French Classics Made Easy (75 page)

RASPBERRY COULIS

[COULIS DE FRAMBOISE]

A raspberry coulis, or purée, is an extremely versatile sauce. Its flavor and color can dramatically alter a dessert and, in effect, create a new one. More than a century ago Auguste Escoffier did so when he created his now famous
pêche Melba
by adding a sweetened raspberry purée to a poached peach perched on top of vanilla ice cream. The addition transformed the simple peach and ice cream into an extraordinary dessert.

Raspberry coulis is great served over other fruits like strawberries or blueberries, or over ice creams such as chocolate or coffee. And the coulis can be frozen into a great sorbet.

MAKES 1½ CUPS

2 boxes (4 ounces each) fresh raspberries or 1 package (10 ounces) frozen unsweetened raspberries, thawed but undrained

Confectioners’ sugar, Sugar Syrup (
page 359
), or red currant jelly, to taste

1 tablespoon kirsch or framboise (optional)

In a food processor or blender, purée the raspberries. Taste and add confectioners’ sugar, sugar syrup, or currant jelly if too tart. Add the kirsch (if using) and strain through a fine-mesh sieve to remove the seeds. (This sauce can be made a day in advance and refrigerated until used.)

S
TRAINING THE
C
OULIS

As you strain the raspberry purée, tap the side of the strainer to encourage the purée to go through, but leave the seeds behind. When you use a spoon to push the purée through a strainer, you risk pushing the seeds through as well.

CREME ANGLAISE

Crème anglaise is a vanilla custard sauce with many uses. It is usually used as a sauce and served both warm and cold to accompany cakes, French
puddings,
crêpes, fruit, and soufflés. It is the base from which both French Ice Cream (
page 290
) and Bavarian cream desserts (such as Marquise Alice,
page 271
) are made, and it can be easily flavored with chocolate, coffee, or any variety of liqueur.

The classic technique for making a crème anglaise requires beating the egg yolks and sugar to the “ribbon” stage, adding warm milk, and stirring over simmering water until the sauce thickens enough to coat a spoon. This procedure takes between 10 and 20 minutes.

For my crème anglaise, I skip the beating of the egg yolks and sugar and eliminate the use of the double boiler. Once the milk and sugar come to a boil, it takes no more than 10 seconds to make the sauce. The classic technique leaves the surface of the sauce smooth and shiny, while this one leaves it with many small bubbles. The bubbles are easily removed with a spoon (but if you’re using the crème anglaise in ice cream or a Bavarian creamh the center. Bake until evenly browned, 25 to 30 minutes. Cool on a rack.

W
HOLE
-W
HEAT
B
READ

[PAIN COMPLET]

Substitute half whole-wheat flour and half bread flour for the unbleached all-purpose flour. The rest of the recipe is the same; or shape it into a
boule
(see illustration, at right).

F
ORMING A
B
OULE

A
boule,
or ball-shaped loaf of bread, with its tight, smooth outer surface is not hard to form, but takes a little practice to make perfect.

1.
Tuck the edges of the kneaded dough underneath itself.

2.
Shape the dough into a smooth round ball.

DESSERT SAUCES

Here are the basic sauces, fillings, icings, and flavorings that you will need to make the desserts in this book. I have also included my recipe for quick and easy homemade jam, which is only lightly sweetened and intense with fruit, and my sugar syrups (used for moistening cakes and making sorbets). You will notice that for all of my dessert sauces, I use less sugar than most classic recipes call for.

Although some of the recipes that follow are not strictly “sauces,” they are the basic dessert-building tools of a classic pastry chef. Once you have made them successfully and begin to see the many uses they have, I recommend that you commit them to memory (this is what a chef in training must do). Learning the structure and the proportions of a pastry cream or a crème anglaise, for example, will give you the freedom to quickly make dessert soufflés, filled cream puffs, ice cream, and dessert sauces whenever you want to.

CHOCOLATE SAUCE

[SAUCE AU CHOCOLAT]

If you start with a good-tasting chocolate, it is a simple matter to make a good sauce. A chocolate sauce can be made with water, milk, or cream. In the following recipe, I use the most convenient and least caloric of these liquids to produce a dark, shiny sauce.

