Génoise

La Chimie du Dessert has the following definition to offer for génoise cake: "A sponge cake confectioned from whole eggs beaten to a froth with sugar. To ensure the cake's proper rising, the eggs are whipped extensively, until they have tripled in volume and fall gently off the beater in ribbons and form ribbon-like ridges when poured into the pan. At this stage, the mousse is thick enough to retain air bubbles. Flour and sometimes melted butter are then added. (The butter moistens the crumb and makes the cake keep longer.)"

This is in translation, of course. In any case, I don't think I can be the only one to get kinds of sponge cake (angel food, which uses no yolks, for instance, or chiffon cake, which uses baking powder) mixed up. It may also be that the definitions themselves are less than crystal-clear. In Craig Claibourne, an out-of-print, Joy-of-Cooking-like favourite cookbook, génoise beats the eggs and yolks separately, then folds the former into the latter, with flour added. This is the exact definition that Chimie gives for sponge cake. The craig citation is from a bûche recipe, whereas Chimie endorses génoise and sponge for rolling purposes. Maybe these are my misnomers, but maybe this is just a mixed-up world for those who can't find a copy of Larousse Gastronomique.

This diatribe on the futility of sponge cake classification has nothing to do with anything. (Purely and self-indulgently tangential paragraphs are a perk of having a blog nobody reads.) My point here is that sponge cake is a fascinating thing. With its myriad forms and facets, it has as many uses as labels. My personal favourite is the bûche de noël, or any roll-up cake. This kind is made with génoise, sponge, whatever, and frosted or at least rolled with something or other. A proper bûche as I've always made it involves mocha cream frosting and rum syrup. The less festive jelly roll's virtues are exually extolled (I doubt their veracity myself, but who can tell) and other prosaic rolled, frosted cakes are of course common.

Your average cake or tea-cake of this kind is baked on a parchment-paper lined cookie sheet, rolled, rested, unrolled, frosted, rerolled, and frosted some more. A fair amount of work, depending on the occasion, goes into this sort of thing. I've seen various spins on the concept: rolled with jam, frosted inside/outside, unfrosted except with decorator's, etc. I admit that the whole shape and assembly is mostly a sleight-of-hand presentation deal. Easier than, say, making chocolate curls (I CANNOT do this) but harder than putting a cherry on top. You want to make a jelly roll? Make a square cake, slice it latitudinally, put jam on the bottom one, and you have a (more visually blah) jelly roll. You want mocha cream frosting on your génoise? Use a regular old 9" by 9" and slather it on.

Rolling cakes is about presentation and occasion: a one-dimensional Christmas log just doesn't do the trick. That means, however, that rolled or not, sponge cake is a star. It's one of those versatile kitchen staples. It's easy to perfume with lemon or citrus rind, notably, although I would like to try--just, you know, to see--using ground tea leaves or matcha. It takes whatever frosting you like (try a simple emulsion of orange juice, rind, a little softened butter and masses of confectioner's sugar to thicken). Brushing with alcoholic or plain sugar syrup adds a pleasing crunch. It can be a foil for fresh fruit or homemade jam.

(N. B. Sponge cake and its affiliated confections are not to be confused with butter cake, though the two have similar-looking end products.)

Besides complicated rolling and slicing procedures, sponge cake follows a basic structure: eggs beaten to maximum fluffiness (the eggs and the yolks are whipped either separately or together, depending, as I've said, on the type of cake), then stabilizing and flavour-giving ingredients (flour, cream of tartar, butter) are delicately folded into the mixture. Think of sponge cakes as sturdy soufflés. Both rise by the same graceful chemical feat, but génoise and its relatives stay souffléd with the help of starch.

Sponge cake (and chiffon, angel and génoise cake, under their correct names or not) recipes are available at every virtual and physical page-turn, so try one and see what happens. They can backbone a show-stopper or be modest, plain and unassuming. Recipes tend to be forgiving, provided the egg whites whip properly, and you can think of them as beginner's soufflés. They're sweet and fluffy, people. Life is short.

Divers

Salut à personne!

Je viens de faire mon premier cha xi indépendant, c'est-à-dire sans le bias du tea-shop. Pour Noël, j'ai reçu les quelques instruments clés dont j'avais besoin. Je suis maintenant tout équipé de théière, wenxiangbei, balance digitale, thermomètre à lecture instantanée. Malgré cet ensemble impressionnant, il est évident que j'ai bien des choses à apprendre. Mes ustensiles se trouvent toujours un peu épars. Toujours y-a-t-il un gadget qui m'escamote : l’eau bout avant que j’aie eu le temps de sortir le thé lui-même.
L'eau pose un véritable obstacle, puisque, nonobstant les éloges des tea-bloggers au sujet de l’eau de source, ou faute de cela, de l'eau filtré, je continue à bouillir de l'eau directement du robinet. Avant, je le faisais couler même chaud. Si j'ai racheté mon péché jusque-là, il reste le fait que l'eau n'est pas filtré et que la bouilloire est en aluminium.

