Ooey Gooey Hot and Sticky

Chalk this up as a happy accident. (As opposed to the previous night's episode, which was far from happy.)

Click to see the deliciousness up close & personal

We wanted dessert badly late the other night, so I decided to bake some chocolate chip cookies. Not any chocolate chip cookies, but Thomas Keller style, as found in Ad Hoc at Home.

I'm generally not big on cookbooks, particularly for cuisines I'm already very familiar with, but Mr. Keller is an exception in this household. Some friends of ours back in California are serious T-kizzle fans (apparently they have achieved the kind of intimacy where one can throw hip-hop nicknames at the man, or so legend holds it), and we're not strangers to Ad Hoc, its awesome crew, and their seemingly infallible repertoire of food.

So much so, that I shelled out 50 bones and nearly exceeded my airline-mandated luggage capacity to bring this giant tome back with me from New York the day after it came out.

Also, Alannah has gone on the record to say she'd ditch me to eat at Ad Hoc. (I've referred to this story in our first attempt to cook TK-styley.) So again, it's a no-brainer that I want to recreate that magic in our own kitchen ever so often. Hell, sometimes we even outshine it.

But sometimes that "no-brainer" part kicks in... almost literally. Like when I try to make chocolate chip cookies and only put in half the flour called for by the recipe.

(Which is, by the way, 2 1/3c flour, 3/4tsp baking soda, 1tsp kosher salt, 5oz 55% chocolate chopped into chips, 5oz 70% chocolate chopped into chips, 8oz butter, 1c packed molasses sugar, 3/4c granulated sugar, and 2 large eggs.)

The recipe actually isn't all that different from many standard chocolate chip cookie recipes, other than the specificity of the chocolate and molasses sugar. Much of what makes a Keller recipe a Keller recipe is stark simplicity mixed with meticulous technique.

So here I was, making this seriously simple but sublime cookie, and midway through the baking process on the first sheet, I noticed that, well, I was literally cooking a sheet. The cookie dough had spread out into a giant rectangle covering almost all of the baking sheet in the oven.

Perhaps I should have known something was wrong when my balls started melting as soon as I spooned them on to the parchment paper. (And here I thought it was all the butter doing that...)

At any rate, I fixed the second batch by adding more flour, and it was a decent enough save, yielding some soft, delicious, hideously rich cookies.

But what to do with the first "batch?" I wasn't about to let all that good chocolate go to waste. Nor that molasses sugar that was probably the handiwork of some poor South American quasi-slaves (no matter what the Fair Trade label on the bag says). And, of course, all that gorgeous A.O.C. butter.

Something had to be done. So I folded the sheet into four, stacked it all together neatly, wrapped it tightly in parchment paper, and put some weight on top of it. Who knows, maybe I was on the way to making the heretofore unseen Chocolate Chip Terrine!

Fast forward to tonight. We had a lovely couscous dinner at a casual Moroccan nearby, skipped dessert in favor of some hot mint tea, and, of course, regretted skipping dessert after seeing the trays of luscious Maghreb pastries go by later. So we got home and I proposed making something with the layered chocolate chip abortion.

I sliced the stack into squares, heated them up in the oven (and for a flash under the broiler), scooped on a couple of quenelles of speculoos ice cream, and topped it all with dark chocolate shavings.

Et voila! I have no freakin' clue what I just made, but it was good. So good that T-kizzle and D-cizzle and company should put it on the menu at you-know-where.

Ok, maybe not, but it was the tastiest accident we've had in a while.

Brown Town Three-Way

This is our first bilingual post, based upon a little challenge I threw out on Twitter the other day. You see, ever since Alannah and I moved to France, I can count on one hand how many good brownies we've had: None.

Ceci est notre premier billet bilingue, basé sur un petit defi j'ai lancé sur Twitter il y a quelques jours. Depuis que nous avons démenagé à France, je peux compter sur mes doigts exactement combien de bonne brownie on a mangé : Aucun.

When we arrived, a fellow American transplant at work told me at lunch never to order the brownie. "Here?" I asked, referring to the restaurant. "Anywhere in France," he replied. Ouch!

Lorsque nous sommes arrivés, un collegue aussi muté des États-Unis m'a dit pendant le déjeuner de ne jamais commander une brownie. "Ici ?" je lui ai demandé, au sujet du resto. "Non," il m'a dit. "Nulle part en France." Ai !

