With the warmer days around the corner, the menu is also changing. Mustard can be your ally here. I declare mustard a summer pantry esential! Let me give you a couple examples.
Mustard tomato tart
This tart is in essence, a shortcrust pastry, some mustard, cut tomatoes. Depending on what you may have at hand in the kitchen or the garden, you can obtain various declinaison of it. On its own, it is quite light. So, a side salad is required.
This recipe jumps back to mind from time to time, I am always pleased with the result!
If you are in a hurry, feel free to use ready-made pastry, puff pastry works well with it to. Otherwise, make a shortcrust pastry, let it rest for half an hour at least, and you are good to go.
For the mustard I use the plain dijon mustard. Roll your pastry, spread the mustard on the base, place sliced tomatoes over. The one I made recently has some grana padano cheese, enoki mushrooms, thyme and rosemary, salt, pepper, olive oil. That simple!
Mustard Chicken casserole
Another recipe highlighting mustard as a pantry essential is the mustard chicken casserole.
You may think a casserole is for the colder months. This one works all year round really. It can be done for a large number of people or just a small number. It is simple to make. Serve with couscous semolina in summer or a little potatoe mash and green salad. Find the recipe HERE.
Today, when we went back to our car after a few hours spent at the beach, we saw three young girls rushing away from a front yard with something that appeared to be very precious in the hands. They were mulberries. The careful attitude had a lot to do with avoiding having blackened hands and squashing the fruits! This did it for us, it was time to go and check our neighbourhood trees and go foraging for mulberries!
Mulberry Trees
Mulberry trees are not an Australian native tree species and because of that, many councils have simply cut the mulberry trees over the last five to ten years. In our area, this has not yet been the case. The tree we went to is quite large, the season is just starting. The fruits this year do not appear to be very big but there are plenty.
A child’s adventure
This foraging expedition is best shared with children. The children love it! They get really excited, so I got them to gather our “kit” and we were ready. We took boxes and a stool and off we went.
The first berries are easy to get to…
Then, a bit more strategy and skills are required…
The other solution? Shake gently one branch and gather the fallen fruits, it is quite effective.
Now, our rule is to gather just what we need and no more. It is a lot of fun and a great adventure!
After that, when we got home, we washed the fruits and removed the stalk. As a result, we did end up with fingers very purple, most of it has not washed off.
Mulberry Pie
The end purpose of collecting mulberries was to make a mulberry pie. It is after dinner now and the left over of our pie is standing on the dinning table not far from me, I can smell its distinctive fruit and buttery aroma!
These last couple weeks, there has been intense activity in the kitchen, I mean more than usual. There has been renovation works, still are actually. Now, I have, after 18 month of cooking on an outdoor stove, a good oven and cooktop and, ceiling lights and power plugs there and there! You can imagine I was pretty excited to get this new oven to the test! In addition to that, I will be managing the food stall at my daughter’s school Halloween Fete and I am trialing a few recipes! A great adventure. Hence, cooking aplenty at the moment!
Last pears of the year
Pears are nearing the end of their season in Australia and I came across a bunch of them just begging to be used on the seconds trolley of my grocery store. Of course I could not resist! I have been willing to do an almond pear tarte for a while.
I ended by using a Donna Hay recipe . The recipe is easy. There is no tart shell. The tart consists simply in a cake dough placed in a tarte tin with pears pushed in it. Cool it down it its tin and serve on a long platter. I would advise to place some baking paper at the bottom, this would make the removal of the bottom part of the tin easy. Click HERE for the recipe.
Look how we recycled an old laundry wash board!
Bread renewal!
With my new oven which keeps the steam (and the heat), I have made a try at semi-sourdough baguettes. Mines were quite short, just to make sure they could fit in the oven. Success!!!
These below is the preshape stage.
And another beauty, this one baked Friday night. A semi-rhye sourdough
Halloween pre-taste
For the school fete food menu, I have decided to expand a bit into some creative pieces that the children will beg their parents to get them. I will speak more about it in a coming post, here is a little pre-taste!
