Friends (And Flan) From Brazil

Anyone still here? I have sort of an odd request. It involves flan. Could you make me some?

I'm not usually a big flan person - if I'm going the custard route, I usually choose something like crème brulée (crunchy crust!) or good, old-fashioned pudding (nostalgia!) - but never flan. ...Flan. The name alone pretty much says it all. Flahhhn. Blahhh. Cold and jiggly. Sort of weird, if you want to know the truth.

Apparently, though, not all flan has to be so... bleh. My friend Nadine introduced me to Brazilian flan yesterday, and it was decidedly not bleh. It was creamy and caramely (not a real word, just go with it) and the perfect texture. None of this cold and jiggly nonsense.

I met Nadine at school. She's Brazilian and hilarious and, for the past three months, we've been bonding over sweaty kitchens, funny french accents, and lemon tart. Nadine always looks at me and giggles whenever Chef D. says "remember," because we decided that, with his thick Parisian accent, it sounds like he's actually saying "Camembert." Which is actually sort of fitting. "And, uh, Camembert to strain your cuh-stahrd for de leh-mon tart beh-fore you bake eet, so eet gets, uh, nice and smooz." (Giggle.) Nadine taught me how to say "shut up" in Portugese. I introduced her to the Shake Shack burger. She taught me about Brazilian flan.

Louis, I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship.

Nadine's Creamy Brazilian Flan (Pudim de leite condensado)

I still don't have a camera (damn you, greenmarket camera thief), so unfortunately we are still sans photos, but trust me when I say that this is one gorgeous flan. It looks good enough to... um... eat. Please do, and enjoy.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup sugar
• 4 eggs, separated
• 1 can sweetened condensed milk
• 1 cup milk

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350ºF. In a small saucepan, melt the cup of sugar over low heat, stirring. Once the sugar has caramelized, becoming a nice, golden brown syrup, pour it immediately into a baking pan (a glass pie pan would work nicely), swirling so that the syrup coats all sides of the dish. Set aside to to cool.

In a food processor or electric mixer on high speed, blend the egg yolks until thick and creamy, about 5 minutes. Add the condensed milk, regular milk and egg whites, and continue blending until all ingredients are combined. Pour the egg mixture into the pan with the caramel and cover with aluminum foil.

Line a roasting pan with parchment paper. Place flan dish in the roasting pan (on top of the parchment), and place the roasting pan on oven rack. Fill the roasting pan with boiling water to reach halfway up the sides of the flan dish.

Bake the flan until a knife inserted 1-inch from the edge comes out clean, 40-50 minutes. The center of the flan will still be soft. Allow flan to cool before unmolding onto a plate. Cut into wedges, and refrigerate before serving.

Hot and Cranky

I'm pretty sure today is the hottest day of the year here in New York City. If it's not, it certainly feels like it. The Weather Channel clocks us in at 93 degrees (with a "feels like" of 98 degrees and close to 50% humidity), which means that, down in the Level 3 kitchen at school, it's about oh... a million bazillion degrees Farenheit. Which means wilted salad greens and grainy whipped cream and silly, long-sleeved marshmallow uniforms stuck to hot, sweaty skin. Appetizing, no?

To sum things up, it's hot. Damn hot. It doesn't help that in our new, more advanced (and more time-sensitive) Level 3 format I'm constantly running around like a mad woman, chopping and filleting and stirring and straining and spooning and tasting and plating and reminding myself to breathe. Today, one of the dishes I was responsible for was grilled salmon with white wine herb sauce. Doesn't that sound good? It does, until you find yourself sweating over a blazing grill, desperately willing the fish to go ahead and be done already, before you reach your boiling point and actually burst into flames. I wonder if that's possible. You know, to flambé yourself.

