Springtime in the French Vosges

Have you ever heard of the Vosges region in France? Maybe you've had Vosges chocolate before, if you live in the United States, which actually doesn't come from France at all--although I would never say no to white chocolate with spicy black pepper.

Les Vosges is a little-known region in the East of the country, right next to Alsace and not so far away from Germany. It's a mountainous region, with medium-sized mountains perfect for breezy hiking. It was well-known for its textile industry in the 19th and early 20th century, which has unfortunately gone downhill since, and many towns were bombed during World War II. My French side of the family lives there--my papi, or grandfather, was from a small village called Nompatelize.

To celebrate my 100th post (already! thank you to the two people who read this!), I thought a few pictures of how beautiful the Spring is in the Vosges were in order. If you're thinking of visiting France, don't leave this region out--it's got great food as well. You can have wonderful cured meats and strong cheese, and the regional fruit is the super-plumpy mirabelle: a great addition to summer tarts. Oh, and let's not forget ice cream and candies made with pine sap, which are a great treat.

My favorite part? Looking out the window as my train rolls in, when the sun shines down on the dark green of the mountains and I just know a weekend spent lounging in the garden is in order. 

I would be saying Happy Spring, but the weather just dropped down a good 10° Celsius and it's raining...so hopefully this will remind you of what a perfect Spring should be like!

Classic French: The Tarte aux Fraises

Summer is just around the corner!

Hold on! Let's not get too carried away here. It's late April and for the past few years, temperatures have been in the 20s--Celsius, not Fahrenheit obviously, otherwise I would be hiding under a blanket and not writing this in the sun. Everytime this happens, we all start getting excited: picnicking in parks! Spending the day lounging around in the garden or at a café terrace! Not doing anything at all!

And then, all of a sudden, June comes along. Visions of warm summers drinking lemonade and selling it for a dollar disappear, replaced by sweaters. I'm not saying I would still have a lemonade stand, because I'm not sure how well that would go along with people in the street in Paris, or anywhere, really. A six year-old selling lemonade is cute. A 23 year-old selling lemonade is just plain weird. In any case, June in France sometimes doesn't call for lemonade, or any other refreshing drink. You'd be more likely to reach for tea or hot chocolate. Just when you thought all those dresses you bought in April would last throughout the summer, you realize you need to buy another pair of warm pants. 

In reaction to this fear of the cold summer, I've decided to pretend like I'm seventy years old and declare that my joint pain can only mean the summer will be really hot. I mean, my wrists hurt every morning, so it can only be that, right? Or the fact that I broke them in January. Right...I forgot about that. 

We'll see how Summer turns out--for now, Spring is pretty delightful. Surrounded by flowers and fruit trees in bloom in Saint Dié, where I'm spending a few days, I couldn't ask for more. Lounging in the sun and eating strawberries can't get any better...unless you add a strawberry tart. The tarte aux fraises is a true French classic; simple enough to make pretty quickly, yet with enough elegance to serve for company. The freshness from the strawberries comes together with the silky feel of the vanilla-flecked pastry cream for a great moment. Add a buttery, crunchy tart crust and you've got the perfect springtime dessert.

Every French family has its own recipe for strawberry tart, but most of them include a vanilla crème pâtissière and a pâte sablée. This recipe is pretty much the same, although I strayed away from family tradition and made a pâte sucrée, where confectioner's sugar replaces granulated sugar. I also added one little thing, which may or may not give the strawberries a little extra something: black pepper. 

Try it on your next strawberry tart, but don't forget: save some pastry cream on the edges of the bowl. You'll thank me for that when you're sitting out in the sun, vanilla-laden cream all over your fingers. Don't worry, nobody's looking: everyone is too busy doing the same thing.

Tarte aux Fraises

serves 4 to 6

for the tart crust (makes extra dough, enough for one or two tartelettes)

250g (1 cup) all-purpose flour
85g (1/3 cup) confectioner's sugar
1 egg
1/2 vanilla pod, scraped
125g (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened and cut into chunks
25g (1 3/4 TB) almond powder
4g (1 TS) salt

Beat butter with a mixer or by hand until fluffly. Add confectioner's sugar, almond powder, salt, vanilla "caviar", egg, and flour, one at a time and mixing well after each addition.

Dough should be pretty sticky but you should still be able to handle it. Roll it into a ball, flatten a little with the palm of your hand, and refrigerate for at least a few hours: overnight is fine. You can also freeze the dough.

When ready to use, preheat oven to 180°C/ 350°F.

Flatten the dough using a rolling pin until it is 3mm thick. Place in a buttered 22cm tart pan (that would be 8.66 inches precisely! 8 or 9-inch is fine). Cover the pan with parchment paper and pie weights. Bake crust for 20 minutes or until golden. Remove parchment paper and weights, and bake for another 10 minutes.

Set tart crust on a wire rack to cool.


for the pastry cream

15g (1 TB) cornstarch
40g (3 scant TB) granulated sugar
18cl (3/4 cups) whole milk
2 egg yolks
18g unsalted butter (1 1/4 TB), room temperature
1 vanilla pod, scraped (or use what you have left from the crust recipe)

Bring milk and vanilla to a boil in a medium saucepan, and remove from heat. Add cornstarch and half of the sugar.

In a small bowl, beat yolks and remaining sugar until lightened in color, about 3 minutes. Add a little of the milk beat to combine.

Place egg mixture in saucepan; beat regularly on medium-high heat. Bring to a boil and remove from heat.

Keep beating until pastry cream achieves a thick but silky consistency. When the cream reaches 50°C / 120°F , add butter and keep beating until incorporated.

Let cool and spread onto cooled tart crust.

for the topping

500g (1 lb) strawberries, sliced
1 TB strawberry or currant jam
1 (tiny) pinch black pepper

Place sliced strawberries on top of the pastry cream, following the edges of the tart crust to make a circular design. Top with a pinch of black pepper.

Heat jam until liquid, and brush onto tart.

Refrigerate or keep in a cool place until serving. Tart should be served the day it is made, otherwise it might get soggy and the pastry cream won't be as good.

Satisfying Soups: Lentil and Caramelized Onion

Sometimes, between all those cookies and muffins, you have to take a break.

Taking my hands off anything sweet is pretty difficult in my case. Actually, if I had no willpower, I would probably be eating sweets all day long, with one-hour breaks to have something salty. Because, you know, eating only sweet things ends up making you feel weird to your stomach--eating a little salty something is the only way to put things back into place before going back for a few hours of cake. Unfortunately (well, fortunately for my health and longevity) I can't stuff my face all day long, and I actually do appreciate eating savory dishes. 

My real problem is that I often go into fads, and fix the same thing over and over again, especially when I'm cooking for one--a fancy way of saying that I make something to go along with my obsessive TV show-watching. Take brussels sprouts, for example: after discovering I really enjoyed them, especially with some brown sugar, pecans and tofu, I made the dish for four days straight. And burrito bowls? Make that two weeks. 

The past few weeks have been all about soup. I don't have the kind of blender that enjoys blending vegetables in soup, apparently (that is exactly how my blender fell into the cold hands of Death), so I've been pretty reluctant to make any winter soups. Pumpkin soup, count me out! Oh well. When my eyes fell on a recipe for lentil soup in a recent issue of Martha Stewart Everyday Food, however, my mind lit up like it does when I look at a chocolate layer cake--and that's saying a lot. Inspired by the recipe, I realized I had everything I needed, and made soup.

And made it again, and again. And again? Let's just say I'm fully embracing the fact that Spring nights in Paris are still pretty cool, temperature-wise. You could also say that I'm a little weird for enjoying the same thing for days on end, but I wouldn't do that if I were you. You never know what soup might catch your fancy next.

