I could never live in New York City. Why? Because of the Doughnut Plant.

This is an evilly addictive bakery that specializes in natural ingredient doughnuts and is so delicious that we went a total of five times during our two-week stay in Manhattan (we would have gone even more had we discovered it the first week of our trip and not the second).

It all started because I wanted Sébastien to try a real American doughnut. He, despite having lived in the US for nearly three years, had never had one before. When I first asked him about this he was sure he had already eaten a doughnut, but his description didn’t quite fit. Upon drilling, it turned out that he had eaten a bagel – same shape, but… no. It was several years ago, at the continental breakfast table of a chain hotel along Route 66. Sébastien described one of those thawed, lifeless bagels that one doesn’t actually choose to eat. I, therefore, declared my husband had tried neither doughnut nor bagel. This had to be remedied.

I myself had not eaten a doughnut in exactly 10 years – Dunkin’ Donuts’ Munchkins were quite popular when I was in college and I distinctly remember eating one senior year. I think I’d only ever eaten a doughnut once or twice in my life – remember I grew up in New Mexico, not New York. I was thus entirely unaware of the lingo when ordering at Dunkin’ Donuts.

The other day, this is what I ordered, in quite a fluster because the line was going very fast: a regular coffee, a coffee with milk, a Boston Kreme Donut, a plain donut. This is what we ended up with: a coffee with cream and sugar, a coffee with milk, a Boston Kreme, a jam-filled donut. None of this, except the coffee with milk, was what we wanted.

First off, the doughnuts: the Boston Kreme was my fault. Sébastien had wanted a simple white doughnut with chocolate glaze. In my confusion, I scanned the selection, eyed the glaze on top of the Boston Kreme and order it. Did it occur to me that there would be cream in a Boston Kreme? No, not until it was too late. As for the jam-filled, how did I end up with that? Maybe the woman behind the counter had misunderstood me. Or, was a plain doughnut in fact a jam-filled doughnut in New York terms?

This leads me to the coffee. I took one look at the “regular” (which obviously had cream in it) and quickly informed the barista, “Oh no, just a regular.”

To my amazement he responded with pure confidence. “There you go, one regular.”

I continued, “No, just a regular, nothing in it.”

By now the woman who took the order had come over, grinning. “Here, a regular means cream and sugar,” she laughed.

How was I supposed to know that?

In the end, we got the coffee we wanted (they were nice about it) and nibbled our cream and jam-filled donuts (the coffee had been enough hassle to try and exchange these, too). They were light and fluffy, but had this underlying taste of… well… something chemical and I started thinking of some article I had once read about the life of a doughnut in your body. It was something like years. We ended up throwing out the coffee half way through.

Thus, when I checked the list of “Places to Go in NY” that my friend Karen had emailed me and read “best doughnuts,” I thought we’d give them another try.

The Doughnut Plant was located not far from our hotel (there are two locations in New York: Lower East Side and Chelsea). I knew I had found our place when I walked in the door and saw “Valrhona chocolate” as a flavor. At first, we were overwhelmed by the selection, but (fortunately) there was a bit of a line so we could take a minute to figure things out. In sum, there were three types of doughnuts: yeast (big and fluffy, perfect for dunking in coffee for breakfast), cake (smaller, denser and sweeter) and filled (a “doughseed” filled with chocolate or homemade blackberry jam). Over our five visits, we tried eight different flavors, including triple chocolate, blackout (with oozing chocolate inside) and, my personal favorite, carrot cake (filled with cream cheese frosting).

Thus, I could never live in New York. Despite the fun we were having, it was necessary to head back to Paris. We needed to nip our addiction in the bud.

Go to:

Doughnut Plant

Lower East Side:

379 Grand Street (cross street Essex) / Phone: (212) 505-3700

Chelsea:

220 West 23rd Street (between 7^th and 8^th Avenues) / Phone: (212) 675-9100

First, I’d like to say it’s cold in Paris right now. Very cold.

This weekend we went to have a look at the green booksellers’ stands along the Seine. “Bouquinistes” have been selling old books, magazines, posters, etc. along the riverbanks for centuries and since 1991 the “boxes” have been classed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. For the last several months, the City has been repainting those in need. Now, several prototypes are on display for possible replacement of hundreds of traditional boxes currently lining the Seine. There are somewhere between 900 and 1,000 boxes and about 230 booksellers concerned. The prototypes, designed by Matériaupôle Paris Seine Amont, are exposed near the Hotel de Ville.

The idea is to “modernize” the boxes and make everyday outdoor life for the “bouquinistes” easier. In the near future, the stands may be equipped with heating systems and protection against rain. (Did I mention it’s cold in Paris right now? Very cold?). The plan is also to have them specially treated against graffiti.

