It is not that often that one really gets the chance to let what’s fresh in the market determine what’s for lunch. However, a Tuesday market day in Orthez, with no obligations and no plans imposing, offered just such a chance.

This Dorade Royale, also known as Atlantic Sea Bream, had the clearest eyes and reddest gills of all the fish on the stall at Poissonnerie Otano, a permanent stand in Orthez’s covered market.  With stands in both Orthez and Bayonne, Otano is family owned by a Basque family that sources out of nearby Saint-Jean-de-Luz. Lets face it, there is no substitute for really fresh fish.

Dorade is such a delicate fish that is is a shame to filet it out and thereby rob the meat of the moisture that the carcass provides as it cooks.  Plus, whole roasting is so easy and quick, once you know a few rules, why do anything else? If you fish monger will clean (yes fish on a good quality fish stall in France are sold with the guts still in!), scale and trim your purchase, it is very nearly ready to cook.  Here are the rules I follow:

Rule 1: Make a flavorful bed of veggies to go under the fish. These will flavor the fish during cooking and will be served as a side dish.  I had on hand peppers (both sweet peppers and the famous poivrons longs verts which are the ones the Basques prefer for making piperade) as well as some summer squashes, onions and garlic. Don’t forget to season the veggies with salt and pepper; I used a little piment d’Espelette.  Also add a little liquid to the dish to prevent it scorching. Water is fine, but white wine, fish stock, even cider or beer will work well.

Rule 2: Rub the fish inside and out with olive oil, the season it well with salt and pepper.  Fill the cavity with things that will taste well with the veggies you have selected for underneath. I used rosemary from the garden and lemon slices.

Once stuffed, I just lay the fish on the veggies, no need to truss it up.

Rule 3: Cook the fish for the right amount of time at the right temperature. The right temperature is pretty easy. I like to use 400 deg F, as this will yield a fish with crispy skin.  Its that “right amount of time” is the kicker…Overcooking will ruin its delicate moistness, under cooking will mean trouble getting it off the bones.

According to Richard Olney, author of the seminal cookbook Simple French Food, one should allow 10 minutes of cooking time for each 1″ of thickness of the fish in question, regardless of the cooking method (if you have read Olney, you will recognize in this advice  his typical obliqueness when it comes to concrete detail and his fondness for sweeping generalities…don’t get me wrong, I love his work but his books are often more philosophy than cooking instruction).  Although I think that this is a good guide, I find that when roasting fish on the bone, in a hot oven, it will be closer to 17 minutes.

In any event, it doesn’t pay to rely too religiously on advise and but instead to verify  that that the fish is cooked by flaking it along the spine with a small knife. If is just barely flakes, it is ready.  Start checking before you think it will be done to avoid over cooking.

Rule 4:  Remember a nice appetizer to snack on while the fish is cooking. This is pork pate from famous artisan charcutier Eric Hospital…yummy!

That’s about it. Once the fish is cooked, lift of the fillets and serve. Stir a couple spoons full of butter into the roasted veggies and pan juices and serve that with your fish.  Add some boiled rice or quinoa and you are ready to go. Simple and delicious!

Yesterday’s Sausage Making Workshop was a ton of fun with the added bonus that we all got to eat a lot of great sausages after the work was finished.  Here are a few photos of the event.  And if you are interested in being on the mailing list for upcoming classes, please email me at jdrohman@lepichetseattle.com or sign up for newsletters from Cafe Presse or Le Pichet.

When: Three different sessions of this class will be offered:

Wednesday October 16, 2013, 6:30pm to 9:30pm
Sunday October 20, 2013, 1pm to 4pm
Wednesday October 23, 2013, 6:30pm to 9:30pm

Location:  the Kitchen at Mallet, 2700 4th Ave S. Suite C, Seattle WA
in Seattle’s SODO neighborhood (free parking available).

Price:  $125 per student, which includes a menu of classic French dishes, wine, and a recipe packet (does not include sales tax).

Please join Le Pichet and Cafe Presse Executive Chef Jim Drohman in July for his latest cooking class and demonstration:  French Kitchen basics.

