A marriage made in heaven, these delicious little sweet and savory pies from Pézenas and Orto di Venezia. Look here on the Orto Facebook page to see why there is a connection.

Meanwhile Bruno, the local pizza guy, has invented a special Christmas pizza. Leeks, asparagus, scallops, shrimps, foie gras with fresh mozzarella and oyster leaves (a little leaf like sage except when you eat it there is the most incredible flavor of oysters). Simply amazing.

This is a variation on my 11th November recipe

You can use almost any fish fillets for this recipe. Make sure there are no fishbones. If the fillets are too thick, you can cover them with with cling film and bash them with a rolling pin to make them thin.

– steam some carrots, cut lengthwise
– chop together some dates and a preserved lemon (citron confit)
– place two or three cooked carrots onto the fish fillets and a spoonful of date/lemon mixture
– roll up fillets and fix in place with a cocktail stick
– place the fish rolls on a bed of cooked carrots, sprinkle with olive oil and cumin seeds and bake in the oven for 25 mins.

There is a plan to build 5 chicken factory farms within 15kms around where I live.
There are 24 chickens per square metre, they only live for 37 days and are mostly fed on genetically modified soya imported from Brazil. They don’t even get a chance to walk!
A multinational chicken company, selling mainly to fast food chains and the like, forces farmers to take out loans to pay for these concentration chicken camps and in return they promise to purchase a huge amount of chickens every month.
If ever there is a problem and minimum delivery amount (720,000 chickens per year!) are not respected, the farmer gets dumped and loses everything.
As the multinational food company transforms the genetically modified fed chickens into bits, they actually sell the meat from these poor animals for more per chicken than quality tasty free-range chickens that the farmers could be rearing, thereby making huge profits for zero risk.
Furthermore, 350 trucks per year are required PER FACTORY to come and pick up these poor chickens and drive them across the country (and Europe in some cases) to the factory where they are processed.
Go here for more details: http://www.bienvivredanslegers.org/

As regular readers of this blog will know, I don’t really do desserts so in actual fact I have practically no idea how this was done, but it was bloody wonderful.
It’s something like this, I think, if you try it out and it’s no good I hold no responsibility.
– Whisk egg whites to stiff peaks
– Sprinkle icing sugar on greaseproof paper, spread egg whites in a layer about 2cms thick and cook in cool oven. Don’t overcook the meringue, it needs to be soft.
– Whisk together cream, sugar and fromage blanc until stiff. Add some raspberries and crushed white chocolate.
– Spread this mixture onto the meringue and roll it together like what we used to call a roly-poly cake.
– Leave to set in the fridge for a while.
– Pour over melted chocolate sauce to serve

– Mix two garlic cloves, a handful of fresh rosemary, some good Balsamic vinegar and olive oil in the blender
– Marinate some good quality steaks in the mixture for at least one hour, longer is better
– Dry the steaks with kitchen roll, sprinkle on a pinch of rock salt and fry in a little olive oil for two minutes each side (longer if they are very thick)

– Leave the steaks to rest for five minutes, keep warm
– Cut each steak into thin slices and serve of a bed of roquette salad with a little balsamic/olive oil dressing and parmesan cheese slices or with broccoli baked in cheese sauce (see photo).

Two variations on the same basic soup recipe:
– fry a chopped onion until soft, add a large bunch of fresh spinach leaves and wilt
– add a similar quantity of frozen peas, a chopped chilli pepper (espelette is best) and some vegetable stock, cover until cooked
– mix the soup in a blender and serve with a dollop of soft goats cheese mixed with fromage blanc

As an alternative:
– follow recipe above but do not add a chilli pepper
– add more peas so as to make a slightly thicker soup
– chop and add two or three slices of chorizo
– heat some parmesan cheese on a greaseproof paper in a hot oven until bubbling and brown, allow to cool
– serve soup with parmesan “wafers”

A very mild and delicate curry
– Make a paste in the blender with two tomatoes, a few garlic cloves and a lump of fresh ginger.
– Chop a sweet potato into bite sized chunks and boil for 5 minutes until just tender.
– Fry an onion in some ghee (clarified butter, if you can’t get some use cooking oil) until soft and add some crushed cardamom pods, peppercorns, cloves, and cinnamon. Add a few curry leaves (or bay leaves), some ground coriander and cumin.
– Add the tomato mixture and some whole duck thighs (remove the skin first).
– Add a little water, cover and simmer for 50 minutes until the duck is well cooked.
– Remove the lid and boil on a high heat to reduce and thicken the sauce if necessary.

– Add a large handful of chopped dried fruit, prunes are best but dried apricots are also good.
– Heat through and add a little cream. Garnish with fresh coriander.

Usually you would serve this with rice but, to make a change, I accompanied this dish with spicy roast potatoes and carrots:
– Boil some potatoes and carrots, cut into large bite sized pieces.
– Drain the vegetables and toss them in a mixture of ground spices (I use chilli, coriander and turmeric) and polenta grains (this makes them nice and crispy on the outside).
– Heat some oil in an oven pan, lay the vegetables in the pan, make sure they are coated with oil.
– Cook in a hot oven for 45-50 minutes until golden brown.