These creatures are madeleines covered in coloured white chocolate. The antennas are pretzels.
What did recipes in the 1800s looked like? Going through a number of old handwritten books, I realised that most of old French recipes were savoury and not exactly very precise. Many titles didn’t speak much to me, so I decided to have a closer look. I am sharing my first trial at following one of the recipes of those books “old recipe 1” !
My first cookbook
My first cookbook is very special. Years ago, still a child, maybe 14 years old, my grandmother, who was having an extended stay at our place called me in her room. That day, my grandmother gave me her cooking book. She trusted I would develop strong cooking skills. My grandmother was an amazing cook. At the time she gave me the book, she was no longer able to cook. As a child (but no longer now), it impressed me that she could tell by smell when a cake was ready or other food.
What is amazing is that cookbooks from people in the first 1920s were fully handwritten! Such is the case for that one. As years went pass, there are also recipes extracted from magazines or newspapers and marks to identify key recipes.
A few years back, I discovered plenty other handwritten old french recipes in archives of the family house. From there was born the idea of selecting some of these old French recipes and making them. This week was the first trial.
Creme blanche, the recipe
Of course, I started with a dessert. One of the primary reason was that the ingredients required were easy to source, the other one is probably that desserts making are my strong area.
This recipe is sourced from a cooking book which had belonged to a long time departed aunt (late 1800s if I am right).
The recipe is in French, in old French and potentially with a number of spelling mistakes.
The recipe of the creme blanche, bottom right
A quick english translation would be:
“White cream
Four egg whites, well beaten to stiff peaks, add to it a pint of cream, [???] lemon rind and two spoon of caster sugar. Place the mix in a saucepan on the fire and continuously mix until it has reached second boil. Pour into a serving dish. It is served cold and should not deflate. When you will beat the egg white on their own, use two forks, it is easier this way”
As you will understand there are a few words I could not make out. Strangely enough, the spelling in this text is quite different to modern French spelling. I tried many internet searches but did not find anything like this recipe anywhere.
The modern “Creme Blanche”
For a start, I am not going to beat the egg whites with a fork, I have done it in the past when baking in places with little cooking equipment, it is quite a bit of work!
Then came the issue of measurement units. The recipe calls for a pint of cream. The internet has various volumes. I used my gut feeling and cloudy memory of old discussions and based it on half a litre.
In the recipe itself, the main challenge is not to overheat the mix or the cream will split. Here we go:
The ingredients
Egg whites to stiff peaks
Adding the lemon rind
Adding the sugar
Here we go
Transfering to the saucepan
Lets start cooking
The result
Creme blanche, just after pouring out of the saucepan
The result was a light fluffy cream. I may have slightly overcooked it but not to the point of splitting. It tastes good. It is a very simple dessert as would have been desserts in those time, working with the ingredients which would have been easily accessible.
I was on a mission, or a conquest. I wanted to make and eat a delicious tiramisu. But what do you do when you don’t like or drink coffee and cannot enjoy this world renown italian dessert in its original version?
I was well decided to give it a try and bought half a kilo of mascarpone from my Italian grocer. The previous times I had bought mascarpone, I went nowhere close to a tiramisu. I just kept using that mascarpone for other things, often radically different. That way I discovered that mascarpone makes a great cake icing: the taste is light (much lighter than butter cream), a bit tangy, and in terms of practicality, it is super easy to spread. If you want to know more, follow this link.
Back to my tiramisu tale (yes, we are getting there). Since I was not going to convert to coffee overnight (I did try a couple times without much success), I browsed through a number of recipes to get a bit of background to the dessert and made up my mind: it was going to be a lemon curd tiramisu!
Here it is!
The execution is super simple, no need to be a great cook, so get some mascarpone and some savoiardi (sponge fingers) and get going!
There is room for changes to adapt to taste. Tiramisu recipes, even the coffee version, are very versatile. I ended up also doing a small coffee tiramisu for my husband who loooooves that dessert and his coffee!
