Autumn Menu with a Hint of Halloween

Delved into my bookmarks and consulted good old oracle Pinterest in order to compile an Autumn menu with recipes slightly out of the ordinary, without obsessing about it - and a hint of the unexpected. It had to be a poetic menu to spell out loud, with each dish almost akin to a verse by Edgar Allan Poe...

Think velvety monochrome textures, smoked flavours, dark syrupy fruit, gooey sauces, messy blends, unusual colours and rare alcohols, to keep you warm inside and chill you out at the same time! Red splatters to keep you on your toes... All in all, a grown-up Autumn menu without the hearty pumpkin chowders, versatile enough to celebrate not only Halloween but also All Saints' Day (Catholic calendar, 1st November) and Guy Fawkes Night (Great Britain, 5th November) without stating the obvious!

So let's get those taste buds into overdrive and that kitchen ready to sizzle!

A P É R I T I F 

The Black Heart by Julep

Cranberry & Pomegranate Spritz by Donna Hay

Pitaya (Dragon Fruit) Margarita by Muy Bueno

Cocktail Snow Cones by HonestlyYUM

Palomitas de Curcúma by La Baguette Magique

E N T R É E

Beet-Pickled Curry Deviled Eggs by Viktoria's Table

Fig and Goat's Cheese Tart by Donna Hay

Spicy Corn Bisque by Bakers Royale

Roasted Red Pepper Tortilla Soup by Cookie & Kate

M A I N     C O U R S E

Vegan Winter Harvest Hummus Bowl by Heather Christo

S I D E S

Roasted Carrots Cooked in a Pomegranate Syrup by Un Déjeuner de Soleil

E N T R E M E T S

Blood Orange Granita by Cook Republic

Pomegranate and Greek Yoghurt Panna Cotta, via Cooked

D E S S E R T

Beer-Laced Sticky Toffee and Ginger Pudding by Delicious

S W E E T     A F T E R S

Raspberry Brownie Ice Cream Sandwiches by The Bojon Gourmet

Juniper + Smoke Marshmallows by Local Milk

Further Resources:

• For a little otherwordliness that remains firmly on the safe side, visit my K ° Mystique Pinterest board.
• Ideas to ease you into the Halloween spirit with a little chill and none of the tack.
• Robert Doisneau photography: black and white, atmospheric and - if you are looking for it - spooky.
• Cocktails that are odd beyond the odds, The Gibson's Cocktail Menu has it by the muddler! Their cocktail list flirts with the quirk and the bizarre in equal doses, if not the borderline bootleg (Scandal in Bohemia, a mixology 'high' of Sweet Grass Steeped Woodford Rye Absinthe + Hemp Cannabis Poppy 'Opium' Oil + Preserved Oriental Lemon Brine + French Confetti Candy Syrup + Forbidden Jelly Ice + Smoking Wood Mushroom)! You couldn't make this one up if you wanted to! For a cocktail slightly less far fetched in terms of ingredients, the Way of the Dragon might persuade an enlightened Classic D&D gamer to give it a try, if only for the rambunctious dragon that is served with the drink: 8 years old Bacardi + Gibson's Seabuckthorn Liqueur + Madeira Wine + Lime + Fresh Rambutan & Mangosteen + Butternut Squash & Walnut Conserve + Galia Melon. Good grief! I'll have a simple G&T anytime!

Way of the Dragon cocktail by The Gibson Bar, Shoreditch, London

Watch Out, There's a Hipster in Your Coffee!

I can't quite figure out how it came about. As my spoon cuts into the foam of my cappuccino and the cocoa constellation dissipates into the milky way of my cup, I look up across the packed out café and smile absent-mindedly. I vividly remember the turning point. At the turn of the millennium, the coffee revolution took us almost unawares and I welcomed it with open arms and a big kiss. In one swell swoop, it swept aside the shameless kettle and Nescafé combo, the gritty coffee pot at work whose treacle-like substance would be laced with lashes of full fat milk and a spoonful of sugar to tone the bitterness and general malevolence. The conservative coffee machine would not fare any better either if you were to self-proclaim coffee maestro. And tumble would the slightly higher-brow cafetière (French Press) that only ever had pride of place in those households that vacationed in France and Italy.

The London Coffee Festival 2015

At that point, coffee had ceased to be that monochrome, low budget, one-dimensional, nonchalant affair, black or white, one sugar, no sugar. Strong and you call it espresso like you're in the know. Weak and you call it Americano, once again if you want to flaunt your two words of Italian (three if we add 'pizza').

