‘The Passionate Foodie’
~ Celebrating our deliciously multicultural island ~
The “Passionate Foodie” has taken on the task of recording recipes from all ethnic groups on St. Maarten/St. Martin so that everyone can have the opportunity to share, prepare and delight in favourite dishes of those that live amongst us. So far, we have looked at Arawaks, Caribs, Spanish, Dutch and this week, the French.
French
The island was first spotted by Christopher Columbus on November 11, 1493, the feast day for St. Martin of Tours, and therefore was baptized in honour of that celebration. Both the French and Dutch sides use that same date to celebrate their peaceful coexistence.
In fact, when the Dutch first arrived, there were already more than 14 families in a small French settlement of what is now known as Quartier d’Orléans. By 1630, the French joined the Dutch in larger numbers on St. Maarten.
Early settlers depended on tobacco as their main cash crop. These crops proved inadequate and, by the middle of the seventeenth century, the small landholders were departing and most island planters turned to sugar as the most profitable pursuit and to West African slaves as the only form of labour available in sufficient quantity.
After some conflict, both French and Dutch colonists realized that the other would not give up the island without a fight. The Treaty of Concordia was signed in 1648, and the island divided between the two countries.
Some accounts claim that the French and Dutch settlers held a contest to divide up the island. The legend goes that a Frenchman and a Dutchman began walking westward from Oyster Pond on the east coast. The Frenchman walked along the northern edge of the island and the Dutchman along the southern edge. Wherever the two groups met, they were to draw a line to divide the island. However, the Dutchman allegedly took with him a bottle of gin, which induces sleep when imbibed in the sun, while the Frenchman took a wonderful bottle of red wine, which gives the drinker a burst of vim and vigour. The Dutchman apparently needed a snooze while the Frenchman kept walking. Needless to say, the Dutch side ended up with only 16 square miles of real estate while the French side has 21.
The accuracy of this account is uncertain, but makes for a great story about how the island became divided into St. Maarten/St. Martin.
More reliable historical accounts tell that the French had a large navy waiting just off St. Martin’s shores and won the majority of the territory by threat of force. The original boundary between the French and Dutch territories changed 16 times between 1648 and 1816.
It was in the 1600s that Chef Francois de La Varenne made great strides in the development of French cooking. He created sauces that became the basis of haute cuisine. Haute cuisine is precise, skilled artistry, as opposed to cuisine bourgeois which, loosely translated, is home cooking. One would imagine that the cuisine taken aboard those old sailing ships would have been Cuisine Bourgeois.
1600 - The French started cooling drinking bottles by rotating them in a mixture of cold water and salt. Salt was mined in the West Indies.
1651 - A little heard of sauce today, but very popular in the 17th century is Sauce Robert basically a brown roux (a combination of fat and flour to create a thickening agent).
The word “sauce” is a French word that means a relish to make our food more appetizing. Sauces are liquid or semi-liquid foods devised to make other foods look, smell and taste better, and hence be more easily digested and more beneficial. Because of the lack of refrigeration in the early days of cooking, meat, poultry, fish and seafood didn’t last long. Sauces and gravies were used to mask the flavour of tainted foods.
1652 - Although most 17th century cookery books were written by men, many of the recipes found in the books were originally devised by women.
Sauce Robert (one of the small sauces, or compound sauces, derived from the Classic French Espagnole sauce)
This classic French sauce was very popular in France in the 17th century and to this day no-one is positive where the name came from, it is thought it was derived sometime in the 16th century. Sauce Robert is considered a brown sauce but is made with white wine and mustard and goes great with beef and pork.
Ingredients
1 medium onion
½ ounce butter
½ cup white wine
1 cup demi-glace
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
Freshly ground pepper to taste
½ ounce butter for finishing
Procedure
1. Sauté the onion in butter over medium high until translucent. Add the white wine and reduce to an essence.
2. Add the Demi Glace, stir and reduce until the sauce is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.
3. Add the mustard, taste for seasonings and finish with the remaining butter.
Probably eaten in the 1600s as a sauce over agouti, (a rodent similar to a guinea pig), or other wild life.