A few tips:
Tiramisu recipes also contain cream, the ratio can be adapted if you don’t have exactly the right amount;
You may use alcohol or not. If not, you will need a sugar syrup to soak your biscuits in. I make 1/2 L to a litre at the time and keep it in a glass bottle. Alternatively you can find some ready made versions in some deli or specialised shops.
Do not forget the almonds, they make the tiramisu by bringing this added crunch and taste.
My lemon curd tiramisu, the concept:
The recipe can be found on its own page (lemon curd tiramisu). Here below is the concept:
Today is not about food, it is the launch of MY POT SHOP!
Pottery is another passion which started some years ago. A few years ago when we lived in Brisbane I bought my pottery wheel. I can just thrown bowl just to relax or for a mission I set myself on! I also do a little hand building.
I make essentially functional tableware: bowls, plate, serving dishes, souffle dish, and more bowls. At times, a teapot and a few cups.
I recently picked up a large batch of my pots from the person who does my pots firing. I have been making these bowls over the last months. Now the question is what to do with 40 new bowls ! I have replaced some broken and chipped ones and kept a few. Some early birds bought some directly.
You got the idea. Hence MY POT SHOP. Check out the below gallery!
I can not keep everything unfortunately, so the sale page is now open.
PLEASE SHARE THIS POST 🙂
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Use Specs:
The bowls are microwave safe, dishwasher safe. For the larger earthenware bowls, it is better to handwash and not soak those whose base is not glazed. You can use them in the oven is you wish, if so, small cracks may appear overtime in the glazing.
This week has been strawberry crazy at home! With 4 boxes of 500 g for less than 5 dollars, no wonder I bought quite a few boxes! Do you want to know how many? 16! Yes, indeed! But they are now all gone, we had the last ones at diner (and everyone is not bored with eating strawberries).
In my strawberry crazy week, I did some jam, we had strawberry tarts, roasted, strawberry for breakfast, for dinner and for lunch boxes. Guess what, we finished the strawberries tonight!
Two recipes were a great success. I will share those with you now.
Again some madeleines, but these ones are strawberry and rosemary madeleines
This madeleines were really a trial, I was trying to find something to go with poached pears and that could be done relatively quickly. These strawberry and rosemary madeleines turned out quite good. They were not as crunchy as the plain ones but the rosemary and strawberry do bring another dimension to that biscuit. Quite good with poached pears indeed! Click here for the recipe.
And of course a strawberry tart
I made the base with my younger daughter, the older one (7 y.o) did the rest of the tart with a bit of instructions. I use a few versions of strawberry tarts. You can find more on the dedicated page for strawberry tart recipes. Basically, the tarts all have a sweet short crust pastry, you then choose or not to have a layer over the pastry before placing the strawberries. The added layer can be roasted strawberries pureed or a creme patissiere (custard). On top of the strawberries, we use a bit of jam diluted and brush it on, it adds taste and shine.
Madeleines are very versatile biscuits. First, they taste great. Then they are kind of cute. The other advantage is that they take no time to make and that you generally will ave the ingredients at home!
Madeleines can be served on their own for the afternoon snack, or with coffee or tea. I love them, and I am not the only one (tested for you!). They are also perfect for children who come back again and again for a spare one!
Yes, from chocolate mousses (last week) to soups, what a change! We can’t eat chocolate all the time as we all know.
What do you think of this little menu: a soup, a small pasta dish and a chocolate mousse. Sounds like a balanced menu to me! Anyway, winter here marks an increase in the amount of soups I prepare. Soups are mega healthy and easy, so no excuse, get the big pot out!
The turnip soup
I bought turnips. What? Yes, turnips! For the French followers who may hesitate on the translation, I am speaking of “navets”). I have ever been a fan. What is the story here? Not being a fan, I never buy turnip, except extremely rarely while preparing a large dish of couscous (the whole dish from northern Africa, not just the semolina part). The rarity is that I don’t do couscous very often, good merguez are hard to find and when I do a couscous, I don’t necessarily add turnips. Makes me feel like making a couscous soon. 🙂 I had always had that repulsion to turnip and wanted to give it a second chance. So I decided on a soup. I looked into the fridge, perfect I had some carrots and some fennel.