The London Coffee Festival

Coffee would be and it would be much more: a coffee named desire. Coffee was going to finally exist, express itself, albeit with attitude and a price tag that yells out indulgence. The Italian vocabulary would expand, and be re-invented should its linguistics become suddenly too limitative. Enter Frappuccino, the foam-at-the-mouth, shirty, expansive creation that makes the paltry espresso look like a size zero, deflated, monastic model. Savvy marketers gave themselves carte blanche to jazz up, sex up, amplify and yuppify coffee and make it indispensable under its new guises. Under the new paradigm, coffee became art creation, indulgence, a liquid brunch - and a neat, no-questions-asked multi-billion-dollar endeavour at the check-out.

The London Coffee Festival North 2016

The revolution would redefine coffee to the point where it would take a long sentence to define your drink to the barman, sorry the garçon, sorry the barista. Just so you can listen to yourself saying it in that all-knowing encompassing 'I'm in the club' way while the punter behind you in the queue quietly rehearses their prose before their grand finale, a brief, sudden verbal diarrhea of a purchasing interjection, cured by a fancy drink that costs a pretty penny.

The London Coffee Festival North 2016

Along with that morning white that suddenly became a long Ethiopian roast skinny decaff latte, the staff behind the counter would be redefined too. Enter Barista, full steam ahead, the busy body that is all arms, concentrated like a strong coffee! They whizz their magic within a few square feet perimeter on the other side of the counter like a storm in a teacup, precise, repetitive movements, attached to shiny expensive machinery with pumps and gaskets, and through the steam, the pulls and the metallic thuds, you would be forgiven to believe they're operating the Orient Express. They add the drama that you bought and paid for to your humble cup, tick boxes and scribble ancient codes on it, spin a thousand variants and combinations around coffee like they're the key to the Graal's safe, so many of them, they've morphed into algorithms. They froth up a hot beverage like a coiffeur teases a curl, with painstaking dedication. And if the impermanence of coffee art weren't fleetingly irrelevant, you have latte art to ponder about.




Now to the crux of the coffee is that correlation of late between fancy, jazzy, niche-market coffee from the café in the know, and the hipster. If we are to believe the hype, it's being percolated to us like it's non-negotiable.

Coffee has become art and science, especially in its percolation. Coffee is edgy: it has become the new absinthe. And in its heyday, absinthe was the poison of choice to the creative mind losing its mind in the buvettes of Montmartre. Modern creatives or wannabe creatives display their edge by drinking connoisseur coffee, a safer healthier option! They still look like the 1890s never quite went away, bar for the rolled-up sleeves displaying elaborate tattoos on their forearms. They wear the bushy beard, checkered shirts, suspenders. Unroll the sleeves to hide those arms, and the chaps wouldn't be out of place on those long-forgotten family photos circa 1890. But why, oh my, did fancy coffee and hipster become an item, if only for the fact that both are stuff of a fashion trend? I doubt I will eat my words on this one: fancy coffee will outlive the hipster but for the time being, chance is you'll spot them together like two coffee beans in a pod behind the counter, about to squeeze into that ristretto.




Hurry up if you wish to catch a gulp (sorry, a slice) of the action! The London Coffee Festival is taking place in a couple of days, 6th to 9th April, Old Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London.

Foraging for Wild Asparagus

Wild asparagus season is in full swing in Corsica right now, and a demonstration of how giving and generous nature is to man, in all of our taking for granted of it. I had spotted a few asparagus stems around the village, tentatively tempting me to indulge in a little culinary adventure.

Fresh asparagus always gets me excited for two reasons. It heralds Spring (two weeks from now!), and is an indulgent delicacy (verging on luxury) that gracefully eases us out of the stodgy Winter veg dishes. Unlike its cultivated counterpart, wild asparagus is thin and lean! Long stems (whose tips are for picking) that delicately sway to the breeze in a semi-shaded, well-drained environment. I find them scattered at the feet of old olive trees.

Yesterday morning, with little Tickle in tow, and 'armed' with a paring knife, small gratin dish and camera, I went pottering about my immediate surroundings, on the hunt for wild asparagus. Oh, I did get distracted on the way there and back by those other tangible signs of Spring, purple daisy-like ground flowers that go by the name of Anemone stellata.

Then I spotted what looked like Morels. However not being a mycologist and not being able to ascertain whether those morels were safe and edible - or toxic - I resisted the temptation of picking them! Folks, the 'Better safe than sorry' idiom befits wild mushroom foraging to a cap, especially if you are no specialist!

