Just in case you were wondering what to send me...

When I lived in Paris in 2008, my host family had two exchange students: me, and another girl from my exchange program.  While I was there, my mom sent me a guidebook to the best pâtisseries, or pastry shops, in Paris.  My roommate's mom sent her miniature boxes of American cereals.

I always kind of wondered why she had come to Paris, if she wanted to eat American cereals and didn't seem much interested in practicing her French or sight-seeing.  I, on the other hand, wore out my shoes hitting the streets of Paris, nearly always with my pâtisserie bible in hand.  Good thing I did; otherwise, I doubt I ever would have found Le Loir dans la Théière.

Le Loir dans la Théière (which means, by the way, the dormouse in the tea kettle) is an eclectic salon de thé/café/restaurant tucked away on the narrow, verdant rue des Rosiers in the heart of the Marais.  It's the kind of restaurant where the chairs don't match, where the half the tables feature brightly colored ceramic bowls filled with white and raw sugar cubes (and those who don't have them make friends with their neighbors), where diners charge their iPhones at the socket beneath the Alice in Wonderland-inspired mural.  Basically, it's my favorite kind of place - especially when you consider how outstanding the food is.  I came for the dessert buffet, much lauded in my pâtisserie guide for its enormous slices of tarte à la citron meringuée (left), but I came back again (and again... and again!) for the tarte aux oignons rouges et tomates.

The savory tarts don't show up on the paper menu - instead, they selections du jour are always listed on a chalkboard near the front door.  The selection is pretty similar from day to day: tarts with fresh goat cheese, capers, and tomatoes; tarts with shallots and aged goat cheese; tarts with red onions and tomatoes.  All the tarts are good, but oh my, the onion and tomato tart is just heavenly.  The earthy sweetness of the caramelized onions is perfectly balanced by the acidity of the fresh tomatoes, and then it's topped with a dusting of diced herbs and served on a perfectly crisp, flaky, buttery crust.  In a perfect world, I would eat this for lunch every day.

Unfortunately, it is not a perfect world, and I don't usually have this even once a year.  I've tried a few times to make it at home, and I think I'm starting to get close.  In any case, I have definitely learned a few things in the attempt.

1.  The onions need to be cooked slowly in advance, to get to the soft, sweet, unbelievably delicious state.  That's just not going to happen during 15 minutes in the oven, so they need to get going well in advance.

2. The tomatoes won't get cooked in 15 minutes, either.  Better to roast 'em by themselves in the oven for an hour first to condense some of the juices and create a much deeper, richer flavor.

3.  To be crisp and flaky and perfect, the crust really needs to be fully cooked on its own, too.

So when you get down to it, making the tart itself is super quick and easy, because you're just throwing together ingredients that have already cooked, and heating them up for 10 or 15 minutes.  It's just the time spent getting everything ready in advance that takes a while.  The end result, though, is so, so worth the effort.

Now that I'm back in the US, I wish my Parisian host mother would send me care packages... I could use a nice slice of authentic Loir tarte aux oignons rouges et tomates!  However, since I doubt it would survive the trip in stellar condition, I suppose I'll just have to keep making my own.  I suppose my consolation ought to be that I have access to all sorts of American cereals in any size box I desire...  Lucky me?

Tarte aux oignons rouges et tomates

A quick note about pie dough: I used Pierre Hermé's recipe for pâte brisée because that was what I had waiting for me in my freezer, but you could use your own favorite recipe.  What's important is that it's fully baked before you put the onions and tomatoes in.  Otherwise, it won't be crisp and divine when the tart is served.  If you have a tart pan, this is a great opportunity to use it, otherwise a pie plate will work just fine.

1 pint cherry or grape tomatoes, sliced in half
Extra virgin olive oil
Salt

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil or bacon fat
6 medium to large red onions, julienned
Salt and pepper
Dried herbes de Provence

Pie crust, pre-baked in a tart pan or pie plate until golden brown and crisp.


Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, then spread out the tomatoes in a single layer over the paper.  Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt.  Bake for thirty minutes, flip the tomatoes over, then bake for another thirty minutes or so, until they're wrinkled and browned and leaking their juices.

While the tomatoes are roasting, set a large frying pan over low heat.  Warm the oil or bacon fat, then add the onions.  Let the onions cook over low heat for about twenty minutes, stirring every few minutes, then add salt and pepper to your taste.  Continue to cook for another twenty to thirty minutes, still stirring every few minutes to prevent sticking and burning, until the onions are soft and sweet without any of the sharp pungency of raw onion flavor.

