The French Market Cookbook (16 page)

I forgot all about these until fifteen years later, when I took a bread-baking class and the instructor whipped out a small piping cone to write on the baguettes we had just shaped. I made sure I got his recipe for edible writing paste and have used it since to personalize my own dinner rolls. You can use them in lieu of place cards when you have guests or come up with a design to match the theme of an event you may be hosting.

This writing paste works for any bread dough, including these no-knead dinner rolls, adapted from a method that baker Jim Lahey and writer Mark Bittman popularized some years ago. It produces flavorful mini loaves with a crisp crust and a moist crumb.

For the bread dough

3⅔ cups / 470 g bread flour, plus more for dusting

2 teaspoons / 10 g fine sea salt

¼ teaspoon active dry yeast

For the writing paste

1. In a large bowl, combine the flour, salt, and yeast. Pour in 1½ cups / 360 ml room-temperature water and mix with a wooden spoon or dough whisk until the dough comes together in a shaggy ball. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let stand at room temperature (around 70°F / 20°C) until roughly doubled in size and the surface is covered with little bubbles, 12 to 18 hours.

2. In a small bowl, whisk together the egg white, flour, and cocoa powder until completely smooth. The writing paste should be the consistency of chocolate pudding: not too thin, or it will dribble, and not too thick, or you’ll have difficulties piping it.

3. Make a small paper cone using a triangular piece of parchment paper. (This is called a cornet, and you can find online videos demonstrating the folding technique.) Spoon in the writing paste, fold the opening shut two or three times, and refrigerate for up to a day.

4. Have ready two baking sheets lined with parchment paper or silicone baking mats.

5. When the dough is ready, turn it out on a well-floured surface. Divide it into 8 equal pieces, and shape each of them into a tightly formed dinner roll, keeping your hands floured to prevent sticking. Place on the prepared baking sheets.

6. Snip off the very tip of the cornet—you want a very small opening so the paste comes out thinly to form clean letters—and pipe the writing paste onto the rolls as desired. Friends and children can be enlisted to help. (Scrape any leftover writing paste into a small container and freeze for future use.)

7. Place an ovenproof cast-iron pan on the floor of the oven and preheat the oven to the highest temperature setting, at least 475°F. / 250°C., for 30 minutes. Have ready ½ cup / 120 ml boiling water in a pouring jug.

8. Using a razor blade or a very sharp knife, cut a lengthwise slit in each of the rolls just above your text; this will promote the rise of the rolls and prevent their crust from tearing randomly through your lettering.

9. Place the two baking sheets in the oven quickly and, wearing long sleeves and an oven mitt, pour the boiling water into the cast-iron pan before closing the oven door; the steam will help form a crisp crust.

10. Reduce the oven temperature to 450°F. / 230°C. Bake the rolls for 15 minutes. Switch the position of the two baking sheets, reduce the oven temperature to 350°F. / 175°C., and bake until golden brown, 15 to 25 minutes. Transfer to a rack to cool before serving.

11. You can make these in advance, cool completely, and freeze. Thaw overnight on the counter and return to a 350°F. / 175°C. oven for 5 minutes to refresh.

Lebanese Coffee Dessert Jars

LEBANESE COFFEE DESSERT JARS

Verrines “café libanais”

SERVES 6

Every few Saturdays, Maxence and I have lunch at a tiny Lebanese restaurant in our neighborhood. It’s little more than a take-out counter, but there are a couple of tables at which to sit and share a plate of hummus while we wait for our falafel sandwiches.

And when we’re done, the owner asks if we would care for a café libanais, a thickly steeped coffee flavored with cardamom. It is much too strong for me, but I do revel in the paired scents of coffee and cardamom wafting up from the small tin pot. Occasionally, it is brought to our table with a complimentary plate of baklava, two-bite crunchy pastries loaded with pistachios and honey, and it is the memory of those flavors coming together in beautiful harmony—coffee, cardamom, pistachio, honey—that inspired this simple dessert.

I dip ladyfingers in cardamom-flavored coffee and top them with honeyed yogurt, pistachios, and grated chocolate. It is a delicious and remarkably low-effort dessert that can be prepared a few hours in advance, and looks equally lovely served in matching or mismatched containers.