I don’t normally do desserts, but my faithful and talented assistant invents things like this in two minutes.

– Whip some sugar, thick cream and fromage blanc together. The fromage blanc (or fromage frais) makes the whole thing much lighter.
– Cook some raspberries, a chopped pear and blueberries together with a little sugar for 5 minutes.
– Crush some biscuits in a plastic bag, use a rolling pin. The very best biscuits for this are Speculos, cinnamon biscuits from Belgium, but ginger nuts or any spicy biscuits will do.
– In individual verrines or glasses assemble layers of crushed biscuits, the stewed fruit and the cream mixture.
– Decorate with fresh fruit and anything else you can lay your hands on (see photo with “chocolate cigars”).

This is a fantastic vegetarian dish with a Middle-Eastern flavour.
– If using dried green lentils wash them and put them to soak for a while (see instructions on packet) and cook in boiling water until tender, put aside to cool. If using ready prepared lentils out of a tin, this is not necessary.
– Chop a sweet potato into bite sized chunks and boil for 5 minutes until just tender.
– Fry some chopped mushrooms in a little oil or butter until they have released their water and it has evaporated. Pour in some dark beer and reduce until nearly all the liquid has gone.
– Mix together the sweet potato, lentils and cooled mushrooms in a large bowl. Add breadcrumbs, an egg, some mustard, some grated cheese, some pistachio nuts and plenty of seasoning.
– Spread melted butter on several sheets of filo pastry or “brick” leaves and place buttered side down in an deep oven proof dish.
– Place the lentil and mushroom mixture.

– Fold the overlapping filo pastry sheets over the mixture and place another sheet on top to close the “pastilla”.
– Spread more melted butter on the top and cook in a hot oven (190°) for 35 minutes until golden.

I got an e-mail from one of my fans (would you believe that 15,000 people visit this blog every month??).
The question was “why don’t you give quantities in your recipes?”
The answer is simple: I just don’t know!
Use your imagination, trial and error.
My recipes aim to give basic cooking methods and ingredients, each cook in his or her own kitchen can adapt my recipes to make something that suits their own personal taste.
Go with the flow, be inspired!

I forgot to take a photo of this delicious Moroccan recipe.
– Ask your fishmonger to extract the central bones of a bream or sea bass. Keep the fish whole.
– Chop some dates and a lemon preserved in salt (citron confit, can be found in most North African grocery shops).
– Fry an onion until soft, add the date and lemon mixture.
– Stuff the fish with the mixture and tie it back together with some butchers string.
– Wrap in aluminum foil and cook in a hot oven (180°) for 25 minutes.
– Serve with a pepper-saffron sauce made from a little melted butter, ground mixed peppercorns and saffron.

This is a good one for Sunday lunch, it does need a lot of cooking but it’s well worth the wait.
– Using a deep oven proof dish, brown a whole veal knuckle on all sides in a little olive oil
– Add 50cl (about 3/4 pint) of stock and one slice of orange zest (make sure you use an untreated orange).
– Cover and cook in a cool oven at 150°C for two hours, turning the meat regularly.
– Squeeze out the orange juice and mix it together with a glass of white wine and three large spoons of honey.
– Pour the honey liquid over the meat and add some chopped carrots and spring onions (trimmed but whole, leaving a little of the green stalk).
– Season with plenty of salt and pepper and add some cumin seeds.

– Cook in the oven at 150°C for another 90 minutes basting the meat with the cooking liquid frequently.
– Place the cooked vegetables in a serving dish and carve the veal meat off the knuckle bone and place on top of the carrots.
– Reduce the cooking liquid over a hot stove and add a little cream or butter to thicken the sauce before pouring it over the meat and vegetables.

I just invented this one, it turned out rather well.
– Marinate turkey escalopes in a mixture of lemon juice, tomato paste, chopped basil and honey.
– Stir fry some chopped bacon or smoked ham, add some shredded Brussel sprouts, lower heat and cover.
– Now cook the turkey breasts on the griddle. Just for a few minutes each side until they are cooked through. Rotate once on the griddle if you want to obtain the pretty criss-cross pattern as seen in the photo.
– Add just a little cream to the Brussel sprouts
– Serve the escalopes on a bed of the vegetable and ham mixture.

I did a vegetarian variation of the Brussel sprouts recipe using very thinly sliced carrots instead of the ham/bacon bits, add salt.

This is a variation on the famous Gundel Hungarian dish. Gundel was the cook at the Gellert Hotel in Budapest where I have stayed so many times and his recipe books are still considered, today, as the very foundation of Magyar cuisine. Gundels recipe is very similar except he adds smoked ham and cheese on top of the cutlets and grills them before serving. My version is a little lighter.
– fry an onion and some chopped mushrooms until all the liquid has evaporated.
– turn off the heat and add a little lemon juice, worcester sauce, paprika, salt and a beaten egg, stir continuously until the “mushroom paste” thickens
– finely shred some peeled potatoes and dry them as much as possible with paper towels so as to extract as much moisture as possible
– fry the veal cutlets in a little butter and oil for five minutes on one side, a little longer if they are very thick, turn them over
– spoon the “paprika/mushroom paste” on top of each veal cutlets, lower the heat, add some veal stock, a little white wine and cover for 5 minutes
– deep fry the dried, grated potatoes for a few minutes to make “angel hair”, drain off the fat (place on kitchen roll), add salt and pepper
– place the cooked veal cutlets on top of a bed of the angel hair potatoes and put the juice of half a lemon and fresh cream into the pan to make the sauce, pour over the cutlets.