So, for the past few weeks, the specialists (the booksellers themselves) have been able to test out these new boxes, and passers-by have been able to ogle them. What do you think???

(old box 54)

(new prototypes)

I did mention it was cold, so here’s how we’ve been keeping warm: buckwheat “galettes” and sweet crepes.

It all started Thursday evening. February 2 is traditionally a religious celebration, the presentation of Christ at the Temple of Jerusalem, but if you ask any French kid what “Chandeleur” is, they’ll tell you it’s the day you eat crepes. Thus, Joy made crepe batter – lots of crepe batter.

This is actually why I was glad it was so cold this weekend. I had lots of crepe batter to store, but our fridge (as I’ve probably mentioned at some point) is rather small. There was no fitting it all in (not with the half butternut squash, lettuce spinner, champagne bottle, tahini, almond butter, milk, hummus experiment…etc…etc… already in there). The magic solution was storing it in the cupboard under the windowsill – believe it or not, this sport was colder than the actual fridge!

Here are two recipes: one for savory Buckwheat “galettes” (as made in Brittany) and one for dessert crepes (this is an updated version since my last crepe post). What made the real difference in the sweet crepes was my French grandmother’s secret: crème fraîche.

To make them smell wonderful, I added some fleur d’oranger (orange blossom water found in the baking isle of French grocery stores) and some vanilla extract.

The other secret is to let the batter sit overnight (or in our case, a couple of days).

Buckwheat Galettes Ingredients

250 grams buckwheat flour

Pinch of salt

1 egg

Cold water (about ½ liter)

Buckwheat Galettes Recipe:

1. Pour flour and salt into a large mixing bowl.

2. In a small bowl, beat the egg.

3. Add the egg and a little water to the flour. Continue adding water and mixing until you have a batter. Thick ribbons should form when you lift the whisk.

4. Let sit for at least a couple hours then cook over a hot griddle.

5. Decorate with your favorite ingredients.

Some suggestions:

- Swiss cheese, mushrooms (pre-cooked with garlic and olive oil) and a fried egg

- Goat cheese, walnuts and arugula

- Parmesan, sun-dried tomatoes and artichoke hearts

- Raclette cheese and potatoes (pre-cooked)

(photo by Sébastien)

Dessert Crepes Ingredients

250 grams flour

Pinch of salt

1 teaspoon sugar

2 eggs

1 tablespoon butter

About ½ liter milk

2-3 soup spoons fleur d’oranger

1 soup spoon vanilla

Heaping soup spoon crème fraîche

Dessert Crepes Recipe:

1. Melt butter.

2. In a large bowl, mix flour, salt and sugar.

3. In a small bowl, beat the eggs.

4. Add the eggs, butter and some milk to the dry ingredients. Slowly add more milk and mix until you get thick ribbons of batter when you lift the whisk.

5. Add the remaining ingredients and let sit at least two hours (overnight really makes a difference!).

6. Cook on a hot skillet and decorate with your favorite ingredients.

Suggestions:

- Homemade chocolate sauce (melt dark chocolate with some milk and/or crème fraîche)

- Apricot jam

- Salted butter and sugar

- Fresh bananas, kiwi, strawberries…

Before I get to the chocolate cake part, let me talk about the BEST MACARONS IN PARIS. Promise you they’re linked…

Last year for my sister’s 25th birthday, my mom and I trekked all over the city collecting macarons. The first part of our goal was to surprise the birthday girl with 25 (yes, an ambitious number) of these fancy (and easily squished) cookies. Our second goal was to find the very best in Paris.

We were successful in our quest and ended up in Montmartre (the best place to surprise someone with a plate-full of macarons) with four different names. Of course, we didn’t tell my sister or my husband which macarons came from where. Here was the verdict:

4. Random corner boulangerie (so-so compared to the others)

3. Ladurée (well-known and delicious, but on the sweeter side and not as original as the winner)

2. La Maison du Chocolat (pretty close to heaven)

…According to us, the very best macarons in Paris are from….

Pierre Hermé

(My favorite was olive oil and vanilla)

What’s the connection to the cake? Well, it’s already been a year since this macaron hunt (oh, yes, and we’ve been back to Pierre Hermé since!) and last weekend my sister celebrated another birthday. Since the weather’s been so nice (well, until yesterday), we had a picnic and I wanted to surprise her with a cake. I always bring my staple moeulleux au chocolat and wanted something more original. It’s hard to beat a pile of macarons! That was my inspiration, though – almonds. They are one of the essential ingredients in French macarons. So, I altered my recipe a bit and came up with a cake I was quite happy with. More moist than ever.

