A ladle of mulled wine and a handful of festive spirit: that's Coco & Co. !

No Christmas tree this year. I opted for alternative Xmas decorations at home.

Last week, my husband and I hosted 5 friends for our second Coco & Co. special Christmas gift party. The party started at 3 P.M Saturday afternoon and ended at 4 A.M on Sunday morning...Cooking and baking took us about 4 hours, and the rest was just dedicated to sharing a good time together, around the dining table, then in front of a film: Thank you for Smoking, and eventually, talking and exchanging views until dawn.
We had agreed on making enough winter chutney to fill up 12 jars, and on baking 4 gingerbread cakes: one for each invited couple to take back home, plus one for our dinner party!
While we were getting ready to start with the chutney, my husband started playing some Brazilian bossa nova by Sergio Mendes, some French groovy music by Jean-Pierre Massiera: Psychoses, discoïd (1976-1981)...

... followed by Alexander Robotnick's Krypta 1982, The Flying Lizards, Bananarama, and Spandau Ballet, to name but a few...As for Daniel, he had concocted a special CD full of Xmas songs to cheer us up!
The Chutney was based on my winter chutney recipe, we just replaced the prunes with dates for that special batch of the day. Well, more precisely, the nuts and fruit ingredients were : dates, apricots, currants, pine nuts, walnuts and the magic touch: a ladle of ...mulled wine that Daniel prepared on the stove all afternoon long. Hum, delicious spicy mulled wine, we loved you! I just had one cup of it, when the others could refill at leisure. Such is life! I was kind of 'driving' the cooking session, so I had to stay sober.

Our Coco&Co. Date & Apricot Winter Chutney : delicious with a slice of slightly fried foie gras...

Now as for our gingerbread cake recipe, I was really happy to share my love for this traditional, Alsatian spicy Christmas loaf with my friends.
Alsace is indeed very proud of their pain d'épices and you can even find a museum dedicated to this cake in the tiny village of Gertwiller.

Illustration by Hansi, the pseudonym of the Alsatian artist Jean Jacques Waltz .

The traditional recipe for pain d'épices calls for making a pâte-mère (mother dough) by mixing honey and flour (often a combination of all-purpose and rye flours) and letting it sit for a long time, sometimes even several months. The lack of water and preserving qualities of the sugar in the honey creates an environment where germs cannot proliferate. After this aging, other ingredients are added to produce different sorts of cakes.

Traditionally pain d'épices did not contain milk or butter, making it a very low fat treat. However the spice cake recipe you find here below contains butter and eggs and does not use the pâte-mère technique, making it a practical and popular alternative for home cooks of today. It is taken from the reference cookbook: Décors et Recettes de Noël by Simone Morgenthaler.

Pain aux épices- Spice cake// Lebküeche (in Alsatian)

Preheat oven to 350° F. Butter and flour 2 loaf pans of 22cm

Dough:
.350 g all-purpose flour
.200 g rye flour
.2 pinches of salt
.10 g of baking powder
.15 g ground cinnamon
.5 g groudn ginger
. 4 g ground anise
. 2 g ground cloves
.2 g ground cardamom
.2 g grated nutmeg
.500 g of pine tree honey
.200 g of golden yellow sugar or muscovado sugar
.200 g butter + 20 g for the pans
. 4 eggs
Optional: 1/2 cup chopped candied orange rinds, roughly chopped

Sift the flours with the sugar, baking powder, spices and salt into a large mixing bowl. Form a well in the middle.
In a medium pan, melt the butter and honey together on very low heat.
Beat the eggs with a fork in a separate bowl. Then add the sugar and the eggs to the mixture, pour in the middle of the well,and start stirring very gently with a wooden spoon.
Mix until well blended. The dough will be stiff and sticky.
Mix in the candied orange peel if you are using it.
Spread dough into the prepared pans (you may need to push on it a bit to get it to fill into the corners).
Optional: Pour les gourmands! Top each pan with orange marmalade and press gently.
Bake for 30 min at 350F, then lower the heat to 300F for another 20 min.
Cool cake thoroughly and cover in plastic wrap to store.

Note: Most people agree that honey spice cake tastes better after it has aged a bit and some will even wait several days before eating it. Wrapped in plastic wrap you can save it at room temperature or in the refrigerator. It also freezes very well.

