– steam some broccoli heads for just a few minutes
– fry an onion (chopped) in a wok
– add some very finely chopped fillet steak and brown
– add parboiled broccili
– add some chili pepper, ginger and ground coriander seeds
– add some soy sauce and oyster sauce and continue until everything is cooked through (if the wok is as hot as it should be this is just a minute or two)

Meanwhile it’s hot down here, 5 days of village party starting tomorrow terminating in the middle of next week with a horse race where we can actually place bets, activity which funnily enough is becoming rather a hobby of mine, so far I am ahead of the game financially but how long will it last?

Back on the subject of cooking, the local pizza shop installed a real pizza oven from Italy, they even drove all the way here from Italy to install it. The marinated ostrich meat and foie gras pizza is especially memorable, but more of pizzas in a future post (passionate topic close to my heart).

Having plenty of young tarragon in the herb garden and some chicken I decided to cook tarragon chicken but I was unable to find the traditional recipe in any of my cookbooks except something really complicated in Larousse Gastronomique. So I improvised this:

– Fry some chicken thighs and drumsticks in a little olive oil
– add two chopped tomatoes, honey, lime juice and a little white wine stock
– cover on a low heat until chicken pieces are cooked through
– add some coconut milk and a large bunch of chopped tarragon
– serve with saffron rice

Having recovered from my gratin and rabbit phases, I now seem to be cooking shrimps or prawns almost every day. The explanation is simple: our local fishmonger has started selling real uncooked fresh prawns (sometimes they are huge, almost what we would call gambas, but I have certainly no intention of getting into a polemic about what these beasts are actually called, you all know what I’m talking about).

The problem with the standard “prawn cocktail” which is probably served on every hotel menu in the UK, is the horrible thousand island dressing (the French call it “sauce américaine” which is very apt, methinks). Usually this stuff comes out of a bottle purchased at the cash and carry, sometimes it is mayonnaise (also out of a jar) mixed with some tomato ketchup. My home-made version is light and fluffy

– boil some shrimps for 2-3 minutes (depends on size), drain and plunge into cold water
– peel shrimps
– separate an egg, beat up the white of the egg until stiff
– put the yolk of the egg, fresh lime juice, olive oil (quite a lot) into a little electric mixer and make a mayonnaise (this can be done by hand adding the oil slowly but it’s so much easier using electricity
– add some tomato purée, salt and paprika (mild chilly powder is okay), some chopped basil leaves and a crushed garlic clove, mix a little more
– gently fold pink mayonnaise into the fluffy egg whites
– add the cooked prawns and serve on a bed of shredded lettuce, decorate with basil leaves and a little paprika

Still rushing around. Stayed in very nice Chambres d’Hotes in Grasse near Cannes, the villa Coste d’Or.

Hertz very kindly upgraded my hire car, instead of an Opel Corsa I got a huge BMW assault tank which guzzled fuel faster than I could fill it up.

Japanese birthday dinner included this shrimp dish
– boil some shrimps for 2 minutes, drain and plunge into cold water
– peel shrimps leaving the tail on
– marinate in a mixture of rice vinegar, soy sauce, sugar, sesame oil finely chopped ginger and garlic
– add some finely sliced and peeled cucumber to the marinade
– serve sprinkled with sesame seds

Japanese chicken with seaweed
– Marinate small chicken pieces in the above marinade mixture
– Drain and roll in a mixture of cornflour and finely chopped Nori (Japanese seaweed used for making sushi)
– Fry in a little oil in the wok until chicken pieces are nice and crispy.

I’m off on my travels again. Cote d’Azur this time. Spring is most definitely here, we are eating outside most days. I desperately need the time to get the pool filled up and working. Some storms though.

Don’t ask why I am cooking a lot of rabbit these days. Just one of those things, I suppose. This is a more classic rabbit recipe which the kids love.