In all honesty, it's not so bad. I mean, I did sign up for cooking school in August. Mostly I'm just cranky because I lost my camera this weekend at the Union Square Green Market. At least, I think I lost it. It could have been stolen... snatched up by a seedy young thief hidden among the throngs of people buying peaches and tomatoes and fresh herbs. I sort of like that idea better - it makes me feel like less of an irresponsible camera-loser. At any rate, I'm devastated. I've been feeling lost and, frankly, naked, since Saturday. Though I did pick up some wonderful heirloom tomatoes and a bunch of small, multicolored carrots at the market. They're really beautiful - knobbly stalks of purple and orange and white. Not that you'll get to see them. Or any of the other pretty pictures I took on Saturday - barrels of shiny, purple and white eggplants, wheels of yellow, raw-milk cheese, bunches of plump and pointy red radishes. Sigh. Such a bummer.

Luckily, before my poor camera was seized by a hostile market-goer, I was able to upload a few pictures from the fiery depths of Hades - I mean, Level 3 at school. Take a good, long look, because there's nothing more where those came from. Sob.

Lemon Tart

Sautéed Center-Cut Pork Chop with Green Peppercorn Sauce

My new Chef! Chef D., critiquing plates of Salade Niçoise, Lemon Tart, Grilled Salmon, Sautéed Pork Chops, Pots de Crème and Vegetable Soup

Here's to a cooler week ahead! And the miraculous reappearance of my camera! ...No? Well fine, but one of the two would be nice.

Roasted Rainbow Carrots with Rosemary and Mint

Colorful carrots are all over the farmer's markets these days - they're sweet and bright and beautiful, and I suggest that, if you haven't already, you give them a try. Just keep a tight grip on your valuables - I hear there's a camera thief lurking around 14th Street.


Ingredients:

• 1 bunch rainbow carrots, whole, scrubbed and trimmed
• kosher salt
• fresh ground pepper
• olive oil
  
• fresh rosemary leaves, chopped
  

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350º. Toss the carrots with the olive oil to coat. Sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper, and place them on a sheet pan. Roast the carrots in the oven until slightly wrinkly and fork tender, about 10 minutes (depending on the size of the carrots). Remove from oven and immediately toss with chopped rosemary and mint, to taste. I prefer to use less rosemary and a lot of mint. Serve with a few slices of toasted bread and a hunk of sharp cheese.

Note: I like the look of these small carrots whole, but feel free to slice them up before roasting, if you prefer. Just be sure to adjust the roasting time accordingly (smaller pieces will roast faster than larger ones). Also, you'll notice I didn't mention anything about peeling the carrots - peeling removes the pretty, outer purple layer (of the purple carrots, anyway), so I opted to scrub them thoroughly and eat them skin-on. Yum.

Let's Talk About Books, Baby

Cheers, Aunt Marie!

My Aunt Marie, who you may already know about because she makes the most fantastic granola around, has a new book out today! Check out Ask Dr. Marie: Straight Talk and Reassuring Answers to Your Most Private Questions. It's a comprehensive on women's health and sexuality - it's got chapters on everything from "How to Get the Health Care You Need at Every Age" to "Sex Smarts: The Thinking Woman's Guide to Having Fun in Bed." Intriguing, no?

I think every gal (or guy who loves a gal) should have a copy of Marie's book. Then again, I suppose I'm sort of biased... she is my Aunt, afterall. Still, she is a rather remarkable Aunt. I mean, in her lifetime, the woman has gone from Nurse to Internist to women's health expert to guest on Oprah to ABC News Medical Correspondant... all while raising a family and being a wonderful Aunt and inventing a damn fine recipe for granola. And if that's not something to celebrate, I don't know what is. Congrats, Aunt Mur!




Celebration Cake

Okay, so, don't freak out. First, let me start out by saying that this cake is delicious. It's light, moist, flavorful, and, um... from a box. (!) Damn my eyes. I do have a "real" recipe for yellow cake, and it's actually quite good, but who wants to fuss around with measuring flour and sugar and blah blah blah and de whole freakin' zoo when you're at the beach on vacation and it's your uncle's birthday and it's an insanely gorgeous day and come on! Give a girl a break. That's right, I said it. It's from a box! And it tastes good! Sue me.