In this recipe, I used salted butter and a bit less sugar.

Shopping List

1 1/2 sticks (170 grams) salted butter

8.8 ounces (250 grams) bittersweet chocolate

1/4 cup (50 grams) granulated sugar

4 eggs

1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon (50 grams) white flour

1 cup (125 grams) ground almonds

Recipe

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C).

2. Slowly begin melting butter over low heat.

3. Separate eggs.

4. Put sugar in mixing bowl, add egg yolks and mix.

5. Begin melting chocolate in double-broiler.

6. Add butter to sugar/egg-yolk mixture and mix.

7. Combine flour, salt and ground almonds, then add to the rest of the batter and mix.

8. Add melted chocolate and mix.

9. Beat egg whites until they are stiff and carefully fold into batter.

10. Butter a round baking pan and pour in mixture.

11. Cook until the edges begin to dry and break away from the pan (10 or more minutes). The inside should remain moist and stick to a knife when tested.  Keep an eye on it and don’t overcook!

If you’re still in a cooking mood, try your hand at macarons. This is a fabulous book: Mad About Macarons! by Jill Colonna.

Thus, chocolate buttercream frosting was in order.

Shopping List

Unsalted butter (room temperature)

Unsweetened chocolate powder

Powdered sugar (sucre glace in French, not sucre en poudre!*)

Recipe:

1. Mix up the butter.

2. Add the chocolate powder and sugar, tasting until you have the right combination (it may depend on your mood or on the sweetness of cake you’re frosting).

That’s it. Really.

*Sucre en poudre is regular granulated sugar.

In Bracieux, France, the same small village that inspired Alexandre Dumas to write about the fictive musketeer, Porthos, you’ll find a chocolate factory.

Not far from Blois in the Loire Valley, chocolate-maker Max Vauché, has set up a chocolatier worth visiting. We took a tour of the contemporary facilities (where dried cacao beans stuffed into canvas sacks are rather mesmerizing transformed into fine, high-quality chocolates). The tour will take you through the entire chocolate-making process, from the harvesting of the beans abroad to the final artistic touches in France.

The tour was especially interesting for its focus on the company’s solidarity-based collaboration with the African Island Sao Tomé and Principe (nicknamed “Chocolate Island” and located just off the Gabon coast).

We visited the factory on a Sunday, so no one was actually making chocolate, but we were able to peek into the large “kitchens” and peer at the numerous machines used throughout the process. A weekday visit might be worth it in order to see (and smell) the grinding, churning and oozing chocolate.

At the end of the visit, we tasted chocolates from all over the world- and learned that, like wine, chocolate really does have a different taste depending on where it’s from. Although cacao trees originated in Brazil, they are now abundant in tropical climates around the globe. Among the nearly endless samples, was some rather bitter 100% pure cacao.

There were lots of helpful hints and tidbits to pick up. Some of them were about properly storing chocolate: keep in an airtight container (in a cool, dark place) and avoid putting in the refrigerator- faux pas I have to admit to. The reason: chocolate is very fragile and will take on the odor of the foods around it. Also, (like wine) cold temperatures will inhibit its aromas.

To learn more, visit the Max Vauché website.

Mardi Gras, commonly known as Fat or Strove Tuesday, goes hand-in-hand with Carnival, a wild festival which has origins in ancient Rome and Greece. Back then, for example, pagan celebrations honoring the gods Dionysus and Bacchus (Greek and Roman gods of wine), were a time of fun and drunken merriment.  Another celebration from ancient Rome, the Festival of Saturn, gave citizens the chance to dress up as members of the society that they were not (the rich as the poor, women as men, slaves as masters).  Such festivities became closer to the Carnival we know today with the rise of Christianity. Christians supposedly adopted the pagan tradition of rowdy merry making, incorporating it into their own religious practices.  The word “carnival” comes from the Latin “carne vale,” which roughly translates as “farewell flesh.”  In medieval times, Carnival would have been the last chance to eat meat before Lent.

Carnival is still celebrated around the world today and ends with Mardi Gras.  The Fat Tuesday we know today (complete with feasting, costumes and revelry) is, thus, a combination of both Pagan and Christian festivities.  The actual date changes each year, depending on Easter.  It always falls the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, which begins the 40 days of Lent.  It is said that “Fat Tuesday” is so-named because of the tradition of using up all the butter, oil, eggs and cream in the house before the fasting period. Thus, the French tradition of making and eating such goodies as fried beignets and crêpes.

