Apple Pie with Meringue Cream

I've converted this recipe from French metric, and it seems to work really well. It's not a single-bowl kind of recipe, but it's well worth it. The word"emmitouflée" is used to describe someone well dressed against the cold, but I'm guessing here it means 'slathered' or 'encased' or something of the sort - the apples are under a tasty blanket of sweet meringue.

Les pommes emmitouflées de Grand-Mère

Part 1 - the pie crust

1 cup flour

1⁄4 tsp salt

1 Tbsp sugar

1⁄2 cup (4oz/114gr) butter, cut into pieces

1 egg yolk

1 Tbsp + cold water

1. Follow the instructions for the Cookie Pie Crust, but substitute the vanilla for 1 egg yolk and be careful about the amount of water you add to avoid having a wet dough. Roll out, place in a pie plate and keep in the refrigerator until the filling is ready. Do not pre-bake.

Part 2 - the filling; apples

5 to 6 large apples, firm when cooked

1⁄4 cup (2oz/58gr) butter 

1⁄4 cup apricot jam

1. Peel and core the apples, then slice them into sections about 1⁄4" thick.
2. Melt the butter and get it to froth before adding the apples. Cook until the apples just start to brown. Finally, add the apricot jam and allow to melt completely before taking the pan off the heat.

Part 3 - the topping

1 Tbsp (1⁄2 oz/14gr) butter

1⁄4 cup sugar
3 egg yolks

3 egg whites
1⁄4 cup sugar

1. In a small bowl, cream the butter as best you can, getting it nice and soft, before adding half the sugar and the three egg yolk, one at a time. Beat vigorously until you get some volume out of the mix.
2. Meanwhile, beat the egg whites, adding the rest of the sugar. Beat until the whites become hard peaks - you should be able to rest a teaspoon on top of the whites without it sinking.
3. Add a bit of the whites into the butter-and-yolk cream, then pour this into the egg whites, gently folding so as to retain as much volume as possible.

Final Assembly

1. Pre-heat oven at 375°F.
2. In the chilled pie shell, pour in apple mixture, then top with the beaten egg mixture. Bake for 45 minutes or until the top gets some nice colour.

Croûte aux pêches - Baked Peaches

Another lovely and wonderfully simple recipe from Monet's Table. The bread toasts wonderfully, browning on the bottom, and the juices drawn out of the peach by the melting sugar and butter spills over and soaks into the bread, caramelizing underneath. Each bite is a soft, buttery, sweet bite with a satisfying crunch. Really good!

6 slices of bread, crusts removed (pieces should fit the size of the peach, ie: all fit in the pie plate)

3 ripe peaches, cut in half and pitted

6 Tbsps. or 6 tsps. sugar, or to taste

1⁄2 cup (4oz/114gr) butter, cut into 6 pieces

1. Place oven rack to the middle position. Preheat the oven to 325°F.
2. Generously butter an 8inch pie plate and arrange bread in it, plopping a peach half, cut side up, in the middle of each piece.
3. In the cavity left by the pit, add sugar, however much you'd like, distributed evenly in each peach, topped by a piece of butter.
4. Bake for 20 minutes or until the peach is cooked through.
5. Serve warm or cold.

Potage Fontange (Mixed Vegetable Soup)

This is a soup which was eaten at Giverny, Monet's country home where grows to this day the garden that inspired so many of his paintings. I've leaped into the book Monet's Table once again and tried a couple more recipes. I've made substitutions to this soup just because some of the ingredients are a little challenging to find here - not impossible, just not at the grocery store nearby. I've indicated the substitutions as well as the original ingredients for the sake of keeping a record - my additions are in parentheses and italicized.

Part 1 - the peas

2 cups dried green or yellow (split) peas

Part 2 - the soup

2 Tbsps (28gr) of butter

1 onion, thinly sliced

2 leeks, white parts only, thinly sliced

1⁄2 lb sorrel (or spinach with lemon juice), trimmed and shredded

1 head iceberg (or romaine) lettuce, trimmed and shredded

3 sprigs chervil (or French tarragon or parsley), finely chopped

2 medium potatoes, peeled and cut in half (or quarters for a piece in each bowl)

6 cups rich beef broth (or any broth) or water

1⁄2 tsp salt

1⁄2 tsp pepper
Part 3 - the cream
1⁄2 cup (4oz/114gr) +2 Tbsps (28gr) of butter

2 egg yolks

1 cup crème fraîche or heavy cream

Bread to accompany the soup

1. The peas: Soak the dried peas in water for 2 hours (I put it in a pot and left it on the stove at the lowest temperature, just to keep the water hot but not boiling to make this go faster) then drain.
2. The soup: In the meantime, melt 2 Tbsps of butter in the soup pot. Add the onion, leeks, sorrel (or spinach, not the lemon juice yet), lettuce and chervil. Cook over low heat until the veg are well coated; do not let them brown.
3. Add the peas and potatoes, give it a good stir, then add the broth. Season with salt and pepper and bring to a boil. Cover and simmer over very low heat for at least 2 hours or until the peas are well soft.
4. (If using spinach, add the lemon juice now). At this point you have two choices: 1) strain the soup (using a vegetable mill or forced through a sieve using a wooden spoon) or 2) keep it chunky where it's recommended you break up the potato with the back of a spoon and mix it in. Either way, you'll then need to make the cream, and for this you must...
5. The cream: Beat the rest of the butter into a smooth cream, Melt the butter, take off the heat, then beat in the egg yolks and the cream or crème fraîche followed by the egg yolk.
6. Dump this cream either in a soup tureen or portioned out into individual bowls, and pour the hot soup on top.
7. Enjoy with crusty bread.