Tarte Au Citron

Dear Devon

Hands down, Anne Willan’s recipe for tarte au citron is the best. One of my all time favorite desserts, tarte au citron is one of late afternoon, last minute desserts. I have experimented with graham cracker crumb crusts, whizzed whole oranges with sugar in food processors, and topped pale yellow tartes with fresh raspberries. Julia Child, Dorie Greenspan, Patricia Wells, Ina Garten, all have their tarte au citron recipes (which I have meticulously ranked), but Anne Willan’s recipe recently catapulted to the top.

A few weeks back, I hosted a small dinner party. The menu included a creamy blanquette de veau, simple garden salad, and two desserts: tarte au citron and a lovely fruit-topped, whipped cream laden cake from the pastry shop. Dinner was followed by an all night marathon of friendly poker, after which that wonderful cake was a welcome sight. It was a great evening and reminded me of why I love hosting dinner parties. I have a chance to serve a variety of recipes that would otherwise remain in black and white print.

Except for one adjustment, I followed her recipe exactly. The recipe called for ¾ cup almond flour. I’m still not so good with the numbers, so I ordered too small a bag from the dry goods stand. So, I added dried coconut to equal the full ¾ cup. The coconut was a nice addition, subtly balancing the tartness of the lemon filling. However, the biggest surprise was the call for pulverized almond instead of cream. I was a bit hesitant at first, but am now a firm believer in almond flour over cream in all tarte au citron recipes. The tart had a nice light texture and held its shape nicely after each slice. I will never go back to cream, when almond flour can be substituted.

Whipping the egg and lemon juice to the ribbon stage nearly killed me. My shoulder muscle is cramping as I type. I have a new respect for those pre-KitchenAid chefs. I have temporarily shelved an attempt at chocolate mousse in favor of the less labor-intensive dessert of cut fruit.

I intended to top the tarte with macerated strawberries. But at the last moment, I opted to serve the berries at the end as a finishing course. The tarte is so good, that it doesn’t need further embellishments. It is a stand alone dessert.

Pull your copy of The Country Cooking of France from your shelf and try it. I’m dying to hear your thoughts, but please use your electric beater.

Tarte Au Citron
(serves 8)

Pate a Sucre
I used Julia Child’s recipe from Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Lemon Filling
½ cup ground almonds
¼ cup shredded coconut
3 /4 cup granulated sugar
3 eggs
grated zest of 2 lemons
¼ cup lemon juice
2/3 cup butter melted

Prepare pate a sucre according to Julia Child’s recipe from Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Blind bake the tart shell until light golden brown.

For the filling, beat eggs and sugar until the mixture until thick and pale yellow. The mixture should leave a ribbon trail when the whisk is lifted. Stir in the lemon zest, lemon juice, and butter. Stir in the ground almonds and the coconut.

Set the tart shell on a hot baking sheet and pour in the filling. Bake until set and golden brown, 25 to 30 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack before unmolding. Serve at room temperature.

Quiche Lorraine

Dear Devon,

Farm fresh eggs. A friend gave me a present of four eggs, real farm eggs from her grandmother’s chicken coop in a small Catalan mountain village. I’ve tried to explain the difference between American and Catalan eggs for my friends from Barcelona. I am still surprised by their natural creaminess and neon orange color. That’s when the egg-collecting grandmother entered the discussion. Her small flock of chickens lays eggs for her city living granddaughter.


In the interest of continuing my education, several eggs were carefully packed in newspaper and given to me. That’s the thing about the people here; they are exceedingly generous. If you show the slightest interest in anything, it will be insistently pressed into your hand. Refusal is not an option.


To enjoy this gift to the maximum, I dusted off the tart form and settled on Anne Willan’s decadent Quiche Lorraine recipe. Eggs, crème fraiche and lardons are the major players in this over-the-top quiche. It’s the perfect mix of creamy eggs and smoky freshly fried bacon enclosed in a flaky and buttery crust. It comes out of the oven puffed and steaming hot. Willan suggests eating it straight from the oven for maximum flavor, which we did, but we also enjoyed cold slices for breakfast the next day and the next.


