Our day started on Goats, moved into Cheese- chèvre, of course, and then finished on Cake. Goat’s Cheese Cake.

I welcomed @SabinaCuisina into the Gascon Kitchen a short week ago, fresh from midterms at her culinary institute and ready for a Gascon Spring Break. (thanks to hubby TP!) Sabina was not the first person in the Gascon Kitchen that lives and breathes cheese- goats, sheep or cow! But she is the first person to come who actually tends and milks goats and makes chèvre working with Liz and Peter Mulholland at the lovely Valley View Farms in Topsfield MA. So  I laid out a week for Sabina that was cheese based, with a few Gascon Kitchen extras thrown in. (P.S. check our program page for more info.) What we ended with was a wonderful experiment in making one of my favorite bought pastries and a successful first attempt at making a goat cheese cake called a tourteau.

These are the goats who make the milk,

that Sabine cares for,

that makes Phillipe  uses to make the cheese,

that he sells at the Agen Market,

and we buy to bring home wrapped in pure white paper…

Oops, what that round black ball? Le Marquis Noir de Jahan?

Otherwise known as a Tourteau Fromagé.

The Tourteau Fromagé is a specialty cake of Poitou-Charente region of Southwest France. Found usually in cheese shops, I developed a weakness for the finely textured, barely sweet cake.  Like an Angel Food Cake married to a N.Y. Cheesecake. After just one bite Sabina also fell for the sweet trap and we decided to test the recipe with some of the fresh goat cheese from Phillipe.

Local is as local does. And here in Gascony, you can tell that even our flour, that I buy in one kilo sacks at Pierre’s Boulangerie is a local product. Wearing the Musketeers habit, this is the classic ‘type 55′ all purpose flour used for most baking. EXTREME warning: The extraordinary eggs from my hens account for the extreme yellow color of the interior of the cake just as the extra-high temperature of the oven produces the traditional blackened crust. The contrast of soft tender cake and charcoaled top crust is part of the tourteaux charm. We produced three cakes from the following recipe that we made in small very deep mini-cassoles each holding about 12fl oz or 300ml. So inspired by the courage of the Cadets of Gascony- all for one and one tourteau for all!

Tourteau de Chèvre or a goat.cheese.cake

Preheat oven to 380’C or 530’F.  Yes. HOT! Very HOT!

For the pastry I sued a simple butter short crust.

• 100 gr butter- unsalted
• 200 gr flour- all purpose unbleached
• Salt- pinch
• 1 egg
• Water- as needed

Cut butter into flour and salt with fingertips. Add egg and water. Gather pastry crust into ball. Divide into three. Roll out each third, place into deep rounded molds. Trim. Prick.

Batter:

• 250 gr fresh goats cheese (after draining)
• 175 gr white sugar (125gr for yolks- 50gr for whites)
• 50 ml milk (about a tablespoon)
• 6 eggs, separated
• 60 gr flour
• Splash of vanilla/rum/Armagnac

1. Pass goat cheese through a food mill or ricer.
2. Beat in 125 gr sugar, milk and flour. (I used a whisk.)
3. Whisk egg whites with 50 gr sugar until stiff peaks. (we use a copper bowl and hand whisk in the Gascon Kitchen.)
4. Fold in a large spoonful of whites into the cheese/yolk mixture. Stir well.
5. Fold remaining whites into cheese/yolk batter.
6. Pour into unbaked pastry shells.
7. Place into HOT oven (280’C/530’F) for 10 minutes. The tops will puff up round and start to brown and blacken immediately. Don’t panic!
8. Then turn oven down to 220′C or 425′F for 40 minutes. remove from oven and let cool.

I used 3 small cassoulet bowls holding about 300ml/12oz each. this is what they look like baking. The forward one we slid in 4 minutes after the first two, and it was indeed underdone. but delicious.

The tops popped up while baking but resettled once they were removed from the oven. The pastry adheres to the batter and shrinks away from the sides making it easy to remove from the glazed bowls. The finished cake has a light and rich texture, akin to a rich golden angel food cake, barely sweet and scented of fresh cheese. Although commercially made with fresh cow’s cheese, the goat’s cheese tang makes a delicious difference. When in France make sure to try one from a fromager or make your own version at home. I am making mini ones this weekend for a large Easter gathering. Another golden eggy wonder from the Gascon Kitchen’s healthy hens. Merci to Sabina, TP, Phillipe and sabine and her goats

When I bought my first chickens at the Agen Market 18 months ago, it was an experiment in reclaiming the rural roots of Camont, a historic 18th-century Gascon farmhouse on two-and-a-half acres of fertile Garonne River Valley land.  I have called Camont home base for over 20 years. I’d come and go as the work and pleasure ed me, sometimes floating away on the big Barge for chartering for months then returning again for months of summer landlocked living. As my European Culinary Adventures tours took me and my guests far afield to taste other gastronomic destinations- Sicily, Tuscany, Burgundy, Provence, Champagne, and Spain, I would eagerly return to my Gascon Kitchen to reclaim my own cuisine and the local abundance of the surrounding Gascon countryside.

