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Kitten and a Curtain |
We are back in Sauzet, comfortably
reinstalled in our familiar gite. Boulette, the dog, was ecstatic to see us;
she recognized the car and ran to it whimpering before we had parked. That evening she didn’t leave our side,
clearly making sure that we weren’t leaving.
Gris Gris also gave us a warm welcome, for a cat, and immediately began
begging for milk.
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Charlie and Me |
Our arrival “home” had been kept as a
surprise for Charlie. When she came home
from school, Isabelle said, “I wonder who that is in the house”. Charlie looked at the car, then at the
lights, and screamed, “they came back”! She
ran up the stairs, into the house, and bestowed upon us large, gleeful
hugs. Since then, we have been receiving
special Charlie artwork and exuberant visitations.
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Lessons |
My cooking lessons with Isabelle have also
recommenced. Macarons have now been added to my French food repertoire, at least
in theory. Macarons are definitely the most complicated and intricate recipe I
have ever made, or helped to make. They
are a traditional French dessert composed of ganache, sandwiched between
meringue cookies. Ganache is a chocolate (dark or white) based cream. We added pistachio oil, rose water, and
violet essence. My favourite was the
violet ganache—ganache made with white chocolate, raspberry puree, and violet. It tasted like a violet petal.
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Using the Pastry Decoration Bag to Apply Ganache |
Macarons are fun because each flavour of
filling and meringue can be a different colour; this also makes the recipe complicated.
For each colour of meringue, a new
batter needs to be prepared. Isabelle
and I chose to make green and purple ones, one colour and batter for each of us. Unfortunately, the green colorant reacted with
the egg whites, so our green macrons
didn’t rise.
The meringue is placed in a pastry
decoration bag (like those used to decorate cakes) and squeezed into perfect
circles to be baked for 12 minutes. My
efforts with the pastry bag were disastrous, creating irregular, misshapen
blobs. After the meringues are baked, ganache
is squeezed onto one, and another is placed carefully on top, thus creating the
sandwich. The finished results were
delicious and looked like something Hansel and Gretel would eat.
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Adding the "Chapeau" |
Cooking with Isabelle is so much fun. I was dubbed her “sous-chef” and Charlie her
“sous-sous-chef”. While cooking, I
learned some important distinctions. One
makes French meringue by adding sugar as the egg whites are beaten; French
meringue is usually used to top pies or eaten as a cookie. Italian meringue has the sugar added after
the egg whites are whipped and is usually mixed into the batter to make it
fluffy and light. Also, although this
has less to do with cooking, what we call French coffee presses are referred to
as Italian coffee makers in France.
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Finished Macarons |
This week, I also made my first quiche and
madeleines. I only attempted the quiche
because my mother had caught a 24-hour virus, so I was designated to make
dinner. Quiche seemed relatively easy,
and French, so I followed my mother’s semi step-by-step directions from the
couch. The leek-zucchini quiche turned
out surprisingly tasty and gourmand. I
even think I could replicate the effect without directions, but we will see.
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My Marbled Madeleines |
Since our time in France, I had yet to
taste a madeleine, so I decided I
needed to bake them myself. To find a
recipe, Isabelle lent me her book of about 50 madeleine recipes—both sweet and
savoury. I wavered between making the madeleines with a chocolate heart, the
marbled madeleines, and the honey madeleines. Ever lazy, I chose the simplest recipe: the
marbled madeleines. The recipe was fairly easy, even if it was in
French. The only problem was that we
didn’t have any measuring cup, so I was converting grams to cups and then
measuring the ingredients with a teacup with sloping sides. The recipe was supposed to produce 16
perfectly marbled madeleines, but we
got 26 madeleines instead. I ran out of vanilla batter about halfway
through, so we even got some pure chocolate cookies. Those were my favourite. Surprisingly, the madeleines tasted and looked exactly like they were supposed
to—which is to say delicious.
To celebrate our homecoming in Sauzet, we went
to our local store and bought some Brie as a celebratory dessert. There were two Brie’s for sale and so we
asked our friend at the counter how they differ. The one Brie, she said, was made with raw
milk; it was very creamy, and good. The
other pasteurized Brie was “zero”. I was
expecting her to say zero fat, or zero flavour, but it was just zero and
utterly worthless. After tasting the
good Brie, we decided that the only Brie for sale in Canada is “zero”.
2 comments:
Gavia, you are definitely invited to my house for a bake-a-thon! xxoo--Sue
I can't wait!
xoxo
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