Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Baking Chez Moi is très magnifique!

I know I haven’t posted anything in forever, which is a shame because I’ve been meaning to. I have a kick-ass lentil soup recipe that I’ve been meaning to write down. (The secret is red wine vinegar and French lentils.) Plus, there is my almost-entirely-from-scratch enchilada recipe. (I make everything except the tortillas, though I do have a tortilla press, so maybe one day.) I should actually write those out because I wing them every time.  

However, today, I am all about the Apple Custardy Squares from Baking Chez Moi. If you like apples, these are near perfect food. The recipe can be found here. (Thank you, Boston Globe and Dorrie Greenspan!)

How perfect is this food? Well, I didn’t get a picture because it didn’t cross my mind because it smelled so good I had to cut and eat it immediately, or after the obligatory fifteen-minute waiting period. Since I’ve basically eaten the whole thing myself, it is good that it only makes a small pan, and it’s great that it only requires ingredients you probably have around the house anyway.

The Apple Custardy Squares are the second recipe I’ve tried from Baking Chez Moi, and I just have to say how excited I am about this cookbook. It was one of my two Christmas gifts from my boyfriend, and sadly, it arrived during a period of immense tummy trouble for me. That’s why I tried it out for the first time only two weekends ago.

I did look at it as soon as I opened it, of course, and the recipes had me salivating and planning what to cook. What’s more, I immediately fell in love with the tone of the writing. It feels like Dorrie Greenspan is in your kitchen chatting you up and offering stories and advice. Every recipe comes with helpful info regarding serving and storing, but the most useful feature might be the Bonne Idée, or good idea. Not every recipe has a Bonne Idèe, but when the recipe does, it lives up to the name. The Bonne Idèe typically offers substitutions or additions to the recipe that might be good to try. For the Apple Custardy Squares, for example, she suggests adding some alcohol or almond extract. (I opted for two tablespoons of dark rum, which I had around because it was an optional ingredient in the first recipe I made, the Brown-Butter-and-Vanilla-Bean Weekend Cake. This is a lady who doesn’t mind a little liquor in her baked goods, yet another reason to love her.) She also suggests using pears or a combination of pears of apples or going tropical and using mangoes in the place of apples.

And this pretty much exemplifies what is so fantastic about this cookbook: there’s no dogma here. Greenspan encourages her readers to have fun, experiment, and make the recipes fit their tastes. I love that because it is how I approach cooking and because I think the dogma keeps a lot of people out of the kitchen. When you are scared of doing it wrong, you are less likely to try. Greenspan’s breezy tone and her many Bonnes Idèes make cooking seem less like a rigorous discipline and more like a fun and enjoyable way to feed yourself, your friends, and your family. Of course, yes, there is and can be some rigorous discipline in cooking; some recipes require it if you want them to turn out properly.  However, my idea of perfect in the kitchen is something the cook is happy with and enjoys eating.  Beyond that, I’m not sure there is a right and wrong so much as a good and even better.