Family Secrets: Vin Maison

In France, a vin maison is an aperetif or digestif consisting of either a wine, an eau de vie, or a mixture of both that has been infused over a period of several months with a special home mix of flavorings. Bitter oranges from the garden, green walnuts, local herbs, and wildflowers all find their way into home recipes. There is always a bit of anticipation when people bring out the unmarked bottle containing their vin maison.

Under normal circumstances, if you drink enough vin maison together with its maker, you’re bound to be offered a bottle. If you bring the empty bottle back for a refill and grease the works with adoring compliments, you might then ask for some enlightenment on the proportions and secret additions. This of course includes the few tips that always never seem to make it into a written recipe.

We’d been celebrating an aunt’s birthday all day, the horseplay by the pool was over, the children were sedated and staring into the candle flames, dessert dishes cleared. Mamie had already been delivered home, and out came the Genepi Maison.

I have had Genepi a hundred and one times. For some reason we’re always being offered commercially produced bottles of the stuff as gifts every time a friend goes up to the mountains. The times I tasted Genepi, I was less than impressed with its cloying sweetness that accosted my jaw and coated my throat, and that bitter aftertaste. It was the Genepi Maison that brought me to a catharsis of taste.

“Now,” I proclaimed to the table, “I understand Genepi.” It had been a long day. It had begun before noon with a huge glass bowl of what Genevieve calls "sangria" and cousin Seb's anchoiade to start us out nice and thirsty. Although my proclamation could have been considered to be exaggerated by anyone looking in from the outside, it was taken seriously by my after dinner companions, as it should have. I was serious.

The flavor was clear and complex, it had a life, it spelled out the mountains, air, soil, and flowers. I had never had real genepi before, I realized, the moment this elixer touched my lips.

It was the brother of the husband of the sister of the mother in law that warned – “Attention, these family secrets are closely guarded.” The table went silent, and I sat mesmerized as the candles burned down and I was drawn through the spiraling path into the tale of this family’s Genepi Maison.

Every year, the papi of the tired children at the table takes their fathers up to the secret places he knows in the Alps where the genepi flower grows. Mind you, picking genepi will get you thrown into prison, it’s illegal to gather because it is endangered. At one time, the tourists began to rip up and destroy all of the delicate flowers, which grows only at very high altitudes, above the clouds, in very shallow crevices in the rocks, with only a little bit of rocky soil and nothing for their roots to hold on to.

People would try and pull the blossoms and their stems off and rip out the whole plant, killing it. Today only a few plants are left, and they are protected. Papi, as he has all his life, knows how to gather the flowers in such a way that the plant is never damaged and it always grows back, and for that reason, he knows the secret places where they grow year after year, and this secret is never divulged to anyone except his sons.

The path is steep and treacherous, and far off the beaten hiking trails in the mountains, even a trained guide would find the way to be difficult. But each year Papi continues his tradition to take his sons up for a few days in the mountains, and they gather about 400 flowers with their stems over the course of about 3 days, leaving the plants to push forth again the next year where they can bloom again.

They don’t get their stems from one particular place, there is a whole list written in Papi’s mind, and according to the weather and the way the earth and vegetation has moved by landslides and the deep winter snow and so forth, he makes the decision to gather the stems in any particular area.

There are two types of Genepi plant: genepi jaune, and the genepi bleu; the bleu is more rare and flavorful than the jaune, and is not identifid by the color of the blossom, because the blossom for both types is still the color yellow. The genepi bleu has an argentine / silver tint to the stem and leaves. Bleu is the best and most flavorful kind, and is the kind Papi gathers.

They bring the cuttings home and dry them on paper outside, and when they are sufficiently dry, the blossoms with their stems are inserted whole one by one into the bottles, 40 blossoms with their stems to a bottle. The stems, once they are in the bottles, are covered with alcohol which has been diluted to 45 percent, and then the bottles are stopped up and the blossoms steep for 40 days. At the end of the 40 days, the Genepi is filtered and put back into the bottles. Sugar is added after filtering, to taste, and every year the batch requires a different amount of sugar.