Vincent is the most amazing fishmonger in Léon, a small town on the Atlantic coast between Archachon and Biarritz.
But in addition to his shop, he has a restaurant in nearby Lit-et-Mixe.
The seafood buffet (fish soup plus as much seafood as you can eat) is real value for money, all his seafood and fish delicious (all cooked to order on the plancha), but the best is mussels in roquefort sauce with chips.
They don’t have a website that I have found but your can go here for the phone number and location. The google map photo on this webpage is unfortunately pointing in the wrong direction so you need to do a 180° turn to see the restaurant which looks closed (I think the photo must have been taken in wintertime on a day when the place was closed).
I’ve been to this place several times now, it was always packed, so I recommend advance booking.

This is a variation on the Indonesian Beef salad that has already appeared here somewhere in the past.
– cook a nice tender piece of thick steak on the griddle. Let it cool.
– Slice into very thin strips.
– make a marinade with honey, peanut butter, ground chilli peppers, lime juice, thai fish sauce or soy sauce and a little oil.
– leave in the fridge for an hour or two, decorate with onions and tomatoes.

Meanwhile, had a car crash, car basically demolished. Airbags and seatbelts are most definitely good inventions. Driver coming in the other direction just lost control on a slippery road. It could happen to any of us.

Inspired by Bruno our local pizza chef, and vice-champion of France, I made my own pizzas this week. This one worked out exceedingly well.
– make a pizza base. I use épautre or spelt wheat flour and a little regular flour, a little yeast, oil, salt, sugar and tepid water. Leave the dough to rest for a while, it becomes more elastic.
– roll out the pizza base very thinly, spread on crushed tomatoes and cover with mozzarella cheese. Cook in a very hot oven (wood stove or pizza oven is even better).
– place cherry tomatoes, and fresh melon balls on the cooked pizza.
– decorate with rockette salad and a little vinaigrette salad dressing.
Thinly sliced parma ham and buffalo milk mozzarella can also be added at the end to make a more “substantial” pizza. But the lightness of this simple “summer” pizza recipe is what makes it interesting.

I do this one in the wood stove but, of course, you can do it in any hot oven. The “souris” is the bottom part of a leg of lamb, allow one per person. I already posted this recipe here a few years ago (see here) but this variation includes potatoes.

– place several souris (not mice, the souris is the little juicy bit around the bone at the bottom of a leg of lamb) in an earthenware dish (that can stand high heat)
– place some peeled whole garlic cloves in the dish, add some juniper berries, a chopped onion, some rosemary, some peeled potatoes and lots of salt and pepper
– pour beer (any kind) all over the lamb and fill to at least halfway up the dish, a little more as most of the liquid evaporates in the oven.
– place in a very hot oven for one hour, turning the meat halfway through cooking.

I must write here, one day when I have the time, about the ritual of picnics. We take picnics very seriously but the three essential items are pink champagne (very decadent), potato salad with tuna, and coronation chicken.

For those of you that don’t know what Coronation Chicken is, then you can go to the wikipedia page here. This lunchtime I came up with a variation which turned out to be a delight:
– boil some chicken pieces in a broth made with chicken stock and curry powder (look here or here for curry powder recipes). Drain and allow to cool a little
– make a “quick” satay sauce in the blender with crunchy peanut butter, soy sauce, a crushed chilli pepper (or two), lemon juice and honey
– chop an apple and a red onion, mix in a serving dish with a little mayonnaise, lemon juice, cream, a large dollop of apricot jam and the satay sauce
– serve with shredded lettuce

This dish can be served as part of a picnic, a starter or a summer main dish and even as a sandwich filler (in this case chop the chicken bits quite small).

We went to El Portalet in Bossòst again.

Beef with cèpe mushrooms, quinoa, roquette, roast potato and caramel mustard	Veal cheek with broccoli, black beer, horn of plenty mushrooms, pinapple, fennel and thyme	Gambas and codfish tartar with baby beans, black olives and tomato bread	Turbot with pigs trotter, sea snails and mango
Marinated Presa with asparagus, pistachios, apple and parmesan ice cream		Goose rillettes, black garlic, smoked eel, fennel salad, pineapple and rhubarb

Duck roll with mushrooms, foie-gras, crispy nuts and maple syrup

Raspberries and pistachios with hibiscus, vanilla and yoghurt cream

Soft and crispy chocolate with coconut and cereals, salty praline and apricot sorbet

Peach fritter with almonds, passion fruit, and maize-curry ice cream