TO CUT NOODLES
Use the blades of a pasta machine that will cut dough into ¼-inch-wide strips. Feed one end of a sheet of dough through the blades, holding the other end straight up from the machine. Catch the strips from underneath the machine before the sheet goes completely through the rollers and put the cut strips lightly across floured jelly-roll pans, or let them hang over the tops of straight-backed chairs. Let the strips dry for 30 minutes.
CRèME CARAMEL AU GINGEMBRE TAN DINH(Caramel Custards with Ginger)
In a heavy saucepan combine ½ cup sugar and ¼ cup each of peeled and grated gingerroot and water and boil the liquid, washing down any sugar crystals clinging to the sides of the pan with a brush dipped in cold water, for 7 minutes. Transfer the ginger with a slotted spoon to a bowl and reserve it. Cook the syrup over moderate heat, undisturbed, until it is a deep caramel. Divide the caramel among four ¾-cup lotus-shaped bowls or ramekins and coat the bottoms evenly.
In a saucepan scald 2 cups milk with ½ cup sugar and the reserved ginger. In a bowl beat 4 egg yolks and 2 whole eggs with a pinch of salt until they are just combined. Strain the milk into the egg mixture, stirring, and discard the ginger. Skim the froth from the surface and divide the mixture among the bowls or ramekins. Put the bowls or ramekins in a baking pan and add enough hot water to the pan to reach halfway up the sides of the bowls or ramekins. Bake the custards, covered with a baking sheet, in a preheated moderately slow oven (325°F) for 35 to 40 minutes, or until they are just set. Remove the custards from the pan, let them cool until they are room temperature, and decorate each one with a small piece of crystallized ginger. Serves 4.
TARTES FINES CHAUDES AUX POMMES JAMIN(Hot Apple Tarts)
Make puff paste and give it 2 more turns. Roll the dough into a 1/16-inch-thick round on a floured surface and with a 6-inch round cutter cut out 6 rounds. Invert the rounds onto a moistened baking sheet and chill them for 30 minutes.
Divide 6 Golden Delicious apples, peeled, cored, and very thinly sliced, decoratively on the dough, sprinkle them with ½ cup sugar, and dot each tart with 1 tablespoon butter, cut into 3 pieces. Bake the tarts in a preheated hot oven (425°F) for 20 to 25 minutes, or until the apples and pastry are golden. Brush the tarts with honey and serve them warm with crème fraîche. Serves 6.
GRATIN DE FRUITS ROUGES LE PRÉ CATELAN(Strawberries with Sabayon Sauce)
Divide 1 pint strawberries, hulled, among 4 individual gratin dishes and sprinkle each dish with 1½ teaspoons sugar, or to taste. In a small heavy saucepan cook 2 egg yolks, ¼ cup sugar, and 1 tablespoon cold water over low heat, whisking, for 5 to 7 minutes, or until the mixture is thick. Whisk in 1 tablespoon heavy cream and 1 teaspoon eau-de-vie de framboise or eau-de-vie de fraise. Divide the mixture among the dishes and put the dishes under a preheated broiler for 1 to 2 minutes, or until the sabayon is golden. Serves 4.
November 1979
WHEN I WAS GREEN
Patric Kuh
A certain solidarity exists among the younger cooks and assistants in good Parisian restaurant kitchens. They all work the same grueling double shifts. They all disdain the high-rent neighborhoods where the restaurants are located. Even their skin seems to break out in unison, from jobs that essentially require them to stand before an open furnace for twelve hours a day. I once was proud to be part of such a tight, gritty fraternity. My rite of passage? The cooking of asparagus.
The year was 1984. The setting, Restaurant Guy Savoy (then with one Michelin star, on the rue Duret; today with two, on the rue Troyon). The dish was a delicate appetizer called huîtres aux asperges (oysters with asparagus). Each day before service began, the oysters were opened and the asparagus stalks cooked, then puréed. Their tips were blanched separately. Just before the dish was delivered to the table, the purée was heated and the tips and oysters warmed in oyster water. Everything was then plated and crowned with a sprig of chervil in an arrangement that suggested both the pastoral and the maritime. The slightest variation in temperature or presentation would send the dish from the domain of the sublime to that of the absurdly simple—a fate that seemed to loom especially large when I, a student recently promoted from cleaning wild duck in the basement, came upstairs to the kitchen to be in charge of cooking the asparagus.