Ahem. Anyway, at least the chocolate frosting is homemade. I adapted the recipe from Lynn Kearney at The Food Network Kitchens.

Ingredients:

For cake:

• 2 boxes yellow cake mix (and various accoutrement - eggs, oil, etc.)
• 3 9-inch, round cake pans
• store-bought sugar flowers or candy, for decorating

For frosting:

• 4 ounces bittersweet chocolate
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 4 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted
• 1.5 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 3 to 8 tablespoons milk

Directions:

Bake the cakes according to the instructions on the (gasp!) box. Let cool completely before frosting.

Make the frosting: in a bowl set over a pot of simmering water, melt the chocolate with the butter. Remove from heat and allow to cool for a few minutes. In the bowl of an electric mixer, add chocolate mixter and sifted confectioners' sugar. Beat until well incorporated (despite the sifting, there may still be beads of sugar in the chocolate. This is fine). Add the vanilla and the milk, a tablespoon at a time, until the frosting is fluffy and has reached a nice, spreadable consistency.

Layer the cooled cakes, one on top of the other, with a thin layer of frosting in between. Ice the top and sides of cake, and decorate with flowers or candy.

Makes one 3-layer, 9-inch cake.

A Little List

I have a list. I think a lot of people do, actually. It's a list of things that, with very little persuasion, I could eat exclusively for the rest of my life and be perfectly content. Cheese, for example. Bread. (Grilled cheese, of course, goes without saying.) Guacamole. Reese's peanut butter cups.

Once, when I was a kid, I hid all of the peanut butter cups I'd collected from Halloween in a desk drawer in our living room, because, you know, they'd be safe there. I tried to ration them - one peanut butter cup a day... well no more than two, at least - so I'd have enough to be stuffed with chocolate and peanut butter for a full calendar year. I must not have realized that there are 365 days in a year, because I probably only had about 25 peanut butter cups. Which is actually a lot of peanut butter cups, but, as you may have guessed, not quite enough to last you (or me, in this particular case) a whole year. Especially if your dad, who also happens to love peanut butter cups, finds your hiding place. Oh well. At least my mother kept the fridge stocked with cheese.

This week at school we made cheese. Real cheese! And it didn't even involve live cultures or mold or anything. Apparently with ricotta, all you need is milk, citric acid, and salt;




and, for mozzerella, just some salt and a big hunk of cheese curd. See?


There's Nadine, working and stretching some curd for mozzerella. Little Miss Muffet would be proud.

We also did a full cheese tasting (complete with pieces of warm baguette from the bread kitchens), during which I discovered my appreciation for sheep's milk,






and we made pasta (fresh gnocchi and ravioli), which I bet is on lots of people's "food I'd eat exclusively" list. Probably lots of Italian people, anyway.



All in all, it was a good week at chef school. Cheese? Check. Bread? Check. Peanut butter cups? Working on it. Guacamole? Well, no. I'm not sure that's covered at the French Culinary Institute. Luckily, I already know how to make it.



Basil Peach Guacamole

I don't usually mess with the solid foundation of guacamole - avocado, onion, tomatoes, cilantro, lime juice - but sometimes I get curious. Like last weekend, when my aunt Marie and uncle Brad made fish tacos. I was put in charge of making guacamole, and when I saw a ripe, red tomato resting against a fuzzy yellow peach, I decided that they looked too nice together to be split up. I chopped the peach right up with the avocado and tomato and, on a whim, threw in a mess of fresh, chopped basil instead of cilantro. The result? Holy fish tacos - unbelievable.

Note: It's best to make this in the summer months, when peaches, tomatoes and basil are readily available.

Ingredients:

• 4-5 ripe avocados
• 1/2 large tomato, chopped
• 1/2 large onion, chopped
• juice of 2 limes
• 1 peach, chopped into small pieces
• large handful of fresh basil, chopped
• salt
• fresh ground black pepper

Directions:

Cut the avocados in half lengthwise, working around the pit. Remove the large pit carefully, and scoop the avocado flesh out of the skin and into a large bowl (I find it easiest to use a spoon to scrape the flesh from the avocado skin). Mash gently with a fork, until the avocados are good and smashed but not completely smooth in texture.

Add the chopped tomato, onion, and peach, mixing to combine. Add the lime juice and basil, and season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve with tacos or chips, or smear on slices of bread to liven up a ho-hum turkey sandwich.

Makes about 3-4 cups of guacamole.

Tarts and Creams and Cake... Oh My

If I scream, and you scream, what are we all screaming for?

The answer, of course, is ice cream. Or maybe it's cake. Or it could be tarts. Or caramel, or crêpes, or puff pastry, or custard, or mousse, or soufflé, or... holy bananas, make it stop.

I mean, not permanently. I love ice cream. And cakes and tarts and caramel and crêpes and all those other delicious treats. But I've been up to my elbows in pastry all week and I'm not sure how much more I can take before my teeth rebel and deteriorate and my body decides it's had about enough, thank you, and forces me to collapse into a sugar-induced coma. So there.

It started last Monday with tart dough. There I was, happily mixing and rolling out pâte sucrée, making pastry cream, slicing apples and pears, warming up the apricot glaze. It all seemed so wonderful! So flaky, so sweet, so... innocent!

I should have known better. Next thing I know it's a week later and I'm hurling caramel ice cream down my throat and wrestling my classmates for the last bite of chocolate mousse. Ahem. Don't look at me, I'm too ashamed.

...Actually, it's been sort of a great week. There was an incident involving the indecent hurling of caramel ice cream down my throat, but I'm happy to report zero incidents of chef knife dueling over the last lick of whipped cream. And, to be fair, that caramel ice cream was flipping delicious.

I want to tell you about everything we made at school this week - from buttercream to ladyfingers to italian meringues, but I'm afraid I can't tell you as well as I can show you. So, here you go... just a taste.

Tarte aux pommes (Apple Tart)

Tarte aux poires à la frangipane (pear tart with almond cream)

Crème au beurre (buttercream)

La génoise (egg foam cake)

Crêpes au citron (crêpes with lemon syrup)

Beignets aux pommes, coulis de fruit (apple fritters with fruit coulis)

Pâte à choux (pastry dough used to make cream puffs)

Choux à la crème chantilly (cream puffs)

Beignets soufflés à l'orange (orange fritters)

Crème caramel (...crème caramel)

Glace à la caramel (caramel ice cream)

...Two servings of caramel ice cream.

Bande de tarte aux fruits (puff pastry fruit tart)

Soufflé glacé aux fruits (frozen fruit soufflé)

Soufflé au chocolat (chocolate soufflé)

Soufflé au poire (pear soufflé)

Clearly, I had my fair share of sugary fancies this week. I wish I could accurately describe the deep, slightly bitter, nutty smoothness of the caramel ice cream to you, or the airy, buttery flakiness of the puff pastry fruit tart. The rich smell of vanilla infused crème anglaise, and the delicate pear flavor beautifully enrobed in a soufflé. Sigh.

I have the recipes for all of these things, and I'll give them to you if you want them, but, for this post, I decided to go with the choux à la crème chantilly. "Shoe a la crem shantee-ee." ...That's cream puff, to you and me.


Choux À La Créme Chantilly
(Cream Puffs)

Caramel ice cream may be smooth and delicious, and chocolate soufflé may be rich and fancy, but the cream puff holds a special place in my heart. When I was a kid, we used to get them at the Wisconsin State Fair, along with grilled sweet corn and barbecued beef. My parents, grandparents, aunt, uncle and two little sisters would all squeeze around a dusty picnic table on the fairgrounds, right near the barns housing the prize-winning animals, the smell of cows and butter and fresh cream wafting around us. Someone would bring a big tray of freshly baked, Wisconsin cream puffs to the table, and we'd scoop them up and dig in, starting with the light, chewy pastry, quickly moving to the sweet, airy cream. Pretty soon we'd be sloshing whipped cream down our shirts and licking stray dollops from each other's fingers. And then 2-year-old Casey would fall asleep and 4-year-old Emily would get upset that she spilled cream on her shirt and I, at age 6, would ask if I could please please have another cream puff. ...Please?

