Today’s French Fridays Post is a double-header featuring Butter & Rum Crepes, Fancy & Plain and Garbure from the Supermarket. The savory garbure is this week’s recipe choice. I’m tardy with the crepes. My crepe pan stayed behind in Colorado. Since my daughter, Melissa, visited me this week, she brought hers.
Missy last spent a week with me in June 2012, after Michael died. Our time together then was bittersweet as we closed a 26-year chapter of our lives. Since then she’s opened her own business, juggling her family’s lifestyle to accommodate this new schedule. In the past 20 months I’ve packed up, moved to Colorado and done some juggling of my own.
I can only imagine the hoops she jumped through to leave her girls, husband and work place to make that six-hour drive from Bishop to Cambria. But, she needed a break and I raised my hand. Last Saturday afternoon she happily arrived at my doorstep.
Butter & Rum Crepes, Fancy & Plain
Melissa’s Arrival last Saturday. Note that her outfit matches her car.
During her earlier visit she’d put together two French Fridays posts for me, over-baking the Hazelnut Biscotti but preparing darn good Crunchy Ginger-Pickled Cucumbers. She had resigned herself to more mother-Dorie-daughter kitchen time so we got busy with the crepes soon after she arrived. I mixed together the batter, which included grated orange and lemon zest, dark rum and Grand Marnier, for an overnight in the fridge. Early the next morning Missy oiled her pan and made the first here’s-how-you-do-it-Mom crepe before handing the pan off to me. I batted .666. Pas mal.
Missy, making the first crepe. Because I was not going to include her in the photo, crediting her with this crepe, she inserted herself into the picture, singeing her hair tips.
For breakfast we just sprinkled powdered sugar on our crepes but Dorie suggests making a yummy honey-orange sauce (recipe here) for a pour-over or a lemon curd filling. Any topping/filling will do but with this batter sweet works over savory.
A Daily Early A.M. Jaunt on the Moonstone Beach Boardwalk
Now, the garbure. “Essentially this is a hearty vegetable soup made heartier with the addition of meat (pork, duck and beef sausage),” Dorie explains.
Hiking the Point Buchon Trail located near Montana de Oro State Park. When the tide is out (and, it was) you can explore the underwater caves.
We like the local mom/pop restaurants. Sunday breakfast at Cambria’s Creekside Gardens
Soups and stews, I love, and this garbure is no exception. Simmering, at least three hours, is the key to unlocking its flavors. The result is memorable. Here’s the recipe. Don’t be dismayed by the ingredient list. (A tip: if you don’t have Piment d’Espelette, use cayenne pepper.) With a baguette to sop up the broth, it’s a meal.
We ate the best Thai lunch at Noi’s, a tiny spot located on a side street in Los Osos
These women turn out delicious food in their little kitchen. I will never complain about my space again. Promise.
Choosing veggies for the garbure at the Los Osos farmer’s market
As many of you know, Mother-Daughter relationships are twicky. I didn’t raise a shrinking violet and I’m no soft touch so there are always detours to navigate around, through, up and over. Love is the easy part. What Life throws in our paths, not so easy. We’ve found what works for us, as you can see in these photos, is to always find the Laughter.
We ate our lunch, sitting inside on two of the three available stools, and watched the women navigate the kitchen. I loved my Red Curry.
Our favorite place for coffee, Top Dog in Morro Bay. Some java is especially necessary before walking into the book store located next door. (Please note that you can also get married at the bookstore. I did not do that.)
At the new&used bookstore, I gave Melissa an unlimited budget and she exceeded it.
We spent our last night having a few beers at Cambria’s Ale House, the locals’ pub (seven stools). Last week Lady Gaga spent a “pleasurable”, sake-filled evening there. She was here while filming a video at Hearst Castle.
French Fridays with Dorie is an international cooking group working its way through Dorie Greenspan’s “Around my French Table, more than 300 recipes from my home to yours.” If you would like to look at our group link, go here. If you wish to know more about Lady Gaga’s visit to the Ale House, go here.
