French Food – Page 4 – Southern Fusion Cooking

Pie Crusts

A homemade pie crust is so superior to bought ones that I am almost ashamed to even make the comparison. With a couple of small exceptions and adaptations, this is the same crust that has been made in the South for decades, if not centuries. This recipe makes one crust.

Basic Pie Crust

Ingredients:

One cup All Purpose Flour

One stick Organic Butter (4 oz.)

1/4 cup Ice Water

Optional: Salt, Sugar

The all butter pie crust is a tradition that makes perfect sense. The Picayune Creole Cookbook even trash talks about other fats in a pie crust.

Some persons use lard for pie crust. This is to be deprecated. The crust will never have the same flavor or be as flaky as when made with butter. Others, again, mix the butter and the lard. This, too, is to be condemned, if you wish for the best results.

There you have it. Unless you want to have your pie crust condemned to Creole pastry hell, use all butter.

Now, back to the crust. Step one is to separate the butter into small, pea to rice size chunks. I use a bench scraper/pastry scraper for this step.

Make a well in the center of the dough and add the ice water in small amounts. Work the dough with one hand (preferably fingertips only) until it sticks together without crumbling. Use the heel of your hand (now we go to the “fraisage” step) to make certain that the butter is well incorporated into the flour. You can accomplish this by folding the dough over a few times.

Scrap the work surface clean and roll the dough into a ball. Wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for an hour or so. Then you can take out your frustrations on the dough.

Spread an ample amount of flour on the work surface and give the dough a couple of good whacks. Oh, go ahead and make it as many as you like. My homemade super bad rolling pin is made of dogwood, and it’s brutalitarian. Roll out the dough as thin as you like. A thick pie crust is no good.

Crust ready to be transferred to a pie plate or form

Roll up the crust onto the rolling pin and transfer to your pie plate. Trim around the edges, and you’re done. It’s pie time.

A crust with added sugar is technically know as a pâte brisée sucrée, which strangely enough translates to pie crust with sugar. The Picayune Creole Cookbook recommends taking leftover dough scraps, cooking them as small squares, and serving with jams or preserves. A good pie crust is a terrible thing to waste.

Creole Onion Soup

Be Warm on the Inside, when it’s Cold on the Outside

Cold weather in the South is particularly nasty, because it isn’t that common. Today will be around freezing, which is just the excuse needed to make our favorite winter meal–Creole Onion Soup. Every cook has their own version, but my wife Melanie Jane has condescended to share her’s, which is pictured above. She also provided the photos.

Creole Onion Soup

Three or Four Onions, sliced thinly

Three Tablespoons Butter

Three Tablespoons Flour

Four Cups Poultry Stock (Chicken, Duck, or Turkey)

Thyme, Oregano, and Basil

Soy Sauce

Worcestershire Sauce

Tabasco Sauce to Taste

Creole French Bread

Grated Cheese–Swiss, Cheddar, or Parmesan, or some combination thereof

Porcelain lined cast iron makes the best soup pot, and the best are still made in France. This one is six quarts. At any rate, slowly cook the sliced onions in the butter. This should be the result:

Remove the cooked onions and add the flour. It’s roux time! This time stir until there is a “blonde” roux. It should look like this:

More butter can be added to achieve the desired consistency. Now it’s time to make soup. Add the stock, cooked onions, soy and worcestershire sauces, and herbs. Simmer for thirty minutes and add the Tabasco, which makes this really Creole, along with the next addition.

Now it’s time to serve. Use a good heat-resistant soup bowl (that’s a handmade Jerry Brown bowl in the picture at the beginning). Top with slices of Creole French Bread, for which I will have to supply a recipe in the future, but it’s really just French Bread with olive oil (or some other fat) added to the dough. Top that with the grated cheese of your choice, and throw under a broiler. When the cheese begins to toast, it’s time to burn your tongue on some smoking hot soup.

Melanie Jane’s hair is about the color of that roux, and she responded to a blonde joke from some fool once by saying, “I guess you graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the best History department in the country, like I did.” Her best put down was of an obnoxious college Dean at a party, who asked her how he looked in his Trucker’s cap. Her response was, “You look like a pig farmer.” Good times and hot soup!

