Besides, I am very far behind on The Normandy Chronicles, which will soon be enhanced with my Brittany chronicles and then my Languedoc chronicles. I am still deciding if I want to turn all my chronicles into a self-published book called 89 Vacations In One, since that's what it's turned out to be. If I go this route, I'll probably offer the book as a download for a small price and also serialize the book for those who don't have a few dollars to spend on a book and don't mind waiting for the next installment. I'll keep you posted.
Meanwhile, I'm still hanging out in Brittany with Galadriel at her home near the beach, since I don't really have to go back to Paris until I start teaching again in the Fall. There's another friend staying here with us. She's a French-Russian (mother is French, father is Russian) and she asks me many questions about America (some for which I know the answer and most for which I make up answers). Par example:
Frussian: Which states in America are sexy?
Framerican: Definitely not Ohio.
My apologies to Ohioans. But really, do you think your state is sexy?
Oh, and about those Russians. I forgot that Galadriel is Frussian too - her mother is Russian and her father is French. So, now that that's cleared up...
The night before last, the dinner conversation turned to typical American food. I mentioned hot dogs (many French sounds of disgust, something akin to phlugh!). Then hamburgers (No reaction. It could be they like these things but they are afraid to admit it).
Talking about food in France is dangerous territory, of course. French people are, rightfully so, very proud of their gastronomy. It's the main topic of conversation in everyday life, with the second most popular topic being the wine which will accompany the food. They can talk (and argue minute details) for hours on these subjects. Why, just the other day, we went to visit some friends who own an art gallery in the resort town of La Baule and I stood for what seemed like hours, waiting for some gallery visitors to leave. After all, they said they were leaving. We all did the double-cheek kiss and everything. Now, why weren't they leaving?
Well, it's because somebody brought up the subject of lobster. Off they went to the races. Canadian lobsters have no taste. The Norwegian lobsters are too pink. But the Bretagne (Brittany, i.e. local) lobsters - oh lah lah. (I just made all that up. The only thing I know is that they were talking about lobsters. For months.) Finally, they solved the Great Lobster Question and we all had to do the double-cheek mwa mwa kiss thing again. (It's a peculiarity of the French that they have to kiss everyone when they enter a party or somebody's home or run into each other in the street. I find myself reluctantly kissing many cheeks. Of people I don't know and sometimes, of people I don't particularly like. This can be disconcerting for a girl like me who likes to hide from people. When I'm around a bunch of Americans, it's always such a relief to not have to kiss anybody.)
So, as you can imagine, it's difficult for French people to think that any food can be good and of course, never can any food be superior. So, I moved the conversation deftly to dessert. This is safe territory, since French people love sweets and don't mind tasting sweets made by infidels. So, I mentioned pineapple upside down cake - a 1950's American favorite. Then baked Alaska. They were (somewhat) fascinated. Until they both decided that they were just like their own desserts called je-ne-sais-quoi and je-ne-sais-rien. Then:
Frussian: Ohhh! I know! J'adore Cheesecake! Can you make cheesecake?
Framerican: Yes. (Liar. Well, not necessarily. CAN I make it? Well, of course I CAN. HAVE I made it before? Wellll, yes. IF you consider buying a pre-made graham cracker crust and pouring in a quickly thrown together cheesy batter - from a boxed mix - and freezing the poor thing until it hardens into a cheesy rock. Yes.)
Frussian: Oh, can you make it for us? Please, please?
Framerican: But, of course!
So, the next morning, I scrounged around the internets, looking for the recipe for Junior's New York Cheesecake. I remember going to Junior's many years ago and walking back to my sister's Brooklyn apartment, carefully holding that five-ton precious cake. There's nothing quite like it, to be sure. I wanted my Frussian friend to experience that very same thing. Then I saw the recipe (linked above) and gulped with fear. Ever since I gave away the keys to the kitchen to my last boyfriend, I've lost my Cooking Confidence. It didn't help much when I was staying with Galadriel's friends at their bee and donkey farm (a story yet to be told) when I offered to make soup and while digging in their cabinets I found some Cayenne pepper and just TAPPED the bottle over the soup and inflicted merely a sprinkle upon the huge cauldron. Well. It was hot as a mother trucker. Mr. and Mrs. Bee-Donkey-Farm were polite, but Mrs. Bee did choke a little. Kind of like a Barbie choke. But choke, she did.
So, I gave up on Junior's. It just seemed too...complicated. I also began to realize that all the recipes I was finding were not in metric amounts and they called for things like a spring-form pan. "Do you have a spring-form pan?" I asked Galadriel. "A what?" she countered. "Oh, never mind." In addition, heating temperatures were given in Fahrenheit versus Centigrade and Galadriel's gas stove is calbrated in "gas marks" - 1-10, with 11 thrown in there for good measure. (If you're a musician, you know what 11 means. Try not to lust.)
