Are any of you hooked on The Canal House? Have Melissa Hamilton and Christopher Hirsheimer (no relation) reeled you into their culinary world? Each weekday I receive an e-mail, accompanied by the most gorgeously enticing photograph, describing these ladies’ lunches.
This week’s recipe, Cheating-on-Winter Pea Soup, pairs perfectly with cornbread slathered in honey and Black Mountain Vineyard’s Pinot Noir.
This week’s French Fridays with Dorie recipe choice, Cheating-on-Winter Pea Soup, presented the perfect opportunity for me to play house like Melissa and Christopher. I returned to Nevada last weekend, after spending the week in Colorado organizing my March move. So, for the next month, most of my days are revolving around sorting and tossing and donating and selling and packing and not having any fun at all. (Okay, that last part is a fib.)
As you can tell from the Mise en Place, The ingredients for this simple soup are probably already in your pantry, refridgerator or freezer.
So, for Lent, instead of giving up something, I’ve promised myself I will stop each day and make a nice, nutritious lunch. Nothing fancy. Nothing difficult. Just lunch. A catch-up-with-yourself moment. And, thanks to Dorie, Thursday’s lunch was quickly created and delicious.
“The soup, made in about 15 minutes, is the liquid version of a classic French dish, peas with lettuce and onions,” Dorie explains.
Everything in this soup was already in my cupboard and fridge – no last-minute trips to the grocery store. The bag of frozen peas, found at the back of my freezer, were just begging for attention. I melted some butter to soften the coarsely chopped onion. After seasoning, I poured in the chicken broth, bringing it to a boil. Then I added the peas and the trimmed, sliced romaine lettuce to the broth, asking it all to simmer while I made corn bread.
Warm Corn Bread is always a treat. Drip a little honey on top, even better. This was a perfect opportunity to sweeten up my lunch menu.
Don’t you think corn bread slathered with honey goes well with just about anything? I decided to go all Pioneer Woman and make it in my cast iron skillet. Just loved smelling the aroma while I pureed the soup in my blender. Because I wanted a smooth, silky texture, I then strained it. Rather than garnish my pea soup, I browned and added some pancetta bits before adding a dash more of pepper. A civilized, tasty meal break during a busy day.
PART TWO: COEUR À LA CRÈME
The End of the Story: For last week’s FFWD recipe dessert, we made Coeur à la Crème, and I used Dorie’s recipe as well as the Barefoot Contessa’s (Ina Garten) for my two Coeurs. Both desserts were admired and willingly devoured, calories be damned. Because Dorie’s Coeur was refrigerated for three days, Ina’s, only 24 hours, it was firmer. I preferred that. Otherwise, the two complemented each other and we noticed little difference.
Admittedly, my friends would rather cook than pose but they indulged me for the sake of FFWD. Charlotte (l), is smiling, kinda, but worried about her garlic burning (it didn’t). DonnaG (middle), our always generous hostess, helped me make the dessert. DonnaC’s, (r), task was to add the panache to DonnaG’s and my Coeur à la Crèmes. As you will see, that lady can work wonders with raspberry coulis.
THE MOHAIR MOMENT.
Our hostess pulled out some special plates, beautiful heirlooms from her family, for serving and to honor this special dessert.
It took a village to produce these two Coeur à la Crèmes but aren’t they pretty? Note the bow (r) which DonnaC recycled from our earlier present exchange.
“If you really want to make a friend, go to someone’s house and eat with him… the people who give you their food give you their heart.” Cesar Chavez
Welcome to my first Work-in-Progress Post. This week’s French Friday withDorie recipe is the very appropriate and élégant Coeur à la Crème.
The most difficult part of making this week’s recipe was finding the heart-shaped molds. I finally found two 7-inch molds at Sur La Table. Guess where???? On The Las Vegas Strip. Go figure. FANTES.COM
Explanation, please. According to Barron’s Food Lover’s Companion, KEWR ah la KREHM is French for heart with cream. This classic dessert is made in a special heart-shaped mold with holes and little feet to hold it up. Cream cheese is mixed with sour cream or whipping cream (and, sometimes confectionary sugar) and placed into the cheesecloth-lined mold. The dessert is then refrigerated overnight, during which time the whey (liquid) drains out through the perforated mold. To serve, the dessert is unmolded and garnished with a coulis and fresh fruit.
After beating cream cheese, confectionary sugar, salt and vanilla to a smooth and velvety texture, it was set aside. We whipped heavy cream until it just began to hold firm peaks. (pictured here).
Like many of you, I had seen pictures of this classic dessert in fancy food magazines but had never eaten it nor even considered making it. That’s one of the many reasons I joined FFWD. To belong to this cooking group and remain in good standing, you must cook each week ……a specific recipe for the team.
We folded the cream cheese mixture gently into the whipped cream AFTER FIRST gently stirring about one-quarter of the whipped cfream mixture into the cream cheese to “lighten” it. After fitting a dampened cheesecloth square into each heart, we filled the molds.
Admittedly, I’ve never been considered a team player. At a recent birthday gathering I was described as “tenaciously independent” – by a family member. Although said more in exasperation than jest, it really wasn’t meant to be a compliment.
But, as a Dorista, I’ve been a pussy cat, so onward and upward to making what Dorie describes as “an indulgently luxurious coeur à la crème with a texture so light you could fool yourself into thinking you were eating sweetened air.’”
After filling the molds, we folded and wrapped them in the dampened cheesecloth and put in the refrigerator to chill overnight. This dessert can be made up to three days in advance.
Realizing that I would be in Colorado for this week’s food project, I loaded and lugged my KitchenAid mixer, the non-refrigerated ingredients and two 7-inch heart-shaped molds to Aspen. My friends, Donna and Bernie, are hosting a dinner party for me tonight so I offered to bring dessert. Donna, not only a delightful hostess but also a talented cook, suggested we make this dessert together, a first for both of us.
For the topping (ever so slight), we made a raspberry coulis by pureeing frozen raspberries, staining the seeds, and adding framboise. Incidentally, the raspberries were from Serbia which we found interesting.
Yesterday morning (Thursday), we made this little bit of dessert heaven, needing very few ingredients, with no trouble at all. It was simple. So far. So good. We refrigerated our two molds and filled a strainer with the leftover batter to chill overnight. We cannot wait until tonight to unmold our coeurs, drizzle our homemade raspberry coulis over the top, toss a few raspberries on the plate and present what we hope is party perfection to our eager taste-testing friends. May the hooping and hollering begin. Photos to follow.
Tonight, Donna and I will unveil and serve our FFWD Coeur à la Crème. Feeling a little pressure. Just like in Nevada, my friends here are all extremely fine cooks so I want this to look beautiful and taste wonderfully. These are good friends, after all, all in fun, but this has been a week-long “talk-in-progress” so here’s hoping for another Dorie-success story. Photos to be posted – success or failure – later this evening.
If you want to make this heart dessert , find the recipe here. To see the finished Posts of my colleagues, go here. I would like to urge you readers to buy the cookbook we are using for FFWD, “Around My French Table”, by Dorie Greenspan. Even if you don’t want to make some of the recipes I post every week (and, as you know, I don’t love everything), there isn’t a week that goes by that I don’t learn some terrific technique or clue or idea or variation from this cookbook. Dorie takes complicated recipes down to simple and enables the average cook (which I am) to succeed , flourish and have a great time. My book’s cover is torn, some pages are stained, there are coffee rings on others, and many corners are dog-eared. It’s a cookbook with character, that’s for sure, and I so enjoy using it every week.
