So, I think that they've decided to teach me some simple recipes!
And to start it off right, here is one for LA GALETTE DES ROIS (three kings cake)
ingredients:
- 2 pâtes pur beurre feuilletée (thin round pastry dough), piquer avec une forchette (pricked with a fork)
ingredients for the cake filling:
- 100 gr de beurre fondue (softened butter)
- 100 gr de sucre en poudre (sugar)
- 125 gr de poudre el amande (take almonds and crush them in a food processor)
- 2 oeufs (eggs)
- extrait vanille liquide ou amande amène (vanilla or almond extract)
Put the dough on wax paper (here it comes in a box already on wax paper) on a cookie sheet.
Brush the edge with some egg.
Dump the filling into the middle of the dough (it shouldn't be too runny or else you'll have a mess).
Cover with the 2nd dough
Punch the two edges together, pressing down lightly with a knife to make a slight cut.
Brush egg in a circular pattern over the entire cake.
Bake at 200 C for 25 minutes.
Also, it's traditional to put a small ceramic trinket into the cake. Whoever gets it, gets to wear a crown!
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We eat salad at every dinner (not really with the dinner, but more once the main course has been eaten off our plates). What's most interesting to me is that they rarely use store bough salad dressing, but rather, make it each night in the bowl that the salad is served in.
Some common dressings are:
1. One big spoon of balsamic vinegar; Two big spoons of olive oil; One big spoon of sunflower seed oil; Some chopped up onion
2. One big spoon of mustard; One of vinegar; Three of oil; Salt and Pepper
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You can imagine my surprise when I came down for dinner one night to see a grown man with his hand INSIDE the uncooked chicken. Not just inside, but in between the skin and the meat. He was prepping it for a stuffing (he suggested that this could be done for a Thanksgiving Turkey!).
The stuffing was:
- mushrooms
- half of a white onion
- a clump of fresh parsley, chopped
- a clove of garlic
- bread crumbs
- fatty bacon bits
Blend the above together and add two eggs, pepper, and nutmeg
He said that you can come up with any stuffing as long as you have two eggs and breadcrumbs
(variations he suggested: creme, apples)
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The other night we ate this dish and it was so delicious. It's called Brandade de Morue and it comes from Nîmes.
I asked for the recipe, but it was so simple that my host mom just told me the ingredients. Here's what I've figured out:
Take a casserole dish. Fill it about half way up with mashed potatoes. Add cod. Cover in cheese (some kind of white cheese that got a melty and delicious). Cook.
I think that the cod gets mashed up and mixed in with the potatoes. Also probably add garlic and parsley to the mashed potatoes. So good.
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So this evening I made chocolate cake with my host mom!
Here's the recipe (english directions below):
Gateau fin au chocolat
90g beurre (butter)
200g chocolat
100g sucre (sugar)
90g fécule (it's like flour but made of potatoes?)
1 sachet levure chimique (baking powder comes in little packets... we didn't have any so we used 2 teaspoons of baking soda)
6 blancs d'oeufs (egg whites)
Faire fondre le beurre au micro ondes et bien remuer.
Ajouter le sucre et le chocolat (fondu avec 2 cs d'eau dans le four à micro ondes) Bien remuer l'ensemble.
Ajouter la fécule et la levure.
Battre les blancs en neige ferme et bien hemogénéiser.
Cuire à 190C pdt 1/2 h.
Demouler chaud et servir avec une crème anglaise.
or for those who don't speak french:
Melt the butter in the microwave.
Add sugar and chocolate (melt the chocolate with 2 tablespoons of water in the microwave). Mix well.
Add fécule and baking powder.
Beat the egg whites with a mixer until firm. Fold into the chocolate mixture.
Cook at 190C for a half hour.
Let cool and serve with crème anglaise.
Step 1. Boil water in a pot.
We also served it with Creme Anglaise:
8 egg yolks
200 g sugar
1 liter of milk
Vanilla extract
1 teaspoon of corn flour (not the same as corn meal... maybe cornstarch?)
Mix eggs and sugar with an electric mixer until as white as you can get it. Add in the cornstarch while mixing.
Boil the milk with vanilla.
Pour the milk into the eggs/sugar.
Mix well and pour back into the pot.
Heat over the stove, stirring constantly. DO NOT let it boil. Continue until it is all yellow and all the foam is gone. It should be liquid but thick.
Serve cold.
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So I am shocked that I have made it 20 years on this planet and have only just now discovered the best way for heating up pasta sauce, courtesy of my host brother. Beeping it is miserable. It just makes a mess. And putting it on the stove makes another pot to clean. But this is so simple I feel dumb that I never thought of it myself:
Step 2. Put closed jar of sauce in the pot of boiling water.
Step 3. Heat.
No clean up! To everyone out there who is eating pasta tonight, you're welcome.
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The best alternative ever to coldslaw: shredded carrots with lemon juice and salt. Done. (though it doesn't always save too well... I had leftover lemon carrot salad and it kind of tasted a little like windex).
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Marie made muffins. Muffins don't really exist in France so she was really happy to try a new recipe.
Viola, Marie et ses muffins:
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Today I've discovered the deliciousness that is Creme Fresh. It's basically fresh cream, tastes sort of like sour cream, but it comes in both liquid and almost cream cheese texture.
With my friends I made this:
Ingredients:
- creme fresh
- olive oil
- pasta
- chicken cutlets (thin)
- creme fresh
- garlic
- lemon (half cut in rounds, half juiced)
(consider adding chicken stock)
(consider adding or replacing creme fresh with white wine)
1. Cook the pasta.
2. Heat oil in sauce pan. Start browning garlic and lemon rounds.
3. Dredge the chicken in egg then flour (or flour, then egg... not sure what order works best) and cook in the oil.
4. Add lemon juice.
5. Lower heat and add creme fresh.
6. Serve over pasta with the lemon rounds.
NOTE: if you add chick stock, you get more of a sauce for the pasta. Not sure if wine and creme mix though.
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Coeur Fondant au Chocolat (or Chocolate Lava Cake)
Makes 5 ramequins
Ingredients:
- 140 g of chocolate
- 4 egg yolks
- 120 g of butter
- 120 g of sugar
- 50 g of flour
- 2 table spoons of milk
Clearly this recipe is very healthy.
With a mixer, beat the eggs and sugar until light yellow.
Melt the chocolate and butter (can be done in the microwave).
Mix the chocolate/butter and eggs/sugar.
Add the flour.
Grease the ramquins.
Put the batter into the ramequins and freeze for no less than 15 min.
Preheat the oven to 210C.
Bake for 10 minutes. The outside needs to be solid but the inside should be liquid.
We also served it with Creme Anglaise:
8 egg yolks
200 g sugar
1 liter of milk
Vanilla extract
1 teaspoon of corn flour (not the same as corn meal... maybe cornstarch?)
Mix eggs and sugar with an electric mixer until as white as you can get it. Add in the cornstarch while mixing.
Boil the milk with vanilla.
Pour the milk into the eggs/sugar.
Mix well and pour back into the pot.
Heat over the stove, stirring constantly. DO NOT let it boil. Continue until it is all yellow and all the foam is gone. It should be liquid but thick.
Serve cold.