You use just plain sugar from the sack, and begin the sugaring with 12 teaspoons of sugar in the bottle. Papi covers the mouth of the bottle with his thumb, shakes it well, and then takes a sip. If there’s enough sugar according to his taste, the bottle is re-corked and it is ready for storage. It will keep for years and years, although this family normally drinks their stock every year.

At that point I considered asking for another serving of this delicious Genepi, since hearing the story made the drink seem even more delectable than before, but I thought better of it. It was truly precious indeed.

I did ask a question – “If Genepi is a protected plant, how come we see the drink for sale everywhere in the Alpes?” Ah, very good question. “That Genepi is made from extracts of cultivated plants. They add lots of sugar to try and hide the taste.” It's terrible stuff.

The storyteller went on to tell the story of the year that they were caught by a terrible landslide when out gathering genepi, and their path back home was completely blocked. Luckily they were able to make their way down to a different town in two days and call his wife to pick them up there. It was a harrowing tale.

He finished with some sage advice: “Don’t even think about hunting genepi yourself. It’s dangerous. We go with Papi because he needs someone to accompany him in the mountain.”

Starry eyed, that evening I went home as if in a dream, and thoughts of home made Genepi filled me with hope and joy as I imagined myself adorned in an alpine traditional gown and carrying a hand woven basket from genepi patch to genepi patch. However the next day, when I was thinking about all of this, I realized that it was the Genepi that got to my head!

The tradition belongs to that family, and since they have done it for generations at home and in small quantities, with respect to the plant, they have a something very special. Please don’t try this one at home or on vacation, folks.

There are so many other wonderful recipes for home steeped vin maison, we can be happy with plants, fruits and nuts that grow locally which can become steadfast traditions linked to the land that nourishes us and that which we can pass to our children. Why not get some local nuts, fruits, or flowers and make your own tradition?

P. Hermé's Kougelhopf

During my years in Beijing, my boss, who was old school, used to tell me that every expat has to get to Hong Kong at least three times a year. For that reason, he would always find me a reason to go down to the Hong Kong office. Bless him. It was in Hong Kong where I learned just what a global city is. I remember the first time I rode in, by taxi, and I was hit in the gut with dreams of science fiction and the history of the oldest culture known to man, at the same time. It was one of those moments when your soul expands to take something in - thousands of glittering glass panes, the moon, the neon, changing and calling, a soulful helipad where you could hit the ground running. There are only a few international cities in the world that perform as magnets of glitz and culture. Like Hong Kong is to Asia, Paris is to Europe. This is the city where I spent the day on Saturday.

Lyon is a wonderful city, it is a great place to live, community, full of history and all that. But Paris - It's like Lyon is just one quartier, and Paris is multiplied by 20. The world comes to Paris. I feel like I'm going to another country when I go there. I thought of the wonderful weekend Merrick and I enjoyed in Paris last June. I am so glad that she had her ideas all organized and was quite firm with me about having a mission. I could just wander forever without any goal in Paris, which usually leads to blistered feet and leaves me precariously dependent on luck. For that reason, I realize it's best for me to set an itinerary and to set a few appointments with people to keep me from drifting like a leaf on the wind forever. For my one day, I set the anchor of a lunch meeting with two friends also visiting Paris from London.

After lunch with Maggie and her friend Enrico, in a restaurant where I had a piece of wood in my salad and the waiter gave me a chocolate to compensate for it, we headed to the Pierre Hermé boutique to pick out a pastry. The boutique itself was rather a minimal operation and not too glitzy, and they didn't have a tea room or anything, but they are very famous. I chose something simple. We headed to where they were staying, Enrico made some tea, and we enjoyed our pastries.

I had a mini kougelhopf (photo above). One bite began my search,and my mind turned over and over and churned for some time, and then I was left dangling there because I could not think of anywhere else I had ever had such a paragon of what I was trying to classify as brioche, but with a depth and certainty of something else.