½ cup / 120 ml strong coffee, unsweetened

Seeds from 6 green cardamom pods, finely ground, or ¾ teaspoon ground green cardamom

2 to 3 level tablespoons mild honey, to taste

2 cups / 480 ml plain all-natural Greek yogurt

6½ ounces / 185 g ladyfingers (about 30)

¾ cup / 85 g unsalted pistachios, halved

2 ounces / 55 g good-quality bittersweet chocolate (about 65% cacao), chilled

1. Have ready 6 transparent jars or glasses, about ½ cup / 120 ml in capacity.

2. In a small saucepan combine the coffee and cardamom. Bring just under a simmer over low heat, remove from the heat, and set aside to cool.

3. Stir 2 tablespoons honey into the yogurt. Add more to taste; it should be pleasantly sweet, but not overly so.

4. Cut the ladyfingers into bite-size pieces. Quickly dip half of these pieces in the cardamom coffee and divide among the glasses, arranging them more or less in a single layer at the bottom. (If your ladyfingers fall apart when dipped, place them dry in the glass and brush with the coffee instead of dipping.)

5. Spoon the sweetened yogurt over the ladyfingers, about 2½ tablespoons per glass. Sprinkle with half of the pistachios, dividing them equally among the glasses, and grate chocolate on top using a zester or vegetable peeler.

6. Repeat the layers—coffee-dipped ladyfingers, yogurt, and pistachios, but not the grated chocolate—using up the remaining ingredients.

7. Cover and refrigerate for 2 hours or overnight, removing from the fridge 30 minutes before serving. Grate the remaining chocolate then (if you do it earlier, it will absorb moisture in the fridge and won’t look as pretty).

Apple Sugar Tart

APPLE SUGAR TART

Tarte au sucre aux pommes

SERVES 8

My grandmother was born and raised in a small town in the North of France right on the Belgian border, in a region that has a strong identity with its own patois, folk tales, and culinary repertoire. She’s the one who tipped me off to the sugar tart, known in the North as l’tart à chuc: a round of light, brioche-like dough made with beer or milk, topped with a mix of sugar and crème fraîche, and baked to a golden amber.

It is irresistible as is, but I have taken the liberty of removing the cream topping and adding in its stead thinly sliced apples, fanned out across the top of the tart; they add a welcome layer of fruity and lightly tart notes and nothing’s stopping you from dolloping crème fraîche on the side when you serve it.

The dough base itself is not very sweet at all; most of the sugar is in fact sprinkled on the tart, where it is in a prime position to caramelize in the oven. The ideal sugar to use here would be the locally produced vergeoise brune, a brown beet sugar with notes of butterscotch; short of that, you can use any flavorful soft, light brown sugar.

⅔ cup / 160 ml amber beer or milk

½ teaspoon active dry yeast

2 cups / 260 g all-purpose flour

¼ teaspoon fine sea salt

⅔ cup packed / 115 g soft, light brown sugar

7 tablespoons / 100 g high-quality unsalted butter, softened, plus more for the pan

1 pound / 450 g baking apples (Jonagold, Gala, and Braeburn are good choices, but do try lesser-known, local varieties)

Crème fraîche, sour cream, or vanilla ice cream, for serving

1. In a small saucepan, heat the beer to lukewarm (when you dip your finger in, you shouldn’t feel any temperature difference). Add the yeast, and let rest for 10 minutes. After that time, active yeast will form a slightly foamy layer at the surface; if it doesn’t, get a fresh package and try again.

2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook, combine the flour, salt, and 2 tablespoons of the brown sugar. Add the yeast mixture, the egg, and butter and knead at low speed for 10 minutes. (Alternatively, you can work by hand in a large bowl, using a wooden spoon or dough whisk; the dough is too soft to knead by hand.)

3. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest at room temperature for 1½ hours, or overnight in the refrigerator (after refrigeration, let rest at room temperature for 30 minutes before using).

4. Preheat the oven to 400°F. / 200°C. and grease an 11-to 12-inch / 28 to 30 cm tart pan with a pat of butter.

5. Scrape the dough into the pan and spread it with a spatula to cover the surface of the pan evenly. Sprinkle with two-thirds of the remaining sugar; it will seem like a lot of sugar, but remember there is hardly any in the dough itself.

6. Peel and core the apples and then slice them horizontally into very thin rounds, using a mandoline slicer or very sharp knife. Arrange on the dough in a circular, tightly overlapping pattern, starting from the outside and leaving a ¾-inch / 2 cm margin of uncovered dough all around. Sprinkle with the remaining sugar.

