There was a bright moon shining last night, and I can actually see outside this morning by some kind of moonglow (I guess). Another reason I can see out, I think, is that it's all white out there. We had a surprise snowfall during the night. All the snow from last weekend had melted, and the outdoor decor was back to green. But not this morning. Luckily, I don't have to go anywhere today, and neither does Walt. Not by car, I mean.
View out the front window at 8:05 a.m. today
I just went and stuck my hand out the window, and I can feel that it is still snowing lightly. We're supposed to have a good thaw this weekend so the snow probably won't last long. It may turn into rain this morning. I wonder if the bread lady will make it up the hill. We would normally expect her at sunrise (the sun rises at 8:26 today). If this snow was predicted, I completely missed hearing about it. It's my morning to walk the dog, too.
A batch of Financiers
Over the past couple of days, we've had a chance to use our new silicone Financiers pan a couple of times. I've posted about Financiers, the little French "gold bar" almond cakes, several times over the years, here in 2007 and here about a year ago. Their distinctive feature is that they are made with almond flour (ground almonds, poudre d'amandes) and egg whites. No yolk (ha ha ha).
Financiers: very sweet, slightly sticky, and crispy around the edges
For the Financier batter, the egg whites are not beaten at all — so the batter is easy and quick to make. It has a lot of butter and sugar in it. The little cakes come out very sweet, slightly sticky, and a little crispy around the edges. I think they are amazingly good (à consommer avec modération, bien sûr). I was going to post the recipe here, but I see that I translated and posted it back in 2007, so you can get it there.
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This 15 lb. pork shoulder cost just over 13 euros and cooked in the oven for 10 hours.
By the way, I ended up getting just about 6½ lbs. (3 kg) of lean pulled pork from that 15 lb. bone-in, skin-on épaule de porc that I roasted a couple of days ago. It cooked in a very slow oven (just over 200ºF or 100ºC) for 10 hours — to an internal temperature nearly that high. It then cooled overnight before I lifted off the crispy skin and pulled the meat off the bones. I froze the pulled pork in one-pound packages for meals in February and March. I'll spare you all the pictures.
We had snow forecast for yesterday evening, but it didn't start until 3.00am. By 3.20 it had finished snowing, so this morning I swept the street before the council can compress the snow into ice.
ReplyDeleteIt was a bit pretty though.
(I am not commenting on cake based goodness. evil, evil stuff! mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm cake.....)
Those financiers look simply delish....now I feel like baking.
ReplyDeleteWalt made two more batches of Financiers yesterday afternoon. We will have to take extra-long walks with the dog for the next few days.
ReplyDeleteA secret: you can make the same cakes with 4 whole eggs instead of 8 eggwhites. They're even richer.
no... we wanna see how that pulled pork ended up! great work. and check this out - that vid you gave me. TOTALLY fixed my pastry problem.. this latest round of croissants turned out perfectly. i raise my chocolat chaud to you!
ReplyDeletehttp://adventuresinthegoodland.blogspot.com/2013/01/how-about-little-petit-dejeuner.html
:-D
ps i'm guessing that since you were a carolina boy that your pulled pork is more vinegar? is there slaw involved?
Yes, OFG, there is vinegar, and there is slaw. I should have made hushpuppies, but we made do with the bread from the village bakery.
ReplyDeleteYour pork roast was beautiful, too bad you don't have any sweet bbq sauce to go on it ;-)
ReplyDeleteHa ha ha Evelyn. Maybe some strawberry jello? Actually, I'll probably be putting some sweet and spicy hot Asian sauce on some of it.
ReplyDeleteI had forgotten about those Financiers. That's a good recipe to suggest to mes élèves when they want to make something French for class :)
ReplyDeleteThat's LOTS of pork! Don't worry, OFG, I bet we'll see photos of dinner the first time he uses some (won't we, Ken?)
How long did it take you to shred that many pounds of pork, Ken?
Excellent timing. I made semifreddo for Page's birthday, and have 7 egg whites left over. I also have a bag of ground almonds in the freezer.
ReplyDeleteThose Financiers do look very good.
ReplyDeleteKen,
ReplyDeleteBefore you told me, I had never heard about financiers, not the Wall Street variety. As I suspected, Google tells me that financiers and friands aux amandes are the same thing, or at least the same recipe. I just love friands, so I’d probably enjoy the ones you bake.
I don’t know about financiers, but I found out you can make friands with a lot of different ingredients.