I wish I had taken notes, because tasting that kougelhopf took me on a real journey. At the time I definitively stated that I would do a survey of the best patissieres in hopes of finding something that doesn't pale in comparison in Lyon. Now however, it doesn't seem like such a reasonable mission considering my altogether plan to live a healthier life. But it was nice to dream. I was glad to have a pastry that made me dream that way.

This is Maggie's pastry:

I brought Loïc some macarons. They had been knocked around a bit but survived.

On Size and Scale

Some little envelopes have got me thinking. I was rustling through a shelf at my favorite papetier here in Lyon, and found that she had these little itty bitty envelopes in stock. Since I'm looking forward to Aude's wedding this summer, I thought of ways she could use them at the reception. I bought them with the thought to do some calligraphy on them and show them to her. When I broke them out of the package and held one in my hand, something happened.

It was kind of like a gut memory, something I was not prepared for. I saw an envelope of this sort presented on a silver tray by gloved hands. I saw the notes we used to write in junior high school and slip into the crevice underneath our desks for the person in the next class to read.

I held the envelope in my hand and imagined receiving a posted letter in an envelope this small. But alas, I thought, these envelopes are too small to send through the mail. They will not go through because they are under the regulation size. I remembered one day in my teen years when I painstakingly hand crafted the envelope for a very important letter to my best friend to be exactly the size it should be. Yes, I suppose it was a bit small but not too small, it was kind of square and big enough to take the address and the stamp and everything, and it rested just right in the palm of my hand. The idea was to transmit intimacy. I took it to the post office behind my mother’s shop downtown, and the clerk thrust it back at me. She said it was too small to send, and they would not accept it. It was a shock and a disappointment to me at the time.

Throughout art school, I was very occupied with the idea of size and intimacy and size and monumentality, and everything in between, and I spent a great deal of time pondering the size of things. This in my mind, is a very important aspect of everything we do, and everything we transmit to others, but also in the way we see. When I had a choice, I would always frame a small area of an object and draw it very large. Coming to grips with the question of scale is a long and arduous process that continues well into our adulthood.

Now this idea of the size of a letter being regulated according to machines in America and the rules being very rigid about size is a very post machine-age thing. I got to thinking about how many very basic things in this country are different due to certain institutions dating hundreds, even thousands of years before the industrial revolution. Everyone knows that starting from scratch and building a well running system is much easier than trying to make an old one adapt. And everyone knows that France had a mail system way before sorting machines that would exclude little itty bitty envelopes. Therefore I conducted an experiment to see if my theory was correct. Indeed, my itty bitty letter was delivered without comment. I love this country! I have launched some off to America to see if they are treated differently, having been initially sorted here and I hope they finally reach their destinations.

The amuse-gueules we receive at restaurants also transmit a certain intimacy from the chef. I love it when they contain hand cut forms of cheeses or vegetables, sliced bigger than a julienne but just the right size to make us look closer, to draw us in. It makes us turn out regard to the intricate beauty of the small natural forms in the foods we eat, and also makes us glad that we have people back in the kitchen thinking of these things.

Ski Picnics

Loïc's idea of the perfect picnic is squatting in the woods with a swiss knife and a piece of cured meat. I like luxurious spreads complete with proper linens, silveware and glasses, and food that has been thoughtfully planned for the event. We have come to compromise on picnics when we ski. This past Sunday we went for a nice jaunt into the forest. Along with a thermos of hot pumpkin soup, we brought simple things. I have hauled very big meals to far-flung places, but simple picnics also have their place.

The first ski picnic I have the pleasure to remember was one prepared by my mother. I suppose I was 10 or 11 years old at the time. This was when my father went all out and bought everyone cross country skis when they were on sale at Marjax. My mother and I soon lagged behind the group. I was just learning to ski and hadn't dressed properly, so I was hot, tired and hungry by the time she pulled out our individual lunches, each in their brown sack. In addition to some sandwiches which I remember weren't too remarkable because of some tomatoes that had gotten everything soggy, she brought out nuts and dried fruits, and something I could not believe: chocolate. I suppose someone had told her the things one was supposed to take skiing because my mother would never choose to feed me chocolate or any sweets if she could help it, or that was my impression as a 10 year old, anyway. I remember that as the first time my mother and I ate chocolate alone together. My spirits lifted immediately after that special picnic with my mom. She said she was proud of me when we finally reached the station to find the others drinking hot cocoa in the lodge.