He was right, though. Nearly two years later, there's not a good brownie to be found. So imagine my excitement when I saw this tweet announcing that a French person was sharing her recipe for real brownies! Not that I needed such a recipe, but I was excited to see that the French have finally figured out how to make brownies.

Mais il a eu raison. Presque deux ans plus tard, je n'ai jamais trouvé de bon brownie. Donc imaginez mon excitation quand j'ai vu ce tweet, disant qu'une française partage sa recette du vraie brownie! Bah oui, je n'ai pas besoin d'une recette, mais j'étais ravi à voir que les français ont enfin appris comment faire la brownie.

I clicked the link and... Dammit! There's baking powder in there! That's a cake! If there's one hard and fast rule about brownies, it's that they don't contain any leavening.

J'ai cliqué le lien et ... Putain ! Il y a de la levure ! C'est un gâteau ! S'il y a un seul règle pour faire la brownie, c'est qu'elles ne contient pas de levure.

I know the French know what they're doing when they bake. They are undeniably the best bakers in the world. This is because they are steeped in tradition and are not keen on bending rules. And that's the problem. The brownie was born of a mistake. Someone forgot to put in the baking powder when making a chocolate cake and voila! There's your brownie.

Je sais que les français savent bien qu'est-ce qu'ils font avec un four. Ils sont sans doute les meilleurs pâtisseurs du monde - c'est incontournable - parce qu'ils sont trempés dans la tradition et ils ne sont pas accoutumés à casser les règles. Et ça c'est le problème. La brownie était née d'une betisse. Quelqu'un a oublié de mettre de la levure dans la pâte d'un gâteau au chocolat, et voila ! La brownie !

@ParisLovesMe said that I, then, should give her a recipe. And I said I'd make some this weekend and even take pictures. The only trouble is... I don't bake, and I rarely use recipes.

@ParisLovesMe m'a dit, donc, que je doit lui donner une recette. Et j'ai dit que je vais faire des brownies ce week-end, et je même prendrais des photos. Le seul problème est ... Je ne fais pas la pâtisserie, et j'utilise rarement les recettes.

So I turned to a couple of my go-to cooks for inspiration: Alton Brown for his scientific, purist approach to American classics, and Thomas Keller for his refined technique. Both offer what I would call an "ultimate" brownie recipe, so I would take the best of both and create my even more ultimate recipe. The figures below are extrapolated for use with an 8.5" round cake pan (because that's what Alannah brought from the US), from Brown and Keller's original recipes for 8" and 9" square cake pans, respectively.

Alors, j'ai cherché l'inspiration de deux cuisiniers : Alton Brown pour sa méthode américaine puriste et scientifique et Thomas Keller pour sa technique raffinée. Les deux proposent ce que j'appelle les recettes "ultimes", et je combinerais toutes les deux dans notre propre recette plus ultime. Les chiffres ci-dessous ont été extrapolés pour utiliser un moule de gateau rond de 8.5"/22cm (car c'est ce qu'Alannah a apporté des USA), contre les recettes originales de Brown et Keller pour les moules carrés de 8"/20cm et 9"/20cm respectivement.

	Brown	Keller	Tavallai
eggs/oeufs	215g	125g	170g
sugar/sucre en poudre	190g	260g	150g
brown sugar/ sucre foncé	130g	–	140g
butter/beurre	200g	240g	220g
cocoa powder/ cacao en poudre	125g	80g	100g
chocolate/chocolate (60% cacao)	–	120g	100g
vanilla extract/ extrait de vanille	6.5g	1.5g	4.5g
flour/farine	70g	75g	70g
salt/sel	2.5g	4g	3g
cooking/cuisson	45 min @ 300ºF/ 150ºC/th. 5	40-45 min @ 350ºF/ 180ºC/th. 6	40 min @ 325ºF/ 160ºC/th. 5.5