Stewed Chicken, Brown Sauce

What we have here is yet another recipe from the magnificent Picayune Creole Cook Book. I should start with a quote from the book itself about this dish: “It is a simple, elegant dish, within the means of everyone.” At least everyone who has a chicken in their pot. We always refer to this dish as just “Brown Sauce Chicken.”

I am going to get all Frenchified on you, as the cookbook gives the recipe names in both English and French. This is also “Fricassée de Volaille, Sauce Brune.” This is an important distinction as a Fricassee is a distinctive method of cooking.

The original recipe uses a whole chicken cut up, including the liver, heart, and gizzards, so think of this as a chicken cooked in its own giblet gravy. Mine is a simpler version for two people, as usual.

Stewed Chicken, Brown Sauce

1 Chicken Breast, preferably bone in and skin on

1/2 Onion

1 Tablespoon Lard, Oil, or Butter

1 Tablespoon Flour

1 sprig Thyme and Parsley

1 Bay Leaf

Salt and Pepper

Begin by cooking the onions in the fat (lard, oil, butter) until soft. I always use the heaviest cast iron skillet I have, but that’s just me. Then add the flour and make a brown roux with it. A roux, aka “Creole Napalm,” is really a matter of practice and patience. A brown roux should be dark brown, the darker, the better the taste. Whatever you do, don’t stop stirring, or let this stuff splatter on you. When satisfied, add the chicken, and brown it as well.

Here comes the fun part. Add stock or water, herbs, and seasonings, and stir well. Cover the pot and simmer for thirty minutes or so on your stove’s lowest setting (mine is 600 btu’s), or an hour for a whole chicken, and you’re done. Check frequently to make sure that the chicken does not stick, or “lay on,” as we like to say. Serve with rice, preferably Louisiana rice, or pasta. Potatoes will also work.

This dish is simple and amazingly good. It’s also a perfect way to practice your skills as a Fricassee cook.

Food Mills

In 1947 Frenchman Louis Tellier invented the commercial food mill, and it changed the world of cooking. Hours of labor were changed into a few cranks of a handle–I should add that he also invented the french fry cutter that many people use. If you’re like me, and hate cleaning all the little fiddly parts of a food processor, the manual food mill is an excellent alternative or addition.

Why this is something of an exotic tool in US kitchens is a mystery, as even the French made food mills are inexpensive and incredibly simple. Put the appropriate milling disk in, pop in the hand cranked milling masher thingy, and go at it. That’s it. Three parts that lead to great food, from mashed or riced potatoes to pie fillings to any puree that you can imagine.

There are things a food mill can’t do that a food processor can, like making bread crumbs, but try getting the seeds out of a tomato or other fruit with a food processor. It also isn’t necessary to go the full commercial route: Moulinex makes an excellent stainless small sized food mill in France.

Food mills are not just for making baby food. Buying one will change the way you cook, and look at food.

Chicken Sauté a la Créole

Great cookbook, or greatest cookbook? The latest reprint is available from Amazon.

I have made the following recipe from this cookbook literally more than a hundred times. Here’s what the Times Picayune had to say about it, when it is made properly:

You will then have a dish for which any old Creole would go on foot from Carrollton to the Barracks, a distance of fifteen miles, merely to get a taste of.

And now this is the modern version, that doesn’t require two whole chickens or two large onions. It’s for two people.

1 Chicken Breast

1/2 Onion

1/2 Sweet Pepper

1 Clove Garlic

1 Tablespoon Peanut Oil

1 Tablespoon Flour

1 Pint of Tomatoes

White Wine for de-glazing

Salt and Pepper

Thyme and Oregano

Heat the oil in a thick cast iron skillet, and add the flour. It’s time to make a roux! That’s what thickens the Creole sauce. I’m channeling Marcelle Bienvenu, who wrote another great cookbook, Who’s Your Mama, Are You Catholic, and Can You Make a Roux?

A “blonde” roux is preferable for this dish, so stir the flour until it browns only slightly. Add the chicken and let it brown nicely. A bone in, skin on, breast is preferred

When the chicken is browned, add the onions and pepper, which should be finely diced. When they are softened, add the garlic. Then de-glaze the pan with white wine.

