Cava o champán: Mismas burbujas, distinto nombre

Published by Tuesday, May 10, 2011 Permalink 0

por Raquel Pardo

Click here to read English version

Sé que puede parecer una gafotada (esta palabra me la acabo de inventar, sustituyámosla por esnobismo), pero me sigue ocurriendo: se me erizan los pelos (a escondidas, eso sí) cuando oigo que alguien confunde el champagne (o champán) con el cava.

Así que hoy me hadado por garabatear unas líneas didácticas para el que quiera leerlas y no confundirlos nunca más, a no ser en una cata a ciegas (que puede pasar, doy fe, a pesar de que haya quien asegure que siempre distingue uno de otro).

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Food Poetry: Ancestor, by Nan Fry

Published by Tuesday, May 10, 2011 Permalink 0

Deep inside me she remembers hunger.
She rejoices when I make stock—
the chicken already baked and eaten

returned to the pot—ribs ridged
like the roof of a cathedral.
I toss in potato peels, limp carrots,
old celery, herbs so dry they crumble.

Steam rises, more fragrant
than incense, and the long simmer
comforts her as no chant could.

Later I scoop out the bones
and vegetables, all their goodness
gone to broth. Golden,

fat shimmers on the surface,
the only gold she’ll ever know.
For now, it is enough.

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Plate to Page Food Writing and Photography Workshop in Weimar, Germany

Published by Tuesday, May 10, 2011 Permalink 0

The From Plate to Page food photography and writing workshop will start on Friday, May 20, 2011, lasting until Monday, May 23, 2011, in Weimar, Germany.

Rambling Epicure contributor Meeta Khurana Wolff, a professional food photographer and stylist whose photos appear almost daily in the slider at the top of our home page, is one of the four professionals giving the workshop, along with another Rambling Epicure contributor, Jamie Schler, author of our Destination Dessert column.

From Plate to Page is an intensive hands-on food workshop aimed at food bloggers, writers and photographers looking to enhance and hone their photography and writing skills while finding their own unique style and voice, both for their blog and for professional work. This exciting, one-of-a-kind workshop will intended to pull food bloggers and photographers out of their creative ruts and start them on their way to a more professional style.

Rather than follow the style and program of traditional food blogging conferences, From Plate to Page is a workshop encouraging active participation by each attendee in the ultimate learning experience. Working alongside four of Europe’s most popular and respected food bloggers — each one of whom has turned her own blog into a springboard for a successful freelance writing or photography/styling career, participants will spend an extensive part of the weekend working on assignments designed specifically for the food blogger. All dedicated activities throughout the weekend will be the source of a writing or photography experience followed by analysis, critique and discussion.

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Simon Says: Daily Food Quote, May 10, 2011

Published by Tuesday, May 10, 2011 Permalink 0

by Simón de Swaan

The farmer in me also makes it hard for me to throw things away.  Everything on our farm used to used; my mother would always have one eye on the next meal. If you had a chicken, the carcass would be boiled up for soup. When the pig was killed the fat would be rendered down and kept in jars for frying.  If something gives you flavour, I find it very wasteful to throw it away.–Richard Corrigan, The Clatter of Forks and Knives

Richard Corrigan is an Irish chef born in Dublin but raised in Ballivor, County Meath. He earned a Michelin star in 1998 and has been awarded many other culinary accolades, including Outstanding London Chef at the London Restaurant Awards. He is the author of two cookbooks.

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Simon Says: Daily Food Quote, May 9, 2011

Published by Monday, May 9, 2011 Permalink 0

by Simón de Swaan

So many of our happiest childhood memories are connected to food. Picnics by the sea, afternoon tea with Granny, Mammy’s lamb stew, or treacle pudding around the kitchen table. How many times have I heard, “I remember Aunt Margie used to make a wonderful apple pie. I wish I’d asked her for the recipe.” So don’t leave it until it’s too late.–Darina Allen, Forgotten Skills of Cooking

Darina Allen is the owner of Ballymaloe Cookery School in Shanagarry, County Cork, Ireland.  In addition to being a teacher, food writer, newspaper columnist, cookbook author and television presenter she is a leader in Ireland’s Slow Food movement. Allen is a founder of the first Farmers Markets in Ireland, and her school is run on an organic farm.