Spice Cake Serving Suggestions

You will probably enjoy slices of this spice cake recipe just as it is, at tea time or even for breakfast. However, the French like to use pain d'épices in many different preparations. Here are a few ideas:

• Slice and toast, then serve with butter and orange marmalade or lemon curd spread.
• Slice and toast, then serve with savory toppings, such as foie gras (a must!) and cheese - try Roquefort or goat cheese ;)
• Or use this cake to make other desserts where bread is called for. Perhaps to line a charlotte or top a crumble.

Below are our Coco&Co. goodies: winter chutney and spice cakes. I had prepared a bag full of ribbons, raffia string, kraft paper, tags and our special Coco&Co. labels (graphic design by Marco Jacob) created for the occasion. We had a lot of fun wrapping up our gifts for Christmas!

We will keep an excellent memory of this cooking session! The participants' warmth and festive spirit, plus the unpredictable effects of mulled wine turned it all into a memorable get-together party. There must have been some wine in that wine, as Marco said...

Bravo Coco & Co.!

Threads of Love

Last Thursday, I took the train to Oakville to spend the afternoon with Barbara, a very hospitable Australian lady who gracefully hosted me with her New-Zealander husband, Edward, when I first arrived in Toronto. Needless to say, I owe them a lot!

Barbara has always been an arts and crafts person, and her passion is catchy. I did not try to resist the contagion... Even when she used to be a nurse, she would devote part of her time to sewing, quilting - she makes amazingly complex quilts!- embroidery, etc. Well, now that she is retired, she obviously can spend more time making things, but the beauty of it is that she loves to share and so often meet with her friends to share the joy. In a nutshell, Barb is a wonderful person, as you may already have understood. ;)
With Christmas drawing closer, I asked her if I could come over and make some gift bags with her help and expertise. For every gift that she makes, Barb places it in colourful gift bags, whose various patterns she adapts to the person she offers the gift to. It really makes her gifts special.
I decided it was time for me to learn how to make them. I enjoyed the shopping spree I took on Queen Street West to find the fabrics. I found some in a beautiful linen quality ( Japanese design, Echino- Bird to Hang- by Etsuko Furuya), and some plainer ones in cotton. We spent four hours, cutting, assembling, sewing and decorating these little bags. Barbara did most of the sewing as she is super fast and I am still quite slow. I am so proud of our work. We made 13 bags that I would like to share with you. They will be perfect to offer with my jars of chutney, marmalade and other Xmas homemade goodies. I know that my loved ones will appreciate these homemade, and very personalized gifts.
We stopped for tea time with her son, Brad, who popped in for the occasion. She had prepared some scrumptious date squares and chocolate brownies. Oohlala, how do I love date squares, that is insane!...
Here is her traditional recipe of date squares, for your tasting pleasure.

Barbara's date squares: delicious!

DATE SQUARES

For the date mixture.

Combine 2.5 cups of dates and 1 cup of HOT water, plus 0.25 cup of brown sugar and the optional addition of zest (shaved skin of a lemon) and the juice of 1 lemon and a pinch of salt. Add one teaspoon of vanilla after the date mixture has absorbed the water and let cool.

For the crust:

Take 1.5 cups of All-Purpose flour, 0.5 teaspoon of baking soda and crumble 1 cup of butter into the flour then add 1 cup of brown sugar and 1.5 cups of oatmeal. Stir all together dry to form the bottom and top crust mixture.

Spread half the mixture into a 9 inch X 9 inch pan (or a 9”x13” pan) lined with parchment paper. Then add the cooled date mixture and then the remaining half of the of the flour- oatmeal mixture to form the top layer.

Cook in a 350 degree Fahrenheit oven for 20 to 25 minutes. The top crust should be lightly browned.

Have a happy season, sewing the threads of love according to your fantasy!

Saumon à l'unilatérale...that will make you swoon!

Mon cher Coco,

Here is a recipe that I found on Food Box, a blog edited by Lili. Lili is a wonderful hostess who lives in Montmartre, Paris; and I love eating at her virtual table. Pay her a visit, you won't regret it!


I adapted Lili's version with the original one, taken from L'atelier des Chefs. My husband and I had a wonderful time preparing that saumon à l'unilatérale (cooked on one side only).