The next ski picnic I remember very well, it was the first one I had ever prepared. I was to go skiing with my dear friend Willy. We were about 14 years old, I think. Willy was a remarkably graceful person, and was a champion figure skater. We spent a great deal of time together during the holidays. When I suggested we start doing some cross country skiing, he really caught on fast and before we knew it he'd convinced his parents to get him some skis and he got his mother to drop us off at the trails. He was very good at convincing his parents to do things. For the picnic that day, I carefully prepared corned beef sandwiches on rye with russian dressing, with lots of crispy lettuce and pepper. For good measure, I topped them with thick wedges of cheddar cheese which where I grew up was made locally and was extrordinarly good, but at the time I didn't realize how good it was because I had never had any other. We were alone on a rather advanced trail, and lo around lunch time we happened upon a shack beside the trail. We sat down and had our sandwiches, which were packed tight and heavy and full of goodness. The snow was deep and there were icicles hanging pristinely from the roof at the front of the shack with the sun sending off beams of light in all directions. A cardinal came to join us. I was just thinking how great it was to be eating that sandwich when he said - "This is the best sandwich I have ever had". I glowed with pride and we laughed for a long time, I don't know why. It was a pretty good ski picnic.



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Note to mom:

Lest we forget your last visit:



Hey mama! If you're in the mood for another adventure, please book your tickets soon! I miss you very much! Love, me.

Cabillaud à la Ménagère

Cod has a great tasting fillet. Being an oily fish, the fillet can be braised along with potatoes with absolutely delectable results. You don't have to worry about this kind of fish going dry if you bake it along with root vegetables for awhile. This surprised me at first, because I always felt that nothing was more regrettable than overcooked fish, and I used to hover needlessly over them all. The more I learn about fish in the French diet, the more happy I am to discover that a variety of species tolerate different cooking methods and times. Cod is a relatively low maintenance fish with high taste ratio for the effort. I'm happy to enjoy more time with my family while I cook up some delicious cod in this simple way.

Preheat the oven to 180C / 350F.

1 onion, sliced not too thin
6-8 peeled new potatoes or 1-2 large potatoes that have been washed, peeled, cut into 4 pieces and tourned. (tourning is optional)
1 tablespoon good olive oil
4 tablespoons butter
1/2-1 teaspoon sea salt
pepper

Grease a porcelain or terra cotta oven proof dish that will hold the fish. Place the sliced onions in the bottom of the dish. Microwave the butter in a small dish until just melted, and add the olive oil, stir the mixture to blend. Drizzle roughly half of the butter/oil mixture over the potatoes. Lay the fish filets flat over the potatoes, drizzle the rest of the butter/oil over the top of the filets, and sprinkle the salt and pepper. Cover the pan with foil, to seal it the best you can. Place in the pre-heated oven for 25-30 minutes. The onion and potato will heat up and release steam, in turn steaming the cod, which will release it's own liquid to mingle with the rest. Serve hot with steamed vegetables.

Gambas Sabayon

The sabayon is an excellent addition to any kitchen notebook. Its origins are in Italy, but the French have adopted it quite well. It is a foam that when warm takes the consistency of a sauce, and when chilled becomes a mousse. The formula: eggs/flavorings/wine/heat works equally well sweetened and chilled or as a savory sauce. Some times I make an elegant sweet champagne sabayon to serve as dessert, chilled. It is a thick rich amagam of concentrated flavors.

This dish is a nice appetizer for a special dinner.

Gambas sabayon
For 4 people as an appetizer
Equipment: 4 ramekins, double boiler or metal bowl that fits over a sauce pan.

