A Forgotten Gem
Just to refresh you on the recipe rating scale:
0=Ugh, why bother! Yucky flavors or yucky technique
1=not worth the end product. Either too complicated or expensive for the end result which is only mediocre.
2=needs tweaking, but worth trying again
3=awesome dish
A book needs a 5 or greater to stay.
An unexpected bonus of my cookbook project has been becoming reacquainted with cookbooks I have owned for a long time, but at which I have not looked for a long while. Once I got married, I found that my cooking became more routine. Several factors affected this. Since I no longer lived alone and had someone to share dinner with every night, I found that I invited people over for dinner less often. I moved farther away from where I worked which meant longer commutes and less time in the kitchen. I was now cooking 50% or less of the meals since I was splitting the cooking with C who had a shorter commute. All these factors contributed to plainer cooking and to cooking that resorted to tried-and-true recipes.
I picked up Jacques Pepin’s Kitchen, Encore with Claudine for my next batch of recipes. It is a habit of mine to mark in cookbooks what recipes I have tried. I mark the recipe in the contents and the index and write comments on the recipe page. As I flipped through the table of contents, I found the margins marked with stars. Evidently, I’ve cooked out of this cookbook a lot.
I tried to do dished I hadn’t made before, but that was a challenge. C and I finally settled on Artichoke Hymn to Spring, Grilled Marinated Pork Loin, Corn Panbread and Cherry Compote. I had made the first and last before, but couldn’t recall the compote and fondly remembered the artichokes.
I always think in my mind that Jacques Pepin takes classic French and Provencal cooking and simplifies it for the American cook. I especially thought this was the case for this cookbook since he wrote it with his daughter who is not an accomplished chef. That is not Jacques’s idiom. He takes classic French dishes and makes them healthier, not simpler. I find a lot of his recipes have complicated, but perhaps not necessary steps. The compote requires pitting fresh cherries, then cracking the pits, tying them in a cheese cloth and boiling them in the cherries to add a slight almond flavor. Cracking fresh cherry pits is no small task, and my tongue was not sophisticated enough to sense the slight almond essence. I would suggest skipping this step and topping the dessert with some toasted slivered almonds.
I’m also amazed at how little seasoning he uses particularly on the vegetables. Often he uses little more than salt, pepper and butter, but his cooking preparations are so perfect that the vegetables need very little to brighten their flavors. This is the essence of French cooking at its best.
Artichoke Hymn to Spring: This recipe requires boiling the artichoke and then scraping the meat off of all the leaves. This meat is then added to a stew of onion, snow peas and asparagus. Again, a lot of work, especially for an Italian girl who is used to just pulling the leaves between her teeth at the table. But in this case, it works. The stew is delightful. My personal take is that a squeeze of lemon and some lemon zest added to the stew would brighten this dish to perfection. Serving it over rice with tuna or a piece of salted and smoked fish on top makes it a perfect spring lunch. We gave it a 3.
Grilled Marinated Pork Fillet: While Pepin’s vegetables are very lightly seasoned, his meats are often packed with flavor. This pork tenderloin was marinated in ginger, jalapeno, garlic, honey and fish sauce. It was slightly spicy and very tasty. Because it is the tenderloin it cooks quickly on the grill. It is then finished in a 200 degree oven soaking in the marinade for 10 to 40 minutes. This delightfully forgiving time range allowed all kinds of family havoc to occur before dinner actually got to the table, a very useful technique. This dish wasn’t a flavor explosion in your mouth, but was enjoyable. We gave it a 2.
Corn Panbread: This was a quick and easy starch, but really never send a Frenchman to do a Southerner’s job. It used fresh corn kernels, which I liked, but needed more salt and sugar than called for. We found it dry. Honestly, I’m likely to make panbread again, but not likely to make this recipe again: 1.5
Cherry Compote: My comments about the fussiness of this recipe aside, it is a gem to keep in your entourage. Served by itself with sour cream, over icecream, over the dry leftover panbread, on chocolate cake, these cherries can do no wrong. Bing cherries are poached in chardonnay, tart cherry jam and then splashed with kirshwasser making this an adult dessert worthy of any summer supper. We’ve already made it twice. A definite 3.
Cookbook total: 9.5 I went into this knowing there was no way this cookbook was leaving the collection. All the stars in the table of contents assured its place, but it was delightful to find it again like going to your college reunion and running into the girl you used to eat lunch with every day. You forgot you even knew her, but are now reminded how much she meant to you. Cooking with Claudine is such a treasure that I’m reluctant to put it back on the shelf for fear that I will forget it again. If only we had a Christmas card list for books to bring them back to mind at least once a year.
