Viva la France! Thrilled to watch France win the World Cup today. Put me in the mood to eat well, like the French. Perhaps, like me, you have heaps of sumptuous vegetables and fruits who fantasize about jumping into your cloth-lined basket for a bicycle ride to the Jardin due Luxembourg or the Parc Monceau. Or Jackson Square, New Orleans, in a pinch. Just in time for Bastille Day, I perused Shaheen Peerbhai and Jennie Levitt’s Paris Picnic Club and was inspired.
Roasted Spiced Eggplant with Moorish Tomato Sauce
Adapted from the Paris Picnic Club
4 garlic cloves, minced
¼ cup olive oil
4 medium eggplants
8 sprigs fresh thyme
2 cups Moorish Tomato Sauce
4 ounces burrata cheese, crumbled
Fresh cilantro leaves
Salt and pepper
Preheat oven to 400. Mix the olive oil and garlic together. Slice eggplants lengthwise, in half. Score the flesh with diagonal crisscrosses (not cutting through the skin) and gently splay open the eggplant to rub the garlic oil into the crevices. Drizzle with oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Arrange thyme sprigs on a baking sheet covered in parchment. Place eggplants cut side down on the thyme sprigs and roast for 40 minutes.
Flip over the eggplant slices and top with equal amounts of the Moorish Tomato sauce, and roast for 10-15 more minutes. Remove the eggplants and top with burrata and cilantro.
Moorish Tomato Sauce with Cumin, Orange Zest, and Cinnamon
3 pounds fresh ripe tomato
1 orange, zest and juice
1 tsp cumin seeds
¼ cup olive oil
1 sprig fresh rosemary
4 sprigs fresh thyme
2 medium onions, finely chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 fresh red jalapeno pepper, chopped
1 small red pepper, chopped
3 TB tomato paste
1 TB honey
1 cinnamon stick
1 bay leaf
Sea salt and black pepper
Prepare the tomatoes by cutting them in half and grating them on a coarse grater until you reach the skin. Reserve the pulp. Peel a strip off the orange, no pith, all zest. Juice the orange.
Heat a sauce pan over medium heat and add the cumin seeds 3-5 minutes until toasted. Crush in a mortar with pestle while still warm. Then heat the pan again and add the olive oil, thyme and rosemary sprigs for a minute. Add the onions, garlic, chili pepper, red bell pepper, tomato paste, and ground cumin. Cook for ten minutes, until onions begin to brown. Add the orange juice to deglaze the pan, cook down the juice until it is reduced by half, then add the tomato pulp, honey, orange zest, cinnamon stick, bay leaf, salt and pepper. Bring the sauce to a boil and cook, uncovered, for 30-40 minutes.
KP and I really did go on a picnic, not in Paris, but in Bay St. Louis. The above meal sort of combusts in transport. But these Jarlsberg Cheese Folio wraps did not.
Basically you are eating a quesadilla except the cheese is the tortilla. You could also easily use these for melting on top of soups or for actual quesadillas. But if you are gluten free- great option for wrap-substitutes. We brought these to Frida Fest. That’s right. A beach town in the state of Mississippi likes to celebrate the life and work of Frida Kahlo every July. I’m so into that.
I read another gastronomic memoir Eating With Peter by Susan Buckley, an homage to her late husband Peter Buckley who was friend to Ernest Hemingway. In it are recipes from their travels together, and the chapter on France at Pavillon de L’Ermitage, where they dined under chestnut trees looking at the Alps and Lake Annecy is my favorite. I love this pie crust recipe, and with it, made a blueberry pie in the honor of the fox who died at the New Orleans Zoo this weekend when the jaguar escaped. Yeah, that happened.
Tucci’s Pie Crust
Adapted from Eating with Peter
2 5/8 (300 g) butter, cold, sliced
50 grams sugar
1 egg, beaten
500 grams flour
Salt to taste
Ice water (as needed)
Mix butter, sugar and beaten egg. Cut this mixture into flour. Add a pinch of salt. Add water if needed. Form into three flat circles, like thick pancakes, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for several hours before using. This recipe will make three crusts. You can freeze the extra for about a month, if needed.
In the pie, I used Let’s Go Organic Arrowroot starch instead of corn starch or potato starch. Buckley’s recipe uses flour, but that’s not my favorite texture for a blueberry pie.
Rest in peace, fabulous fox.