Here’s my most-recent (and easy) crêpe recipe:

What’s probably already in your cupboard

2 eggs

½ liter whole milk (or less)

250 grams all-purpose flour

Pinch of salt

1 tablespoon melted, unsalted butter

Directions:

1. Beat eggs and add about half the milk.

2. Begin adding the flour/salt and mix, alternating with more milk, until all the flour is used up and you get a thick ribbon of batter when you lift up the whisk.

3. Add the melted butter.

4. Let batter sit in the fridge for several hours (this helps it settle and really does make the crêpes easier to cook).

5. If needed, add a little more milk just before cooking.

5. Cook (kind of like pancakes) on an appropriate crêpe pan or other hot skillet (there’s a whole spreading/flipping technique, but that merits another post entirely…).

Make lots and enjoy with your favorite toppings.

]]> http://thetomatoknife.com/2010/02/mardi-gras-crepes-recipe/feed/ 0 http://thetomatoknife.com/2009/07/fiery-moelleux-au-chocolat-recipe/ http://thetomatoknife.com/2009/07/fiery-moelleux-au-chocolat-recipe/#comments Tue, 21 Jul 2009 14:00:35 +0000 Joy Anna Becvarik http://thetomatoknife.com/?p=280 What happens when you add New Mexican chili powder to a traditional moelleux au chocolat?

You get an intense chocolate dessert that makes you feel like you’re traveling continents by simply lifting your spoon.  At first, you’re in France.  You bite into tradition- smooth, rich chocolate.  Then you’re transported across the Atlantic with a spicy kick- only for the most adventurous!

A moelleux au chocolat was the first thing I wanted to make in the new oven.  It’s a common French gateau, soft and moist inside and slightly drier on the outside.  I first learned to make it a few years ago, thanks to a friend who passed me her recipe.  I was still in grad school and at a huge loss for time, but even that couldn’t keep me away from the kitchen.  I was planning a surprise for Sébastien and needed something easy, quick and, of course, decadent.  The first recipe was a success and I’ve since been toying with it- making it my own.  I’ve experimented with different doses of butter and sugar (preferring less to more) and different types of chocolate and cacao content (preferring more to less).  When I made my moelleux au chocolat last weekend, I figured a new kitchen needed some real spice and decided to add the chili powder.  My sister warned me not to add too much so it wouldn’t overtake the chocolate- fortunately, I listen to her!  With or without the chili, this recipe for the moelleux has been my best to date.

First, a note on chocolate: What kind should you use?  Dark, quality chocolate.  The minimum cacao content should be 50%.  I’ve started using a combination when I cook.  This time, I used two-thirds at 52% and one-third at 70%.  Always avoid a high sugar content, as it corresponds to a poor cacao content.  Also make sure your chocolate includes cocoa butter and not its substitute: vegetable or animal fat.

And if you’re curious: What is cacao?  First off, cacao is an evergreen tree that sports a fruit (or a pod) inside of which you find seeds.  Chocolate liquor, also known as cacao, is extracted from these seeds. Both cocoa (note the spelling difference) butter and cocoa powder are extracted from this “liquor.” Unsweetened chocolate is made from the chocolate liquor, whereas bittersweet contains a combination of both the liquor and cocoa butter.  When looking at the cacao content on a package of bittersweet chocolate, you’ll usually be looking at a combination of these two.  Sometimes, however, you’ll see the cocoa butter listed separately.  Now for the recipe…

Shopping List:

1 1/2 sticks (170 grams) unsalted butter
8.8 ounces (250 grams) bittersweet chocolate
1/3 cup + 1 tablespoon (75 grams) granulated sugar
4 eggs
1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon (50 grams) white flour
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
2 teaspoons chili powder*

*Adjust according to your taste buds and the chili you are using.  I used medium-hot from Chimayo and it gave a good kick.

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C).

2. Slowly begin melting butter over low heat.

3. Separate eggs.

4. Put sugar in mixing bowl, add egg yolks and mix.

5. Begin melting chocolate in double-broiler.

6. Add butter to sugar/egg-yolk mixture and mix.

7. Combine flour, salt and chili powder, then add to the rest of the batter and mix.

8. Add melted chocolate and mix.

9. Beat egg whites until they are stiff and carefully fold into batter.

10. Butter a round baking pan and pour in mixture.  (Optional: sprinkle sugar and/or small pieces of chocolate on the bottom before pouring in the batter.)

11. Cook until the edges begin to dry and break away from the pan (10 or more minutes). The inside should remain moist and stick to a knife when tested.  Keep an eye on it and don’t overcook!

A “fiery” moelleux au chocolat is best served warm, right out of the oven.