How to do without them when thinking of the holidays, taking time at the table after several very dense and particularly stressful months? Fruits are the star foods of this summer, with an appetizing basket. Europe 1 offers you this weekend to have fun with them and revisit them to better savor them. On the program, salads, sorbets and pies.
>> Find La Table des bons vivant in podcast and replay here
Before cooking the fruits, we will simply bite into them: fruits picked at maturity, which have ripened in the sun, with aromas of sugar that develop. We have before us a beautiful fruit basket from the Interprofessional Association of Fresh Fruits and Vegetables (Interfel), which has launched a campaign to cook fresh fruits and vegetables at home.
For a few weeks now, we have been tasting strawberries: these are the first fruits that announce summer. The cherries have also arrived. We are starting to have the first apricots, as well as the first peaches. In a few weeks the figs will arrive and at the end of August, the mirabelles.
A salad with various accents
You can have fun cooking all these fruits in salads, for example. The strawberries go very well with a very syrupy balsamic vinegar. For a more substantial salad: place arugula leaves, sliced red onions and half the strawberries cut in half and the other half thinly sliced in a salad bowl. Above, crumbled goat cheese and some nuts. And to finish with balsamic vinegar and basil, for freshness.
You can decorate peaches in salads with tomatoes. The acidity of the tomato will go perfectly with the sweetness of the peach. And add a little coriander or tarragon. Fruits also go very well with meat, but you have to be fond of sweet and savory.
You can for example cook cherries with a duck breast. Once your duck is cooked, cut your cherries in half and make them confit in the cooking juices of the duck, 5-10 minutes, with a little vanilla. For gluttony, add a little cream when your cherries are cooked. The figs go very well with pork, like a filet mignon larded with thyme.
A gourmet sorbet
And for dessert, we can obviously think of sorbet. Fruttini are whole fruits filled with sorbet, from the pulp of the fruit: the tomato, which is a fruit but which is eaten like a vegetable, strawberry, almond, peach and apricot.
Sorbets are not complicated to make, even with damaged fruits like strawberries, for example. You mix your strawberries (500 g), with a little water (3 cl) and sugar (100 g). Place this preparation in the freezer in ice cube molds or better, in ice cream molds, at least 24 hours. You will then have a fruit concentrate. You can also concoct smoothies, mixed fruit drinks. Use bananas, which allow a smooth drink.
A vanilla pie
The essential are the pies: like that from Hugo & Victor, with raspberries and vanilla, and strawberry with lemon zest. At home, to make a nice fruit pie, you have to make a good buttered dough for gluttony.
First, mix the butter by hand (200 g, at room temperature, cut into pieces) with the sugar (200 g) and salt (3 g). The trick is to use granulated sugar and soft butter. Add the eggs (4 egg yolks and 2 whole eggs, at room temperature). Add the flour (400 g) and the yeast (6 g), before forming a ball, to wrap in plastic film and let cool for at least 30 minutes.
Once cooked, add a nice vanilla cream on top. Whisk the sugar (120 g) and the eggs (2 egg yolks and the whole egg) until you obtain a frothy mixture, before incorporating the flour (50 g). In a saucepan, heat the whole milk (500 cl) with the seeds of a vanilla pod. When it boils, add half the milk to the egg-sugar-flour mixture. Mix well, otherwise there will be lumps before returning to the pan the cream and whisk continuously, until the cream thickens. It is there, coming out of the heat, that we must add the amber rum (2 tablespoon) to the cream. You must then pass a plastic film before allowing it to cool. Once the cream spread on the dough, place the fresh fruit on top and cut into regular slices.