Year: 2010

Cooking with Comté

Posted on by Pat
If you've ever eaten a croque monsieur in a cafe anywhere in France (my absolute favorite is served at the News Cafe in Paris at 78 rue d'Assas across from Jardin du Luxembourg), chances are you've eaten Comté cheese. The firm and nutty Comté is the largest selling hard cheese in France. I'd always figured that only a big factory could turn out enough Comté to satisfy the appetites of the fromage-loving French, but it turns out that Comté is still made pretty much the same way that it's been made for about a thousand years--that is, small-scale and personal. And the whole process is open to the public: from brown-and-white Montbéliarde cows grazing in buttercup-laden meadows, to milk delivery and early morning cheese-making in...Read More

A very Fortnum Christmas to you

Posted on by David
Since business took me to St. James's Street in London (mostly to visit the iconic wine shop of Berry Bros. & Rudd, which has been there since 1698), there was no way I could miss visiting Fortnum & Mason (181 Piccadilly; tel: 0845.602.5694; www.fortnumandmason.com), practically around the corner. I could tell that Christmas was coming when I met chocolatier David Burns (above) just inside the front door, handing out samples of his chocolates. (The lavendar English cream that he gave me was as divine as I'd expected.) Burns and his wife Keely operate the small firm that has supplied handmade chocolates to F&M since the 1920s. By the first week of October, my favorite London purveyor of gourmet goodies had transformed its first floor into...Read More

Say cheese in Montreal

Posted on by Pat and David
The graffito above pretty much says it all. Montrealers love their cheese. We've been in Montreal for most of the last month doing the research for Food Lovers' Guide to Montreal, to be published next spring from Globe Pequot Press. (See our first volume in the series, Food Lovers' Guide to Massachusetts, under the tab ''Some Books.'') We have to admit that we are staggered by the explosion in artisanal cheese-making in Quebec. La Belle Province is beginning to rival La France when it comes to great fromage. Many of Quebec's best cheeses are made from raw milk, but thanks to NAFTA, all Quebec cheeses are allowed into the United States, even though similar cheeses from France might be banned. Gilles Jourdenais, owner of La...Read More

It’s saffron harvest time!

Posted on by Pat and David
Growing saffron crocuses always seemed like a rather romantic undertaking--until we visited Consuegra, Spain during the harvest season. The dry plains of Castilla La Mancha, about 90 miles south of Madrid, are perhaps best known as the stomping grounds of the befuddled knight Don Quixote. But farmers in the region grow about two-thirds of the world's culinary saffron. It's also the best on the market (just ask any Spaniard). The harvest season is usually the last three weeks in October and is capped by the Saffron Rose Harvest Festival (La Monda de la Rosa de Azafran) in Consuegra on the last full weekend of the month. We visited one year to take part in the festivities--and also got a lesson in the hard work that...Read More

A Cayman Islands version of a pepper pot

Posted on by Pat and David
[caption id="attachment_1149" align="alignleft" width="213" caption="Chef Dean Max"][/caption] As we were pondering how else to use our beautiful Cayman peppers, we were reminded that chef Dean Max is also a big fan. We met him last winter at an "Island Organic" presentation at the Cayman Cookout on Seven Mile Beach on Grand Cayman Island. When Max isn't presiding over the kitchens of his Miami seafood empire, he's often on Grand Cayman kicking back at the Brasserie, the restaurant he owns with King and Lisa Flowers. For him, one of the pleasures of cooking in the Caribbean is drawing inspiration from local cooks. "I always take the traditional thinking," he said. "We use their technique, but then we add things. Take chicken pepper pot soup. You're making...Read More

Deciphering the traditions for sofrito

Posted on by David
There must be as many recipes for sofrito as there are cooks in Puerto Rico, Cuba, Trinidad, Puerto Rico, and even Catalunya. But the mixture is to Latin cooking what the classic mirepoix of onions, carrots and celery is to French. It's the underlying mother flavor of the cuisines. When I asked around the garden, I got very different answers about ingredients. Jamaicans seemed to favor a lot of green sweet pepper, and some suggested ham. Some people add tomato, some don't. But everyone felt that the sweet ají dulce peppers were critical for an authentic sofrito. If they were not available, you could substitute an equal amount of chopped bell pepper. Some folks use only cilantro (or cilantrillo, as some call it), while others...Read More

Cayman peppers come to Cambridge

Posted on by David
Back in February I mentioned that our hankering for some of the flavors of the Cayman Islands had led me to introduce the amazing Cayman sweet pepper to the cooler climes of eastern Massachusetts, where I grow at Zone 6. (See Finding seeds for the taste of Cayman.) I started seed from Cayman and Florida sources on March 5 and transplanted seedlings to my community garden on May 5. Other than having richer (and more acidic) soil than they were used to, the plants did just fine. The honeybees loved them. But it quickly became obvious that even with a heavy yield of a dozen or more peppers per plant, the crop would be too small to squander on experiments making Cayman pepper jelly. I...Read More

Thank you, Liguria

Posted on by David
It's August and we are eating insalata caprese for lunch every day in a vain attempt to keep up with the tomatoes and basil from the garden. And we have the Ligurians to thank. On my first visit to Genoa and the Ligurian coast in September 2005, I had the superb luck of eating lunch with researchers at the agricultural experiment station in Albenga, just west of Genoa. In true Italian style, our "casual" lunch consisted of several dishes in rapid succession, all of them featuring plants that the experiment station grows. That's where I met my first Costuluto Genovese and Cuor di Bue Ligure tomatoes. The latter is a large pear-shaped tomato that the experiment station perfected in the 1950s from an heirloom variety...Read More

Sweet and tart — the Shaker take on lemon pie

Posted on by Pat
The Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, is one of my favorite Shaker sites to visit. Although it hasn't been a working Shaker community for decades, it's the largest preserved Shaker village in the country. Moreover, it is the only one that offers both overnight lodging and a good restaurant. I wrote about it last week in the Boston Globe's Food section in a piece called "A menu that reflects Shaker simplicity." The article deals with the new chef Patrick Kelly's "Seed to Table" program. His menus in the restaurant feature food from his kitchen garden and from farms in the adjacent bluegrass country near Lexington. Not only is the program in keeping with the locavore trends in contemporary dining, it also echoes the Shaker...Read More

Burgundy eggs in red wine sauce

Posted on by Pat
Of all the wonderful food in Burgundy, I have a special soft spot for the bistro staple known as oeufs en meurette. The dish is hearty and warming on a cool autumn night and it is a classic in the region. Maybe I like it so much because sauce meurette is very similar to the sauce in coq au vin. Despite its rich flavors, French cooks usually pair meurette with mildly flavored proteins, like poached eggs or a poached fish. Restaurants in Burgundy often feature this dish as a first course (one egg per person) because everything but the eggs can be prepared ahead and re-heated, making it a quick dish to assemble. POACHED EGGS IN RED WINE SAUCE Most of the ingredients for this...Read More