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A tomato tart is easy to prepare and makes
a gorgeous presentation.
YALONDA M. JAMES/STAFF
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Working
vacation Provence-style
Be careful what you bid for. You might end up with a delightful
stay at a French country inn learning to cook with an accomplished chef.
I have a habit of signing up for silent auctions of foreign cooking
schools, usually with a nominal bid. This year, at my culinary organization's
annual meeting, I made a bid for several of the French cooking schools.
I didn't read the information too carefully because usually the dates
are negotiated and because I was sure I wouldn't win anything.
Well, so much for assumptions. Apparently, everyone else read the information
about the cooking school at Mas de Cornud, just outside St. Remy de
Provence. The class was offered in May, and it was already April. I
was the only one who bid.
Just a week before the date of the class I found out I had won. If I
wanted my prize, I had to be in France in short order. The details of
getting my frequent-flier ticket are excruciating. But once there, the
trip was all I bid for and much, much more. I wouldn't take the bid
back, and it is worth the full price. I learned an enormous amount and
had a lovely vacation with likeminded people at the same time.
Mas de Cornud is a farmhouse turned into an inn through great investment
and labor. The three kitchens, and most importantly, all the baths,
are models of efficiency. (It's a miracle to have flawless plumbing
in France.) There was a teaching kitchen, replete with a stainless-steel
table with individual stations and drawers for each student. There was
a kitchen in the dining room, mostly used for keeping soups and some
such dishes warm. And there was an outdoor kitchen with a wood-burning
oven overlooking the luxurious swimming pool. I couldn't count all the
tables where we could eat, but there were at least two inside and four
outside, each one able to accommodate all the guests of the inn.
The food was outstanding, as it would be anytime four people are cooking
for 10! The four cooks were the three students and our teacher, Nito.
(During the season, which started right after I was there, there are
more students and guests.) Nito is a specialist in the incredibly tasty,
simple food of Provence. She and her husband, David Carpita, have lived
all over the world; and she has taken cooking classes everywhere she
lived. She is a font of information about Mediterranean food.
She shows up in the teaching kitchen each day in a crisp white chef's
uniform, a smile on her face. We students were set chopping, slicing
and making pastry, with Nito hovering near us and anything on the stove.
We had one class consisting of one meal a day, either morning or afternoon,
and Nito and her staff made the other two. (Each morning was fresh croissants
and pastries, served by a cheerful helper, with the sun shining on thetable
and coffeepot.) The market in St. Remy offered us fresh fish for dinner,
and Nito's garden gave us four kinds of artichokes, and an incredible
variety of fresh fruit and vegetables. Walking through the market and
cooking the food, I was struck yet again by the similarity of the foods
of America's South and the foods of Provence. Their nights are cooler,
and they have less humidity, but so many plants that are happy growing
there are happy growing here.
Interestingly, Nito taught recipes using familiar Southern ingredients,
but the dishes were very different from anything I would ever cook.
In fact, I was disinterested by the sound of many of them. That's the
good thing about cooking classes. They are an opportunity to learn something
you didn't know, and that includes cooking things you didn't think you
would like. I wound up loving almost every dish we cooked and ate.
In addition to the lessons in the kitchen, we had other lessons. We
met goats and watched them be milked and butt their owner affectionately.
We watched the lady of the house making cheese from the goats in a completely
sterile kitchen. We saw honey extracted from honeycombs and olive oil
pressed. And we ate. Nito and David are extraordinarily convivial, the
kind of people who love having an inn because it gives them an excuse
to entertain every night, and David loves matching the abundant wines
to the feasts Nito cooks. Most of us forgot we were paying guests.
There were three mother-daughter combinations of guests in the inn,
as well as several couples. Two daughters and one mother had never been
to France before, and to see it through their eyes and to hear their
praise of the food made it a new experience for me, bringing a freshness
to the things we saw and did.
When in France I am constantly reminded of how much less they eat than
we do. Although they eat multiple courses, stretching out the meal for
hours of talk and laughter, they eat less of everything, and portion
sizes are much smaller.
Please take note that each of these recipes, converted by my assistant,
Sundance Bear Rivera, from the metric system to ours, are for a meal
of several courses. I'm including recipes today that I would never have
cooked on my own because I didn't like the sound of some or the look
of others. The actual eating of each one was so wonderful I hope you
will try them all.
I am particularly grateful for the pictures that David took of each
recipe because it reminded me of things I forgot to note on my recipes,
and I recommend doing so with your own recipes in this digital age.
