef for a fragment of the cost.

Japanese Miso Beef grilled on raifort leaves

Ingredients:
One sirloin tip
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
Raifort, kale or vine leaves
1 Miso tablespoon
1/4 cup (60 ml) Mirin sauce
1/4 cup (60 ml) teriyaki or thick soja sauce
1 spring onion (scallion)

Material:
1 sharp carving knife
1 blender
1 big plastic bag
1 Hibachi grill or barbecue
1 set of tongues

Place the meat in the freezer for 30 minutes.
Place all the other ingredients except for the raifort leaves into the blender and mix well. The sauce should be thick. If the consistency is too watery, add some miso.
Carve the meat as thinly as possible and place in the plastic bag. Pour the marinade into the bag and shake until well coated.
Prepare the barbecue and light it half an hour to an hour before cooking the meal.
Place the leaves on the embers. Lay separately each slice of meat, add a little sauce on top. Turn each slice over after two minutes. After another minute, remove the slice and place on a warm plate. Repeat until you run out of meat.
Serve on top of sushi rice.

One pot thai fish

I have a particular fondness for the one pot meal approach, especially on a casual weekday. Having decided on the method, I only have to pick the ingredients. I happen upon a flounder fillet frozen a month ago when an expected guest canceled. I stocked earlier in the week on fresh peas and I always carry carrots and fresh ginger in my refrigerator. An inspiring basis is the filtered leftover broth of the clam spaghettis I made earlier in the week. To complete the stock in which I shall simmer my concoction and to give it an exotic Thai leaning, I open the can of coconut milk I keep in the pantry. Because we turn out to be 6, I buy 3 dozens of clams and 12 shrimps.

Thai fish casserole

(Easy, Preparation and cooking time: 20 minutes, Cheap)

Ingredients:

1 cup fish or clam stock

1 cup white wine

1 onion peeled and cubed

1 1-inch piece fresh ginger peeled

1 tablespoon sesame (or other kind) oil

1 stalk of lemon grass (or 1 teaspoon dried)

1 bunch cilantro leaves

1 can coconut milk

1 teaspoon pepper flakes

1 large fillet of flounder

3 dozen clams or mussels

12 unpeeled and uncooked shrimps preferably with their heads on

Material

1 heavy-bottom saucepan and its cover

Wooden spoon

Place the tablespoon of oil in the saucepan. Heat it up for 1 minute on high. Add the onions and soften for 3 minutes, stirring constantly. Pour the wine and broth. Add the lemon grass, red pepper and ginger when the liquid boils. In the meantime, remove the shells of the shrimps keeping the heads and tails on. Add the coconut milk. When the boil resumes, add the clams. Cover. Check after 3 minutes, the clams should have opened. Lay the fish on top, cover and lower to a simmer. After 3 minutes add the shrimps, cover again and turn off the gas. After 10 minutes check the fish for doneness: a knife should enter easily into the flesh but the fillet should not disintegrate, the shrimp should have turned pink and all the shells should have opened.

Serve with white rice in soup bowls.

Spring Tuna Salad and Rhubarb Lunch

On a recent foray in Union Square market, I almost tramped on a school of third graders. Walking two by two and well chaperoned, the little gourmets took in the seasonal bounty as I did. There were a wealth of greens, nicely bunched in bouquets, green asparagus a galore as well as ramps, the new darlings of the in chefs and all the variety of potatoes produced in America. On the sweet side rhubarb stems and apples were nicely tucked under bright awnings. But the palm for diversity went to the florists. The season after all has just started and is still low-key. I came home happy with just the right mix to toss a spring tuna salad for 4. Instead of my usual pairing of rhubarb and strawberries, I decided to be a pure locavore and to forego the berries for the apples. I was happy to find on my way back a tiny shop, called Macaron on 36^th street between Broadway and Seventh and splurged on lychee and rose macarons as well as chocolate. Yum!

A Versatile Sauce and Lobster Soufflé

A sauce can transform a dish drastically. To celebrate her 90^th birthday in style, my mother asked for a beef Wellington. I usually cook it for Christmas or New Year and insert a mushroom, foie gras and truffle mixture between the crust and the meat. To make it really special, I decided to add a Perigourdine sauce and to insert the mushrooms and shallots, which flavor the sauce in place of my usual mixture. What gives the sauce its name is a generous addition of black truffle pieces, an import from the Southwest of France, hence the regional attribution, to a Cognac, wine and cream emulsion. More than happy with the sauce and enamored with its voluptuous Cognac taste, reminiscent of a lobster bisque, I then decided to put it to another creative use: the basis for a lobster soufflé. Forget the black truffles, cut one-inch pieces of lobster and replace the milk by the richer Cognac-cream emulsion. The dish will serve 4 as a starter or 2 for lunch with a green salad on the side.

Lobster in a Spring Vegetable Emulsion

The east coast of the United States enjoys a lovely spring. For once Paris is not one month ahead in terms of weather. Magnolias, forsythias, wisterias, and all the fruit trees are flowering for more than the three days generally allowed in our region. It is cause for celebration. So little else is: simultaneously, an Icelandic volcanic eruption has wide ranging consequences for millions of people varying from simple travel inconvenience to subsistence threatening issues. And as usual, my way of breaking the gloom takes the form of a dish suggestion, using the vegetables available in my garden: asparagus and chives. The inspiration comes from Paris, where I have been feeding on emulsion, and where the play on cooked and raw, when asparagus is concerned, has gone mainstream. Peas, lobster and asparagus are complementing flavor and create a lovely light lunch for 2 or starter for 4.