The farmers where we buy vegetables had returned from a short week off to visit their family and when they re-opened there were a lot of fresh new products among which several kinds of beans. Borlotti beans look nice with their purple etchings on a white background. Hariciot coco Borlotti in French, they can be … Read more
A quick recipe for a healthy vegetable side dish of spinach and apples.
A simple version of a classic French dish with pigeon and peas.
On the farmer’s market here in Mirepoix, I found fresh kale just had to take it home. Kale, chou frisé, is called boerenkool and the Dutch eat it as a healthy and cheap vegetable in winter.
I am trying out a new online fresh retailer, Tauziet et Co, that allows me to buy goods direct from the producer in southwest France. There is plenty available around here, but not everything. The more you order the smaller the transport fee, so when I do order it is a full carton. That is … Read more
One Monday morning on our weekly farmers’ market in Mirepoix, the poultry lady had chicken livers. Not the soggy reddish things in a plastic container at the super market – which are more than decent – but, well, big livers. The point is that most “chicken” killed and sold are in fact still chicklets – … Read more
At a market nearby I found a man selling fresh fish from his small fish farm in the mountains, using clean spring water, as many fish would prefer. He used a net to catch the fish from plastic containers on the back of his car.
I prepared the fish in the simplest possible fashion to appreciate the taste and presented it on a bed of green cabbage, leek and a carrot because they happened to be waiting for use in the kitchen.
I like spinach. I do not believe it makes me strong like Popey the Sailor Man (and he ate them from cans…) but it is healthy. On the farmer’s market in the town here they sell “cold-ground” spinach, big rough leaves with a snail here and there. It will not last when it starts freezing.
Start of winter is also the beginning of the season for cheeses that melt easily to be put on bread or in fondues after walks in the mountains or winter sports. One of my favourites is Mont d’Or, a soft cheese with a nutty flavour from the Jura area. It is a kind of Vacherin, a soft cow cheese, from a specific area.
For some reason I often associate rabbit with Belgium and like to make a rabbit stew with prunes in Belgian beer.
Perhaps because we had a rabbit when I was young and it was a Belgian race that grew rather fast. My parents thought they had bought a “dwarf “ rabbit that would live quietly in its cage and eat carrots, lettuce and other greens.
Instead we had a big beast that needed to run outside. It did not stay with us for long and I do not remember whether we ate any rabbit.
In French cuisine, the rabbit is often stewed with prunes that add a sweet taste to the meat and some colouring. Sometimes they add ginger bread or bread with mustard. I reserve the mustard for another rabbit dish.
Winter is the season for root vegetables like the celery, as well as the truffle.
Celery is inexpensive while truffles are rather expensive, but there are ways to overcome this and add a bit of truffle flavour to a dish with truffle oil.
So I did here, I cooked a chopped-up celery with six potatoes, then blended that with some stock, reheated it and added some drops of truffle oil.