Eventually, the Captain in me swapped places with the Cook and Gardener in me and I moored the Julia Hoyt to the garden gate as a stationary souvenir of the adventures that had led me all over Europe at 5 miles an hour.  ‘What next?’ I mused. What could be as much fun, interesting, and unpredictable as the last 20 years afloat?  I looked around this fragrant memory of a farm and realized that it was simply making food that kept my interest. Not just cooking, teaching and writing about it ‘cuisine’, but growing, planting and now, tending the food we eat at Camont’s Gascon Kitchen.

Although I have tended a couple of vegetable and herb gardens for many years now, it was the addition of food animals (we don’t count Bacon the big dog, or Boudin the barn cat in this group) that flipped me from being a voyeuristic wannabee food producer, to re-establishing Camont’s roots as the sort of scrappy self-sufficient family enterprise that it was for nearly 300 years.   Starting with just 3 hens and a rooster, we soon become a happy family of a dozen hens, a very busy and proud rooster, 4 Rouen Clair ducks and a drake and the soon to arrive pair of lambs in the newly fenced pasture. Like many of you urban farmer neophytes, I, too, have been lured by the golden treasury of fresh eggs and wholesome meat as well as our own wonderful organic vegetables and fruit.  Quite frankly, and  in the words of an favorite ex-husband,  I could buy all of this good food from my near neighbors and for little money. What he didn’t get, and I was slow to explain, was the wily and invasive learning that takes place and the profound understanding that comes with watching something grow from seed or root or egg. Nourishing at many levels, the growing of food, even the most modest windowsill garden, teaches us of life from the first germ to sprout to the tossing of greens with a good vinaigrette for a summer salad. Nothing gets taken for granted again. As Dana McMahan found out on a recent writer’s residency, not one brussel sprout goes to waste. So when the super productive feathered working girls are churning out 8-10 eggs a day, here is what we do.

Omelette Catalane

So why did I get those chickens? To help teach my students, those brave and spunky cooks who make their way through the internet jungle to find this site, then brave the electronic media to write an email, then screw up the courage to buy a ticket, make a commitment and fly to a country that insists that you pay attention to what you eat every day, three times a day! It is grueling for many, a few wimp out along the way, but most revel in the French way of tasting, really tasting what this country, that could be described as a 260,000 square mile garden and the most visited country in the world (82 million people every year!), produces. Food. Very Good Food. It all starts with an egg.

Fortunately, I am surrounded by experts: farm families, housewives who still buy a dozen chickens to kill, pluck and cook, and of course, weekly markets full of artisan producers who grow and sell their food ly to you. Now we pass this hands-on learning to working interns, apprentice students and creative residents all through the year here at these varied and individualized programs.

The chicken experiment has been a success. Now the foundation of the Gascon Kitchen basse–cour or barnyard, students at the Gascon Kitchen at Camont learn that the investment in caring for the critters is reaped on their plates. The proof is in our golden yolked pudding… or in this case our Catalan Tortilla or Omelette Catalan.

BASIX Catalan Omelette made with fresh Spinach

1. After washing fresh spinach until grit-free, place wet leaves in saute pan, cover and wilt over high heat. About 3 to 5 minutes.
2. Break a dozen fresh eggs into a large bowl. whisk.
3. Sauté garlic and hot pepper in a half of cup of olive oil. remove when pieces when golden.
4. Soften one small sliced onion in the oil. do not brown. Remove from oil, leaving the now intensely perfumed oil in the pan.
5. Add wilted spinach and onions to the beaten eggs. Add salt, pepper and nutmeg. stir well.
6. Pour egg and spinach mixture into the hot pan and cook gently about 10 minutes. turn heat down until the mixture sets. then using a platter of pan lid, flip the omelet over and continue cooking on other side. Remove and serve warm or at room temperature as tapas.

