How to prepare sorrel

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.

Sugar syrup

This syrup is mainly used as a basis for all sorbet recipes, which consist of this syrup and fruit pulp, but it can be also used to soak biscuits for example, or for fruit salads.

Poaching syrup

Less sweet than normal sugar syrup, poaching syrup is specially for slow cooking fruits to be used in other recipes.

"Psychedelic" sandwich bread

This amazing-looking loaf uses a basic sandwich bread recipe, but half the dough is coloured yellow with turmeric, the other half black with squid ink. The two colours are then rolled up together to give the spiral effect you can see in the photo. The outside is coated with sesame seeds. This surprising bread is full of flavour and, with its "psychedelic" look, it makes spectacular sandwiches and canapés.

Craquelin (sweet cracker dough)

This sweet cracker dough ("craquelin" in French) is a very simple mixture: equal parts of flour, butter and light brown sugar. It is simlilar to a shortbread dough and can be rolled out very thinly and cut into any shape as desired. Craquelin is mostly used (though not exclusively) on top of choux pastry (pâte à choux) to give a more attractive and regular result, with eclairs, for example, and gives them a delicious crisp...