For information on Mas de Cornud, go to its Web site www.mascornud.com
or contact the Carpitas at mascornud@compuserve.com.
Pope's Hat Eggplant Flan With Coulis of
Sweet Red Peppers
1/8 cup butter, melted
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 medium eggplant, peeled and diced into 1/4-inch cubes
2 large eggs
1 cup whipping cream
1-1/2 to 2 tablespoons salt
Black pepper to taste
2 tablespoons parsley, diced
2 cloves garlic, diced
Parsley for garnish
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease 4 (8-ounce) ramekins or 8 (4-ounce)
ramekins with the melted butter.
Heat a skillet and add the vegetable oil. Add half of the diced eggplant
so as to not crowd the pan. Stir constantly until they are browned.
Remove eggplant to a paper towel-lined plate. Repeat with the second
batch of eggplant. This process removes the bitterness of the eggplant's
juice.
Mix eggs with cream, salt, pepper, parsley and garlic.
Stir in 3/4 of the cool, drained eggplant. Too much eggplant will cause
the cooked mixture to fall apart more easily.
Spoon mixture 1/2 inch from the top of the buttered ramekins and place
them into a water bath. Water should reach only half the height of the
ramekins.
Bake for 45 minutes and remove from water bath to prevent further cooking.
To test for doneness, insert the tip of a toothpick; it should come
out dry.
Turn out flan from the warm ramekins onto serving plates. Surround with
Coulis of
Sweet Red Peppers (recipe follows); sprinkle with parsley and serve.
Coulis of Sweet Red Peppers
2 red peppers, peeled, cored, seeded and diced
1 small russet potato, sliced
1/4 cup water
1 tablespoon whipping cream
Salt
White or black pepper
Combine diced peppers and sliced potato in a saucepan with water. Cook,
covered, over low heat until very soft, about 30 minutes.
Using a blender, puree the mixture until smooth. Mix in the cream and
season to taste.
Serve with the Pope's Hat Eggplant Flan.
This pie is startling in its innovative use of potatoes to make a delicious
meal starter, or as an accompaniment to a salad for lunch. Makes one,
9-inch pie.
Tomato
Tart with Black Olives
3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1/2 pound onions, halved vertically and sliced into long, thin strips
1 tablespoon sugar
Salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons water
1 (9-inch) pie crust (prebaked; see cook's note in above recipe)
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
12 basil leaves (cut 8 into thin strips; reserve 4 leaves for garnish)
1 pound fresh tomatoes, sliced into very thin rounds
9 Nicoise black olives (see cook's note)
1 tablespoon vinegar, preferably sherry or red wine vinegar
2 pinches of coarse salt, such as sea or kosher salt
Cook's note: In France, the olives are served whole with pits intact.
Pitted olives can be substituted.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Heat a medium saucepan and add 2 tablespoons olive oil. Add onions and
sautÈ for 2 minutes. Add sugar, salt and pepper to taste, and
the water. Toss together, cover and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring
often without browning onions.
Spread the cooked onions in the pie crust to within 1/2 inch from the
edge.
Sprinkle with garlic and basil strips.
Lay slices of tomato on top to overlap, starting at the outer edge and
working into a circle.
Bake for 20-25 minutes until the tomatoes soften.
Remove from oven and garnish with olives and small basil leaves. Drizzle
the remaining oil and vinegar over the tart. Finish with a sprinkle
of the coarse salt and serve hot. Serves 4-6.
Chocolate Parfait
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
4 ounces good-quality dark chocolate, chopped into chunks
4 egg yolks
8 ounces whipping cream, whipped to firm peaks
1 tablespoon White CrËme de Menthe liqueur
4 fresh mint leaves
Bring sugar and water to a boil to dissolve sugar. Set aside.
Melt chocolate in a heat-proof bowl or double boiler over simmering
water. Be sure that no water finds its way into the chocolate.
In another heat-proof bowl or double boiler over simmering water, whisk
egg yolks until they are thick and light and the whisk leaves a trail
or ribbon when it is lifted from the egg. Drizzle the warm sugar syrup
into the eggs, whisking constantly. Remove from heat source.
Add the warm melted chocolate to the egg mixture, stirring constantly.
Allow this mixture to cool so that it is barely warm to touch.
Using a spatula, fold in the whipped cream and liqueur. Fold thoroughly.
Spoon the mixture into glasses and freeze for at least 2 hours.
Remove 10 minutes before serving and garnish with mint.
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