16 medium to large wild fished gambas or netted ocean shrimp, uncooked
8 spring roll wrappers
2T. butter
1 T. spice mix maison
100 g. green mixed salad

1 head garlic, unpeeled
4 egg yolks
1 T. spice mix maison (that makes for a total of 2 tablespoons)
2 T. lemon juice (fresh)
1 cup white wine
1 t. dijon mustard
1 T. minced fresh tarragon

Method
-Cut the base off the head of garlic, wrap in foil, and bake in a hot oven for approximately 20 minutes.
-Remove from oven and when cool enough to handle but still warm, squeeze the softened garlic into a metal bowl (that will eventually fit over the saucepan.) Add the Creole seasoning and lemon juice and mix the paste well.
-Mince your tarragon.
-Peel the shrimp, remove the heads and de-vein. (For beginners, please note that uncooked shrimp will be blue or green in color. When it cooks it will turn orange.)
-Preheat the oven to 375F / 190C.
-Grease the ramekins and fit two spring roll shells into them, fluffing them into pretty shapes that will eventually hold the shrimp and the sauce like a nest.
-Heat up 2 T. butter in your saucepan and add 1 T. spice mix maison. When the foam has subsided, add the shrimp all at once and cook about halfway, stirring and flipping them constantly. The goal is to finish cooking them in the oven in the shells. (This is just enough to get the outsides to start to turn orange, but not any more, because if you fully cook them before they go in the oven, they will overcook in the oven and that would be a shame.) This should take no longer than about 3 minutes.
-Remove the shrimp to the prepared shells quickly and arrange them in a pretty way, this is how they will be presented in the end. Careful about drips. I use chopsticks to do this for more precision. Slide them in the oven, and set the timer for 5 minutes.

-Rinse out the saucepan right quick and put about an inch (2cm) water in the bottom, and heat the water to boiling.
-lower the heat to keep the water simmering, and place the metal bowl containing the garlic and spice paste on top ove the pan, over the steam.
-Break the 4 egg yolks into the bowl containing the paste.
-Whisk for a few seconds, incorporating the egg yolks thoroughly.
-Add the wine and continue to whisk over the steam until the sauce begins to thicken. -Keep whisking, and add the dijon mustard when you see the first wisps of steam rising from the sauce. It will thicken quickly at this point, and this is when you should add the minced tarragon. At this point in adition to having thickened, it will have turned into a foam. A delicious foam. Be careful not to let this sauce cook much more beyond this point or it will turn.

-When the timer rings (this should time out approximately to the sauce being finished) Remove the shells from the oven. They should be browned around the edges, they will be pretty. Arrange the salad around the plate and leave a little place for the pastry nest. Carefully lift the pastry nests from the ramekins and place them on the plates, use a ladle and give a nice dose of the foamy sauce over the shrimp and around the plate, without covering the salad or the forms of the shrimp too much, their forms are special. Take them to the table immediately.

-Bring the leftover sauce to the table for mopping up by the gourmands.

Variations: Some people don't like tarragon. Never fear, this dish can and has been done without it, with a beautiful garlicky result. The roasted garlic, instead of lifting up and complimenting the tarragon flavor, will become the central flavor. You should consider the seasoning if you omit the tarragon, and adjust with a bit of extra salt just before serving. Another way to do that, if you have some in the kitchen, is to dust the finished dish with fleur de sel.

Spice Mix Maison

Like equipment, there are certain seasonings that everyone should have on hand and within easy reach in the kitchen. I keep three old mustard pots filled with the following. Good Herbes de Provence as provided to me periodically by my mother-in-law Brigitte who lives in the midi (that's down south in Provence for those not in the know with the lingo), Rough Sea Salt, and my own Spice Mix Maison. It varies from batch to batch, depending on what I have got in the larder. For example last time I ground up a dry smoked Mexican pepper that Loic brought to me to replace the cayenne. Sometimes I add a pinch of this or a pinch of that. Make up your own mix, but start from here:

3 parts paprika
1.5 part dried garlic
1 part dried onion flakes
1.5 part rough sea salt
1 part black pepper
1 part herbes de provence
1 part oregano
1/2 to 1 part cayenne

If you use tablespoons for the parts, you should get a nice big jar of it that you can keep by the stove. Be careful not to mix up the cayenne and the paprika when you've bought them in bulk. Taste things carefully.

