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After the Cassoulet

After watching the delightful Julie and Julia I felt compelled to cook something from my battered 1968 edition of Mastering.
Cassoulet may seem like a strange choice for an August dinner party but I figured it would be cold and foggy at the beach house and that even if it wasn’t, my guests still would appreciate this most seductive of dishes.
It wasn’t; they did.
Cassoulet is so robust a dish that Julia suggests following it only with fruit — but, be honest, aren’t you a tad disappointed when you attend a dinner party and dessert turns out to be the equivalent of one-perfect-peach?
Instead I made a granita from the lemon verbena in my garden and paired it with the marvelous madeleines I learned to make from Flo Braker.
Following a Julia recipe with one from Flo had a certain resonance for me: Julia was a huge fan of Flo’s baking, even listing Flo’s first baking book as one of her 10 favorite cookbooks.
Flo and I were such Julia fans that we quoted her constantly, sometimes in less-than-Meryl-Streep-level imitations. One day the phone rang at Flo’s and when she answered a voice boomed, “This is Julia Child.”
Flo told me later that she came perilously close to saying, “Casey, I really don’t have time to kid around right now.” Fortunately she didn’t as Julia was calling to invite her to give baking classes in the famous Cambridge kitchen.
I don’t know if Flo included this recipe in her classes that week, but it remains for me the way to achieve madeleines I’d serve proudly to Julia, Julie, Norma or Meryl.

Flo Braker’s Madeleines

These are genuine genoise madeleines, far more delicious than those little pound -cake-style imposters.

2 eggs, room temperature
1/3 cup vanilla sugar
1/2 cup sifted flour
1/4 cup melted, clarified butter (measured after clarifying; you’ll need to start with at least 1/3 cup)

Grease and flour molds for two dozen madeleines. Preheat oven to 400-degrees and place racks near the bottom of the oven. It’s best to make this batter in a small mixing bowl.; it makes incorporation of the ingredients much easier, more thorough and quicker.
Beat the eggs with an electric mixer until thick and yellow; slowly add the sugar, beating until the mixture is thick and pale. Fold in the flour all at once and then fold in the butter, working quickly.
Fill each mold with a generous tablespoon of batter. Bake for about 10 minutes, although I start checking at 7-8 minutes. The little cakes are done when they spring back when lightly touched and are well-browned around the edges.
Remove the cakes from the molds immediately and cool on a rack. Serve sprinkled with powdered sugar.

Sunday, August 23rd, 2009 at 8:19 pmand is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.