A gift from Missy. TO MOM: BECAUSE WHAT WE DO BEST IS LAUGH
This week’s French Fridays with Dorie recipe choice is Pommes au Four, baked apples filled with fruits and nuts. My first thought? Who can’t bake an apple? In Iowa, when I was a kid, we picked apples at the local orchard, hauled them home and helped Mom turn them into sauce, pie, crisp, cake, salad and, yes, baked.
But readers, this is an apple like no other. In Dorie’s words, “Baked apples are less a recipe than a construction: you core some apples, stuff their hollows with dried fruits, nuts, honey and butter, and then slide them into the oven. Which fruits and nuts? It’s up to you. Cinnamon or no cinnamon? Again, your choice. Hot? Warm? Chilled. with heavy cream? No one will tell you definitely.”
made this recipe last week-end, just before leaving for California. I enjoyed it hot, warm and chilled, with crème fraîche. I even diced up the leftovers to use as a topping for my oatmeal. If you follow the recipe carefully, Pommes au Four are simple to bake and delicious to eat.
I baked my apples in Aspen but am writing this post in Cambria, my winter home for the next three-and-a-half months. Yesterday I moved into our family’s rental house and, admittedly am enjoying the roominess. Although I’ve made peace with my 940-square foot Colorado condo, this house is nice, quiet and, sorta like this week’s baked apples, a real treat.
My biggest treat, however, will be seeing my nearby family more often. In their last e-mails to me, Emma, my blond, 12-year-old granddaughter, announced the tips of her hair are now dyed pink! Her sister, Clara, who is 10, wrote that she is negotiating with the neighbors to rent hen space in their chicken coop. To my mind, my daughter, Melissa, who is their mother, has either lost her mind or loosened her grip. I need to check in on Family Place to find out. (If it’s the latter, Ms. Clara and I are going to go purchase one great big noisy hen.)
If you’re interested in seeing how other Doristas peeled their apples this week? Go, here.
This week’s French Fridays recipe choice is Hélène’s All-White Salad, a bunch of crunch created by Dorie’s friend, Hélène Samuel. She has loved this salad since first eating it at Samuel’s cafe, Délicabar Snack Chic, located in Paris’s renown Le Bon Marché department store. Built by Gustave Eiffel in 1852 and now owned by the luxury group LVMH, the store still exists.The cafe does not. Luckily, Dorie asked, Helene shared, and the all-white salad still survives in Around my French Table.
This salad seemed comfy, a thumbs up. I located every ingredient at the tiny Cookie Crockery market in Cambria. The priciest item was organic mushrooms but the rest, celery, Granny Smith apples, Napa cabbage and Greek yogurt, cost less than the gas to drive there.The preparation was simple.The dressing, Yogurt Vinaigrette, parading as a light, low-calorie mayonnaise, went together easily.
Earlier in the day I baked Irish Soda Bread, using a recipe from Dorie’s Baking: From my House to Yours cookbook. My wine was Patelin de Tablas Blanc from Tablas Creek, one of many local vineyards focusing on grapes and blends traditional to France’s Rhone Valley.
Readers, sometimes hits turn into misses. The Vinaigrette was bland. After one glass of vino and half-way through another, still tasteless. I liked the salad ingredients, however, especially the apple/Napa cabbage/celery combo. For lunch the next day, I used the leftover “whites” and made chunky blue cheese dressing for the pour-over. Bingo. Blue is the new White.
FIGURE IT OUT, MARY
Today’s Post marks three years of turning my lights on bright. Disappointed the salad was not the celebratory recipe I envisioned, the birthday candles went back in the box. Then, an Aha moment. The past three years have been all about hits, misses, thumbs up and never agains. Let me explain.
Irish Soda Bread – It’s Almost St. Paddy’s
This blogging adventure began shortly after my husband, Michael, was moved to the Memory Care Unit with Hospice joining the private facility to assist with his care. The good news was my day-to-day caregiving responsibility was no longer needed. The Pros wanted and insisted upon taking over. The bad news was my day-to-day caregiving responsibility was no longer needed. I was undone. “Go out and make a life, Mary,” a nurse insisted.