Tripes

There's a reason why the French refer to tripes in the plural. Cows have four different stomachs, each with its own function. Form follows function in each of the stomachs, and we have different patterns and shapes to appreciate when we find them freshly prepped for the cook pot at the butcher. Any respectable tripe dish should have a sampling of each stomach, because their shapes and forms allow them to sopp up sauce in different ways. A perfectly prepared dish of tripes will give you a variety of mouthfeel all throughout the dish, as each piece will pick up the stewing juice differently.

Since tripes prepared from their raw form take several hours to reach a digestible consistency, for the most part, your butcher will carry tripes that have been previously cleaned and boiled, and are ready to take on whatever style you choose with another hour of simmering. One great thing about tripes is you can never simmer them too long! Prepared tripes run from a brilliant white to a faded tea stained color, depending on which parts of the stomachs they came from. The ones that have not been pre-boiled will look like they need a good cleaning. If you are not sure, ask your butcher.

A nice way to fix tripes

1 kilo beef tripes, cleaned and boiled by the butcher
1/4 cup good olive oil
2-3 cups white wine
5 or 6 tomatoes or 3 tablespoons tomato paste in winter
4 cloves garlic, peeled but left whole
2 medium sized onions, roughly chopped
1 bouquet garni
2 or three poivre long or black peppercorns
1 teaspoon spice mix maison
salt and pepper

-Cut the tripes into about 2cm sized (1 inch)crisscrossed chunks.
-Faire fondre the onion in olive oil (that is saute until soft without browning)
-Add the tripes and let sizzle for a little while, then add the whole garlic cloves, the herbs, tomato paste and white wine. Bring to a boil and then lower the heat, and simmer for an hour. Add the spices at the end.

A wonderful variation of this dish which I like very much is to replace the tomato paste with the juice of one lemon and 2 tablespoons white cider vinegar. At the end, in the last five minutes, when you add the other seasonings, add about a 1/2 cup of pitted black olives. Which one you prepare depends on your mood for tomatoes. You really can't go wrong with tripes, they like acidic mediums to simmer in. I have served tripes over rice, with country bread, etc. Greens of any kind go well with tripes, but what I like best is to serve them alone, followed by a clean crisp simple salad.

Tourtes

Tourtes are covered pies in France. They are not called tourtes by virtue of their roundness or their contents. Sweet or savory, tourtes are pies with an upper crust. No matter that in Germany they are round sweet cakes with nuts & cinnamon, no matter that the origin of the word comes from the latin torta, round. Escoffier said so, and so it is. No matter, we still see exceptions here and there, but ask any booksmart gourmand or gourmet, and they may have a thing or two to say if you don't include that upper crust! Anything different and it's a tarte, they'll say. By my twisted logic, I think tourtes are an older, wiser, more thoughtful, slightly more modest version of the tarte.

Basic Pâte Brisée

This basic recipe is one I use for all of my tarte and tourte crusts. The recipe below is enough for two small tartes that will serve four people one reasonable serving each, or one big one. If you want to make a larger tarte or multiple batches, you can multiply this recipe. You can make this pastry crust, refrigerate it, and use it the next day. The dough freezes well, for when you are preparing mass quantities for parties, but the pastry crust is so easy to put together, I don’t see the point in making more than you’re going to use each time. If you like a nice thick crust, sometimes it is better to give it a blast in the oven before filling it to ensure that it cooks through. I use this recipe primarily for savory dishes, but it also goes well with anything chocolate. If you uset his crust for a fruit tarte, omit the salt.

The Recipe

160 grams of flour
3 grams fleur-de-sel or lightly crushed sea salt
70 grams butter or duck fat, depending on what you need to use up.
1 egg yolk
1 T. thick crème fraiche or a few drops of poultry stock, depending on what you have on hand and what you plan to fill it with.

