Free-Form Peach Mousse

This "recipe" is easy-peasy. You are basically going to make sweetened whipped cream with a bit of liquor and then stir in some peach purée and eat it.

If you want, you can chill it a bit before eating, but this mousse won't really hold up for days. Think more like you make it right before dinner and then eat it right after, or if you are making a single serving for yourself, just chill your ramekin or cup or whatever you are going to eat it out of before you start preparing your dessert. No chilling of the finished product is necessary, especially if you are working with cold ingredients. If you've got a jar of peach purée that you, say, made right after buying peaches at the farmers market, then this takes no time at all. If you don't have one, you should probably go to the farmers market, buy some ripe peaches, and make one. Heck, make more than one and freeze the extra.

This recipe makes one reasonably-sized serving. If you want to go big, as I have lately, multiply everything times 1.5. If you are not single or have a date or a dinner party or a family, multiply times the number of people and maybe add a serving (or more) because some people want big helpings or seconds or what-have-you.

This is based on my recollection of a recipe from what claimed to be a French monastic cookbook based on the principal of seasonal eating. This recipe was pretty much the only thing I made from the book and liked, but as the cookbook cost less than $5 in the basement of the Harvard Book Store, I never felt bad about that. However, in one of my recent moves, I apparently didn't feel like I needed to keep the book either, so when I went to find the recipe a few weeks ago, I realized I must've gotten rid of the cookbook it was in. Oops!

However, as I was sure I remembered the basic ingredients, I decided to tinker till I got something I was happy with. This is it.

I know lots of fruit mousses call for gelatin. This one doesn't—not only because the original didn't, but also because I'm a vegetarian—albeit not the strictest one—but despite my occasional marshmallow, I generally don't eat gelatin because it isn't vegetarian. Besides, this is delicious without it and holds up fine so long as you eat it within a few hours of making it. Why add ingredients you don't need, after all?

Lastly, I encourage you to get crazy and use different sorts of fruit purée. I think a number of stone fruits would work. However, whatever you use should be about the consistency of peach purée and shouldn't have seeds in it. I guess you could strain out the seeds if necessary, or if the texture doesn't bother you, do what makes you happy. Also, you are likely going to have to adjust the sugar based on the sweetness of the fruit you use, so keep that in mind.

(for a single serving)

¼ cup cream

2 tsp confectioners sugar

1 tsp brandy (option, but why wouldn't you?)

3-5 tsp of peach purée (to taste)

1) Add the cream to a mixing bowl. It would be awesome if the bowl were metal and chilled, but it's not necessary. Using a mixer of whatever sort you've got, start mixing the cream on low as you add the sugar bit by bit and the brandy.

2) Once you've added the sugar and brandy, turn the mixer up to high speed until you've got whipped cream. You'll recognize it because the cream will hold its shape. Don't over mix, or you'll end up with sweetened alcoholic butter, and I'm not really sure what that's useful for. (Perhaps you could make a cake with it.)

3) Once you've got whipped cream, gently fold in the peach purée and spoon into ramekins or tea cups or whatever you plan to serve the mouse from and cover it and put it in the fridge till you are ready to eat it.

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.

Buttermilk Pancakes

Generally speaking, I'm more of a French toast girl than a pancake girl.  Perhaps it is because French toast and grilled cheese are the first things I learned to cook back when I was about 5 years old.  In any case, living with roommate over the past year, I've gotten into the habit of making pancakes on the weekend.  I've tried a few recipes and have come to the conclusion buttermilk is a must.  Plain old pancakes are just blah.  Also blah are mixes.  I haven't used one of them in years.  Besides, it doesn't make sense to spend money on a mix when homemade pancakes can be made with ingredients I keep in the house anyway and taste so much better.

The recipe I've come up with has the benefit of being small.  It probably makes 6 to 8 pancakes depending on the size.  The recipe makes enough food for my roommate and me with enough batter left over for me to have a second batch the next morning.  Also, because it is small, it doesn't take much in the way of ingredients, so even if you have only one egg in the fridge, you can make these.  This recipe isn't my best recipe, but it is good.  It's especially good if you add fruit.  I like to put the fruit right into the batter instead of just on top.  You can use fresh or frozen, but out of fear of having half-frozen berries in the middle of my cooked pancake, I defrost the frozen ones first.  When I'm in a hurry, I do this by putting the berries in a ziploc baggie and running warm water over them.  They don't have to be completely defrosted, just enough that the heat of the stove can do the rest.

Buttermilk Pancakes

• 1 cup cake flour (You can use all-purpose, but the pancakes are more tender with cake flour.)
• 1-2 tbsp sugar (I go with one, but I once used 2 by accident, and it was fine if you like them sweeter.)
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp.baking soda
• pinch of salt
• 1 egg
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 2 tbsp of melted butter or canola oil (I like to do 1 tbsp of each.)

1. In a medium bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients, but don't get too zealous or you'll end up with flour all over the place.  Add egg and buttermilk, and begin whisking together.  Once everything is wet and lumpy, add the butter/canola oil to smooth it out.  Mix until most of the lumps are gone.

2. Heat a skillet on medium for a few minutes until the pan is good and hot.  (By trial and error, I've come to know how hot this is, and it's probably best for you to figure it out yourself, too.)  Pour 1/4 to 1/3 cup of batter into the skillet.  Let the pancake cook till bubbles begin to form and edges look dry.  Using a spatula, flip it over and cook until done. 

A final word to the wise: Do not turn up the heat so your pancakes will cook faster.  You'll end up with the outside cooked and the inside runny.  When I first started making pancakes in my teenage years, I often ended up with pancakes whose middles were uncooked.  Finally, my mom saw what I was doing, reached over, and turned down the stove.  I've never had that problem since.