Today, 22 Prairial, we celebrate chamomile! This date has inspired me to order some chamomile seeds to plant in the yard for future tea. A quick update on the wasabi root I planted earlier this spring: it definitely died.

I think this cake was lovely and would be a welcome addition to a low tea get together. It is taken from Kate Hackworthy’s @KateVeggieDesserts which is a marvel of innovative desserts.

Chamomile Cake with Honey Buttercream 

2 sticks of butter

5 chamomile tea bags

1/4 cup of milk

1 cup of sugar

3 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 cup flour

2 tbs baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

Icing 

6 tbs butter at room temperature

2 tbs honey

2 tbs whole milk

1 cup powdered sugar

1/4 tsp salt

Pre-heat the oven to 350. Prepare a 9 inch pan with cooking spray or butter and flour. In a small saucepan, heat the butter, milk and chamomile tea bags to a light simmer for 2-3 minutes. Turn off the heat and let steep for 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes, strain the mixture over a sieve. Discard the tea bags.

In an electric mixer, beat the butter mixture and sugar until pale and creamy. Add the eggs, one by one. Add the vanilla.

Add the flour, baking powder and salt to the butter mixture and mix until just combined. Pour the batter into the prepared ban and cook for 30-35 minutes. Remove and let cool. Invert onto a platter and make the icing.

 

For the honey buttercream, beat the butter until pale and creamy. Add the honey, powdered sugar and milk. Mix until smooth and then add the salt and frost the cake when it is completely cooled. Enjoy!

 

For 13 Prairial, we celebrate the pea! It’s been a hot couple of days, so I went with “not soup” for today’s recipe. Just a couple of veggies and some mashed peas. This is taken from a Bon Apetit recipe, but I switched around some veggies based on family preferences.

1/2 lb of carrots

6 radishes

10 oz frozen peas

1 garlic clove

Zest of one lemon

1 tbs lemon juice

1/4 cup grated Parmesan

Sliced sourdough

1/2 lb asparagus

4 green onions

mint leaves

First, slice the carrots, radishes, asparagus and onions. Toss the veggies, except onions, with 2 tablespoons of olive oil and salt and pepper to taste. Bake at 400 for about 15 minutes.

In a food processor, mix the peas, garlic, lemon zest, lemon juice, Parmesan and salt and pepper to taste. Mix until mostly smooth. Drizzle some olive oil over the bread slices and when the veggies have cooked for 15 minutes, remove the pan and arrange the bread on the edge of the pan. Add the onions to the pan and cook for another 10 minutes.

To serve, spread the peas over the toasted bread, top with vegetables and mint. Enjoy!

We’re doing a little bit of skipping and heading on to 17 Prairial before doubling back to peas in our next post. Today, we celebrate the elderberry with a cocktail using St. Germain. Up until last year, I had foolishly thought that the liqueur was as storied as its art deco bottle. I was surprised to discover when reading about the inventor’s death in 2016 that St. Germain has only been on the market since 2007. The liqueur is made not from the elderberry, but from the very fragrant blossoms of the tree. To celebrate, I have made a cocktail that I have enjoyed for the past five years – ever since I read the recipe for it on The Kitchn. They had a series celebrating Downton Abbey in 2012 where each of the three sisters received their own cocktail. This is the Lady Sybil. For me, it ranks up there as one of my favorite cocktails to make and drink – a close second to the Gin Bennet.

The Lady Sybil 

1 oz gin

1/2 oz St. Germain

Chilled brut Champagne (I use cava, usually)

Combine the Gin and St. Germain in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake until chilled. Pour into coupe or flute and top off with Champagne. Long live Lady Sybil!

Mes amis, on this day of Prairial, we celebrate the strawberry as the French Revolutionaries would surely have wanted – with ice cream. In looking through past posts, I was sure that I had written about the etymology of “strawberry” before, but apparently not! All my strawberry research so far has been off the clock. No longer. Last summer, we planted strawberry plants for the first time in our garden and wondered about the origin of the word. Turns out, it is up for debate. A lovely article by Anatoly Liberman from the Oxford University Press blog details many theories.

The double trouble with strawberry is that no other European language has a similar name (one late occurrence in Swedish is of unknown provenance) and that, on the face of it, straw– makes little sense in it. The word goes back to Old English, and there must have been a serious reason for coining it or for changing the traditional denomination (that is, “earth-berry,” which did turn up at that time but, judging by the extant texts, was known very little). One thing is clear: the Germanic invaders of Great Britain did not bring the word strawberry to their new homeland from the continent.