- Mix the flour and salt and make a well in the center.
- Work the fat into the flour with a fork until it looks like crumbs. Add the yolk, and work it in.
- Incorporate the crème fraîche or stock into the dough by teaspoon, stopping once it holds together.

This is your pate brisée for savory tartes.

- Place this in the fridge and find something to occupy your time for at least 1/2 hour before using it. When you're ready to use it, roll out the dough into a circle, keeping in mind that for a home made tarte, you have the choice to make it as thick as you like. What you want to do is roll it out to be just a bit bigger than a small pie shell, so that you can set it inside and have the edges fold over a bit. If you don't have a small shell, you can just as easily roll the crust flat and simply turn up the edges by pinching all around before pre-baking it.

- Pre-bake this shell: Cover your rolled shell which you have place in the tarte pan with baking parchment and weigh down the middle with pastry beans and bake at 200C / 400F for 7 minutes (the pastry beans don't have to be used if you have rolled the shell flat).

You don't have to pre-bake this crust if you don't want to, really. Follow whatever your recipe says, and when you have the time to try it another way, definitely experiment, and put it in your own kitchen notebook!

Petite Tarte aux Poireaux

Profound deliciousness lies in the midst of the season’s scarce pickings. A winter’s kitchen repertoire is like a closet full of thick warm woolen sweaters, each a different color and each knit by a separate hand. Winter is a time to prepare comfy foods that nourish the soul as well provide everything we need to keep us warm. In the French kitchen, the leek plays a supporting role all year round, but is by far the star of the show during the dark winter months. In winter, the leeks are often new, small and thin, the kind I like best, because they are bursting with life out to their skin, and the flavor goes such a long way. Leeks are an important part of the petit salé, the pot au feu, and many other long cooked soups and winter ragouts, and perfect in combination with potatoes in a velouté we call the Vichyssoise. One of the best and easiest ways to enjoy fresh young hardy winter leeks fresh from the producer’s garden aside from eating them plain, is to make a petite tarte aux poireaux.

The Recipe
Prepare one batch of your favorite Pâte Brisée recipe, and prebake a small tarte shell.

4 small fresh leeks
1 shallot
2-3 new onions (they look like fresh white bulbs with green stems) or 1 small yellow onion
2 leaves of sorrel
1 bunch chervil
50 g. butter
1/3 cup crème fraîche
salt and pepper

- Wash and dry the herbs. Remove the chervil leaves from their stems. You are going to have between 1/2 and 1 cup of leaves. Roll and slice the sorrel into a fine chiffonade, which is thin strips made by slicing across the roll you have made.

- Cut the end from each leek, and remove the outer leaves only if necessary. Wash them well, without taking them apart. There may be areas near where the green shoots form where sand or dirt have accumulated. This is rare for the fresh young leeks, but be careful and ensure that it is all removed. Slice the whites into very thin rounds, and keep slicing a little way up into the green stem, to give the mix a little color. (Leave the remaining green part in your collection of scraps and cuts to be used later for a vegetable stock.) Mince the onions and shallot.

- Sauté the onions, leek, and shallot in the butter over low heat, pushing them about with a wooden spoon, until they soften (this is called faire fondre, to melt, in French). You don’t want to have too much caramelization. Use your judgement and once the roots are soft and tender, and not browned very much at all, add the herbs and push them about until they wilt but not so long that the sorrel begins to change color from bright green to drab. Turn the melted bulb / herb mixture into the prepared pastry shell and spread it all over the bottom. Remember, a little leek goes a long way in flavor.

- Stir up the crème fraîche and add a little water if necessary to get it to the consistency that it can pour. It should still be quite thick. Drizzle the crème fraîche over the whole surface. Return the tarte in which you have placed the melted roots and crème to the oven, and bake for another 10 minutes. Serve this tarte warm, hot, or even cold.