Lili's version suggests a few additions, like the honey with the caramelized shallots, or replacing the butter with olive oil to fry the potatoes, and adding some almonds while toasting the potatoes. We thought her tips were well worth taking into account, as they were adding some real delicate notes to the Chefs' recipe.

The video is a lot of fun to watch and follow: hope you will understand it alright. It is in French...
The chef is very focused and gives out every stage of the recipe in the minutest detail. You really cannot get it wrong!
Delicious, easy and quick to prepare.

For 2 Cocos

2 fillets of salmon(150 g each)
2 shallots
20 ml of balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp honey
4-5 small potatoes
10 g flat-leaved parsley
2 handfuls of sliced almonds
1 clove of garlic
1 branch of thyme
1 bay leaf
salt, pepper and ground pink peppercorns
olive oil (3 tbsp)

We did not feel like white wine on that night, so we went for a light, fruity red Beaujolais. It was nice! But now I think we could also go for a Sauvignon Blanc, or an Alsatian Toquay Pinot Gris. Next time!

Mince the shallots thinly.

Heat the vinegar in a pan. Add the shallots, and bring to a boil so that it reduces significantly. Stir regularly and lower heat. Add the honey and salt at the end, once the shallots are caramelized + Add 1 tbsp of olive oil to turn it into a vinaigrette. Set aside.

Rinse and slice the potatoes thinly.
Cook for 5 min into salted water. Drain the potatoes.
Heat 1 tbsp of olive oil in a frying pan. Fry the potatoes for 5 min.
Add the almonds, and parsley at the end. Season to taste.

For the salmon preparation...
In another frying pan, pour 1 tbsp of olive oil, fry the salmon fillets only on one side, on their skin (technique called "à l'unilatérale"). Salt the fillets, and grill them for 5 min to toast the skin golden. Add the garlic, thyme and bay leaf. Cover with foil.
Cook for another 4-5 minutes.
Uncover and add the pepper.

Lay a bed of potatoes on each plate, on which you will place the salmon decorated with a line of shallots vinaigrette.

Miam-miam! We had a succulent dinner that night. We particularly loved the delicacy and crispiness of it all. Well, if you try it, let me know your impressions.;)

Bon appétit!

Soup of the Day!

Dear Coco,

For the anecdote, I made a soup last night. And something strange happened. My husband, who hardly ever drops his fork, or spoon, once he has started eating (yes, he eats quite fast), did drop his spoon twice for the occasion. Oops! I imagined the worst, that something serious had happened here, that it was not meeting with the basic requirements of his taste buds. But not at all... It actually was quite the opposite. He told me that he had to drop his spoon; it was sooo delicious, that he had to pause in order to fully savour it.
So I thought that I really had to share the taste of that soup with you. Ho ho ho!

Winter-licious Soup (with Carrots, Leeks, Potatoes, Tomatoes & Spinach)

Serves 8 people

Ingredients:
- 3 carrots
- 3 leeks
- 2 potatoes (cut them into cubes or dices)
- 1 handful of fresh spinach leaves
- 400 g of tomatoes ( I used them diced and canned, they were perfect!)
- 4 cloves of garlic
- 1 (or 2) yellow cooking onion
- 1 tsp ground pink and green peppers
- 1 tsp coriander
- 1 tsp turmeric
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- 1 tbsp of soy sauce
- 3 tbsp of olive oil
- 1.5 L of chicken broth ( or a cube of dehydrated chicken broth diluted into hot water)
- Roasted and salted pumpkin seeds for decoration

1 hand-held blender

Fry the onion, and garlic into the olive oil for 5-7 minutes, or until they are soft and brownish. Then add the potatoes, leeks, spinach and carrots, all cut roughly into small pieces. Cook for 15 minutes until the vegetables are golden, then add the diced tomatoes. Season to taste with the spices and peppers. Then add water+chicken broth. Cook the soup for another 30 minutes. Finally, blend the soup with the hand-held mixer.
When ready to serve the soup, sprinkle your plates with a spoonful of pumpkin seeds. It really adds beautiful flavours to the soup.

Best savoured with a slice of multigrain bread on the side, and a glass of claret (Bordeaux) within reach!

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