Finally, I found a cheesecake recipe that handily provided Centigrade and metric measurement equivalents. Galadriel told me that 10-11 was equal to 300 degrees Centigrade and 3 was about 90. Close enough for government work.
So, Galadriel went shopping and brought home goat cheese to substitute for Philadelphia cream cheese and crème fraiche to substitute for whipping cream. You can't find graham crackers here, so I used spéculoos cookies. All set? Well, kinda. The girls left me alone in the kitchen. Thank God. Because I had noooo idea what I was doing. Was Galadriel's round baking pan 9 inches? I dunno. (I could make a joke here, but I won't.) I just looked at the pan and decided to cut the recipe in half. (Maybe because I have years of experience telling the difference between 6 inches and well, four. Sorry, couldn't resist.)
So I decided to crush the cookies. Any zip-lock bags? Nope. OK, a plastic grocery bag? Yep. Rolling pin? Nope. Galadriel brought me a rubber mallet from her tool shed. Perfect. Cookies duly crushed. I melted the butter, added it to the cookies and flattened them into the bottom of the pan. So far, so good. I shoved the pan in the oven to cook the crust.
Now, for the goat cheese. The recipe calls for freaking 2.5 pounds or 1.1 kilograms. Hmmm. Does Galadriel have any measuring cups or a scale? Nope. Okkkk. So I dug around in the cabinets and found an empty sauce jar whose label claimed it contained 300 grams of something. So...how many grams are in a kilogram? It's been YEARS since I bought illicit drugs, so I've completely forgotten. Frussian tells me that there are 1000 grams in a kilo. (Do you KNOW what the street value of 1000 grams of coke are these days? Neither do I.) So that meant that I needed about three of those jars stuffed with goat cheese to make almost one kilo so half of that would be a jar and a half. Et voilà.
I didn't tell you this would be easy. So, carry on.
Galadriel had a hand mixer but it was taken from a space alien ship or is also used by Roto Rooter to clean out the toilets. Whatever. I rinsed it, ok? And I clomped all the goat cheese in a bowl and tried desperately to make it creamy and it wasn't budging. So, I threw in the crème fraiche to liquefy things. I know, I know. It's out of order from the recipe, but too freaking bad, ok?
OK?
Then I threw in the sugar, salt and eggs and a little squeeze of lemon and then realized I didn't have any vanilla. Galadriel handed me some vanilla sticks. Oh. Hmmm. OK. They were hard as rocks. I snapped about an inch off of one. I threw it into a little pan of boiling water to "soften it up." I forgot about it. It burned to the bottom of the pan. I got the vanilla seeds out of it anyway. They tasted like plegh. So I didn't use them.
I also forgot about the graham cracker crust that was supposed to be cooking for only 10 minutes in the oven. Oops. It was, uh, golden brown. That's ok, it was going to be covered with my cheese mix. That mix whose consistency was worrying me. It was a bit, well, wet. I thought it should be kind of thick. So I added three tablespoons of flour. What the hell. I did the little drop-bowl-o-mix-on-counter (to get the bubbles out - why I have no clue, but mine is not to reason why) and then poured the mix on top of the crust. It filled the pan. I was right to cut the recipe in half.
I want this recorded. I was right.
As a last-minute fling, I sprinkled little bits of lemon zest all over the top of the cake. (Sacrilege! I'm sure.) Then I put it into the oven at 11 (rock star heat level) and this time, I set the timer for 10 minutes. I actually was near the timer and heard it... and knew what it meant... even though I was drunk. This is a miracle. I then turned the oven down to 3 and set the timer for 100 minutes. 100 minutes? 100 minutes.
Then I read all the comments under the recipe about all these people wringing their hair out about cracks in their finished cake. If that cake tasted remotely like cheese cake, fuck the cracks. OK? My biggest fear is that it would burn on the outside and when cut, would dribble egg yolks and wet cheese all over the place. I sat, in fear, for minutes. 100s of them.
I also read that after pulling the cake out, it had to first cool on a wire rack for an hour or two and then cool in the refrigerator for 4 more hours. It was 7pm. Frussian was hovering, asking, "Eez eet cayk-uh yet?" Everyone wanted cheesecake after dinner. Uh-oh.
The cake puffed up beautifully and then as it was cooling, it kinda sagged. (But I have years of experience with that too, so it didn't bother me.) But, there were no cracks! I shoved it in the fridge after an hour. We made and then ate dinner and we disobeyed the recipe and breathlessly cut into the cake after only two hours of cooling. It was fabuloso. Really. It was fab. I was thrilled. It wasn't as high as Junior's cheesecake, but it tasted great!
So, there's a lesson here, somewhere. Something about saying no to cracks? But, it's really about taking a risk and clusterfucking yourself to cheesecake glory. Anybody can do it. Even moi. Here are some pictures to prove it: