Week Seven: The week of perfection
What a weekend! Hardly recovered from last Thursday’s shenanigans and it was already springtime and Palm Sunday. It turns out that Palm Sunday is very popular here in our quaint Parisian suburb. Who knew the longest Gospel reading of the year would draw such a crowd? We arrived on time for the Sunday service and were lucky to get a seat inside the confessional on the far back wall. The faithful were lined out of the back of the church all eagerly clutching their boxwood branches.
Which leads me to the fourth most interesting fact about life in France (after the novel idea of giving cashiers a chair to sit on, collecting trash in the evening and steak cooked-to-order on the menu at the zoo cafeteria): No palm branches in sight on Palm Sunday. Instead the Scouts (by the way, mixed gender—no cookie sellers here!) hand out boxwood branches for a small donation.
In honor of the continuing festivities, this week’s line-up includes four recipes that would all be fantastic additions to an Easter buffet or a daring early spring picnic spread:
Kartoffelsalat (Potato Salad)
Tarte tatin (French apple pie)
Potato Bread
Confiture de carottes aux zestes d’orange et pistaches (Carrot-orange-pistachio jam)
Kartoffelsalat (Potato Salad)
Potato salad has the advantage of not only including potatoes, it’s also good for the gut. A recent and quite entertaining bestseller Gut:The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Underrated Organ by German scientist Giulia Enders endorses cooked and then cooled potatoes as being an excellent source for fortifying a suffering gut. It’s all the encouragement we needed to put Kartoffelsalat on the menu.
Please note: this is not Kentucky Fried Chicken potato salad. This is a really delicious, not drowning in a sea of mayonnaise, dish that will happily complete any grill menu. And it’s infinitely adaptable. Dr. Oetker suggests one could add in slices of sausage and apple, or how about chunks of pumpkin?
Potatoes, a few potatoes less than 2 lbs. (800 g)
Onions, 2
Pickles, 3-1/2 oz. (100 g)
Eggs, hard-boiled, 2
Mayonnaise, 6 Tbsp.
Pickle water, 3 Tbsp.
Mustard, Dijon, 1 Tbsp.
Salt & pepper
- Wash and cook the unpeeled potatoes for 20-25 minutes. Drain, let cool and peel them. Cut into fairly large slices.
- Finely chop the onions.
- Slice the pickles and the eggs.
- For the sauce: combine the mayonnaise, water from the pickle jar and mustard.
- Combine the sauce with the potatoes, onions, pickles and eggs.
- Season to taste and let it all chill together for at least 30 minutes.
Kartoffelsalat (Potato Salad)
Ingredients
- Potatoes a few potatoes less than 2 lbs. (800 g)
- Onions 2
- Pickles 3-1/2 oz. (100 g)
- Eggs hard-boiled, 2
- Mayonnaise 6 Tbsp.
- Pickle water 3 Tbsp.
- Mustard Dijon, 1 Tbsp.
- Salt & pepper
Instructions
- Wash and cook the unpeeled potatoes for 20-25 minutes. Drain, let cool and peel them. Cut into fairly large slices.
- Finely chop the onions.
- Slice the pickles and the eggs.
- For the sauce: combine the mayonnaise, water from the pickle jar and mustard.
- Combine the sauce with the potatoes, onions, pickles and eggs.
- Season to taste and let it all chill together for at least 30 minutes.
Tarte tatin (French apple pie)
Shortly after our arrival in France I learned a critical secret to being a convincing French cook: nonchalance. We had been spontaneously invited for dinner in the home of a *real* Parisian couple, who would soon become good friends and frequent dinner company. I watched in complete awe as the hostess, without blinking an eye and while still maintaining lively pre-dinner chatter, prepared a “sorry this is so simple, but it’s what we have on hand” dinner consisting of a perfect cheese soufflé and a delicious Tarte tatin (a very convincing French interpretation of apple pie). Oh right, and she had a four-month-old baby. This, I decided, must be the ultimate test of Frenchness. Not only are soufflé and Tarte tatin dishes that most non-French would tremble in fear at just the thought of preparing, our hostess did it all with complete nonchalance.
Since that impactful evening, I have managed to repeat the menu at our home for various dinner guests, with attempts at that same impressive nonchalance, to more or less similar effect. An important note on meal planning: be sure to account for the fact that soufflé is, as the name suggests, mostly air and may be too light of fare depending on the appetite of your guests. If you are entertaining Americans or northern Europeans and you’re planning to serve soufflé and salad for dinner, estimate about ½ a Tarte tatin per person. To replicate the famous French nonchalance, a glass of wine in hand is a tremendous aid.
The following recipe comes from Mille et une recettes maison. But this is not the only way to make a Tarte tatin. Speaking from my short years of experience with the dish, the primarily goal is to cook the apples and caramelize the butter-sugar top. How you get there is up to you.
For the crust:
Flour, 1-1/4 cup (150 g)
Butter, 5 Tbsp. (75 g)
Salt, a pinch
Sugar, 1 tsp.
Water, ½ cup
For the filling:
Apples, 5-6
Sugar, a generous 1/2 cup (125 g)
Butter, 5 Tbsp. (75 g)
- First prepare the crust. Combine the flour, sugar and salt. Cut in the cold butter. (The easiest method is with use of a pastry cutter. However in the absence of such modern niceties, two knives and some light ninja skills with suffice.) Add just enough water until the dough becomes soft. Set aside to rest for 30 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 465° F (240° C).
- Prepare a round cake tin with 3-1/2 Tbsp (50 g) of butter and 1/4 cup (50 g) of sugar. Here you can take advantage of your preheating oven to first melt the butter in the pan and then sprinkle the sugar evenly on top. If you forget about the pan in the increasingly hot and now smoke-filled oven while you are busy building a Duplo tower, it’s probably not the day for Tarte tatin. Use your apples for the Easiest applesauce recipe ever instead.
- Peel (not optional), core and slice the apples into ½ inch (1-2 cm) slices.
- Place the slices into the pan with the round part of the apple facing the butter-sugar layer with the end esthetic in mind. A picture is worth a thousand words:
- Sprinkle 1/8 cup (25 g) of sugar on top of the apples.
- Roll out the well-rested dough to a (circular, optional) shape roughly 1 inch (2 cm) larger than the baking pan. Place the dough on top of the apples and tuck it in around the edges.
- Bake the tart for 30 minutes until the crust is golden.
- Let cool 5 minutes before attempting one of the most dangerous and exhilarating feats of your young baking career, turning the tart over onto a plate.
- Combine the rest of the sugar and the butter. Spread over the apples and place under the grill in the oven.
- The idea is to caramelize the sugar, not burn the tart. (Good luck!)
- The tart can be served hot or cold. Traditionalists will tell you that a Tarte tatin served with anything other than crème fraîche (sour cream), is not a Tarte tatin. That said, ice cream could also be quite nice.
Tarte tatin (French apple pie)
Ingredients
For the crust:
- Flour 1-1/4 cup (150 g)
- Butter 5 Tbsp. (75 g)
- Salt a pinch
- Sugar 1 tsp.
- Water ½ cup
For the filling:
- Apples 5-6
- Sugar a generous 1/2 cup (125 g)
- Butter 5 Tbsp. (75 g)
Instructions
- First prepare the crust. Combine the flour, sugar and salt. Cut in the cold butter. (The easiest method is with use of a pastry cutter. However in the absence of such modern niceties, two knives and some light ninja skills with suffice.) Add just enough water until the dough becomes soft. Set aside to rest for 30 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 465° F (240° C).
- Prepare a round cake tin with 3-1/2 Tbsp (50 g) of butter and 1/4 cup (50 g) of sugar. Here you can take advantage of your preheating oven to first melt the butter in the pan and then sprinkle the sugar evenly on top.
- Peel (not optional), core and slice the apples into ½ inch (1-2 cm) slices.
- Place the slices into the pan with the round part of the apple facing the butter-sugar layer with the end esthetic in mind.
- Sprinkle 1/8 cup (25 g) of sugar on top of the apples.
- Roll out the well-rested dough to a (circular, optional) shape roughly 1 inch (2 cm) larger than the baking pan. Place the dough on top of the apples and tuck it in around the edges.
- Bake the tart for 30 minutes until the crust is golden.
- Let cool 5 minutes before attempting one of the most dangerous and exhilarating feats of your young baking career, turning the tart over onto a plate.
- Combine the rest of the sugar and the butter. Spread over the apples and place under the grill in the oven.
- The idea is to caramelize the sugar, not burn the tart.
- The tart can be served hot or cold. Traditionalists will tell you that a Tarte tatin served with anything other than crème fraîche (sour cream), is not a Tarte tatin. That said, ice cream could also be quite nice.
Keep up with the latest fads and wow your Easter guests with hard-to-imagine delicacies like:
Potato Bread
with a side of:
