1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (27 page)

Mail order:
touchofeurope.net
(search lentilles de puy).
Further information and recipe:
saveur.com
(search lentil salad).

Traditional blue steel pans can be hard to find, but they produce cakes with the crispest edges.

“Those squat, plump little cakes called ‘petites madeleines,’ which look as though they had been molded in the fluted valve of a scallop shell.” Who better to describe the spongy, fragrant blond tea cakes than Marcel Proust, who immortalized them as a touchstone for memory in
Swann’s Way
, the first book in his seven-volume
Remembrance of Things Past
. Biting into one as an adult, Proust began to recall the Sunday mornings as a child when his aunt shared the delicate pastries with him; suddenly his entire life flashed before him, and an epic was born.

Remarking on the literary mileage Proust eked out of that one small pastry, A. J. Liebling noted in
Between Meals
, “In light of what Proust wrote with so mild a stimulus, it is the world’s
loss that he did not have a heartier appetite.” The formidable journalist and trencherman speculated that an even greater masterpiece might have resulted had Proust dined on a dozen oysters, a big bowl of clam chowder, steamer clams, scallops, soft-shelled crabs, a few ears of corn, two lobsters, and a duck.

To eat this little cake may be to indulge in cliché, but madeleines have considerable charms; the moist and buttery morsels are soft and light on the inside but satisfyingly crisp at the edges, with a simple flavor that makes them a favorite of children everywhere.

The origin of the madeleine is the subject of hot dispute. Commercial madeleine makers in the town of Commercy say that in 1755, King Stanislas of Lorraine was hosting a luncheon. When his mercurial chef stormed out of the kitchen during the meal, a young assistant saved the day by preparing a little cake similar to one her grandmother made. The king and his guests were so delighted that they named the cake after the girl, Madeleine. Another version suggests that madeleines were invented by Avice, Talleyrand’s pastry chef, while he was seeking to create a pound cake in miniature form. Still another tale insists that Marie Leczynska, the wife of Louis XV, perfected them with the advice of her own cook, Madeleine.

Although they are baked throughout France, the town of Commercy in Lorraine is considered the epicenter of their production. Proust fans flock there to buy the biscuits, traditionally packed in quaintly designed oval boxes.

The madeleine’s sweetly innocent flavor begins with a blend of egg yolks beaten with sugar and seasoned with grated lemon zest. Folded into flour and combined with snowy beaten egg whites and golden melted butter, the mixture is poured into pretty shell-shaped baking molds. Some recipes call for brandy, but in a quantity that, as Liebling put it, “would not furnish a gnat with an alcohol rubdown.” With or without it, the cakes exude a heavenly scent as they bake. The special metal baking pans with scalloped indentations produce equally charming results when filled with cornbread or gingerbread batter.

Where:
In Paris
, Blé Sucré, tel 33/1-43-40-77-73,
blesucre.fr
;
in New York
, La Maison du Macaron, tel 212-243-2757,
nymacaron.com
.
Mail order:
histoiresucree.com
(search madeleines de commercy).
Further information and recipes:
Swann’s Way
by Marcel Proust (1913);
Between Meals
by A. J. Liebling (1962);
Maida Heatter’s Book of Great Desserts
by Maida Heatter (1999);
smittenkitchen.com
(search classic madeleines).

One of the oiliest and fishiest of all fish, mackerel will have little appeal to those who prefer their seafood white, firm, and mildly flavored. But even timid palates have been known to develop an appreciation for these shiny silver-blue fish when they are prepared as in the following recipe.

After being boned, skinned, and filleted, they are suspended in an astringent aspic based on white wine, onion, garlic, bay leaf, coriander seeds, and a good dose of lemon juice and grated lemon peel. Those aromatics clean up the fish’s excessively oily overtones, while the wine and lemon work in tandem to do the job of firming and pickling. Delicious as a cold appetizer, or as a light lunch with bread and a salad, these
maquereaux
are especially welcome in hot weather.

Serves 6

6 medium-size mackerel, gutted but whole (about 1 pound each)

1 cup dry white wine

1 small onion, thinly sliced

1 large clove garlic, peeled and lightly crushed with the flat side of a chef’s knife

1 bay leaf

6 to 8 coriander seeds

6 to 8 mustard seeds

2 teaspoons salt

8 to 10 black peppercorns, lightly crushed

Grated rind of ½ medium-size lemon

Juice of ½ medium-size lemon

2 tablespoons minced fresh flat-leaf parsley, for garnish

Hot toast or warm baguette slices, for serving

1.
Thoroughly rinse the mackerel under cold running water.

2.
Place the white wine, onion, garlic, bay leaf, coriander and mustard seeds, salt, peppercorns, lemon rind and juice, and 1 cup of water in a large saucepan. Bring to a simmer over medium heat, and let simmer until the mixture develops into a court bouillon and becomes flavorful, about 10 minutes. Let the court bouillon cool to room temperature in the saucepan.

3.
Place the mackerel in the cooled court bouillon over low heat and let simmer until cooked through, 10 to 15 minutes. Let the fish cool in the broth.

