Chestnut cake

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This delightful cake is doubly chestnutty: it contains chestnut flour, and sweet chestnut purée.

How to dust

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"Dusting" in cooking is sprinkling a very fine layer of something in powder form. Icing sugar or cocoa powder on cakes for example. As this is not very easy to do evenly, here is a way to do it.

Potato purée

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The French have fond childhood memories of this, and while nothing will ever be as good as "Maman" made, here's a fairly straightforward way to make it.

Terrine of foie gras

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This simple way preparing a terrine of foie gras is ideal for beginners. In this recipe the liver is passed through a sieve or vegetable mill rather than kept in large pieces. The final appearance is smoother, less marbled, but just as delicious.

How to prepare courgettes

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Preparing courgettes is fairly simple. You just need to remember 3 things: 1) the bigger they are, the less good they will be, 2) they never need to be peeled, and 3) the central part with the seeds is pretty tasteless.

How to prepare cucumber

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Or how to start with a whole cucumber and finish with small crunchy dice, ready to be added to a salad.

Beurre blanc sauce

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Beurre blanc sauce is a great classic of French cuisine, made with vinegar, white wine and shallots. It is a wonderful accompaniment for fish and shellfish.

Purée of Jerusalem artichokes with foie gras

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This recipe features a rather unexpected combination that works really well: the distinctive flavour of Jerusalem artichoke with the richness of foie gras. The Jerusalem artichokes are puréed with potatoes. This is serves hot mixed with very cold diced foie gras. The combination of flavours and contrast of hot and cold is delicious.

Thin tomato jelly and avocado tart

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For this sophisticated recipe, we'll be preparing a disc of tomato jelly to sit on a puff pastry base. This is topped with slices of avocado in a lime dressing.

Kumquat compote

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Here's how to make a kumquat compote that's low in sugar but high in flavor, for use in pastries, or simply on top of cottage cheese or yogurt.

How to prepare cockles

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Cockles are small Atlantic shellfish which can be used in many delicious dishes. However, they need to be prepared with care before cooking. Here is a simple way to do this.

Breton sablé biscuit dough

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Brittany is famous for its rich, sandy textured "sablé" biscuits. Similar to shortbread, they are made with lots of butter and egg yolk, and just a hint of vanilla. This dough can be made into simple biscuits – already delicious on their own – or used as the base for tarts and other desserts.

Galette Charentaise

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This is a traditional cake from France's Charente region. The recipe is straightforward and the cake is slightly dense in texture, but quite delicious.

Cretan salad

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A hint of Crete in the flavours of this salad, with a mix of crunchy and soft textures: diced tomatoes, sliced spring onions, feta and tuna.

Strawberry-mint sorbet

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For this strawberry and mint-flavoured sorbet, we will be using an unusual method: blending the strawberries with mint leaves. This mixture is then left overnight for the flavours to mingle before being strained and then churned. This makes a delicious sorbet with its full-on strawberry flavour boosted by a definite mintiness.

Raspberry sorbet

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To make a seriously good raspberry sorbet, the fruit must be of the best quality, of course, but there is another little secret: you need to remove all the seeds to make a really smooth coulis. It is this smooth coulis that makes the sorbet so deliciously velvety.

Linzer torte

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Linzer torte, or tart from Linz (Austria), has a cinnamon-flavoured crust filled with raspberry jam. The special and rather crumbly sweet pastry used for the case is made with cinnamon, ground almonds and the yolks of hard-boiled eggs. There are many different versions. In this rather unusual one, inspired by Gaston Lenôtre, the raspberry jam is mixed with a little tart (in the other sense!) stewed apple.

Moist Lemon Cake

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This is similar to the basic "four quarters" cake, but with the delicious double lemon flavour that comes from using both zest and juice.

Lemon Confectioner's Custard

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This recipe is for a confectioner's custard with a difference: it's a little less sweet than the classic confectioner's custard (crème pâtissière, or french pastry cream) and has double lemon flavour, using both zest and juice, for plenty of tangy lemon taste. It's the perfect filling for lemon tarts, of course, but also verrines, profiteroles, eclairs, etc.

Oaty walnut cake

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This is a moist-textured walnut cake with rolled oats, but the real secret comes from dry-roasting the nuts before adding them to the mixture.

Egg yolks and caster sugar

We often come across recipes where we need to mix egg yolks with caster sugar. This would appear to be a very ordinary and simple thing to do but, be warned, these two ingredients can behave oddly together.
February 15^th 201880 K 24.3

Soup vs. potage

It's true that we're finally coming out of winter as I write these lines, and that we'll all be making, no doubt, a little less soup and potages, but even if it's out of season, it really is a simple and delicious dish, which is one of the always easy answers to "What's for dinner this (Sunday)...
April 9^th 20229,051

How to sprinkle well?

When in a recipe you need to sprinkle something, that is to say to spread a fine layer of powder (flour, sugar, etc.) on something, powdered sugar on a pie for example, you will probably use a fine strainer or a sieve, this is the best way to proceed. But is that all?
May 23^th 20238,6724.7

The importance of sieving

In recipes that use a fine powder (flour, powdered sugar, etc.), you'll often see the advice to sift before using it. To sift is to pass the powder in question through a sieve (a very fine strainer) before incorporating it into your recipe. It's often advice, but is it really useful?
September 3^rd 2025429