Duckys- cornmeal ducklard cookies

It is just 26 days to D-day. January 1 2010 is Duck Day and I’m  counting days to my arrival on Podchef Island to help the @podchef himself, farmer, chef and food guru Neal Foley, kill, cook, cure and eat a few dozen meaty Rouen ducks. Someone declared December as ‘all-duck, all the time’ month. So as December’s kitchen becomes more and more infused with the scent of duck, I took a break from savory to sweet with these melt in your mouth shortbread cookies.

In the spirit of Ashley Rodriquez’ great post on bacon fat shortbread cookies here, ‘nothing goes to waste’ in the Kitchen at Camont. So with a bit of tweaking from Ashleys’ recipe and an inspirational nod to my sweet guru David Lebovitz easy jam tart use of cornmeal (after all ducks take to corn like… ) I baked up a first batch of these crumbling rich, nutty-flavored shortbreads. Duckys.

Here’s the recipe for a few dozen Duckys

What:

70 gr duck fat

70 gr butter

50 gr white sugar

50 gr brown sugar

2 large eggs

1 Tablespoon white armagnac- (or rum)

200 gr white flour

80 gr fine cornmeal

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 Tablespoon baking powder

How:

I melted the duck fat and butter together with the sugar until it formed a broken caramel.

Then measured all dry ingredients into a large bowl, poured in fat/sugar mix, broke in the eggs with the armagnac then stirred like mad.

Next, I divdied the dough in half, formed two rolls, wrapped them in parchment and stuck them in the frigo until I was ready to bake.

Cut the rolls into thick slices. Place on cookie sheet. Bake in a hot oven (400′F) for 15 minutes or until slighty toasted. Quack! Quick, make coffee or tea!

Pain d’Epices- a honey sweet spice cake

Nothing like a little frost on a Sunday morning to bring out the baker in us all. So when Julia Leach, the Kitchen-at-Camont’s fall intern, fell under the Pain d’Epices spell, we turned on the oven and began a day learning about dough, pastry and good smells.  Here in Gascony, Pain d’Épice or Spice Bread is thought of as a foreign treat- from the north, another region, a taste of winter.  Usually, I buy thick slices of honeyed pain d’epices made near Rocamadour from Kakou & Francoise at the Saturday market and serve it in the Gascon way with duck rillettes or thin slivers of foie gras. Dense, solid and studded with walnuts or candied orange peel, prunes or even chocolate chips, this honey bread is made by a former beekeeper turned patissier specialist in the Lot at la Noyeraie des Abeilles.

With that tasty inspiration at hand, we turned to a monograph on the subject published by Les Editions du Coq a l’Ane and signed and prefaced by the late Bernard Loiseau. I found it one year in Dijon, one of the spice cake centers of France and have hoarded it since waiting for a chilly baking sort of day. All secrets lie within this thoroughly researched and well written book, from history and folklore to dozens of recipes. From the sucrée- actual recipes for dozen’s of versions of honey spice bread, to the salée-including a killer looking Lapin au Pain Épice for rabbit with cream, mustard and pain d’epice breadcrumbs.

But first things first, I chose this basic recipe “like in Dijon” to honor the book, the source and inspiration to cook regionally. We used local honey, mixed flours and upped the spices some. Results? Perfect! A chewy caramelized crust, moist but substantial density and just right  balance of honey, spice and orange flavors. Have fun!

Adapted from Le  Pains d’Épice by Lise Bésème-Pia.

Le Pain d’Epice Comme a Dijon.

