Category: French food

Recurring failure

I’m usually pretty confident in what I do, and in cooking more than anything else. I can try new recipes or invent new ones on the fly with quite some easiness and usually I obtain very very good results (it was one if the motivations for me to start this culinary journal, to keep track of my inventions).

That said (a little bit of self flattering never hurts!!!), I am not super human and there are things that I can never manage to master. Croissants are a great fancy for me and I love the idea of freshly baked croissants, buttery and fluffy, with a perfect puff to start a great Sunday. Despite having tried 4 or 5 times, having checked different recipes, watch videos and read books… I failed poorly in reaching my goal every single time. The taste is always great but the result is never a puff pastry croissants, it is a bread-ish, brioche-ish, milk bread-ish thing but never puffed. I don’t know what’s wrong with what I do or use. I’m incriminating the floor, the yeast, the kneading, the rolling and the folding… tried to improve each but didn’t succeed. If you are a successful croissants maker I’ll be more than happy to receive first hand feedbacks and hints to succeed next time. I’m also considering finding a class, if you know any I’ll be happy to learn about it…

Please help me make puffy croissants for Sunday morning breakfast !!!

Whaou!

Quite a week, and it’s only Thursday!!!  So let’s get back to when I left you last Saturday… Sunday evening we had 4 guests (mix of French and Japanese) for dinner at home in Tokyo so I cooked some of my half new recipes: creamy cauliflower soup with curried croutons (recipe below), pork cutlet with roasted roots: lotus, taro, sweet potatoes, turnips, deglazed in soya sauce, and for dessert hasaku with spices syrup (ginger, cinnamon and cardamom) served with sesame and kinako biscuits. A. picked many Japanese and French wines to accompany my food. Oh… and I also made some plain and olive fougasse, with the olives from the garden in Aix that my mother prepared! But that was Sunday and it seems ages already!!!

And then Monday it had snowed, quite a lot actually, so I came back home earlier than usual to avoid being stucked with train problems. And I was happy to work from home eating left over sesame-kinako cookies with a hot chaï late. And having nothing to prepare or so for dinner since I hade made too many roasted vegetables! I like to recycle leftovers and do new things with them. So I added fukinoto and topped with sprouts for a perfectly balanced dinner. It was a great flavor experience! Fukinoto bring so much!! They are also the taste of coming spring with plum blossoms! And then there was this workshop I co-organized at the French Embassy. Everything went great, I met amazing people, now I can think about what’s next (and there’s plenty) and go back to the work routine for a short while!!

How is your week doing? 

Cauliflower soup with curried croutons (6 servings as starter)

– 1 cauliflower

– 1 potato

– 150ml of cream

– 4 slices of bread (I used half rye bread I made) 

– 2tsp of curry

– oil for the frying the croutons

– salt, pepper  

In a large pan I boil the cauliflower washed and chopped and the potato, peeled and chopped too. When they are very soft I blend everything. Add water if it’s too thick. Then add the cream.

In a fry pan add oil and the curry, cut the bread in cubes and fry them while turning them regularly. When golden take them out and keep them on cooking paper. When serving heat the soup, add salt and pepper if you lile, serve and top with the croutons. I added a sprinkle of tumeric for adding a bit of color.

Le petit nice

After the buzz of a family Christmas celebration, the noise and the fuss, it is now quiet, even peaceful and time to celebrate my birthday. My parents booked a table at le Petit Nice, a three Michelin star restaurant in Marseille that I like very much for the excellent Mediterranean cuisine and the beautiful view from the dining room. It’s been a really long time I haven’t been there, probably at that time it was not Gerald Passedat but his father Jean-Paul, so I was glad to go again, and with the grey and cold day, it was even more adequate. Since I came last time the place has been nicely refurbished, with classic modern flair, and Jean-Paul Passedat welcoming you at the entrance is just great! As expected the menu (adapted for my taste) was perfect and two dishes really surprised me and enchanted me taste-wise more than the others. The first one was the turbot with fennel. A magic fish preparation with several fennel versions: seeds, roots, juice etc… The second dish that was really unique was the dessert with cacao, persimmon and black olives. The mise en bouche was just strickingly beautiful, like a piece of Mediterranean sea in the plate. If you are in Marseille and want a great culinary experience, do not miss the place!

And to continue the pleasure of the experience the book is really great! With some recipes to try very soon!

Le petit nice

17 rue des Braves, 13007 Marseille

website  not fully operational and up to date (the dining room is now much nicer)

Shiitake week! Day 1!

After weeks trying to get this new rythm, I think we’ve almost got it… and a weekend in the country with tennis, gardening and cooking, plus the cat and a bit of work was the perfect way to completely get it right. My muscles hacking from the tennis and the gardening: trimming a Japanese pine is quite a demanding task, and I didn’t even manage to get it done… For the cooking I have been enjoying a lot the autumn vegetables, in particular most of my recipes included shiitake lately, I put them every where. So this week is a shiitake recipe week! But if you don’t have shiitake you can replace them by porcini or simple mushrooms. 

Let’s start with this very nice marcrobiotic French Japanese style recipe of Persillade. Traditional persillade is made with garlic, parsley, oil etc… except that I don’t like garlic (one reason why I never use it, despite all the health benefits it may have), so I have invented this new recipe that ressembles persillade but is much more fun and goes perfectly with shiitake! Here is my recipe!

