Mini Potato Pies à l'andalouse. Mazagran with spicy sausage & red peppers. Gluten-free

Here is another version of the mazagran or filled potato pie. Mazagran  à l'andalouse is a blaze of colour and with its spicy interior brings all the warmth of a Southern Summer back to a Winter buffet. On days when the wind is howling in across the Atlantic from the West and the rain transforms the garden into a sea of mud, these little pies of delicious and sunshine soaked, brightly coloured pimentos, red onions  and peppers work their magic! They epitomise the rhetorical question in Shelly's concluding words to Ode to the West Wind:

'If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?'

TEMPERATURES

Preheat the oven to 220°C or 425°F

à l'Andalouse

The term  in French cooking refers to a mix of pimento, chipolata and onion. To me chipolata is much too tame for Andalusia and I would be thinking chorizo but this dish really requires fresh meat rather than a dried sausage and in France we only get the latter type. Therefore, I choose to add merguez a spicy sausage from North Africa, which is also very popular in the Middle East and in France forms the basis of couscous dishes. As I remember Andalusia, its rich history, fabulous architecture and world renowned cuisine, influenced by many cultures, including Moorish,  I believe this ingredient not out of place in a dish with the title à l'Andalouse.

Merguez are made of beef and/or lamb and also sometimes of poultry. They have a distinct rich red colour which comes from the spices used in their confection. Every charcutier or chef has well-guarded secrets as to the blending of merguez spices but some of the most common are: hot chillies, cumin, fennel, paprika, sumach and coriander.

INGREDIENTS

(makes 16)

For the 'Pastry':

4 medium to large potatoes
A knob of butter
Salt and freshly ground pepper
White rice flour for dusting

For the Filling:

1 Merguez cut into small pieces
1 large red pepper
1 medium red onion
½ a Piment d'Espelette (do not include all the seeds!) or chilli of your choice*
Salt and pepper
Butter or a suitable oil for cooking.



* Having read around the subject the nearest taste to Espelette seems to be Organic Ground Cayenne

METHOD

For the 'Pastry':

Boil the potatoes whole and in their skins until firm but cooked well enough so that  a fork will pierce them easily. Peel and then mash with a hand masher, thus avoiding any chance of the potato becoming 'gluey'. Add salt and pepper and the butter. Set aside to cool.

For the Filling:

Sauté the onions, chillies, red pepper in butter in a heavy bottomed pan until they begin to soften. Add the pieces of merguez, cover the pan with a lid  and cook until the meat has turned brown. Season with salt and pepper and then cook, stirring occasionally until any liquid is reduced and you have a thick sauce. Remove from the heat and leave to cool. At this point I mash it slightly with a potato masher just to make it smoother and easier to spoon onto the potato.

ASSEMBLING THE MAZAGRANS

Mazagrans were traditionally cut out with round fluted cutters and in fact for the first  à l'Andalouse I made I used these and when they were cooked I thought they looked good, (see above). However, I recently bought a set of four different shaped biscuit cutters in three different sizes because, firstly I thought the Mazagran would look more interesting when there was a whole flock of them on a buffet table.  Secondly, when they came out of the oven, it was a lot easier for me to keep track of what filling was in which!

Dust your pastry board and rolling pin with rice flour. Work with a handful of pastry at a time, it's easier that way. Roll it out and add more rice flour if the potato begins to stick to either the board or pin. Using a cutter of your choice, I liked the large heart for this, cut out the 'pastry' shapes. When you have cut the first one and with the cutter still in place move it slightly from left to right. If it slides easily and the potato moves with it then the rice flour is doing its work. I was so happy to find this solution, as I tried first with potato flour and it was nowhere near as successful!

Place the shapes onto a buttered baking tray.

Cut the lids so you will be ready to assemble them immediately you have positioned the filling. Prick the lids with a fork to allow for any excess moisture to escape.

