Of Fads and Fancies

It’s fun watching food trends come and go. Though it’s tempting to think of French cuisine as immutable, it is in fact porous. A good idea comes along and is absorbed; the less successful swish right through and leave no trace. One trend that appears here to stay has to do with serving all manner of things in glasses, which can be in all manner of shapes and sizes, although they usually tend to be fairly small and served as appetizers. Called verrines—the freshly minted word seems to be a play on terrine, vitrine and verre—these concoctions can contain just about anything, from a diced seasoned tomato topped with a froth of herbed cream to a complex blend of smoked salmon folded with tiny dice of cucumber and radicchio, a crunch of almonds and a hint of horseradish. I recently had one that was diced avocado tossed with lemon juice, layered with tomatoes and fresh cheese and topped with a crumble of buttery pastry. As you can see from the above, the most important thing about preparing a verrine is the dice, since the ingredients have to fit in a small container.

While the verrine began in vaunted restaurants—where trends usually have their inception—they’ve filtered down through cooking magazines into French home kitchens. So any dinner party now is likely to feature at least one verrine. I was recently invited to a birthday party held outdoors in a cool, shady garden. Verrines were on the appetizer menu. There were two—one contained lovely little mixtures of cream and salmon eggs, the other green tapenade and yogurt with tiny toasts. Neither required any cooking, and that is a hallmark of the verrine. They do require a deft hand at assembling, making them ideal for the culinary trend follower who has little time.

It’s all part of French home cuisine circa 2010, where family cooks are simplifying, freshifying and generally lightening up home fare and having some light-hearted fun in the process.

Pool vs. puddle

Light is an operative word when it comes to French home cooking right now. I must add here that what is light to a French cook may not seem light to the rest of the world. The use of thick, heavenly crème fraîche in a dish makes it “light” to the French palate. Having grown up in a non-crème fraîche using culture, I wondered at this and asked, “If crème fraîche is light, what makes a dish heavy?” Butter. This makes some sense—butter is the fat solid of crème fraîche. It’s all relative.

In any case, French cuisine is lighter than it once was. It’s natural that cooking lightens up in the heat of summer. But there has been an overall lightening up of French food that began in the 1970’s and by now has taken firm hold. It doesn’t mean that the French home cook is dieting. It just means that fats are used in a different way.

Consider simple braised rabbit, a typical home-cooked dish. Fifty years ago the rabbit would have simmered gently with onions, herbs, wine and a generous pool of crème fraîche. The sauce would then have been reduced to a rich, silken thickness. Today, the rabbit is simmered to tenderness in wine, herbs and onions, so all the flavor is there. The pool of crème fraîche has been diminished to a generous puddle, and it is added right at the end of the cooking so it heats but doesn’t thicken in the same way. The difference? Less cream, fresher cream flavor, less concentrated fat, more brightness and lightness to the dish.

Berries Bordelaise

Leaving fat behind, I want to say a word about strawberries. I have always considered the strawberry an exclusively spring fruit. Now, thanks to science and research, it has become a five-month-a-year fruit. My favorite local farmer, Baptiste, whom those of you who read this column regularly are beginning to know, produces the most heavenly strawberries I’ve ever eaten. I’m not sure he has done me any favor, because I now want no others.

This year, they were slow to arrive and lacking in their usual flavor at first because of our hard, long winter. Now they’ve reached their perfumed stride. It’s really quite unbelievable how flavorful and aromatic they are. I stand in line each Wednesday and Saturday at Baptiste’s stand in the market in Louviers, considering what to purchase. Before I have time to think, the aroma of those berries helps me make up my mind. They are impossible to resist, whether the variety is the famed Gariguette or the more recent Mara des Bois.

This year I’ve had some fun with strawberries, my fancy struck by the way the Bordelais eat them. It’s a result of spending a few days in Bordeaux this spring, where I went to do some reporting. There, they treat strawberries in singular fashion, slicing them into their glasses of red Bordeaux. Then they languidly fish them out and eat them, wine-steeped and delicious. They sip the wine left in the glass, berry-steeped and scrumptious.

I decided to play with this idea. I poured some Bordeaux in a pan, added a cinnamon stick, some honey and a few grinds of black pepper, and got the wine to bubbling. When it had reduced by half, I stirred in some gelatin and let it cool, then refrigerated it.

Then I sliced up berries, tossed them with a small amount of sugar, and let them sit. When it was time for dessert the mulled wine was gently jelled and I put it in the bottom of a flared glass. I topped it with berries, and voilà! I had a dessert verrine on my hands, a new/old Bordelais idea for strawberries! Isn’t cooking fun?

I put a scoop of homemade vanilla ice cream atop the berries. It’s lovely that way. It’s also lovely all by itself, with a happy garnish of mint. Enjoy!

 

FRAISES A LA BORDELAISE/STRAWBERRIES, BORDEAUX-STYLE

For the wine:

3 leaves gelatin (½ envelope powdered), softened in cold water

2 cups (500 ml) richly flavored red wine, such as Bordeaux

3 tbsp (45 ml) floral honey, such as lavender

1 cinnamon stick

Heaping 1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper

 

For the strawberries:

1 lb (500 g) perfectly ripe strawberries

1 tbsp vanilla sugar

 

1. Put gelatin leaves in a bowl of cold water to soften.

2. Put wine in a medium-sized saucepan. Add honey, cinnamon stick, and several grinds of black pepper. Bring wine to a boil over medium-high heat and boil until reduced by one-third. Remove pan from heat.

3. Squeeze water from gelatin leaves and whisk them into the wine, one by one.

4. When wine has cooled to room temperature, refrigerate.

5. Cut strawberries in quarters lengthwise. Put them in a bowl, add the sugar and toss gently. Set aside.

6. When the spiced wine is chilled and slightly jelled, remove cinnamon stick and divide half of it among 6 glasses. Divide the strawberries among the glasses, and top with vanilla ice cream, if desired. Garnish with a sprig of mint and serve.

6 servings

Susan Herrmann Loomis teaches cooking classes in Normandy and Paris. The latest of her ten books, Nuts in the Kitchen, has just been published by HarperCollins. www.nutsinthekitchen.com

Originally published in the July/August 2010 issue of France Today

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