Robert Reynolds Chefs Studio

HOLIDAY COOKING CLASSES

The holidays approach this year with the prospect of a new outlook that demands new thinking, so it might make sense to focus on the table at the center of our lives, where we gather to save the best part of the day for ourselves, to share, talk, and think about bounty and harvest.

To that end, I’m proposing 2 hands-on, and 2 demonstration classes to help you bring new ideas to the holiday tables, or to re-visit traditional ones inspired by new insights, abilities, skills, techniques, methods, and stories.

DEMONSTRATION CLASSES

are scheduled November 17 & 24

In each session Four recipes will be prepared

first course, gravy, vegetable dishes, and gratin,

a simple supper also offered

The cost per evening will be: $30.

6.30 @ Chef Studio // rsvp by email

HANDS-ON CLASSES

will be held November 18 & 25

Same format, four recipes will be prepared

first courses, gravy, vegetable dishes & a gratin,

a simple supper also offered.

The cost per evening will be $45

A NOTE FROM PROVENCE

I received this note from a friend in Provence to whom I’d been sending emails that were flying around the internet, to give her a little picture of how things were going during the campaign. She wrote me:

Red or blue, red and blue, these are the United States.

And seen from here, we love you. A big “hooray” from the south of France to absolutely all the Americans.

A country is a complete thing, and here we are crushed by taxes, old and new,that are used for sponging up past accountings, or for the slow and costly redoing of laws poorly thought in the first place and which have proven catastrophic with the passage of time by things never conceived of when theywere ratified.

In such a short lapse of human time, countries seem like such enormous machines ungovernable in the long term by forces like globalization which now gallop andtake us along as fast as they can.

So, let’s do everything.

I was happy to see the finesse and the supreme intelligence with which ‘Le Barrack’ presented himself in the name of all Americans.

The beautiful Americans who give a moral uplift to those who live in the big,the far, and the inaccessible world – i.e. the whole world.

It’s such a breath of hope and I only want to offer a big hug to all whoexperienced this unimagined moment from the inside.

Take full advantage of it. From here, I drink a good glass to the health of your and yours. Tenderly,

FRIDAY AND SUNDAY IN NOVEMBER

TWO TABLES AT THE STUDIO

The intimate dinners at the Chef Studio will continue through November. Friday nights are like a reward at the end of the work week; whereas Sunday supper frames a perfect, cozy week-end filled with comforting aromas before we re-begin.

The studio is small, with just two tables which accommodate 6 to 8 each. Sometimes when the light is right, and I’m facing the 17-foot high walls, I can fool myself into thinking I’m in an old chateau in France. It doesn’t last of course, because the powder blue stove on the other side of the room, framed by a wall of crisp white tile, illuminates a more alluring symbol of excellent food and company & the pleasures of the table.

To join us for 4 courses @ $38 - Reserve by email

Friday November 14th & Sunday November 16th MENU LYONNAIS

Oeuf en meurette, poached egg in red wine sauce

Breast of chicken in cream sauce garnished with sauteed spinach

Caramelized apples in brioche crust

Time: 6.30 PM – Cost: $38

November 21 GUEST CHEF CHRIS ISRAEL

will prepare a special Moroccan dinner

Sunday November 23rd MENU PROVENCAL

with Lamb and Panisses (chickpea fries)

November 28 & 30 Friday & Sunday

Beef in an elegant style of Bordeaux

Dinners and holiday classes will continue into December.

Remember, classes make good gifts because they keep giving back.

New schedule of day and evening classes resumes in January 2009.

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  I don’t know how or why particular tastes morph into food memories, but we do return to specific pleasures. What students call “Pork bread” has become like that. I wonder if the desire to revisit certain tastes is triggered by the drinking water, or if it lies dormant somewhere in a photographic memory, so that when I see a recipe on a page in my mind, I let myself know “I need to have that again.”

We have prepared milk rolls studded with pork in classes over the past month or so. After the students discovered them for the first time, I watched this simple food embedding itself in our memories in an effort to guarantee its own future. Modest dishes sneak up on us and most recently, when one student tasted the bacony buns, he just emitted “Pork bread” almost involuntarily. So now, of course, that is what we called them.

For me the modesty of such a dish is also a part of its strength. When I have a magnificent dinner at a three star restaurant in France, I can recall the details of it years later. It’s a category of experience that my friend Marietta might describe by saying, “I not only remember what I ate, but what I was wearing.” But I don’t long for those three star dishes in the same way that I long for modest tastes of the Pettis pains, aka Pork bread. The hospitality of that three star dinner is joined by the remembrance of tastes and flavors, but there is also inaccessible distance that separates the two experiences. I know on which side my bread is buttered.

The Petits pains with bacon and walnuts weren’t at all fussy to prepare. When we opened the oven door we discovered that they have great ‘gueule,’ or what Bogart might have spoken of as kisser, meaning looks. I think that may be how they snuck up on us. We made them small enough to fit in your hand, like a Parker House roll. However the egg glaze they were given provided an extra shiny and dark appeal. These are not the rolls of the fine pastry shop, but more the style you’d find in the bread bakers shops on side streets of small towns in France.

We started the bread dough the normal way, by adding flour to a utility bowl. My gestures are automatic, pushing the flour with a wooden spatula to create a well on one side of the mound instead of the middle. What can I say; I’m left handed. I used warm milk, instead of water to start the action of the yeast, encouraging it with some honey. The milk/yeast is poured into the well of flour, and a little flour gathered to it to ‘feed’ the yeast. I toss the salt needed for the batch to the other side of the bowl, away from the proofing yeast. I leave it to proof for 20 or so minutes until the yeast becomes bubbly.

While that goes on, I cut pancetta into what the French call ‘lardons,’ a word boys have fun massacring. The roll of pancetta is cut in a slice as wide as my finger, then cut again in smaller segments also as wide as my finger, about ½-inch by ½-inch. These are sautéed slowly in a skillet, without the addition of any fat. The bacon renders and gradually develops even and golden color. My technique calls for crisping the lardons on the outside while retaining a creamy texture inside. When I have it where I want, I remove the pieces from the pan and chop them into bite-sized bits. You can save the fat, adding it to the bread dough (or not), to give additional flavor and softer texture. Mostly however, I skip this gesture.

While the lardoons sauté slowly, I take a handful of excellent walnuts, and warm them in a small skillet. When they begin to give off an aroma of oil, it indicates that the flavor of the nuts is on the surface. I chop them in small pieces as I did with the bacon. Now all the elements are ready.