Creamy Pasta Served with Wild Asparagus

Back home, I threw together a quick and easy lunch out of leftover plain pasta, simply plunged in boiling water and a dash of olive oil for a couple of minutes, then tossed in double cream, to which were added a small tin of sliced button mushrooms (my safe option to those unacquainted wild varieties out there!), the juice of half a lemon from Nice (+ a sprinkle of grated peel), salt, pepper and chopped chives. In a separate pan, I blanched the asparagus tips for five minutes, drained them and scattered them over the plated pasta. It was an ordinary meal with a little extra thrown into it, thanks to the fragrant, natural and organic asparagus that had been picked from the wild!

(pict source)

Dairy Malaise

Not only are we talking dairy malaise but also a general malaise that has 'egg-xacerbated' the whole farming industry worldwide for years. It is just that dairy price wars have featured on the French and British news lately, and pork price wars are doing the headlines right now. Yet to begin with, we do not need to look further than the antagonistic words 'farming' and 'industry' forcefully sitting next to each other as in 'farming industry', in order to understand the roots of the malaise. And there is no word - nor book title - more eloquent than CIWF's Farmageddon, to sum up the disastrous consequences that a drive for cheap brings.

The Honest Farm Toy by CIWF

Farming was once a history of small family-run concerns and pastoral endeavours that helped families sustain themselves, look after the countryside, build closely-knit communities, be self-sufficient and economically-independent, albeit modestly. The Industrial Revolution lured millions of rural families to the city lights that engulfed them into the darkness of coal mines and textile mills. From the 1920s onwards, farming increasingly became mechanised, and as such, less labour intensive. After World War II, it shifted to a lean, automated, extensive and intensive (monoculture-based), chemically-pumped, figure-churning, competitive industrial model set to satisfy corporate demands for their ever-increasing profit margins at the expense of farmer and flock. This has been amplified since as farming is currently being forcefully channelled into the global one-size-fits-all model. Except that one size fits not.

"Animal and crop rearing were once a happy partnership. Industrialisation divorced them." - Philip Lymbery, Farmageddon

As faceless as industrial models are, the first thing that happened to farming was a faceless revolution in the 1960s as flocks, herds and cattle were moved en masse from their lush pastures to concrete pens tucked away from sunlight and our sight, into barren sheds and hangars. Away from sight means away from the mind of the modern consumer, who associates their pack of sliced ham to a sandwich rather than to the pig it belonged to. And animals in their millions to be farmed for slaughter yearly (currently 70 billion worldwide) have become just that: an obscene number that defies the human mind capacity to fathom them as a collective of individual animals. The number appears as a desensitised distant emotionless global mass instead. Faceless in the hangars and faceless on the mind. Faceless on paper too as numbers are being tweaked and crunched to squeeze productivity out of farm animals to exhaustion, before they end up on the abattoir's conveyor belt on their way out of a short, brutal, confined, loveless - and ultimately pointless - existence.

(Available to purchase via Amazon)

Industrial farming means a serving of pain on your plate, and cheap animal produce (dairy, eggs, meat) is an additional serving of hurt. Now you may think I'm serving you the obligatory activist spiel as a vegetarian, but don't forget that I was once an omnivore, and pretty much oblivious to the fact that the whole farm-to-fork line is nothing more than a series of productivity processes that use and abuse animals to death. I am not seeking to discourage anyone from a meat-based diet, I just want to set the record straight so you get the facts in order to make up your mind for yourself.

I was brought up on a meat diet by meat-loving parents born in the 1940s who underwent full-on the changing consumer habits of the post-war Western world with all the false truths that went along, and for whom a meat-based regimen was (is) a sign of healthy living, social success and a status symbol. To be honest, I never was that much of a meat lover, but peer pressure and preconceptions meant I didn't question my own carnivore habits until only a few years ago.

A lonely calf peeping out of a veal crate... Photography by Jo-Anne McArthur, from her book We, Animals

Just to show you how out of touch with the reality of farming I was, I used to believe (well into adulthood) that dairy cows just so happened to naturally produce milk, without any intervention! The stark reality of dairy farming is that cows are perpetually made pregnant (by natural means or artificially inseminated), then separated from their calves at birth (sending their maternal instinct into disarray) or a few days later, and their milk - that should be feeding their young - is pumped away from them in order to feed us, humans. To the strain of repeated pregnancies, you add the trauma of a mother's separation from her baby, plus the painful milking process, and a life behind bars that ends up in the slaughterhouse, to realise that dairy is dreary!

