Pissaladière

It's Summer again! Well, technically,  we are still a few weeks away from Summer but as I have come to realize "Summer time" is a very cultural theme.  For French people, l'été really means July and August - the time of year when everyone gets some time off. June is when everyone starts to think about their Summer vacations ; this is why I really like going to France in June. Days are really long, Parisians are starting to slow down, eating outside ,and easing into their Summer days....
In the U.S., Summer officially starts at the end of May with Memorial Day weekend and finishes early September with Labor Day. This is when plane tickets prices soar; this is when everyone starts barbecuing or, if in Philadelphia, talking about their weekend at the Jersey Shore....

So, it's Summer again in the U.S. and time to entertain outside. Since we only live in a two-bedroom apartment in Philadelphia, we can not entertain a lot during the cold months of Fall/Winter/early Spring.We are fortunate, though, to have a large roof top in our apartment building, which we use as an extra room everytime it's hot enough to sit outside.  This varies a lot -  we experienced a very hot Winter, which made it possible to eat outside in February! Most generally, we really start opening up the terrasse at the end of April. This spare open space with full view of the Benjamin Bridge enables us to host a few parties during the warm days of Summer in Philadelphia...

Since apéritif is one of my favorite meals, we tend to organize large "apéros" on our roof top. This makes it easy to organize and host: no back-and-forth with the kitchen downstairs : the food is already out. Everybody can help themselves with what they like (or want to try).... It's just a nice way to chill out and enjoy the company of friends.

Among all the things we make are the usual suspects : Guacamole, Hummus, white beans and fennel dip, salsa and chips, nuts, cake aux olives et au jambon, charcuterie and cheese, etc.  This year, I made a few variations of pissaladières. Pissaladières are from the South of France and traditionally involve caramelized onions, black olives, anchovies on bread dough. Since I know few people  who like anchovies, I tend not to make them with anchovies, especially when a lot of children are coming over. This year, I had extra feta cheese so I added feta instead of anchovies since we were having more than 12 kids over with their parents. I don't bother making my own dough anymore (my sourdough starter died a while ago) so I just purchase pizza dough at the local supermarket.
Really easy to make - and as usual, something you can improvise around to adapt to the palate of your guests. It's also very easy to bring Pissaladières to a Summer pique-nique or your next BBQ since it's officially in season!
Bon Appétit!

Ingrédients

• A ball of pizza dough
• Onions (more than you think you need - I use 3 large ones for one Pissaladière)
• Herbes de Provence
• Anchovies, black olives, feta cheese

• Pre-heat oven to 400F
• Lay out the dogue in a square pan
• Cook the onions in olive oil until translucide but not caramelized (although you could caramelize them)
• Add herbes de Provence, salt, pepper to taste
• Lay the onions on the dough
• Add Anchovies/black olives, etc.
• Bake in the oven for 25 minutes

La roulette russe: sauteed peppers

One of my favorite part of the late summer farmer's market are the small peppers that you saute in olive oil until they are fully cooked and eat with lemon juice and sea salt. My friends from California enjoy them pretty much all year long (sigh! heavy sigh since I just came back from a two-day business trip to the Bay Area....) but back East, it's just a seasonal treat....

Favorite peppers to serve that way are Padrón Peppers or the ones that we also find on the market (like the Bishop's Crown I got from Tom Culton Organics on the picture).   Unlike most peppers that are either sweet or really hot, you don't really know how hot a Padrón pepper is until you try them as only 10-25% of them are really hot...
Last year, we bought many Padrón peppers that were really not that hot... but this year, the farmer warned us that some of them were actually much spicier than usual. And sure they were!!

This is why we started calling it the "Roulette Russe" with our children when we eat these peppers... If you are lucky, the one you pick is not too hot; if you are unlucky, well, we have a nice slice of bread with butter ready for the unlucky eater! 

Despite a few really really hot ones, our children have been enjoying eating them. We serve them as an appetizer, or a side dish or even when we do our Friday evening aperitif....
Now if I could live in California... (re-sigh...)

Bon Appétit!

Smoked Salmon Dip

Our son has been diagnosed with foot & mouth disease. Not the one that can dissiminate cattles (my veterinary husband was fast to associate our son's symptoms to what he learnt in vet school a long time ago)... but the one that affects young children (syndrome pieds-mains-bouche et non pas la fièvre aphteuse for my French readers). And make them MI-SE-RA-BLE. Sooooooooo miserable...  And the rest of us at for the same token, even if we, fortunately, did not develop the symptoms (although suddenly, I feel like I have plenty of mouth sores!!)..
It has been such a long time since I had to wake up in the middle of the night more than once to attend a crying child! And feel powerless.....At least a few years ago, I knew what to do: feed, change a diaper, cuddle... and that was it! This time nothing seems to help... ....and apparently the symptoms might last up to one week...  One LOOOOOOONG week...