The yeast should have proofed by this time, so it’s time to add about a half cup of cold water to the proofed paste, and to start pulling in flour until I have gathered the dough into a ball. I don’t attempt to pull in all the flour because I would only end up with a shredded mess. Instead I build a ball of dough until it resembles the finished shape I want the dough to take. While adding more water, and pulling in more flour as needed, I never lose sight of the ball of dough.

 I dump the dough on the counter, and scatter a handful of reserved flour beside it. The bacon and walnuts are added to the dough that is kneaded one hundred times. As the dough becomes sticky, it’s dusted with flour and kneading continues, repeating that action until I reach one hundred turns. At the end, the dough has evolved to a soft smoothness like a baby’s cheek and no longer sticks to my hands.

After adding a light coating of flavorless oil to a utility bowl, the ball of dough gets coated on the bottom side with oil. A quick flip of the dough ensures an even coating that helps prevent the dough from drying out when covered with a towel and set it to rest in a place sufficiently warm to double in bulk in about half an hour.

The oven is set to 425oF when the dough is removed to the counter. It is cut it in half first, then shaped into a log, and each half cut once more into six pieces. These in turn are shaped slightly larger than a golf ball, arranged on an oiled sheet pan and left to rise another 15 to 20 minutes. Just before they go into the oven, they are carefully brushed with an egg wash that will give them their final burnish of color and shine.

It’s hard not to eat Pork bread as soon as it comes out of the oven. I usually do because you have to test them before you serve them. You also might want to rehearse your lines so you have a delivery equal to the beauty of these little pork rolls. We’ll serve them this weekend at the table in the Studio. Come see for yourself. It’s a new era and you might as well get some inspiration for how good it’s going to be.

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I read recently that a food writer didn’t like eggplant because it made their tongue sting. People often have a similar response to eggplant but I love it for it’s sweet and creamy qualities. I’ve had my share of eggplant improperly prepared, and wondered where the food writer had been.

When I see eggplant on a menu in a Chinese or Thai restaurant, I order it without hesitation.  Eggplant is also a delicious staple of Near Eastern cooking. I’ve had it prepared in Indian kitchens where it was simply roasted until it collapsed. The flesh, once scraped from the skin, was flavored with yogurt, garlic and a bit of heat. I may eat and cry, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. My experience has been that some cultures know what eggplant is supposed to be, and they cook accordingly.

I’m going to order eggplant when I see it in an Italian restaurant for the same reasons.  A dish like Eggplant Parmesan works in great part because the preparation calls for salting the eggplant slices first to draw out bitter juices. Next it’s fried. Eggplant takes to being fried because as an Italian friend of mine likes to observe, “Anything that tastes good, tastes better fried.” Afterwards the eggplant might be layered with cheese, ragu, béchamel, or some variation thereof, topped with sauce and cooked more by baking. When it’s served to you piping hot from the gratin dish, it doesn’t bite but rather is characterized by a very satisfying creaminess and sweetness.

When I worked with Josephine Araldo on her cookbook “From A Breton Garden,” she had 60-plus years of experience cooking professionally. The recipes and materials she handed to me contained dishes she’d learned from her Grandmother some of which date from the mid 1800’s. She also had dishes she’d learned when training at the Cordon Bleu where she graduated around 1920. She had a view of things that spanned a century. I loved that if I picked up the phone to talk with her, I could have the benefit of that hundred and fifty years in time. I vowed early on that if I thought about her, I’d call.

Some of Josephine’s recipes were like the one I just described. A vegetable would be treated to three different cooking processes. I once asked her why that was. I mean, I lived in California, America, where under-done was almost P.C., the order of the day. She said, “Robeirt, you need to understand that vegetables are like meat – you can cook them to the bone.” I realized immediately that meat cooked to the bone is a magnificent thing unto itself. I learned that vegetables cooked to the bone were decidedly more flavorful than those quickly sautéed, (the exception being how perfectly the Chinese kitchen quick sautes).

Salting is a cooking technique and with a vegetable like eggplant it helps draw water and to soften fiber. We often rely on both those factors help us decide whether a vegetable is cooked. Is there enough loss of water?  Is the fiber soft? When we answer those questions to our satisfaction, then we’re in agreement (if only with ourselves) that the thing is cooked. When under-done, with the fiber not sufficiently broken down, and sugars not sufficiently developed, you get acidity that bites your tongue. Not our specialty.

Frying lends color to the vegetable, and that always equates with flavor. Browning is caramelizing, a concentration of the flavor of the browned element. Browned food is almost uniformly good. The heat required to get a vegetable brown also usually helps to break down fiber even further. In the case of eggplant, when the fiber breaks down, the starches have cooked sufficiently to convert to sugars. At that point you get sweet eggplant taste. The accompanying soft fiber gives the effect of creaminess. Those tastes of cream and sugar are eggplant’s essential nature. Welcome to the new eggplant.

EGGPLANT FRIES

1 or 2 medium sized eggplants, about ½ pound each

Sea salt

All purpose flour for dusting the fries

Good frying oil, Safflower, peanut, grape seed (not olive)

Peel the skins; remove the stems. Slice the eggplant lengthwise in finger-thick (1/2 inch) slices. Lay them on a board and salt them lightly and uniformly on both sides. Allow them to sit for until water starts to bead on the surface (about 5 to 7 minutes). Pat them dry with paper towels.

While the slices draw water, heat half an inch of oil in a 9-inch straight-sided skillet.

Have some things ready before you start to fry.

First, a sifter large enough to hold enough fries to fill the skillet in a single layer without crowding.

Second, have a large bowl with a cup of so of flour, where you will toss the fries to coat them just prior to frying. Don’t coat them with flour and let them lie around, they will just get soggy, and not give you a good crisp result.

Third have skimmer ready to remove the finished fries.

Finally, have a sheet pan, lined with paper towels, ready for the cooked fries, and to absorb any excess oil once the fries are done.

Pat the slices dry with paper towels once more. Then cut them into French fry shapes 1/2-inch thick

Once the oil is hot, take a handful or two of fries; toss them into the bowl with flour to coat uniformly. Remove them to the sifter; shake to rid them of excess flour. (Sometimes I do this step twice.)

Immediately put the eggplant in the hot oil. Carefully using tongs, arrange them so they don’t clump, then leave them alone until they brown evenly, about 2 or 3 minutes. Remove them to drain on the paper towels and season with salt. Keep them warm in the oven while you repeat the same frying procedure with the next batch. Serve the fries on their own, or as the accompaniment to almost any main course meat or fowl.

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The Paley’s Place Cookbook: Recipes and Stories from the Pacific Northwest, written in collaboration with Robert Reynolds, celebrates Kimberly and Vitaly Paley’s deeply personal approach to food and wine. Vitaly has adapted his recipes for the home cook.  Kimberly’s thoughtful wine pairings identify and describe well-matched styles and makers from the Pacific Northwest and France.

