Category: French food

Artichokes

One of the food I miss much in Japan as you already know, is artichoke. For some reason it is something that reminds me my childhood. From the simply boiled large ones that one of my grand mother would prepare to eat one leave after the other dipped in mustard vinaigrette, or the tiny purple artichokes barigoule of my mother or a recipe from my other grand mother “greek style artichokes” I love them all. When we lived in Paris I used to prepare some quite often and the greek style artichokes were always a good pick for casual dinners. When we go back home, my mother always prepare artichokes for me, usually for the very first day when we arrive, since they can be made in advance, and they are very good warm or cold it means lunch or dinner is always ready for us to eat anytime. Yesterday for a family lunch she made artichokes greek style. I thought I’d share that recipe today.

Artichoke greek style (for 2)

– 10 large artichokes (in worst case artichokes heart preserves)

– 10 bell onions

– 1 tbs of coriander seeds

– 2 leaves of laurel

– a branch of thyme

– 3 tbs of olive oil

– 3tbs of white wine (optional)

Boil the artichokes and extract the hearts.

Clean the bell onion by peeling one layer.

In a large pan put the olive oil, the wine, the artichokes hearts, the onions, the coriander, thyme, laurel. Add just a bit of salt and pepper, cover with water and cook at low heat under cover for 40min.

Perfect eaten with fresh rustic bread to enjoy all the delicious juice.

How quick…

Not enough time to do all the things I want to do… and in a snap it’s already mid December…

Busy days follow busy days… the excitement of all the things I do leaves me quite resourceless and for the first time in quite a while I feel tired. Tired of so many things undone, tired of running after time, tired because of too little sleep. I am normally a heavy sleeper. If I dont sleep 7-8h I physically can feel it and I am underperforming. For the first time in quite a while I had a nap on Saturday afternoon. It was rainy and cold, perfect to just let it go… Just 20min but my body and my mind were craving for it. It gave me new strength to start again!

I started by baking pompes a l’huile for ourselves and to give away to friends. December is definitely the time to bake pompes a l’huile, this Provence traditional sweet bread we eat for Christmas. And it’s really easy to make and bake, and so easy to eat, so making several at the same time is probably a good idea!

The recipe is quite simple. I posted it quite some time ago. I made a few variation this time. Used a little less olive oil (believe it or not, I ran out of olive oil!!!) and I used the zest of a tangerine from the garden!

This was a great success! Everyone loves pompe a l’huile!!!

Pompe in the making, proving

Panisse

Probably very few of you know what panisse are… you only know if you’ve been to Provence long enough or have a specific interest in regional cooking… Panisse are an other traditional recipe based on chickpea flour and that cones from Italy apparently, but is also famous as far as Marseille. I’ve already shared the recipe of socca from Nice, panisse are something different. They are thicker and fluffier. Most recipes I’ve found are just using the same ingredients as socca but cook it in a pan with a lot more water, and then wait for it to cool down before frying them. I wasn’t too happy with these recipes and tried one I found in one of my vegetarian cookbook. The reason I was interested in that recipe is because you need to add a bit of baking soda to the mix… and you can cook it immediately and eat it immediately too. I still cooked it in a frypan like the socca but it resemble a giant fluffy pancake.

So here is my recipe.

Panisse

– 100g of chickpea flour

– a pinch of salt

– 1tbs of olive oil

– 1tsp of baking powder

– water

In a bowl mix all the ingredients and add water little by little until the mix is thick but not dry.

Heat a frypan of 15cm diameter, grease slightly with olive oil, pour the mix and cook at low heat, under cover, until it’s almost dry on top. Flip, and cook 2more minutes. Cut and eat!

You can use a lot more oil when cooking the panisse, but this is not mandatory… you can also add a bit of salt after too… enjoy!

Special guest: Eliane

The Causse Mejean doesn’t have too many places to eat out and enjoy local products nor sleeping options… but it wasn’t always the case… until 15 years ago there was a magic place where to eat and that was also an inn. The place where my parents went while looking for a place to sleep when they were honeymoon touring the region. I have never known the name of the inn it has always been “chez madame Fage”. This place was where you could have delicious soup made from the kitchen garden vegetables, a salad just freshly taken and dressed simply, the marvelous chocolate mousse the daughter Eliane would make for dessert. It had the rustic flavors while being perfectly prepared and fresh. I keep beautiful memories of this place. The aperitif under the wisteria, the big wooden tables, the check table cloth and napkins… a picturesque place. Mas Saint Chely, where “madame Fage” was is just a 30min walk from our house through a pasture track, and of course we decided to take the walk up there, not knowing what to expect as madame Fage closed 15 years ago, the bread-shops and the other very few places in the village also closed down more than 20 years ago.

