a MAGYC PIE...

There are pies and there are PIES.

There is magic and there is MAGYC.

And yes, this is a bonafide, real, authentic MAGYC PIE.

Over the years, I have dabbled in savoury pies as the visual and gustatory homage to Monsieur Monet’s painted pies here, here and here, of course!

But this week as Fran and Ian from Melbourne, and Hilary from Sonoma, and Matt from Welbeck descend on the Chapolard home for lunch, we’ll be bringing this fat MAGYC PIE with us.  MAGYC stands for Mastering the Art of Gascon Cooking (with a nod to Julie Child’s masterful book). What’s in this golden-crusted succulent pie? Read on…

This MAGYC week of Gascon food is a 4-day winter exploration from Farm to Market to Kitchen. We swooped into Lavardac market on Wednesday and filled our baskets with: a guinea hen or pintade, a stewing hen, 2 demoiselles or duck carcasses some pork sausage, fresh foie gras, thinly sliced jambon de campagne and enough vegetables to make a rich stock- carrots, onion, celery, leeks, garlic, bay, thyme.

Less a recipe than a blueprint- we built the pie like this:

• boned the pintade then reserved the breasts and thighs.
• make a rich and short bouillon with the carcasses of the duck, pintade and the stewing hen.
• seasoned the 500 gr of pork sausage meat and pintade & chicken liver with onion, salt and pepper.
• deveined the foie gras

special delivery

Back to school clothes. Blustery bright weather. A turn in the garden.

Arriving this week  with a suitcase of sweater/jumpers for the beginning of a year of practical butchery & charcuterie classes at the School of Artisan Food was like taking a peek into the past. Nervous/excited students joined nervous/excited teachers, all eager to get their hands into the daily work that will occupy them for the next 10 months. Back to school. Autumn. A new year begins.

As a cook, I look to the garden to help reset my calendar, to reboot my year so that when October & November arrive, I am ready for the longer nights, the colder days, and the work at hand. when I asked a student who was heading over to the farm shop to pick up some vegetables for me for dinner (we already had the makings of a pork tenderloin from today’s class), they arrived fresh on the stalk… by special delivery.

It didn’t take long for a bike load of Brussel sprouts to become a tasty companion to our freshly butchered pork. Recipe? Just half a sliced onion and the sprouts sauteed in some Devon butter and olive oil with fresh thyme, salt and pepper finished with a squeeze of lime.

With the school year starting like this, I look forward to more velo-driven rewards from Welbeck’s Farmshop to accompany the talented Mr. Viv Harvey’s teaching results…

Two tartes.

One with goat’s cheese; one without.

A gathering of fruit from Camont- half a dozen last figs, handful of grapes from the arbor, several walnuts fresh from the trees.

A buttery crust bound with an egg cradles a base of fresh goat’s cheese, egg and sugar; or just half a jar of quince/orange preserves.

Popped in a hot oven 200′C/425′F for 25 minutes. Don’t forget a sprinkle of sugar across the top. Perfect for a sunny fall lunch.

This is another version of the tarte that Mrs. Wheelbarrow wrote about here. It’s that time of season here.

Result: One happy Camp Cassoulet Camper at Camont!

]]> http://kitchen-at-camont.com/2011/10/10/harvest-tarte-in-few-words/feed/ 2 http://kitchen-at-camont.com/2011/08/27/hurricane-soup-dont-forget-your-duck-confit/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=hurricane-soup-dont-forget-your-duck-confit http://kitchen-at-camont.com/2011/08/27/hurricane-soup-dont-forget-your-duck-confit/#comments Sat, 27 Aug 2011 07:18:51 +0000 Kate Hill http://kitchen-at-camont.com/?p=5860

I was just going to call this Workday Soup- a 20-minute solution to feeding a small crew at Camont. I’ve been working on my homework for SAF  (actually, my homework will be your homework, you lucky Butchery & Charcuterie students who begin next month!). I hate to get interrupted when working on tables and calendars. When the Noon siren blew from the nearby village spire, I just started shouting cooking advice into the kitchen. Cut up some potatoes! Chop up that Ventreche into lardons! Throw it in a pan with the duck fat!

Twenty minutes or so later, the potatoes were creamy and tender, the duck fat broth was golden rich, and a jar containing an solitary confited duck breast was popped in a pan to warm through, crisp up and garnish the steamy thyme and bay infused broth. Eh Voila!

This is the sort of nourishing and soothing meal that might help in a hurricane ravaged moment- grab a sack of potatoes, a jar of duck confit and your sterno stove. To all my dear friends and family in Irene’s path, I dub this soup for you!

ps- don’t have any duck confit in the larder? I still have one place open on the October 3 Confit Course -http://kitchen-at-camont.com/programs/cookery/dig-in/cassoulet-confit-coq-au-vin/.

Last night, as the kitchen crew began to lose control between increasingly large portions of truffle-related wonders, Jack uttered a solitary phrase as I suggested we taste the fruits of our week’s labors- a recreation of a historic hunting-inspired terrine favored by Henri IVth.

“Let’s taste Kate’s small terrine of joy”.

The Small Terrine of Joy- henceforward referred to simply as STJ- had been resting on the counter perfuming the air above and around that corner of the kitchen, wafting up the stairs and sneaking under the pigeonnier’s chambres with a heady hint of forest and field elevated to a sublime taste of… game, pork,and veal bound by truffleness.

Less a recipe than a celebration of special ingredients, bound by traditional respect for lean and fat, natural flavor and added seasoning, we began with an idea and ended up with delicious mouthful of succulent savory textures that played between toothsome and tender as foie gras melted onto truffles under a lean strip of marinated pheasant.

This is a lesson in cooking, as we let the ingredients dictate how we treat them, slow or high heat, moist, covered or browning. This is not a recipe of proportions or weights; this is an afternoon of friendship and inspiration manifested at the table and on our plates in the Kitchen-at-Camont. For Tim Clinch’s lovely take on this: http://timclinchphotography.tumblr.com/post/3561477421/the-small-terrine-of-joy-actually-a-terrine

It’s easy. Be not afraid of crust. It will be delicious and your friends will love you and your tartes

Tart Dough
1 1/2 cups (210 g) flour
4  ounces (125 g) unsalted butter straight from the refrigerator. Cut into cubes
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 large egg
2-3 tablespoons cold water as needed.

Preheat the oven to 425ºF (220ºC). The oven should be very hot to seize the pastry to hold its shape.
1. Make the dough by mixing the flour and salt in a bowl. Add the butter cubes and use your hands to break in the butter by smashing the butter with your fingers into the flour. Continue until the mixture has a crumbly, cornmeal-like texture.
2. Mix the egg with 1 tablespoon of the water. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and add the beaten egg mixture, stirring the mixture until the dough holds together. If it’s not coming together easily, add additional water.
3. Gather the dough into a ball and roll the dough on a lightly floured surface, adding additional flour only as necessary to keep the dough from sticking to the counter.
4. Once the dough is large enough so that it will cover the bottom of the pan and go up the sides, roll the dough around the rolling pin then unroll it over the tart pan. Prick the bottom of the pastry with your fingertips a few times, pressing in to make indentations. Who needs a fork?

You can then brush the pastry base with an egg, sprinkle with sugar or just fill and bake. How long? Depending on the filling about 25-35 minutes.

For more delicious pie crusts… try my Pie Sister Kate McDermott’s perfect All-American Flaky Apple Pie

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!

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…

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.

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.