As multinationals are forcing down produce prices and controlling the commodities market, animals (the very commodities at the heart of the farming industry) are forced to produce more, while their living conditions deteriorate further. And if farmers refuse to comply with the demands or refuse to bow to the pressure of turning their middle-size dairy farm into a super-farm, they lose their concerns to the banks, and the multinationals move on to source out cheaper milk from countries like Germany, Serbia or Poland, where cows have a tougher life. Farmers are as much victims as their animals here. They live from hand to mouth, work extremely long hours for a pitiful wage. Pushed to the end of their tethers by those unscrupulous men in suits, they resort to suicide (one suicide every other day in France). Now pause for a minute and consider the irony of it all: those (animals and farmers) who feed us are the ones who starve and suffer!

La Ferme des Mille Vaches (1000 Dairy Cow Farm) is France's first ever US-style mega-dairy farm, est. 2014.

My purpose is not to condone veg(etari)an practice at the expense of another, or sound like the newscaster of doom and gloom at every article I write. La Baguette Magique being about Lifestyle with Attitude, I am not going to follow the herds down the well-trodden middle of the consumerist road to ukulele you a song about Happy Meals! Instead we'll take one step back in order to get a clearer vision and stay ahead. My purpose is to raise awareness and then leave it up to you, dear readers, to think it over, investigate the issue further if it resonates with you, and decide - or not - to review your consumption habits. Let us bear in mind though that only collectively through our changing consumer habits will we be able to impact the faceless powers that are ruling our food shelves and ruining our food chain. Will you take that stance with me?

P.S: Be sure to watch CIWF's Farmaggedon - The True Cost of Cheap Meat. On a happier note, watch Karma the cow being finally reunited with her calf at The Gentle Barn sanctuary, after a life of misery. Who said cows have no feelings? Therefore no matter how well looked after dairy cows may be at David Homer's farm, they will still be missing their babies...

Further Reading:

• We Can Make it Possible - Together
• Sunny Side Up with Origami Hen! 
• Meat Free Monday
• On and Off the Magic Milky Way
• Walled Gardens in Stone Silence
• The Reckoning 

[25-Sept-2017 Update]: For a quick and snappy visual idea of the cruelty of the dairy industry, please watch this French documentary preview, showing a cow and her calf who she had given birth to only a few hours prior. The farmer unceremoniously takes her calf away in his van while the mama runs after the vehicle in desperation for her baby! The calf is taken into a hangar where (if a male) he will be fattened up for the veal industry, or (if a female) fattened up to become a dairy cow. A dairy cow will be expected to produce milk for 5-6 years before being slaughtered for meat.
 

@baguettemagique @CIWF_FR Thank you so much for helping to raise awareness of #factoryfarming and #YOURFARM. Great to have you on board :)

— Compassion (@ciwf) August 20, 2015

Gâteau Paris-Brest

Serves: 8
Preparation: 40 mins (choux pastry) + 40 mins (filling and dressing)
Cooking: 20 mins + extra 5 mins + leave in the open oven for an extra 5 mins

If a French pastry ever were to be described as la crème de la crème (in every sense of the phrase), then Paris-Brest would be it. The gâteau is classic in style and celebratory in mood, and a piece of French culinary heritage all to itself that goes beyond anything cream cake. If I wax lyrical so readily about this particular pâtisserie, it is simply because it stands as my all-time favourite!

The Paris-Brest dates back to 1910, which despite making it a centenarian, also brings out its timeless appeal! Its circular shape is in reference to the Paris-Brest cycle race. A pâtissier from the Parisian suburbs, Louis Durand, had been tasked by the race manager to create a cake that would commemorate the event.

So here we have a gâteau whose popularity has surpassed that of the actual race. It is made out of light and airy choux pastry (cream puff dough), and sprinkled with a generous helping of aromatic roasted almond slivers, finished off with a fine dusting of icing-sugar. The filling is nothing less than a dreamy fluffy praline mousseline cream whose nuttiness echoes that of the almonds, and peers out of its fine corset of piped pastry to doom us into sweet temptation some more.

The Paris-Brest might appear daunting to bake, only if you follow some of the eccentric variants out there, that make it sound more complicated than it actually is! The best thing to do is to follow my step-by-step foolproof method, and you'll be coming back for more!

[Recipe adapted from Maxi Cuisine magazine from a few years back.]

Choux pastry:

• 10cl (1/2 cup) milk (whole or half-skimmed)
• 10cl (1/2 cup) water
• 80g butter (1/3 cup), cut in small chunks
• 140g (1 cup) all-purpose white flour, sieved
• 4 middle-size organic eggs
• pinch of salt
• 1 tsp white caster sugar

Filling (praline mousseline cream):

• 1l (2 pints) milk (whole or half-skimmed, but not fat-free)
• half a vanilla pod
• 6 egg yolks
• 80g (1/3 cup) white caster sugar
• 25g (1 heaped tablespoon) all-purpose white flour, sieved
• 25g (1 heaped tablespoon) cornflour 
• 180g (1 cup 1/2) chopped French pralines (a confection of almonds with caramelized sugar)
• 100g (1/3 cup + 1 oz) softened butter (left out of the fridge)

Topping:

• 50g (1/2 cup) almond slivers
• 50g (1/3 cup) icing sugar

P.S: For baking ingredient conversions, refer to this.

