A Croissant and a Tourteau

It started with thumbing through a cookbook at my favorite local shop. Unable to resist reaching for a binding printed with the block-letter words "New French Recipes" a luxurious but simple lunch idea was born.

Since I left Europe in December of 2005, I have been nurturing a love of its various regions. My ventures into cheesemongering and macaron-making have inevitably grown a particularly French intrigue, and so it is impossible for titles concerning this culture and its cuisine not to thoroughly entice me.

And yet, constantly aware of the ability a cookbook collection has to boom out of control, I try to be extra selective about what I purchase versus what I browse for on food blogs versus what I check out from the library. In this case, selecting and mentally tucking away one recipe within the pages of Éric Kayser's New French Recipes allowed me to peaceably put the book back on its shelf.

Not feeling rushed, I figured I would eventually get around to the recipe (if it can even be named so formally), but the next day it was convenient to stop by the local cheese shop and my grocery list started to form. I was hoping to find Comté, but the next closest option was a cave-aged Gruyère, which would do just fine. Continuing to piece together ingredients, I picked up a croissant at the bakery as well.





This is where my sights were set: a pan-grilled sandwich of melty Alpine-style cheese, crunchy bites of sweet hazelnuts, and savory nibbles of green garlic, simply seasoned with cracked pepper and assembled within a flaky butter croissant. To make it a meal, baby heirloom tomatoes waited at home to nestle along the side of the plate.

A little more grand but similar, this sandwich reminds me of the nut, cheese, and bread combination I latched onto while living in Oxford. Planning a coach trip into London or a study session at the park, I would slice cheese and lay it flat across the face of whole wheat sandwich bread. Gently pressing halved walnuts into the cheese, I would complete the sandwich with another slice of bread spread with blackcurrant jam. Sometimes I would use marmalade or a different flavor of jam, and sometimes the cheese would be Brie, sometimes Port Salut, or sometimes sharp English cheddar; it was simple and on a college student's budget, but I loved it. These sandwiches, Digestives, and ten cups of black British tea a day (plus chicken breasts from the farmer's market) were my staples that semester.



Before ending this blog post, let me revert briefly back to France. The very same day I made that grilled croissant sandwich, I received a cookbook from my brother and his wife, a cookbook I have no qualms adding to my collection.

I love curling up and reading Dorie Greenspan's voice, whether it is out of my copy of Baking, her blog, or many of her publication appearances. Now, I get to listen to her from Around My French Table, a cookbook that thoroughly won me over several months ago when first seeing it at a bookshop and flipping to this page:



This tourteau sounded so enjoyable, I am hoping to make it my first completed recipe out of the cookbook...if the strawberry, tomato, mozzarella salad or olive sables do not push their way to the top first. I will be sure to keep you posted.

Seeking Variety

I never set out to make a name for myself in the cookie baking department. In fact, looking at my recipe index, it would appear I have a ways to go until that title is truly earned. But ask my coworkers what they expect to find in the break room on Wednesdays, and they'll quickly answer back with "Lael's cookies."

A particular recipe I made a while ago launched me into being a weekly cookie baker in my office and I have stuck faithfully to that recipe since. The wonderful thing about it is that within the same dough you can replace or add any number of things and get something new and different, yet still with a melt-in-your-mouth sensation.

However, I am not always the best example of a creature of habit because while I like consistency in some senses, I can get incredibly bored with it. For one, I'm not the kind of person who eats the same thing for breakfast every single morning. And, while I love to give myself an extra half or full hour to exercise in the morning, the activity may range between walking, running, or any number of yoga sessions.

All that to say, I can't help mixing things up on Cookie Day sometimes. I try to stick to a similar type of cookie, at least, and last week's variation was subtle but still special in its own way. Instead of using powdered sugar, I used unrefined cane sugar and cut the amount of all purpose flour in half, replacing the rest with whole wheat. The eggs were left in the fridge, and a coarsely chopped chocolate bar was mixed in.

I cannot claim this adaptation as an invention of my own brilliance. In fact, it's an entirely different recipe. One from the mind of Dorie Greenspan, and the other from the equally admirable Alice Medrich. Both produce a cookie with similar proportions of ingredients and delicate flavor that spaciously fits in the palm of your hand.

I can't remember where I first saw this recipe, but when Googling it, I found that The Wednesday Chef had made it, and it's quite possible I first read about it there.

Whole Wheat Sables*

*Alice's recipe calls for cocoa nibs or chopped hazelnuts, both of which sound lovely, but I had an Endangered Species dark chocolate bar with espresso beans on hand, so I used part of that.