My ginger persillade (for 2) 

– 1 cup of brown rice

– 2 carrot

– 6 shiitake

– 1/2 burdock root

– parsley

– fresh ginger

Cook the rice in a pot, Japanese style, or in a rice cooker. Brown rice requires a little bit more water than white rice. 

Peel the burdock, cut in bites and wash abundantly, same with the carrots. Wash the shiitake and slice them thinly. In a heated pan add a bit of olive oil, then the burdock, later the carrots and finish with the shiitake. Stir once in a while. 

Peel the ginger, cut in thin slices and then dice in 1mm side. Wash the parsley and chop it. Add the ginger and the parsley in the pan, stir regularly. Add a bit of olive oil if necessary. That’s it!  

Serve the rice, the vegetables and enjoy your meal!!! 

Curry-rice quiche!

Not enough of the leek tart with some brown rice pie crust, I went further with this curry-rice quiche. All in one dish all in one quiche! Same pie crust as the last post, but this time after half baking it I filled it with a special mix. In a pan I cut roughly a bundle of fresh spinach washed, 2 pieces of chicken breast and cooked at high heat for 5 minutes, then added a block of silky tofu and cooked 10 minutes while stirring, finished with 1tbs of curry powder, some red pepper, nutmeg and salt and pepper, took away from the heat and added 3 eggs. Stirred well and poured everything in the pie crust. Baked for 35min at 180deg, checking regularly after 20min that it wasn’t over cooked but just golden. I served that to friends for dinner with a fresh green salad. Simply delicious and astonishing! 

Tiny new potatoes

When I was a kid my grandfather had a terraced kitchen garden where he would grow in the summer green beans, tomatoes, salads, radishes, strawberries, raspberries, red currants, herbs, there was also a fig tree, a verbena tree etc… I have vivid memories of eating the tomatoes on the plant while warm from the sun and full of the smells of the tomato leaves, of picking red currants and eating half of them before they even reach the basket… one thing that I really loved was picking potatoes with him, not only because it was fun picking them, but because of the promise of one of my favorite dish at that time: new potatoes sautéed. The main difference with new potatoes you can find on the farmers market is the size pf the potatoes. My grandfather never waited until the potatoes where big to harvest them, he harvested them whem most where still very tiny, and the tiniest was always in my plate. Today, I went to visit our old neighbor. Since her dog has passed she doesn’t come mear our place as often as she used too so I meet her much less. And she was in her kitchen garden harvesting potatoes. She offered to give me some and while discussing she told me that most people criticize her for harvesting also tiny potatoes but I told they were my favorite so she gave me plenty and I was very happy. It is rare to find tiny new potatoes and they are really delicious. I washed and brushed them and cooked them with some pork belly slices and rosemary. A very simple meal, very nostalgic. Thanks Mrs. K. For the tiny potatoes!!!!

Fougasse bacon-mustard

I make fougasse regularly, and I regularly change the ingredients and try new recipes: fougasse, sesame  fougasse, olive fougasse… This time I tested a new recipe with smoked bacon and mustard. Simply delicious for a quick bite! I used my reguler recipe base with plain white flour. And when shaping the fougasse I added bacon that I cut in small cubes and mustard. Then folded the dough and rolled it to trap the bacon and the mustard mainly inside. And shaped it as usual. Same baking time, same olive oil brushing after baking.

Have a great week! 

Clafoutis

Yes! The season for clafoutis is coming again! I love summer and summer fruits simple recipes like clafoutis, tarts and simply poached fruits with herbs or spices. The clafoutis recipe is really simple: 4 ingredients only: flour-eggs-milk-sugar, but you can easily make some variations by changing the balance between the ingredients, or using vegetal milk rather than cow milk. Recently I’ve been using quite a lot of a new organic non-modified soya milk and again I used it this time. I wanted also a rather thick consistency so I used more flour than usual and fewer eggs (only 3). And since cherries are really sweet, and I had plenty, and I prepared the clafoutis for breakfast I used very little untreated natural sugar. Nothing new here, just that the season has arrived again and many clafoutis will be made this summer too I guess!!!

Golden week(end)

The golden week in Japan is this blessed moment in spring when there are several bank holidays and when usually the weather is perfectly warm but not hot and the nature is full of dpring greens, flowers and days are getting longer with a beautiful light. This is a time when we usually have msny friends coming to our country house and I can cook a lot of different things for them. This weekend was the beginning of the golden week. Ot was just a normal weekend for us since we are working Mondayand  Tuesday, but it was a wonderful lively weekend with friends.

For our friends visiting on Sunday I prepared a mix of Japanese food and French food with all the seasonal and local ingredients. I prepared my classic bamboo shoot and capers salad, some spelt bulgur salad, some olive fougasse with olives my mother has made, and a big cocotte of new onion with zucchini and rosemary. The new onions are so sweet and soft that I cook them as whole, with just olive oil, salt and pepper, then later I had the zucchini which required much less cooking. For the meat eaters, some porc slices are nice to add. And after a long lunch in the garden, what best than going to the empty beach at sunset watch some surfers and play with our friends dog?

I wish you an excellent week!

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