Do you love French cooking but feel too intimidated to get started?  Or do you feel that a review of basic culinary techniques would be helpful?  This class is for you!

The goal of this class is make student feel comfortable trying out traditional French recipes by providing an introduction to basic French techniques.  We will start with how to handle a chef’s knife,  basic French knife cuts and sharpening…if you have your own, bring it along…if not bring your questions about what to look for in a knife.  Then, through the preparation of a few simple dishes, we will learn how to make a stock; how to truss, roast and carve a chicken; be introduced to the basic workings of chocolate and to the dynamics of whipping cream and eggs.

 What you will really learn is that preparing a complicated meal is easy when you know how to break it down into approachable steps.  All this while enjoying four complete dishes accompanied by wine.

Says Chef Drohman: “I am very excited to have the opportunity to share with you my love of the home-style cooking and simple, simply delicious wines of France.  The class will be a mix of demonstration, hands on learning and communal eating.”

If you are interested in receiving more details and sign-up information about this class, please email Jim at jdrohman@lepichetseattle.com

Class Menu:

Rillettes de thon, échalotes et betteraves au vinaigre, baguette
“Potted local albacore tuna served with pickled shallots and beets and sliced baguette”

Poulet rôti (demonstration)
“Whole roasted chicken”

Ragout aux lentilles de Puy, au chou et aux chanterelles
“French green lentils simmered with pancetta, Savoy cabbage, chanterelle mushrooms and cream”

Mousse au chocolat (demonstration)
“Chocolate mousse served with fresh whipped cream and vanilla butter cookies”

As an accompaniment to this classic French menu, we will taste several lesser known wines from the countryside of France.

If you are anywhere near the Pike Place Market today, Sunday August 4, 2013, would be pleased to have you drop by the Chef Demonstration Booth today between 2 and 3pm for a cooking demonstration give jointly by myself and Le Pichet Chef de Cuisine Jack Spiess.

Here’s what we will be cooking:

“Roasted beet gazpacho garnished with a salad of house smoked Idaho trout, scallions, dill, creme fraiche and candied lemon”

And yes, there will be samples.

This week, I reached the end of my trove of Arizonan lamb necks, with the happy result being two more lamb neck dishes.

Number One:  Hash of pulled lamb neck, caramelized onions, winter squash and curly kale, topped with poached farm eggs….unfortunately I don’t have any photos of this dish.  It was so tasty that time was not made for photography.

Number Two:  Lamb necks “en daube Toulousaine” served with boiled rice and a saute of winter squash, kale and button mushrooms (yes there is a lot of squash and kale in my winter cooking…good and good for you).

The daube is the classic southern French method of dealing with a tough old piece of beef, although it is also used for wild boar of even bull, depending on the region and availability. As with many of the classic dishes of the French countryside, there are as many recipes as there are grandmothers, but they all share a basic pattern.  The meat is cut into hearty sized chunks and left to marinate overnight in tannic, young red wine with aromatics, bay leaves and herbs.  The next day, the meat is drained, saving the wine and the aromatics.  Then the meat is seared (or not, again, depending on the recipe), the vegetables from the marinade are sweated in the searing fat, the red wine from the marinade is used to deglaze the pot and the whole is simmered at barely a murmur until the meat is tender and delicious.  Typically, the daube is served with fresh buttered noodles or boiled rice, noodles showing up more often in the east near Italy, and rice west of Marseille.

Of course the regional, and even individual, differences are many.

What piece of beef to use (I like shoulder, but shanks, neck or a mix of cuts are possible…choose a gelatinous cut with a good amount of fat)?

Marinate or not (it depends on how organized I am)?

Sear the meats or not (I say yes…brings out the sweetness in the meat and the wine)?

What vegetables to use the marinade/simmering (carrots, onions, garlic and celery are classic, although fennel often shows up in Provence)?  Add alcohol in addition to the wine (I like to use Pastis or Cognac or Armagnac)?  What spices, herbs and extras to add (cloves, thyme and bay are almost required…many cooks also add a couple anchovy filets and a bit of dried orange peel.  In the southwest, often walnuts are added)?

