31st December 2020
Tournedos Rossini
This exquisite dish lends its name from Italian composer Gioachino Rossini who lived in Paris for two long periods in his life.
It is not only exquisite but also extravagant as it combines three nobel and expensive ingredients — beef filet, foie gras and truffle.
7th September 2020
Borlotti bean soup with vegetables and sausage
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 used in stews and dried for later use in winter. […]
30th July 2020
Bouillabaisse Back to Basics — a modern version of a recipe by Jean-Baptiste Reboul
Jean-Baptiste Reboul wrote “la cuisinière provençale” in 1897 and it is still a standard-bearer. I recently bought fish at Port la Nouvelle with the aim of making a Bouillabaisse.
This fish soup with chunks of fish has become a famous Marseille dish of broth, lots of fish and sea food, served with a garlicky and peppery rouille and even some grated cheese.
1st June 2020
Spatchcocked cockerel on the grill
Spatchcock, or butterflying, is a method in which one cuts the backbone away from the bird and flattens the carcass.
1st April 2020
A simple aïoli
For many people aïoli is a garlic sauce that goes over fries, kebab or shawarma. But in the Provence, aïoli is more than that and can be an entire festive meal with fish, snail, squid, artichokes and other vegetables with a dollop of the creamy garlic sauce.
26th February 2020
Fried spinach with apple, shallot, sambal and soy sauce
A quick recipe for a healthy vegetable side dish of spinach and apples.
22nd December 2019
Pancakes!
In France, people eat a lot of pancakes. They are flat and called “crèpes” and can be sweet of savoury. In Breton pancake eateries they have savoury “sarazin” crèpes that could rival with pizzas. The “crèpes Suzette” is an alcohol soaked sweet desert. In the Netherlands where I grew up, the pancakes are thicker and can be baked with slices of lard or apples. I […]
18th November 2019
Beef pear with trumpet of the death mushrooms
My butcher usually keeps two special cuts aside when he gets a new carcass — the poire and the merlan — and I have the right of first refusal. I hardy ever refuse.
These are very fine cuts, one is oblong and looks like a fish (merlan being a whiting) and the poire looks like a big pear. They come from near the topside, in English butchery terms. For French butchers, they are near the tranche. It is lean and delicate meat and not so well known because there is just about a pound of it on an entire cow.
18th November 2019
Pasta with clams, Saint Jacob scallops and squid
This weekend was the “Foire aux harengs et à la coquille de St Jacques” in the coastal town of Dieppe but we could not go to the Normandy port.
To mark this weekend of herring and scallops and encourage the hard-working small-boat fishermen there, I made a dish with scallops from my local fishmonger.