Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Several years later, eating dinner with my daughter in a little French restaurant in New
York, clafouti showed up on the menu. Still curious, I tried it again: it was nothing like the
one I'd made. This clafouti was tender, almost custardy. It was perfect with cherries, and I
could easily see how it could be adapted to fit other summer fruit.
This time I was determined to get it right. I gathered a stack of French cookbooks and
went to work. Julia Child's recipe from Mastering the Art of French Cooking turned out to
be much closer to what I had in mind. Lulu Peyraud and Richard Olney's Lulu's Provengal
Table turned out to be much the same as Child's, though quite a bit sweeter (1/2 cup sugar
to Child's 1/3 cup).
On a whim I checked out Joel Robuchon and Patricia Wells's Simply French, another
cookbook that has been a never-fail source of great recipes. Predictably, Robuchon's re-
cipe is very much a reinterpretation - a custard in a pastry crust, with fragments of cookie
dough on top. But Wells included her own recipe - one made with pears and star anise.
Surprisingly, the batter - made with equal parts cream and milk - turned out to be much
more like what I had in mind than the milk-based recipes.
Armed with the fruits of my research and apricots and plums from the market, I set to
work inventing my own clafouti. After several trials, I ended up with Wells's combination
of milk and cream, but with more flour to make it a bit more cakey and much less sugar.
The truly wonderful thing about this recipe is its adaptability. A clafouti is just about the
perfect way to present soft fruits. Tweak the seasoning just a little, and you can make this
recipe with cherries (substitute cherry liqueur or vanilla for the almond extract), peaches
or nectarines (combine with raspberries instead of almonds) or plums (a little ground
cloves, or maybe dust the top with cinnamon sugar).
You can't imagine anything easier. Essentially, this is a very eggy pancake batter that you
simply pour over sliced fruit. Mix the batter in a food processor or blender (the blender
does a better job of dispersing the flour), let it stand for 10 minutes or so, pour it over the
fruit and then stick the whole thing in the oven.
Pear Frangipane Tart
Frangipane is made by grinding nuts and eggs together to make something between
a cookie and a custard. Use this basic recipe, varying the type of nuts and the fla-
vorings, as a filling for all kinds of fruit tarts.
6 SERVINGS