P.P.S: PRALINES-- French Pralines are caramelized almonds. They are sold either whole as a confection, or chopped into a rough granulated texture (see above picture), called 'Pralin' in French. However depending upon which country you live in, French Pralines may not be readily available to purchase. Therefore you may have to resort to making your own, and this easy-to-follow online recipe will do the trick. If you are based in the US, you may want to opt for Glazed Pecans or Praline Pecans from Southern Candy Makers as your closest shop-bought alternative to French Pralin - and for that little Southern touch... All you will need to do is chop the whole glazed pecans/ praline pecans through a food processor until they turn to a granulated texture.

All in all, please be warned about the confusion between Pralines (as in Southern Pecan Pralines) and French Pralines, despite their common French origins. The Pecan Pralines (described by Southern Candy Makers as "similar to candied pecans, only creamier, [they] resemble a cookie, but are actually a crumbly candy patty [made] from fresh cream, butter, sugar, and Louisana pecans") are not suitable for Paris-Brest. Do aim for Glazed Pecans or Praline Pecans instead.

Now back to our Paris-Brest. Preheat the oven (200°C/ 392°F). Prepare the choux pastry: In a medium saucepan and on medium heat, combine (without whisking) milk, water, butter, salt and sugar. When the mixture starts to simmer, add the flour in one go. Then for about one minute and on lower heat, mix together vigorously with a wooden spatula so as to dry out the dough without it sticking to the pan, and you should get a thick and smooth consistency.

Then transfer the dough from the saucepan to a mixing bowl. Add the whole eggs, one at a time, thoroughly incorporating each single egg into the dough with the spatula as you mix together, before you add on the next. Carry on until the dough gets elastic and smooth and comes off the sides of the bowl.

Optionally trace a loose circle (approx. 20cm diameter) on a sheet of parchment paper with a pencil. Then lay the parchment paper onto a baking tray and lightly grease the paper with cooking oil. Then spoon the dough into a piping bag and trace a circle onto the parchment paper and then another circle inside the first (right next to it with no gaps), so that you get a one-inch wide circle. Then pipe a third circle to rest on top of the junction between the first two circles.

You may use a teaspoon as an alternative to the piping bag (which is what I did here) and painstakingly spoon one teaspoon of dough at a time onto the paper until forming a full circle of dough (one inch wide). The finished article, once baked, might not be as full and rounded as the classic (piped) Paris-Brest, but this will not impair the taste whatsoever. And eh, who said Paris-Brest couldn't look rustic round the edges? Actually, [purists, look away now!] should you find convention a tad tricky to handle, you may want to adjust the shape of your Paris-Brest to rectangular, as this will neatly fit in the baking tray (which is what I did here too!).

Sprinkle a generous handful of almond slivers all over the choux pastry. Bake in the oven (200°C/ 392°F) for 20 mins. Never be tempted to open the oven during the baking process or the pastry will deflate and never raise again! When the 20 mins are up, turn the oven temperature down to 180°C/ 356°F and bake the cake for a further 5 mins. Then turn off the oven completely and open its door and leave the cake to cool off for 5 mins before taking it out of the oven. This will prevent it from deflating too much. The pastry should be golden in colour when it comes out of the oven.

Only when the cream puff pastry has thoroughly cooled off, should you split it in two equal horizontal halves, carefully and using a bread knife. Personally I find that a serrated grapefuit knife will do the trick nicely, thanks to the fact that the centre of cream puff is hollow.

Prepare the praline mousseline cream filling: A mousseline cream is basically pastry cream (crème pâtissière) to which butter has been added. Note that the cornflour will lighten the cream consistency. However if you have no cornflour handy, then adjust the all-purpose white flour quantity accordingly, i.e. to 50g (1/3 cup OR 2 heaped tablespoons).

Pour the milk into a saucepan. Split half a vanilla pod lengthways and scrape the seeds into the milk and add the pod shell to it. Bring the milk to the brink of simmer, whisking frequently so as to prevent it from sticking to the bottom of the pan. Meanwhile combine the egg yolks and sugar into a big mixing bowl and cream until white and fluffy. Then add the combined white flour and cornflour in one go. Whisk together. Strain the vanilla pod out of the warm milk.