This was not new advice. I had tried and been spectacularly unsuccessful at the new life-thing. As usual, with each crisis, I ran wailing to my professional counselor, Paige. This woman does not suffer histrionics. She is also maddeningly unemotional. After calming my waters, she asked, “Mary, what are the two things you do best?”
After some thought, I responded, “Writing and being a good grandmother.”
Well,” she answered, “your granddaughters are nearby and you see them often. Check. That leaves Writing. Go figure it out.”
Visit over. I didn’t even get my hour.
2012 Patelin de Tablas Blanc
THE BIRTH OF A BLOGGER
After some months of thought, I decided to blog. WordPress was beyond me so I found a web designer on Craig’s List. He put together the site you are now reading, albeit not without disaster. Within five minutes of my site going up, I totally obliterated it. I blogged about politics and hobbies and caregiving. Nothing worked. An article in Oprah’s magazine introduced me to FrenchFridays with Dorie. The dye was cast. FFWD created the structure I needed in my life.
Yes, Michael-visits were still unbearable but cooking the book with my fellow Doristas was salvation. Better yet, it framed my week. Here’s how it goes: 1) Read the assigned FFWD recipe; 2) Shop for ingredients; 3) Make the recipe; 4) Photograph, eat and share the food; 5) Write my piece; 6) Post on blog each Friday; 7) Link on thirty or forty of my colleagues‘ blogs to read/ comment on their sites.
You thought the life of a food blogger was easy?
My FFWD virtual friends became reality at the International Food Boggers Conference in Seattle. Our Dorie was the keynote speaker. Fall, 2013.
Michael spent two years with round-the-clock care and I launched a new life. When he died, I had a framework in place as I began to build a lifestyle alone. In addition, I had met an entire family of virtual companions who joined with my family and friends to assist me. Now, with 228 Posts under my toque, I think I’ve been spectacularly successful in doing just that.
CAN “LIGHTS” GET BRIGHTER?
Today I completed Melanie Faith’s five-week online food writing class. Her nuts and bolts course was immersion at its finest. Our class waded through a 300-page text, Will Write for Food by Diane Jacob and submitted five in-depth writing assignments. Every morning, w-i-t-h-o-u-t fail, I woke up to an e-mail prompt, our exercise-of-the-day. Writers need editors. I am pleased to have Melanie in my back pocket.
After months of deliberation I just hired a young Denver firm, Peak Solutions Marketing, to completely redesign my site. Sorta excited. Kinda nervous. (No pressure, Zoe & Kenneth) It appears I’m committed to keeping my lights on. The brighter, the better.
The High Priestess of French Fridays, Dorie Greenspan
French Fridays with Dorie is an international cooking group working its way through Dorie Greenspan’s “Around my French Table, more than 300 recipes from my home to yours.” If you would like to look at our group link, go here.
Paris-Brest, a delicate pastry dessert that was a splashy finish to my Chinese New Year celebratory dinner.
For anyone believing this holiday has come, gone and you missed it, I’m about to make your day. For more than five-thousand years the Chinese people have observed New Years their way. In the simplest of terms, it’s about the moon and our earth’s creatures. Once upon a time Buddha invited all the animals to join him for New Years. Twelve came to his party, resulting in a year being named to honor each one. This year, we’re observing the Horse.
Astrology doesn’t interest me. “What’s your sign?” is a question I can’t answer. I never read horoscopes. Every year a friend buys the current Chinese horoscope book and insists I read the chapter pertaining to me. I am a Monkey. For each of the last three years, the prognosis has been lousy. This year I flat-out refused to read it. “No, no, Mary, it’s good,” she promised. “You’re going to have a great year.”
I read. I saw. I’ll believe it after I live it.
Mussels and Chorizo with Pasta is a delicious and filling main course for any festive celebration.