The above (half of the fennel shown) serve 3 people.
Peel you vegetables
Place them in a large saucepan or cooking pot
Add a little rock salt (the quantity will depend on the volume of soup), for the quantity pictured above 1/2 teaspoon is enough.
Cover with water and cook until the vegetables are soft.
For the turnip soup, if you don’t want the bitterness of the turnip you need to drain the cooking water or part of it unfortunately. If you like the bitterness, keep as such. Blend the soup. Add to it a couple cheese triangles (you can substitute for cream or cheddar cheese).
Eat warm and fresh with toasted buttered bread.
The 3 ADVICES FOR SOUPS
ADVICE 1: if you don’t want to eat the same soup for the whole week, make small batches!
It is very easy getting carried away by adding a lot of vegetables or adding a few items of each sort, but here I should advise against it:
You may have a wonderful soup but if you wanted to have a dominating taste, this will not be the case.
Trust me, after two meals your taste buds will ask for other flavours.
ADVICE 2: Add a little rock salt while cooking to avoid packing on salt when you eat it.
Include some salt to your cooking pot. The photo below is from a different mixed vegetables soup (kale, carrots, potatoes, celeriac branches). Why?
You will have less rush for excess salt when you eat it.
Some vegetables, such as carrots, cook better with a pinch of salt (apparently salting the water raises its boiling point, making it boil hotter, so that your carrots cook faster).
ADVICE 3: Tips on ingredients
In the choice of vegetables, you can go for a unique vegetables or a mix. When doing a single vegetable soup:
you want a vegetable which has a little bit of character.
You may also often choose to boost the flavours with a roasting process (it brings out the sugars in the vegetable by caramelising them) or some garlic or added cheese.
The mix vegetable soup is either a choice or a practicality:
The mix vegetable soup uses all those veges left in the fridge which need eating!
When combining vegetables, I would always ensure to have a less watery vegetable, this gives body to the soup, typically I would use a couple potatoes.
That soup is pretty easy to prepare.
Now, to the question do you need a litre of stock to make a soup, the answer is NO (exception of the onion soup). This is particularly true for the mix vegetable soup, you are basically creating a stock! For the single vegetable soups like cauliflower and pumpkin, if you want to use a good stock, by all means use it. Just watch out for added salts and flavours.
Soups’ Ideas!!! Yes, please!
The soups below are blended except if advised otherwise. Single vegetables soups that we make at home are:
the zucchini soup: boiled zucchini in very little water, pinch of salt, processed with a soft cheese such as “Vache Qui Rit” (cheese triangle) or works well with cheddar too.
The cauliflower soup: cauliflower steamed or partly roasted, partly steamed if time allows, with head of roasted garlic (keep only the cloves), thickened cream.
Pumpkin soup: with a little cumin or nutmeg. Served with chilli. Sometimes cooked with carrots. Also try the Thai pumpkin soup, love that one!
The onion soup (not blended), the preparation requires a good broth if possible, a bit more work to prepare than the other soups but really worth it.
the leek soup, “soupe au poireau” made of one leek (white AND green bits), 3 large potatoes, 2 carrots.
The minestrone. This is great when you have plenty vegetables. Cut them in small sizes. Plan to add small size pasta at the end. This soup is not blended.
You did read properly “Chocolate Mousses” with a “s” at the end. Yeah!!!
This means we get to speak about a few versions of this hero dish. There is no single recipe for chocolate mousse, the recipe to use depends on the application: is it to be served on its own? or is it to use as a layer in a cake?
I have also ventured into the word of raw and vegan people by trying the raw chocolate mousse in which avocados are used to create the body of the mousse. I even tried the water chocolate mousse from Heston Blumenthal, which was a lot of fun!