An emphasis on the building blocks of wonderful food—great ingredients and great technique—allow the home cook to create brilliant dishes from the ground up.

The Paley’s Place experience is shaped by Vitaly’s cherished relationships with local foragers, growers, fishermen, and artisan producers and the ingredients they bring to the restaurant’s door each day—mushrooms, salmon, potatoes, lamb, truffles, chestnuts. Throughout The Paley’s Place Cookbook, Vitaly and Kimberly weave enchanting stories about many of these skilled food producers who make the Pacific Northwest a culinary treasure trove.

Contact Robert to obtain your signed copy.

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Of all the seasonal and local Oregon foods we prepared at the Studio in Portland this week, the thing that most caught my attention was a pear tart. It completed a menu that began with little pancakes made from a pumpkin I found at the Farmer’s market, and topped with ham and Gruyere cheese. That course was followed by a tender, local chicken braised in green grape juice, finished with walnut butter, a note of mustard, and accompanied by a puree of Gene Thiel’s Butterball potatoes, yellow and rich enough to not need butter. The pear tart took its place last and was so good that some people (myself included) couldn’t resist seconds.

 I still have my old notebooks from when I studied in the French Alps. I recently revisited a recipe for a pear tart. The old book is cloth bound and was purchased in a gift shop in a downtown San Francisco office building. It was offered to me as a going away present by co-workers. I worked at a law firm for a year to earn the tuition needed to attend cooking school. That mission gave me a special status, because none of my co-workers heard of anyone going to France to study food. I lived out their fantasies. I never used the book to take notes, but once the course was over, I transcribed my notes in a nice hand to the cream colored, lined pages. This modest going away present still permits me to recall the warmth and generosity of the person who offered it.

I was in the Alps in the Fall, so when local pears appeared, Madeleine Kamman explained how to prepare them in red wine before encasing them in pastry to produce a tart like nothing we’d ever imagined. The red wine penetrates the pears lending them the visual quality of a ruby. The pears are perfumed with the slightest hint of spice. The simple crust guaranteed the taste of excellent butter. Because its top was brushed with water and dusted with a scattering of sugar before it went into the oven, it finished with an additional fine crust like frost. It’s re-discovery is loaded with memory.

The Saturday Farmer’s market at Portland State has to be one of the most beautiful in the country. I found small, under-ripe Bosc pears. Back in the kitchen studio I showed students how to halve them, scoop out the seeds with a melon baller, then carefully trim each pear to have about four facets. The faceted effect supports my illusion that the pears can transform into jewels.

I had a student toss a piece of butter into a skillet, and when it melted, arranged the pear halves in a single layer. They cooked for a few minutes until the pears started to color, and the butter ran the risk of browning. I didn’t want the butter to burn, so I showed them how to add about 1/3 to ½ cup of sugar, stirring to coat the pears, and continue cooking. I pointed out how to turn the pears to help them glaze evenly and continue to watch the butter and the sugar. After they leached juice, the pears started to color. I let them know when to add a cup or so or red wine. As they continue the cooking, the pears absorbed the winey juices that transform into a glaze. The students preparing the tart repeated adding red wine as needed until the fruit was easily pierced with a knife. I stood at the stove beside the student reducing the glaze, and had them taste so that they understood that the deeper the pear cooked, the more flavor it had. I indicated as much reduction as I dared before removing the finished pears to a plate.

A tart pan was ready, lined with dough. The pears were arranged nicely. I pointed out how to use a spatula so that not a drop of glaze was lost to the ungrateful skillet. After brushing water on the underside of the top disc of pastry, it was set in place carefully, and crimped lovingly, the way a Grandma might have. I had them pierce the top decoratively with the tip of a knife to release steam then brush the surface with cold water. The moisture helps the layer of sugar adhere to the top crust. The tart baked at 400oF for about an hour.

When the oven door was opened it revealed a finished crust that melted to the shape of each pear. It adhered to them like a nicely tailored piece of clothing, suggesting the perfection of form it contained. The tart, needing no further adornment, was served forth. (See following recipe)

FRIDAY NIGHTS AT THE STUDIO

The next session on the 24^th is booked. There are openings for Friday the 31^st.

THROUGH NOVEMBER - Proposed weekly offerings:

 November 7 - Alsatian menu featuring Beef with Meunster gnocchi

 November 14^th - Menu from Lyon, beginning with Poached egg in red wine sauce

 November 21^st -  Provencal menu with a Leg of lamb, tomato sauce & chickpea ‘fries’

 November 28 - Food in the style of Bordeaux beginning with a flaky blue cheese tart.

 Each menu will be paired with wines of the region, and the cost of the menu is $38.

 DECEMBER

I am reserving dates for dinners, classes, and small events at the Studio in December. If you’re thinking of bringing together a small group together, at the Studio, for your business or at your home, phone for ideas and availability.

JANUARY

The next 8-week Apprenticeship session in Portland

will begin January 5^th, 2009. Evening classes, which begin a week later, will run once a week for six sessions. The classes offer a balance of structure and impromptu cooking that guarantee fun while learning.

Some people attending the present cooking sessions have been offered the classes as a gift. When you giveclasses to someone, often you get the benefit of what they learn. It’s one gift that keeps giving.

TART OF PEARS POACHED IN RED WINE

FOR THE PASTRY:

2 cups flour

pinch of salt

6 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 teaspoon cider vinegar

1/2 cup ice cold water

Put flour in food processor along with salt and pulse half a dozen times to loosen the flour. Add the butter, cut into tablespoon-sized pieces and pulse a dozen times until the butter is pea-sized. Turn the machine on and add cold water, a tablespoon at a time, in succession, until the dough comes together, (about 3 to 4 tablespoons). Gather the dough into a ball. Cut two thirds of the dough and roll it to fit a buttered 9-inch tart pan with a removable bottom.  Set the dough in the pan, trimming the dough to leave a 1/2-inch overlap.  Refrigerate the dough. Roll the remaining third of the dough to the exact dimension of the tart pan. Refrigerate. 

FOR THE FILLING:

8 large Bosc pears

2 tablespoons butter

½ cup sugar

pinch of salt

1-1/2 cups dry red wine, such as Oreogn Pinot Noir or Gamay

Pinch of quatre epices, or cinnamon, clove, cardaman, nutmeg

Sugar for dusting the top crust

Cut pears in half, core, and peel with four facets. Heat butter in sauté pan, and cook until the pears start to brown. Add sugar, salt, and the wine mixed in successive small additions until the pears are well coated with a nice sugar glaze. Add the spices.