Admittedly, Mary the Monkey is looking good for the next twelve months. On a scale of 1 to 12, I’d give myself a 9.3. Since Chinese New Year is a two-week affair, I still could honor that Horse, who is hopefully filled with good fortune, with a celebratory meal. I decided to make two recipes my French Friday colleagues had already made. I also baked blueberry-corn muffins and visited the winery-of-the-horse for vino. If the year ahead is as scrumptious as the dinner honoring it, I will be one merry monkey.
Blueberry-Corn Muffins added a touch of sweetness to the spicy seafood.
My entrée was Mussels and Chorizo with Pasta. You may think this dish was created by committee but it’s a Basquaise. With a nod to the simplicity of French Basque cuisine, these recipes often include tomatoes and sweet or hot red peppers. This dish includes both.
I bought my mussels at Piers 46 Seafood and already had a spicy pork link in the fridge. Since there’s a limit to the nod I want to give a Basquaise, I cut the diced fire-roasted tomatoes with green chiles by half. Fettuccine, with its slithery journey among the mussels, is the perfect pasta option. The sweetness of the blueberry-corn muffins provided just that tinge of sugar so needed with this spicy seafood dish.
It’s all about the horse, of course. I visited the Wild Horse Winery and picked a Pinot Noir.
If you’ll recall, last week’s FFWD recipe choice was a delicacy of caramelized almonds, pâte à choux and vanilla pastry cream. Knowing I didn’t have the proper equipment and pastry tips in my rental kitchen, I opted to save it until spring. Over the weekend, however, I experienced baker’s remorse. Each of my colleagues’ Paris-Brest write-ups were taste taunts to my stomach.
I used the heart pan to more easily pipe the Pâte à Choux into a shape.
Wasn’t the Year of the Horse worthy of a splashy dessert? Couldn’t this Monkey go the extra mile to cobble together the right stuff? Don’t Doristas always find a path? It took some scrambling but this week I put together my first Paris-Brest. Aside from its heart rather than round shape, I’m guessing it looked and tasted much like a novice’s Paris-Brest should.
Yum.
Here’s the recipe for the Mussels and Chorizo with Pasta. If you’re interested in the Paris-Brest recipe, here it is. If you’d like to see what my colleagues are making this week, go here. For the past three weeks I’ve been focused on Dorie’s recipes that this FFWD group made before I joined. I’ve completed my seafood and fish catch-up and next Friday I’ll be following our regular FFWD recipe schedule.
Happy New Year, readers. Horse or no horse, may we all find goodness and joy in the months ahead.
Scallops with Caramel-Orange Sauce and Spiced Butter-Glazed Carrots
This week’s French Fridays with Dorie recipe choice is the dessert Paris-Brest, a celebratory creamy puff ring made from light pastry dough called pâte à choux. Already this sounds complicated, doesn’t it? It was created in 1891 to honor the Union Des Audax Français, an amateur bicycle race that is still peddling strong today.
Paris-Brest is a crowd-pleaser, promising to produce ou’s and ah’s from anyone who worships at the altar of caramelized almonds, vanilla pastry cream and Crème Anglaise. That’s why I decided to save this masterpiece to bake for my spandex-clad biking buddies when I return to Colorado this spring.
INSTEAD, TRY THIS MENU
Spiced Butter-Glazed Carrots. The carrots are dirty-fresh from Cambria’s Friday Farmers Market.
Instead I took advantage of the Central Coast’s largesse and made Savory Scallops with Caramel-Orange Sauce and Spiced Butter-Glazed Carrots. For me, it’s make-cup week. The recipes were made in 2011 before I joined FFWD. Dorie always delivers delicious. These two sweet/savory combos were a perfect light dinner to enjoy while watching the Grammy’s.
These little guys are fresh and tasty sea scallops.
The Caramel-Orange Sauce is a sweetheart of a compliment to the scallops.
When I visited Pier 46 Seafood to buy scallops, my fishmongerette, Amber, suggested small scallops rather than the large called for in this recipe. The prep and cooking time are the same. Here’s a tip. Dorie’s simplistic technique for the caramel sauce is one to commit to your memory bank. About those carrots? When you start with carrots just pulled from the earth, adding just a spice or two and chicken broth, there’s very little to say but thank you, Mother Nature.