Caramelized Onion and Lentil Soup

adapted from Martha Stewart

serves 4

1 large onion, thinly sliced
2 TB olive oil
1 1/2 to 2 cups cooked green lentils (canned can work as well!)
5 cups chicken broth
1/4 c. crème fraîche (or sour cream), for serving
1/4 c. fresh chervil, or any other fresh herb
2 dried bay leaves
salt and pepper

Heat olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add onion and cook, stirring frequently, until edges start to brown and onion is very soft. Stirring often helps ensure the onion won't burn.

Add chicken broth, lentils, and bay leaves, raising heat to medium-high. Bring to a boil and reduce heat. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes, crushing lentils along sides of the pan to thicken soup. Season with salt and pepper, tasting to adjust seasoning.

Ladle soup into plates; garnish with fresh herbs and a tablespoon of cream. Serve immediately.

Note: If you're starting out with dried lentils, you can proceed like this: Place 1 and 1/2 cups dried lentils in a saucepan, cover with water (it should come up about a half inch higher than the lentils), add a little salt and some dried bay leaves. Bring to a boil, then cover and reduce heat. Let everything simmer until lentils are soft but not mushy, which takes around 20 minutes. Drain and set aside.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies : A Classic

Oh, poor oatmeal cookie. You never were my favorite...until now.

Whenever I had the choice, I always picked the chocolate chip cookie. Silky and smooth, with just enough semisweet chocolate to make you swoon...none of that thick "oatiness" (yes, I just made that ridiculous word up). And raisins? Who needs raisins when you can have chocolate? Seriously. My sister always went for oatmeal raisin, and I never really understood why. I'm not a huge fan of oatmeal, and oats in general weren't really my thing.

That is, until I discovered, oatmeal scotchies a while ago. And as they say, "Once you go oat, you can't leave the boat". Or something along those lines. 

I also have to factor in the fact that I had the hugest, most amazing cookie ever when I lived in New York at a café called Grey Dog--eating one cookie would probably make you full for at least a good half of the day. But it's one of those treats where you can't stop even though you know you've gone way past what your stomach can tolerate. I started to see where my sister was coming from, choosing to have the oatmeal raisin cookie. However, I'd never taken it a step further and made them myself. If you can have butterscotch chips instead of raisins, why bother?

I had a suitcase full of such excuses, but a weekend trip out to Normandy made me change my mind. Wanting to bake a batch of cookies to bring along for the car ride, I settled on oatmeal cookies, thinking they would be sturdier than chewy chocolate chip cookies. The next question that came up was which extra something I should add. Chocolate chips? Butterscotch chips? The tradition seeker in me came right out and voted for raisins. Raisins it was, and with my trusty ATK cookbook in hand (or under my arm, seeing how big it is), I was off to the land of raisins in cookies.

Will I ever look back? No way. I'm a chocolate chip cookie kind of girl, but oatmeal raisin is right up there alongside it. I guess every girl wants to end up like her older sister.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

adapted from the America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book

makes about 24 large cookies

1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour
1/2 TS baking powder
1/2 TS salt
1/4 TS ground nutmeg
1 TS cinnamon (not in the original recipe)
16 TB (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 c. packed light brown sugar
1 c. granulated sugar
2 large eggs
3 c. old-fashioned rolled oats
1 1/2 c. raisins (I plumped them a little first by steeping them in hot water)

Preheat oven to 325°F / 160°C. Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper.

Whisk the flour, baking powder, salt, nutmeg, and cinnamon together in a medium bowl.

In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugars together with an electric mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy, 3 to 6 minutes (I did this by hand). Beat in the eggs, one at a time, until combined, about 30 seconds.

Reduce mixer speed to low and slowly add flour mixture until combined, about 30 seconds. Mix in the oats and raisins until just incorporated.

Working with about 3 TB of dough at a time, roll the dough into balls and lay them on the prepared baking sheets, spaced about 2 inches apart. Flatten to a 3/4-inch thickness using your palm.

Bake cookies until edges are set and beginning to brown but centers are still soft and puffy, 22 to 25 minutes, switching and rotating the baking sheets halfway through baking.

Let the cookies cool on the baking sheets for 10 minutes, then serve warm or transfer to a wire rack and let cool completely.