Crème Brulee (mentioned by Massialot (French) in the 1600s)
Ingredients
500ml double cream
1 fat juicy vanilla pod
100g caster sugar (plus extra for the topping)
4 egg yolks
1 whole egg
Method
1. Pre-heat the oven to 275°F
2. Pour the cream into a saucepan.
3. Split the vanilla pod lengthways and scrape the seeds into the cream.
4. Chop the empty pod into bits, and add these too.
5. Bring to boiling point, then turn off the heat and put a lid on. Leave to infuse for five to ten minutes.
6. Beat the sugar and all the eggs together in a large heat-proof bowl until pale and creamy.
7. Bring the cream back to boiling point, then pour over the egg mixture, whisking all the time until thickened, this indicates that the eggs have begun to cook slightly. (You should have a smooth custard the consistency of double cream, a grainy texture means it’s been over-cooked and you’ll have to start all over again.)
8. Strain through a fine sieve into a large jug. Use this to fill 6 ramekins about two thirds full.
9. Place the ramekins in a large roasting tray and pour in enough hot water to come halfway up their sides.
10. Place on the centre shelf and bake for about 30 minutes, or until the custards are just set and still a bit wobbly in the middle.
11. Remove from the water and allow to cool to room temperature.
12. When you’re ready to serve, evenly sprinkle one level tsp of caster sugar over the surface of each Crème. Caramelize with a blowtorch. Leave to cool for a couple of minutes.
(Castor or caster sugar is the name of a very fine sugar in Britain, so named because the grains are small enough to fit though a sugar “caster” or sprinkler. It is sold as “superfine” sugar in the United States.)
The Spanish have a dessert called Crema Catalana which is essentially identical except for the flavouring cinnamon instead of vanilla.
~ Celebrating our deliciously multicultural island ~
The “Passionate Foodie” has taken on the task of recording recipes from all ethnic groups on St. Maarten/St. Martin so that everyone can have the opportunity to share, prepare and delight in favourite dishes of those that live amongst us. So far, we have looked at Arawaks, Caribs, Spanish, Dutch and this week, the French.
French
The island was first spotted by Christopher Columbus on November 11, 1493, the feast day for St. Martin of Tours, and therefore was baptized in honour of that celebration. Both the French and Dutch sides use that same date to celebrate their peaceful coexistence.
In fact, when the Dutch first arrived, there were already more than 14 families in a small French settlement of what is now known as Quartier d’Orléans. By 1630, the French joined the Dutch in larger numbers on St. Maarten.
Early settlers depended on tobacco as their main cash crop. These crops proved inadequate and, by the middle of the seventeenth century, the small landholders were departing and most island planters turned to sugar as the most profitable pursuit and to West African slaves as the only form of labour available in sufficient quantity.
After some conflict, both French and Dutch colonists realized that the other would not give up the island without a fight. The Treaty of Concordia was signed in 1648, and the island divided between the two countries.
Some accounts claim that the French and Dutch settlers held a contest to divide up the island. The legend goes that a Frenchman and a Dutchman began walking westward from Oyster Pond on the east coast. The Frenchman walked along the northern edge of the island and the Dutchman along the southern edge. Wherever the two groups met, they were to draw a line to divide the island. However, the Dutchman allegedly took with him a bottle of gin, which induces sleep when imbibed in the sun, while the Frenchman took a wonderful bottle of red wine, which gives the drinker a burst of vim and vigour. The Dutchman apparently needed a snooze while the Frenchman kept walking. Needless to say, the Dutch side ended up with only 16 square miles of real estate while the French side has 21.
The accuracy of this account is uncertain, but makes for a great story about how the island became divided into St. Maarten/St. Martin.
