Clafoutis: Stylish French comfort food
Clafoutis has a luscious yet homey French pedigree.
Pronounced kla-FOO-tee, it requires little muss or fuss to be instantly satisfying. A slightly sweet egg-flour-milk batter is poured over tiny cherries, baked and finished with a dusting of powdered sugar.
It is often likened to other egg batterbased foods. But please don’t call it a pancake because it is not flipped and cooked on both sides.
Neither is it a quiche (which has a crust), a flan (which has more flour, making it thicker) or a far Breton (a custardy cake from Brittany that has a smooth flanlike texture and is dense). When made with pears, peaches or apples instead of cherries, purists say it is not a clafoutis but a flaugnarde.
Clafoutis is derived from the word clafir, which means to fill. Typically, small black cherries are laid out on a buttered baking dish, which is then filled with a batter made with eggs, flour, milk and sugar.
Christiane Larhantec, who lives north of Paris in Coye la Foret, believes a real clafoutis is made with unpitted tart cherries. Part of the pleasure of eating one is enjoying the fruit with pits intact, she says.
Also if the pits are removed, she says, the cherries will let out more juice, making the custard thinner. But she offers this warning: “You need to pay attention and not bite into the pit.” It might crack your tooth.
Didier Berlioz, an assistant professor at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, says small, unpitted black cherries are ideal. Pits add a complementary flavor to the clafoutis, he says, but the bigger the pit the more tannin it will add to the dish.
“That’s why small pits are so much more desirable,” the Nice native says.