– fry rabbit pieces in a little oil with some onions
– add some mustard, chopped carrots, white wine stock and a little madeira
– place in an ovenproof dish and cover
– cook in a low oven for 60 minutes
– serve with rice

Very strong winds yesterday, warm and dusty, the poor dog nearly got blown off his feet. Still no winter to speak of.
I found some rabbit breast at the local butcher and this experiment turned out rather well:

– mix together strong dijon mustard, whole grain mustard and mild yellow mustard with some ground coriander seeds, chopped coriander leaves and lemon juice
– generously coat the rabbit breasts in the mustard mixture
– place in an ovenproof dish and pour over some madeira
– cook in a hot oven for 45 minutes
– serve with roast vegetables and roquette salad sprinkled with a little mustard sauce made by adding a little more lemon juice and some olive oil to the remaining mustard marinade

Sorry about the terrible photo, no batteries in the camera so I took it with the mobile phone.

Have been extremely lazy with recent posts, some days there are so many things to do and so many things to say and just nothing materializes.
We’ve all been a little dogged by illness, a mixture of huge temperature differences and doing too many things at the same time. Indeed Winter finally arrived last week, we even had snow for a couple of hours and now we are back to Spring again with glorious sunshine and almost summer temperatures, lunching out on the terrace in January is hitherto unheard of, but we get frost at night so the termerature difference over a 24 hour period is sometimes over 20 degrees Celsius.
The wood stove keeps us warm and does most of the cooking – curries, casseroles and saucy dishes are obviously much easier than Chinese food (to get enough heat for the wok you have to really get the wood blazing).
Here is a basic Indian curry recipe which can be adapted to almost anything:

– fry some onions in ghee or oil
– grind up a spice paste with fenugrec seeds, coriander seeds, cardomom pods, cloves, chilli peppers, cinnamon, turmeric (haldi – important for yellow color, you can also use saffron) and garlic
– add the spice mixture to the pan and stir for a couple of minutes, make sure nothing burns
– add two chopped tomatoes and some coconut milk (if using uncooked prawns or shrimp add these too), heat until sauce thickens, otherwise wait and…
– add peeled (cooked) prawns for a few minutes just to heat through.

This is a great recipe for left-over rice which we often have available: every good household should have several woks and a Chinese Rice Cooker? These wonderful machines are incredibly cheap in any Chinese supermarket (don’t buy one anywhere else, they cost a fortune), you just put in rice, salt and water and it cooks and stays warm all by itself. I still haven’t worked out how they work (well with electricity obviously, you have to plug it in) – they automatically switch from “rice cooking” mode to “keep warm” mode somehow.

– fry some onions and pepper in ghee or oil
– grind up a spice paste with cardomom, cloves, chilli peppers, cinnamon, turmeric (haldi – important for yellow color, you can also use saffron) and garlic
– add cooked rice, a tin of peas and the spice mixture to the pan
– stir and heat throroughly and add peeled (cooked) prawns
– serve with cucumber raita and mango chutney

There are endless alternatives and variations to this recipe, replace the shrimps with cooked chicken pieces, left-over meat, the remains of a curry, fish, or mixed vegetables. Mushrooms are good too but they make the rice turn to a sickly colour of grey so it’s not so presentable. You can also use this dish in large quantities as the centre of a curry tiffin – decorate with chopped coriander, toasted almonds or cashews and chopped white and yolk of hard boiled eggs.

I’ve been neglecting the posts here, too many things to do at the same time.

– chop some chicken breast (this recipe also works with pork fillet) into tiny pieces, toss in cornflour and fry in some oil until light brown and crisp, depending on quantity you may need to make two or three batches
– take out the cooked the chicken pieces and drain on some kitchen roll
– fry chopped onion and peppers in remaining oil, add a very thinly sliced carrot (I sometimes add some broccoli flowers too)
– once the vegetables are starting to get soft add a tin of chopped pineapple pieces and their juice, some tomato purée, soy sauce, vinegar, sugar and a little cornflour dissolved in some sherry
– cook for a few minutes until the sauce starts to thicken and add the fried chicken pieces
– serve with rice or as part of an oriental buffet.

Meanwhile a little progess on the book and still no sight of winter.

No posts for a while now, this can be explained by a mixture of laziness and too many things to do in the build up to the festive season. The builder is still here, in fact we will probably have him for Christmas lunch today – the frost has caused endless delays to the terrace work.

