Since everyone is always asking me about French food, as I mentioned before, I decided that I will just document everything my host mother cooks, making me camera-happy every day. It gives me a wonderful excuse to whip out my iTouch.
It wasn't today, but a while ago, my host mother made these for a dinner with her in-laws. Even so, they're very easy to make. I'd say they take no time at all, but I really don't know, since my host mom is just magical in the kitchen. I just got my wand (BY THE WAY a wand in French is une baguette magique)
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| they're all enchantingly delicious |
I should probably decrease my baguette jokes : month ratio. Anyways, I warn you that my instructions would not help those that burn water. Just so, I've added a bunch of pictures that I hope are self-explanatory.
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| pic 1: go and be a chef now |
I'll do my best, though anything I write will be a pale imitation of what my host mother makes.
I suppose in the future I'll end up typing recipes like those boring pages with all the ingredients first and what not, but I can't really do that considering how my host mother just whips things up together and I'm frantically trying to understand how.
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| "oh that's how you - nope you just did something French" |
So, more explanations from me than neat recipes. Shame, since one of my friends said that he needed a dissection comprehensible for five-year-olds in order to even attempt cooking. Guess he won't be able to eat French food then.
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| stop whining and go back to them cheeseburgers |
I'm procrastinating on actually writing the article. I apologize, since I still am.
Let's pretend that you are going to serve eight people. Now, you are also pretending that you are a French person, which means that for dessert you eat a tiny tiny bit of food since you'd already be stuffed from the appetizer, entrée, salad, cheese, and everything else I have to suffer through everyday.
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| it's horrifying how I'm treated here |
Take eight apples. Fine, 16 since you can't handle pretending to be French (fellow American, I understand). Now, don't peel the apples, that's not good. The skin of them will split right off and make the entire dish ugly. Well, I suppose it's not really pretty afterwards anyways, but trust that it is supposedly butt-nasty with collapsed apple skin. My host mother made some incisions in the apple to try to prevent that.
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| revolting |
Hint: use apples that are good for baking. Like Golden Delicious, or whatever you use in apple pie. I have no idea, not being an apple expert myself, but I shall do an experiment one day with Fuji, Granny Smith, and Gala apples. Or you can, and tell me what the results are.
Eating the skin is not necessary, it's just there to keep the apple from completely rupturing and become applesauce. We want to keep the skin, but not the middle with all the seeds. I hate eating seeds, especially in grapes. Somehow France has no appreciation for seedless grapes. It's the worse thing in the world when you're trying to enjoy a grape at the cafeteria and CRUNCH you got bitter between your teeth.
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| not seen: the hell contained inside |
So core the apples (=remove the middle). I'm not going to explain it all, so here's a link : http://www.ehow.com/how_5016725_core-apple-apple-corer.html I guess you could half the apple, it'd be so much easier, but my host mother didn't, so like I said, pale imitation. Especially since you need that tunnel in the apple to put jam and butter.
Before you go nuts and try to stuff a cup of butter in the apple, and I should've said this earlier, you need to prepare the baking casserole thing first. You've seen the picture above, it's like a cookie sheet with sides. So like a brownie pan. I'll learn the vocabulary when I get back to the USA, no time for that now.
Don't butter it, not necessary. Remember how you took 16 apples? Well, I hope you can put 16 apples in your casserole like in pic 1 above. Yeah, how's being American doing for you? Well, considering the size of our brownie pans, you'll be fine.
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| it's our breakfasts that are too small |
Anyways, the golden ratio is one slice of bread (a pancake might be good too, actually) for each apple, so line the brownie pan with one layer of bread. Now remember the tunnel in the middle of the apple as a result of coring it? Well make it so that it's perpendicular to the bread (that means vertical), and fill it halfway with unmelted butter (don't stuff it though, just put like half a table spoon of butter in) and then fill the rest of the tunnel with jam. Reference pic 1 with the eight apples above.
My host mother uses jam made with red fruit, like strawberries, cherries, raspberries, or gooseberries (currant jam) since they're nicely acidic in comparison to the apples, but I'm not going to stop you from using grape jelly. I wouldn't think that that'd taste good though.
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| remember what I said about grape medicine? |
Make sure that the half of the apple with the butter is on the bottom. It'll melt and give the bread purpose, which I think is not exactly crucial for this dish.
I should've probably told you this before too, but seeing as how my host mother just put the dish in the oven at the same time as the chicken, I don't think there's an optimal temperature that the apples need to bake at. They're apples, there's not really a need to kill germs or anything.
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| I could be wrong |
She put it in the oven at 205°C for 30 minutes, about. The time isn't really exact either, since I wasn't timing it, and she didn't remember care how long the apples were in the oven.
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| pic 2: just leave them in there until they look like this |
To recap (you poor fellow, after having read all of that above):
8 (or 16) slices of bread, or just until the casserole is lined with ONE layer
jam of a red fruit
some butter (really, it's however much you'd like, but note that it is necessary)
- line casserole with one layer of bread (I'm emphasizing that a bit much
- wash and core the apples, then dry them
- score the apples a bit, to prevent butt-nasty skin explosion
- put one apple on each thing of bread
- put butter in the middle of the apple
- then put jam
- put the casserole with everything in it in the oven, at 205°C for 30 minutes, or until everything looks like pic2
- then take the casserole out
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| I'm counting on your common sense to make up for my bad instructions |
Oh, and the apple on the bottom half of pic 2, second from the left? That's the apple that wasn't scored properly, and had it's skin slide right off. Disgusting
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