Chou Rouge

Fall whispers in poetry and spice. Frankly, I love spice in my food anytime of year. But there's something about the colder, gloomier months that demands a few cloves, a cinnamon stick, and allspice berries. It veils the home in incense, steaming the windows in a kitchen's call to prayer.

The warm aura of spices also recalls rosy, if apocryphal, visions of the medieval England. Not the one with religious intolerance, indentured servitude, and syphilis. Instead, the bright technicolor image of Flynn's Robin Hood sipping mulled wine, snuggled up in some Sherwood Forest inn with Lady Marian.

I concluded a spicy, wine-borne treatment of red cabbage sounded like a delightful remedy to those stormy November doldrums. I stumbled upon Elizabeth David's "Chou Rouge Landais" in her seminal French Country Cooking.

Penned in early 1950's England (when they were just emerging from post-war diets of shoe leather sauteed in wood varnish), her recipes contain some oddities. In this particular recipe, I found the measurements unfamiliar. She calls for a gill of wine vinegar and 1/4 pint of red wine. As most of us would, I needed to look up "gill" in the dictionary, only to find out that it equals 1/4 pint. Why not use "gill" twice?

And, as my girlfriend instructed me, a pint equals about 2 cups. In other words, 1/2 cup of wine vinegar and 1/2 cup red wine. But that would have been far too easy.

Overall, I stuck close to the recipe, with a few notable exceptions. I omitted the suggested sausage/bacon, as I was practicing the veggie version for a potluck. Whereas I am an omnivorous wolf, I often break bread with my friends, among whom are gentle herb-eating lambs.

The recipe also called for dried orange peel, which appears in some markets in dubious quality and others not at all. I found some in a mccormic's jar for over 6 dollars. I will not pay 6 dollars for less than one orange worth of peel. I found it at the local Asian market, but they looked tired, shriveled, and half brown, like something you might have found under a park bench in August. So instead I used orange zest. Just a touch, mind you. Maybe 1/5th of the orange, but it did the trick rather nicely.

Lastly, the recipe called for herbs and seasoning, but did little to specify beyond mace and ground cloves. I threw in a light dusting of dried sage and rosemary.

David asks us to build up from the bottom of the casserole with alternating layers of cabbage, apples, onions, seasonings, and back again. In a horribly inefficient but monastic-like ritual, I prepared the seasonings separately for each layer. After layer one, I slivered a clove of garlic, grated some orange zest, sliced some red pepper, ground, shook and sprinkled the spices. Ad nauseam, five layers worth.

By the end, the casserole sported a purple dome of sliced cabbage, laid mosaic with apple slices, like some Byzantine temple. David writes "The aroma which emanates from this dish is particularly appetizing."

I invite you to close your eyes and swim in the miasma of the aforementioned contents, lazily braising in red wine and cider vinegar for 4 hours. If you've got that olfactory image, you've captured my idea of the smell of Autumn.
　
Here's the recipe for Chou Rouge Landais courtesy of Google Books. Enjoy!　 　
　
　

Scare me Savory

Savory french toast on Halloween morning? How perfectly frightful. Truth be told, savory french toast sounds frightful anytime of the year, but somehow suitable on Halloween. A day when ghouls roam the earth devouring such non-foods as human flesh and tootsie rolls.


I was preparing for a breakfast for 6 after an overnight in a spooky beachfront setting. The night had been dark as sin, sheeting rain, and zombie stories were tossed around the living room. Quite a setting for a potentially stomach churning experiment.

Even more diabolical were the recipes for savory french toast included in my girlfriend's favorite vegetarian cookbook. Need I say more than curried french toast, or barbeque french toast?


But, for some reason, the concept called to me and I boldly answered. As if in a dream, the idea took shape and I saw a simple base, with sauteed veggies on top and finished with cheese. Wild mushrooms, Emmentaler cheese, and spinich came to mind. And so it was.


This was pretty exciting. Usually when drifting into the culinary unknown, I hold onto a sensible recipe for dear life. But this was pure inspiration from on high. And it worked!!


Here's how it came to be:


Ingredients:


a loaf pre-sliced artisan bread
4-6 eggs
seasonings (salt, pepper, marjoram, basil, oregano, celery seeds, pepper flakes)
butter
dried porcini mushrooms
garlic, cut into slivers
spinich, chiffonaded or simply shredded by hand
grated Emmentaler cheese

1. Boil 1-2 cups of water in a small saucepan, add the porcinis, cover and remove from heat.
2. Beat the eggs and add the seasonings.
3. Melt a pat of butter into a skillet large enough to fry two slices of bread at once.
4. Dip the bread into the egg and fry until browned, turning once (one-two slices at a time).
5. Keep the bread warm on a baking sheet in the oven set at 200 or below.
6. When all the bread is browned, remove the porcinis from the water with a slotted spoon.
7. Reserve the mushroom liquid.
8. Melt another pat of butter in the skillet on medium heat and saute the garlic for 20-30 seconds.
9. Add the spinich and saute until softened, adding a spoonfull or two of the mushroom liquid.
10. Add the porcinis and saute until warm.
11. Remove the pan of toast from the oven and set oven to broil.
12. Add the spinich/mushroom mixture over each slice of toast and top with Emmentaler.
13. Return the pan to the oven and remove when the cheese has begun to melt.
14. Serve immediately.

By the way, you don't need to wait until next Halloween to try this. Any weekend mid-morning will do.