Forget about healthy diet at this stage... The only goal is to make our son drink fluids and eat some food... He was delighted to hear at the pediatrician's office that he could eat icecream. More than once a day. Even for breakfast!  Think: a child's dream-come-true...   but even icecream is hard for him to get down these days... And no, I did not offer Little Baby's Ice  pizza-flavor icecream... (yes, I know some people in Philadelphia are very creative; maybe too creative???) but maybe I should?

Kefir, hot chocolate, and homemade smoothies are his most favorite foods these days... So whatever makes him feed himself a little bit is welcome in his glass!! My home made soupe-aux-légumes did not make it past two teaspoons at lunch yesterday. Hopefully he'll feel better tomorrow to have a few more spoons... or I'll dilute it enough so that he can drink it with a straw!! No matter how willing I am to feed him Kefir yogurt and smoothies, he is like me who shivers from drinking too much cold liquid at once (no ice in my water. EVER). Here he is, drinking his Kefir with a straw (and every sip he swallows without crying makes he happy) but then, 5 minutes later, I see him shiver and soon heading to the bathroom. MI-SE-RA-BLE, I told you......  He feels so miserable that he does not even comment on the menu that we, meanwhile, eat. We do add Kefir and icecream on our menu (our daughter is delighted!)... but we still eat other real food as well! I can't wait for him to feel better. We actually started a list of dishes that he would want to have when he feels better. Think, his birthday is next week and he might have to pass on  his birthday cake! On his list are empanadas, galettes des rois, charlotte aux fruits rouge, bagels, moules-frites, fish with wild rice, corn on the cob, candies, fish fingers, pancakes, madeleines and viennoiseries (pains au chocolat, croissant, brioche, etc.) I told him that except for out-of-season corn on the cob and galette des rois, we'll that when he feels better. I get a smile when he thinks about it... So yes, once he feels better, I will take the time to make some of these dishes and remember to purchase the viennoiseries from school on Friday. But that's not until a few more miserable days. Pff...

Here is a dip that I served earlier this week to the three of us who could eat solid food. For Americans who love their bagels-and-lox-for-breakfast, it would feel like breakfast. For those of us who are not eating bagels for breakfast but rather for lunch, it would feel like a nice dip to serve before dinner or to go along with cocktail drinks. Unfortunately, not straw-friendly for our son at this stage. Bon Appétit!

Ingredients:

- 1 cup Greek yogurt or Labne (Lebanese cream-cheese style)

- A few ounces of smoked salmon, cut in small pieces

- 1/2 Cucumber (diced)

- Capers (to taste)

- Dill

- Olive oil

- Salt & pepper to taste

• Mix the greek yogurt/labne with the smoked salmon, cucumber, capers and dill.
• Add a one Tbs of Olive oil and salt & pepper to taste
• Serve with buckwheat mini-crepes, pita chips or crackers... or on bagels!

My Personal Comments

• I like it best with Labne but Greek yogurt makes it a little bit lighter. You could,  obviously use cream cheese but I personally don't like with cream cheese.
• If you don't have cucumber, you could use celery. The idea is to add something crunchy to the dip.
• If I don't find dill, I use fennel fronds

Fennel and White Beans Dip

Since our children have been away for their long vacation in France, I have not been cooking as much I  generally do (and nope, even though we are not on our regular schedule anymore, my husband has not been cooking more, with the exception of the occasional BBQ! Sans commentaire!) Added to the fact that Philadelphia has been experiencing temperatures in the 100F (more than 40C), the idea of eating a warm meal does not appeal to me. And just thinking about turning on the oven makes me sweat!
Since both my husband and I have been enjoying the change of rythm to.... work more (pathetic, I know!), dinners have been generally a large salade composée or a cold vegetable dish with a side of dip: guacamole, mango salsa, hummus, edamame spread, etc.  That, with a glass of red wine, on our roof terrasse... a little preview of our upcoming summer vacations in France!