• 250 gr wheat flour (we used half white wheat flour &  half whole wheat; rye and buckwheat are traditional choices as well)
• 125 gr honey-
• 125 gr sugar
• 200 ml warm milk
• 1 tsp spices (1/4 teaspoon each of cinnamon, ginger, allspice or cloves, & anis)
• 1 tsp of baking soda
• zest from one orange

Place the flour in a  bowl. Add the sugar and spices. Melt the honey with the warm milk and add to the flour. Whisk together and work the batter (not using machines much here, we whisked by hand for 10 minutes). Then add baking soda and whisk again until well mixed, stir in orange zest. The batter should be smooth and fluid. Pour into a well-buttered loaf pan (22 cm or 8-9 inch) set on a baking sheet. Place in cold oven; turn on and set at 180′C or 350′F. Bake for 45 minutes, then lower heat to 150′C or 300′F for another 15 minutes; total baking time 1 hour. Remove from oven, cool some, remove from pan, cool some more. Then attack with knife and fork with good coffee or tea at hand! A taste of honey for you sweet things…

Piggy Newtons part 2- the larder cookie

How a cook’s mind works. Not recipe development, but a ramble through past experience as it teaches the present.

That perfect  dark gooey figgy filling has been resting a couple days and I have some time between classes and visitors. I am going to figure out how to make those ‘piggy rolls’ that Miles offered me the other day. I’ve had all sorts of ideas on how to make them from baking them like brownies- fig bars, to making a tube like ravioli and filling it, to rolling up a long strip and cutting them in finger lengths when done. In the end, the bar idea won out over being too fidgety. I am an impatient cook.

But first to come up with the a crunchy chewy cookie/pastry to wrap around the filling. (Careful- dangerous segue about to occur) I’ve been thinking about my grandmother Julia all month. She would have been 102 this year. Which means she was about my age now when she came to stay with us that summer that I was 11. She was my own personal Julia- Julia DiPietrantonio  from Portland, Maine.  Over the years, she visited us all the way from Portland to Hawaii, and later to Arizona or Washington. Long trips in those days on prop-driven airplanes and long days on buses. Widowed young,  footloose and fancy free,  she’d come for  a few months, staying long enough to tell us all her stories, and managed to teach me some of her practical magic- cooking.

Sorry Mrs. Child,  but my Julia taught me to cook. I remember the tastes, the smells and her hand-to-hand method of how much flour to egg to make macaroni (it was never called pasta!); always three different kinds of meat to make tomato sauce- beef, pork and a chicken; a favorite Christmas dish was something we called ‘weed soup’ made with chicken and curly endive and served with a big bowl of over-sized eggy croutons, fried in olive oil and dusted with Parmesan cheese. I never wrote any of these ‘recipes’ down. But I cooked them, again and again. Over the years, I learned them by heart, like a song. My grandmother’s voice in my kitchen always.

When Grandma (my cousins called her Nona- odd to our westerner ears) didn’t visit, she still would send boxes of biscotti at Christmas. Long before UPS and overnight delivery, these hefty boxes would arrive some weeks after she had baked the anise scented cookies- pizelles and biscotti. The biscotti were tender and toasted, not hard as a brick, and half were  spiked with cherries, walnuts, and anise seeds- my favorites. Except for the anise seeds. These biscotti were nothing like the rock hard, fat free yuppie imitations that are served in coffee joints and urban bakeries. Julia’s biscotti would first crack under your teeth and then crumble in lardy tenderness. Her secret, lard, was used by everyone then- for pie crusts, cakes and biscuits. I still sing Julia’s biscotti song every Christmas as I make a few batches to give to friends- “a dozen eggs, a pound of lard, a handful of sugar, enough flour to make the dough…”

Yes, a pound of lard.

(Quick return from familial revery) My Piggy Fig Bars are a tribute to the way we stitch a life together… or a recipe. A long ramblin’ song of friends, family and good food. Here, I played on my basic Gateau Basque recipe, a rich fresh egg pastry  then in another piggy nod I used half lard and half butter. I grabbed the wholewheat flour for the nutty toasted tasty I like and flavored it with a splash of  ” Le Secret”, a Gascon… well, secret.  Rolled, patted it, market it with a B and put in a pan and baked in the oven for you and me!

Kate’s Piggy Fig Bars.

ingredients:

• 100 gr lard
• 100 gr butter
• 200 gr sugar
• 300 gr whole wheat flour
• pinch of salt
• 4 whole eggs
• splash of flavoring: vanilla, almond, etc

Cream the fat and sugar together, whisk in the eggs, add flour, salt and flavoring. Mix well into a ball. Cut in half  and pat one half into a brownie pan 9×12″, about 1/4 ” thick.   Spoon a layer of figgy jam filling over the pastry. Then pat out the second half of dough on a pastry sheet, mat or parchment and cover jam filling, making a cookie sandwich. Back in a moderate oven, for 30-35 min. Mine were a little dark on the edges, but still chewy inside. Cut into bars while still warm. Pour glass of milk.  Burn tongue on hot filling. Smile back at Julia. Yikes, I have turned into my grandmother.

Piggy Newtons Part 1- My Perfect French Fig Jam

When visiting Flower Power Lisa and her two kids t’other day, Miles- the wee one with the duck down hair, offered me a ‘Piggy Roll’ with my tea. He cracks me up with his 2 1/2 year old hospitality, dead serious and smiling at the same time. Yes, I’d love a “Figgy” Roll, I corrected.

Figs. Pigs. What’s the diff? A figgy newton-like cookie is always good with Earl Grey.

This week, I gathered the first harvest from the GIANT fig tree at Camont and I knew just where I was going. No recipe needed to make a batch of dark, delicious figgy/piggy jam. But I will tell you what I did with what was at hand. Next post, I’ll make a homemade a cookie dough with lard and butter (like my Grandmother’s biscotti) and cook the ‘Pig Newton Rolls’ for Smilin’ Miles- my new beau.

Kate’s French Figgy Jam- notes on a cooking riff.

The most important ingredient is my pot. For years, I used a too-deep 20-liter stainless steel stock pot or a too-wide braising pan with lid that was big enough to hold 2 chickens. One was not wide enough for the volume of fruit, the other too wide. So just like Golden Locks, I now have refined my perfect small batch confiture bassin- a not too big, not too small, JUST RIGHT, second hand, acid-green le Creuset acquired last year at a brocante for a few paltry euros. Measuring about 24 cm and holding 4 liters, it is the PERFECT size for fast cooking a 2 kilo or 4.5 pounds of fruit plus sugar, etc. Now, I know by sight that when the casserole is half full (about 2 liters of cut up fruit), it is time to stop picking, pitting or peeling.

Next.

2 kilos or 4-5 pounds of figs with the stems trimmed off and cut or pulled into quarters. When the figs are as ripe as these, its easier just to pull them apart.

500 grams or one pound of rapadura sugar (the SECRET ingredient) The caramel/molasses flavor immediately darkens the fruit mixture into a deep jammy color.

500 grams other sugar- white, brown, raw, etc. This is where we start to get creative with what’s at hand.

One whole organic lemon: zest, juice and pulp- zest it, squeeze it, then scraped the pulp out with a spoon. Add it all.

I also added:

• a handful of wild blackberries
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 1 vanilla bean- split and scraped
• a large glug (that’s a metric measure) of orange juice

COOK. I put the flame on high under the fig-filled le creuset; dumped the sugar on top of the figs. Added the rest of ingredients and then waited. Just waited. As soon as I heard the juice from the orange, lemon and figs start to burble, I stirred. A quick stir to mix everything together and placed the lid on until it was boiling away nicely.

THEN. Take off the lid, adjust the heat so it won’t boil over and let cook about 15-20 minutes.

BLEND. I use the immersion/stick/magicwand blender and gave the mixture a half stir. Some chunks, some puree. Taste and adjust lemon if needed.

That’s it. It was sweet, dark and thick. Perfect. How did I know? It said so on the jar.

crowing hens…cluck, cluck, cluck whole hog!

Do you know that hens crow too?