Fill the tart shell with pears, and flip the pastry back. Moisten the edge of the second piece of pastry and center it well over the dish. Crimp the pastry to seal the fruit. Cut small openings for steam vents. Brush a fine layer of water and sprinkle with fine sugar. Bake in a preheated 425oF oven 50 to 60 minutes.

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With the change of season we begin to anticipate re-experiencing the flavors of autumn.  It can be a dilemma to have to choose between the last of the peaches (in a season that yielded perfect stone fruit) and the first of the apples. When you taste those new foods again for the first time of the season, you also rediscover the memories associated with them. My first taste of pumpkin this season was not as a soup, instead it came in the form of matafan, a French pancake that is more a cousin to an American pancake than a crepe. One important difference however is that the French version is savory.

With the first aromatic bite, I recalled Josephine Araldo saying, “the cooking of the countryside is always the best.” There is something incomparable about the flavors of foods prepared closest to the source. Country people have a resourcefulness shaped by the fact that can’t rely on having everything all the time in the way the cooking of city food can. We all have memories from childhood about the first real taste of something from the source, a local wild berry; milk or cream from a cow; an apple from the tree you lean against as you bite into it; a local potato; an herb from the garden; or a perfect tomato made by the collaboration between the month of August and God. Those foods impress us because they taste like where they are from.  However, we are fortunate enough in Oregon to have that experience of tasting food at the source in spades.

I was taught to make these little wonders by Madeleine Kamman where they originate in the French Alps. Over the years I have added my own touches. I always enjoy watching people’s response to them. They take one when offered, look at it and wonder. Since we don’t usually eat pancakes with our fingers, it doesn’t look like anything they’ve ever eaten (perhaps a blini). A defining moment is created. There are those who taste first, and try to discover what they are eating; others who need to know the name of the thing before it crosses their lips. To the “What is this?” group I always say, “Taste; then see if you can tell me. “

The small sugar pumpkins that weigh a couple of pounds yield a perfect flavor. A batch of pumpkin matafan calls for about a cup of pureed vegetable, about one quarter of the pumpkin. Yesterday at the Hillsdale market, I couldn’t resist a small blue Japanese pumpkin. Whichever one you choose, simply roast it in the oven at moderate temperature until it collapses. When it’s cool, quarter it, remove the seeds and outer skin. (Divide the remaining quarters and store them for later use. You’ll probably revisit the taste of these matafan.) I puree the amount of pumpkin I need with the milk that’s called for in the recipe. And finally when I’m ready to assemble the dish, I simply put flour in a work bowl, add salt, then egg yolks. I warm the pumpkin liquid, and stir it into the flour/egg base to bring the batter together. The method doesn’t call for anything exotic.

The trick of adding warm milk is different. Usually we make pancakes with cold milk, and as with anything calling for the addition of cold milk to flour, it requires resting time so that the flour can absorb the cold liquid. The matafan, made with warmed milk, absorbs the flour at once. A second technique calls for separating the eggs, incorporating the yolks into the base, then folding in whipped whites at the end. The addition of egg whites negates the need for chemical leavening such as baking powder. The air mass trapped in the whipped whites lifts the little pancake toward the heavenly bodies.

When I worked with Vitaly Paley on his about-to-be-released PALEY’S PLACE COOKBOOK, he once remarked that often the difference between a dish that is okay and one that is really good, is the addition of salt. So, don’t be stingy, don’t be afraid, and be judicious – add and taste. The presence of the correct amount of salt will bring the pumpkin to the fore in a way that makes its flavor feel like a discovery.

There would be nothing to prevent you from making these pancakes speak American English by topping them with maple syrup. Where they originate, they are served with a slice of country ham, and topped with béchamel, perfumed with a bit of nutmeg, and the addition of Gruyere, a cheese from the same area.

I plan to serve them as an appetizer next Friday night at the Studio. There are a few seats left, and if you’d like, I’ll demonstrate their preparation . We’re serving four courses for $38, discuss how they pair with wine. The one seating is at 6.30.  Email to reserve a place. There will be a series of Friday dinners at the studio throughout October and November.

MATAFAN AU COURGE

2/3 cup roasted pumpkin, pureed

2/3 cup buttermilk

 2/3 cup all purpose flour

½ teaspoon salt

6 egg yolks (reserve whites)

4 egg whites, whipped to soft peak

Unsalted butter

Garnish:

A slice of ham per pancake

1-1/2 cups béchamel (see below)

In a food processor, puree the pumpkin, adding the cold milk, until homogenous. Remove the mixture to a small saucepan, and warm gently.

Put the flour in a work bowl, and make a well. Add the salt, then the yolks. Mix the yolks to incorporate, adding the warmed milk until the batter is homogenous. Fold in half the beaten whites, then repeat folding in the remaining whites.

Heat 1 tablespoon of butter in a 10-inch skillet. I pour the batter into a metal ring used for preparing poached eggs. If you don’t have one, it doesn’t matter. The ring allows the batter to take on a perfect roundness, and allows the cake to climb slightly.

Pour half a ladle of batter (about 2 to 3 ounces) per pancake. Let them hat through, forming bubbles on top, and coloring golden on the bottom, before turning them to cook on the second side. Remove to a plate and keep warm. Wipe the pan with a paper towel, renew the butter and prepare the remaining matefin until the batter is used up.

 To prepare Bechamel

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

3-1/2 tablespoons all purpose flour

Pinch of salt

Nutmeg

¼ to ½ cup grated Gruyere, Beaufort, or Emmenthal

Melt the butter in a small saucepan without allowing it to get too hot. Add the flour, stir to make a roux (paste). Season with salt, then add 1-1/2 cups warm whole milk, or half and half. Let the sauce cook slowly for 5 minutes until it has the consistency of heavy cream. Flavor it with nutmeg, and add cheese until it thickens to a consistency that appeals to you.

Top each matafan with a slice of some type of good domestic ham available at markets with specialty meat counters, or a ham like prosciutto cotto. Black Forest or boiled ham also work.

Finish with a spoonful of the cheese sauce. Pour a wine from the Savoie, an Apremont, Abymes, or Altesse. All are generally available through a variety of wine vendors in Portland. Otherwise try Cameron’s Giovanni.

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This week one of the students brought a large bag of wild mushrooms he’d collected while foraging with a mycological group in an area around Mount Hood. He arrived with a couple of varieties, all aromatic, pristine, firm, and not soggy. I suggested that we use some to make custards.

We set to work cleaning them, wiping rather than washing, to rid them of needles or woody debris they picked up from the forest floor. They didn’t show signs of being dirty or sandy so I didn’t think it was necessary to submerge them in water. That would only dilute their natural flavor. I wouldn’t have hesitated washing however if they showed any signs of needing it.