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The 7 Lives of Bread: Pascal Auriac, master bread baker in Laguiole, a hidden corner of France

Published by Friday, May 6, 2011 Permalink 0

Dictionnaire Universel du Painpar Jean-Philippe de Tonnac

Translated from the French and adapted by Jonell Galloway

In the food world, the name Laguiole — a tiny village tucked away in the highlands of the Aveyron Aubrac region of France — is generally associated with the brilliant, one-of-a-kind, self-taught chef Michel Bras, whose restaurant here earned its third Michelin star in 1999, and is held in the highest esteem by gourmets around the world. In the world of haute cuisine, he is considered to be an exceptionally gifted chef who works like a sorcerer in his kitchen laboratory hidden in the Puech du Suquet region, turning out dishes that resemble none other, but which are quickly dished out by a long line of copycats.

So you can just imagine how the young chefs who spend time in his kitchen walk away with a lasting impression of a single man, who didn’t quite live in sync with the times. Perhaps he was a Cistercian monk in another life, using a golden ratio to secretly slip secret formulas into his culinary compositions. If you ask Michel Bras what inspired him most in his creative progress, he says: “Photography and foot racing!” One might say asceticism and contemplation.

Pascal Auriat — master bread baker in Laguiole, who once worked in Bras’ kitchens — is still under the influence of this “ascetic aesthete”. When he speaks about the years he spent at Bras, his tone rather resembles that of a religious convert who has not slipped in his ways after all these years. What he has most retained is the veritable alchemy of fermentation.

The bonds that started to germinate between restaurants and bread baking — hardly perceptible even now — are still moving in a positive direction. It’s now difficult to imagine that there really was a time in France, not so long ago, when a 3-star menu served mediocre bread, not worthy of being placed on such high tables of gastronomy. To remedy this situation, chefs such as Michel Bras, Alain Passard (L’Arpège in Paris) and Olivier Roellinger (former Maison de Bricourt in Cancale in Brittany), as well as many others, started installing small bread ovens in their kitchens and making bread in a somewhat primitive fashion.

Restaurant pastry, which has followed its own path, quite separate from grande pâtisserie, has a similar story. Although they both followed their own separate paths, they never stopped mutually nurturing and influencing each other. Will there come a day when the ovens in the laboratory-kitchens of the great gastronomic establishments will  be directly connected to bread ovens, each housing one of France’s handcrafted bread bakeries?

Another way for a chef to improve the quality of his or her bread is of course to order it from a bread baker worthy of her name. Some artisanal bread bakers, such as Jean-Luc Poujauran, have already dug a deep niche for themselves.

It was like a calling when Pascal Auriat, with a vocational training certificate in cuisine already under his belt, came to Laguiole to try to work for Bras. In 1992, Bras gave him his chance. His first job was the vegetable station, which might well be the heart of Bras’ creative “offensive”, so it was a true sign of trust on the part of Bras. After two seasons, a place opened in the team he had his heart set on: pastry and micro-bread baking. At the time, the three daily batches were “germinated” using sourdough starter made from yogurt, a recipe that Bras had perfected and that Auriat was to scrupulously replicate, while, at the same time getting acquainted with the world of pastry making, working alongside Philipe Andrieu. Andrieu later went on to Fauchon and Ladurée, where he is now Executive Pastry Chef, so Auriat didn’t learn pastry making in just any old school.

Pascal Auriat entre Michel et Sébastien Bras au Mazuc (première implantation à Laguiole)

Restaurant pastry making inevitably calls on its counterpart. Pascal Auriat felt the need to perfect his training, so he left his mentor, a daring act indeed. So off he went to work with Pierre Hermé (now dubbed by Vogue as being “the Picasso of pastry making”) at Ladurée, which had just opened on the Champs-Elysées in Paris. Then a famous family of bread bakers, the Holders, bought out the noted Ladurée, started by Louis Ernest Ladurée, a former miller, in 1862.

Musical chairs: the miller Ladurée opened a pastry shop/tearoom, which was bought out over a hundred years later by a bread baker. A cook who learned to make pastry from another cook abandons the highland stoves of remote Aubrac to try his hand at small and big jobs on the Champs-Elysées. Gastronomic explorers have no bounds.

But Auriat did make his way back to Laguiole in 1999, when Bras asked him to become No. 2 pastry chef. The restaurant had just gotten its third Michelin star, and had to face up to the inundation of guests. There was no lack of work, and the horizons were unlimited. Michel and his son Sébastien were invited to open a branch in the Hokkaido Windsor hotel in Japan. Auriat packed his suitcases.

It just so happened that Eric Kayser, bread baker/fellow of the craft and today head of an empire including more than 60 bakeries spread out on all continents, also landed in the Windsor, where he opened a bread bakery. The three men met and talked about fermentation. Bras’ old yogurt only slightly interested Kayser, who advised him to use a liquid starter that he had patiently perfected. In the world of fermentation, Kayser had it all; Bras was convinced to change his ways.