As we were making our ways through the village I instantly recognized the kitchen garden, the winding street and the terrace covered with the wisteria. Nothing had changed. I climbed up the stairs and knocked and Eliane opened the door as she would always do! For a moment time had stopped!

She offered us drinks on the terrace, with the same glasses and the same fresh water, what was new for us was her lavender syrup. Made with the wild lavender flowers found on the causse, it was devine so I needed to ask her recipe and share it with you.

Lavender syrup

– a large handful of lavender flowers rather fresh

– 1L of clear water

– 600g to 1kg of sugar

Wash the flowers gently. In a large pan filled with the water, bring them to a boil for 2min then stop and leave for 24h. Add 600g to 1kg of sugar for 1l of liquid depending on how sweet you like it and how long you want to keep it (the longer the sweeter). Bring to a boil and cook at low heat for 10min. Let cool down and bottle the syrup… that’s it!! Drink diluted with water or use in cooking… with grilled white meat, desserts…

Cat hiding in a street of Mas Saint Chely

Lozère

Hello there!!! You may have wondered where I was all this time… well… after another crazy busy week in Tokyo, a rapid stop in Paris, and a long drive, I was in Anilhac in my parents country house to celebrate their 50´s wedding anniversary. The house is not equipped with internet and there is no 3G or 4G coverage there either. So obviously I had to be disconnected for a while. After that I went straight to Germany for work and now I’m finally on my way back to Paris for a last stop for work before heading home… pfiou…

Being disconnected from my phone wasn’t a big deal to be honest… I can totally live without it and days in Anilhac we’re actually busy with hiking, flying and very little cooking as mom had planned everything… I only made pancakes for the whole family one morning…

Lozère is not very famous for food and staples: the most well known products are chestnuts from Cevennes, cheeses made of sheep milk, honey, wild berries, and wheat… that’s probably it… it’s a very barren region, with tough winters and dry summers, very poor. Mostly sheep and shepherds. Actually, the house is a former sheep house my parents transformed 45 years ago in a country house.

Life for me in Anilhac is about being outside, hiking, reading and drawing by the fireplace, then having meals all together.

Meals there are usually simple… a very lot of cheeses for me (this place is cheese heaven!!), and some cured meat for A., fresh vegetables from the neighboring kitchen gardens, and some wild fruits from the garden or harvested during the hikes: plums, hazelnuts, blackberries… oh… and braised potatoes of course! Baked in the embers of the fireplace.

Oh! And my parents had a surprise for us: I finally managed to fly a glider from le Chanet airfield… it was quite an experience… after seeing my sister doing it 37 years ago, and always wanted to try…

Take off

Bouillabaisse my way

As you already may know or you can check here, bouillabaisse is a classic summer dish in my family. My grand mother, and now my mother prepare it for family gatherings. While I love it and have helped preparing it many times with my grand mother as a child (I even fished the soup…) this is something that I absolutely cannot prepare now as the preparation of the fishes indisposes me. The single idea of emptying a fish and cleaning it, or cutting a fish head or crushing a whole fish just makes me sick. That’s why I always ask at the fish stand that they do it to me or I buy sashimi cuts or clean cuts far from the belly. And so you may remember that recipe of simmered fish a few weeks ago… well I got the same cut again. And while I was thinking of preparing it exactly the same way, an outing to Hoff market in Ohara to see our pottery teacher has made me change my mind as I bought lovely potatoes there. Indeed there are always a few stands selling organic locally grown vegetables. This potatoes made me crave a kind of bouillabaisse. So I made it my way. I first prepared ichiban dashi with konbu and katsuo bushi to replace the fish soup. Then I sliced the potatoes and add them to the soup. After a bit added the fish and a bit of soya sauce, sake, and two lovely purple tiny bell peppers (optional and not in the classic bouillabaisse, but I really wanted to try them) , and cooked under cover for 15min. And served.

The fish cooked in the fish stock and with the potatoes definitely had a familiar taste and reminded me a lot of bouillabaisse, but without all the annoying parts!!