We discovered the stems to be fibrous, so we removed and discarded them. Some flavor could have been salvaged if we’d stewed them to flavor a broth but I didn’t. We had enough cleaned, picked mushroom heads to fill a 9-inch sauté pan, in a single layer. It was about 2 cups. We turned the heat to medium-high, sprinkled the mushrooms lightly with salt, and placed a lid on the pan. We waited for the salt to draw water, then turned the heat to low and continued to stew the mushrooms until they were tender.

We checked on the cooking every few minutes, and whenever we tasted one, and it was chewy, I told him, “Think of them like meat, and cook them through.” I kept advising him to put the lid back and continue cooking.  He commented that these particular mushrooms didn’t seem to offer much flavor when cooked at home.

As soon as the mushrooms started to show some sign of softening, I had him add about a cup of good, homemade chicken broth, and then cooked them dry without the lid. As the stock reduced the mushrooms started to give off some lovely nutty, woodsy aroma.  It automatically drew my nose into the skillet. I called the students over, had them smell. Then I tossed a sprinkle of salt, stirred quickly and had them smell again; the flavor was clear and distinctive.  “Now I understand,” he said, “why I didn’t get flavor from them when I cooked them previously, I didn’t cook them enough.”

I told him to prepare about 8 small custards, using 2-ounce ramekins. I reminded him that the formula for making the custards calls for using 3 eggs per cup of milk.  I suggested that he use half and half for the milk; that he liquefy half the mushrooms in the half and half; and use two whole eggs and two yolks. Once the mushrooms are liquefied in the half and half, then add the eggs, and pulse enough to homogenize. Taste, then season to bring the flavor up. “If you need more of the mixture to fill the 8 ramekins,” I instructed, “make another batch. And bake them at 325o until they are set. I will probably take half an hour.”

WILD MUSHROOM FLAN

1-cup wild mushrooms, picked, cleaned, coarsely chopped (about 1/4 pound)

Pinch of salt

1 tablespoon unsalted butter (additional butter for the ramekins)

1-cup chicken stock

2 cups half and half

4 whole eggs

4 egg yolks

Put the mushrooms in a 9-inch skillet; sprinkle about half a teaspoon over the surface. Heat the pan over medium flame, cover, turn the heat down and simmer for 3 to 5 minutes, until the mushrooms give up their water. Continue simmering until the mushrooms are soft and tender. Add the chicken broth and continue cooking until it is completely evaporated. Add the tablespoons of butter and continue cooking another minute or two until you begin to see some caramelization on the mushrooms.

Remove the mushrooms to a blender, add the half and half, and liquefy. Add the whole eggs and yolks, and liquefy another 30 seconds till homogenous. Add ¼ teaspoon of salt, pulse to mix. Verify the seasoning is where you like it. Divide the mixture among the ramekins. Bake at 325oF until set, about 30 minutes.

Remove from the oven and lot the ramekins stand in the water bath until ready to serve. Run a knife around the edge, invert onto a plate. Garnish with salad or sautéed, wilted greens.

NOTE: Where flavor lies: Somewhere between a fear of salt and over salting is where flavor is often found. My recommendation is to add salt and taste while you’re liquefying the mushrooms in half and half, and before you add the eggs. Add salt, liquefy, taste. Repeat until you see how salt brings out flavor, knowing that flavor is round, and fills the mouth. Absent flavor, the taste experience is flat. Seasoning at this point also removes the possibility of over salting, because the eggs have yet to be added. They will dilute over salting if it occurs.

Another flavor element I use is to employ only one complimentary thing. In this case, if I were to add an herb, given that we have mushrooms, I’d choose marjoram or oregano. When you add a complimentary flavoring you understand that it’s role is to flatter, and not dominate.  When you discover the right ration of mushroom to herb, you see clearly the role of the complimentary element.

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Because the egg is perfect in all ways, it is only left to us to ask, “What can you become?”

It’s a lovely Fall Monday morning illuminated by that special golden hue the sun lends this time of year. The dog is still in bed. The special parade of school bound children has passed my house.  My efforts to begin the week anew involve pushing Sarah Palin from my head. I have to leave her to solve the problem of how she will exit the stage and return to her family who needs her more than I do. I’ll organize a yard sale of ideas concerning the economic crisis, arranging items according to their historicity, or hystericity. Are we revisiting 1830, 1930, 1960?  I’ll toss speculations in a box marked “50 cent items” and see who takes what. In the space left behind, I have a vision of a perfection called the egg.

I see it clearly. Ovoid. Clean. Simple. Shell, white & yolk. When I cook it in its shell, I pierce the top with a push pin, an applied technique meant to release air and prevent the shell from cracking. A timer set for 4 minutes, during which time I toast my bread of choice to golden perfection. Sometimes I apply butter, sometimes I don’t. The egg in its shell is removed with a slotted spoon, run under cold water just long enough to allow me to handle the shell with my bare hands.  I crack the shell deftly, splitting it so that the yolk rests intact in one half. I spoon the other half first onto the toast, following that gesture with a similar clean movement to remove the half with the yolk. When I do it right, the yolk stay intact. Coarse salt and freshly ground pepper complete the scene. I’m reminded  that my friend Hsiao-Ching wrote about these eggs when she was Food Editor of the Seattle P-I.

Part of what makes simple things perfect is that they lend themselves effortlessly to other ideas. If, as I butter the bread, and before I nest the egg, I spread a small amount of blue cheese, I will have an entirely different beginning to the day. I have a friend in France who runs a Salon de the. She introduced me to the idea of soft boiled eggs, served in the shell, with fingers of buttered toast, lightly coated with Roquefort. It marked me forever.

If, instead of butter, I spoon a small amount of leftover tomato sauce, my day will take yet another direction, as I discovered after leaving home at 17. Once I found myself invited to an elegant table for breakfast. A friend of my host prepared a poached egg nested on leftover tomato sauce. She was Italian, from Providence and she taught me that the beauty of the egg is its adaptability.

If recipes direct us to make Moules Mariniere, the mussels of the fisherman’s wife, what prevents us from the realization that she also had a way of cooking the fisherman’s egg? When she took the mussels from the steaming liquid, she combined it with a little butter and flour to make a sauce which she chose to finish with a drop of cream. She did this as the egg poached, and the toast turned golden.  The finished egg, nested onto the toast, was sauced and garnished with mussels. The first taste always transports me instantly to the Atlantic coast of France.

If you ate bacon and eggs in a place surrounded by the production of vast amounts of red wine, like Burgundy, it might occur to you to combine them. If that red wine producing place doesn’t think eggs are breakfast fare, you’re free to be inspired by  lunch or dinner and your expectations might lead you to create eggs en meurette.