The classic French Chocolate Mousse
Use: dessert in individual portions or in a large bowl to share.
Ingredients: good dark chocolate and eggs ONLY (no sugar, no cream).
Accessibility: super easy to make and always a winner. Needs to be done in advance
I love this one, for me it is “the chocolate mousse”. Mum used to make a large bowl of it for the family and guests.
Use: in proper cooking, it is used as part of a layered cake but you will find it as a stand alone recipe if you google chocolate mousse in Australia (and probably most anglophone countries). When I am served such a mousse in a cafe or restaurant, it is for me a massive let down (and I won’t eat it, not a fan) and generally says much of the restaurant. However, in a layered cake, where it is associated with some more complex flavours, these mousse has its place.
Ingredients: cream whipped and mixed with chocolate powder, cocoa and sugar or at best cooking chocolate.
Accessibility: super easy. Should be done earlier.
The mixed version
I happen to make recently (not for the first time) a mousse which we really like. It is quite strong and is often served with some fruity notes and a crunchy element. This mousse is decadent! It is yummy and you must stop yourself to avoid cleaning off the bowl!
Use: As an element of a dessert. Likened to little chocolate pots desserts. The texture is silky and shiny!
Accessibility: super easy. Can be eaten straight away.
I tried the avocado chocolate mousse in order to know what it is all about. I purchased some raw cacao and was lucky enough to do my grocery when there was a special on avocados!
The concept is very simple: put the avocado flesh in the food processor with some raw cocoa and some liquid sweetener and whizz! You can add a little drop of water to reach the desired consistency.
I tried three versions of it:
raw cacao
dutch cocoa
good dark chocolate
The recipe is HERE. I pushed it and made some raw tarts (see photo).
Result: the fruity flavours of the cocoa, or maybe the avocado are really the novelty for me. If you don’t use enough cocoa, the avocado taste comes through which is not great. All together, it has a very earthy smell and flavour which is not for everybody. As for the tarts, the texture is very crumbly (just nuts, oil and sweetener), which is no surprise as there are no binder. Both the avo mousse and tarts were not a success in our household.
The Water chocolate mousse (Heston Blumenthal)
I had to try it. I saw it on television and just the idea of it grasped my curiosity.
The method is easy, you bring to the boil the water and pour it over your chocolate previously chopped in small pieces. Now start whisking and don’t stop! The whisking will integrate air bubbles while the temperature decreases. Eventually it reaches a crystallisation point. That point is reached all of a sudden. You get some warning as you see and feel the mix thicken, just then, it sets, if you go to far (like I did the first time) you get like a dirt texture which can actually be great for some specific desserts set up.
start whisking
Inserting bubbles
Done!
Water chocolate mousse. It hardens the minute is is made, to serve immediately.
Tips:
If you went too far, you can reheat the mousse a little , it will liquefy again, Start whisking again!
You can use a large bowl of ice to bring the temperature down quicker but remove it as soon as the mix starts to change a bit
The mix will be very liquid at first, then will become like cream, then thickened cream. Stop there.
Recipe and video HERE. Feel free to reduce the proportions, I used half of that.
Again a french classic, yoghurt cakes are called gateaux au yahourt in the french cuisine! The reason yogurt cakes are so well loved is these crusty edges and top and the moist inside with that yoghurt taste cake that we recognise closed eyes.
A yoghurt pot to measure all ingredients! How fun for kids!
In France, the recipe is based on the volume of a little pot of yoghurt (about 1/2 cup), so it is fun to measure the other ingredients with that container. Elsewhere in the word, yoghurt may not be sold so much in individual portions by default and also the use of measuring cups is not a novelty!
Two recipes to choose from:
Anyway, for you here, I have added two recipes to this blog and provided the quantities in grams as well.
The first one is the “original” yoghurt cake, it can be a bit floury, it is a matter of taste.
The second one (Yoghurt Cake, the other version) is not floury and has more yoghurt (and not so much sugar). I love that one too. The down is that the edges are not as addictive, the cake makes up for it in its taste.
