Meal, June 15, 2012: Pigeons, Lamb brains, and Chanterelles

If sometimes I do not post, it is likely because I am digesting. Such is the case last night.

Last night for a family member's birthday at Hotel Eychenne, we feasted.

The menu was one of my favorite dishes at Hotel Eychenne, roasted pigeon, with a sauce of flavors so new that I cannot justly describe it. The chef has promised to teach me, and then I will be able to adequately explain it's flavors. But for now, I can only describe the feeling. It was a sauce of such caliber of flavor that upon entering my mouth, it blurred out all recognition of sounds and sights in the room, and focused my attention, with no will of my own, on this savory pleasure. It loosened and softened the taught taste of the pigeon, opening up also the meat's flavors with its saucy command. 

The chef told me that the sauce was made with the carcasses of the birds. I was glad to hear this, because my role that evening was to clean and butcher the breasts and small bit of thigh from the bird, leaving a rather large, but nearly meatless carcass behind. Pigeons have a sizable breast because they are birds of flight, and the action of flying requires substantial breast muscle. Aside from this, there is little other meat. (Note: other birds, such as ducks, chickens or turkeys, have a good amount of meat on their thighs because they frequently walk or swim. Thanks, Dad, for the ornithology lesson!) 

 More to come on the sauce, once I have my lesson!

The pigeon was served with chanterelle mushrooms that had been freshly collected in the nearby hills that morning. The mushrooms were pan seared, giving them a crispy exterior, which nicely accompanied the lamb brains served along side. The brain was sliced through both lobes, giving it an appearance a bit like sliced cauliflower. To the taste it was wonderfully creamy and soft, and had no bitterness. It was quite delectable! It reminded me of sweet breads. 

Crème brûlée

The trick to crème brûlée is crunch followed by cream. It should make a bold impression and then swoon you over with delicacy. It should be subtle-- not overly sweet no harsh creaminess on the throat. It's subtlety should make you stop chewing and savor the custard. And it should pleasantly linger in your mouth.

Hotel Eychenne's crème brûlée is convincing.

There's always something thrilling about when it's acceptable to play with food, especially in formal settings. It excites me to watch dainty ladies using long silver spoons smash the crusts of their burnt sugar layers revealing the white cream beneath.  It's satisfying to hear the shatter.

The crème brûlée had a crunchy burnt layer, formed by using a blow-torch to brown the cane sugar on top. I like things that crunch. The slight acidity of the burnt taste is first relaxed by the initial taste of the cream, and then the cream takes over. The simplicity is astounding. It made me stop and just savor the taste of cream. Like most foods at Hotel Eychenne, their Crème brûlée is traditional: sugar, egg, vanilla and, of course, fresh cream. But why it is so convincing is because it's precise. Crème brûlée often risks going overboard with either the sugar or the vanilla. Too much vanilla and you're left with a yankee candle. This is not what I want to eat. Too much sugar and it becomes childish, and worse risks leaving you that scratchy throat feeling.

For years I subconsciously avoided Crème brûlée. I think this was because I had it once in a restaurant in Chicago and remembered it being an overly sweet, thrill-less desert. It was not until last summer when on one of my last meals that year at Hotel Eychenne I decided I would try this dish, one of France's most famous. And it won me over.

Simple Potato Gratin

Gratin is one of my favorite dishes. In fact, there's not much involving a potato that I don't completely love. This gratin is simple and classic. It dosen't have any fancy cheeses or mixture of vegetables. It's simply potatoes, milk, cream and spices. But to the taste it is hearty and comforting; crispy and juicy; creamy and salty.

Here's the recipe:
10 medium sized potatoes, peeled and sliced thinly (if you have a mandolin slicer this will save you a lot of time and ensure that you have evenly cooked potatoes. If you don't have a mandolin, consider getting one.)
250g of whole milk
250g of cream
Salt to taste (about a tablespoon, as the potatoes will drink it up)
Freshly cracked pepper, 2 tsp. (to taste)
Freshly grated nutmeg, 1 tsp.

Layer the potatoes in a baking pan that's at least 2 inches deep.

Mix the milk, cream and spices. Taste, and adjust to your liking. Pour the mixture over the potatoes. Bake at 190 for an hour.

Dinner tonight was seared duck breast (it's shaped like a C because it's folded, skewered, and flash grilled and then cooked through in the oven), and roasted zucchini and tomato. 

Smoked Salmon

Hotel Eychenne's restaurant smokes their own salmon and then gives it a rub of a black pepper with a nice fresh kick and dill. It's simple. But like a lot of the meats in the restaurant the taste is from the quality of the original product. This salmon is sublime. It's light and refreshing, it does not have a heavy smoky flavor that can really add some weight to salmon. 

 

Fougasse!

Fougasse (pronounced foo-gaas) is a type of bread found in the south of France. Many regions have their own take on this simple yeast bread. Typically, Fougasse is shaped like a grain of wheat, with cuts of dough removed to form a veined leaf-shaped outline.

History has it that this primitive sort of bread originated in Roman times. A simple yeast and flour bread, it was placed in the oven, typically on the hearth in order to test the temperature of the oven. The technique spread with the roman empire, as evidenced in the language, the french fougasse is cousin to the better-known Italian focaccia. Unlike the Italian style, which is often crisp on the bottom, but notably airy and lighter, what makes the French fougasse shine is its crunch!

By cutting out several spaces (see below), this bread maximizes surface area and thus maximizes the amount of crust the bread will have. Biting into a fougasse has a nice crunchy outside, and a doughy nearly wet inside.

To the taste it's distinctly sour inside, and often cooks will use a sourdough style recipe to make the dough. Commonly, fougasse bakers may add additional flavors. The style typical to the famous fougasse of Provence can include olives and a mixture of herbs including rosemary and thyme. In the Ariege, in the mountains of the Midi-Pyrenees where everything is a bit heartier, it often includes lardon (bacon).

One loaf of a lardon fougasse is enough to last a day. It seems as if food inventors in the Ariege thought to themselves, "Can I make it over the mountains with this?" And if the answer was 'yes' it came into existence. This is one hearty bread. Hearty and tasty. Savory bacon mixed with that sour, doughy soft inside, encased in a crunch.

The Saint Girons Market

Grocery shopping is just more pleasurable when it takes place under a grove of Sycamore trees, beside a river. 

And, the products in your basket are all the tastier when you've collected them from a little valley town, where all of the farmers in the Pyrenees mountains bring their goods. 

The Saint Girons market has been an institution for years. Scattered throughout hills, mountains and valleys are several fantastic farms, producing cheeses, honey, superb meats, vegetables and all things duck. Because of the great distances between each farm and the villages, every Saturday morning farmers have carted themselves down from their rural havens to sell their products to other rural customers, as well as gourmands from Toulouse, seeking hard to find products. Because this market is essentially a grocery store for most customers, goods are priced to sell to the average local consumer. In other words, the products are fantastic and the costs are low. 

Aside from these immediately local producers, the market also attracts produce from the greater area. Situated roughly two hours on either side from the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts, Saint Girons is within reach of the fantastic flavors of either region, from mussels, to Atlantic oysters, and Spanish paella. For a little rural town, there are also many vendors selling products from outside of France. A Vietnamese stand sells spring rolls and rice dishes. The middle eastern stands sell Kebabs, pita breads, and a variety of spreads. 

Cooking Lessons: Day 1: Chocolate cakes and lamb

Today for fun I began helping in the kitchen of Restaurant Eychenne. 

The first lessons in a kitchen are always the least exciting: how to wear your apron (with strings tucked under so as to prevent catching fire or on machinery), and to thoroughly wash one's hands. 

Hotel Eychenne's food is rather complicated, but at its root all dishes share one main factor: the most quality, fresh ingredients. The restaurant's owner, now in his seventies, has spent years establishing relationships with only the most quality ingredients. Without the American designations of "organic" or "local", the French have been eating this way forever, because, simply, what's local is often the tastiest. In my opinion this is not just because it is fresh, but somehow when eating food in its origin the foods are tasted with the atmosphere: the moisture of the air, the scents, the scenery. 

Today we prepared a simple dish: grilled lamb ribs. The meat had been rubbed with thyme, and placed on a hot grill. Not too complicated. But the taste of this lamb! To the tongue there were hazelnuts, and herbs. There was a distinct sweetness. Were it not that I had watched the preparation I would have sworn there must be more to this lamb, but the flavors were within the meat. 

Secondly, we prepared the ganache which would top an extremely tasty cake. To make the ganache, the cook prepared a simple syrup of sugar and water, and heated this over a flame until dissolved. He added a spoon of this syrup to a beautifully yellow cream, and heated until boiling. In a bain-marie (which is essentially a small pot placed within a large pot of boiling water, we melted dark chocolate. Both the melted chocolate and the cream were poured over large chunks of dark, baker's chocolate, and swirled until it was a silky liquid.

The ganache was then used to dip frozen cakes, which the chef had prepared earlier that morning. The cakes were composed of a nougat of chocolate that when served is cool, but creamy, like a glorified fudgsicle. The fudgsicle is prepared on top of a crispy cookie, which is a mixture of butter, flower, a dash of salt, and a sort of thicker grain which is ground into a finer powder. Please note, all lessons are in french, so some of these words I didn't always understand! 

Delicately, holding the crunchy bit, we dipped the nougat top into the ganache. These shiny-surfaced, chocolate cakes were then topped with toasted almond. 

Because I'm not a big fan of really sweet deserts, this cake is fantastic: the crunchy bottom is a tad bit salty, and the ganache is nicely bitter. 

Voila!