Place one teaspoonful of the mixture on each heart leaving a border to allow for a good seal when positioning the potato lid. Make sure to press around the edges of the heart gently but firmly.

Cook for 10 to 15 minutes on the top shelf of the oven, but check after 5 minutes to make sure they're not cooking too quickly. If they are, then move the tray down to the next level.

Serve warm.

Enjoy!

If you put the filling in when still warm the potato is steamed from the inside and does not hold its shape as well. They still taste good. Though from an aesthetic point of view are rather lacking!

All that needs to be said now is Bon Appėtit!

Hope to see you here again for another recipe from my 100 Gluten-Free Organic Party Foods Challenge!

All the best,

Sue

MORE MAZAGRANS & EXAMPLES OF HOT APPETISERS

Potato heart-shaped canapés à la provençale. 

The nineteenth recipe in my 100 Gluten-free Party Food Challenge. This Mazagran  is one with a difference, for when I looked at making an à la provençale version..read more

Individual Potato Pies à la Clamart. Gluten-free

The eighteenth recipe in my 100 Gluten-free Party Food Challenge. I've been making these for years, unaware that they had an official French culinary name...read more

Prawn Kedgeree Stuffed Eggs. Gluten-free

The twenty-sixth recipe in my 100 Gluten-free Party Recipe Challenge. Kedgeree makes a great breakfast or supper dish and with its beautiful rich colours would grace any buffet table..read more

Stuffed Cherry Tomatoes à la Bonne Femme.

The twenty-seventh recipe in my 100 Gluten-free Party Recipe Challenge. Stuffed tomatoes are a standard classic French pre-takeaway takeaway and...read more

Kartoffelpuffer With Fresh Fig & Prosciutto Di Parma 

The eighth recipe in my 100 Gluten-free Party Food Challenge.  Kartoffelpuffer aka German potato pancakes are used for both savoury and sweet toppings.  As a base for a gluten-free dish kartoffelpuffer are extremely...read more

Baked Organic Quail Egg in a Nest.

The twelfth recipe in my 100 Gluten-free Party Food Challenge. A variant of a dish we used to eat regularly at home on the farm when I was a child. ..read more

Sausage & Mash on a Stick

The thirteenth recipe in my 100 Gluten-free Party Food Challenge. A British traditional recipe on a stick. One of the Tavern dishes which was not pastry-based and is still a favourite pub meal today...read more

 

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©  Sue Cross 2017

Picture of lAlhambra thanks to the Pinterest board of thatsaudigirl3269.tumblr.com

Stuffed Cherry Tomatoes à la Bonne Femme. Gluten-free

Stuffed tomatoes are a standard classic French pre-takeaway takeaway and interestingly are slow rather than fast food. Every traiteur and charcuterie has them in season as a ready made dish to take home and heat up. Most butchers' shop in France make one daily ready-made hot dish and stuffed tomatoes à la bonne femme is again a seasonal favourite. I've always thought how interesting it is that many countries, France is just one, maintain this old tradition and link with the past, when people didn't necessarily have ovens or maybe wanted an oven-baked meal without going to a restaurant. I really loved, when I was in Portugal, seeing people, mainly the elderly coming to restaurants with their fish, bought straight off the boats and getting them, cooked on a restaurant's barbecue. What better way to get a good nutritious hot meal and a chat!

Here I'm using cherry tomatoes and these make great hot savouries in a bite sized edition!

Cherry tomatoes are very easy to grow in a small space in a container or hanging basket. If you have a greenhouse or a window sill you can keep them producing right up to the first frosts. Tomatoes are perennials, so with care you can keep the plants from year to year.

TEMPERATURES

Preheat the oven to 200°C or 400°F

INGREDIENTS

(makes 16)

16 cherry tomatoes

1 small red onion finely chopped

1 chipolata sausage or equivalent in sausagemeat

½ teaspoon herbes de Provence

Butter, coconut or your chosen oil

Salt and freshly ground pepper

METHOD

Rinse and dry the tomatoes.