In an attempt to cook something light but tasty and special for Christmas Eve dinner, I came up with the following which was a great success.

– fry some chopped onion and peppers (red or yellow are best) in a little oil
– add some crushed garlic and a tin of coconut milk, simmer for a few minutes
– peel some shrimps and add these to the sauce, if ready cooked shrimps they just need to be heated through, if they are fresh and uncooked put up the heat and cook them in the sauce until they are pink and cooked through
– garnish with fresh coriander and serve with roast vegetables (recipe here) and a mesclun salad with balasmic vinegar and olive oil dressing.

Now I have to go and start preparing the turkey. Happy Christmas everyone!

This whole vegetable gratin business is getting out of hand. I am seriously thinking of registering courgettegratin.com or vegetablegratin.com.

This little film (see right) has been sent in by my fan, you need a Quicktime plug in to view it. It demonstrates the version made with smoked salmon and ravioles, which are tiny French raviolis stuffed with cheese and herbs, made in Alsace or somewhere over there near Switzerland.

I went to Switzerland many years ago, the father of a friend of ours had a vineyard up near Vevey. I recall drinking vast amounts of his white wine and then going up into the snowy hills for a snowball fight and fried perch fillets and chips. The restaurant broke a hole in the ice over the frozen lake next door, threw in some explosives and picked up the fresh stunned/dead perch out the hole. It was one of these “as much as you can eat places” – the restaurant must be closed down by now, and catching fish like that must have been banned at least a decade ago (we are talking about Switzerland here). Great day and wonderful memories.

Back here in reality, the builders are moving forward very slowly, I always knew that paying them on a daily basis was a bad idea.

The builders are here, the banging starts at 8am. Today, in an attempt to motivate them (and avoid their usual 4 hour lunch break), I cooked a gourmet lunch for them. Greatly appreciated despite some of the dishes being extremely spicy. Eating lunch outside on December 5th was very decadent (talk about climate change), we christened our “new” and not-quite-finished terrace. The previously mentioned roast vegetables recipe was part of this meal.

method:
– cut potatoes, sweet potatoes, turnips, carrots and parsnips (or any selection thereof) into large chunks
– boil or steam until cooked but still firm (about 6 minutes)
– melt some duck fat in an overproof dish, add some ground rosemary, rock salt and cumin seeds and toss the strained vegetables in this mixture until well coated
– place in a hot oven until the vegetables are cooked through and lightly browned (about 30-40 minutes depending on the oven)

Terrible week in Paris, it was grey and everything is so complicated these days. Good food though, an especially memorable Indian lunch where the bindi bhaji were very very good and the chicken tikka masala very spicy HOT (as requested) for once.

One of my (numerous) fans who uses the highly dubious name of “benquicky” has sent me a photo of the now evidently famous courgette gratin recipe in the process of being cooked. She further promises photos of a dish in various stages of its elaboration as well as a critics appraisal of the recipe. Can’t wait!

Orignal recipe can be found herebelow on 23rd October or on this link.

This vegetable gratin thing now has so many variations we could almost write a whole book about the method. The goats cheese and tomato layer version is having particular sucess amongst those who don’t eat cream and are looking after their figures, it even works without the pasta (or ravioles). Anyway I am thing of starting a separate blog all about “gratins” – if anyone thinks this is a good idea please let me know and support the plan….

Benquicky reports disturbing flatulence problems following the digestion of vast quantities of courgette and salmon version of the famous gratin dish. Be warned.

More gory details of benquicky’s condition can be found here http://www.myspace.com/benquicky.

Today’s lunch is veal blanquette with carrots, served with roast parsnips and sweet potatoes. Time allowing, the recipes might be posted tomorrow.

