Category: French food

Brioches

With the temperature increasing slightly it’s becoming much easier for me to make breads. Normal people living in normal houses don’t have this kind of problem of course, but if your house is a Japanese traditional old house made roughthly of paper, that matters! Now I can knead and I know the result is gonna be nice, so it was high time for a brioche. Usually I cook them in a rectangular pie dish, but this time I wanted them round and golden all over, so I made them smaller and round.

kneading brioche requires a bit more time than bread and your hands get really nasty, but it’s too delicious!!! So for 6 of these beauties, you need, 250g of hard white flour; 40g of brown caster sugar; 6g of salt; 10g of sourdough; 7g of yeast;  3eggs; 120g of butter at room temperature; vanilla. Mix all the dry ingredients, add the eggs and finish with the butter. Knead until smooth and soft. It can take more than 30min. Then keep in a warm place until it has taken a bit of volume (it does not double or whatsoever). Then keep refrigirated for about an hour. On cooking paper, cut in 6, and shape the brioches the way you want; wait an extra 2h; you can then use an egg yolk for a golden finish, and bake at 170 for 25min.

One-plate salad

This morning the farmers market showed me once again that it is not clear which season we’re in!!! The transition seems to take an unusually long time and daikon and cabbages were lined together with strawberries and new wasabi leaves. It gave me the idea to prepare us a warm/cold salad with warm green lentils from France and thick fried tofu, fresh tomatoes and wasabi leaves, with an olive oil and soya sauce dressing and finished with a few sesame seeds!

3 types of cabbage tart

At the local farmers market the other day I found beautiful cauliflower, romanesco and broccoli. Having all them together I couldn’t help but cook something mixing it. I love the idea of having ingredients close in shape but different in taste and color, and the first idea that I had was to make a tart with a piece of each. And becauseI really love the idea of mixing Japanese flavors with western ones I decided to add in the base some katsuobushi flakes. For the dough, I opted for a classic sable dough. A perfect balance.

Brandade

This recipe is one of our mother recipe and is a traditional Provencal recipe using the leftovers of salted cod . After the cod has been unsalted and washed, just boiled it, then add milk and stir until the milk has been all absorbed by the fish. Add pepper and olive oil, stir again.  This mixture, called “brandade” is delicious on toasted bread, with boiled potatoes, as a spread or to stuff veggies. It’s good eaten either warm or cold. Here is a preparation of stuffed cherry tomatoes, perfect for a buffet or finger food.

Looking for the perfect madeleine recipe: may be I’ve found it!!!

Well, an other rainy Sunday to test some madeleine recipe and I think this time it’s the right one. At first I was a bit reluctant in trying it because it has a lot more butter in it, but so far it’s the one that guarantees the best bumps and the perfect consistency. So, too bad for the butter outage that we still have in Japan, this is the recipe I will adopt as a base for my madeleines from now on!

I found it on the blog Piroulie (http://piroulie.canalblog.com/archives/2008/12/03/10442707.html) and it’s a Lenotre recipe. I always do smaller amounts so I used: 100g of flour, 85g of butter, 40g of brown caster sugar, 2 eggs, 3g of baking powder, a pinch of salt, a large table spoon of honey, then whatever you want for flavoring. This time I used neroli. I first melt the butter in a little pan. Then in a bowl I mix the eggs, the sugar, the salt and the honey, and batter well until a foam starts forming. Then I add the flour, the baking powder and continue to mix. Finally I add the butter and the flavoring and refrigirated for 30min. The oven is preheated at 230deg and as soon as I insert the madeleines I drop the temperature to 200deg as Piroulie recommended. After about 5-7min I again lower to 180deg, then the bumps appear nice and big! I bake until almost all golden, and remove from the mold as soon as I take it out. Quite simple and really delicious!!

Pear tart “bourdaloue”

It’s been a long time I haven’t made cake or tart. With all the nice pears in the grocery store, I wanted to make one for tea time.  

You need a puff pastry, 4-5 nice pears. spread out the pastry, and put the pears cut in small dices. 

Mix 3 eggs with 3 spoon of brown sugar, 10cl of cream and 20cl of vanilla soy milk. You can add a drop of vanilla. And add 150g of almond powder. Pour this mix on the pears.  

Then 35-40 minutes in hot oven.  

You can add a pinch of slender almond on the top before the end of baking. 

Wait 1h before eating  

Madeleines

Since my last trial of madeleines this summer I didn’t had te time to get my molds and to try again, but now that days are really getting shorter and cooler the tea-time after gardening all afternoon requires a little complement and madeleines are perfect for that. So I went to buy some molds to Kappabashi street the other day and I just tried to make some madeleines again. I picked a different recipe than last time but I am not completely satisfied with the shape. They get a little bump, but not as big as I expeted. Taste-wise: perfect. Let me work a little on the recipe before sharing it. But if you have a good one let me know!!

Pompe à l’huile

We are weeks before Christmas and this year again I plan to bake the traditional pompe à l’huile for everyone. So right now once in a while I bake one just to polish my recipe. And I think I got it right this time! The pompe à l’huile is a traditional Christmas dessert in Provence. It is often mistaken with Gibassier. Pretty much every family has a recipe or a preference. Pompe brioche, with orange, with neroli, with anise… In our family we like a thin rather dry one, with neroli and a bit of orange peels.

Since it is an olive oil base dough it is extremely easy to knead and with the neroli it smells extremely good. A real pleasure to prepare!

For a 30cm pompe à l’huile I used: 180g of flour (regular flour not the strong one), 6g of dry yeast, 3g of salt, 35g of brown caster sugar, 60g of water, 75g of olive oil, 1 table spoon of neroli, a few candied orange peels, or a zest of orange.

I mix all the ingredients and add the orange peels in the last few minutes of kneading. I knead until the dough is smooth and soft as usual. Then I wait for 2 to 4 hours depending on the room temperature before shaping it. I roll the dough in a circle, cut and if you want you can strech the dough so that the cuts open loose for 1 cm. Then wait for a few hours before baking at 180deg until it goldens. While still hot with a cooking brush apply a thin layer of olive oil.

Maison Plisson

While in Paris last month I was curious about going to Maison Plisson since I read so many fantastic reviews about it in magazines, blogs etc… Maison Plisson http://www.lamaisonplisson.com, for those who don’t know, this is a Parisian grocery select store that has opened last May. It offers selected products from a variety of places mainly French but also from Europe.

As they also have a cafe and a restaurant we first went for lunch there before checking the adjacent shop.  It was an awfully rainy day so eating outside was not an option, so we had a tiny table squeezed between other tables and it felt quite exiguous. Like the whole place was designed as a cafetaria for 10 year old kids. Luckily the food was really nice, simple, home-made like.

My main disappoinment was the grocery shop. I was expecting a huge store but it’s rather ridiculously tiny supermarket on the ground floor, with low ceiling, and a basement that is even tinier and lower. Passed the disappointment of the entire space, what about the products? The cheeses and charcuterie looked nice but it was not an option for us since we couldn’t cook or bring back any to Japan. The fruits and veggies were scarse and not too appaling, bad timing maybe. And I was hopping a treasure trove grocery shop, but it didn’t impressed me at all, in the basement it is super tiny, a few shelves only, mainly foreign products and processed bins and sweets, it looked rather like a gift shop… I was hoping to find some delicious lentil from Auvergne, big white kidney beans from Toulouse, buckwheat flour from Brittany, and other wonderful things… But I didn’t. The wine shop is also a small corner in the basement…

So unless you can bring back fresh products home or live in Paris, for me Maison Plisson’s shop = Non!

The pictures of this post come from Maison Plisson Instagram account. 

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