Now it’s time for a little technique: milling tomatoes, using the finest insert that comes with the food mill.

Truthfully, this step is optional, but the end result is a seed free sauce of superior texture and taste. It doesn’t hurt to have some home canned, locally grown, tomatoes to mill, as pictured. Just crank the tomatoes right over the skillet. I’ll do a deep dive into food mills eventually–they are a French invention, and the best ones are still made there.

Once the tomatoes are milled, season with salt, pepper, and herbs. Once the sauce is simmering, put a lid on the skillet and turn it down to the lowest setting possible, the lower, the better. Just add water or stock as it cooks down. In forty minutes or so, you have a dish worth walking fifteen miles for. And that is just to taste it.

Do I Need That? Does My Skillet Handle Need a Cover?

You could call these skillet condoms, but that would be rude. Just say yes to prophylactics, unless you want baby skillets.

Lodge Manufacturing, in South Pittsburg, Tennessee, is without a doubt the world’s greatest manufacturer of cookware. Sorry, Frenchys. Not being satisfied with that, they have branched out into a new field entirely: skillet condoms. Check that, they are handle covers for skillets, in different shapes and forms. Here are my two favorites.

Silicone Handle Holders for Carbon Steel

This is designed for the Lodge Carbon Steel skillets, but also fits Frenchified brands like Bourgeat. (I apologize to Lodge for not being completely faithful to them. You know what they say about the French.) Speaking of unfaithful, that little orange ribbed rubber thing is made in China.

Nokona Leather Hot Handle Holder

This one was my favorite cookware purchase of the last year. USA baseball glove maker Nokona makes these for Lodge, and they are fantastic. Don’t tell anyone, but they also fit those Frenchy Staub cast iron skillets. USA made, so my transgressions with the French must be forgiven.

Buy these guys at your favorite supplier. Lodge gave me the silicone one gratis, as I bought a buggy full of cast iron from their factory store in South Pittsburg. I think the giant carbon steel skillet cost something like ten bucks there.

Coffee and Chicory–Better Know a Southern Staple

Coffee 1 A hot homemade English Muffin, and homemade Fig Preserves, and an old Cafetière of Coffee and Chicory. Breakfast!

When I left the farm in Good Hope, Alabama, for college, I knew that there were people who drank coffee without chicory in it, but I had never met one, as far as I knew. It could have been because I didn’t drink coffee, or even alcohol. Then when I started graduate school, and entered into the teaching profession at the same time, I found I needed something to wake me up in the morning, and put me to sleep at night. My girlfriend Melanie Jane and I headed out for the Kroger’s in Tuscaloosa, on a mission, after my first class. We left there with two new items in our buggy: some Luzianne Coffee and Chicory, and a bottle of BV Beau Rosé. Being an adult wasn’t all bad.

The other thing we bought at about the same time is a cookbook that is still my favorite, the 1901 edition of The Picayune Creole Cookbook, from New Orleans. For years the only two cookbooks we owned were that, and The Joy of Cooking (it should be noted that Irma Rombauer, who wrote the original Joy, was from St. Louis, which is sometimes considered to be Southern, though usually not). Truthfully, those two books, and a little curiosity, is all a cook needs. However, the very first recipe in the Picayune Creole Cookbook is Café à la Créole: Creole Coffee.

Though chicory is not mentioned in the recipe, the praises lavished on coffee are next level. Coffee “supported the old age of Voltaire,” and I challenge anyone else to find a cookbook that begins with a reference to Voltaire (a bust of Voltaire welcomes visitors to the entrance hall at Monticello). I have to throw in another quote about a French writer, this one by Henry James: Honoré de Balzac could not have written so many novels without “deep potations of coffee,” allegedly around fifty cups per day. But here is the real kicker from the recipe:

Coffee is now regarded by physicians as an auxiliary food substance, as retarding the waste of nerve tissue and acting with peculiarly strengthening effect upon the nervous and vascular systems.

Coffee. It’s what’s for breakfast. As much as I have drunk, I should live to be two thousand years old.