Add the warm milk to the yolk and sugar preparation in the mixing bowl. Note that the milk must not be boiling hot or it will cook the egg yolks, which is NOT what we want! Whisk together and then pour the cream back into the pan, on medium heat, until it has thickened up and a couple of bubbles have risen to the surface, indicating that the flour has cooked. Turn off the stove. Add the chopped pralines and mix with a wooden spatula, together with the softened butter, cut in chunks.

P.S: For the purists! Some pastry chefs would recommend that you go the extra mile with the praline cream. Once it has cooked - and before any of the softened butter has been added to it - pour the cream into a mixing bowl that sits in a bigger bowl that is filled with ice cubes. Leave the bowls in the fridge for one hour. When the time is up, take the cream out of the fridge and beat it to unset it. Then deal with the softened butter by creaming it with an electric whisk. Add the creamed butter to the praline cream, a little at a time, so as to get a smooth consistency.

Pipe the praline mousseline cream onto the lower half of the choux pastry circle, or alternatively dollop it with a spoon, and then either smooth the edges with a small pallet knife or shape them with a fork (which is what I did). Carefully position the upper half of the circle (i.e. the cake lid) onto its creamed-up lower half. Refrigerate the Paris-Brest until ready to serve. Liberally sprinkle icing sugar before taking to the dinner table, and just let your guests do all the swooning for you!

Psssst! Do not throw out those left-over egg whites! Whip them into Macaroons, a sweet teatime companion.

Total Recall - Doing Good for Food

Starting today and until next Sunday, we're gonna have a little fun in here, and I've called this Total Recall! As La Baguette has clocked well over 270 blogposts since coming to life exactly four years ago back in Manchester, I thought it would be a cool idea to revisit 40 articles (at the pace of 5 a day, easy-peasy!), organised per theme.

We'll start off our trip down memory lane right now with 'Doing Good for Food': food ethics, organic produce, sustainability, farm animal welfare:

• Honey, Please Bee Lovely! (25/03/2013) >> Of the importance of the bee and pollinisation, and how one UK company is doing its bit to raise awareness and help contain the decline of the bee population.
• Sunny Side Up with Origami Hen! (30/06/2012) >> Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) commissioned a short animation film to raise awareness on the horrors of those cheap supermarket chicken eggs, and how 'cost-conscious' consumers really get what they pay for in one simple equation, i.e. cheap eggs = chickens treated cheaply.
• Little House on the Prairie (27/06/2011) >> My first-hand personal foray into organic fruit and veg, via a work contract which I landed at a Corsican garden society, where ancient cultivated varieties are stabilised, preserved, cultivated and propagated, namely the highly sought-after Oignon Doux du Cap (the mild Sisco onion) and the Aubergine Ronde du Cap (a Firenze-originated round aubergine/ eggplant).
• On and Off the Magic Milky Way (20/04/2011) >> Lost in the milky froth of our trendy cappuccinos and fluffy Italian ice-creams, it is easy for us to forget how the cow is the most overworked farm animal, pushed to yield even more milk while often being prevented from the joys of motherhood, and ending up as steaks on our plates. Maybe it is time to pay the animal more respect than we do...
• My Organic Garden (19/10/2009) >> My modest contribution to the wordwide organic community, via my little suburban garden back in South Manchester.

I'm sure you'll enjoy the reads! And back in tomorrow for more, yay!

Cooling Down the Heat!

I have a confession to make: I have been on a meltdown. I've been indulging in all things fresh and cool and icy lately. I whipped up a wicked strawberry ice-cream from scratch, earlier in the season, which I served with a homemade warm dark chocolate sauce, the kind that makes you go 'ohhhh!' and 'ahhhh!' and not care if the world ends now!

Introducing the passion fruit gelato from my local café!

My mum made an apricot ice-cream last Sunday that was equally delish! And in between our homemade concoctions, I've had the odd cornetto, and the odd (the odd, haha!) gelato from my local café down the resort, from fig to coffee, from pistachio to passion fruit... With a terrace view to kill for - overlooking the beach cove. Who said life wasn't a beach?

P.S: I have another confession to make: homemade is best!

Mousse au Chocolat

Let's demystify the chocolate mousse as a tricky fussy sweet, based on the vague assumption that all of French baking requires skill. Besides, the scores of recipe variants out there mislead the authentic method. Firstly, is the mousse that difficult a dessert to make? Well, just ask my ten-year-old self, this is how old I was when I whipped up my first mousse - with a little help from my grandma. This aside, I am about to demonstrate to you how unfussy this dessert really is. But most of all, the key to the success of this recipe relies on the quality and freshness of the ingredients, especially in terms of chocolate and eggs, and not to rush through the prep. Then Bob's your uncle and in no time will that mousse be added to your to-impress repertoire!