De plus, il me semble que mes dispositions zen de mes ustensiles laissent fortement à désirer. Toujours avec une tendance vers l'improvisé, mes arrangements sont généralement en pagaïe dès que je les touche.

Bon. Le temps m'apportera de l'habileté, je l'espère. Parlons du nouveau livre Thé de Camellia Sinensis.

Le livre a eu assez de publicité, non seulement chez Cam. Sin., mais dans le Gazette. Il existe une ou deux autres ouvrages séminaux sur le thé (citons L'Histoire du thé et le livre allongé orange qu'on voit chez Renaud-Bray), mais pas assez. Trop de prétendus guides de dégustation et histoires culturels ne savent que décrire la façon de boire britannique, et n'offrent même que de faibles invectives contre les sachets de thé. Heureusement, je crois que le breuvage asiatique vient graduellement en vogue. Nous verrons.

Mais je détraque. Le livre Thé: histoire, terroirs, saveurs, est une livre pas tout à fait de référence. L'Histoire du thé, lui, par exemple, raconte l'histoire (passionnante) du thé en détail. Thé esquisse plutôt cette histoire. Je ne le lui reproche pas. Il a un but différent.

Beau livre, pleine d'images de terroirs, feuilles fraiches de thé, et d’artisans au travail, Thé, de ses trois dits sujets, se concentre sur terroir. La majeure partie du volume est classée par pays: thés de Chine, thés de Japon, d'Inde, de Taïwan, etc. La livre a l'organisation basique régionale. Pour les auteurs, la région particulière, traditionnelle et unique d’un thé en fait le caractère. Ce traitement domine le contenu du livre.

Il y a d'autre choses, bien sur: une section très utile mais bref portant sur la dégustation et son rhétorique spécialisé, ainsi qu'une richesse de tableaux et analyse chimiques du thé. J'apprécie bien ce dernier. Les beaux tableaux sont uniques, faciles à comprendre, et fascinants. Un classement de 25 thés par mg de caféine dans 100mL montre l’impossibilité de dire tout court, "Le thé vert a moins de caféine que le thé pu-erh," ou n'importe quoi. Ça dépend du thé et non de sa catégorie.

J'aime beaucoup ce livre. Son but n'est pas d'être complet, mais de toucher par-dessus tout au pays et aux artisans. En outre, tous les thés qu'on mentionne sont essayables au teashop.

Tasso, mezze bar

A few days ago, I was migrating haphazardly down St-Denis from Dix Mille Villages in the general direction of Camellia Sinensis. It was snowing lightly, as it had been all day, on and off. Everything was deserted on the dark cold Sunday night--we were the exceptions to deserted, but not to cold. Window-shopping the empty stores, we passed Tasso--mezze bar. It had a lighted menu outside and looked pleasingly warm and candle-lit. I've passed a lot of restaurants on St-Denis and promised to go to them someday, this one being no exception. Because of the aforementioned circumstances, however, the lure of a light meal was too great, and in me and my party went.

Mezze is, to but it bluntly, a Mediterranean version of Tapas. (Tasso serves Greek food, but mezze itself is not exclusively Agatean.) The two are of course wildly different, because the cuisines are totally unrelated, but the idea of many small plates is the same. Flatbreads and Flavours (by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid) portrays it ideally as a cornucopia of savoury delicacies, meant for a large group, abnudant with flabreads and everything else from olives to kebabs.

This kind of place always looks deceptively cheap, at 7 or 8 dollars a dish (saving the occasional 12-buck exotic seafood dish). But small is not a misnomer, and two or three dishes are required to amount to a normal serving. We were, however, on the lookout for a light meal. As such, we ordered only one plate each. It was less than we'd have liked to eat, so mouth-watering proved the menu, but such is life.

The place was all but empty upon our arrival, but friendly nonetheless. The tables are cork and the ambiance classy. The white-washed walls and idyllic fishing pictures are meant to recreate, to the lowest common denominator, of course, a gleaming Greek fishing village. Cork is a decorative theme. I approve. The service, I will take the time to say, was extremely good: speedy, courteous, informative, enthusiastic. I do not think waiters should make or break a restaurant, although they can earn significant bonus points. The main idea is the food, and here we go.