7. Bake for 20 minutes. Cover loosely with foil and then bake until golden brown and caramelized, 15 to 25 minutes more.

8. Serve slightly warm or at room temperature, with crème fraîche.

Fruit Salad with Spiced Syrup

FRUIT SALAD WITH SPICED SYRUP

Salade de fruits au sirop d’ épices

SERVES 6

A good fruit salad, prepared carefully and well seasoned, can be a sublime thing. The first order of business is to select the fruit: seek variety in texture (crisp, crunchy, soft) and flavor (sweet, tart, floral) and seasonal fruit that is ripe, so it tastes its best, but not so ripe it will turn to mush in the salad bowl. Good winter fruits to use include pears, apples, kiwis, persimmons, and citrus as well as tropical fruits (bananas, mangoes, passion fruit), though these last in moderation due to their faraway provenance; choose ones preferably from a fair-trade source. You are looking for roughly 3⅓ pounds / 1.5 kg total fruit.

But the real magic lies in the spiced syrup stirred into the fruit; it highlights their sweetness without overstating it and adds a dimension of flavor that elevates the fruit salad from a basic blend of cut-up fruit to something that stops guests in their tracks and makes them go for seconds.

I serve fruit salads with a cookie partner, such as Lemon Corn Cookies or Breton Shortbread Cookies. It’s also an excellent complement to a sliver of rich chocolate cake.

For the syrup

½ cup / 100 g unrefined blond cane sugar (also sold as evaporated cane juice)

Zest of ½ organic orange (grated, or thinly peeled with a vegetable peeler)

½ star anise

½ cinnamon stick

Seeds from 4 green cardamom pods, or ½ teaspoon ground green cardamom

For the salad

1 teaspoon orange flower water, or more to taste (optional)

1. Prepare the syrup up to a day ahead. In a small saucepan, combine the sugar, lemon juice, orange zest, star anise, cinnamon stick, cloves, cardamom, and ¾ cup / 180 ml cold water. Bring to a simmer over medium heat and cook for 10 minutes. Let cool completely.

2. Prepare the salad. Peel and core the fruit as needed and cut into bite-size pieces. Place in a medium salad bowl and pour in the syrup through a fine-mesh sieve (discard the spices). Add the orange flower water (if using) and stir gently to coat.

3. Cover and refrigerate for 1 to 2 hours, removing from the fridge 30 minutes before serving. Leftovers are delicious the next day, though the fruit will look a little less perky then.

Chocolate Berawecka

CHOCOLATE BERAWECKA

Berawecka au chocolat

MAKES FOUR 12-OUNCE / 350 G LOAVES

Berawecka is an Alsatian specialty that pops up in local pastry shops and market stalls during Advent, the weeks leading up to Christmas. It is a small loaf chock-full of dried fruits, candied citrus, and nuts, bound by just enough bread dough to hold it all together. Not too sweet—there is no sugar added beyond that of the fruit—but crunchy, moist, and flavorful, it is the perfect winter treat, the kind that would feel nutritious and restorative in the middle of a snowshoe hike or just a long and gray afternoon spent at your desk. I add chocolate to my own take on the traditional recipe in the form of cocoa powder and chopped chocolate. Unsurprisingly, I like it even better that way.

Berawecka is meant to be baked some time in advance, wrapped tightly, and left to “ripen” for a few weeks before eating in thin slices, with a cup of tea or mulled wine. It is delicious the day it is baked, but during this resting period, the flavors will bloom and the texture will even out for easier slicing. This also makes it an ideal holiday food gift to bake and ship out before things get too hectic.

14 ounces / 340 g mixed dried fruits (pears, apples, dates, figs, prunes, cranberries, cherries, mangoes, etc.)

5 ounces / 140 g candied citrus, finely diced

¼ cup / 60 ml kirsch, Grand Marnier, or other fruit brandy or liqueur, or black tea

7 ounces / 200 g mixed nuts (almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts, etc.), including 12 whole almonds

½ teaspoon active dry yeast

2½ cups / 325 g all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon warm spice mix, such as pumpkin pie or gingerbread spices (clove, ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg)

¼ cup / 30 g unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder

7 ounces / 200 g good-quality bittersweet chocolate (about 65% cacao), chopped to chocolate chip–size bits