When Auriat returned to his fold in the Aveyron, he started applying the “new school” methods of making sourdough bread using liquid starter. And just as every pastry chef puts his hands in the dough, his shoulder to the wheel, he left them there. He would have had to leave a starter in the refrigerator for six months, out of spite, to obtain what he was looking for, in vain, on his own: a good starter to incorporate into his tried and true kneading techniques.

Pascal set up shop on his own with Anne, whom he had met at Bras, and started perfecting his magic formulas using a starter made from wheat and rye from the Auvergne region, delivered straight from the moulins Antoine mill.

When he talks about himself, he says that the time he spent at Bras as cook, pastry chef and bread baker made him put taste above all else. One might call it bread baker’s aesthetics, expressed through taste. It could be his slogan.

It’s not often that a bread baker gets his training in the world of haute cuisine. And when it comes to Michel Bras’ kitchens, one might question whether a bread baker merits the attention of bread lovers.

Master bread baker in Laguiole, a hidden corner of France, cradle of creativity: it does sound good on a sign, doesn’t it?

Anne & Pascal Auriat
1 place Auguste Prat
12210 Laguiole
Tel : 00 33 (0) 5 65 44 31 09
Site : http://www.maison-auriat.fr/
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Mediterranean Food Connection: Cocas à la Frita

Published by Friday, May 6, 2011 Permalink 0

Recette de Christophe Certain

Click here for English version

Les cocas à la frita recette facile en images, chaussons de pâte brisée fourrés d’oignons, tomates et poivrons revenus

Voilà ma recette de cocas, testée à de nombreuses reprises ; elle est infaillible, même si elle n’est pas traditionnelle.

Ne pas mettre trop de farce (2 C.A.S.) sinon les cocas risquent d’exploser à la cuisson.

Si vous utilisez de la frita, veillez à ce qu’elle ne soit pas trop liquide pour les mêmes raisons. Otez le jus s’il y en a. Le blanc d’oeuf permet de bien stabiliser la fermeture de la pâte à la cuisson, le jaune d’avoir une belle couleur dorée.

La recette traditionnelle de la pâte à coca se compose de 50% farine, 50% saindoux, avec un peu de sel. Comme ça vous pourrez comparer !

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Simon Says: Daily Food Quote, May 6, 2011

Published by Friday, May 6, 2011 Permalink 0

by Simón de Swaan

The three-Martini lunch is the epitome of American efficiency. Where else can you get an earful, a bellyful and a snootful at the same time?–Gerald Ford

Gerald Ford, 38th President of the United States of America (1913-2006), was then incumbent Presidential candidate running against Jimmy Carter. who condemned the practice of having luxurious mid-day meals that could be written off as tax expenses.

Click here to listen to the 3-martini lunch song.

Simon Says, Simon de Swaan. The Rambling Epicure. Editor, Jonell Galloway.

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Simon Says: Daily Food Quote, May 5, 2011

Published by Thursday, May 5, 2011 Permalink 0

by Simón de Swaan

Never hesitate to take the last piece of bread or the last cake; there are probably more.–Hill’s Manual of Social and Business Forms: Etiquette of the Table (1880)

The entire book is scanned for reading online. Click here to read it.

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La Perle: A Pearl of a Middle Eastern Pastry Shop in the Heart of Geneva

Published by Wednesday, May 4, 2011 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

A new Middle Eastern pastry shop has opened in Pâquis, right in the heart of Geneva. Their base is in Paris in the 18th arrondissement at La Rose de Tunis.

The Achech family have been making pastries for they can’t quite remember how many generations. They come from the Tunisian village of Ghomrassen, known for its pastries, thanks to the almond trees and other ingredients used in Middle Eastern pastries that thrive in its soil. It is thanks to this heritage and carefully kept-secret family recipes they have been collecting for generations that they produce the most delicate Middle Eastern pastries I have ever tasted.

Tunisian baklava, Moroccan baklava, Turkish baklava. Pure almond paste, pistachios, rose water. The perfumes of the Orient are all there, in the pastries and in the flowery, nutty wafts you experience as you stroll through the tiny shop. Pastries are stacked artistically, like pièces montées, and can be bought individually or on a catering basis for weddings, receptions, banquets, etc.

The shop is filled with Middle Easterners in their finest attire. It is classy and impeccable in every way.

They also serve mint tea…the real stuff.

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