The meal was started off, for free, with bread and olive oil. It was an extremely promising beginning. The bread was really, really good. I would guess, in my fangirl way, that it is baked in-house, then toasted before being served. The toasting is clearly done on the grill, a significant asset. Nor was the olive oil unworthy of its recipient. We were given the choice of two kinds, even; the waiter gave us the skinny on the "light" and "dark" oils and bid us choose. The description was detailed and accurate: its finish was indeed peppery, its body in effect smooth, its flavour fruity. Olive oil is yet another liquid, if not a beverage, that begs a root to stick -philia onto.

We ordered a selection of dips as our first "course". We ate them with more bread. There were four kinds. The tzatziki, a dip we're all familiar with, was excellent and somehow different from store-bought or even home-made kinds. The chef apparently uses ouzo (an anise-flavoured Greek liqueur) to pull the flavours together. It's something I'll have to try. It gave it an unparalleled roundness, almost sweetness. There were three other dips: a delicious, creamy black olive tapenade, a puree of feta and red peppers called tyrokafteri (good, but my least favourite; it tasted like feta cheese transposed to a smoother texture and slight pinkishness), taramosalata, a real delicacy made of red caviar and various flavourings, superbly light, thoroughly delicious.

We ordered grilled quail, too. Because, I presume, of the rarity of the main ingredient, the serving was really pretty puny. (The presentation was cute, though. The pieces were propped against each other on a mini cast-iron skillet.) Still, the meat was succulent and the skin perfectly crispy.

I loved the fried eggplant and zucchini with garlic sauce. Both vegetables were their respective -ish adjectives, and were sliced very thinly. The fragility of the pieces perfectly matched the airy batter in which they had been deep-fried. The garlic sauce, not dissimilar to the the tzatziki, was exquisitely creamy and flavourful.

We also had vine leaves. They were a little disappointing. The rice didn't seem up to snuff with the ethereal-quality standards of the meal, and the leaves were a little tough. They would be my only complaint about the restaurant, but a minor one. Vine leaves are so ubiquitous that I hardly think they necessarily reflect a Greek restaurant's quality. In this case they didn't.

The plates may have been small, but I was actually quite satisfied, and had a truffle instead of a scone at the teashop afterwards. After all, when you've only got two beautifully browned quail wings left to eat, you find yourself at no small pains to eke out every last morsel of grilled deliciousness from the tiny bones. Eating slowly fills the mind--it's the placebo effect for the stomach. Besides, with enough bread, dips are really very filling.

I will go back here, and as soon as possible. I enjoyed it immensely.

En vedette : le « lemon curd »

Ai-je dit qu’il était l’hiver, le dernier poste? Je le répète, puisque la ville a maintenant le paysage et le service de bus qui siéent vraiment à la saison. Pour l’instant, je trouve encore la neige belle. Et je profite du moment de l’année pour acheter des pommes grenades et des agrumes.

Le « lemon curd », bien que j’en aie entendu parler auparavant, m’a été introduit par Le Chimie du Dessert, une livre que j’adore. Pleine de recettes, d’astuces, de labos et d’explications scientifiques, elle rassasie ma curiosité sur les aspects chimiques de la cuisine. Bien des choses qui m’étaient jadis des mystères (les confitures, les biscuits à l’avoine, la crème pâtissière) me se sont expliquées, le « lemon curd » inclus. Il s’agit de quelque chose qu’on tartine sur n’importe quoi, les rôties, les scones, la crème glacée. Il est délicieux car il contient deux bonnes cuillérées à soupe de zeste et trois quarts d’une tasse de jus de citron et de lime. Ce choix-là de fruits est le plus traditionnel sans être le seul. À date, j’ai fait un « curd » classique et un à l’orange-pamplemousse, mais je tiens à en faire un avec des oranges sanguines ou peut-être des clémentines, puisque nous en achetons tant.

La première étape est de zester et juter vos agrumes. Ça prend du temps, plus même que la préparation actuelle. (Les limes, moi, je trouve ça impossible à zester—la pelure est trop mince et elle déchire plutôt que de rendre la surface du fruit savoureuse et parfumée voulue.) Ensuite, il faut y mélanger des jaunes d’œuf et du sucre et fouetter le tout pour obtenir un mélange lisse.