Since we were getting beautiful fennel bulbs with amazing fronds at the farmers' market the other day, I was trying to figure out what to do with the fronds so not to have to waste them (living in a building, albeit with a roof terrasse, we don't compost.) I have used fronds the way I use dill (it's the same family): in a salad or to bake fish in the oven/on the BBQ. I tried to make a fronds pesto but my blender being too weak I never managed to reach a puree-like texture. I was therefore happy to find an article on fennel in the New York times and realized that I could actually use at least some of the fronds.
Fennel, like turnips, has a very different taste when you eat raw versus cooked. I like both but never really ate raw fennel until I started adding it to salads for crunchiness (instead of celery). I never grew up eating pieces of raw fennel just like that as an apperitivo (I went to two different Italian families that did that and told me it's very common in Italy)....but have been more and more prone to doing the same!  Why not, Americans offer raw broccoli to dip into ranch dressing after all. Why not fennel? Try it! It's actually delicious when dipped in this fennel-based recipe! Perferct for your summer entertaining!
Bon Appétit!

Ingredients:
- 1 small bulb of fennel with some fronds
- 1 small can of white beans (I generally use cannellini) - rinsed and drained
- 1 small garlic clove, chopped
- a few fennel seeds, crushed (optional)
- Juice and zest of one lemon
- 2 Tbs of Olive oil (or more)
- Salt and pepper to taste

• Cut the fennel in half. Reserve one half and a few fronds for serving and decoration
• Cut the other half and some fronds into small pieces and put into a blender
• Add the drained white beans, lemon zest and juice, garlic, salt, pepper, fennel seeds and olive oil. Blend until desired consitency.
• Adjust seasoning and put in the fridge for 30mn or until serving.
• Decorate with a few extra fronds.
• Serve with slices of the remaining fennel, other vegetables or pita chips.

Irresistibly Deadly Addictive Nuts Cocktail

Once upon a time, when I was back in France working for a large international pharmaceutical company (that was more than 10 years ago!), I was traveling a lot for my job. Since the company policy was to put its employees in business class for any travel longer than 3 hours, I had the opportunity to fly business class a few times when coming to the US. Back then (we are talking pre-9/11), airlines were still pampering their customers a little bit. Nothing like what our parents could have experienced back in the 1980s or even early 1990s... but still at least you felt that they did care about you. Note that I don't fly business class anymore.. so I would not be able to compare but I have experienced the difference in coach class (as I am sure some of you have too!). Sans commentaire!
On one of my business trips to the US, I was served an unforgettable nuts cocktail. Not the usual boring-too-salty peanuts... no, a real little dish of warm mix of fancy nuts! And since then, being nuts about nuts, I have been trying to find a recipe for nuts cocktail. I tried the one where you soak nuts in egg whites. I have tried some of the store-brand pre-mix... but none came close to the ones I had on that flight...   Then again, I am sure that if I were to taste that same nuts cocktail again today, I would not find them that good! This is why it's always dangerous to want to reproduce something you had once a long time ago and tasted soooo good to you! (Even more true when it comes to a dish that your husband grew up with (ie, that his mother or grand-mother made): unless HE makes it,  you are NEVER going to win!! )

I came up with this specific recipe because, one day, I had decided to purchase some caramelized pecans at a store to make a "healthy basket of American goodies" to offer to Europeans (because, yes, to me caramelized pecans are fully associated with American food)... to realize when reading the label (yes, I ALWAYS read the label!), that they were coming from....... Spain! How disappointing!!! Especially, when you know that the US produce more than 75% of the world Pecans (mostly in the Southern states of the US where there is even such an aread called "Pecans belt"!!) I obviously did not purchase these pecans for my friends. It just gave me the idea to try to make my own instead!
Since I don't like things too sweet and that I had this nostalgy of that 2000-era nuts cocktail in mind, I decided to do something both sweet & savory. The result?
Let me warn you (and the people who have had the opportunity to taste them would confirm), these nuts are deadly addictive! If I make a batch for my family or guests, I know that they won't last long! Always a good sign when it comes to cooking, no?
Now, if I could only find a good salty-cocktail mix recipe!! Bon Appétit!

Ingredients:
- Raw unsalted nuts: I generally use a mix of walnuts, pecans, almonds and peanuts. You could use hazelnuts, brazilian and sunflower seeds as well. However, I never liked when I used cashews in that mix.
- Cayenne pepper (to taste)
- A pinch or two of salt
- Maple syrup : enough to coat the nuts
- A sprig of rosemary, scissored

• Pre-heat oven to 350F (175C)
• Take a baking pan and lay out all the nuts on the pan. If the nuts are on top of each other, you will have to make a second batch.
• Transfer the nuts in a bowl, add the pepper, salt, rosemary. 
• Pour enough maple syrup to have all the nuts nicely coated when you mix them (including in the creases). You don't want them to soak in maple syrup, though!
• Lay the nuts on the baking pan and put in the oven.
• Cook for 15 mns, stirring every 5 minutes. You should start to see the syrup cristallized but the nuts (especially the pecans) should not be burnt.
• Cool on a flat non-sticky surface (I use a silpat) before eating.