In May we celebrated spring with a touch of Burgundy. My
childhood home cooking from the celebrated French wine region, applied to our
fresh farmer’s market ingredients, made for a crescendo of flavors starting
with snappy radishes served on buttered tartines, graduating to a hearty Boeuf
Bourguignon, and ending with just the most delicate individual lemon mousse
cakes.
Spring is flavorful and fresh, and this was reflected in the
menu. So the Boeuf Bourguignon, the staple main course of a Burgundy table, was
framed by light, sometimes new, combinations of young local produce.
We started in the late afternoon on a beautiful Sunday,
enjoying views of the Pacific, Champagne in hand, and snacking on a prelude of
home-made chicken liver pate and par-boiled crudités. Then came the first
surprise for most of us: crunchy radishes paired with soft butter spread on
baguettes and topped with rock salt, which delivered flavors, textures and
colors with a bang and left us wondering about the next step…
We set out to mix and bake. A traditional teaser for the
appetite in the Burgundy region is the gougère. It is not so hard to make,
as it’s essentially a savory choux pastry with a touch of Swiss cheese. Taken
step by step, we found that we were able to produce the tastiest, fluffiest
delicacy. We learned that in America it is difficult to find good Swiss cheese.
We used aged Parmesan cheese instead. We
made the dough on the stove top and stood watching to see if it would fold away
from the sides of the pan. It did. We played a game of agile teaspoons as we
used one and then the other to drop the right mounds of our preparation on
Silpat sheets. And we used the few minutes they took to rise in the oven to
open our 10-year-old bottle of Meursault.
Ah! Were we rewarded for our hard work and piqued curiosity!
The gougères
tricked our taste buds with their intense flavor as they popped against our
palates. They asserted themselves as the perfect match to the smooth white wine.
Preparing the rest of the meal was a breeze. The Boeuf
Bourguignon had been simmering in a pinot noir reduction for a while already. We
added carrots and pearl onions some minutes before serving. The broccoli,
steamed almost to a mush, was creamed in the blender with a splash of milk and…
would you guess? a hint of nutmeg. As for the potatoes, it would have been
enough to mash up a few russets in their skin, but we opted instead for briefly
sautéing fingerlings in Le Président butter. A lid finished the
cooking over low heat.
We spent a few minutes beating egg whites to whip up a
dessert said to rival the gougères as the surprise of the meal. Two
Meyer lemons from my backyard gave us enough juice and zest to blend with two
egg yolks and a mere quarter cup of flour.
A thimbleful of sugar, another splash of milk and we were sliding seven
ramekins into a bain-marie for 22 minutes. This dessert did give us the joy of
superb flavor and the near-absence of calories that the seven of us, gourmet
girlfriends with flair and panache, strive for.
And so, we sat down for dinner. The cubes of Boeuf
Bourguignon were served surrounded by a string of potatoes, scoops of broccoli
puree and, of course, the red-wine sauce. The food dissipated rather quickly,
accompanied by a 2003 Auxey-Duresses Clos-du-Val made by my father and my
brother, Roger and Philippe Prunier. My father, now 80 years old, has since retired
from making wine but I have no doubt that his health and energy can be traced
to his love for and long-standing involvement in his work. To this day, he and
my mother keep fit and trim working outdoors in their orchard and vegetable
garden. My family has had vineyards in this part of the Cote-de-Beaune of
Burgundy for many generations dating back to the 1600’s. My brother is now the
chief grape-grower and wine-maker of the vineyard. In 2009 his daughter,
Justine, joined him and she will in time take over from him.
We lingered over a small cheese course continuing to praise
the merits of good wine and good food, and we at last got to the lemon mousse
cakes. I am happy to say that they provided the intended pleasurable closure on
the meal. Almost weightless, creamy and flavorful, and so low in calories, several
Gourmet Girlfriends have already served them to friends and family with the
same success. Lemon is, after all, a year-round delight enjoyed way beyond
Burgundy!
About Chantal:
Chantal grew up on a
vineyard in Burgundy, France. After graduating from the Ecole Superieure de
Commerce of Dijon, she left the nest and moved to Melbourne, Australia to work
in marketing. She came to the United States to attend Harvard Business School
and has lived and worked in New York and Los Angeles ever since. Her interests
include her family, photography, real estate and all her friends and Gourmet
Girlfriends with whom she shares a love of cooking, travelling and telling
stories.
