Welcome back to Cooking With the French Chef, in which I review episodes of Julia Child’s original show, cook out of the new edition of the French Chef Cookbook and share the results with you. Past posts can be found here.
What does the word, “timbales” make you think of? It doesn’t signal food to me. I don’t know why, but it always makes me think of percussion instruments. Or steel drums. Or tambourines. Timbales don’t sound like what they are, which is, simply put, baked custards of wondrous variety.
It also helps if timbales is pronounced in the French fashion, as opposed to the Spanish, which is what I’ve been doing. Anyway, here’s the relevant episode of The French Chef, which first broadcast on May 4, 1964, the twenty-first episode in Season Two:
Okeydokey. I have a slight egg allergy, so I’m proceeding with caution here. On the bright side, there are so many ingredients going on that I might be OK, and these eggs are spread out over whole recipes.
Speaking of spread out, this post is going to have a lot of photos, so RIP anyone’s data cap if they have one.
All right, here are the ingredients for our first timbale, the Timbale aux Épinards, or Spinach Timbale, and it’s pretty simple and straightforward. Presumably, this is supposed to be a first course or a light luncheon dish, but it seems awfully rich.
What I liked about this recipe was that I was able to set some steps in motion while getting others ready to go, so while I waited for the blanching water to boil I prepped the eggs, the onions, the cheese, and the bread crumbs. First, the eggs…
Then the onions. White onions don’t photograph very well against a white cutting board, but what can you do?
The bread crumbs were next…
And finally, the Swiss cheese. Some of this was for the timbales and the rest was for the cheese sauce.
By that time the water was boiling merrily, so in went the spinach for three minutes. And yes, my pot only has one handle. 🙂
Julia’s recipe doesn’t say to put the blanched spinach in an ice bath, but I did it anyway. I doubt she would mind, to be honest. Once the spinach was cooled, I had to squeeze all the water out.
And then chop it up finely. I have to say, this is a really pretty shade of green.
Cooking the onions in butter came next, and they caramelized a lot faster than I thought they would, probably because of the residual heat off of the oven. After that, it was time for spinach. cheese, butter, and milk.
Meanwhile, my eggs waited in the wings for their shot at the big time. Julia doesn’t say anything about tempering the eggs in her recipe, but I did it anyway, slowly adding the spinach while visions of scrambled oeufs danced in my head.
Success! After that it was time to butter and fill the ramekins, which were lined with waxed paper. I love these dishes. Best purchase of the last year.
Into the oven they went. Julia said the timbales would rise a little bit, and mine definitely did. I just didn’t expect them to be this dome-shaped.
Awfully pretty, though, if I do say so myself.
Getting them out was a little bit of a struggle, and I can’t stress enough how important the butter and waxed paper are. After running a butter knife around the edges, these little guys plopped right out. Here’s one without sauce and one with.
Getting crustless quiche vibes here, plus they look like the sous vide egg bites from Starbucks.
So yeah, these were amazing. Creamy, fluffy, rich, and very filling for a first course. I couldn’t finish mine, so I gave it to my son, who wolfed it down. He doesn’t even like spinach that much, so him polishing off these timbales says something.
A few days later we had the Timbales aux Jambon, which I hoped would be a little less eggy and a little more like a regular main course. Here are our ingredients, and as you all can probably tell, I did a few steps before taking the photo…
Yep. Fewer eggs, thick cream sauce, and no bread crumbs. We’ll see how this goes. Separating the eggs came first…
Next came adding tomato paste and Swiss cheese to the egg yolks. Who else loves tubed tomato paste? This stuff is awesome.
After that, it was time to pulse ham, mushrooms, onions, and noodles in the food processor. Julia doesn’t say what kind of noodles to use, so I got some cavatappi from Winco’s bulk section…
All of this got added to the egg mixture, as well as the thick white sauce. Then I folded in some stiffly-beaten egg whites, wondering how these light ingredients would play with the heavier ones and if it would all hold together.
Into the oven the little ramekins went, and unfortunately, I forgot to take an “After” photo. Oh well.
We had these new timbales with tomato sauce, ably assisted by Mr. Paul Newman.
And now it’s time for the big reveal, again with and without sauce…
So how were the ham timbales? Well, they tasted really good. Very cheesy and smoky. They were also a lot less eggy, which was good for my allergy. On the downside, they were, unfortunately, much looser than the spinach ones, which meant they were harder to pull out of the ramekins and one of them just fell apart.
My son didn’t care. He had seconds.
I think if I were going to make the ham timbales again I would eliminate the noodles and add breadcrumbs, plus use a less chunky tomato sauce. Or maybe pulse the mix-ins a bit more. These timbales are so delicate, they just can’t take a lot of weight or stress. Still, they’re an interesting way of using up leftovers and a nice light meal with a salad.
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