4.
Lift the cooled fish gently out of the saucepan, reserving the broth. Remove and discard the heads, bones, and skin of the fish. Cut each fish half into fillets that are about 2 inches long.

5.
Place the mackerel fillets in a glass or ceramic serving dish. Boil the broth rapidly over high heat until it is reduced by half, to about ⅔ of a cup. Strain the broth, discarding the solids. Pour the broth over the mackerel and sprinkle the parsley on top.

6.
Cover the serving dish with plastic wrap and place it in the refrigerator until the broth sets to a light aspic, 7 to 8 hours. The mackerel will taste even better if it is refrigerated for 12 hours before it is served. Serve the mackerel with the hot toast or warm baguette slices.

Further information and additional recipes:
Simple French Food
by Richard Olney (1992);
Daniel Boulud’s Café Boulud Cookbook
by Daniel Boulud (1999).

Morels usually range in size from 2 to 6 inches.

Morels, even when called
morilles
, are not exclusively French. The highly prized luxuries also grow wild on the edges of forests and in mountains elsewhere in Europe, in China, and in the midwestern United States, around Michigan. What
is
French is their best and simplest preparation, the three-ingredient dish called
morilles à la crème:
After their cellular conical caps are brushed clean, the mushrooms are lightly simmered in unsalted butter for about seven minutes, then bathed in hot, heavy sweet cream that bubbles down to an enveloping satiny sauce. Preferably served as a garnish for chicken or game birds, morels also shine when simply sautéed in butter with a hint of shallot and a dash of red wine.

Strictly speaking, from a botanical point of view, morels are closer to truffles than to other members of the edible fungi family, due to their distribution of spores. The most delicious varieties are the ocher-colored
Morchella esculenta
and the chocolate-brown
Morchella deliciosa.
With their peaked honeycombed caps, fat, floppy stems, and generally earthy colorations, they might look a bit ominous to the uninitiated. And, in fact, with good reason: The helvellic acid present in raw morels can be toxic. Amateur foragers had also best beware of highly poisonous look-alike fungi known as false morels. Better to trust your local farmers’ market or fancy food stores and live to tell the tale.

Harvested in midspring, morels flourish following a forest fire. They are best eaten fresh; the dried variety, while useful as a flavoring for sauces and stews, can be unpleasantly fibrous, even when soaked and simmered.

Where:
In Paris
, L’Ami Louis, tel 33/1-48-87-77-48.
Mail order:
Melissa’s Produce, tel 800-588-0151,
melissas.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini
by Elizabeth Schneider (2001);
thegreatmorel.com
.

Chocolate mousse really does live up to all the clichés it engenders: Light, airy, rich, and quintessentially chocolate, it’s an iconic symbol of indulgence and of the sensuous pleasures of French food. In the bargain, it is also almost
embarrassingly easy to make. Essentially, it consists of chocolate, melted with butter and combined with egg yolk (for a creamy texture), enfolded with sweetened whipped cream and/or beaten egg whites (for an airy touch), and then chilled. The term
mousse
simply means foam. The chocolate version had already achieved its global significance by the eighteenth century, when mousses both sweet and savory were popularized.

In these diet-conscious days, chocolate may be moussed with or without egg yolks, with or without egg whites, and with or without both cream and butter. You may see a mousse frozen, molded, tucked into pie, layered into cake, and flavored with coffee or any number of fruit liqueurs. All such iterations may have their charms, but the absolute simplest formula remains the purists’ favorite, for the best of reasons. The key to making a pure version of chocolate mousse delicious is to use very high-quality bittersweet chocolate with a high percentage of cacao. The chocolate is no supporting actor here, after all—it’s the whole show.

Further information and recipes:
Jean-Georges: Cooking at Home with a Four-Star Chef
by Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Mark Bittman (1998);
The James Beard Cookbook
by James Beard (2002);
bonappetit.com
(search classic chocolate mousse).

American doughboys deployed in France during World War I were so shocked and amused to see the French eating frogs’ legs, they couldn’t get over it. Thus was bestowed the nickname that seems to have stuck, although it isn’t exactly PC these days. The French have had the last laugh, however, considering how delectable, tender, and sweet those succulent limbs can be. Do they taste like chicken? Well, not exactly. Perhaps a bit gamier, and with just the slightest saline suggestion of their amphibian nature.

Although the most famous French version is
cuisses de grenouilles provençal
, in which the cute little legs are sautéed to crunchy golden bliss in a haze of garlic butter and aromatic
herbes de Provence
, the Alsatian version has to be accorded first place for sophistication and elegance. Created by Paul Haeberlin, the second-generation chef in his family’s exquisite garden of a restaurant, L’Auberge de L’Ill, the preparation starts with a mousseline—a light and creamy mousse, actually a pike puree, whipped to an airy snow with cream and egg whites as it would be for quenelles—which is heaped into small individual ramekins. A well in the center of the mousseline is filled with the boned, silken ivory meat of frogs’ legs poached in riesling wine. Baked under a fluff of creamy béchamel sauce, the mousseline is unmolded and nestled onto verdant sautéed spinach and sprinkled with minced chives.