My French Kitchen Daily

"In southern France, slices of pissaladiere wrapped in paper can be bought from a boulangerie and taken to the beach as a lunchtime snack. At home, serve thick slices of warm pissaladiere with a green salad, or serve small squares of it with drinks." – Harris, My French Kitchen










July 19

There is a small farm tucked back in the green valleys of Onalaska, WI, located across the street from a small old white milk house once attached to the very farmstead of Hamlin Garland, a pulitzer prize winning author from the turn of the twentieth century, who had immortalized the rolling pastures, the drift less sandstone cliffs, and the difficult days filled with the domestic tasks of mothers and daughters, that would make a perfect little French restaurant. From my kitchen there, hopefully looking out over the same small pastures that now house a handful of goats, chickens, and even a burrough, I would send out first what Harris calls Pissaladiere, what looks, at first glance, like an American style flat crust pizza, stacked by 3 lbs of yellow onions, 12 salt-packed anchovies and "About 1 cup black Mediterranean olives, pitted." The dough is a standard mix of flour, yeast and flour, but maybe I would try to slip one farm fresh egg along the edges. The topping consists of onions primarily, finely sliced, which cook for an entire hour, stirring occasionally, with a touch of thyme to flavor, and salt and pepper to season. The eventual cooked dough is covered with the cooked onions and the anchovies are cut to ribbons and arranged on top in a lattice pattern. "Place the olives between the crisscrossed anchovies and sprinkle with the remaining thyme. Leave somewhere warm to rise again, uncovered, for 30 minutes." Bake the entire pissaladiere for 20-25 more minutes, serve warm. It seems to me that the final half hour would be the time sequence that would allure the residents of the back bluff neighborhoods as they biked, walked, and even drove by the farm. Ah, what I visage! The small red barn set in the center of this little scene; a few animals clopping about in the back; a most unusual smell wafting up out of the doorway of the kitchen. Children out at the merry go round, part of the green day, part of the sunshine.