More reliable historical accounts tell that the French had a large navy waiting just off St. Martin’s shores and won the majority of the territory by threat of force. The original boundary between the French and Dutch territories changed 16 times between 1648 and 1816.
It was in the 1600s that Chef Francois de La Varenne made great strides in the development of French cooking. He created sauces that became the basis of haute cuisine. Haute cuisine is precise, skilled artistry, as opposed to cuisine bourgeois which, loosely translated, is home cooking. One would imagine that the cuisine taken aboard those old sailing ships would have been Cuisine Bourgeois.
1600 - The French started cooling drinking bottles by rotating them in a mixture of cold water and salt. Salt was mined in the West Indies.
1651 - A little heard of sauce today, but very popular in the 17th century is Sauce Robert basically a brown roux (a combination of fat and flour to create a thickening agent).
The word “sauce” is a French word that means a relish to make our food more appetizing. Sauces are liquid or semi-liquid foods devised to make other foods look, smell and taste better, and hence be more easily digested and more beneficial. Because of the lack of refrigeration in the early days of cooking, meat, poultry, fish and seafood didn’t last long. Sauces and gravies were used to mask the flavour of tainted foods.
1652 - Although most 17th century cookery books were written by men, many of the recipes found in the books were originally devised by women.
Sauce Robert (one of the small sauces, or compound sauces, derived from the Classic French Espagnole sauce)
This classic French sauce was very popular in France in the 17th century and to this day no-one is positive where the name came from, it is thought it was derived sometime in the 16th century. Sauce Robert is considered a brown sauce but is made with white wine and mustard and goes great with beef and pork.
Ingredients
1 medium onion
½ ounce butter
½ cup white wine
1 cup demi-glace
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
Freshly ground pepper to taste
½ ounce butter for finishing
Procedure
1. Sauté the onion in butter over medium high until translucent. Add the white wine and reduce to an essence.
2. Add the Demi Glace, stir and reduce until the sauce is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.
3. Add the mustard, taste for seasonings and finish with the remaining butter.
Probably eaten in the 1600s as a sauce over agouti, (a rodent similar to a guinea pig), or other wild life.
Crème Brulee (mentioned by Massialot (French) in the 1600s)
Ingredients
500ml double cream
1 fat juicy vanilla pod
100g caster sugar (plus extra for the topping)
4 egg yolks
1 whole egg
Method
1. Pre-heat the oven to 275°F
2. Pour the cream into a saucepan.
3. Split the vanilla pod lengthways and scrape the seeds into the cream.
4. Chop the empty pod into bits, and add these too.
5. Bring to boiling point, then turn off the heat and put a lid on. Leave to infuse for five to ten minutes.
6. Beat the sugar and all the eggs together in a large heat-proof bowl until pale and creamy.
7. Bring the cream back to boiling point, then pour over the egg mixture, whisking all the time until thickened, this indicates that the eggs have begun to cook slightly. (You should have a smooth custard the consistency of double cream, a grainy texture means it’s been over-cooked and you’ll have to start all over again.)
8. Strain through a fine sieve into a large jug. Use this to fill 6 ramekins about two thirds full.
9. Place the ramekins in a large roasting tray and pour in enough hot water to come halfway up their sides.
10. Place on the centre shelf and bake for about 30 minutes, or until the custards are just set and still a bit wobbly in the middle.
11. Remove from the water and allow to cool to room temperature.
12. When you’re ready to serve, evenly sprinkle one level tsp of caster sugar over the surface of each Crème. Caramelize with a blowtorch. Leave to cool for a couple of minutes.
(Castor or caster sugar is the name of a very fine sugar in Britain, so named because the grains are small enough to fit though a sugar “caster” or sprinkler. It is sold as “superfine” sugar in the United States.)
The Spanish have a dessert called Crema Catalana which is essentially identical except for the flavouring cinnamon instead of vanilla.