The new red hens are starting to lay their first eggs.  When the commotion in the chicken garden reaches a crescendo, I know there is yet another golden yolked egg waiting in the straw nest. But here in Gascony, even little Pigs crow. So when Judy Witts  and I start crowing this morning, it’s because after 4 years of reporting on all things pork at the Whole Hog Blog we made Saveur Magazine’s best of the web. Cluck, cluck, clucckkkk!

While Judy has been giving online courses to chefs  in making Porchetta, I have been waking up at 4 in the morning (ouch!) to drive charcuterie apprentices to the abattoir, hauling 150-pound half carcasses in the trunk of my Renault Clio back home, and helping them learn the names and cuts of the French Pig from jarret to jambon.  Then we cook, cure & preserve all week until the larder is full, the pantry est plein.

My favorite French ‘pulled pork’ is called escaoudoun in the Gascon patois. Tasted in a hideaway of a cafe in the Landes forest called La Croute du Pin where it was made with the typique Noir de Gascogne pig, I re-created the dish here at Camont with most of the shoulder from Camas’ graduation pig.

Once it cooked in the sweet onion sauce for a two hours, I ladled the sauce pork into large canning jars. When unannounced friends arrive for dinner, I’ll cook some Monalisa potatoes and serve them floating on an island of sweet onions pork, just like Madame did.

Recipe- for  Estouffade de Porc- l’Escaoudoun

• 2 kilos / 4 1/2 lbs. of farm raised pork shoulder, cut into large cubes
• 1 kilo of onions, sliced thinly
• 2 soupspoons of duck fat
• 1 bottle of sweet wine wine (jurancon or cote de gascogne)
• 1/2 bottle madera, sherry or white port
• 1 generous glass of armagnac
• 2 large carrots, peeled and sliced
• a large bouquet garni- lovage, bay leaf, thyme
• sea salt to taste
• freshly ground black pepper, a lot of it!
• a large pick of quatre épice  (ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves)

The basic recipe is to cook all of the above until the onions have melted, the pork is falling apart and the flavors of the sweet wine mingle with the onion in a caramel-colored sauce.

Cook the onions in duck fat until they start to be translucent.  Add the pork and herbs, season (using only a little salt at this time to allow for reduction of the sauce), pour the wines and armagnac over the meat, cover and cook over a very slow heat for 2 hours or until meat is falling apart and the sauce is thick. Taste to reseason for salt. Serve warm with boiled potatoes.

Blackberry Summer- a French Fool

I am a fool. A fool for summer, for preserving… for anything growing within reach of the Kitchen-at-Camont. When walking Bacon down the towpath first thing on these French summer mornings or passing the Garden Shed on the way to feed the Flock, I have been counting the days to ripeness, sampling the wares for sweetness and getting ready to pounce on both wild and cultivated blackberries, as soon as there was enough to harvest.

A plate full was not enough to bother for confiture even with the extra raspberries. So in my usual Gasconne fashion, I turned to drink. Armagnac, specifically.

The ingredients on the bottle of artisan creme de mure sauvage calls for sugar and eau-de-vie. Nothing more. This is the simple life at its best! So I tipped the berries into a canning jar, added a generous scoop of white sugar, and covered the dark brooding berries with a bottle of eau-de-vie (simple clear brandy) and the remains of a favored bottle of Delord armagnac.  Cover and seal. Give a few quick shakes to break up the berries and melt the sugar. Eh voila! Now wait a month- the necessary patience until I taste test the brew.  Filter the fruit and seed out and decant the sweet dark summer liquor into a fancy bottle. Make a label. Write “Summer Fool ’09″

Preserving. These are the summer ways to remember a cool morning spent picking berries and listening to the quiet clucking of a new mother teaching her chicks to hunt and peck for a few stray ripe berries that drape across the chicken wire. This winter, after cursing the wet winter chores of mucking out the coop, I’ll remember summer ’09 better with a glass of Fool in hand.

‘Summer-under-Glass’ is a part of our

NEW  ‘Camp Camont’ programs at the Kitchen-at-Camont.