Quiche Lorraine
(from Willan, Anne. The Country Cooking of France p. 46)

Pate Brisée
1 2/3 cups flour
1 egg yolk
¾ tsp salt
3 tbsp water
6 tbsp butter

Filling
1 tbsp butter
7 oz lean smoked bacon, cut into lardons
2 eggs
1 cup crème fraiche

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

In a food processor, combine cubed, chilled butter with flour and salt. Pulse until small peas form. Add egg yolk and pulse, three or four times. Add water, tablespoon by tablespoon, pulsing the machine until the dough just comes together. The amount of water used depends on the humidity of your kitchen. You may not need to use all the water. When a rough dough forms, turn out the dough and lightly knead on a floured surface. Form into a ball and rest in a lightly oiled bowl. Cool in the fridge 15 to 30 minutes.

Roll the chilled dough to ¼ inch thick on a lightly floured surface. Line tart pan with dough. Using the tines of a fork, prick the dough all over and fill with pie weights. Bake the shell until light golden color, roughly 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool on a cooling rack.

For the filling, cook lardons until lightly browned and crisped. Remove from the pan using a draining spoon and cool on a plate lined with super absorbent paper towels. In a bowl, whisk together eggs and crème fraiche. Line the cooled pie shell with lardons and pour in the egg mixture. Bake until the filling is set and golden brown, 30 to 35 minutes.

Softly Scrambled Eggs with Fava Beans

Dear Devon,

Thoughts of your celery kimchi have my mouth watering. I’m imagining a spicy, crunchy and refreshing bite soaked in a salty and tangy brine. Homemade kimchi is probably the easiest bit of “cooking” out there. I have made several batches since moving to Barcelona, calling upon local ingredients and rather inventive brining methods (fridge is small). But my next batch, will definitely involve celery.

Something else I’ve been drooling over is Anne Willan’s The Country Cooking of France. This book has become the standard by which I judge all other cookbooks. It has absolutely gorgeous photographs for almost every recipe in the book, and includes detailed instructions. Never underestimate the importance of detail when explaining how to prepare pig’s feet or soufflé techniques.
And while I consider myself fairly handy in the kitchen, her text does leave me a bit intimidated. She seduces me with recipes that seem easy to execute but conjure battle scenes with an unwieldy giant in my imagination. Am I exaggerating? You’ve known me for years and you must know that I tend to embellish.

It is time to stop reading and move towards the stove. I’m living next to some of the greatest markets and pork products in the world. I should embrace some of Willan’s more adventurous recipes. When else will I have this chance? Plus, I am lucky, my dinner guests these days are forgiving, adventurous types.

For a warm up exercise, I chose Willan’s recipe for softly scrambled eggs with wild mushrooms. If you haven’t tried softly scrambled eggs, I suggest you to crack some eggs and try it tonight. The texture is buttery and light. The trick is to scramble the eggs over low heat. It takes an extra 10 minutes or so, but is definitely worth the wait. Overflowing from every market stand when I first arrived in Barcelona, wild mushrooms have disappeared into their damp retreats until the fall. Undeterred, I substituted fresh fava beans.


Softly Scrambled Eggs with Fava Beans
Adapted from Anne Willan’s The Country Cooking of France

1 pound fava beans in the pod
1 slice of unsmoked bacon, cut into chunks
4 eggs
¼ cup milk
1 pinch salt
toasted bread

Bring a large pot of water to boil. Drop in the fava beans (in their pods). Boil roughly 5 minutes before removing from the stovetop. Drain and soak in cold water. When the beans are cool enough to handle, break open the pods and remove the beans.

In a sauté pan, slowly fry bacon. When the bacon is nice and crisp, remove from the pan and reserve in a small mixing bowl. Add the shelled fava beans to the bacon fat. Cook over medium heat until nicely browned. Remove from the pan, adding favas to the bowl with the bacon.


In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs and milk with a pinch of salt. Wait for the pan to cool down, before cooking the eggs. Turn the flame to medium-low. Add egg mixture. Using a wooden spatula, stir the eggs, scraping the sides and bottom of the pan. The goal is to prevent the eggs from setting too quickly or clumping. Vigilant stirring is the key. Cook for about 10 minutes. The eggs should be loose but not runny, without any traces of raw egg. At the last moment, stir in the favas and bacon. Freshly chopped herbs would be a nice addition. I recommend: chive, chervil, dill or parsley.