“You’re not in California now,” my immediate supervisor, Gaetan, a nineteen-year-old from the Vendée, would say each time I gave him yet another underdone asparagus tip. (Never mind that, as yet, I’d never been to California. To him, the state had an obvious connection to underdone vegetables.) Or I’d cook the tips a second too long, and his eyes would make stabbing motions toward the blender, as if to command, “Get those puréed before anyone else tastes them!” I’d jump on that blender like a manic soda jerk. I knew the score. The chef wouldn’t go off on me; he’d go off on Gaetan. For if I couldn’t cook an asparagus, then Gaetan couldn’t cook an asparagus. In fact, if I couldn’t cook an asparagus, then Gaetan would never be a chef.
The different levels of pressure under which we at the bottom rungs worked were clearest during the coupure, the break between lunch and dinner. In the winter, few of us ventured farther than the café on the corner, where we’d stand at the zinc counter, too poor to sit down. But there the unity ended. At one end of the counter converged the unpaid students and stagiaires; at the other, clustered around the pinball machine in a cloud of Gitane smoke, were the real cooks—the ones who’d already had their mettle tested. They had to put up with us greener hands in the kitchen—but not here, not on their own time. They needed a good reference to move on to the next great kitchen; we rookies were just in it for the recipes. (“You know when they start taking pictures of the food, they’re fixing to leave,” our bosses liked to quip.) If any one of us hoped to make it over to their end of the zinc, we had to prove ourselves first.
My opportunity came during a particularly busy lunch. To my growing dismay, every second order that was called out (to an immediate “Oui, chef” response) was for huîtres aux asperges. Standing beside me, furiously working the vegetable station, Gaetan whispered urgently, “Got enough?” I didn’t—but there were crates of asparagus downstairs in the cold room. I’d have to cook them in the middle of the service. “I will,” I answered.
I placed a pot of salted water on the hottest part of the flattop and raced downstairs. I grabbed the asparagus, lined them up, and cut them. Back upstairs the water was at a rolling boil. I threw in the asparagus tips, and with a metal bowl in hand, ran to the ice machine, body-checking a waiter on the way. On my way back to the stove, I seized a slotted spoon and plunged it into the pot, without even tasting one asparagus. In two swift moves, I had all the tips in the ice bath, the cooking stopped dead.
Not thirty seconds later, the chef said, “Asperges,”like a surgeon asking for a scalpel. Gaetan set the warmed tips beside him. But the chef didn’t plate the orders immediately. First, he took a tip from the pan and, with the eyes of the kitchen on him, bit into it. Gaetan swallowed. I swallowed. Everyone, even Hassan the dishwasher, swallowed. There was more swallowing going on in that kitchen than in the dining room. Then, without saying a word, the chef resumed assembling the orders. I exhaled. No comment. That was as good as it got here.
And so it was, wordlessly, that afternoon that Gaetan waved me over from the other end of the zinc, and I joined the other young cooks around the pinball machine.
ASPARAGUS AND GRUYÈRE TART
Serves 8 (lunch main course)
Active time: 1¼ hr Start to finish: 2¾ hr
Black pepper and sour cream pastry dough (recipe follows)
3 lb thick white or green asparagus, trimmed to 6 inches and peeled
½ teaspoon kosher salt plus additional for sprinkling
1 cup heavy cream
2 large eggs
¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1 cup finely grated Gruyère
Special equipment: a round pizza pan (13 inches in diameter, not including rim) and pie weights or raw
rice
Make crust:
Roll out pastry dough on a floured surface into a 15½-inch round. Transfer to pizza pan by rolling dough around rolling pin and unrolling it across pan. Trim edge just enough to make even, then fold over and pinch to form a ½-inch-high, double-thick side. Prick bottom of shell all over with a fork and chill until firm, at least 30 minutes.
Preheat oven to 375°F.
Line shell with foil and fill with pie weights or raw rice. Bake in middle of oven until sides are firm, about 20 minutes. Remove foil and weights carefully and bake shell until golden, about 10 minutes more, then cool.
Prepare filling while shell cools:
Layer asparagus on a steamer rack, sprinkling each layer with kosher salt to taste. Steam, covered, over boiling water until completely tender but not mushy, about 8 minutes for green asparagus or 12 for white, then transfer to a bowl of ice water to stop cooking. Drain well and pat dry with paper towels.
