Classic Madeleines

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Today we baked another French classic : the Madeleine. This famous delicacy is usually enjoyed for afternoon tea. Madeleines are very small sponge cakes, traditionally flavoured with lemon, and have a distinctive shell-like shape, much easier to do than commonly thought. 

The legend of this cake is traced back to the 18th century. Stanisław Leszczyński, Duke of Lorraine, was having a large dinner party in his Château de Commercy, in 1755. In the kitchen, an argument occurred between the steward and the cook, leading to the latter quitting and taking all the freshly baked deserts with him. The dinner seemed compromised until a young maid, Madeleine Paulmier, offered to cook a cake recipe she inherited from her grandmother. The warm welcome that this uniquely shaped cake received, baked in scallops shells back then, inspired Stanislaw to name the cake after the young heroine who saved his dinner. To this day, Commercy is still regarded as the home of the madeleines. 

Madeleines were also made famous by the French author, Marcel Proust, in his novel "In Search of Lost Time". He uses madeleines to demonstrate the contrast of involuntary memory and voluntary memory (retrieved by putting conscious effort into remembering events, and therefore inevitably partial). Now known as the "episode of the madeleine", the cake, when dipped in a cup of tea, suddenly evokes not only a mere memory, but the full essence and feeling of a childhood event. The "madeleine de Proust" became a popular metaphor commonly used in French to describe something that triggers an involuntary memory. 

But enough with history, to make this delicacy, you will need a madeleine cake mold, now widely found in specialized kitchen equipment stores and online. The cooking time will vary depending on your oven, and since it only needs between 8 and 10 minutes of cooking I would advise you to stay around to check on it regularly. A perfectly baked madeleine should be light golden-brown, with a little bump on the top side, and the distinctive shell-shape on the other side. The recipe is very versatile and you can replace the lemon by vanilla, or add some chocolate chips. We'll be presenting some other variations, including savory ones in the future ;-)

If you have kids around, make this recipe with them ! It doesn't need anything sharp, it's easy as pie, and you will create some true "madeleine de Proust" moments for them.

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20 minutes + 1h resting time

8-10 minutes + until cold

20 madeleines

Wine poached Pears

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For Halloween, we decided to do wine poached pears ! Ok, we know it isn't a Halloween classic but we thought the deep red colour of the pears looks almost blood-like (and with some whipped cream, we even achieved this brain-like look in our serving glasses). Spooky !

Wine poached pears are a traditional dessert from the Burgundy vineyards in eastern France, more specifically, the Beaujolais province. In French, we would call this dessert "Poires à la Beaujolaise", and we would poach them specifically with Beaujolais wine, however, you may use any wine of your personal preference for this recipe. 

This dessert can come in handy because it has the advantage of being prepared the day before, on top of being super easy. The trick is to get pears that are not ripe. This is important because if your pears are already very ripe, they will get soft and mushy, while you want them to hold their shape and stand up themselves.

We will only do 4 pears here, however, you can probably get up to 6 pears depending on the size of your saucepan. You can also keep the spiced wine, reheat it slowly for poaching a second batch of pears the day after, or simply strain the wine and drink it (heat it up a little bit for extra mulled wine goodness) !

The whipped cream is totally optional here, and for more convenience, you can substitute the handmade cream for canned whipped cream. We would advise you not to choose sweetened whipped cream because the wine sauce is already sweet. 

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30 minutes

30 - 40 minutes + 24h resting time

4

Pork Roast Orloff

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My Mom used to make this recipe at home, and we would call it "Rôti de porc à la paysanne", or Peasant Pork roast in English. However, after researching about this recipe, it turned out it's actually called a Pork roast Orloff. Regardless of how it's actually called, this is one of the easiest and most delicious way of enjoying a pork loin.

This recipe is a variation of an old classic recipe from the Franco-Russian repertoire, the Veal Orloff. It was created by the French chef Urbain Dubois, who worked for the Russian ambassador in France, Prince Alexeï Fiodorovitch Orlov during the 19th century. Originally, a boneless veal loin would be sliced, and filled with a layer of mushroom and onion mash between slices.

This variation uses pork instead of veal, and is layered with bacon and cheese slices. Sounds good already doesn't it ? 

Most of the time, when we do this recipe here in Ireland, we use Emmental slices because it's a cheese we enjoy and it's easy enough to find in store. Back in France, my Mom used Mimolette cheese, and since we were able to bring some back from our holiday there, we will be using this one. Feel free to swap for any cheese you prefer (Emmental, matured Cheddar, or Gouda will work out nicely), or try to get some Mimolette in specialized shops. 

This recipe is really quite simple. Usually, we would slice the loin multiple times from the top-side, halfway through and stuff the gaps with bacon rasher, slices of cheese and it would go in the oven without tying. The blog of Sandrinita is showing clearly how to do it this way. Here, we'll be "butterflying" the roast in order to have it unfolded and flat, than we'll stuff it, roll it back, and, to finish, we'll be tying it so it keeps a neat shape. So, if you're not fully comfortable with tying or butterflying the loin, you may find these steps a bit daunting, but feel free to check out YouTube for tutorials on how to unfold and tie a pork loin, or simply skip these steps and make the traditional slice. 

It was our very first time butterflying the pork loin, and after cooking, we noticed that part of the mimolette melted out of the roll, so we would advice to slice the cheese thinner so the roll is tighter. We also think that if you're using Emmental cheese, you won't have this problem since this cheese tend to stay in place when melted. Still, the final result was absolutely delicious ! We honey roasted some baby potatoes, carrots, and parsnip to serve on the side. 

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30 minutes

1h30 minutes + 10 minutes resting

4