mmmadeleines

so this is the weekend i thought i'd get a little french. tg's father has returned from cape town via maputo, lusaka, and dubai, so we are having a little get-together that is totally non-france-related, but if i'm doing the hosting and the cooking, it is only fair that i get to choose! so we are having poached trout (easy) with remoulade sauce (easy), a couple of salads, some cheese (my beloved bresse bleu among others), olives, baguette, and gateau chocolat a la ocean.

all of which i have done before. but the new things i am keen to try are rabbit rillettes (i love nothing more than the rillettes of rabbit with pistachios and prunes at chez bernard in st-sauveur-des-monts) and madeleines. the rillettes seems fairly straight forward: pop the ingredients in a braiser for a few hours, then mash a bit (modern recipes say to pull apart the meat with a fork, the larousse gastronomique insists it must be punded in a mortar). but madeleines are meant to be tricky.

larousse is typically vague on technique. they offer two versions, commercy and plain, with the commercy recipe adding lemon zest and baking soda but containing less butter. basically, the gastronomique says to put everything but the butter in a bowl, "work with a spatula until smooth," then add the butter. one crucial difference between commercy and plain? one is baked "in a very slow oven," the other at 375F.

david lebovitz, on the other hand, cooks them even hotter and makes a big fuss about chilling the molds and chilling the batter and insists that added leavening is sacrilege - all the lightness comes from whipping the eggs and sugar together first. sort of the opposite of the gastronomique; i can't imagine "working with a spatula" would get a terrific amount of air into anything. and as the "plain" recipe looks a lot like a pound cake batter, i imagine they would be quite stodgy.

the other big difference is that the gastronomique recipes make between 2 and 5 times as many madeleines, at a guess.

i think for this weekend i will stick with the hand-holding lebovitz (but perhaps doubling the quantities), and mess with the gastronomique recipes on a less momentous occasion. the gastronomique may not be terrifically user-friendly, but any encyclopedia that offers a 5-page section entitled "restaurants of bygone days" will always have a place on my shelf.

superfast!

a couple of pics of the the love bug-inspired sweater as modelled by the fellow who requested it. i tried to get him to pose in a way that showed off the sweater while smiling at the same time; didn't really work out though.




filmcraft tutorial on top-down saddle-shoulder sweaters coming soon!

finally!

camera and card and card reader all in the same spot!

the love bug-inspired sweater is finished and blocking at home right now. harry is so excited! he actually asked to wear it to school yesterday morning. soon, soon i promise the top-down saddle-shoulder tutorial.




and just for fun, the long-ago-finished, only-recently-blocked saroyan scarf. this is made for my cousin, out of handspun from her sister. i was thinking i'd make one for myself too - it's such a pretty pattern! - but after blocking it (4 pins to a leaf) i don't know if i can stand to do it all again.

oh dear

i was about to post a happy "look i'm almost done this sweater" post and went to take a photo with my lovely camera (a christmas gift no less) when i discovered something a bit horrible! i've been meaning to make some sort of case or cozy for it as it likes to turn itself on in my handbag, but haven't gotten round to it. now i've discovered something else it likes to do on its own - open the battery/memory card compartment and eject everything. the batteries were floating around in my handbag, but the memory card is missing! this is not right! oh boo.

well time to get to work on the camera cozy i guess. my plan is something double-knit that looks a little like this:

gf-cf and other food fun

is there anyone left who can eat absolutely anything? besides me, i mean. my sister is vegan, my son is allergic to oats, my husband is allergic to oats and eggplants.

a kid in our neighbourhood just started a gf-cf diet after being diagnosed on the autistic spectrum, so i've been thinking about recipes he could enjoy (almond milk ice cream springs instantly to mind) and yesterday was a co-worker's birthday, so i got to try one of them out. she's not gf-cf, but has food sensitivities including cows' milk, wheat/gluten, tree nuts, citrus fruits, and other things i can't remember right now.

this lovely chocolate cake is rich and moist and flourless, and shockingly easy to make. the original recipe calls for butter, but i made it with earth balance vegan margarine and it worked perfectly and tasted delish! i also threw in a pinch of vanilla salt - salt is an essential addition to most things made with vegan margarine, because it doesn't have the saltiness of butter or margarine with whey. and salt intensifies flavours wonderfully.

there is a story behind this recipe that i don't properly remember - something about a fishmonger in a small french village that was also renowned for selling this cake, and then had an extramarital affair with someone, and the cuckolded spouse got revenge by giving the recipe to all in the town so no one needed to go to the fishmonger for cake anymore. or something.

gateau au chocolat a la ocean

8 oz bittersweet chocolate
8 oz butter or margarine
6 eggs
3 oz white sugar

melt together the chocolate and fat. allow to cool.

beat the eggs with the sugar until very fluffy (n.b. i made this once or twice before whisking by hand, and doing so is utterly deadly. last night i used the kitchen aid whisk, and beat the eggs to four times their quantity with no effort at all! it did take a longish while to get there, though)

fold the melted chocolate gently into the eggs.

pour into a 9" springform pan lined with waxed paper, bake at 325F or 350F for 30 or 40 minutes (the original recipe said 35 for 20 minutes, but that has never worked for me! it also didn't specify what size springform pan, maybe 350F for 20 minutes works for a larger size?) until the top looks a little dry and it is no longer super wiggly.

the cake starts out high, but sinks as it cools into a dense, rich cake.

hmm?

i was looking at some doctor who-related things upon discovering that we'll be seeing some new eps starting this friday and i started thinking about the silly old sweater-vest that sylvester mccoy (the seventh doctor) used to wear. "i should knit one for harry," i thought, "before he is too old to hate me for it." and then i realised... i probably have enough of the right colours in scraps of briggs & little (depending on how much leftover yellow wo i have, that will be the kicker).

so... should i? if i can do it from scraps? or will the kiddo kill me for it?

forget what i said

in my last sewing through the decades challenge post - this fur-trimmed coat is the one i covet!

maybe what i should do is pick patterns covering the decade from 1929 to 1939? or something? the later thirties don't do much for me - once the war started, it all got too pragmatic - but the 1920s often fail to excite in the way i feel they ought to.