More great photos by erika hildegarde johnson

My Gascon neighbors call Spring- le saison d’amour the season of love. This morning, this too cold February morning and Valentine’s Day, I found my sweetheart present on the ground outside the chicken coop. Not one, but TWO fat white translucent-shelled duck eggs and the Spring promise of Easter ducklings and next Fall’s Duckfest here at Camont.

When I was a girl, my mother had a funny way of nagging us to clean our rooms. She called mine- The Lazy ‘K’  Ranch and warned me that I would need a maid when I grew up. (Thanks Mom for the tip!). But being lazy in the kitchen can be a good thing. One day… 20 years after I started out on this European Culinary Adventure, I understood that the real art in being Lazy with a capital ‘K’ was knowing when a recipe worked effortlessly, elegantly and easily. I call these the Gascon Kitchen Basix- the recipes I cook and teach everyday, year-round at Camont. So know when you see the ‘Basix’  key, you can take a page from my ‘Running the Lazy ‘K” Ranch’ workbook and whip up a French Supper for friends …or even votre amant.

Ducks are lazy, too. At the beginning of laying their clutch, they drop their eggs wherever they are sleeping. They lay mostly at night. I can imagine they hate to move when nature calls to the nice secure sheltered nest pen we built last year. However, their feathered neighbors, eleven productive hens and a busy rooster- Henri, conveniently lay our daily gift in one tidy pile in the shelter of the blue coop. So day in and day, even when it’s not Valentine’s Day, we harvest a basket of extraordinarily fresh, deep yellow-yolked, naturally organic hen’s eggs. Eggs. French eggs. My Gascon deep yellow yolked French eggs from Camont’s happy chickens. This is where the most basic of Basix recipes start.

‘Basix’ are the simple recipes I learned from French housewives and farm neighbors.

Basix: good everyday dishes that we live on.

Basix: simple meals for family and friends.

Basix: fast food from fresh ingredients.

B A S I X . E G G S

In fact, every one of these Basix dishes stars just one basic ingredient and today it is all about the E G G. Enjoy this sweet breath of a Sunday omelet with your sweetheart or just for yourself! Inspired by Bonnie Walsh’s dad, who made Souffle-ed Omelets whenever we had a sleepover, I teach these golden clouds at Camont when students wake on Sunday Morning. The first grumbles of beating the whites by hand with whisk and copper bowl, turn to amazed admiration for the marshmallow-soft stiff peaks. Mr. Walsh used to bake them in shallow pie pans; I use a deeper terracotta dish and cook them a bit longer. Eh Voila! my own Valentine’s kiss to you.

BASIX Omelette Sucrée Souflée- serves 4

Heat oven to 400′F or 200′C.  Place a tablespoon of butter in a pie pan or oven proof clay dish. Place in hot oven until the butter melts. In the meantime make your omelet.

1. Take 6 very fresh eggs. Separate whites from yolks into 2 clean bowls.Yes, those yolks are really that color! happy chickens.
2. Whisk 3 Tablespoons sugar into yolks. Whisk until sugar is dissolved and yolks are ribbony.
3. Whisk egg whites in copper bowl. (Suck your stomache in when whisking for a bonus workout.)
4. Whisk eggs until the form a strong peak but not too dry.
5. Mix a large spoon full of whipped whites into the egg yolks then pour yolks onto whites.
6. Fold the whites into the yolks. Gently. A few ribbons of white in the gold is fine.

Pour eggs into the hot pan and place into the hot oven. Bake for 20-25 minutes until set. My finger-deep omelette took closer to 30 minutes. A thinner one might take just 15 min. Keep an eye on the oven! We served this melt in your mouth Sunday breakfast with some hot compote des pommes (applesauce) and marmalade covered toast. Perfect.

All these BASIX Eggy pix by http://www.erikajohnsonphoto.com/ Merci!

Created by Julia Leach, 8-week stagiere at the Kitchen-at-Camont.

Fall ’09.

]]> http://kitchen-at-camont.com/2009/10/26/bon-jour-les-poulets/feed/ 1 http://kitchen-at-camont.com/2009/10/25/sunday-grasse-matinee-hatching-ideas/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sunday-grasse-matinee-hatching-ideas http://kitchen-at-camont.com/2009/10/25/sunday-grasse-matinee-hatching-ideas/#comments Sun, 25 Oct 2009 14:33:27 +0000 Kate Hill http://kitchen-at-camont.com/?p=970

I love it when I feel I am in the middle of something. It doesn’t happen often being a bit of a “living on the edge” sort of person- in all senses. But when it does, I feel that delicious “a-ha!” moment welling up out of my back brain and jumping out of my mouth onto The Keyboard.

