My first encounter with a Jésuite left me with a sugar-dusted nose. A tray of the long, triangular pastries in the window of an Île de France bakery-café lured me inside, and a few minutes later I emerged with a floral-printed pack of pastries. Michel and I took a table on the sidewalk, ordered coffee and peered into the box: “How do we eat these?” was my husband’s first query.  The Jésuites cantilevered over the rim of a plate; the server brought spoons, but I was wondering if a steak knife and long-tined fork would be better weapons for approaching this iced, sugar-topped puff-pastry.  The American way, go ahead - use your fingers, would avoid having pastry corners shooting across the table, so that was my last resort:  pick it up, bite off one of the corners.  Flakes of puff pastry drifted across the table, the buttery-crisp corner melted in my mouth and traces of sugar stuck to the nose above my triumphant smile.  I took a good look at the pastry for future reference, wondering who first decided that eighteenth century Jesuit hats would provide a template for an almond-cream filled pastry.

Having conquered question number one - eating it - I moved on to question number two: how can I reproduce the frangipane filling and triangular pastry?  For the Jésuite is a classic pastry-baker’s item, rarely made at home.  You can begin with puff pastry, pâte feuilletée, which can be bought ready to roll.  Or chill a slab of marble, mix flour and chilled butter, (layer dough with butter chips) and fold the sticky pastry several times to ensure flakiness.  My first effort at this type of puff pastry was on a hot August morning, not the ideal timing and overall, a discouraging experience.  But I recently bought a pre-rolled pastry that was a decent substitute, enough for making four Jésuites.

To form the Jésuites, cut the circle (about enough to make a 10″ pie crust) of pastry down the center, then across the center making four equal quarters. Slice each quarter in half and separate. Prepare the frangipane: Cream 50 grams/1/4 cup of soft unsalted butter, add 50 grams/1/4 cup of sugar and 50 grams of ground/powdered almonds, whisking this into a frothy mixture. Beat in 1 egg, 1 teaspoon of almond essence, (add 2 more yolks at this point if you want a richer filling), and 2 tablespoons of rum or brandy. This can be made in advance and chilled. With a small pastry brush (I use a Hungarian feather brush from Williams Sonoma), moisten the edges of 2 triangles, spread with the frangipane, place one triangle on top of the other and seal the edges by pressing gently. Repeat this with the remaining triangles. The fingerprints will disappear as the puff pastry expands in the oven. Heat the oven to 205°c/400°f. Very lightly oil a baking sheet (use almond oil if you have it) and place the 4 pastries with 2″ spacing.  At this point, you can brush with milk and sprinkle flaked almonds on them, or go a step farther with a light meringue of: 1 egg white mixed with 25 grams icing sugar then topped with the flaked almonds (or crushed praline!).  Bake the Jésuites for about 8 minutes, then lower the heat to 160°c/324°f for another 8 to 10 minutes.  Take the golden Jésuites out of the oven and dust with icing sugar.  Some French bakers even add a fine top layer of white frosting - gilding the lily, perhaps.
Next question: Frangipane who?

He waved an arm toward the valley beyond us, saying… “About 1,500 hectares in almonds here, along with olive trees and some pasture”. The sheep behind me, bleating in an off-key chorus, were the only other beings that I could see for miles around. Our guide, George, was at the wheel after this ‘vista stop’ on a morning’s tutorial. The subject: almonds. The place: central Greece, a five hour bus ride north of Athens. And the season: February, when almonds begin to bloom. This professor of Pomology at the University in Volos is an expert on the almond and all sorts of other fruits and nuts. His father and grandfather had large fruit groves and worked the land in these temperate valleys; I was in good hands to learn more about this Mediterranean ingredient. Studies that George (Dr. Nanos) and his colleagues had done on irrigation in almond groves and other production research were posted on the internet, and led me to contact him about a possible visit. The adventure was lined up for the second week in February, a bit early for full almond blossom time. What luck - trees were in full boom two weeks early! After our three days in almond heaven, my head was spinning with not only facts, but strong visual impressions of stunning settings: mountains silhouetted against the horizon, tidy harbors in the foreground, and rich valley land stretching in between crossroads and villages. There is more to this almond adventure, not to mention the gooey pastry-sampling story to be told.

Growing almonds is essentially a balancing act. During interviews with growers in the French Roussillon region, that becomes very clear. In spite of its ancestry and basic nature as a Mediterranean tree, the almond does need water - not in excess, just a little at a time - ideally in drip irrigation five times a day. The tree’s long tap root and ability to survive drought in poor soil is a plus, but to produce high quality almonds in good quantity, the soil and water are a grower’s main preoccupations. California almond trees are irrigated, grown in thousands of acres of enriched valley soil, hence tons of almonds flow with regularity onto the world market. Spanish irrigation in groves is scanty, partly due to the rocky terrain and terraced planting, so the trees are subject to greater shock in dry years. Sicilian growers are installing more irrigation systems in spite of their irregular terrain, a Herculean effort that we witnessed in the rugged hills around Noto. On Apulian slopes across southernmost Italy and in groves overlooking the coast of Crete, almond trees grow - some with the advantage of irrigation, some without.
“The almond tree has a memory of three years” explains Giles Gibbs, a Roussillon grower whose verdant almond orchard near Thuir is a case study. If an overly dry summer causes fruit to drop one summer, it will do the same the following year. It sheds fruit that cannot be nourished, a shock that takes three years of care to restore normal bearing and a decent crop. “To nourish one almond, it takes sixty healthy leaves”, adds the affable, lanky engineer turned almond grower. We follow him between trees lush with leaves, their branches loaded with plump green almonds, giving no evidence of ‘fruit drop’ problems. “A healthy tree doesn’t need frequent pruning”, Gibbs remarks “…if they are fed well enough, we just remove lower branches every three years”. We stop to inspect the ground around a trunk, evidently spread with some dry organic matter. Non-composted marc de raisin (the residue remaining after grapes are pressed) is collected from local grape growers and serves to change the soil composition, resulting in a more water-retentive structure. It seems a natural balance, a symbiosis using the residue of one crop, grapes, to nourish a new crop, almonds.

Gibbs does not sell green almonds. It is such a short phase of the almond’s year, and one with a limited market. Only a few growers in the Roussillon appear to be organized to pick and sell the delicate green nuts. Their principal market is in the middle east, or Arab grocers in Paris or Provence. These clients want the choicest almonds, which command a higher price. Green almonds are picked by hand, are fragile, spoil within a few days if not kept in a cool, dark place, and are thus more problematic to keep and to ship. A handful of inventive chefs order green almonds and turn them out onto refined platters, from octopus with green almonds on the Costa Brava, to spiced Provençal peaches bathed in almond milk. In open air markets across the south of France, finding green almonds is a matter of serendipity, the chance that a grower took time to gather a few - with a regular, very particular client in mind.

Always, the question of balance comes into play as the grower decides which direction to steer his or her time, trees, land and production: to hand pick green almonds for a high end, middle eastern market, or to aim at the volume market of dry almonds for pastry makers and confectioners, for local restaurants or to be shipped abroad. These considerations, along with the vagaries of each season’s weather, may tip the balance for almond growers anywhere in the world - all affecting how and when the ordinary market shopper can enjoy baking an almond gâteau for Sunday lunch.
(excerpt adapted for vagabondgourmand from Ah, Almonds!)