You would pan fry pieces of bacon, called lardons, until they give up their fat and start to brown. I prefer them crisp on the outside creamy inside. Remove them from the pan. Saute a tiny dice of onion, carrot and celery, with the addition of mushrooms, in the fat in the pan until the vegetables are soft and sweet. Add the red wine and reduce it slowly to the amount desired to produce sauce for the number of eggs being served. Some people poach the eggs in the red wine. I’m not considered a purist because I poach the egg separately. I can live with it.

Sometimes I add a little chicken broth to the wine reduction to lend a meaty balance. When the amount of sauce is near what I want, and the flavors are full of promise, I finish the wine sauce with a little fine butter. The egg goes into the bowl, followed by the red wine sauce, a scattering of chopped lardons and a flourish of salt and pepper. The toast sits in the middle of the table, to be taken or not. Attempt this at breakfast only when breakfast occurs after the clock strikes noon. 

FRIDAY NIGHT AT THE STUDIO …. I am planning a Friday night spirited series  – an end of the week call to the table. There is room for 16 people to gather for a meal informed by talent and dexterity.  Put together a small group, or reserve and come on your own. Service begins at 6, or 8.30 and involves appetizer with aperitif, and a 3-course menu at $38.

October 10 menu inspired by Eggs en meurette, and the food of Lyon is BOOKED

October 17 is built around a harvest menu featuring Chicken with green grape sauce

October 24 menu features a roast of Carlton pork with peppered fruit

October 31 menu ends on a note of roasted quince tarts

Email robeirt@comcast.net to reserve. It will happen only this Fall because I’m in the mood to be festive. 

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Josephine Araldo used to say, “but it takes a genius to know how to use leftovers.” What she meant was that the skill of cooking is based in one part on resourcefulness -knowing how to make use of ingredients - and secondly in applying good cooking skills. 

I offer two courses starting next week that give insights into the genius of cooking, and are designed to help you get food to the table.  There are a couple of seats still available in each (and you can imagine how I feel about that!)

In one course, called “Course by Course,” we learn to prepare a number of dishes in each of the categories of a menu - Starters, first courses, pastas, meat cooking, sauces, desserts. There are six sessions meant to help you think about food in a way that should serve you. Each offers methods and techniques to back you up. We’ll give you a glass of wine in case you start to forget that it’s fun.

Another course, entitled “How to get food to the table” will help get you to think on your feet.  You’re standing in front of the refrigerator, door open, with a look like a deer in the headlights. Or, you’re at the market, and you have the same expression. I designed this course to present simple ideas that extend out - learn one idea, method, technique, and we’ll help you figure out how to apply it to other dishes. You have one skill, I’ll show you that you have more.

When I had students in France I used to play a game with them. We’d return to the house from the market around 12.30 or 1 o’clock. We had to eat. As they unpacked the bags of things we’d purchased, I’d set some aside. I’d add leftovers, and tell them they had half an hour to put food on the table. It was a good exercise; it stretched their thinking and made them feel  self possessed, and resourceful.

Yesterday when preparing a salmon for a dinner for 20, I filleted the fish, and slipped the flesh from the skin. I scraped any flesh I missed, which amounted to about 1 cup. I build the following pasta dish from that meat, but you could as easily use any salmon trimmings, or leftover fish from last nights’ supper.

PASTA WITH MUSTARD CREAM, SALMON AND CAPERS

Dry fettucini for 4 to 6

1 cup heavy cream

1or 2 tablespoons crème fraiche

½ tablespoon Dijon mustard

2 tablespoons capers, rinsed

1/4 cup chopped herbs - parsley, chives, tarragon in any combination

½ to 1 cup leftover salmon (cooked or raw)

salt

Bring a pot of water to a boil, add salt to it until you can taste the salt, toss in the fettucini and cook according to the maker’s instructions.

While the pasta cooks, reduce the cream in a saucepan by ½ to 2/3^rd’s. Whisk in the crème fraiche. Season to taste with salt and keep on reserve.

While the cream reduces, chop the capers and herbs coarsely. Chop the salmon coarsely then mix it with the herbs, chopping a few additional times.

Drain the pasta and put it in a warm bowl. Add the mustard to the hot cream, along with the salmon and herbs. Mix everything well. The heat in the pan will cook the salmon. Use this as a sauce for the noodles. Drink an Alsatian white to accompany the dish.

Follow the pasta course with a salad. And, for dessert, a perfect peach, dropped into boiling water for 1 minute, then halved, peeled, and sliced. Scatter perfect raspberries over the peaches. Put a bowl of sugar on the table, and cream (if you’re inclined) and let each person take charge of their own pleasures. Don’t forget to finish that white wine.

For information on the evening courses, or daytime courses that can be taken 1 day to … as many as you would like, visit the website www.thechefstudio.com

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COOKING WORKSHOPS AT THE CHEF STUDIO

We help make good cooks,

and our schedule is flexible.

Here is an opportunity to join in a professional class without a big time commitment.

Drop in for 1 day, or for a week of classes created to train professionals. Focus on what it takes to cook well. Every day we examine menu design, explain methods and techniques that elevate your cooking skills, and stretch your thinking. Classes are small-scale, hands on, and experience and expertise are at your side.

We look at French and Italian cooking, regional to modern. We discuss cheese and wine as well. The sessions are dense with talk and info, and accomplish what good learning should - they leave you feeling renewed.

Call Robert Reynolds for specific menus, and teaching objectives @ 503 233 1934

Each session costs $200, includes instruction and lunch paired with wines.

For info evening, part-time, and future schedules -

Check CLASSES on the new website  www.thechefstudio.com

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THE PURE TASTE OF PEACH TART  by Robert Reynolds

Over the years I got to live in Provence a number of times. I brought students there for training, and my friend Michel, who owned restaurants there, would take them under his wing. He was smart, funny, irreverent, and very talented. He loved the American students, and was generous to them. Whenever I announced my intention to come back to France, Michel would simply say, “Your room is ready.”

Michel grew up in Lyon. He knew every corner of the city. After one time when he spent 6 weeks working with me at my restaurant in San Francisco, he was happy to return to his city. Hardly off the train, he phoned me to say he anticipated dinner, telling me he planned to eat a Poulet de Bresse, drink an excellent Beaujolais, and finish with a San Marcellin. I can hear the expectation in his voice, such was his pleasure. His menu stays in my memory, and when I go to Lyon, they are what I eat.

While prowling the neighborhoods in Lyon, Michel found a small shop run my two women. It had a plain décor, furnished only with the foods the women made and displayed behind old-fashioned glass counters and on shelves. It was modest and inviting. The women made the simplest apple tarts composed of a flat crust, and a thin layer of apples glazed with jam.