Slice off the top of each to make a lid and set these to one side.

Using a teaspoon, carefully remove the inside of each tomato.

Sauté the red onion until it begins to soften. Add the chopped interior of the tomato and let this simmer briskly until it loses most of its liquid. 

Split the skins of the sausage  and add the meat  to the pan and cook these until the sausagemeat has browned and the sauce has thickened.

Add the herbs and mix well.

Using a teaspoon stuff each tomato with the filling and place on a buttered tray.

Put a 'lid' onto each tomato.

Place in the oven for 10 minutes or until the cherry tomatoes are cooked.

Allow them to cool slightly if you are taking them straight to the table. Tomatoes hold their heat too well!

Enjoy!

All that needs to be said now is Bon Appėtit!

Hope to see you here again for another recipe from my 100 Gluten-Free Organic Party Foods Challenge!

All the best,

Sue

MORE HOT SAVOURIES

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Devils on Horseback

The seventh recipe in my 100 Gluten-free Party Food Challenge. Nowadays served as an appetiser, this is a variation on the Victorian savoury Angels on Horseback itself a popular final dish served in a formal 19th...read more

Kartoffelpuffer With Fresh Fig & Prosciutto Di Parma 

The eighth recipe in my 100 Gluten-free Party Food Challenge.  Kartoffelpuffer aka German potato pancakes are used for both savoury and sweet toppings.  As a base for a gluten-free dish kartoffelpuffer are extremely...read more

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Prawn Kedgeree Stuffed Eggs. Gluten-free Hot Appetiser

Kedgeree makes a great breakfast or supper dish and to my mind with its beautiful rich colours would grace any buffet table. How to serve it was a problem because it is a substantial dish and all the individual baking cases I have seemed way too substantial as well. My best and I hope you'll agree the prettiest solution was to present it in the egg itself. This way it can be served straight from the oven, piping hot!

Kedgeree as khicṛī or khicaṛī is one of those great ancient Eastern egg and rice dishes reputed since the 14th century as a nourishing and easily digested invalid food. One school of thought believed that it was this very mild spiciness which first attracted its notice to the British in India. Legend has it that the Scots regiments sent to India adopted it over porridge  as a breakfast food and by which time it had acquired the addition of fish. There are many legends attached to it, one being that consuming fish in the morning was the most practical way to enjoy it in a hot climate. At a later date when the dish was imported into Britain it incorporated smoked fish and became a supper favourite. Another story holds that the British in India used the dish as a hangover cure after a night on the chhota pegs.

A FOREWORD ON ORGANIC PRAWNS 

Although we live by the sea and can easily get wild local shrimp, prawns are another matter. To get the quantity to make a dish here, we need to go out by boat to the beautiful Chausey Islands (below), something we have done in the past. The only other prawn I would ever eat would be an organically farmed one and these will be ready cooked. We eat them from the packet but if you are concerned, then you can always heat them up quickly by dropping them for a few minutes into boiling water.

INGREDIENTS

(makes 20)

125g - 4oz Basmati or Thai rice cooked (see below)

100g - 3½oz of cooked prawns

10 hard boiled eggs

1 medium red onion, chopped
1 dessert spoon of turmeric
1 heaped dessert spoon of coconut oil or raw butter
Paprika for sprinkling.
Black pepper

Rice and the Steam Dragon

As for the rice, I cook it in a very ad hoc manner taught to me by a friend who was maniacal about the 'Steam Dragon'. Very simply I wash the rice several times in cold water, then cover it with two fingers depth of water. Put it on a high heat, reducing this when it starts to boil too furiously and never open the pan lid, except just to quickly check now and again for when the water has been absorbed - if you open the lid too wide you let out the Steam Dragon. It seems like many dishes, rice is better left alone. Once the water has been absorbed and the rice is very slightly al dente remove the pan lid to allow the remaining water to quickly evaporate, leaving the rice 'dry' and fluffy. If you still have water visible above the rice but the grains have already reached this stage, then pour off the excess water first. If you overcook rice it goes sticky, then it is called 'friendly rice', which I think shows just how forgiving cookery can be!