Strain the sauce?  Thicken with a bit of flour or reduce? Rice or noodles?

It is clear that, as long as the general outline is respected, almost any combination of choices can yield a satisfying dish.  As a consequence, it hardly seems worth having a recipe.  Meat, red wine, its a daube.  Here are some photos of how I made mine.

I chose not to marinate the necks overnight…too big and and thought of it too late.

The lamb necks are seared off…I used some beef tallow for the fat. Yes I know that this pan is too big, but my other dutch over seemed too small.

After the necks are seared, the vegetables are softened in the same fat, then I added a bit of tomato paste and a spoon full of flour.

Now the necks go back into the pot with thyme, bay, cloves, anchovy filets and walnuts. If you are going to leave the veggies in the finished sauce, these things should be tied up in cheesecloth for easy removal. I am going to strain.

Next, I deglazed with Cognac, scraped up all the brown bits from the bottom of the pot then added the wine.  I am using a Cahors, which has the shoulders to stand up to long cooking with full flavored meats.  The use of wine from the Southwest, Cognac and walnuts gives this daube its distinctive southwestern notes.

Now it is time for cooking.  The meat is cooked covered in a very slow oven, say 250 degrees F.  Obviously, to become tender, long cooking will be required.  After about 5 hours, with regular basting every hour or so, the meat begins to get tender.  However, the sauce is still too thick.  The solution is to finish the cooking with the lid off, basting often, which allows the sauce to thicken and also give the meat a lovely glazed finish.  This final step of glazing will take an hour or so, depending on temperature.

That is some beautiful, fatty lamb neck.

Summer’s Gift
I recently happened into 8 pounds of deliciously ripe, honey sweet Green King figs.  By “happened into” I mean that my neighbor across the hall got a whole bunch of these rare local treats from a tree at his mom’s house somewhere on the east side of Lake Washington.  Green  King figs, when ripe, are never firm under the best of condition;  some of these were firm enough for cutting and eating but many were so soft that they squished under my knife.  They were, is short, some of the most lusciously sweet and sun drenched fruit is is possible to imagine coming from the Puget Sound area.

A few points on making jam
When faced with more pounds of very ripe fruit than two people can possibly eat before it goes off, the obvious course of action is to make jam.  Jam making is very easy, especially on a small scale, and can be broken up into stages so as to avoid the day long jam canning marathons of the kind my mom favored when I was young.

Lets talk about making jam.  It is helpful to remember that  adding sugar to fruit is a way to stop its decomposition.  Once the fruit is boiled with sugar and sealed in a canning jar, it has a shelf life of almost a year.  But since the sugar acts as a preservative just as salt and vinegar do in pickles, it is important to add enough sugar to make sure the fruit will be preserved.

There are 3 major steps in making and preserving jam:
1)  Cooking 2) Setting and 3)  Preserving.    This sounds pretty simple but there are choices to be made along the way that can have a large impact on the final product.  Cooking is the process by which the fruit and any flavoring elements are combined with the sugar and brought to a stable point.  Setting is the method used to give the jam the preferred consistency.   Finally, Sealing is the means used to remove the jam from contact with air, which extends the shelf life of the finished jam so that it can be enjoyed all year long.

My mom always followed the jam making advice distributed by the US Department of Agriculture, which involved cooking the fruit  with an equal weigh of white sugar,  guaranteeing the set of the jam when necessary by using pectin and sealing the jam in jars with 2 piece lids by  boiling them in water for 15 minutes (she also like to make freezer jam, which is exactly what it sound like, which, for my money, gives a better result than traditional canning).

There are a couple of obvious drawbacks to this method.  1) In the Summer, when many fruits are at their peak and are most reasonably priced, the idea of keeping a cauldron of water boiling for hours on end is not very attractive, especially if you live in a small apartment with imperfect circulation and no air conditioning  2)  Using pectin can not only give an overly gelatinous consistency to the jam, there is something that rankles about making wonderful fresh jam from organic fruit and sugar only to add artificial thickener  3)  Boiling the finished jam for another 15 minutes after it has finished cooking just to seal the jar tends to compromise the fresh flavor of the fruit (The extra cooking time can make the jam seem caramelized or oxidized, when you really just want the flavor of fresh fruit).