Have a good week!

Brandade

Probably the last recipe of this potatoes week. I could have talked about gnocchi (but I have so many times done already), about hachis parmentier, or oven grilled potatoes, and I may some other times. But it’s true that with new potatoes I love simple recipes when they are steam or pan fried. Yet there was one recipe I had never tried before and I wanted to for quite a bit now: brandade. It’s a traditional recipe from Provence and Occitanie and I grew up eating some quite often. Like many traditional dishes it is rather simple to prepare, and it requires very few ingredients: salted cod, potatoes, milk, olive oil. It just requires to prepare in advance the salted cod that needs to bath in water for 12-24h or so. I made a very light version on brandade, and we ate it as a dip for steam vegetables. It can be used further in a few recipes too: with bread toasts, potatoes, tomatoes… But without further delay here is the recipe. I hope you’ll enjoy it!!

Brandade

– a piece of salted cod

– one mid size potato

– olive oil

– milk

– pepper

12 to 24h before eating bath the cod in water. Change the water once in a while. If you use Japanese salted cod, the quantity of salt is much less than in Europe so I only had mine bathing for 6h.

Now that the cod is soft and almost unsalted, boil it in a large pan and boil the potato to without peeling it. When cooked, remove the bones of the cod and peel the potato.

I used my blender but you can do it in a bowl too and do it manually. Put the cod and the potato and purée the mixture, add a tablespoon of milk and one of olive oil each time it’s needed to smoothen the mixture. Repeat until you have a creamy dry texture. It should not be liquid so be careful when adding the liquid, not to add to many. Add pepper and your brandade is ready!!

Sugar bread

When I was a child we use to spend part of August in my parents country house on the Causse Mejean, France. It was a long drive to go there, we would often stop have breakfast or lunch on the way, have a swim in Gard, and then start the winding road that goes up and down and up and down and finally up. This road is the Corniche des Cevennes and is definitely a beautiful one I would recommend to everyone who likes driving. Once up in our house, the nearest shop is a mere 30min drive. By then their would be food trucks coming with bread, meat and some groceries. I remember the fouace that we would buy and then have for breakfast. It was a heavy kind of brioche but nit buttery, with a sticky crust. After I was 10, this bread wasn’t sell anymore, so it’s been some time I haven’t had any. You can then imagine my surprise the first time I cooked sugar bread from Kayser bread book. It was exactly that. I made sugar bread a few times, and each time it took me back there. So now I want to share this recipe with you. If you think about it, it a classic bread recipe in which you add a bit of sugar, and finish with a syrup to have the sticky soft crust.

Sugar bread (500g bread)

– 250g of white flour

– 160g of tepid water

– 5g of yeast

-5g of salt

– 40g of brown sugar

– 3tbs of sugar and a bit of water for the syrup

Mix all the ingredients together except those for the syrup. Knead until soft. Prove for 2h. Shape as you like. I made a ball but I could also have made a braid. Leave to rest for 1h. Then bake at 200deg for 30min.

Make the syrup by mixing the sugar and water in a bowl. Apply the syrup everywhere and let cool down before eating.

Enjoy your week!!

Crêpes

It’s been a few years now that on Saturday afternoon I make crepes. Our Saturday from November to April, when not working, are filled with many activities, gardening in the morning and playing tennis or going for a hike or bicycle ride in the afternoon. The rest of the year we also go to the beach swimming and bodyboarding…

Around 17:00 is always a time we get hungry and since we dine late a little snack is never bad. I found that crepes were actually the fastest thing I could make in small quantity. Crepes look tedious to make and I had this image that should be made in large quantity but actually it is not the case. We usually have 2 crepes each, that we eat in the kitchen while chatting and having tea. I found a perfect recipe that makes just the right amount of dough for 4-5 crepes and we fill them with chocolate, almond butter, or just lemon juice and a bit of sugar. Here is my recipe, and it’s so simple and quick that I’m sure you’ll start making crepes often!!

Crêpes (4 pieces)

– a handful of white flour

– one egg

– 1 tsp of sugar

– 350ml of milk

In a bowl mix the flour, the sugar and the egg, add the milk slowly while stirring. You should easily obtain a smooth and rather liquid mixture.

In a greased heated pan pour a thin layer of mix and cook until you can flip it easily. Flip and add filling of your choice, fold in four and enjoy!!!

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