Cook the onions in butter until they are soft.

Melt the  coconut or butter and add the turmeric to it. Incorporate these gently into the rice to get an even colour. Add the onions.

Cut the eggs in half and hollow out the yolks. Crumble the latter and add to the rice, leaving a little yolk to sprinkle on the finished dish. Keep the rice mix on the top of the stove on a trivet, so that it keeps hot but does not burn.

Cut 10 of the prawns in half longways and chop the rest. Add the chopped prawns to the rice. Season with black pepper, which allows for better absorption of the curcumin in the turmeric - as it is not just fish that is good for the brain!. Taste and add salt if needed.


Form into balls and place inside the halved eggs. Place in the warming drawer until all are ready.

Add a halved prawn to the top (you can heat these first in boiling water if you wish but be aware they will become rubbery if you overcook).

Sprinkle with finely crumbled yolk. Dust with paprika and serve immediately.

Enjoy!

All that needs to be said now is Bon Appėtit!

Hope to see you here again for another recipe from my 100 Gluten-Free Organic Party Foods Challenge!

All the best,

Sue

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Fresh Figs, Smoked Salmon Wraps.

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The twelfth recipe in my 100 Gluten-free Party Food Challenge. A variant of a dish we used to eat regularly at home on the farm when I was a child. ..read more

 

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©  Sue Cross 2017 

 

Individual Potato Pies à la Clamart. Mazagran with petits pois and raw cream. Gluten-free

I've been making these in the larger version for years, neither aware that they had an official French culinary name nor that they were traditional gluten-free hors d'oeuvres! I tend to read cookery books, as I would novels and in Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management, Larousse Gastronomique and Hannah Glasse's The Art of Cookery, the recipes are but a fraction of the whole. The rest is history, husbandry, anecdotes and personal experience, all of which goes to make a 'damn good read'. Food and the way we prepare and consume it is part of our heritage, every dish tells us something about who we were and who we are today.

Most people may know the term Mazagran from the fashion of drinking ice cold, often ice-drip coffee from a distinctive glass or earthernware cup. It's actually quite an old fashion, as it dates back to the siege of Mazagran in 1840, when a group of French soldiers, as legend has it, were obliged to drink cold coffee with water rather than their usual hot coffee with brandy. This however, does not explain how in Larousse Gastronomique, the term also refers to an oven-baked potato pastry pie, 'filled with a salpicon...or similar preparation'. There are Algerian Maakouda or fried potato cakes, which are sometimes baked but not filled. Thus, Mazagran could be a regional version or perhaps people used the distinctive Mazagran cup to cut out the potato pastry... whatever the explanation, they are delicious! However, if any one knows the exact reason for this name, I would be very interested.

PETITS POIS FASHION & MANIA

When we think of Catherine de Medici it may not be cookery that first springs to mind. With her marriage to Henry II in 1533 and as part of her dowry, she brought with her from the Florentine court a whole host of chefs, cooks, gardeners, and viticulturalists, who would change the cuisine of France and establish it as one of the greatest in the World. Many French dishes today were founded on Catherine's dowry in the way of new seed varieties and the manner of harvesting and preparing vegetables. One example was Cassoulet, the chief ingredient being the famous Tarbais bean and another was the fashion for petits pois. Until the arrival of Catherine, peas had been grown only in the varieties suitable for harvesting and drying for Winter use. Famously due to their protein content and ease of storage, the armies of France marched not just on their stomachs but more specifically on peas. The Florentine Court consumed peas fresh and also consumed them young. 