0=Ugh, why bother! Yucky flavors or yucky technique
1=not worth the end product. Either too complicated or expensive for the end result which is only mediocre.
2=needs tweaking, but worth trying again
3=awesome dish
A book needs a 5 or greater to stay.
An unexpected bonus of my cookbook project has been becoming reacquainted with cookbooks I have owned for a long time, but at which I have not looked for a long while. Once I got married, I found that my cooking became more routine. Several factors affected this. Since I no longer lived alone and had someone to share dinner with every night, I found that I invited people over for dinner less often. I moved farther away from where I worked which meant longer commutes and less time in the kitchen. I was now cooking 50% or less of the meals since I was splitting the cooking with C who had a shorter commute. All these factors contributed to plainer cooking and to cooking that resorted to tried-and-true recipes.
I picked up Jacques Pepin’s Kitchen, Encore with Claudine for my next batch of recipes. It is a habit of mine to mark in cookbooks what recipes I have tried. I mark the recipe in the contents and the index and write comments on the recipe page. As I flipped through the table of contents, I found the margins marked with stars. Evidently, I’ve cooked out of this cookbook a lot.
I tried to do dished I hadn’t made before, but that was a challenge. C and I finally settled on Artichoke Hymn to Spring, Grilled Marinated Pork Loin, Corn Panbread and Cherry Compote. I had made the first and last before, but couldn’t recall the compote and fondly remembered the artichokes.
I always think in my mind that Jacques Pepin takes classic French and Provencal cooking and simplifies it for the American cook. I especially thought this was the case for this cookbook since he wrote it with his daughter who is not an accomplished chef. That is not Jacques’s idiom. He takes classic French dishes and makes them healthier, not simpler. I find a lot of his recipes have complicated, but perhaps not necessary steps. The compote requires pitting fresh cherries, then cracking the pits, tying them in a cheese cloth and boiling them in the cherries to add a slight almond flavor. Cracking fresh cherry pits is no small task, and my tongue was not sophisticated enough to sense the slight almond essence. I would suggest skipping this step and topping the dessert with some toasted slivered almonds.
I’m also amazed at how little seasoning he uses particularly on the vegetables. Often he uses little more than salt, pepper and butter, but his cooking preparations are so perfect that the vegetables need very little to brighten their flavors. This is the essence of French cooking at its best.
Artichoke Hymn to Spring: This recipe requires boiling the artichoke and then scraping the meat off of all the leaves. This meat is then added to a stew of onion, snow peas and asparagus. Again, a lot of work, especially for an Italian girl who is used to just pulling the leaves between her teeth at the table. But in this case, it works. The stew is delightful. My personal take is that a squeeze of lemon and some lemon zest added to the stew would brighten this dish to perfection. Serving it over rice with tuna or a piece of salted and smoked fish on top makes it a perfect spring lunch. We gave it a 3.
Grilled Marinated Pork Fillet: While Pepin’s vegetables are very lightly seasoned, his meats are often packed with flavor. This pork tenderloin was marinated in ginger, jalapeno, garlic, honey and fish sauce. It was slightly spicy and very tasty. Because it is the tenderloin it cooks quickly on the grill. It is then finished in a 200 degree oven soaking in the marinade for 10 to 40 minutes. This delightfully forgiving time range allowed all kinds of family havoc to occur before dinner actually got to the table, a very useful technique. This dish wasn’t a flavor explosion in your mouth, but was enjoyable. We gave it a 2.
Corn Panbread: This was a quick and easy starch, but really never send a Frenchman to do a Southerner’s job. It used fresh corn kernels, which I liked, but needed more salt and sugar than called for. We found it dry. Honestly, I’m likely to make panbread again, but not likely to make this recipe again: 1.5
Cherry Compote: My comments about the fussiness of this recipe aside, it is a gem to keep in your entourage. Served by itself with sour cream, over icecream, over the dry leftover panbread, on chocolate cake, these cherries can do no wrong. Bing cherries are poached in chardonnay, tart cherry jam and then splashed with kirshwasser making this an adult dessert worthy of any summer supper. We’ve already made it twice. A definite 3.
Cookbook total: 9.5 I went into this knowing there was no way this cookbook was leaving the collection. All the stars in the table of contents assured its place, but it was delightful to find it again like going to your college reunion and running into the girl you used to eat lunch with every day. You forgot you even knew her, but are now reminded how much she meant to you. Cooking with Claudine is such a treasure that I’m reluctant to put it back on the shelf for fear that I will forget it again. If only we had a Christmas card list for books to bring them back to mind at least once a year.