Now, New Orleans Creole Coffee is most famous for it’s various coffee and chicory concoctions, and just one producer has at least six varieties of coffee and chicory to choose from. Chicory is a southern European plant with blue flowers, from the Aster family, though the part used in the beverage is the roasted root. Chicory root has claims of medicinal qualities about it that would have made the writers of The Picayune Creole Cookbook blush.

chicory-root-001

This marriage of African coffee bean and European roasted herb root made it to France in 1801, and was well entrenched in N. O. by the time of the Civil War blockade. According to Smithsonian Magazine, folks from New Orleans tried everything from acorns to beets as additives and fillers for their coffee, in order to stretch out their supply. Apparently Coffee and Chicory tasted better than Coffee and Acorns.

If you are brave enough to try this incredibly smooth, addicting drink, locals throughout the South recommend just about everything available. The general consensus is that there are two favorites: Community Coffee Coffee and Chicory, and Union Coffee and Chicory. Consider all other brands as tied for third, and they all have slight variations in flavor. Prices vary widely, so do a little searching before purchasing. I personally buy the 32 oz. bags of Community Coffee Coffee and Chicory, but I probably should consider coffee rehab.

If you have a super special coffee variety already that you have sworn allegiance to, say, something grown only on three acres on a mountain in Jamaica, and picked only by left handed Ganja smokers, despair not. Chicory is sold widely, and even Community Coffee sells bags of it. Mix one part of chicory, with three parts of your Ganja smoker picked Jamaican primo, and there you have it. That’s the standard mix ratio, but experimentation is encouraged. Believe it or not, instant chicory is also available, for fans of instant coffee.

Now, naturally, to the world famous Cafe du Monde in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Starbucks it ain’t. Unless you want your coffee cold or frozen, you have two choices: black Coffee and Chicory, or Cafe au Lait, which is half strong Coffee and Chicory, and half hot milk. No lattes, no frappuccinos, and definitely no pumpkin spice. If you go there and ask for a doughnut and some pumpkin spiced coffee, please have the word “TOURIST” tatooed across your forehead first.

James Hemings, the Godfather of Southern Cooking–and of American Fine Dining

If you have never heard of James Hemings, it’s not your fault. Blame it on an educational system that has historical amnesia. Just to give a hint of what James did, he introduced the following dishes to the newly minted United States: French style ice cream (the kind everyone eats now), crème brûlèe, pommes frites (french fries), and best of all, macaroni and cheese. Essentially, all the cornerstones of a healthy diet.

To put it bluntly, James Hemings was the enslaved servant of Thomas Jefferson, despite the fact that he was actually the half-brother of Jefferson’s wife, Martha Wayles Jefferson. (If you would like a complete history of the Hemings family, read Annette Gordon-Reed’s superb The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family.) Jefferson “inherited” the entire Hemings family upon the death of his father in law. Despite that beginning, James would become the person who was arguably the first classically trained chef from North America.

In 1784, shortly after the death of his wife Martha, Jefferson was dispatched to Paris as Minister to France, and to help Benjamin Franklin and John Adams negotiate with the French government for support of the new nation which they had helped create. The group that left for France had to be one of the strangest family groupings in American history: Jefferson, his twelve year old daughter Martha “Patsy” Jefferson, and nineteen year old James Hemings, who Jefferson referred to in one letter as “my servant.” Jefferson’s goal was for James to train as a French chef. Regardless of the goal, when James stepped foot on French soil, he was free, slavery being illegal in France.

Upon arriving in Paris, James immediately apprenticed with a caterer named Combeaux, at Thomas Jefferson’s expense. Realizing that he could claim his freedom, James made a deal with Jefferson, that his enslavement become an “apprenticeship” instead, and that he be granted his freedom after a number of years. Jefferson agreed, and additionally, paid James a salary that was more than double that of a well placed Parisian servant. James’ second apprenticeship was at the estate of the prince de Condé, Chantilly, which included a stable that could accommodate 240 horses, and had what was considered the finest kitchen and chef de cuisine in France. The apprenticeship was remarkably expensive. Jefferson paid for it anyway.