I stopped by the Hearst Ranch Winery in nearby San Simeon to pick up wine for this menu. Ryan, who was working at the tasting bar, urged me to try their award-winning Three Sisters Cuvée red wine, a mixture of Grenache and Syrah grapes. It slide down easily.
ADAPTING TO ANY KITCHEN, STEP-by-STEP
If there is one question nagging at you after reading my three recent posts from Cambria, I suspect it would be, “How does that woman turn out this amazing food while working out of a rental kitchen?”
Here’s the answer, a how-to on cooking in strange spaces. My only criteria when renting a winter house in Cambria was that it be by the ocean and have a gas range. Because of a calendar snafu, my Realtors found me two houses by the ocean with gas ranges. One house for 5 weeks and the house I wanted for 8. If nothing else, I’m all about flexibility.
Traveling Tools: mandoline, electric grill, dutch oven, frittata pan, scales, Valentine molds, knives, juicer and. springform pan. Food Processor hidden from view..
While on-the-road most cooks know what equipment they must own, what they can live with and what, if necessary, can be purchased. This is what I packed: 1) ten cookbooks including Ottolenghi’s Plenty and Jerusalem, Madison’s Vegetable Literacy, Pereman’s Smitten Kitchen and CanalHouse Cooks Every Day; 2) Pensey’s spices; 3) my chef’s and paring knives; 4) equipment ranging from my food processor to a Wagner Magnalite cast aluminum pot; and 5) a 4-quart crockpot, acquired here.
Just as important as what I lugged from Colorado is what happened after my arrival. The house is lovely but the kitchen wasn’t feeling that love. Disarray is the word. First I scrubbed and scoured. Then I organized. I don’t mind grease and spills but I insist they be my grease and spills. After this thorough once-over and a trip to Trader Joe’s, my rental kitchen was ready-to-roll.
Having found ten cutting boards in my rental kitchen, I’m thinking of holding a garage sale.
What is insane about this particular kitchen is what’s here and what isn’t. There are 10 cutting boards. (I plead guilty to sometimes exaggerating so I snapped a photo. Count ’em.) It’s taken me three weeks to find potholders but during that hunt I counted 36 dishtowels. Although this is wine country, I only have two red wine glasses and six white, all with various logos. There is no paring knife but several huge plastic bowls (I’m thinking pretzels). Several pieces of the Crate & Barrel dinnerware are chipped or cracked. I’ve relegated them to the garage. I couldn’t set a table for six but since I’m not here to party, I don’t care.
As for the by the ocean requirement, I have no complaint!
These gorgeous strawberries are finally showing up at our local farmers markets.
If you would like to see the spectacular Paris-Brest created by my colleagues, go here. To find the recipes for scallops, Dorie’s caramel sauce and carrots, go here and here. French Fridays with Dorie is an international cooking group working its way through Dorie Greenspan’s “Around my French Table, more than 300 recipes from my home to yours.”
This week’s French Fridays with Dorie recipe choice is Moules Marinière. It proved to be the perfect anchor to my celebratory feast after settling into my new California digs.
Moules Marinière
Living in the Colorado Rockies is a privilege, my idea of paradise. But it’s that 4-month window of snow, cold temps and icy footpaths that, well, leaves me cold. I learned to ski at Snowmass Mountain in the late ‘70s and buckled up my last boot in the late ‘90s when my knees began sassing back at me. This month, after two loopy falls on the ice, I escaped in search of a winter paradise. My first stop was Cambria, a drowsy, seaside village of 6,000 people located on the spectacular central coast and plopped among a native stand of Monterey pines.
It’s a good choice and here’s why. To my thinking, winter shows off Cambria at its finest. It’s off-season, that fleeting moment when locals reclaim their community. Think quiet, quaint and a well-kept secret. But here’s the thing, what surrounds this tiny town is just flat-out noisy in the friendliest of ways. Besides a number of migrating species, elephant seals, whales, birds and butterflies, there’s a castle to visit and an ocean to enjoy.