Christine Ferber is one of the best known master jam makers in France’s Alsace region, which is known for its wonderful fruit preserves and jams.  In her book Mes Confitures,  she lays out a method for making jam that puts maximum emphasis on preserving the true, fresh flavor of the fruit.  Her method involves using only beautifully ripe,  fresh-picked fruit, only organic ingredients and cooking the fruit as little as possible.  When thickening is required (for fruits with little natural pectin, like cherries), she adds her own home made green apple jelly (outside of quince and lemon rind, green apple has just about the highest levels of pectin of any fruit).  To eliminate further cooking  during the  sealing process, she uses a method that I like to call “inversion”.  Note that my Grandma also favored this method until the 70’s when dire government warnings about improper sterilization forced her to switch.

How Much Sugar?
Like I said, the old way of making jam was to weigh the fruit you want to use, then add to it an equal weigh of refined white sugar.  This assures that your jam will have enough sugar to be properly preserved for long storage.  The problem is that this amount of sugar can make for a very sweet jam.  I find that with most fruits, using 85% of the weight of the fruit in sugar is plenty sweet and also makes for jam with a long shelf life.  The sweeter the fruit, the less sugar is required.  For super sweet figs, as little as 70% works fine.

I also prefer less-refined organic sugar.  I find that organic sugar has less of the “hot” flavor of refined white sugar, which can overpower the flavor of the fruit.  Plus it is less likely to have pesticides and it also less likely to to be GM (that’s a whole story unto itself).  The only downside with less refined sugar is that it is  necessary to skim the jam during boiling a lot more carefully.  This makes sense, because the foam that comes to the top of boiling jam is in fact the impurities from the sugar.  Skimming these impurities out gives a sparkling clear finished jam.  It should be no surprise that less refined sugar has more impurities to be skimmed off.

Macerating v Cooking
The simplest way to minimize the cooking time for jams is to macerate first.  When fruit is tossed with sugar and left to rest, the sugar begins breaking down the fruit in a way that resembles cooking but without the loss of fresh taste.  Depending of the firmness of the fruit, Ferber recommends macerating the fruit raw with the sugar, or bringing the sugar and fruit to a boil together very briefly then leaving it to macerate overnight.

To Thicken or not to Thicken
Time was people liked a thick jam (heck that still might be today).  If that’s the case, when making jam, one needs to either pick a fruit with enough pectin to yield a nice thick jam or to add some sort of thickener, normally pectin.  One can also add sources of natural pectin, like lemon pith.  Or one can just get good with a looser jam.  In any case, simply boiling the fruit and sugar together will give a certain amount of body to jam.  Further boiling will increase the thickness.  However, you hit a limit where further boiling compromises the flavor of the jam, leaving it tasting “cooked”, “caramelized” or “oxidized”.  So the trick for fresh tasting jam is to test the thickness of the jam after minimum boiling to see if the “set” or thickness, is enough for your taste or if you need to resort to other methods of thickening.  I find that for most fruits, 5-10 minutes of hard boiling gives enough set without compromising the flavor.

The easiest way to check the set is to put a spoonful of cooked jam onto a cold plate (I keep 2-3 plates in the freezer while making jam for this purpose).  This will allow you to get a clear idea of how thick the jam will be when it cools.  If you are ok with the set, you are ready to seal.  If not, you will need to think about cooking further or adding thickener.

SO whats “Inversion”?
In the typical canning process, the clean jar are filled with hot jam to within about 1/3 of an inch from the top, leaving what is called “head space”.  The jar is then closed with a 2 piece canning lid and boiled in water in  a canner, basically a big pot designed for this purpose, for 15 minutes.  The two piece lid is designed so that during this boiling,  some of the expanding air in the head space escapes.  Then, as the jar cools after boiling, the remaining air in the head space contracts, creating a vacuum that seals the jar.

In the inversion method, the clean jars are filled with hot jam almost to the very top.  The jars are closed with a two piece canning lid, then turned upside down on a towel and left to cool.  The contraction during cooling of both the jam and the small amount of air left in the jar cause the lid to seal.  Easy.

