It’s All About the Garlic {CtBF}
Hearty salads for dinner are a house favorite. I don’t usually follow a recipe, using the bits and pieces leftover in the refrigerator, but for this week’s recipe for Cook the Book Fridays, a French bistro classic, I followed the rules.
Salade Lyonnaise is bacon-and-eggs in salad form with a heavy dose of garlic thrown in. There are many components, but many of them can be prepared ahead, making it easy to pull together for a weeknight meal.
The base of the salad is frisée, AKA curly endive. At first I couldn’t find any, just green heads labelled “chicory” which resembled a coarser form of frisée. Doing a Google search in the market, I learned that the chicory I found along with frisée and escarole are all in the same botanical genus, but curly endive and escarole are more closely related, being the same species, Cichorium endivia, with different leafing habits: one with lacy leaves and the other broad leaves. I decided to go with the escarole, but then came across curly endive in another section of the store. In the end, I bought both and made the salad with a mix of the two.
My favorite part of the salad was the garlicky croutons. A crushed clove of garlic is cooked in a generous amount of olive oil to flavor it. Then the bread cubes are sautéed in the resulting garlic oil until they are golden brown and fragrant. I often make croutons to have on hand for Caesar salads, but compared to these croutons, I’d have to dub my usual technique as spartan croutons because they are simply cubes of bread toasted in the oven with no oil or seasoning.
Boiled baby potatoes, bacon, and dressing round out the ingredients that can be prepared ahead.
When it’s time for dinner, the salad can be assembled: endive, sliced potatoes, bacon, croutons, and that garlicky dressing. In the meantime, it’s time to poach the eggs. At my house, that’s Howard’s job because he’s an expert, making dinner is a team effort. I toss the salad and fill individual salad bowls so that they’re ready to be topped with the eggs after they are cooked and dried off.
We had it two nights in a row, adding some leftover grilled asparagus for the encore appearance. The final verdict was two thumbs up. We both really enjoyed this one. You should try it too.
You can find the recipe on page 99 of David Lebovitz’s My Paris Kitchen. My friends from Cook the Book Fridays review the recipe here.
Enjoy! Bon Appetit!
An Evening Pick-Me-Up {CtBF}
Crème brûlée is one of my favorite desserts to order in a restaurant. I find the contrast between the creamy custard and the melted sugar crust a pleasing way to end a meal. The only other time I’ve made crème brûlée at home was about 5 years ago for French Fridays with Dorie. When this week’s recipe challenge for Cook the Book Fridays was another version of crème brûlée, this time infused with coffee flavors, I was ready to try it again.
The custard is relatively easy to put together. The milk, cream and sugar are warmed together, then whisked into egg yolks. The mixture is flavored with instant espresso powder and coffee-flavored liqueur. I used an ANCIENT bottle of Tia Maria that my mother gave me when she cleaned out her liquor cabinet over 30 years ago. Alcohol must be quite the preservative because I tasted it first and it still tasted like coffee liqueur.
You don’t even have to thicken it on the stovetop, worrying about clumping or burning. Crème brûlée is gently cooked in a water bath in the oven until set. Mine took almost an hour to get to that point, possibly because I used small ramekins instead of lower gratin dishes, but I wasn’t in any hurry.
The custards wait in the refrigerator until it’s time for dessert. I sprinkled a heavy layer of sugar on top of each bowl, then I put Howard in charge of the mini-blowtorch. He seemed to enjoy melting the sugar until it was slightly golden. After all that bubbling, it’s surprising how quickly the topping hardens.
After my first experience, I think one reason this elegant yet easy treat didn’t make it into my repertoire is that Howard insisted this wasn’t a dessert he enjoyed. With this latest version, I convinced him that it was like coffee ice cream, which he does like. He was a sport and tried it. I think he surprised himself when he liked it. I filled 6 ramekins, so we shared the leftovers with my in-laws when they visited this weekend. They liked coffee crème brûlée too! Maybe we will be making this again, at least the coffee version.
I used the egg whites to make this impressive (and more difficult) dessert, an almond macaroon torte with chocolate frosting from Smitten Kitchen.
If you’d like to give coffee crème brûlée a try, you can find the recipe here on Leite’s Culinaria or on page 253 in David Lebovitz’s My Paris Kitchen. To see how the other bloggers from Cook the Book Fridays made out, follow the links to their results here.
A Plateful of Happiness 