All three recipes ways require that you beat the hell out of the eggs and fully integrate with the sugar until creamy.	Toutes les trois recettes demandent que vous fouttez les oeufs vigoureusement, et les integrer compètement avec le sucre, jusqu'à il soit crémeux.
Alton Brown's recipe is incredibly simple: Melt the butter and mix in with all of the wet ingredients. Sift together all the dry ingredients, then fold in all of the wet.	La recette d'Alton Brown est incroyablement simple : Fondez le beurre et mélangez-le avec les autres ingrédients humides. Tamisez ensemble les ingrédients secs, puis ajoutez tous les humides.
Thomas Keller's approach calls for melting half the butter, then pouring the melted butter over the solid butter and working it into a mostly consistent, creamy mixture, with lumps of solid butter throughout. The butter mixture is then added - alternating with the sifted dry ingredients - into the egg/sugar/vanilla bowl. Chopped up chocolate chunks are added at the very end.	La méthode de Thomas Keller exige que vous fondez la moitié du beurre, et mélangez-le avec le beurre solide à faire une crème assez consistent, mais avec des petites morceaux de beurre partout. Le mélange est puis ajouté - alterné avec les ingrédients secs - dedans le bol des oeufs/sucre/vanille. Le chocolat - haché en morceaux - est ajouté à la fin.
For the Tavallai version, we went with Keller's more professional technique of folding dry goods and butter into the egg/sugar/vanila mixture. However, I used a whisk to cream the melted and solid butter together - almost whipped - for a smoother butter that marbled into the bowl. Again, the chocolate chunks are added at the end.	Pour la version Tavallai, nous avons suivi la technique plus professionelle de Keller, en mettre les ingrédients secs alterné avec le beurre dans le melange oeuf/sucre/vanille. Cependent, j'ai fouetté le beurre fondu et le beurre solide, comme une crème presque montée, pour un effet marbré dans le bol. Encore, les morceaux du chocolat sont ajoutés à la fin.

As expected with its cocoa-heavy recipe, the Brown version came out very dark, and was difficult to set in the pan because of its concrete-like thickness. The Keller batter was much more fluid, and in every step of the way, much lighter in color. Our version was exactly in the middle.

Comme prévu avec sa recette pleine du cacao, la version Brown était très foncée, et c'était un peu dificile à mettre carrement dans le moule à cause de son épaisseur bétonesque. La pâte lisse Keller était bien plus fluide, et à chaque etape, plus claire en couleur. Notre version restait precisement au milieu.

After cooking, the Brown version was expectedly dark and dense, the Keller version lighter in both color and consistency with a beautiful craquelure, and ours again in between with a mild craquelure but a beautiful two-tone coloring. The chocolate chunks remain solid and visible.

Après la cuisson, la version Brown était foncée et dense comme prevue, la version Keller plus légère et plus claire avec une belle craquelure, et le nôtre encore au milieu avec un effet craquelure bien plus doux, mais avec un effet marbré. Les morceaux de chocolat restent solides et visibles.

I "fileted" each brownie round, and we filed the rest into plastic tubs with labels. This way, we can share each kind of brownie with our friends this week to get their opinions. Don't you wish you were in Paris?

J'ai fait des "filets" avec chaque rond de brownie, et puis nous avoins classé les restes dans des boites en plastique avec des étiquettes. Comme ça, nous pouvons partager chaque genre de brownie avec nos amis cette semaine pour prendre leurs avis. Souhaitez-vous que vous étiez sur Paris ?

For the tasting, we had all three of the brownies presented in each of the ways typical of the respective chef. The Alton Brownies plain, the Thomas Keller brownies dusted with powdered sugar as they are at his Ad Hoc restaurant (and in the Ad Hoc at Home cookbook) and ours with Alannah's trademark dark chocolate ganache, which has already been titillating Parisians with its few public appearances... A total of nine different brownies!

Pour la dégustation nous avons présenté tous les trois recettes à la façon de son chef respectif. Les Alton Brownies nature, les brownies Thomas Keller époussetées du sucre glace comme servie à son resto Ad Hoc (et dans son bouquin Ad Hoc at Home) et le nôtre avec sa fameuse ganache au chocolat noir, qui a déjà titillé plein des parisiens pendant quelques apparitions au public ... un total de neuf brownies différentes !

The Alton Brownies were a dense chocolate bomb. Like having your mouth raped by a giant chocolate wang... Only you can't rape the willing. Delicious, but overwhelming.

Les Alton Brownies étaient une bombe de chocolat. Comme faire violer ta bouche par une grosse bite à chocolat ... Seulement c'est impossile de violer les disposés. Delicieux, mais saissisants.

Keller's brownies are near perfect, as you'd expect from a 3-Michelin starred chef, reminiscent of the amazing chocolate Bouchon from his bakery of the same name. However, Alannah found the powdered sugar to simply get in the way of the chocolate, and we both thought the chocolate chunks were a bit too much. Otherwise, the texture is perfection.

