Tag: French food

Quenelles

Quenelles are a French traditional recipe that comes from Lyon. Though I am not usually a big fan or connaisseur of the cuisine from that area (usually too meaty for me). Quenelles are one of the rare preparations from that region I love. It’s usually vegetarian, except for chicken or fish quenelles, it’s versatile and super easy to prepare. In France most peole would buy already prepared quenelles in supermarkets, but it’s really simple to make them at home. You only need 150 flour, 2 eggs, 50g of butter, a bit of water, a bit of milk, salt and nutmeg. You can add mushroom, white fish, chicken breast etc… but personally I like them plain.  In a pan set the water and the butter. Heat until the butter has melted. Add the milk and then the flour, and cook at low heat for 8min. Cool down a bit and add the eggs, the salt, the nutmeg, and stir well. You should obtain a smooth dought that doesn’t stick. If it sticks add a little more flour. Cut the dough in 8 pieces and form the quenelles as shown in the picture bel ow. Boil a large amount of water and poach the quenelles until they float. Now they are ready for any preparation you want! My favorite are the following: (1) oven grilled with vegetables: mushroom and cream, tomato sauce, this time I tried super moisted butternut squash slightly spicy purée…  for the oven grill you need some moisture.

(2) slice and grilled in a frypan with a bit of kosher salt. 

(3) in a soup of green leaves vegetables: lettuce, spinach, radish tops…  more details in my next post!!!

Oven grilled quenelles covered in butternut squash purée  
Oven grilled quenelles covered in butternut squash purée  

Quiche!

I think this recipe base is becoming my all-time favorite for the quiche: it’s simple and it mixes Japanese and French flavors perfectly. The quiche is a traditional dish in France, simple to prepare and accomodate with everyone taste. The twist comes from the ingredients I use in the egg base: bonito flakes (katsuobushi) and soya sauce. It gives a subtle flavor of dashi and Japan. For the dough you can use whatever flour you like or have around. I change all the time: white wheat, whole wheat, spelt, buckwheat, rice… A combination of the above mentioned is good too. I usually prepare a sable dough because I like it better, but brise dough works well too. Veggies are only seasonal fresh veggies and this time I pocked some end of summer mushrooms: shiitake (well you can fond them all year round!) and bunashimeji, a white smooth version of shimeji. That’s it!

Getting ready!

On August 20th I will cook for the final of a cooking contest. It’s my first cooking contest and I have clue how it works. For me cooking is quite an intimate experience, I usually cook alone and enjoy it very much, so cooking in front of people is going to be a fun challenge!!! For the contest I needed to write down the recipe of the dish I will cook and more difficult the quantities required. Since I cook by feeling, on the spot, with the ingredients I have I don’t keep track of what I put in exactly, hence I started this cooking diary to keep track of my ideas, but not the recipe in detail as you may have noticed. So I wrote down some numbers in my recipe but I needed to check if they were actually ok. For example with 100g of buckwheat flour and a bit of rice flour can I roll a dough big enough for a 20cm pie dish etc… I guess I could, but I needed to be sure before the contest. And since tomorrow I leaving Japan for more than 2 weeks (going to the US and Canada) and I won’t have much time when I come back, I finally did it last night. And everything seems to work well!!! I didn’t put to much effirt on the shape, but the taste was amazing!!! I have a winner I’m sure, hope to convince!!!!

Rice salad Japanese style

Japanese purists would hang me for that recipe!!! In the edamame gohan I’ve added boiled chick peas, and served this “mame gohan” with blanched green beans, cherry tomatoes and hard boiled egg. A sort of “salade de riz” as we call it in France, (so 70’s tupperware cooking!!!) but with a Japanese touch. Of course for the dressing it’s just a little of soya sauce if the green beans and tomatoes, the sacrilege doesn’t go that far!

Speaking of soya sauce, I’ve been selected as a finalist for a cooking contest organized by the soya sauce association! The finale is on August 20th… Let’s see what I can do. It’s my first cooking contest. I have no idea how it is gonna look like… 

Croissant?

My first trial
My first trial
My second trial
My second trial
My latest trial
My latest trial

A. asked for croissants for breakfast last weekend and I really wanted to try making some again after my last trials that were so so. Indeed I tried twice before to make croissant and if there was always something to complain about. For my first trial they had the consistency and taste of brioche, delicious but not a croissant at all. My second trial, more than one year ago, the taste was perfect but they didn’t really grow fluffy so they were tiny and heavy and slightly unbaked because it took actually more time to cook them and I was worried they would dry. This time I used the same recipe as before but the temperature was higher so they grow bigger, but I made a little reading mistake when finalizing the shapes and instead of one layer of dough I rolled two: heavier, less fluffy than expected and twice less croissants! But perfectly baked with the longer time and very promising. I’m getting close! Can’t wait to try again!!!

Back to normal… Socca lunch

Hectic weeks, busy week ends, when we arrived in Ohara last night it felt like we haven’t come for months. Everything in the garden has grown tremendously high and green, no cat was waiting for us… Of course H. came today but we are more a food supply than anything else so far… There is such work to do in the garden that we started early this morning and work until lunch, without even going to shop for frrsh veggies. So when lunch time came and we needed energy before our afternoon tennis game I had to fix something with what I had in stock: sokka and a few vegetables: tomatoes, cucumbers and avocado. Sokka is a traditional dish from Nice in the south of France. It is extremely simple to make!

Socca (chick pea flour galette) 

– 100g of chickpeas flour,

– a cup of water,

– a bit of olive oil,

– salt and pepper.

Mix all the ingredients. Preheat and grease with a bit of olive oil a frying pan. Pour some dough in the pan to obtain a 3-5mm thick layer. Cook, flip, cook again, serve immediately. It is also possible to do it in the oven but the pan is much more convenient for me.

Cherry clafoutis 🍒

We unusually spent the weekend in Tokyo because A. promised his shamisen group to play with them at a volunteer concert in an old folks day care. And I had to go and sing too!!! I like these concerts because giving a bit of our time for these people, it’s always a nice. Though it can be a really depressing moment (I really don’t want to grow old). And this weekend was also the first giving a real taste of summer. I’ve craved for outdoor swimming but outdoor pools will only open in June… I’ve craved for summer fruits and summer recipes. So for once I bought some non-local products: American cherries and prepared a traditional cherry clafoutis for our breakfast. Clafoutis can never go wrong and are always perfect for breakfast with tones of fresh juicy fruits and a simple base of flour-sugar-egg-milk. I use brown sugar only and soy milk, but one can use whatever is available. Now the question of pitting the fruits arises and of Prunellia always pit them, I never pit the cherries. When pitted they have a tendency to shrink and melt in the dough and dry, while not pitted they just bake in their own juice under the skin, ready to deliver it when in the mouth. How do you like yours?

Sable-navette

Guests for dinner at home twice in a raw and working each day until late, I needed something delicious, simple to accomodate with fruits… and that can be prepared in advance.

I invented this recipe of little bites sable with neroli, that feels like eating navettes marseillaises. Just flour, butter, egg, brown sugar and plenty of neroli. 

Japanese quiche

When the quiche lirraine meets Japanese ingredients it gives that: 

The dough is made with plain white flower and olive oil, black pepper and soya sauce. The filling is made of seasonal vegetables: paprika, lotus root, tomato, green peas, broccoli, and an egg and cream base with plenty if katsuobushi and soya sauce again. A very good match of tastes, texture and a versatile dish.

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