Serve over toast and with freshly grated black pepper.

Gateau Breton

Dearest Michelle,

I love, love, love The Country Cooking of France. For weeks after you gave it to me, I've been itching to sit down and read it through, but had been thwarted by life until this week. Finally, a couple of days ago, I was able to deposit myself on the couch with a cup of tea and minimal procrastinatory guilt to read it cover to cover. It is a gorgeous book, one of those that would be equally appropriate on a coffee table or on a bookshelf devoted to serious cookbooks. The photos are lovely, and the blurbs about different regions and ingredients make entertaining reading. And then, there are so many recipes in there that I want to make! I was bookmarking those that I liked particularly, but that soon became redundant.

A few recipes jumped out at me immediately, among them that for gateau Breton. I was waffling between baking that or a lemon tart (a long-time favorite), but the gateau was a little easier to make, and required fewer ingredients. There is no image to go with the recipe in the book, but the description grabbed me,

"A cross between pound cake and shortbread, Gateau Breton seems to me richer and more luscious than either."

Who could resist that? I'm sure glad I didn't; this is something I will make again. It is buttery like a shortbread, but rich with the egg yolks and therefore more tender to the bite, with barely a touch of crunch in the top due to the glaze. Eaten immediately (and, no, we didn't wait till it had cooled completely, though you are supposed to), it seems a touch sweet, but the next day the flavors were perfectly balanced. Supposedly, it gets even better with age, and can be kept for up to two weeks, but this one barely made it three days. Someday I'd like to see how the flavors further develop. Maybe the trick is to hide it somewhere.


While this gateau is perfect on its own, I couldn't help but think of pairings for it. I ate it for breakfast yesterday with strawberry jam (delicious) and a cup of maccha green tea, and I bet it would be equally as good with lemon curd. One of my friends suggested incorporating almond paste, which would also be tasty. Almond flour, substituted in for some of the all-purpose, would be interesting too. Mostly, I'd like to use this dough as tart crust, which it's not far from. I don't know that I'll mess with the gateau itself, as much as incorporate the recipe into something new; any additions would make it other than what it is, so perfect in its purity.


Gateau Breton

from The Country Cooking of France by Anne Willan, pg 293

Note: This is incredibly easy to make, and well worth it. I loved how the book has the weight of ingredients marked; if you don't have a kitchen scale I'd highly recommend getting one. It takes all of the guesswork out of measuring flour. That is, of course, if the recipe notes the weight. I imagine that the butter, egg yolks, and sugar could be mixed most of the way in a separate bowl for ease and incorporated with the flour afterward, but I made it in the method detailed below which was not difficult. The author notes that if you do not use salted butter, 1/2 t salt should be added to the flour.



1 c /225g salted butter, soft but not VERY soft
6 egg yolks, room temp, beaten to mix but not beyond
2 c / 250 g flour
1 c / 200g sugar
1 T Calvados or rum ( optional- I omitted due to convenience)

8 inch tart pan with fluted rim and removable base



Butter tart pan ( I use a brush, which is easy and consistent) and set aside 1 t egg yolk for the glaze. Sift flour onto work surface and sweep a large well in the surface with your hand (larger than you'd think). Cube butter and add to center with sugar, yolks, and booze, if using. Work these together with fingers into a paste. Using fingers and heels of your hands, work in flour and work dough gently 'til smooth. It should be sticky at this point and should be mixed with the use of a pastry scraper.






Transfer dough to the pan and smooth the top with your hand, dipped in water so it does not stick. Brush the surface with the reserved egg yolk and mark a lattice in the glaze with the tines of a fork. Chill until firm, at least 20 m. Meanwhile, heat oven to 375F/ 190C.

Put tart pan on baking sheet before setting in oven. Bake 20 m. Reduce heat to 350F/180C and bake until cake is firm and golden brown, and the edges shrink from the sides of the pan, 20-25m longer. Let cool till tepid, then free it from the pan to a rack to finish cooling. Sprinkle with powdered sugar if you are so inclined.

It's as good freshly baked as it is saved in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks, when the texture softens and the butter flavor deepens.