Serves: 4
Preparation: 20 mins
Cooking: 4 mins

• 200g bar of good quality dark cooking chocolate (minimum 65% cocoa content)
• 50g organic salted butter
• 4 free range organic medium eggs 
• 4 tsp caster sugar
• pinch of salt

Melt the chocolate in a bain marie. To do so, snap the chocolate bar into small pieces that you place in a small saucepan or heatproof glass bowl (Pyrex). Then fill a kettle with water and bring it to the boil. Place a big saucepan on the cooker. Pour enough of the boiling water into the big saucepan so that the bottom of the smaller pan containing the chocolate pieces (or the heatproof glass bowl) rests comfortably just over the hot water line (i.e. without touching it). Turn on the cooker on low, and leave the chocolate to melt, without tampering with it. Keep an eye on the boiling water so that it doesn't splutter unexpectedly or start boiling away out of control, as all is needed is a gentle simmer for the chocolate to gently melt.

The chocolate sauce

Once the chocolate has melted, turn off the heat and take the small pan (or glass bowl) off the big saucepan of hot water. Leave to cool for a couple of minutes, but no longer than that otherwise the chocolate will start hardening. Add the butter to the melted lukewarm chocolate and mix together with a wooden spoon. Leave to cool further while you deal with the eggs.

Separate the 4 whites from the 4 yolks into two separate bowls. Add a pinch of salt to the whites and beat up with the electric whisk until stiff.

Add the caster sugar to the yolks and beat up with the electric whisk until the preparation has paled down in colour and fluffled up.

Add the yolks and sugar mix into the chocolate sauce and blend delicately with the spoon. Then slowly and light-handedly add the whisked whites into the sauce, one spoonful at a time, making sure not to crush the whites into the preparation. The mousse consistency is airy and bubbly. Think a softer (and nicer!) version of the Aero bar! Place in the fridge for at least a couple of hours.

Serve on its own, or even better with homemade English Custard, a couple of tablespoons of Bitter Orange Marmelade to taste and a selection of your favourite Macaroons.

February 2012 - Five Random Faves (Part 4)

Fave #4: Get one step closer to vegetarianism with Meat Free Monday!

Carnivorous friends, if the road to veggie is paved with good intentions that you feel unattainable, how about start off the week with a neat little compromise like going meat-free for the day? Monday is ideal as a good detox day after the week-end's excesses, and one day can't be that harsh a start surely, even if you are a die-hard meat eater!

And even less so when you know that not only will you be doing your health a favour while giving animal life a break, but also helping the planet at large? And you will be carrying out your one-day diet in stellar surroundings (or did I mean 'Stella', as in Stella McCartney?).

According to Meat Free Monday, 'The estimated 634 gallons of fresh water required to produce one 5.2 ounce (147g) beef burger would be enough for a four-hour shower. For comparision, the same quantity of tofu requires 143 gallons of water to produce.' Check MFM for more fascinating facts, as well as for mouth-watering recipes.

To La Baguette it pays off to be a round-the-year veggie, but it certainly is one step in the right direction for any of our meat-loving friends to give one day a week an animal miss! (to be continued)

Ready to commit further?

• Get ready as March is Veggie Month (with a compelling video to remind us that meat is murder and put us off that chop!) 
• Check out Animal Aid's 'Guide to Going Veggie or Vegan'
• Find out more about the dairy cows plea with La Baguette.

On and Off the Magic Milky Way (Part 2)

Within the wider dairy produce arena, I was also a Rachel's Organic and Yeo Valley Organic customer (two well-established UK organic dairy brands fondly remembered for their creamy yoghurts and scrumptious yet simple desserts. Obviously if I were still living in England right this moment, I wouldn't put the sentences in the past like this just isn't true anymore. If still in England I would indeed still purchase those brands as I am totally sold to their ethics, philosophy and quality produce.

Back to our UK years, if no organic milk was available from the store, I would reluctantly relent to the mass-produced non-organic standard alternative, and would (more happily) compromise with a couple of tins of Carnation milk, as the processed (evaporated) milk somewhat tastes nicer than standard milk, it tastes like caramel to me. What I would do with Carnation was cut it with a third water, before heating up in a pan for my daily breakfast muesli (Alpen, occasionally Dorset Cereals and even posher ones if I felt flush, or simply stick to Sainsbury's own continental style which was decent enough).