You can create a thin or thick sauce by merely changing the amount of liquid used. The amount shown in the recipe below produces a sauce that is thin when hot and thicker when cold, the proper consistency whenever a chocolate sauce is called for. It is also an ideal consistency for flavoring ice creams, custards, and the like. Using
half
the amount of liquid produces a thick, hot sauce that becomes fudgy when cold. In this form, it is perfect for pouring over ice cream, and at room temperature mixes well with buttercreams and makes a wonderful coating for cream puffs and éclairs.

You can add a teaspoon or two of Cognac, rum, Grand Marnier, or liqueur to change the flavor of your sauce, or make it richer by using milk or cream, instead of water.

MAKES ¾ CUP

4 ounces (115g) semisweet or bittersweet chocolate

½ cup water (see Note)

1.
In a small saucepan, melt the chocolate with the water over medium heat, about 2 minutes. When the water and chocolate come to a boil, stir gently with a whisk until smooth.

2.
If the sauce is too thin, cook it longer. If it is too thick, add more liquid and stir to blend well.

3.
Remove the sauce from the heat and serve hot or cold. Refrigerate any leftovers.

NOTE

Use only ¼ cup water for a thick sauce.

IN ADDITION

Over the years, I have been told by chefs, cooking teachers, and cookbook writers that you can’t mix water and chocolate and boil it to make a sauce. It is true that when melting chocolate, a drop of water will cause the chocolate to seize up, but if enough liquid is used you won’t have a problem. I often use a microwave oven to make this sauce. I put the water and chocolate into a glass or ceramic bowl, and when the water boils, there will be enough heat to melt the chocolate, allowing you to stir it to make a smooth sauce. If too thin, use the microwave to boil the sauce to thicken.

RASPBERRY COULIS

[COULIS DE FRAMBOISE]

A raspberry coulis, or purée, is an extremely versatile sauce. Its flavor and color can dramatically alter a dessert and, in effect, create a new one. More than a century ago Auguste Escoffier did so when he created his now famous
pêche Melba

APPENDIX A

THE METRIC SYSTEM IN COOKING AND PASTRY MAKING

Cooking is more an art than a science, and as such gives the individual a considerable amount of freedom. Pastry making, on the other hand, is a science and requires precision and accuracy for consistently successful results.

For years, Europeans have had the advantage of the metric system in the kitchen. When correctly used, this system of weights and measurements not only preserves the freedom inherent in the “art” of cooking, but also ensures accuracy in the “science” of pastry making. The key advantage of the metric system lies in the principle of weighing solids and measuring the volume of liquids, as opposed to our system of measuring the volume of both.

Ideally, recipes should list ingredients as we find them or buy them at the market—e.g., 1 eggplant, 1 pound (500g), diced. This describes the size and weight of the eggplant to buy and what to do with it once you get it home. Many American recipes list ingredients by volume measurement—e.g., 3 cups diced eggplant; ½ cup chopped onion; 6 cups sliced apple; a slightly rounded cup of grated cheese. This is impractical.

A “slightly rounded” cup of grated cheese always puzzled me until one day when I was writing a recipe for a cheese sauce. In making the sauce, I took a piece of cheese (100g) out of my refrigerator, cut it into a few pieces, and melted it in the liquid in my saucepan.

Simple enough. But, in writing the recipe for a nonscale-using audience, I found that I had to describe the amount of cheese in cups. I grated the same weight of cheese and then sprinkled it into a cup. Finding it was slightly more than 1 cup, I described it as a slightly rounded cup of grated cheese. I could have easily pressed it gently and then called it a “lightly packed” cup of grated cheese. In both cases, the grating and measuring are time-consuming procedures. They were not needed when I made my sauce. They were needed only because the average reader doesn’t have a small, inexpensive kitchen scale (see “Buying a Scale,” facing page).

Although the scale is merely helpful in making most cooking easier, in the science of pastry making it is
indispensable
. Most problems in baking come from the inaccurate measurement of flour.

Back in the ’30s, when the first Betty Crocker cookbook was written, readers were told to sift flour onto a piece of wax paper and then spoon it into their liquid measuring cups. (Dry measuring cups had not come onto the market yet.) Since the book was so popular, this form of measuring flour became the norm until Julia Child appeared on the scene. In her first book, she measured flour by sifting it directly into a dry measuring cup and leveling it off. In her subsequent books, her flour has been measured by dipping the cups into the flour and leveling them off.