Ingredients:

For the choux dough:

• 1 cup water
• 110 grams butter (slightly less than 1/2 cup butter), cut in chunks
• pinch salt
• pinch sugar
• 1 1/4 cups flour
• 4 to 5 eggs
• extra egg, for egg wash

For the crème chantilly:

• 1 1/4 cups heavy cream
• 2 tablespoons powdered sugar
• vanilla extract

Directions:

To make the choux dough, put the water, butter, salt and sugar into a pot and bring to a boil. As soon as the mixture reaches a boil and the butter is completely melted, take it off the heat and add all of the flour at once. Place the pot back on a medium flame and stir vigorously with a wooden spoon about 30 seconds, until the dough comes together and forms a mass that does not stick to the pan.

Dump the dough into a large, clean bowl. Crack 4 eggs into a separate bowl, and add them to the dough one at a time, making sure that each is fully incorporated before adding the next. You can do this step either by hand with a wooden spoon or in an electric mixer using the paddle attachment. The mixture should be firm but smooth. You'll know it has absorbed enough eggs when a spoon or finger run through the batter leaves a channel that fills in slowly, and a dollop of batter lifted on a spatula curls over itself and forms a hook. If the dough still seems too firm (if the channel formed by a spoon through the batter takes a long time to fill in), crack the 5th egg, break it up with a whisk in a separate bowl, and add drops of egg until the batter is just right.

Preheat the oven to 350ºF convection (or 400º regular).

Fill a pastry bag with the choux batter, and pipe out small circles of dough onto a sheet pan lined with parchment paper. If you don't have a pastry bag, you can make one by cutting off one of the bottom corners of a large, plastic ziptop bag. Just fill the bag and pipe the dough out of the little hole. You can make your cream puffs any size you like, just make sure they are all generally the same size.

Brush the circles lightly with egg wash, and bake until the dough has puffed up and is a deep, golden brown. Turn off the convection oven, or lower the regular oven to 300ºF, and leave the choux in for another 5 to 10 minutes to dry out. Remove the choux from the oven when they are dry and feel light and hollow (if you're not sure they're completely dry, take one out and split it open. The inside should be bone dry - any moisture will leave you with soggy creampuffs.) Allow the choux to cool before slicing off their tops and filling them with cream.

To make the crème chantilly, beat the heavy cream (either by hand or with an electric mixer) until it starts to thicken. Flavor it with the sugar and a drop of vanilla, and continue beating until stiff peaks form. Be careful not to overbeat the cream, or it will turn to butter. Pipe the cream into the cool, dry choux pastries, and serve immediately.

This recipe makes a lot of cream puffs (roughly 50) - feel free to halve or even quarter it for a more manageable batch of deliciousness.

The Awful of Offal

Just as it always does, summer is moving too fast. When did it become mid-July? Just yesterday it was the beginning of June and I was learning to flavor stocks and chop vegetables, and today I'm knee deep in organ meat. Organ. Meat. I'm talking about veal kidneys, sweetbreads (oh, they sound delicious, but don't be fooled - sweetbreads have nothing to do with either sweets or bread; they are the thymus glands of veal, young beef, lamb or pork), calf's liver, tripe (that's the stomach lining of a cow, for those interested), and lamb's tongue. The proper name for these tasty treats is offal, and it's pronounced just like it sounds. And tastes.

I know it's sort of hip to enjoy eating offal, and I'll admit that liver does have its merits (mainly in the form of my Gramma Inez's chopped chicken liver - more on that another time), but what can I say? Ingesting animal entrails just isn't really my thing. But, as Chef S. likes to say, "tough luck on you." So, on Friday I put on a clean chef's coat, suppressed my upchuck reflexes, and started the day by boiling and peeling lamb tongues. Les langues d'agneau. Sounds much better in french, n'est pas?