So yes, I consumed my muesli in a very continental way, blended with chocolate-flavoured hot milk (although this might just be my version of continental, I'm not quite sure, just that I can't stand the taste of milk on its own, and simply abhor cold milk - and yes I am daring to dedicate an article to milk while cultivating so many particularities about it!). The girl is strange.

Dairy high: Victoria Sandwich

With Carnation evaporated milk and its caramel undertones, the issue of cow welfare would be sneakily shifted to the back of my mind, to the back burner. Cow welfare? What is that strange girl on about? Oh yes, in the context of industrial farming, when you taste that mass-produced standard milk whose carton price has been squeezed even tighter by the notorious supermarket purchasing lobbies at the expense of the producer's profit margins and subsistence, and to give the end-consumer that elusive feeling that they are making a bargain while the one winner really is the retail chain, the dairy producer has no other option than turn to even cheaper feed for his cows and inflict more crammed living conditions onto them, while increasing his milk quotas, and that means demanding an even higher return on investment from the herd. Therefore expect a higher, faster, more intensive milk turnover with all the consequences that go along. Some French dairy producers push the boat even further by moving their production altogether to cheaper countries like Romania, spelling an even harsher life for the cows.

The objective is for the dairy cow to produce more milk and be milked round-the-clock to exhaustion, until both the milk and the animal's life have drained out! This gives the idiom 'milking it' its powerful significance. Cows develop a weakened immune system despite the battery of antibiotics that they are subjected to, many develop lameness. Besides their over-worked udders are susceptible to mastitis (sores, pus, blisters) that not only cause the cow terrible discomfort, but also run the added risk of discharge into the actual milk output, as Heather Mills (ex-Mrs Paul McCartney) had highlighted to the press once.

The cow's ultimate reward for that thankless life of labour is to have its already shortened life taken away while still a few years away from 'retirement', with the ultimate stress of the abattoir lottery (some slaughterhouses being less 'humane' to the animals on death row than others, shall we say...). And at the end of the line, that's our dairy cow ending up hacked, chopped, filleted and minced to pieces. From a froth of hot milk sitting nicely onto your cappuccino, all the way down the food chain to that steak fighting the French fries for space on your plate, that's all in one day's work when you are a cow!

Life as a standard non-organic mass-production dairy cow is pretty bleak, as we've just seen: the cow as a relentless milk factory on legs with basic - even miserable - life conditions, whose life ends up as a meat factory, the four legs up. This is basically and simplistically the picture, and it would be naive for the consumer to assume otherwise. I too used to kid myself until recently that 'maybe oh so maybe' dairy cows got spared the gun and simply produced milk at a leisurely pace, after their daily wander in some lush postcard-perfect clover-rich pasture, all in all enjoying a long and merry life before naturally dying of old age...

Dairy high: Pasticciu (Corsican custard speciality)

Enters the next instalment in our mass-production milk saga, relayed this time by UK charity WSPA (World Society for the Protection of Animals) via its punchily energetic and innovative Not In My Cuppa campaign fighting proposals for the planned controversial super-mega Nocton dairy farm in Lincolnshire (UK) that would have spelled further doom for the cows in the name of higher yield. The original proposal was for the mega dairy to house 8,100 battery cows, with a view to produce at least 38 million litres of industrial milk a year (19,300 pints per cow per year), enough for 2.5 billion cups of tea, according to The Soil Association. The mind boggles! Then the proposal was revised down to 3,770 cows, before the plans were withdrawn in February 2011. It's a victory and I am personally delighted! Yet Not In My Cuppa campaigners and supporters need to remain vigilant as similar proposals could spring up again in future.

Of course organically-certified dairy cows are not spared the fate of turning into meat chops. But at least - in principle, and I do weigh those words carefully - they are guaranteed more acceptable welfare conditions than their industrial-farming counterparts. Meanwhile as consumers we have the power to vote with our feet.

Leading by example: London's Kaffeine only uses organic milk

Thus for our cappuccino or cream tea, would we not be prepared to pay that little extra and demand from our favourite cafés to switch to organic milk alongside us, in order not only to safeguard our conscience but ultimately the dairy cows living conditions, and the incidence these conditions have on the quality and taste of the milk? Milk from miserable, overworked, weakened, exploited cows: no way! Milk from happier, less-crowded, better-fed, better-looked-after cows: yes please, we're in! I'll put the kettle on right away!

Further resources:

• The Soil Association, a UK charity campaigning for environmentally-friendly farming practices
• WSPA (World Society for the Protection of Animals), the world’s largest alliance of humane societies and animal protection organisations, representing over 1000 member societies in more than 150 countries, with consultative status at the United Nations and the Council of Europe
• CIWF (Compassion In World Farming), the leading farm animal welfare charity.