• A-ha! Locavorism is my way of being a lazy bum- what’s growing outside the door? dandelions? rosemary? rosehips?
• A-ha! Organic Gardening is also wonderfully lazy, no schedules to follow for spraying or bottles of poison to sort out by use by date.
• A-ha! Canning & Preserving in small batches is fast and easy. 4 jars of quince here, 5 jars of salsa there; faster than going to the supermarket.
• A-ha! Butchering & Charcuterie making on the farm with artisan French butchers is part of the yearly cycle here.
• a-ha! Farm-to-table does work when you live surrounded by fertile fields in a wealth agriculturally based society. “France” in a word.
• A-ha! Urban farming works as long as you have Wi-Fi and can Google “mysterious chicken diseases”.
• A-ha! The Back-to-the-Land movement I joined in the 70′s on Lopez Island, WA never went away, it just got better music.

So when the I see this big kahuna wave swelling around me,  I’ve been sitting on my long French board for about 20 years, it makes me want to start paddling faster and faster. Catch that wave now! And at last, I can be the #1 Surfer French Farm Queen-Dudette in town.

This week’s wave is all over the web on blogs and news sites. Kim Severson writes an article at the NYT  about  some of the of the problems people are having raising chickens in an urban environment. And today, Alex Williams writes about the new “do-it-yourself butchery” taking place around the country in shops, cooking schools and well as bars. Like preaching to the choir, I want to join in and shout Amen! or Hallelujah! After all, I learn by doing, too. And while I want to encourage and applaud these Good Food neophytes, I want to bang them on the head, too.

Like parents that think Easter chicks are cute- for a week, I imagine those chickens abandoned by someone who found out that a living breathing animal eats, poops and needs attention just like we do.  I think about the wasted meat not cooked from that lovingly raised porker by someone whose stomach was turned by the smell of too much raw meat or the serial killer smell of fresh blood. I know some of that good meat will end up in the garbage uncooked. I know what happens not just because I see it when fresh students and interns show up in France all starry-eyed or because I have years of experience of sheltering the delicate Gourmet-reading gourmand from knowing too ‘much ado about foie gras’, or the ‘truth behind truffles’.   I know what happens because I, too, have been there. And I am willing to admit it.

I’ve learned a lot these two decades of eating France. Yet, I still have a lot to learn.  About Charcuterie- did you know that the age of the pig (minimum 12 months) affects the acid level produced in the meat muscle and thus affecting the quality and curing of the jambons, saucissons and chorizo?  I didn’t either until this summer when Camas D., Jonathon K. and I sat down at teh lunch table with the Brothers Chapolard for a Q&A about their pig farm and artisan charcuterie operation.  About Chickens- after a year with my own layers  (11 hens- 1 rooster) and losing a couple to neighbor dogs (including Bacon the teenage gangsta pack member),  I am soooo glad I have chicken-raising neighbors who coached me through my first crisis (one too many rooster) and told JK and me exactly where to stick the knife. The Coq au Vin was as good as any I have cooked and eaten.

Interested to learn more? Not on the web but live and in person with people who love their food and make it too. It’s easy this winter. Come to France (air fares are looking good, children!) this November (read about it here) or meet me in the North West this New Year 2010 as  I pack my Gascon bags with lots of ideas and tons of experience on making cassoulet, rendering duck fat, confit and natural foie gras with Neal Foley on his Podchef Island and Robert Reynolds at his wonderful Chef’s Studio in Portland.

Now about that wave… let’s keep it swelling. There are a lot of delicious rides ahead.

A totem tribute to some of my busy chickens working up the ‘feathered orchard’

and a few favorite eggs shots by fellow bon vivant Tim Clinch.

Seems like everyone I spoke or twittered to today had something to say about eggs. Oh, these super fresh, straight from the hen house, goldenyolkedsilkywhite French EGGS!! this morning I splashed a tsp of sunflower oil in the pan, grated half a zucchini, a small chunk of cheese, some dried breadcrumbs and then after I flipped the whole thing, I dropped an egg on top and folded it over. A sort of vegetable omelet stuffed with an egg.

More good things to do with eggs here in the archives with Gascon Sabayon recipe .

Slow Cooks’ Curry Egg breakfast here. (ps Ed, even at those prices, eggs are still a bargain!)