It was nasty. The tongues were the worst. Any preparation that starts with: "eliminate the larynx and disgorge the tongue under cold running water" is bound to be sort of gross, but I'm not sure I can accurately describe the extent of the grossness. Suffice it to say, of all of the wretchedly gross things in the world, the act of peeling off the outer skin of a poached lamb's tongue has got to be up there. And I mean up there. Yech.

The sweetbreads weren't much better. One of the prep instructions is: "using a finger, eliminate any nerves or cartilage." Uh huh, yeah, I'd love to stick my fingers into a smelly lump of thymus nerves. I thought you'd uh, never ask. And yes, we did make a heaping plate full of veal kidneys (a.k.a mushrooms in mustard sauce),

but if anyone brought them over to the Level 1 kitchen, I don't know. I'm not trying to make any Level 1 vegans cry.

So, like the first half of summer, offal day at school came and went, and I'm happy to say that I did try every dish we made on Friday: sautéed kidneys with mustard sauce, grilled and pan-fried sweetbreads (actually, the pan fried ones taste sort of like chicken nuggets... not bad for thymus glands), sautéed calf's liver with caramelized onions, and lamb tongue with spicy sauce. I may have whimpered and gagged a little bit, but I did it, and it's over. In the words of Chef S., "and blah blah bah, blah bah, and dat's the end of dat stoh-ry. Now make me a clean-up, get reed of dis zoo." Gladly.

This week begins a seven-day stretch of pastry at school - everything from pâte brisée to sorbet to soufflé - and I couldn't be happier. To celebrate this sweet turn of events, I thought you might like to make an apple tart with strawberry compote. I promise, there's nothing awful about it.


Apple Tart with Strawberry Compote

Ingredients: For the Dough:

• 1 and 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 7 tablespoons butter, very cold, cut into small pieces
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg mixed with 2 teaspoons water

For the Strawberry Compote:

• 1 large container of strawberries (about 16 ounces), hulled and chopped
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• 2 tablespoons water

For the Apple Filling:

• 2-3 apples (I used Granny Smith)
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• 2 tablespoons melted butter

Directions:

First, make the dough. Sift together the flour, sugar and salt in a bowl. Mix the cold, cubed butter into the dry ingredients using two forks or clean fingertips, until the butter is incorporated and the mixture has a sandy texture. Form a well in the butter-flour mixture and add the egg/water mixture into the well.


Begin to combine the liquid into the flour-butter mixture, being careful not to overwork the dough (overworked dough leads to tough, heavy crust). If the dough seems too dry (if it's too flaky and won't stick together), add a few drops of ice-water (only a few small drops at a time!) until it comes together.

Gather the dough, form it into a flat disc, and wrap in plastic wrap. Chill in the refrigerator at least 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, make the compote. Put the strawberries, sugar, water, and lemon juice in a sauté pan over medium-low heat, and cook slowly under a parchment paper lid, until the strawberries are very soft and have exuded their juices.


Preheat the oven to 425ºF. When the dough is thoroughly rested and chilled, roll it out on a floured surface and gently press it into an 8-inch tart pan. Spread the strawberry compote in an even layer on the bottom of the pastry shell.



Cut the apples in half, and core them. (Some people like to peel them first - one step too many for me, but if you prefer peeled apples, by all means, go for it). Slice the apples in very thin slices horizontally, and arrange them decoratively on top of the strawberry compote, making sure to place the slices very close together (the apples will shrink in the oven, so be generous with the little slices).


Pour the melted butter over the tart, and bake it in the 425º oven for 10 minutes. Lower the heat to 350ºF and bake for an additional 50-60 minutes. When it's ready, the apples should be soft and brown on the edges, and the pastry should be golden brown.


Serve warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, or room temperature with a dollop of cold whipped cream.

Makes one 8-inch tart.