I was not at home during Christmas and while I assisted in the cooking of meals during those days, I did not have the opportunity to prepare a festive meal. But on New Year’s eve we were at home, alone, and I could prepare a meal for two. Just a one course dinner, after the calorie boost of previous days.
One of the things I love about cooking is they way you can use your inventiveness to make subtle changes to existing recipes and use the seasons and products at hand instead of a list of prescribed ingredients. So it is here. The ceps risotto is a nice savoury dish for cold days to start with. There are still some fresh ceps on the market […]
When I was at university, there was a popular book with the title “Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche”. But I do, and consider myself a real man, nevertheless. I even make tarts, no pun intended. However, a basic quiche uses cream, eggs and bacon and can be rather on the fatty side, especially when you use puff pastry instead of a shortcrust pastry.
The girolle is a yellow kind of small forest mushroom and belongs to the same family as the chanterelle. But while the chanterelle is usually light brown, the girolle is more yellowish, at least in my experience. It is one of the most harvested mushrooms in Europe, and certainly in France, and it grows during the summer, especially after rainy days have been followed by […]
Veal is a tasty and lean cut of meat. As I wrote before, the problem is to find a good supplier of meat from an animal that has not been mistreated. Once that step is taken, and in France the meat is generally of good origin, you have a fine ingredient. You can eat it hot on the first day and serve cold slices later. […]
This weekend we made another visit to Dieppe at the Normandy coast. It is not a very big town but it has a long history and interesting city centre, as well as a wide gravel beach, cliffs and a fortress. It was our intention to arrive before midday so that we could buy fish from the small stalls tended by the fishermen themselves, but alas […]
I am very happy to be living in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, but there are of course fewer restaurants than in Paris and the choice of styles is limited. While there are a several sushi-like motorbike delivery services, you cannot get a nice noodle soup like in Tokyo or in the area around the rue Saint Anne in Paris. So I made my own. This time I had […]
A slightly complicated dish where a stuffing of ceps is put beneath the skin of the bird and then served with seasonal Brussels sprouts and chestnuts. There are various reasons to stuff a bird. The main reason is to add substance and flavours. Substance so that a family of six can dine on one chicken and flavour to enhance the often bland, and sometimes dry, […]
There are still various mushrooms on the market, some late ceps, cantherelles, the black “trompettes de Maures” (also called trumpets of death) and the yellow girolles. I do like mushrooms, especially ceps, but I find most of the mushrooms a lot of bother to clean. Girolles go well with poultry, so I bought some of them for this recipe. Ingredients one guinea fowl 200 grammes […]