Heart-shaped potato canapés with spicy tomato and anchovies. Open Mazagrans à la provençale

The  Mazagran I'm presenting here is one with a difference, for when I looked at making an à la provençale version, I thought it would be so pretty that I felt it would be a shame to cover it up with potato. This comes from the South East as the name suggests and normally includes aubergine, green beans and potato but for my version I'm using the provençale base, which is a thick tomato fondue. I'm also presenting it in the form of a pissaladière, a typically Southern French pizza-style street food, which I first tasted in the monégasque tomato version in the market of Monte-Carlo, many, many years ago.

To make these I decided on the medium heart-shaped biscuit cutter from my newly purchased set.

TEMPERATURES

Preheat the oven to 220°C or 425°F

INGREDIENTS

(makes 16)

For the 'Pastry':

4 small to medium potatoes
A knob of butter
Salt and freshly ground pepper
Rice flour for dusting

For the Spicy Tomato Fondue:

4 medium  tomatoes - chopped
1 small red onion - chopped
1 small red (sweet) pepper  - chopped

2 chopped chillies - I used French varieties; 1 mild fresh Piment de Bresse and one small hot dried d'Espelette Pepper* (including some of the seeds)

1 clove of garlic - finely chopped
butter
Salt and freshly ground pepper

* Piment d'Espelette is from the Basque country, which spans the borders of France and Spain and its cookery is hot, colourful and powerful. There is a link to one of its most famous dishes at the end of this article.

à la pissaladière

8 halved black olives
4 salted anchovies (rinsed in water)
herbes de Provence

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. 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 Spicy Tomato Fondue:

I made more than I needed because I was going to use it as a base for other dishes. When using chillies I find it better to make sauces in larger quantities because otherwise the flavour can get overpowering. This fondue freezes very well.

Sauté the onions, chillies, pepper and garlic in butter in a heavy bottomed pan until they begin to soften. Add the tomatoes, season and then cook, stirring occasionally until the liquid is reduced and you have a thick tomato sauce. Remove from the heat and leave to cool. At this point I mash it up with a potato masher just to make it smoother and easier to spoon onto the potato.

ASSEMBLING THE MAZAGRANS

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 and once you have filled the tray put it in the oven for 5 minutes, after which the potato should feel slightly firm to the touch.

Place one teaspoonful of tomato fondue on each heart.

Split the anchovies and remove the backbone and fin (unless of course they are already filleted). Cut each fillet in half.

Place a piece of anchovy and half a black olive on each half and sprinkle with herbes de Provence or a similar favourite herb mix.

Cook in oven on the top shelf for a further 10 minutes but check after 5 minutes to make sure they are not cooking too quickly, if they are, 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

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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

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In the dish of piperade, there is more of the Flamenco than the Java more of Miró than Monet. Piperade breaks the rules of classic cookery...read more

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©  Sue Cross 2017

Baked Organic Quail Egg in a Nest. Hot Gluten-free Appetiser

In case you were wondering where I find organic quail eggs, I raise my own. In 2000 we moved permanently from a city to a farmhouse in France. I knew Andy's life would be miserable unless we came up with a cure for his hay fever. I'd been reading up on the use of quail in ancient Eastern medicine and I decided that it was well worth a trial. At that time, except for some work done around the 1960s by a Dr Truffier, no one had discovered why quail eggs cured so many respiratory and allergic conditions. That didn't bother me one jot and ironically we cured not only Andy's hay fever but also his eczema. If you want to read about the therapeutic use of quail eggs and how we raise our quail, then you can find detailed information in the links below.

This is a dish (in larger version) we used to eat regularly at home on the farm when I was a child. It is simple and nutritious, was fun for us kids to make and used the ingredients we always had to hand: eggs and potatoes.

Below: 'Hands off these are Mine!' Cecily, one of our Golden Manchurian Coturnix) protecting the nest.

 

TEMPERATURES

Preheat the oven to 220°C or 425°F

INGREDIENTS

Makes 18 to 20 nests

4 Medium to Large Potatoes. Preferably 'floury' varieties that are suitable for mashing.
Quail Eggs
Butter
Salt and Pepper to taste.

METHOD

Peel and then boil the potatoes until firm but cooked well enough so that  a fork will pierce them easily. Mash with a hand masher, thus avoiding any chance of the mash becoming 'gluey'. Add salt and pepper and a little butter.

Form the mash into small round balls.

Make a depression in the centre of the ball with the thumb and work the potato into a nest shape.

With a fork, lift up sections of mash to create a 'twiggy' appearance.

Place the nests on a buttered baking sheet...

...and cook until lightly golden (around 10 to 15 minutes).

Crack a quail egg into each nest add a dot of butter to the white and return to the oven cook for a further 10 minutes or until the eggs have set and have a white glazed appearance.

The nests without the eggs can be made in advance and frozen.

I also made a more rustic version, which is quicker to produce but obviously doesn't have the uniformity of the above and is not as easy to freeze!

Enjoy!

All that needs to be said now is Bon Appėtit!


All the best,

Sue

RELATED ARTICLES

A comprehensive guide into the history & use of quail eggs in medicine Part 1

How we cured Andy's hay fever and eczema with a dip into Ancient Egypt and 60's France...read more

A comprehensive guide into the history & use of quail eggs in medicine  Part 2

Now we eat quail eggs for pleasure..here I look in depth at the clinical trials in the 1960s and the posology used then and by us...read more

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RETURN TO 100 GLUTEN-FREE PARTY RECIPES CONTENTS 

©  Sue Cross 2017