By the end of 1788 James Hemings himself was the chef de cuisine at the Jefferson residence in the Hôtel de Langeac on the Champs-Elysées, which served as a de facto American Embassy in Paris. James hired a tutor to help make him completely fluent in French, and had the pleasure of seeing his younger sister Sally arrive in Paris, as a servant and companion to Jefferson’s youngest daughter Polly. By August of 1789 James served his first famous dinner, which included a six hour long marathon discussion between Jefferson, the Marquis de Lafayette, and seven other Frenchmen, who, according to Jefferson, invited themselves over; as Lafayette told him, they would like “to ask a dinner of me.” Their topic of discussion was the ever growing French Revolution. Although, apparently, there was more drinking than eating, Jefferson considered the evening to be a great success.

Then came June 20, 1790, back in the States, and what is sometimes called the dinner table compromise, or alternately, the greatest meal in American history. The first functioning Federal government was installed, and Secretary of State Jefferson and Secretary of Treasury Alexander Hamilton agreed on little. However, the question of war time debt overlapped their respective positions, as most of the states’ debts were to foreign institutions. Jefferson and Hamilton agreed that the debt the states carried and could not pay, could, in fact, cause the collapse of the new government.

Jefferson decided that this problem could best be solved over a meal prepared by James Hemings. Jefferson hosted the meal at his apartment in New York, the then seat of the government. The staff of Monticello, along with writer Charles Cerami, has made up a mock menu for the meal, based on what Jefferson typically ate (this information comes from the excellent book Thomas Jefferson’s Crème Brûlée, by Thomas J. Craughwell):

Green Salad with Wine Jelly
Capon stuffed with truffles, artichoke (artichokes are still grown at Monticello), chestnuts, and Virginia ham. It was served with an apple brandy sauce.
A Top Round Beef Roast and Veal Knuckle, served with onions, carrots, bacon, and garnished with parsley and thyme
Small plates of confections
Vanilla Ice Cream inside a puff pastry

Naturally this would need five bottles of wine to go with it, concluding with a bottle of Champagne to accompany the dessert. And there it is, fusion cooking, with mostly local ingredients prepared using mostly French techniques, though the beef and veal were cooked for hours in an old American stand-by, a cast iron dutch oven. Thankfully, James Madison was also present to help tackle this feast.

The solution to the debt dilemma was this. Jefferson agreed to Hamilton’s idea that the Feds assume the states’ war debts. Jefferson, knowing that a financially stable state like Virginia would never go along with such an idea, proposed that the national capitol be moved to the South, as compensation. Madison’s job was to get the bills through Congress. Thus modern America was born, over dessert and ice cream, and multiple bottles of wine.

James Hemings returned to Monticello, and taught his brother Peter how to cook in the French fashion. Peter also became a master brewer later, and ran the brewery at Monticello. After James had successfully taught Peter the necessary cooking skills, he was finally granted his freedom in 1796, the requirements of his “apprenticeship” having been fulfilled.

One last episode remains in this story. Soon after Jefferson was inaugurated as President in 1801, he had an intermediary contact James, who was working in nearby Baltimore, and offer him the job as the first chef de cuisine at the brand new White House. James was hesitant, and Jefferson indicated that he did not want to pressure him into the job. James did return to Monticello in the fall, and ran the kitchen there for one last time. By late October, James Hemings was dead, from an apparent suicide.

After asking for confirmation of this report, Jefferson received the following reply from his acquaintance William Evans:

Sir,

I received your favour of the 1st Instant, and am sorry to inform you that the report respecting James Hennings Having commited an act of Suicide is true. I made every enquiry at the time this melancholy circumstance took place, the result of which was, that he had been delirious for Some days previous to his having commited the act, and it was the General opinion that drinking too freely was the cause, I am Sir
Your obedient Servant
William Evans

This strangely modern tale of substance abuse claiming a chef’s life in no ways changes the influence James Hemings had on American, and particularly Southern, cooking. In 1824 Jefferson relative Mary Randolph published the South’s first great cookbook, The Virginia Housewife. Included in the book is a recipe for ice cream (the first published in the US), and a recipe for”Macaroni,” where the other main ingredients are milk and cheese.

Where could those ideas possibly have come from?

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Silicone Handle Holders for Carbon Steel

Nokona Leather Hot Handle Holder

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