Whisk together cream, eggs, ½ teaspoon kosher salt, and nutmeg, then season lightly with pepper. Pour custard evenly in tart shell.
Top filling and bake tart:
Sprinkle custard with two thirds of cheese, then arrange spears in custard, tips out (like the spokes of a wheel). Sprinkle remaining cheese over top.
Bake tart in middle of oven until custard is set, about 20 minutes. Then broil tart 2 to 3 inches from heat until golden, 1 to 2 minutes.
Cooks’ note:
If you don’t have a pizza pan, you can use a 12-inch tart pan (you’ll need to trim asparagus to 5½ inches).
BLACK PEPPER AND SOUR CREAM PASTRY DOUGH
Makes enough for a 13-inch tart shell
Active time: 30 min Start to finish: 1½ hr
This dough would make a delicious crust for any kind of savory tart, such as a quiche.
2¼ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
¾ teaspoon black pepper
⅛ teaspoon sugar
1¼ sticks (10 tablespoons) cold unsalted butter, cut into bits
⅓ cup cold vegetable shortening
3 tablespoons sour cream
3 tablespoons ice water
Blend together flour, salt, pepper, sugar, butter, and shortening with your fingertips or a pastry blender until most of mixture resembles coarse meal with remainder in small (roughly pea-size) lumps. Stir together sour cream and ice water, then stir into dough with a fork until incorporated. Gather dough into a ball.
Flatten dough into a 6-inch square on a lightly floured surface. Roll out into a roughly 18-by-6-inch rectangle and fold into thirds (like a letter) to form a 6-inch square. Turn dough so an open-ended side is nearest you, then roll out dough into an 18-by-6-inch rectangle again, dusting work surface with flour as necessary. Fold into thirds same as above.
Repeat rolling and folding 1 more time, then chill dough, wrapped in plastic wrap, at least 1 hour.
Cooks’ note:
Dough can be chilled up to 1 day.
ROAST CHICKEN WITH ASPARAGUS, MOREL,
AND PEARL-ONION RAGOUT
Serves 4
Active time: 1 hr Start to finish: 1¼ hr
10 oz pearl onions
1 (3-to 3½-lb) chicken, excess fat removed and legs tied
1 tablespoon olive oil
4 tablespoons unsalted butter (2 tablespoons cold, 2 tablespoons softened)
1 lemon, halved
1 oz small dried morel mushrooms
1 cup warm water
1 lb medium green asparagus, peeled and trimmed
Kosher salt to taste
¼ cup dry white wine
Preheat oven to 425°F.
Blanch onions in boiling salted water 1 minute. Drain in a colander and rinse under cold running water to stop cooking. Trim root ends and peel.
Pat chicken dry. Coat a 17-by-12-inch flameproof roasting pan with oil and put chicken in pan. Rub 2 tablespoons softened butter into skin over entire chicken. Season chicken inside and out with salt and pepper. Put 1 lemon half in cavity and squeeze remaining half over chicken.
Roast chicken in middle of oven 20 minutes. Baste chicken, then continue to roast, basting about every 7 minutes, 20 minutes more. Scatter onions around chicken and continue to roast, turning onions and basting every 7 to 8 minutes, until chicken is golden and a thermometer inserted into fleshy part of a thigh registers 170°F (juices will run clear), 25 to 35 minutes more.
Once chicken begins roasting, soak morels in warm water 20 minutes. Lift mushrooms out of water, squeezing excess liquid back into bowl, and reserve liquid. Rinse morels thoroughly to remove grit and squeeze dry. Trim any tough stems. Pour reserved soaking liquid through a sieve lined with several layers of cheesecloth or a paper towel into a small bowl.
Cut asparagus diagonally into 2-inch lengths. Arrange on a steamer rack and sprinkle with kosher salt. Steam asparagus, covered, over boiling water until crisp-tender, about 5 minutes, then transfer to a bowl of ice water to stop cooking.
Transfer roast chicken to a platter, then discard string and cover chicken loosely with foil. Transfer onions and pan juices to 2 separate small bowls (do not clean roasting pan). Skim and discard fat from juices. Set roasting pan over a burner. Add wine and deglaze by boiling over high heat, stirring and scraping up brown bits, until reduced to about 2 tablespoons. Add pan juices from bowl, any juices that have accumulated on platter (from chicken), mushroom-soaking liquid, and morels, then boil until liquid is reduced to about ? cup.