Les brownies de Keller sont presque parfaites, comme prevu pour un chef étoilé (3x), réminiscent de son Bouchon de chocolat de sa boulangerie-pâtisserie éponyme. Cependant Alannah a trouvé le sucre glace interférant du goût de chocolat, et nous avons pensé que les morceaux de chocolat étaient un peux trop. Autrement, la texture est la perfection.

And our version? Let's say this is the first and only time that you will hear of Tavallai trumping Keller. Our recipe truly combines the best of both, delivering the dark chocolate punch of Alton Brown's recipe, and nearly matching the excellent texture of the Thomas Keller recipe. And Alannah's ganache just puts it over the top, though it's a wholly unnecessary luxury. The flavor and level of chocolate are perfect, and a dozen grams of tweaking the butter (more) and brown sugar (less) should yield the velvety texture of the Keller brownies.

Et notre version ? Disons que c'est la première et seule fois que vous entendez que Tavallai a battu Keller. Notre recette combine le meilleur des deux autres recettes, livrant le coup de chocolat de la version Brown, et presque appariant l'excellente texture de la recette Thomas Keller. Et la ganache d'Alannah est vraiement extra, mais c'est un luxe complètement inutile. Le goût et le niveau de chocolat sont parfait, et un dizaine de grams de bidouille du beurre (plus) et sucre foncé (moins) devrait rapporter la texture veloutée des brownies Keller.

KFC vs. Local & Organic: An Epic Tale

It's been a long, hot, sultry summer. Have you noticed our absence?

In true Parisian style, we've blown off just about everything for the summer: A couple of weeks in the States, entertaining (and sometimes getting busy in the kitchen with) friends from abroad, and generally doing anything to avoid being in our steampit of an apartment. Generally, this has meant hanging out on the various terrasses of Paris and getting slurry. And frankly, if there's anything we like better than cooking, taking photos, and writing about it, it's actually being out and about in Paris. Drinking.

But with the weather cooling down in time for la rentrée, we've ventured back into the kitchen more often, greasing the pans and flouring the crevices of passion. I've been compiling a sort of "Greatest Hits" of the summer for anyone interested, but in the meantime, something else has brought us out of our summer stupor: The KFC Double-Down.

Of course, I loathe KFC for their animal husbandry practices (or lack thereof) and the fact that their food, in general, sucks. But I have this morbid curiosity about various manufactured foods, and the last one to enchant me with its siren song was KFC's disgusting Famous Bowl. From first sight, I had to know what a sandwich using two pieces of fried chicken breast in lieu of bread was all about.

Fortunately for my stomach, intestines, and any other orifices affected by potential food poisoning, KFC in France has an extremely limited menu. No Famous/Toilet Bowl. And most certainly no Double Down. So after numerous comments back and forth on Facebook and Twitter – and some egging on from Alannah – I vowed I would make a "premium" version of the Double Down so we can try for ourselves.


Behold, the TKFC Double Down.

Two fried chicken breasts done in the style of Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc fried chicken (from scratch, cribbing the recipe from the spooge-worthy Inuyaki.com), and in between it some slices of cheese and bacon.

Of course, these aren't just any ingredients. In order to really one-up KFC, we went as from-scratch as possible.

The chicken is farm-raised, just slaughtered, and lovingly prepared by our local butcher. Yesterday morning, it still had a head, feet, and feathers.

The bacon is one of the same butcher's specialties: Poitrine fumée (smoked pork belly), sliced to order. The butcher's from the Auvergne region – famous for its hogs – so he does not mess around when it comes to his cured meats, most of which are the product of his mad in-house charcuterie skills.

The cheese is Gruyère from the fromagerie up the street: One of the many master cheesemongers who ages and then selects cheeses for you on-site based on when you'll consume it (an appreciated art in France); One of the few who is a woman.

We even went a little crazy sourcing the ingredients for the fried chicken coating.

Buttermilk is hard to come by in France, so Alannah has devised a trick where she mixes fromage blanc ("white cheese," but it's actually just a denser yogurt) with milk. Naturally, we go with the organic stuff that's micro-filtered as opposed to heat pasteurized, but sometimes we go raw if we know we're going to use a litre within a few days.

For the dry part of the coating, we went as "from scratch" as we could, as well. While we don't mill our own flour, I did mill our own garlic powder (half a dried clove in a pestel and mortar), and the seasonings were as locally sourced as possible. (Impossible for the cayenne pepper, but hell...) Even the herbs and lemon for the brine were purchased at the local green market.

Having gone so far as to skip KFC and the supermarket, we decided to go a bit upmarket with classic KFC sides, as well.


Mashed potatoes became Alannah's spectacularly creamy, thick mashed red potatoes, topped with bacon gravy. Corn on the cob became corn charred on the cob, then shucked and tossed with butter and parsley. And - making a pitstop at Shakey's - Mojo potatoes became our Belgian-style double fried Mojo potatoes with grated parmesean and olive oil.

And the end result of all this?

It tasted like upscale fast food. Really good, really upscale fast food. As in I'd do body shots of the gravy off of Alannah. And she's already told me the only thing she'd forsake me for is Ad Hoc – and by golly, that's Ad Hoc fried chicken in front of her.

But I didn't cream my jeans over the concept.

In fact, I'm not sure what the big deal with KFC's Double Down is. The marketing ploy is that it's a bacon-cheese sandwich using fried chicken breasts for a bun. In reality, the combo you're looking at is a rebranded chicken Cordon Bleu. Think about it: A Cordon Bleu is a fried chicken breast stuffed with ham and cheese, often served at banquets and school cafeterias. The Double Down just doubles the amount of chicken.

So really, we made chicken Cordon Bleu with excellent ingredients tonight. Ho freakin' hum.

--

But wait, there's more!

When we were assembling the ingredient list yesterday (we started a day before, because of the overnight brining process for the chicken), Alannah was a bit bummed by the bill of materials. She was under the impression that the Double Down was a burger. As in chicken-burger patty-chicken with some bacon and cheese in there.

So when we were at the butcher shop, we had our man in the bloody apron grind up some of his finest beef for us.

And like every good mad science project, we created a backup in case the first one failed... "Screw the Double Down," she said. "I wanna go All-In."

Mixed gambling metaphors aside, it was a perfect name.


Two TKFC chicken breasts, a 250 gram (over half pound) burger patty cooked medium, bacon, gruyère cheese, caramelized onions, deep fried hash browns, and bacon/burger-dripping gravy.

The heart-topped picks not only keep this monstrosity together, but remind you exactly what you risk damaging while you eat it.

I suggested topping it with a fried egg, but Alannah told me to stay realistic. There's only so much one can fit in his/her mouth in one go, after all.

And while I can't say I will ever make or eat such a thing again, it is now quite evident that I married the perfect woman. One who is still shapely, but can concoct a "sandwich" that puts the McGangBang to shame.

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Unfortunately, we were too busy deep frying, frying, and roasting to concoct a KFC-style dessert. And to be frank, I don't care to make a fancy version of the Colonel's Parfait.

Instead, we rolled down to the gelato shop in our neighborhood, named in 2007 as Maître Glacier (Master Ice Cream Maker) of Europe, for some of their fabulous on-site creations. I was very happy with my cup of lemon-basil gelato, and Alannah with her green tea gelato, all made and sold on the very same street as the butcher, green market, and cheesemonger.

How's that for supporting independent, local merchants who source their goods from as near as possible?

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Unfortunately, in bending the Colonel over and making his redneck ass our bitch like this, we spent a lot of time and money, and didn't exactly stroll to the gelateria all light as a feather.

The ingredient cost for one "Double Down," one "All-In," three sides, a bottle of wine, and dessert for two nearly came out to 30€ ($43). The time to prepare it from beginning to end: 17 hours. NOTE: There's a substantial amount of leftovers. Except the wine.

A Double Down combo meal at KFC costs around $7 (plus tax) and probably takes around six minutes.

Neither is particularly good for you.

But our version contained no hormones, came from animals raised in open-air farms (and we don't accept farms that are big dirt lots as open-air, there's a whole rating system for it), had as few industrial ingredients as we could get away with (no luck on the peppercorns, salt, and milk, I'm sure) and nothing genetically modified.

We got the pleasure of talking to our local purveyors, who are always more friendly than anyone at a supermarket or fast food restaurant.

We enjoyed beer and wine while waiting for the brine to cool.

We enjoyed each other's company while the chicken was brining overnight.

In every way, despite the much higher amount of time and money required, our "Double Down" (and "All In") were infinitely more pleasurable than the experience you get from KFC.

And what point is it going after foods on the extreme ends of the spectrum – be they the biggest, the fattiest, the greasiest, or whatever – if there is no pleasure?