How to add beaten eggs whites to a mixture

Candied grapefruit peel

Not really a dessert, more a kind of sweet. After soakiing, strips of grapefruit skin are cooked very slowly to conservethem in sugar. It's a real treat with coffee at the end of a meal.

Rice pudding (riz au lait)

My personal version of this classic family recipe.

Bouquet garni

Used very frequently in French cuisine, a secret of French chefs, it adds flavour to a lot of recipes, and it's easy to prepare. The basic principle is to make a small bundle of herbs, bind them in green leek leaves and to tie it up, so that the whole thing can be removed and discarded easily after cooking.

Vanilla sugar

Almost essential in patisserie, you can find it in expensive little sachets of about 10g. It's necessary to distinguish between the vanilla sugar which really contains vanilla, and vanillin sugar, purely chemical which has never seen a vanilla pod. Here is how to quickly make a whole jar full of your own vanilla sugar.

Clarified butter

This is a way of melting butter to eliminate all the impurities. The clarified butter can then be heated without spoiling, and is more digestible. It is ideal for cooking at high temperatures where small black specks would spoil the appearance, or for emulsified sauces like béarnaise or mousseline.