Old habits die hard however, and it was not until the late 1600s, when a French nobleman returned from Genoa  with fresh peas and presented them to Louis XIV,  that they became incredibly fashionable. The craze for eating them when immature, of course meant that they were so small that the price rose to accommodate the need for early harvesting and thus diminished yields. High prices only fuelled 'the fashion and madness for petits pois', as Madame de Maintenon, the King's mistress and later his second wife, wrote in a letter to cardinal Cardinal de Noailles in May, 1696:

'Petis pois continue to be a fascinating  topic. The  expectation of eating them, the pleasure of eating them and the anticipation of eating more of them are three subjects which our princes have been discussing for three days.'

To have them as fresh as possible for the noble tables of Paris, areas in its vicinity were dedicated to the culture of petits pois. For their extensive market gardens comprising pea fields, towns such as Saint-Germain and Clamart had recipes named after them which incorporated this new fashion for eating little immature peas. This is one of the easiest of the mazagran fillings but it is nonetheless very tasty. So let's make mazagrans à la Clamart.

TEMPERATURES

Preheat the oven to 220°C or 425°F

INGREDIENTS

(makes 16)

For the 'Pastry':

4 medium to large potatoes
A knob of butter
Salt and freshly ground pepper
White rice flour for dusting

For the Filling:

16 heaped teaspoonfuls of cooked petits pois
1 tablespoon of fresh raw cream
Salt and freshly ground pepper

METHOD

For the 'Pastry':

Boil the potatoes whole and in their skins until firm but cooked well enough so that  a fork will pierce them easily. Peel and then mash with a hand masher, thus avoiding any chance of the potato becoming 'gluey'. Add salt and pepper and the butter. Set aside to cool.

For the Filling:

Mash the peas and cream together to obtain a smoothish paste - I preferred to still have some texture to my petits pois as this makes a good contrast to that of the potato pastry. 

ASSEMBLING THE MAZAGRANS

Mazagrans were traditionally cut out with round fluted cutters and in fact for the first ones I made I used these. However, I recently bought a set of four different shaped biscuit cutters in three different sizes because, firstly I thought they would look more interesting on a buffet table and secondly it was a lot easier for me to keep track of what filling was in which!

Dust your pastry board and rolling pin with rice flour. Work with a handful of pastry at a time, it's easier that way. Roll it out and add more rice flour if the potato begins to stick to either the board or pin. Using a cutter of your choice, I liked the medium heart for this, cut out the 'pastry' shapes. When you have cut the first one and with the cutter still in place move it slightly from left to right. If it slides easily and the potato moves with it then the rice flour is doing its work. I was so happy to find this solution, as I tried first with potato flour and it was nowhere near as successful!

Place the shapes onto a buttered tray.

Cut the lids so you will be ready to assemble them immediately you have positioned the filling. Prick the lids with a fork to allow for any excess moisture to escape.

Place one teaspoonful of the pea and cream mixture on each heart leaving a border to allow for a good seal with the potato lid. Make sure to press around the edges of the heart gently but firmly.

Cook for 10 to 15 minutes on the top shelf of the oven, but check after 5 minutes to make sure they not cooking too quickly. If they are, then move the tray down to the next level.

Serve warm.

Enjoy!

All that needs to be said now is Bon Appėtit!

Hope to see you here again for another recipe from my 100 Gluten-Free Organic Party Foods Challenge!

All the best,

Sue

RELATED ARTICLES

Potato heart-shaped canapés à la provençale. 

The nineteenth recipe in my 100 Gluten-free Party Food Challenge. This Mazagran  is one with a difference, for when I looked at making an à la provençale version..read more
 

RETURN TO MAIN CONTENTS PAGE 

RETURN TO 100 GLUTEN-FREE PARTY RECIPES CONTENTS 

©  Sue Cross 2017
Thanks to the Pinterest Boards of i.pinimg.com for The Marriage of Catherine de Medici and Invaluable.com for the Dali Mazagran service