If you're really good at planning and timing your cooking, you could be preparing the pie dough during the time the onions and tomatoes are cooking: after it has rested, rolling it out, getting it in the tart pan, chilling it, pre-baking it.  If, like me, you have high hopes for doing 15 things at once in the kitchen that invariably turns into a slow working process, you could get the pie dough done ahead of time.  In any case, once the pie dough is baked, the tomatoes are roasted into their sweetest essence, and the onions are irresistibly caramelized, it's time to start assembling.  Pour all of the onions into the tart crust, then dot the top with tomatoes.  Finally, sprinkle herbes de Provence over the whole tart.

Bake at 350 degrees for 10-15 minutes, just until heated through.  Serve immediately with a tossed green salad and crusty bread.  If you also happen to have a buffet table full of desserts when you finish, so much the better.

Serves four

All signs

Today I ate my first apple from the market, and shuffled my feet through the first of the crunchy fallen leaves.  The air is cool and crisp and fresh, and it's just beginning to pick up that tell-tale October scent of crumpled, drying foliage and wood-burning fires.  We may still be a day or two from the equinox, but in my book, all signs point to autumn.

Here's to soon-to-be-made chili and applesauce and butternut squash soup!

Red, green, gazpacho

I don't know why people always talk about Christmas in July.  Based on what I've seen in my kitchen lately, it seems to me that Christmas in August would be more fitting.

I know, I know, technically, the calendar says it's September now.  Sometimes, I even believe it, like when apples and grapes first started showing up at the market last week, or when I check the weather forecast and see our high is going to be in the 50s.  My kitchen is still full of tomatoes and basil, but it's starting to feel like a mad rush to get whip up pestos and roast the tomatoes and get everything stored carefully in the freezer to brighten the months to come.  I have more to say about those efforts, but first, I need to talk about gazpacho.

I made gazpacho a few weeks ago, back when it was still warm enough that the idea of a chilled soup doesn't feel quite so outrageous as it does today.  Today, I made my first pumpkin bread of fall, and I'm keeping warm at my computer with a sweatshirt and a mug of hot tea.  Two weeks ago, though, we had a warm day and lots of vegetables.  Gazpacho is my perfect August dinner: cool, refreshing, ideal for those hot, sticky evenings when you can't stand the idea of turning on the stove.

I had made gazpacho before, but the last time I made it, it was a chunky soup that really emphasized each vegetable individually.  When I was in France last summer, however, I tried gazpacho andalou, a smooth, velvety revelation that appears on menus all over the country, but especially in the southwest.  It was served with tiny bits of bell pepper, onion, and crisp little croutons to be added by the diner as garnishes, providing just enough textural contrast to keep the whole thing interesting.  This was the gazpacho I wanted to make.

Gazpacho andalou is a French name for the popular chilled tomato-based soup from Andalusia, the southernmost region of Spain.  Home to the Great Mosque at Cordoba, Pablo Picasso, and hot, dry, summers, these people really know their chilled soups.  Their gazpacho includes all of the common ingredients found in a chunky, state-side gazpacho: tomato, bell pepper, cucumber, onion, garlic, good vinegar, good olive oil, salt and pepper.  However, there's also one more standard ingredient mixed in: stale bread, which helps the smooth soup bind together.  Because we're not worried about having perfectly diced vegetables, the recipe couldn't be easier: just a rough chop, a minute or two whirling in the food processor, and a quick press through a sieve.  No heat required; thank goodness.

The thing that really counts, though, in making a good gazpacho is to use top-notch ingredients.  Luckily, August is the month that farmer's markets are overflowing with vegetables, and this is a perfect way to use 'em.  (I know, I know, that pesky September thing again... but last I checked, there were still plenty of vegetables at the market, so if it's still hot enough to warrant it where you live, get to it!)  The vinegar and olive oil should be great, too.  A good sherry vinegar, always a popular choice in Spain, is ideal, but any vinegar you like enough to drink straight would be great.  As for the olive oil, this is the time to break out the expensive bottle of extra virgin, estate pressed stuff.  Keep a little extra on hand for garnishing, too.

Speaking of garnishing, keep an extra red and green bell pepper on hand to dice for garnishes, and then go to town with the Christmas in August celebrations!

Gazpacho Andalou

Traditionally, gazpacho was made by mashing all the ingredients together with a mortar and pestle.  I've heard this gives the soup a better texture.  But when it's hot enough outside that you want gazpacho for dinner, do you really want to be exerting all that energy?  I don't.  I was quite happy with the results from my food processor, and it saved me some considerable elbow grease.

All the recipes I've seen for this gazpacho say that it needs to sit at least 2 hours once it's all mixed together, and they're not kidding.  When I tasted it right out of the food processor, it was a disappointing, bland vegetable mush.  The next day, though, the flavors were much more pronounced.  After two days in the fridge, it was better yet, bright and refreshing. 

2 1/2 lbs tomatoes, seeded (reserve the juice!), and cut into chunks

1 good-sized cucumber, or 2 medium cucumbers, peeled, seeded, and cut into chunks

1 green pepper, seeded, cut into chunks

1 red pepper, seeded, cut into chunks

1/4 sweet onion, diced

1 small clove garlic, peeled

6 oz good bread (I used this one), crusts removed and torn into smallish bits

2-4 tablespoons good olive oil

2-4 tablespoons good vinegar (sherry, if possible)

Salt & pepper

Set the bread to soak in the reserved tomato juice.

Combine the cucumber, tomatoes, peppers, onion, and garlic in the bowl of a large food processor.  If you don't have a huge food processor, it may be easier to do this in two batches.  Add in the vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper, and let sit for 10 minutes.

Add in the bread and tomato juice, then process until smooth, pausing occasionally to scrape down the sides of the processor with a spatula.  Season with salt and pepper to taste, keeping in mind that the flavors will heighten as the soup rests.

Strain the soup through a seive or chinois, then set in the refrigerator to rest for at least two hours, and up to three days.  Serve chilled with good bread and some garnishes (see below for possibilities).

Garnishes

While not strictly necessary, having some crunchy bits of vegetables or croutons make for a fantastic contrast with the silky-smooth texture of the soup.  The garnishes are generally served separately in small bowls.  At the table, diners can garnish their own bowls of soup as they please.

1 slice good bread, diced into tiny bits, browned in the oven for 5-10 minutes to make croutons

1 red pepper, seeded, diced into tiny bits

1 green pepper, seeded, diced into tiny bits

1 small cucumber, seeded, diced into tiny bits

Good olive oil, for drizzling

Serves 4 as a main course with bread, or 8-10 as an appetizer

Seattle, part three

Even when we weren't taking trips through the mountains, Jen and I covered a lot of ground.  Luckily, though, sometimes we didn't need to go too far afield, because there was plenty to do almost in Jen's back yard.

Jen lives in Fremont, an eclectic neighborhood that I'm quite confident is way too cool for me.  It's filled with cute shops and eateries and a sign the casually marks the center of the universe.  In addition to being home to a street market every Sunday that boasts a bizarre yet intriguing collection of antiquities, collectibles, junk, and food, there's plenty of permanent public art, like a rocket perched precariously on the corner of an old warehouse, a thirteen-foot tall bronze statue of Lenin, and, perhaps Fremont's most famous resident, an eighteen-foot tall troll that lives under a bridge.

Fremont is also home to Theo Chocolate, a bean-to-bar chocolate factory.  Theo offers tours of their factory, which includes tastings of several of their chocolates and a brief explanation of some of the machinery and processes used to make chocolate.  On my last morning in Seattle, Jen and I signed ourselves up for a tasting.

I had attended a chocolate class at work the week before I headed to Seattle, which was helpful to me at the beginning of the tour, when our guide handed out samples to taste.  When tasting chocolate, you want to consider the ingredients included, the percentage of cacao (the percent listed on a bar is the percentage of cacao; the remainder is sugar), whether the chocolate snaps cleanly when broken (a good one will), the aroma (which is stronger just after breaking the chocolate), the flavor (which is best experienced by chewing the chocolate a little, letting it spread throughout your entire mouth, and then bringing air into your mouth, like in wine tasting), the mouthfeel, and the finish.  There's a lot to consider, and I was glad to have had a course in the basics before launching in to tasting on my own!

Chocolate is one of those products for which I really have to wonder how anyone discovered its existence.  It begins as the seed of the cacao pod, the flesh of which is white and slimy and tastes, I am told, something like SweetTarts.  In its raw state, the cacao bean is bitter and unpalatable, like apple seeds.  After the cacao pods are harvested by hand (a necessary step, because cacao pods never fall from the tree, and on one tree you may see pods that range from the flower, to barely formed, to entirely ripe), the beans and pulp are extracted from the pod, and then they need to be fermented for five to seven days, which kills the bean and eliminates some of its bitterness.  Next, the beans are sun dried, and then they are packed and sent from the cacao farm to the chocolate producer. 

Once at the producer, the work to make the chocolate has only just begun! The beans need to be roasted (as in the first photo to the left, with the yellow bins of raw, dried beans and the round black roaster in the back, which, incidentally, was a coffee roaster in a previous life).  After a good, long roast, the beans (now much darker, as in the second picture) are cracked and winnowed, which separates the inedible husk from the edible interior, called the nib.  The nibs are then ground, after which they are conched, a process that heats the chocolate and helps to create the desired mouthfeel in the finished product.  Next, the chocolate is refined, which gets all the particles of chocolate and any additives (like sugar) to a consistent size.  From there, the chocolate is tempered, which is a precise cooling process that, when done properly, gives chocolate its smooth sheen and its crisp snap when broken.  And then, of course, it's packaged and sold and, most importantly, eaten!

Theo produces a couple dozen different bars, many of which have added ingredients that range from the standard, like almond, to the unusual, like chai tea or buttered toast.  The flavored bars are intriguing, but ultimately I felt that the additional ingredients clouded the flavor of the chocolate itself.  I ended up purchasing one of the plain bars, an 84% dark chocolate made with beans from the Dominican Republic.  It has a dark flavor that reminds me of tobacco.

(By the way, if you're interested in learning more about the specifics of chocolate production, or you'd like to try your hand at making your own chocolates, Chocolate Alchemy has some great DIY instructions for the enthusiastic budding chocolatier.)

But of course, we had to eat more than just chocolate.  Sometimes, we had to eat ice cream, too, like the stunning cone of honey lavender ice cream I got at Molly Moon's.  I don't know how anyone who lives by Molly Moon's doesn't immediately gain fifteen pounds - the sweet, toasty aroma of freshly-made waffle cones (as we waited in line, we watched the cones come off the griddle and get shaped - that's how freshly made they are!) wafts out the front door of the shop and permeates the surrounding street within at least a ten-yard radius.  When I order ice cream I usually opt for a cup, but how could I turn down a cone I had watch them make?  The honey lavender was floral without being overwhelming, utterly delicious.  And that last beautiful bite, that was mostly cone with the last nibbles and drips of ice cream - perfection.

Once in a while, we even took a break from dessert and ate real food.  When I was planning my trip out to Seattle, about the very first thing that Jen suggested we do was to eat at Ivar's.  Ivar's has a few outlets in Seattle (including, I discovered on my way home, one at the airport), and they are known for their seafood.  The specialties vary from place to place: there's a clam house, and a sports bar, and a few quick fish fries.  We ate at the Salmon House, which offers stunning table-side views over Lake Union.

The menu seemed to be about 90% salmon: coho, sockeye, red, king, Sitka sound white king, all grilled over smoky alder wood and served on Caesar salads or with panzanella or just as is.  I ordered the King salmon, alder grilled and served with roasted fingerling potatoes and fresh green beans, along with a glass of pinot noir:

After our attempt at preparing salmon for dinner a few nights prior, I was reminded why I so often eat fish when I eat out - these chefs really know what they're doing.  The fish was perfectly prepared, slightly flaky, moist, with a rich, smoky flavor. The potatoes were crisp and lovely, and green beans are about my favorite thing ever, so they made a perfect accompaniment.  Yum.

But let's not forget ourselves; there was dessert at the end of lunch, of course.  Jen and I decided to split the strawberry shortcake.

The biscuits were so crisp, they almost seemed more like sugar cookies.  But when they got moistened with the sweet strawberry juice and the silky, freshly whipped cream, it made a very satisfying dessert.

When we weren't raising our blood sugar to dangerously high levels, Jen continued to show me around Seattle.  One of my favorite visits was to Gasworks park, a wonderful example of post-industrial repurposed land.

She also led me around the University of Washington's campus on a stunningly comprehensive tour ("That's a building.  That's another building.").  At the end of the day, Mount Rainer even poked its head out of the clouds to say hello. 

See that oblong triangular shape in the middle of the clouds?  That one that looks like a cloud itself?  That's Mount Rainier, reminding us that, even as freak earthquakes and hurricanes roll through the east, there are still active volcanoes ready to terrorize the west on a whim.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and eventually I had to say goodbye to Jen and return home.  Not to worry, though: during my visit, we must have come up with a dozen things to do "next time," so sooner or later I'm sure I'll be returning so we can start plowing through that list.

Thanks to Elizabeth for playing the part of chauffeur, and especially to Jen, for playing the host and tour guide, and for showing me the path Ben Franklin took to work each morning.  After all, we all know that was the real reason I came to Seattle.