Pour cuire et épaissir la crème au citron, vous avez le choix entre une casserole sur feu doux ou un bain-marie (c’est la méthode que je préfère). Une fois sur le feu, ajoutez-y le beurre coupé en dés. Il fondra au fur et à mesure que vous remuerez. La cuisson complète prend une dizaine de minutes à peu près. Il faut remuer constamment pour éviter les grumeaux. N’attendez-vous pas à ce que le curd devienne épaisse comme une crème anglaise. Il devrait tout simplement napper l’arrière d’une cuillère en bois. Ce n’est pas en vérité grand-chose, et le mélange, à ce stage, est encore un liquide dans lequel. Votre fouet n’y fera pas de spirales. Si vous avez un thermomètre pour bonbons (ou à lecture instantanée, etc.), vous pouvez l’utiliser; lorsque vous lisez 185°C, la cuisson est finie.

Pour conserver, laisser tiédir le mélange avant de le réfrigérer dans un bocal bien scellé. Il se conserve pour un mois à peu près, et il se congèle bien. C’est après la réfrigération que le curd adoptera une texture de confiture. (Le beurre ajouté se solidifie.)

À quels fins utiliser ce curd? Il sied aussi bien à un muffin anglais le déjeuner qu’à un dessert élégant. Moi, j’adore ça sur la crème glacée et sur les scones, mais sur les meringues, c’est incomparable. L’effet est encore plus joli et savoureux si vous saupoudrez quelques graines de pomme grenade sur le dessus. Amusez-vous : ce délice est aussi versatile que savoureux.

Lu An Gua Pian

It's winter, folks. The season for which we are famous has begun in its usual fashion, if a little late. There is always one early, slushy, rainy snow in mid-fall. (Remember it? It was the one where everyone groaned with cries of "It's not even November yet!" while clambering about the drippy window, being glad they weren't outside.)It snowed in earnest last night, though, with big fat snowflakes ideal for tongue-catching, swirling in the street-light's glow, blanketing the late-night world with quiet, and all that rot--the silver-bells ambiance fading when the snow stopped, just in time to prevent people from actually wearing boots. Today it settled down to a more familiar bleak. Little stingy snowflakes sticking to the sidewalks just enough to make them slippery, cold, grey, dusky, the whole package.

That said, what better time to enjoy, oh, say, a fig-chai oatmeal cookie and a Chinese green?

Camellia Sinensis has changed its menu. None of the pages are falling out anymore; there are no more "épuisé" stickers (although I shouldn't imagine it'll be long). The pictures are different, and the technique this and that photos are in color. (The tea-sorting baby orangutans from Darjeeling or possibly Assam are gone. Pity.) The menu has been switched around quite a lot really. Some teas are the same, but there's a large percentage have been removed and replaced. The pu-er selection is half-again bigger and includes two vintages from '80 and '76. I'm dying to try them although they're splurges at 12$ a pot. The black teas are quite different, and few of the oolongs remain the same. Some Vietnamese greens have set up shop, and the range of Japanese greens is wider.

I'm pleased. A few of my favourites got the ax--Cingshin 1991, for one, but some, like Sencha Ashikubo, were kept. The menu is neater, and has some really great-looking stuff. It's got me flipping through the pages, reading the descriptions over and over, deliberating endlessly, just like I did when I first walked into the store.

The Lu An Gua Pian I had today is new on the menu, of course. Its leaves are lovely. Blue-tinged green with a sheen of silver. Rolled, ridged, smallish leaves, no stem or twig, medium-sized leaf sections. They smell invitingly spicy. Once unrolled, tiny insect bites are visible--a sign of quality, as Teamasters has taught me. They retain their sea-greenitude when wet.

The tea is a nice yellow. Its texture is thinnish but smooth and genteel. The smell of the rising steam carries out the description's promise: sweet, vegetabley. I shied away from a professed "vegetable character" until recently, fearing sharpness or astringency. Not so, at least in most cases. In this case it communicated freshness and soupçons of avocado. ("Avocado" is from the mouth of Cam. Sen. They always seem to be able to pick specific vegetables. I never seem to, but I'm trying.)

The liquor has sweetness and a good kind of sour, not citric but like an underripe plum or something. My main vegetable pick is asparagus (cooked) and raw stringbeans for the aftertaste.

The second and third infusions are similar but bitter. My fault: the tea likes short infusions. 10s and 15s produced better results. The sourness receded and the throat presenced filled out. Some of the sweetness of the smell seeps in while crunchy string-bean character takes precedence.

This was an excellent tea. The leaves really are things of beauty. The tea itself is very tasty and mild with the theanine--a good evening tea.

(It didn't upstage the fig-chai cookie, but then, what could?)

Vous savez que vous êtes montréalais(e) si...

...vous vous demandez si Algorithme Pharma va bien cesser son étude clinique une de ces décennies.

