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OK, return to the present. You’re at the dinner table again, but now Sylvie Ryan, the Boise Co-op’s Culinary Educator, is conducting one of her fabulous Wednesday evening cooking classes. She’s wearing pearls, because this is another Julia Child session. And the menu tonight is (drum roll) ... “The Sweet Side of Julia.”
You look at the menu and you pinch yourself. You can’t believe your eyes. Tonight we ... will ... have ... four desserts! Oh, my sweet Aunt Petronella, does it get any better than this? La Tarte des Demoiselles Tatin (upside-down apple tart), with a sweet short paste, no less; Charlotte Chantilly aux Framboises (Raspberry Cream Charlotte); Biscuits à la cuillère (ladyfingers); and finally what I would willingly give my right arm for (if I had two left ones), chocolate mousse.
In the interest of journalistic integrity I have to mention that there was a non-sweet item at the beginning of tonight’s feast: Sylvie’s Roasted Vegetable Gazpacho, along with French bread from Le Café de Paris. The soup was wonderful, but let’s be honest, it was not the main event
The Misses Tatin invented their famous upside-down pie by mistake in the kitchen of their inn one evening in the 19th century. They put apples for an apple pie into a pan without having first lined the pan with crust. The kitchen was too busy to redo the pie, so they put the crust on top, and voila! An instant classic. Think of a pan packed with Fuji or Pink Ladies apples and sugar and melted butter and cinnamon. On top of it, you spread a crust made with butter and sugar, a crust you could eat by itself, but of course you won’t because that apple filling is so majestic. You bake the pie for an hour, and you serve it with crème fraîche. You listen to the sounds of gustatory pleasure from the guests. And you take a bow.
Raspberry Cream Charlotte is a very special kind of dessert, the kind you don’t tell your cardiologist or your dietician about. You line a round mold with upright ladyfingers. You put in a super-rich, super-good filling of superfine sugar, beaten egg yolks, whipped cream (lots of it) and raspberries. (Those are just the ingredients. The technique? Ask Sylvie.) You place a layer of ladyfingers on top and you refrigerate it overnight. You take your first bite and you take out your cell phone to make a plane reservation to France. It’s that good.
But wait, there’s more. Dessert No. 3. consisted of those same ladyfingers, freshly baked by Sylvie. You can guess the ingredients – butter, granulated sugar, egg yolks, egg whites, vanilla extract, flour, powdered sugar – baked on cookie sheets. Sure, they were wonderful in the Charlotte. But by themselves they’re the star; they don’t have to compete with berries and whipped cream. You can serve them as they come out of the oven, or you can make sandwiches with apricot glaze or butter cream by sticking the flat sides to each other.
And then came the high point of the evening, at least for me. I know as a truth that chocolate mousse cures every ailment known to man, and I make a pretty mean one myself. But Julia’s – and Sylvie’s – is different, as it should be. Every version of chocolate mousse is individualistic and stands by itself. Hint: The quality and cocoa content of the chocolate is a crucial factor. Sylvie put coffee in hers; many people do. But she added a secret ingredient, which I will reveal only if you promise not to tell her I told you: Orange liqueur.
As we started to leave I made a diving leap for the bowl in which Sylvie had mixed the mousse so that I could have just one more taste. But my wife, Pat, stopped me. Gee, Pat, I was acting my age ...
Too much of a good thing, Mae West once said, is wonderful.
I have nothing further to say.
Except to urge you to go to boisecoop.com, look up the schedule of Sylvie’s classes, and register.