The end of the trail at Harmony Headlands and my favorite spot for a picnic lunch
Added perks are the vineyards, olive tree farms, goats (think chèvre) and farmers markets. These aren’t the vineyards of boxed wine and Two-Buck Chuck. In fact Wine Enthusiast magazine just named the surrounding Paso Robles area as the 2013 Wine Region of the Year. In all the World! More than 200 wineries here plant and pick over 40 wine grape varieties. It’s also reasonable to assume that marching in lock step with these wine producers is a food culture of innovative chefs offering seasonal, farm and ocean-to-table cuisine. For a food writer like me, I’ve landed in an edible feast of experiences.
This olive oil ranch is located in Paso Robles.
In a salute to where I landed, I made this week’s FFWD menu a true farm & ocean – to table meal. My two-pounds of mussels came from Pier 46 Seafood, my favorite fishmonger located in nearby Templeton. To make the mussels, I used Pasolivo Olive Oil made with olives grown on their Paso Robles ranch’s 45 acres of trees.
Emptying Sarah’s baguette basket at Hoppe’s Bakery. (Sarah has applied to Colorado University’s doctoral program in political science and is nervously waiting to hear from Boulder.) Note the time. It is 8:20 a.m.
The best baguettes on the central coast are made at Hoppe’s Bakery in picturesque Cayugos, a 15-mile trip and soooooo worth the 20-minute drive. If you stop by at 8am, the baguettes will be warm, the coffee, piping hot, and the almond croissants……… well, you know. I bought out Sarah’s basket and delivered two of those beauties, wonderfully warm, to my Realtors, Heidi and Janet. Since those two ladies were already having a prickly morning, the baguettes were welcomed.
Pour moi. An almond croissant. And, yes, I hung out at Hoppe’s, chatted with Sarah and ate the whole thing.
For wine, I turned to my favorite vineyard at historic Halter Ranch, and chose, at their suggestion, a fruity-tasting Sauvignon Blanc. Besides pouring superb wine, I am partial to Halter Ranch wines because of its owner, Hansjörg Wyss, a Swiss-born, billionaire businessman who donates generously to various conservation efforts in the Rockies. He also walks the walk at the 960-acre Ranch with its state-of-the art and environmentally-sensitive winery.
Halter Ranch’s state-of-the-art winery. Photo by Halter Ranch
There is no downside to this meal. Chop an onion, 2 shallots and 4 garlic cloves and throw into a Dutch oven filled with a tablespoon or two of olive oil. Toss some salt and pepper into the pot and soften the mixture for 3-5 minutes until it glistens. Pour in a cup of dry white wine with a chicken bouillon cube, springs of thyme, parsley, bay leaf, and lemon zest strips. In another 3 minutes add 2 pounds of mussels. After bringing this to a boil, cover the pot and steam for another 3 minutes or so, until the mussels are opened. Serve immediately with a hot baguette and toasty french fries (mine are from the local Trader Joe’s.)
Two pounds of mussels, scrubbed, debearded and ready to steam.
A tip or two. I cranked up the broth’s flavoring by doubling Dorie’s suggested ingredients portions. What I used for my 2 pounds of mussels, she used for 4 pounds. Also, try this when eating Moules Marinère. Break the shell at its hinge and use one half as a scoop to detach the mussel and spoon it in your mouth. Really, no utensils are needed. As Dorie mentions, “You’re talking about an elbows-on-the-table meal and messy fingers.”
To see how these mussels opened for my colleagues, go to our group link here. For this week’s recipe, go here. French Friday’s with Dorie is an international cooking group working its way through Dorie Greenspan’s “Around my French Table, more than 300 recipes from my home to yours.”
Today’s French Fridays Post is a double-header featuring Butter & Rum Crepes, Fancy & Plain and Garbure from the Supermarket. The savory garbure is this week’s recipe choice. I’m tardy with the crepes. My crepe pan stayed behind in Colorado. Since my daughter, Melissa, visited me this week, she brought hers.
