Bacon Edamame à la Française

I've been stuck at home watching a lot of tv recently, since my immune system decided to take a vacation. Daytime tv is horrible, so I usually stick to the Food Network and Cooking Channel.

I caught an episode of French Cooking at Home and watched Laura Calder melt a HUGE portion of butter, fry pearl onions in it, and THEN add bacon to it. I was totally on in love with the idea...until she started shelling peas.

Peas irritate me. I don't know what it is about them that bothers me so much, but I don't like them. So I knew I wasn't going to follow this recipe exactly, but I didn't know what to use instead.

And then I remembered there was edamame in my freezer. And despite all the warnings about genetically-modified soy, and soy consumption tied to cancers, I do occasionally indulge in some. It's rare, because I don't want to die (that's why I eat quinoa). But it was the perfect replacement for this exceptionally rich dish.

Obviously with this much butter AND bacon, you eat this sparingly. After you defrost the beans, of course.

The original recipe called for an entire pound (2 cups) of peas. That's a LOT of peas. I decided half a pound of soybeans was sufficient and there was a good balance of beans to everything else. Despite my abhorrence of peas, I do so love bacon. And pearl onions (usually in my martinis, but fried up is good too). Throw in a bunch of lettuce so as not to completely clog your arteries and you're in business.

If you've never peeled pearl onions, all you have to do is boil them for a few minutes and the skins will come right off. Then drop them in butter, and once they're lovely and brown, toss in the bacon. The smell will overwhelm you. It's fantastic.

It's okay to scale back on the butter, if you're really afraid of saturated animal fat. I used half the listed amount and it was just fine. You might also want to be careful about how much salt you use. The bacon will add a good amount, so low-sodium chicken broth is a good bet.

In the end my taste testers (aka mom & dad) loved it. I found it intoxicating, from the aroma while it cooked, to the warm wilted lettuce and plump soybeans in my mouth.

I'm not clear on what makes this à la Française (read: French)...maybe it's the obscene amount of butter? The fact that Laura Calder has a delightful accent? I don't know. Suffice to say it's good food. Just eat it.

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Bacon Edamame à la Française

by Paulette Fontanez November-7-2012

Adapted from Petit Pois à la Française

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon butter
• 16 pearl onions, peeled and halved
• 4 slices bacon
• 1/2 pound soybeans, shelled
• 1/2 cup low sodium chicken stock
• 2 cups red leaf lettuce, shredded

Instructions

1. Melt butter in a frying pan and add the onions. Cook on medium heat until the onions begin to brown. Brown food tastes good.2. While the onions are frying, cut the bacon strips into small pieces (sometimes called lardons). When the onions have browned, add the bacon and cook until crispy. 3. Add the soybeans and chicken stock. Cover and cook until tender.4. Add the lettuce, stir, and cook covered until just wilted (about 1 minute).5. Serve warm.

Details

Prep time: 10 mins Cook time: 10 mins Total time: 20 mins Yield: 4 servings

Attempt at French Food: Fish Mousseline with Sauce Nantua

The French know everything about cooking, right? They invented it.

Because of this, I've always felt that it's pretty intimidating to attempt French food. As if somewhere, a panel of unrelenting judges will strike you from the kitchen should you not recreate a dish perfectly. You'll be banished to a life of raw and fast food eats for the remainder of your days.

That's not at all true, though French food can seem complicated. The recipes seem to have innumerable ingredients with highly complex steps. But when I happened to catch an episode of French Food at Home on the Cooking Channel, Laura Calder made it actually seem doable. Not "easy" but definitely less difficult than I had previously believed. So I attempted her Fish Mousseline with Sauce Nantua. Translation: fish mousse with a creamy shrimp sauce.

I was heading to my parents' house the next day for a family dinner, and knew that my very picky little brother has just recently started eating fish. We had gathered at Chez Mommy & Daddy to watch the Giants take out the 'Niners in the NFC championship playoffs, so I decided to test this on them.

My parents are pretty adventurous, and they too like to experiment with new recipes, so they're the perfect test subjects. My brother could always order a pizza if he didn't like it.

The sauce was quite simple, surprisingly. Butter, onions, carrots, shrimp, herbs, set them on fire then add cream and puree. It was the first time I've flambéd a dish. That was fun. Fire! We like fire here at Girl + Fire.

Then came the fish mousse. I don't know what I did wrong, but it was overly watery, so it never set properly. I could blame the blender that created butter out of the cream, but that was my fault. So I had both a watery and buttery mousse. Split personality mousse. I should have drained the liquid. And probably used a food processor instead of a blender. Tip for next time.

The Giants ended up winning that game (and then the Super Bowl! AGAIN!). We ended up loving the creamy shrimp sauce. The fish mousse...eh. But if I learned nothing else, it's that French food ain't that scary after all.

You can find the original recipe here.

Pink & Lavender Turkey Mini-Burgers

I recently became obsessed with lavender. I've always liked the color (it's so pretty) but I didn't really know how it tasted. At one point I was trying to figure out what to do with a decadent wedge of Humboldt Fog goat cheese, and learned that typical French herbs lavender and thyme paired nicely with it.

Them French know a thing or two about food.

Lavender is quite perfume-like. Too much of it and you will feel like you sucked down some Chanel No. 5, which is a very lovely fragrance. (If any fans wants to gift G+F some perfume, nous aimons Coco.) But you don't want to taste it for the rest of the day. Use sparingly.

Another lovely pantry staple is pink peppercorns. These are less pepper and more berries, and also hail from France. I have had them for a while, wondering how and what to use them in. Turns out these pink beads blend nicely with its equally colorfully-hued French friend lavender. I was making on my way to making a pink and purple rainbow of food.

Plus I grow thyme in my little patio garden, so now I just had to figure out what to do with this spice blend and cheese.

Enter ground turkey and King's Hawaiian mini buns. And then you have mini burgers! Not sliders, as Serious Eats explains, but mini burgers. They're as easy to make on the stove as on the grill. And even though we're having some unseasonably warm weather in Los Angeles this winter (in the 70-80 degree range, which is weird even for southern California), I still haven't fired up the grill. Mostly because I gave it to my dad and no longer have one.

Thinking about it, I suppose you could make these into sliders. But I like my onions caramelized and IN the ground meat mixture, not just steaming on top of it.

I made two of these, ate them, and they tasted fine. I let the rest sit in the fridge until the next day, made two more, and they tasted so much better. The flavors were much better combined. So that's the trick, let the mix sit overnight. More yummy bang for your buck.

Don't forget the oozy cheese!

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Pink & Lavender Turkey Mini-Burgers

by Paulette Fontanez 

French lavender and pink peppercorns help turn a normal turkey burger into a gourmet mini burger.

Ingredients

• 1 pound ground turkey
• 1/2 cup caramelized onions, choppped
• 1/2 cup fresh cilantro
• 1 egg, beaten
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/2 tablespoon dried lavender
• 1/2 teaspoon pink peppercorns
• 1/2 teaspoon black peppercorns
• 1/2 teaspoon coriander
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme (or 1 teaspoon of fresh thyme)
• dash of salt
• 8 ounces goat cheese
• 8 mini burger buns

Instructions

1. Crush the peppercorns and coriander to a powder (use a spice mill if you have it). 2. Combine the crushed spices with the turkey, onions, cilantro, garlic, olive oil, and salt and mix well. Optional but highly recommended step: let sit, covered, in the fridge overnight.3. Form into 8 mini burgers. Grill on high heat for 3-4 minutes per side.4. Serve on mini buns with a 1-ounce piece of goat cheese (Humboldt Fog is strongly recommended!). Let the cheese melt a bit. Add additional condiments if you feel it necessary.

Details

Prep time: 5 minutes - overnightCook time: 8 minutes +Total time: 13 minutes +Yield: 8 mini burgers