... « BonjourHi », « AlloBonjour » et « Puis-jevousaiderCanIhelpyou » sont pour vous des mots parfaitement propres et nécéssaires dans la vie quotidienne.

...l'obtention d'une siège sur le métro ou sur le bus est un art qui nécessite le plus développé des sixièmes sens.

...vous maintenez une relation amour-haine avec la STM. Même si vous avez parfois l'impression qu'elle forme une cabale contre vous, vous laissant choir quand vous en avez le plus besoin, même si votre carte opus s'est déja cassée trois fois, même si vous haïssez la saleté des cars de métro et les graffitis sur les fenêtres des autobus, même si vous avez marre du « Mouvement collectif », eh bien, ...eh bien, vous avez comme une familiarité avec elle.

...vous parlez souvent à une caissière ou autre personne semblable dans votre langue secondaire, une action de politesse, croyez-vous, (vous aviez été trompé par son « BonjourHi ») et découvrez subséquemment que c'est la langue secondaire de lui ou elle aussi--mais rendu jusque-là, vous vous sentiriez con à changer de langue.

...votre sens de la géographie de la ville a plus à voir avec les quartiers francophones et anglophones que les noms de rues et les points cardinaux.

...vous vous gardez d'utiliser le mot "malade", car vous ne savez pas, même à cette date, si elle est censée être une bonne ou mauvaise chose.

...vous savez distinguer les clientèles distinctes des cafés. Java U, par exemple, se voue aux jeunes branchés qui payent les salades et sandwichs chers et les patates frites délicieuses. Starbucks accueille des types plus variés et plus pressés, même chose pour Second Cup, avec une emphase sur les étudiants. Caffe Italia est rempli d'Italiens, de shoppeurs à Jean-Talon, et d'enthousiastes de café. Café Art Java, lui, sied aux gens de McGill, glissant une pause café-travail dans leurs horaires chargés. Shaïka réunit les jeunes artistes, musiciens, gens cool, et riffraff de la région. Café Crème attire les aisés de Westmount, les propriétaires de chiens, et des amis réunis pour causer. Ainsi de suite.

...vous vous obstinez: Mont-Royal n'est pas une colline, c'est une montagne.

...vous adorez inconditionnellement votre ville.

High tea: part 2

I'm getting a little depressed by the fact that I'm all alone out here in cyberspace. Nobody's going to read me, ever. Ah, well. I can't keep up with all the trendy chemist-photographer tea bloggers out there. It's life.

I'm not actually sure if "high tea" is the correct terminology. There's some sort of complex arrangement with high and low and afternoon and somewhere-in-between tea being different things. I stick with high out of habit, and I never get around to making sure it's correct.

Tea things should be set up around scones. As such, make them well, as you would a central meat or veggie dish. Serve them with good jam and butter. (Smuckers? Not so much.) If there are homemade spreads, so much the better. Try making apple butter (quite simply a cooked-down apple sauce with the texture of butter). Quebec apples, I love you. I wish you never had to go out of season. Lemon curd is a classic. And jam, if you can cope with the whole canning thing.

That said, scones are the middle course. Start with savories. It's a broad term and covers everything from pâté de foie gras to cucumber sandwiches. There are a lot of recipes out there for little onion and beet confits and various arcane things involving asparagus tips. They're fun. But itsy-bitsy sandwiches, well, they just have this glamour, you know? Here are three "recipes".

1. Cucumber. I don't like cucumbers, but I like good cucumber sandwiches. The secret is to slice them über-thin. Use a vegetable peeler. For these, a light buttering is fairly key. The bread, to keep it classic, should probably be white sandwich, although I have resorted to challah and ciabatta in absence of non-Wonderbready type stuff. A light crack of salt and pepper. If flavourings are your dish, pulverize some mint leaves and put them in; they go well.

2. Stilton & pear. These are actually DELICIOUS. Stilton is a creamy-crumbly Brit blue cheese. With a slice of Bartlett, they're a treat. Here, any bread is fine: baguette is always nice, but "normal" white sandwich is fine too. These sandwiches tend to fall apart because the bread won't stick to the pear. For that reason, I'd recommend lightly buttering the top slice.

3. Apple & cheddar. It's a classic combo. Just make is all sandwichy. A thin-ish slice of apple on top of a cheddar slice of the same thickness between grain-product slices and you're golden. The sandwich doesn't hold together too well, but I don't like it buttered so much; I'd rather just have it be a little topply. Any bread is fine here. Something firmer, however, is preferable; baguette, say, or even matzoh, which offsets the textures rather nicely.

I think there will have to be a part three to this post.