The cake is generally baked in a round tin, but feel free to use muffin trays like I did.
If you use it for afternoon tea, the cake is great on its own. If you want to serve it for dessert, poach some fruits and serve it with the reduced poaching syrup!
Brussel sprouts are in season in Australia and right now the volume of production is quite big. You can not really miss them in stores or on markets. So read on and maybe you will add them to your next grocery list.
Let me ask you, do you know anything about the production of Brussel Sprouts?
Many of the people I know do not like Brussel Sprouts, maybe because of terrible tin version used in school canteens when they grew up or just because the taste can be quite strong. I will give you a few ways with Brussels Sprouts which work quite well!
Just in passing….check the nutritious qualities of Brussel sprouts: high in vitamins A, B1, B7, very high in vitamins B9), you will find plenty information by googling around. Surprising it has not yet been marketed as a superfood!
Where do Brussel’s Sprouts come from?
Brussel sprouts as their name suggests are associated with Brussel (Bruxelles) in Belgium, where they originate from. The Brussel sprout belongs to the cabbage family and as such its structure is quite similar to it big brother the large green cabbage.
Brussel Sprout plant seen from top (Photo: Jerome d’Hautefeuille)
In Europe, the areas of productions of Brussel sprouts are primarily the UK, Belgium, Holland and northern France. Australia has a few small areas of production.
Brussel Sprouts grow along the stem of the plant in a helicoid distribution (it turns around the stem). The stem can be quite high and reach over a metre height, this means quite a lot of sprouts per plant!
The photos below are courtesy of my brother who farms them in Northern France.
Brussel Sprouts Plant Stems, in a field before harvest (Photo: Jerome d’Hautefeuille)
The production is labour intensive throughout the crop development. At the start, seedlings are grown in nurseries, then have to be transplanted to full fields. During growth, interventions are rather mechanical. At the time of harvest, each plant is handled manually. Each stem is cut by the harvester then inserted manually into a part of the harvester which cuts off each Brussel sprout from the stem. The sprouts are collected by a conveyor belt, sorted (manually) in the upper section of the harvester. They can then start their journey to the consumer.
There are quite a few ways to use Brussel Sprouts, from raw whole in lunch boxes to cooked a number of way.
Raw use:
As such in lunch boxes
Only one Brussel sprouts in the box today, sometimes it is 2! Sometimes, I am to late, some little hands (or bigger ones) have emptied the bag of sprouts in the fridge
Add a couple thinly sliced Brussel sprouts to your green salad, it will provide some crunch and a little tasty bite.
Cooked:
Brussel sprouts taste better when associated with other ingredients, they are especially good at absorbing the good flavours of fats such as butter and bacon but also some sharp flavours like balsamic vinegar.
A common use in Australia is the use in Asian dishes such as stir fry dishes or curry. For those, it is nice when there is still a bit of crunch to the Brussel sprouts. I would advice the bigger sprouts be cut in half.
The most common way cooked by my mother when I grew up, was steamed and then slowly, but really slowly, reduced with a nut of butter and some bacon dices (lardons) for quite a while, you want the bacon to be crisp and the sprouts slightly coloured. The sprouts become very soft and melty and quite tasty. I tried with my children, our au-pair and my husband, it was a success. Unfortunately, I forgot about the photo! As a result, the one below photo is from another blogger.
Another way, which was a random find while looking at ways to use ricotta in savoury dishes is in a mushroom and Brussel sprouts lasagna. The sprouts are thinly sliced, then reduced in oil (but I should try in butter), seasoned with salt and pepper. A dash of balsamic vinegar is added to the pan towards the end of the cooking. I could have eaten the lot straight out of the pan!
The Brussel sprouts precooked overlying a layer of mushrooms in the Brussel sprouts and mushroom lasagna
I happen to make recently (not for the first time) a mousse which we really like. It is quite strong and is often served with some fruity notes and a crunchy element. This mousse is decadent! It is yummy and you must stop yourself to avoid cleaning off the bowl!