This is a winter favorite, slow cooking in the oven is essential.

method:
– fry chopped onions and bite-sized chunks of stewing beef
– add hot paprika, cinnamon and ground cumin, fry for a minute or so until the spices coat the meat
– add chopped carrots, red wine stock, some orange zest, salt and water to cover
– place in a covered casserole dish and cook in the oven at 150 degrees for two hours or so. Make sure it doesnt get too dry.
– (optional) 15 minutes before serving add chopped mushrooms
– Serve with rice

To keep the stones alive, you should soak them in a saline solution for 24 hours before the full moon and put them out to dry in the full moonlight. These stones have great power but we have to give them back their energy.
This is the great lesson of this last weekend and a wonderful Sunday lunch where so much was left unsaid but so much accomplished and even more understood. The menu, exotic as ever, was lamb tajine with couscous.

method:
– chop dried apricots and dates and put to soak in lime juice with some raisins
– fry onion in a little hot oil
– add chunks of lean lamb and brown, add ground cumin, coriander seeds and chilli pepper and fry for two minutes to incorporate all the ingredients
– place in a tajine (earthenware dish with a cone cover) with large chunks of parsnip or turnip, potato, some whole carrots, chopped fennel, whole garlic cloves, courgette….. in fact almost any vegetables will do
– add vegetable or meat stock to cover with a lot of saffron (stems dissolved in warm water or crushed) and salt
– cover with tajine cone and cook at low heat in the oven or on the stove for two hours
– fifteen minutes before serving add the dried fruit that has been soaking in the lime juice, mix well
– serve with couscous and fresh coriander

I made the vegetarian gratin recipe last night adding a layer of sliced goats cheese. This transforms the dish completely and raises it to new levels of deliciousness

Orignal recipe can be found herebelow on 23rd October or on this link.

ingredients:
diced pork fillet
chopped fresh ginger
chopped onion
half glass chicken stock
two large spoons brown sugar
two soup spoons soy sauce
half glass madere, xeres, sherry, etc.

method:
– fry onion in a little hot oil
– add pork and ginger
– once the meat is browned add all the other ingredients except the soy sauce
– reduce sauce over high heat until it thickens
– add soy sauce and serve with white rice.

Off on my travels again, Paris, Monte-Carlo then maybe even Hungary. The planes and airports are as unpleasant as ever, it’s just the pain of travelling is shorter by air.

Found some extremely interesting documents about how to diet by eating oriental food. Very little meat, chinese tea, take your time and eat your rice and sauce seperately, not mixed up. More about this in future posts

Meanwhile a variation of a vegetable lasagne recipe that Nicole gave me last year. She made this with layers of herb “ravioles” which are basically little raviolis made somewhere in the east of France
– place alternate layers of sliced courgettes, sliced tomatoes and smoked salmon in an ovenproof dish
– add plenty of pepper and a little fresh cream (the tomatoes give out most of the moisure requires for this dish)
– top with mozarella and grated cheese
– bake in a hot oven until the courgettes are cooked and the cheese lightly browned (about 30 minutes)
– you can replace or add layers with lasagne or indeed other sliced or finely chopped vegetables.

Mushrooms again. Millions of them. Normally this species (Craterelles cornucopioides) only comes every five years and we picked and dried huge quantities last year. Their re-appearance this year is therefore a pleasant surprise, albeit yet another symptom of world climate change and disorder.

Of course I was woken up at 7 in the morning with the farmer ploughing the field next door. They are harvesting the maize too, until late at night, so it is not as peaceful as one would expect at this time of year.

Meanwhile chicken rolls stuffed with trompettes
– soak the dried Trompette mushrooms in a little warm water for 20 minutes (same for fresh ones as this eliminates the grit and the strained water is used for the sauce)
– cut a pouch in the chicken breasts and stuff with the mushrooms
– roll in a very thin slice of smoked ham which holds everything together
– sprinkle with flour, brush with a beaten egg, and then coat with breadcrumbs
– place on a greased dish in a hot oven until browned and cooked through (about 25 minutes)
– reduce a little stock with some of the water from the soaked Trompettes (strain to remove any dirt and grit), some Madiera (or Port), some blueberry jam and fruit (in France you can buy these fresh in season and all year round in a jar or tin, other names include myrtilles, Vaccinium myrtillus, whortleberry), salt and pepper, thicken with a little fresh cream
– pour the sauce over the chicken rolls and serve with fresh pasta