There is wide discretion in recipe nomenclature. You can pretty much name a recipe anything you want. The usual practice, however, is that the name should indicate something about the ingredients and style of preparation.
I named this dish a clafoutis despite knowing that the French are persnickety about naming classic recipes. Académie Française, the renowned authority on all matters involving the French language, including French names, would be horrified at such a misnomer. The Académie and the cherry orchard growers of Limousin region decreed the clafoutis name is reserved exclusively for a custard batter dessert filled with Limousin black cherries and only Limousin cherries. Should any other fruit be substituted for Limousin cherries in a similar custard batter, it must be named flaugnarde. So under these rules, it would seem impossible to have a savory clafoutis.
My initial experimentation with the vegetables in this recipe (fresh corn, peppers, shallots and goat cheese) focused on preparing a crustless quiche. Quiches are usually savory, and I wanted the vegetables to be suspended in a custard base. I tested several typical quiche custard combinations and discovered that a custard solely of eggs and cream was too soft to support corn, which settled to the bottom. I checked other vegetable quiche recipes and learned that a hard cheese like emmenthal or cheddar was often used to stabilize quiches with heavy vegetables like broccoli. This was not the texture I wanted.
So I researched other custard-based recipes which might provide more support for the chosen vegetables without being overwhelmingly dense: flans, corn puddings and clafoutis.
I dismissed the flan I knew best and prepared most often, Spanish or Mexican flan, an egg custard similar to the French crème caramel or crème brulée as the texture and density resembles the soft custard base of quiches. But with some research I learned that traditional English cooking includes two other flans: a sponge cake in which fruit or savory ingredients can be arranged on a base of jelly, cream or custard and another, a purée of vegetables mixed with eggs and cream. In reviewing English savory flan recipes, I discovered that puréed vegetables such as Savoy cabbage, asparagus or spinach are combined with a quantity of flour, starch or hard cheese to stabilize the custard when heavier ingredients were incorporated into a recipe. The resulting dishes, however, were not sufficiently creamy, but tasted heavy and doughy to me. Perhaps I did not find the right English recipe.
Since corn was my principal ingredient, I also considered using a corn pudding recipe for the base. Corn puddings are staples in American Midwestern and Southern cookery and are considered by food historians to be a variation of the English savory custard puddings. James Beard in his classic American Cookery provides three corn pudding recipes, one with added sugar and canned creamed corn, one with fresh corn, sugar, Tabasco and bacon and another southwestern style pudding with fresh corn, chilis and tomatoes. The 1964 edition of Joy of Cooking includes a corn pudding with added sugar and cream and another, Denver-style, with ham, peppers and cheese. The 1994 edition of Joy repeats the recipe with cream and sugar, and adds a recipe with assorted cheeses, savory spices and poblano peppers. These corn pudding recipes range widely from soft, almost soupy corn puddings (mostly made with canned whole kernel or creamed corn) spooned from the casserole to a dense, wet cornbread-like texture that can be cut into serving pieces. Again, none of these recipes produced the texture and consistency I wanted.
So I turned to clafoutis recipes for guidance. I recalled that the custard batter in traditional clafoutis tastes custardy but is firm and can support the weight of cherries. So I figured a comparable base would support the weight of the corn, peppers, shallots and goat cheese.
I turned to my source for most French recipes and the clafoutis recipe in Julia Child’s classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking (which even though the Limousin farmers won their case at the Académie Française against calling the clafoutis a flan is found in a dessert section called “Fruit Flans”!) for the essential custard ingredients: milk, eggs, salt and flour, eliminating all the sweet components. I used the custard batter proportions in the Child recipe, substituting cherries with an equal proportion of chosen vegetables, adding other savory ingredients and miracle des miracles the recipe worked. The corn, peppers and goat cheese mixture is pleasantly spicy in a soft but firm custard base which cuts into well-defined pieces.
Raymond Olivier in his La Cuisine: Secrets of Modern French Cooking (1969) suggests that a savory clafoutis is possible, but should be called clafoutian, a compromise between clafoutis and tian. A tian is a vegetable tart, traditional to Nice, made without custard. In his clafoutian recipe, Olivier incorporates pan fried green beans, lima beans, peas and artichoke hearts with the custard batter ingredients used in a clafoutis. While clafoutian may be a more accurate description of my recipe, this merged name seems to be Olivier’s invention and does not appear in Larousse Gastronomique. Thus, I am calling this recipe a clafoutis
Corn, Peppers, Shallots and Goat Cheese Clafoutis
1 small red pepper, quartered, seeded and sliced
1 small green pepper, quartered, seeded and sliced
1 red chili, diced
3 small shallots, diced
2 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
2-3 ears corn (about 1 ½ cups corn nibblets)
3 large eggs
⅔ cup (80 g) all-purpose flour
1 ¼ cup (300 ml) half & half
3 ½ oz. (100 g) soft goat cheese, crumbled into small pieces
3 ½ (50 g) tablespoons butter
2 teaspoon fresh thyme, leaves only
½ teaspoon dried oregano
1 ½ teaspoon kosher salt
½ teaspoon white pepper, ground
⅛ teaspoon cayenne
½ tablespoon Italian parsley, chopped
Preheat oven to 375 F (190 °C).
Heat olive oil on medium heat in large frying pan. Add peppers, chili and shallots and cook, stirring occasionally, until tender, about 10-15 minutes, but not browned. Remove from heat and cool. Stir in thyme.
Fill a large pot with water and bring to boil. Clean husk and silk from corn and cook in boiling water for 5 minutes. Remove ears to dish towel lined cookie sheet and cool to touch. Hold ears of corn perpendicularly to the chopping board, stabilizing on a wet cloth, and slice corn nibblets off each ear. Set aside 1 ½ cups of nibblets.
Whisk eggs in a large bowl, alternately add flour and milk until combined and lump free. Add goat cheese and process until smooth. Pass batter through a sieve to eliminate bubbles. Stir in oregano, salt, pepper, cayenne and parsley. Add pepper mixture and reserved corn to the batter and fold until incorporated.
Butter a loose-bottom tart pan or regular tart pan about 10 inches (25 cm) in diameter. If using a loose-bottom pan, cover the underneath side of the pan with aluminum foil to prevent leakage. Pour batter into pan, tapping counter to level surface into an even layer. Place tart pan on a cookie sheet and bake in the oven for 45-50 minutes or until top is puffed, firm and slightly golden.
Remove from oven and cool for 10 minutes. If using a loose-bottomed tart pan, run the tip of a knife around the edge of the clafoutis before removing sides of tart pan. Serve warm or room temperature. Garnish with sprigs of thyme.
Serves 8 for lunch with a green salad such as arugula or 12 as a side to an entrée.
Photo credits: Slava Johnson
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