Here are some of the options:

1. The “straw” is derived from “strew,” which describes how the berries send out runners in a mess of different directions. So, perhaps at one time, they were “strewberries.” Liberman rejects this interpretation as it would have been unlikely the first part of the word would have been a verb.
2. When cultivated, gardeners usually use straw for mulching the plants during the winter. Liberman rejects this because before strawberries were cultivated, they were popularly harvested in the wild.
3. The “seeds” of the berry could, perhaps, look like straw. This is the etymology favored by the OED, according to Liberman.
4. The tendrils that connect the new runner daughter plants to the mother plant could look like thin straws.
5. Perhaps a derivation of “strayberry” – describing the wandering nature of the runners.
6. Finally, a puzzler (to me) – a corruption of the Norwegian word for the berry, smultron. 

As there are options for the origin of the berry, so are there options for recipes to make on this hallowed day. I combined two ice cream recipes – Jenni’s Splendid Ice Creams idea for roasting the strawberries and David Lebovitz‘s vanilla ice cream base.

Roasted Strawberry Ice Cream 

1 pint of strawberries

1 cup whole milk

3/4 cup sugar

2 cups heavy cream

pinch of salt

6 large egg yolks

3/4 tsp of vanilla extract

First, clean the strawberries and cut into quarters. Line a baking sheet with parchment and cook at 350 for 10 – 15 minutes. Let cool while you make the ice cream base. Warm the milk, 1 cup of cream and the sugar in a medium pan. In a bowl, pour the remaining cup of cream and place a strainer on top of the bowl. Separate the eggs and slowly add some of the hot milk mixture to the eggs to temper. Pour the eggs into the milk mixture and cook while whisking constantly. When the mixture is thickened, pour into the bowl through the strainer and add the reserved strawberries. Cool overnight and then freeze in your ice cream maker the next morning. Enjoy!

Welcome to the month of Prairial! On the 5th day of this month, Jacobins celebrated the duck. We shall celebrate with a decadent summer dish of roast duck with fresh cherries. I very much enjoyed this recipe, which is from the New York Times – spicy and sweet, and very satisfying. It calls for using 2 Muscovy duck breasts, but the cheapest I found were $72 for two breasts. While searching at Whole Foods, I found 4 non-Muscovy breasts for $13 and went with those. Turns out, Muscovy ducks are native to Central and South America and look kind of crazy. They are supposed to have a taste more similar to roast beef and are very tender.

Roast Duck with Cherries 

Rub for the Duck 

2 duck breasts

salt

1 tsp peppercorns

1/2 tsp ground allspice

4 cloves

2 bay leaves

1/2 tsp fennel

For the sauce

1/4 raw sugar

1/2 cup red wine vinegar

1/2 cup red wine (I used pinot noir)

1 cup chicken broth

1 tbs grated ginger

pinch of cayenne

salt

2 tbs butter

1/2 fresh cherries, pitted and halved

2 tsp granulated sugar

1 tbs brandy

First, score the fatty side of the breast with a light crosshatch pattern. Salt both sides of the meat. Then, grind the peppercorns, allspice, bay leaves and fennel for the rub. Massage the rub on to both sides of the breasts and then refrigerate for several hours.

For the sauce, combine the raw sugar and red wine vinegar in a saucepan and simmer at medium-high for two minutes, until slightly thickened. Add the wine and broth and simmer for about 5 minutes. Add teh ginger, cayenne and 1/2 tsp of salt.

To cook the duck, heat a wide pan over medium heat. When hot, add the duck, skin side down. Cook for about seven minutes, until the skin is crispy making sure that the skin does not get too dark. Turn the meat over and cook for another 5 to 7 minutes. Remove and let the meat rest for about 10 minutes.

To complete the sauce, in a separate pan add the butter, cherries and granulated sugar. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes, until sugar dissolves. Add the brandy, cook one more minute, then add this to the previously made sauce and heat through.

Slice the breasts on a platter and top with the sauce and cherries. Enjoy!

 

Dearest, most treasured readers,

Apologies for the unexpected break from the business of blogging about the food of the French Republican Calendar. I return today with a few backlogged dishes. On 27 Floréal, we celebrated chives! My thoughts turned to chive soup, then quickly away from chive soup. Instead, I made a delightfully spring-y dish with chives from our garden.

Glazed Carrots and Chives

1 lb of carrots, peeled and cut in 1/2 inch pieces

2 tbs butter

1 cup chicken stock

2 tbs sugar

1 tbs diced chives

salt and pepper

First, bring the chicken stock, and butter to a simmer in a medium pot. Add the chopped carrots and cook on medium, covered, until the carrots are tender – around 10 minutes. Uncover and add the sugar. Cook for another 2 to 3 minutes until the sugar has dissolved. Add the chives and enjoy!