Cut remaining 2 tablespoons butter into pieces and add to morels with onions and asparagus. Cook over moderately high heat, shaking pan, until butter is just incorporated and vegetables are glazed. Season vegetables with salt and pepper and spoon around chicken.
WHITE ASPARAGUS WITH TRUFFLE VINAIGRETTE
Serves 4 (first course)
Active time: 30 min Start to finish: 45 min
White asparagus has a delicate flavor that works especially well with our truffle vinaigrette, but try the dish with green asparagus, too.
1½ tablespoons sherry vinegar
1½ teaspoons fresh lemon juice
1 (15-gm) bottled black truffle (1 inch in diameter), finely minced
½ teaspoon kosher salt plus additional for sprinkling
4½ tablespoons hazelnut or walnut oil
1½ tablespoons chicken broth or truffle liquid from bottle
1½ lb white asparagus, peeled and trimmed
Garnish: fresh chervil sprigs or chopped fresh chives
Whisk together vinegar, lemon juice, truffle, kosher salt, and pepper to taste. Add oil in a slow stream, whisking. Whisk in broth and season with more salt and pepper if necessary.
Arrange asparagus on a steamer rack and sprinkle with kosher salt to taste. Steam asparagus, covered, over boiling water until tender, about 10 minutes for white (4 to 6 for green).
Transfer asparagus with tongs to paper towels and pat dry. Divide among 4 plates, then spoon vinaigrette over and serve warm.
CRèME D’ASPERGES(Cream of Asparagus Soup)
Serves 4
Active time: 20 min Start to finish: 50 min
lb green asparagus, trimmed
1 large onion, chopped
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
5 to 6 cups chicken broth
½ cup crème fraîche or heavy cream ¼ teaspoon fresh lemon juice, or to taste
Cut tips from 12 asparagus 1½ inches from top and halve tips lengthwise if thick. Reserve for garnish. Cut stalks and all remaining asparagus into ½-inch pieces.
Cook onion in 2 tablespoons butter in a 4-quart heavy pot over moderately low heat, stirring, until softened. Add asparagus pieces and salt and pepper to taste, then cook, stirring, 5 minutes. Add 5 cups broth and simmer, covered, until asparagus is very tender, 15 to 20 minutes.
While soup simmers, cook reserved asparagus tips in boiling salted water until just tender, 3 to 4 minutes, then drain.
Purée soup in batches in a blender until smooth, transferring to a bowl (use cau
tion when blending hot liquids), and return to pan. Stir in crème fraîche, then add more broth to thin soup to desired consistency. Season with salt and pepper. Bring soup to a boil and whisk in remaining tablespoon butter.
Add lemon juice and garnish with asparagus tips.
Cooks’ note:
Soup keeps, covered and chilled, 2 days. If making ahead, add last tablespoon butter and lemon juice after reheating.
March 2001
AMERICANS IN PARIS
A MEMORY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS
Naomi Barry
The most memorable table I have known in Paris was in an apartment over a printing plant at 5, rue Christine. The entrance was little better than a slum, but in the old quarter of Paris the entrance tells little. Once you were inside, the rooms were spacious and the furniture, the objets d’art, the bold individuality of taste, the reflection of strong personalities made you feel as though you had gone straight through the looking glass.
Invitations to lunch or dinner were precious affairs and hard to come by until you were accepted. There was no dropping in. The owner, a lady of unmistakable appearance, was quite likely to tell any unfortunate who rang the bell without an invitation that the maîtresse de maison was not at home.
This year those of us privileged to have been admitted have been musing a lot about those exquisite meals, because there will never be any more. They belong to an iridescent history. The hostess, Miss Alice B. Toklas, who was an integral part of the Paris of art and literature and esprit for sixty years, died in March.
Alice Toklas was the first true gourmet I ever met. She knew how to grow, to buy, to prepare, to cook, to savor, to serve—and how to put food in its proper place. She understated flavors so that you were deliciously tormented trying to grasp them. A lunch at the rue Christine lasted three hours if you broke away brusquely, but it was more likely to be a leisurely four hours, for the meal was meant to be a trampoline for conversation and pithy criticism.
Remembrance of Things Paris Page 22