Dorie Greenspan will spend Thanksgiving in her Upper West Side apartment in New York City, but on her holiday table will be edible reminders of her other life in Paris’ St.-Germain-des-Pres district. There, alongside Mr. Tom Turkey, will be a soup, either chestnut or mushroom; an endive, apple and grape casserole; a salad of greens dressed in a Dijon mustard vinaigrette; and an apple cake invented by a dear Parisian friend, Marie-Helene. Even the stuffing will be made with a leftover baguette.
“My Thanksgiving Day dinner is structured like a meal in France but without the cheese course,” she says. “Cheese doesn’t seem right somehow; it doesn’t seem like it fits in Thanksgiving.”
That Greenspan’s holiday feast will be American but with a strong French accent is appropriate. The baker, home cook and blogger (her eponymous Web site has its devotees) is author of several cookbooks of which “Baking With Julia,” a companion to Julia Child’s television series, may be the most well-known. Now she’s out with “Around My French Table” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $40), a cookbook with more than 300 recipes “from my home to yours.”
Armed with Greenspan’s clear, detailed recipes – backed by practical suggestions on substituting ingredients, cooking ahead and storing afterward, you, too, can transform that same-old, same-old Thanksgiving chow-down into a veritable fete francaise.
It’s simple to do – what Greenspan calls in the book a “bonne idee.”
“French home cooking is very much like American home cooking,” she says with her trademark enthusiasm (five minutes on the telephone with Greenspan can convince you that you are capable of cooking/baking almost anything). “I call the recipes in my book ‘elbow-on-the-table food.’ You don’t find home cooks in France peeling peas or reducing stock. That’s restaurant food.”
The French even use convenience foods in their cooking, she notes impishly, “but they do it in great style.” One such convenience missing in France is canned pumpkin; she brings it from New York to make dishes such as pumpkin-gorgonzola flans.
“French food today is so recognizable to Americans,” Greenspan adds. “The French food that was Julia’s French food is the food of 50 years ago. … Julia’s food does exist in France today and is beloved. Nobody is giving up tradition, but they’re playing with it. She would love what’s happening in French food today.”
Greenspan loves cooking American food in France – and her Parisian friends get a kick out of seeing an American tackle French dishes.
“It becomes kind of a mix. You go there as a fully formed American and start playing with this stuff,” she says.
Take those pumpkin-gorgonzola flans. Greenspan takes a quintessentially American ingredient, pumpkin, and uses it in a classically French way, baked as a flan.
“I don’t claim my book is an authentically French cookbook,” she adds. “It’s a snapshot of what’s happening in French food today. If I took the ‘French’ out of the title, people would think it was just great food.”
Endives, apples and grapes
Prep: 5 minutes
Cook: 40 minutes
Makes: 4 servings
This recipe, adapted from “Around My French Table,” may have originated with Alain Passard, the Michelin three-star chef, but author Dorie Greenspan points out that it is really quite easy to make. And unusual too. “Who’d ever think hot grapes and butter would be so great?” Greenspan asked.
2 plump endives, trimmed
1 tart-sweet apple, such as Fuji or Gala
1 1/2 tablespoons salted butter
4 small clusters white or green grapes
4 small rosemary sprigs
1/2 teaspoon salt
Freshly ground pepper
1 Cut the endives lengthwise in half. Cut the apple into quarters; remove the core. Peel off a thin strip of skin down the center of each quarter.
2 Heat a large skillet over low heat; add the butter. Heat until melted; add the endive cut side down. Add the apples skin side up. Add the grape clusters, leaving the grapes on the stems; scatter over the rosemary. Cook, undisturbed, until undersides of the endives are caramelized, the apples and grapes will be soft and perhaps browned, 20 minutes. Gently turn everything over; baste with any liquid in the pan. Cook 20 minutes.
3 Transfer to a warm serving platter. Season with salt and pepper. Scrape up the cooking sugars sticking to the bottom of the pan, adding a few tablespoons of water to make a little sauce, if you like. Spoon over the endive; serve hot.
Nutrition information
Per serving: 137 calories, 29% of calories from fat, 5 g fat, 3 g saturated fat, 11 mg cholesterol, 23 g carbohydrates, 4 g protein, 379 mg sodium, 9 g fiber
Pumpkin-Gorgonzola flans
Prep: 20 minutes
Cook: 35 minutes
Makes: 6 servings
Greenspan likes serving these flans in their cups, but you can unmold them. While the French would garnish this flan with creme fraiche, Greenspan prefers a tiny drizzle of honey or maple syrup. The flans are best served the day they are made. Keep, lightly covered, at room temperature for about 6 hours before serving.
1 can (15 ounces) pumpkin
3 eggs
2 egg yolks
1/2 cup whipping cream
1/4 teaspoon salt
Freshly ground pepper
3 1/2 ounces Gorgonzola, crumbled (generous 1/2 cup)
2 tablespoons chopped roasted walnuts
1 Heat oven to 350 degrees. Butter six custard cups or ramekins. Line the bottom of a roasting pan that’s large enough to hold the cups comfortably with a double layer of paper towels. Put the custard cups in the pan. Put a kettle of water on to boil.
2 Put the pumpkin, eggs, yolks and cream in a food processor or blender. Process to blend. Season with salt and pepper; pour the custard into cups. Divide the Gorgonzola among the flans, poking the cheese into the custard a little bit, just to distribute it. Sprinkle the tops of the flans with the walnuts. Pour enough hot water into the roasting pan to come halfway up the sides of the cups.
3 Bake until a knife inserted into a custard comes out almost clean, 35-40 minutes. Transfer the roasting pan to a rack; let the flans cool in the water bath to just warm or room temperature.
Nutrition information
Per serving: 221 calories, 71% of calories from fat, 18 g fat, 10 g saturated fat, 218 mg cholesterol, 8 g carbohydrates, 9 g protein, 541 mg sodium, 2 g fiber