Those tarts were so good that he would say to me, “Let’s drive to Lyon and visit those ladies who make the apple tarts.” It took an hour and a half to make these impromptu trips. Michel would buy several tarts to bring back to the restaurant, or to his home. He would gather staff, family, or friends to eat. The goal was always to determine what made these simple tarts so good. In the end, we always drew the same conclusion: good ingredients, good flour, butter and salt. Good apples, Good jam for the glaze.

The tarts, made with a single layer of the thinnest slices of apples, always yielded an essential flavor that seemed disproportionate to the amount used. How could so little yield so much? The tarts seemed to affirm the French dictum that “Things taste best when they taste like what they are.”

This summer has been good for stone fruit. Magnificently perfumed apricots came and went in a flash. Peaches are having a longer run, but we know time is fleeting. Yesterday I prepared a simple pastry with flour, butter, salt, a bit of vinegar, and water from Bull Run. I rolled the dough, lined a pan with it, and froze it while the oven warmed.

I chose firm fleshed peaches that gave the slightest hint of yielding. They were not fully ripe. I halved them, peeled the skin, and cut ten slices from each half.

When the oven was hot, I scattered sugar onto the crust and baked the shell until the sugar caramelized and the crust was nicely golden. While the crust baked, I melted a piece of butter in a skillet, added the fruit, dusted them with sugar, and cooked them for not more than two minutes. I wanted them to soften slightly, give up some juice so the crust would not be soggy. I wanted the slices to hold their shape.

I carefully fanned out a single layer of peaches onto the crust, (didn’t use a glaze as the peaches were so juicy) and baked it ten more minutes. It then sat on a rack in a place of honor until it was time for dessert. It was like a small bouquet of garden flowers sitting on a counter exuding unparalleled charm.

It was served without cream. I was tempted by ice cream, or crème anglaise, but I kept resisting. I listened to that voice in the back of my mind reminding me that “Things taste best when they taste like what they are.”

THIN PEACH PIE

1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour

pinch of salt

8 tablespoons unsalted butter, cold

1 teaspoon cider vinegar

3 to 4 tablespoons cold water

3 large peaches

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

1 or 2 tablespoons sugar

Put the flour and salt in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse to fluff. Add the butter, cut into half tablespoon-sized pieces, and pulse a dozen times until you obtain pea-sized pieces of butter. Add the cider vinegar to the cold water. Turn the processor on, and tip a tablespoon of water at a time into the flour. Pause a few seconds before adding the next volume of water. Stop adding water when the dough starts to gather. Turn the machine off, invert the dough onto the counter. Flatten into a cake, and refrigerate 15 to 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to 375oF.

Roll the dough into a disk large enough to fit into a 9-inch tart pan. Fit the dough into the pan, trimming any extra. Freeze for 10 minutes before baking. Bake 15 minutes until the sugar caramelizes, and the crust is uniformly golden. Remove from the oven.

Halve the peaches, trim the skin. Cut each half into ten slices and put them in a utility bowl. Add the butter to a skillet large enough to hold all the peach slices. Dust lightly with sugar, and cook for two minutes. Return the peaches to the bowl.

When cool enough to handle, arrange peach slices in a single layer on the crust. Put the tart back into the oven and bake for another ten minutes. Remove to a cooling rack to rest until ready to serve. Hold the cream, or not.

Look for the new September/October issue of NORTHWEST PALATE.

I share the cover with Vitaly and Kimberly Paley. They hired me as the writer for their new book, “PALEY’S PLACE COOKBOOK, Cooking in the Northwest,” which will be released mid-October. Read and find out why we are so jazzed.

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BECOMING COOKS by Robert Reynolds

You could see it happen. From one week to the next, the students began to hold themselves differently. They had more confidence, demonstrated more self possession. They stopped making certain kinds of mistakes; left behind notions that didn’t serve them; revealed they were more open. Their excitement to be in the kitchen never flagged.

For graduation, they invited 24 people to a sort of cocktail. They planned for days what they would do. It was not easy to comb through all the dishes they’d done over the previous two months. It took a couple of days to thin the list out. They realized they had to string their ideas together harmoniously, or the experience would just be a random collection of tastes. They’d taken on the notion of geography, season, and culture as a way to organize their thinking. It helped them sort things out. They’d learned a respect for ingredient.

The final 14 dishes they came up with were choreographed so the tasting experience for their guests would have movement, be captivating, and executed perfectly. As they fed their guests one thing, we set to work to prepare the next. Everyone gravitated toward the kitchen to observe, be closer, absorb the performance. One after another, without a single hitch, the students unveiled the successive taste tour they wanted to share. This was graduation, a high wire act performed without a net.

There wasn’t a single hitch. We served foie gras on brioche as if to say, “Now that we have your attention, we plan to take you for a ride!” They confectioned an egg in the shell, so that when you swirled the spoon, it made a mousse flavored with spice, herbs and Sherry. While the guests were wide eyed, the students turned to prepare the next dish of crepes filled with a spoonful of soufflé. It looked like a mini ice cream cone. A crisp fish, topped with deconstructed ketchup, was served with a tiny dice of apple, sweet pepper, celery, brought together with lemon rind, capers and herbs. It was breath taking.

All evening long, we drank Champagne as if to demonstrate a belief that Champagne goes with everything. In the end each student was handed a beautifully designed bleu, blanc, rouge, diploma. It’s meant to remind them of how far they came and what authority they’d assumed.

Their excitement was vibrant, their skill unsurpassed. Hats off!

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FIG ICE

by Robert Reynolds

Sometimes English fails me as a language for discussing food. Fig. Ice. Made of figs, but not ice cream. Not sorbet technically, either. It feels fat in the mouth, the way ice cream would, as if it contained eggs. Except it gives a cleaner taste, like a sorbet. It’s a delicious dilemma, flavored with citrus, and sometimes perfumed with herbs, and spot on for fig season.

My Fig ice is actually a by-product of another recipe for canning figs so that I can eat them in the middle of winter. I poach the figs with a little wine or excellent quality grape juice (not from concentrate) sweetened with a little sugar. I also add a piece of orange or lemon rind, and have been known on occasion to add a small stem of mint, thyme or rosemary from the garden.

Once poached, the figs are packed into glass jars, processed, and stored on the shelf until I’m inspired by the taste of August. I discovered that if I puree the figs and their liquid, then freeze them in an ice cream machine, the figs reveal a whole other dimension of pleasure. Serve them with a simple shortbread cookie.

