Some people requested the recipe for a plain risotto of which my wife had posted a picture on Facebook. Well, why not? The trick with a good risotto is good ingredients and patience – you will have to stir almost constantly.
Cauliflower is a very healthy vegetable with anti-cancer and detox properties. However, it stinks when cooking and has a very bland taste. Basically, it is boring and needs something to liven it up. Often it is combined with cheese, as in the British cauliflower cheese dish or the Dutch cauliflower with cheese sauce dish. In France, cauliflower is often prepared with a white sauce of […]
We were in the north of France recently and had lunch with a friend who had prepared a regional dish of chicken legs with Maroilles sauce. Maroilles, named after a town, is a very pungent soft cow cheese that is produced in the Avesnois region in the north. Our host, Nathalie Banckaert, made the dish with chicken legs cooked in a stock with wine and […]
Sometimes you want something simple and pasta with meat sauce is a kind of comfort food for colder days. I do not like to buy pasta sauce in tins or jars and I did not want to go into the trouble of making a real Bolognese sauce because with the bacon (and mushrooms) it adds up to a rather filling and a bit fat sauce. […]
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.
This soup is delicious in itself but it is also a very good remedy against hangovers. Perhaps it is an idea to have some ready that you can simply warm up the morning after the evening in the festive season… There are several versions of garlic soup, especially from the southwest of France where they have the tourin – with onions and eggs – or, […]
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 […]
A tariflette is a potato, onion and cheese dish usually made in the mountains of the Savoie, during winter. We were at Maligny in a holiday home for a short stay in the Chablis area to taste and buy wines and eat some local delicacies such as snails, chitterling with Chablis wine and cheeses such as époises, Brillat Savarin and Chaource.
The death in Rome of James Gandolfini, the American actor who played a leading role in the Sopranos series, gave me pause to think. At just 51, his demise was a reminder that a heart attack can strike anytime. Especially if you do not exercise regularly and do indulge in the pleasures of life. It also reminded me of the scenes in Mafia movies where […]
‘Real men don’t eat quiche’ was the title of a 1982 book on masculine stereotypes, which only shows that not many men are ‘real’ in the red-neck sense of beef eating, beer swigging misogynists. Valentine’s Day (named after two martyrs called Valentine, killed on the same day by the same Roman emperor but in different years) is also a stereotype, a pagan celebration closely related […]