This recipe does very well as little bite sized aperetif tartelettes. The photo above is a portion-sized tartlette which was done without pre-baking the shell. It is nice to serve this is as an appetizer, or what the French call an entrée. A variation of this tarte is to grace the top with slices of fresh goat cheese and a generous grind of white pepper before baking. This marries very well with the sorrel and chervil. Be sure to note your variations in your kitchen notebook, because they'll serve you well in the future.

Introduction

The St. Antoine Market on the bank of the Saone river is my home base, and it is a source of great inspiration. It's the place where I do most of my shopping, and aside from my kitchen, the place where I snap the most photos. A month after we moved to France, Loic and I had a place to live, a bed, and a stove. We were waiting for our furniture, books, everything, to arrive from America. I did not speak French at the time, and each day, Loic would go off to his new laboratory and do physics, while I tried to figure out how things worked in this country.

Our move having been kind of a last minute thing, and with my needing to work as long as I could while I still could in Los Angeles, I had not had any time to learn much about life in this country. As we packed our two suitcases each for the flight to Lyon, I instinctively put two books in my bag, the two legendary central tomes by Julia Child, one of which had been given to me by my mother when I was 21 years old, and the second volume having been purchased at a used book shop when I met Loic.

Even a trip to the grocery store was a trial and a test for me. If you don't prepare for the culture changes, there are a million little peculiar qualities to the people here that when added up can make you feel like they are losing touch with your sanity. I decided, not by my own choice, in the beginning, to begin frequenting the outdoor markets of Lyon, because for some reason I felt I could communicate more directly with the people there.

It was amusing to the vendors to witness my mute, haggling, bustling, no-nonsense way of keeping of the food on the table in those fragile months when we'd sunk everything into just getting to Lyon, and I had only a little bit of money a week to keep us fed.

At that time, I discovered the beauty and the magic of French cooking. I know it sounds odd that I had been hauling Mastering the Art of French Cooking around for so many years without ever really appreciating what was inside, and only when things got easy and all those strange ingredients were close at hand did it all click for me. Ho hum, sometimes I rely on felicity more than I should.

Although we were really struggling to keep afloat, to me we were still managing to eat like kings - I was cooking real French food! A couple of eggs, a knob of butter, a pot of local wine and whatever was in season and we could do some serious eating! I began to explore parts and offal, and cheap things, keeping things playful and adventurous. My husband agreed. I never did get in the habit of supermarket shopping. The market is the element of the French way of living that I find has so completely wrapped itself tightly around my heart. I suppose that struggling and coming out on top, no matter what kind of struggling or where, does that to a person, endears them to a place. It doesn't matter really where a person is.

I began taking careful notes in those very first days, a blank book that I had started as a diary to paste the ticket stubs and remember the carefree whilrwind months I spent in Paris as an exchange student from UNC CHapel Hill at the Sorbonne before Loic and I were engaged. I had covered the outside of the blank book with a subway map (one of the good ones, back when they gave out good maps) of the city of Paris and had embedded a small printed photograph, a fleeting snapshot of the bird that came out to sing in the evenings in the courtyard behind Loic's one room apartment near the canal. I still call those kinds of birds 'love birds' and consider them good luck, although I know they must have a name given by the scientists of the world.

When I had filled that first book with a whole lot of very simple notes and discoveries, notes from enthusiastic brainstorming, essays, stories, and a host of happy aha moments and accidents (yes! It just keeps going and going!), I got another blank book, and this time covered it with a map of Lyon, and filled it with increasingly sophisticated food oriented ideas. My family and friends began to identify me with my strange obscession at that time. New friends never knew the before-food Lucy, all the better, in my opinion.

This blog is the place where I'll put personal recordings from over the happy years we have spent in France so far. It begins after six years of diligent servitude to the seasons, French cooking, new discoveries, ideas inspired by my husband and his family, my education in the language and culture, and all around food enthusiasm that was jump started by my sudden immersion in Lyon.

I hope you will enjoy accompanying me through seasons. Most of all, I hope that my kitchen notebook inspires you to keep one of your own.



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