I didn’t tell you to do this!
Let me be clear that the FDA recommends for home canning that one  use the traditional method of sealing jars in boiling water for 15 minutes.  At my restaurants, we don’t can our jam but instead make it fresh each week, so this issue never comes up.  However, at home, when I am making jam just for  myself and my wife, I feel at liberty to use whatever method I like.  After all, the FDA would prefer that I didn’t drink raw milk or eat raw milk cheeses, but I routinely ignore that advice.   However, be aware that sealing by boiling minimizes the risk of food borne illness in canned food.  Full disclosure.

In a nutshell
So there you have it.  The basics of jam making:  Cooking, Setting and Setting, its that easy.  The process varies a little for each fruit, which is where the skill of the jam maker comes in.   You can check out my recipe for Green Fig Jam here.

Making foie gras terrine is a Holiday tradition around our house.  As described in an earlier post, a good terrine of foie gras is, in France, as important to Christmas, as, well, Pere Noël.   This year during the terrine making process, I got some additional photos that might be helpful if you are trying to follow my recipe for terrines yourself.  I hope you will find these interesting.

This year, I served the terrine with toasted country bread and baked apples.  The apples, which were served warm as a foil to the cool richness of the foie gras, had been basted with a reduction of apple cider, vanilla bean, honey and butter, and then roasted for about 45 minutes.

In the neighborhood where I live, many of the trees that line the streets are lindens.  I was not really aware of this until a day several summers ago when I was walking home from work.  It was a warm late June evening and the still air was filled with an intoxicating, sweet floral fragrance that seemed to come from everywhere.  A little following my nose revealed that this wonderful summer smell was coming from the multitudinous yellow flowers of the trees all around me.

A little research yielded the identity of these trees and a lot of information about the use of linden blossoms.    It seems that linden blossoms are collected in much of Europe and the UK (where Lindens are called “lime” trees…I guess there are no actual citrus lime trees growing in England, so the confusion never arises), especially in Provence, where there are actually seasonal markets in linden blossoms.  Folk wisdom has it that linden blossom tea is a sleep aid and the blossoms are also used in herbal medicines and tinctures.

My main interest in these blossoms is their incredible fragrance and specifically, the question of whether it was possible to capture it in a liqueur.  If a liqueur made with  linden blossoms also had soporific properties, well I suppose that would be useful in certain situations as well.

My friend David and I began making plans to answer this question after the success of the cherry blossom liqueur, the blossoms for which we had together harvested the previous year.  Our plan of action was to use the same basic recipe as for the cherry blossom liqueur, but we differed as the the alcohol that we thought would provide the best result;  David favored grappa, I thought it would be best to stick with vodka.  With plan in mind, it remained only to wait for the lindens to bloom.

The waiting proved to be a much longer process that expected.  In the past I had noted that the lindens in my neighborhood bloom in mid to late June.  This year has been unseasonably cold and grey, with the result that the lindens still had not bloomed on the first of July.  Believe me, we checked…nice fat buds but no flowers.

On July 2nd the tiny yellow blossoms began to appear, their scent announcing the arrival before we noticed the blooms.  A scouting stroll indicated that many of the buds had not opened yet, so we made plans for picking blossoms two days later.  By then the blossoms were in there full glory, the linden trees literally robed in the heavy, hanging flowers.  Time to harvest.

Believe me, the trees were so heavy with blooms that the bowls full we snipped were barely noticeable or missed.  At least I hope they were not.

After the harvest, the process of macerating the blossoms in liqueur followed pretty much the same pattern as for the cherry blossoms.  David and I put down our two batches of blossoms to macerate each in a different alcohol.

After about 3 days, the vodka was beginning to take on a slightly tawny color from the flowers.

About 15 days later, my vodka had taken on a lovely amber hue and smelled richly of linden. I strained it and added a bit of sugar syrup.  Now begins the wait of 5 to 6 months, during which time the alcohol heat of the vodka will diminish and the liqueur will mellow.  The resulting liqueur should be ready to enjoy in December 2011. Stay tuned for an update later in the year.