Financiers

Our last post.......till we return from France in early May :)

PerNana:

Nana's "Yankee Doodle" financiers......Taking advantage of some

 of the odds and ends of ingredients left from our   recent recipes, I decided

 to use Dorie's "bonne idee"  and make the chocolate financiers.

I thought this was going to be a tricky recipe but it all came together easily.  

 The most important part was making beurre noisette, and even that 

worked for me.  I lined my mini muffin tins with paper rather than butter 

and flour, and they turned out great. I was afraid they might stick to the 

paper but they didn't. As I was chopping the chocolate into smaller pieces 

I realized that I did not have the 5 ounces called for, so I substituted 2 tsp

 of Hershey's cocoa.  It actually worked quite well and made a lovely ganache.

  When they came out of the oven all I thought about was stuffing them with 

whipped cream- they looked like Drake's Yankee Doodle cupcakes.

I actually did serve some with cream and they were good. 

This is a fun recipe and I am definitely going to the vanilla

 version and see how that works out. 

Per Tricia:

Sorry all, I couldn't swing this even if Nana had delivered my little

 tupperwares  of ingredients this week - but for a very good reason.  

Today is my last work day before taking a 3 week vacation with Nana 

to enjoy France.  Hence the downward spiral in my leaving comments 

(sorry  all !!)  and then being able to even get to the recipe.   Things are 

hectic at work and  home as we plan our adventure and we look forward to

 sharing our adventures when  we return in early May.

I will leave you with photos I took this weekend while waiting for my son

 to take a life guarding class.I took advantage of having to drive him an hour 

away and then kill time - so I  road tripped a bit further to the charming town

 of Lambertville, NJ.  I was stalking looking for the "Canal House Cooks"

 location and hoping they had something open to the public. 

Nothing (yet) open for their fans, but a glorious day to be in a lovely town 

and I did manage some paparazzi shots of their location. They have an 

amazing site & wonderful cookbooks if you have not already checked them out.   www.canalhousecooking.com

  PS- Kathy, the Canal House ladies were at the Bridgewater Commons 

mall's Williams Sonoma a week or two ago, but Nana and I couldn't 

swing it !  But we thought of you !! And Mary- I know you get their lunch
 emails so I was thinking of you as I stalked checked out their place :)

Pierre Hermés olive sablé

A novel use for an Easter egg ~ 

Per Nana ~

A very interesting recipe and simple to prepare. When I noticed  that the recipe called for potato starch, only 6 tbsp,  I thought why can't I just use more flour? I had no idea what I could  possibly use it for after making this recipe, plus I  have so many herbs,  spices, etc. left from other recipes.  However, I checked out the super  market and when I read that it was used for gravies and had  many  other uses, I decided not to be so cheap and purchased it.  To make it  even more economical I would share some with Tricia.  The recipe called for oil cured olives so I used "Greek olives", as they  are called in New York.  They have just the right amount of salt and I do  think it went well in this recipe. I  used  Pompeian olive oil, not sure if it is  considered a fruity oil, but it was a better choice than my garlic-infused  olive oil. The dough came together pretty well, and after refrigerating  overnight, the dough was easy to slice. I had divided the dough into three  rolls and planned to only bake one now and freeze the rest.  However,  once I tasted the first sablé - I baked the whole batch and haven't  stopped eating them since. All in all, this was a tasty little treat that  Hubby and I enjoyed it with a glass of wine.  I would like to make a note  regarding the MARTHA WRAP- the foil  backed parchment paper. This is the first time that I have used it and  found that for baking cookies or the above recipe, that the corners curled  up in the process.  I only used it for the first tray of sablés, then switched  to regular parchment paper which lasted through 3 more bakings. I'm not sure if this was intended for baking cookies, I know it only  mentioned being used for cooking  en papillote on the box.  I wonder  if anyone else has used this and had the same problem ?

Per Tricia~

Note the tupperware of ingredients presented to me by Nana.

 Impossibly, I still almost managed to mess this easy recipe up.
First, I completely forgot to actually add the olives as I pondered

 how silky my dough was. P&Q comments showed folks having issues

 of dry, crumbly dough - so of course I figured I had messed up the

 dough  when mine was not dry. After making the logs I realized my

 error, put them back into the bowl and tossed in Nana's adorable

 little container of olives. Which had not been chopped.

 Since she basically did my "mise en place"- I thought they were

 chopped. So I then picked them back out of the dough and chopped them. 

At this point my teenager had to leave the room because he was fearing

 the downward spiral of my mood (or perhaps he could not stand

 watching his Mother's continued failure......)

Aside from user error, the recipe was quite easy. The results were

 good but they missed the mark for my family. The olives were too 

subtle and we just didn't get that perfect balance between sweet and 

savory. The final verdict is that for a cocktail hour we would not 

repeat these when compared to Gougeres or Gerard's Mustard Tart

 or Batons- found elsewhere in the book.

Kudos to our admins for finding a recipe calling for the yolk of a hard-

boiled egg at Easter time - when we had lots of colored eggs to use up !