FIG ICE

18 fresh figs, stems intact

½ cup sugar

1 cup of white wine, or good quality juice from grapes

Grated rind of half an orange, or lemon

Optional: small branch of mint, thyme or rosemary

Place the figs in a saucepan large enough to hold them in a single layer. Mix the sugar with the wine or grape juice, add the citrus, and pour into the pan. Add the herb. Bring the mixture to a boil on high heat, turn to a simmer, cover and poach the figs very gently for 20 minutes. Turn the heat off, and allow the figs to cool for another 20 minutes.

Make the ice when the fruit is cool. Discard the herbs, trim the stems, and puree everything in a blender until homogenous. If the mixture is too thick to puree, thin it with additional syrup (half water, half sugar), added by the tablespoon, until the mixture begins to move smoothly in the blender (2 to 4 tablespoons). Remove to the ice cream machine, and process according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

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OLD SCHOOL

Robert Reynolds

My day started by reading that I’m ‘old school.’ (In the nicest way, but nonetheless an unexpected challenge to my vanity.) Before the day was done, I found myself sitting at the counter at Navarre with a friend. He’s probably old school as well since w both go way back, both trained in France, both had restaurants in San Francisco. We talked over a glass of rose from Tavel, from the south of France, across the river from Chateauneuf du Pape. We appreciated the wine more than the subject of molecular gastronomy.

Navarre was humming nicely. The kitchen staff offered a pleasant backdrop, acting out an organized, economy of movement, focused on the tasks of chopping, cleaning, wiping, plating, serving. The present menu is focused on the cooking of the alpine region of France on the border with Italy, known as the Savoie. While examing the menu my friend said he wanted the chicken liver mousse. I wanted the salad of tomatoes and peaches. He wondered if we should order the roulade. “I’m up for it,” I answered. He turned to John Taboada, who owns Navarre, and asked if the staff made the roulade the way he suggested. John gave him a qualified answer, explaining that they’d taken the flavorings from a dish of the region that John researched in an old Madleine Kamman book.

John came to study with me in France, and was an exceptional student of cooking. I remember the day at the market hall when I decided to give him the budget for the day’s food purchases. I told him there were only two conditions. “You have to buy what is best, and you need to explain to me how you know that. Second, no matter what you buy, the garlic from the old lady who pulled it out of the ground today and brought it to the market, or the foie gras from the woman who raised birds; I want you to ask what they would do with the ingredient today.” I still have a photograph of him navigating a village market in France, completely engaging vendors who spoke no English, and he spoke no French.

At another stage of his training, I moved on to an exploration of regional cooking. I chose a menu from the Savoie and told John to go to town to get wine from my friend’s shop. “Tell Patrice exactly what you are preparing. Ask him what he recommends.” I knew that Patrice would love discovering what the Americans were up to, and that he’d give John exactly a wine that I’d want. John came back with a wine from Apremont.

That night as the students gathered around the table to enjoy the foods they had prepared, we opened the Apremont. It’s taste made their jaws drop. “What is this?” John asked. “It’s like wine made from water cascading down the mountains, captured, and made into wine,” I answered. “Can we go here?” he asked, pointing at the bottle in his hand. I rotated the bottle to the reverse side. Because it was France, the name, address, and phone number of the wine maker was noted on the label. I picked up the phone, and dialed.

When the person at the other end picked up, I explained to him who we were, what we were doing in France, and that at the moment we were drinking one of his wines. “We want to know if we can come and visit you?“ I asked. “Certainly,” he told me. The next day, we packed up, drove across France, visiting the regions of the Beaujolais and Lyon, before climbing the roads to the valley high in the mountains where Apremont is produced. I will always remember the road entering the valley. There are mountain ranges on both sides, and the ribbon of road divides as it extends through the carpet of vinees. We entered to meet the man we’d spoken with on the phone.

Fifteen years later Apremont is almost a fixture on Navarre’s wine list, and the region still inspires John. The Roulade on Navarre’s menu made me think of a dish Josephine Araldo used to prepare. His version arrived with three slices served with the broth in which the meat cooked, and accompanied by a scattering of onion and carrots that gave flavor to the broth.

The meat was melting tender, and beautifully flavored with bay, thyme, nutmeg, the classic, old-fashioned blend of spices Madeleine Kamman suggested in her recipe. The way those flavors transported the lamb and made the dish delicious, old school, and a rarety. ”Oh,” my friend added, “and the chicken liver mousse was very much like …. an airy cloud.”

Josephine Araldo was trained by Henri Paul Pellaprat, France’s kitchen god. Her generation passed on the traditions of good food to the generation of Julia Child and Madeleine Kamman. Josephine and Madeleine passed that tradition to me. I passed it to John. He gives it to his staff. There’s something satisfying in discovering how it continues. Molecular gastronomy will disappear, but the thinking that produced Navarre’s roulade sustains itself by addressing a different truth. It does so honorably.

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SORREL PANNA COTTA

Robert Reynolds

Week 3. We’re making a panna cotta with sorrel that is breath taking. I went back to the book I wrote with Josephine Araldo FROM A BRETON GARDEN because I remembered she had a recipe for sorrel but forgot the details. Her recipe calls for making jelly flavored with ginger and lime. “Dude,” I thought, she did that a century ago! So we took off on our adventure, and the results were show stopping.

I’ve become enchanted with the idea of savory panna cotta. We’ve done them with cucumber, flavored with mustard and tons of herbs. They’re like little contained salads and you just know they’re the perfect summer food.

We’re enthralled by experimenting. Vitaly Paley asked us to test recipes for his new book THE PALEY PLACE COOKBOOK that goes to press next week. It is due for release in September/October. (It’s available by pre-order from Amazon.) Recipe testing has helped me depart from the regular agenda of the 8-week course at the Chef Studio so we stretch our thinking, have fun, and get to enjoy amazing food.

1-1/2 teaspoons gelatin

3 tablespoons cold water

½ cup organic whole milk

1 inch piece of ginger, grated fine

1 cup sorrel leaves, stems removed

Grated rind of 1 lime

Juice of half a lime

Pinch of salt

1-cup excellent quality heavy cream

8 ¼ cup ramekins, lightly oiled with flavorless oil

Bloom the gelatin by mixing thoroughly with cold water and leave to set for 5 minutes. Scald the milk along with the ginger. Strain it over the gelatin; discard the ginger. Immediately pour the hot liquid into the blender, add the sorrel leaves and liquefy. Remove to a utility bowl, adding the lime rind, salt and lime juice to taste. When cool, (about 5 minutes) add the cream, mixing well. Divide the mixture among the ramekins and refrigerate for 2 hours until set. Garnish with a few lettuce leaves, dressed lightly with lemon and olive oil, topped with grated carrots, dressed similarly.

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