How to cook hard-boiled eggs properly

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A hard-boiled egg is properly cooked when: shell is not broken, white and yolk are firm, yolk is only yellow with no traces of green around it. Here are some tips to make this easy.
1.4M 65 1 hour 28 min. November 4^th 2013

How to prepare tomatoes

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Yes, I know you will say to me: why peel tomatoes? The answer is very simple: it's much better, gives a better texture, softer in the mouth. The skin is tough, adds nothing to the taste (and you will have noticed that commercial tomatoes have practically no taste), and finally it's there (on/under...
324K 24 40 min. June 6^th 2012

How to prepare a bain-marie

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A bain-marie is the best way to cook or heat a preparation gently without risk of burning.
507K5 7 min. July 5^th 2013

Blackcurrant coulis

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Blackcurrants make a very good coulis, but it's a bit more difficult than with other fruits. Here is a simple method to help you succeed.
439K 23.5 25 min. February 21^th 2011

Poached eggs

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Poached eggs are cooked, without the shell, in barely simmering (nearly boiling) water. White should be firm and yolk soft, that's the difficulty. This recipe teaches you how to succeed with three important points.
305K5 2 hours 40 min. January 8^th 2013

Pilau rice

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Pilau rice (also called "restaurant rice" in France) is a way of cooking rice that's very different from using a rice-cooker. In this recipe, the rice is first "pearled" with onion in olive oil, then chicken stock is added, and the whole lot is put in the oven. This produces a very tasty moist rice,...
376K 14.4 33 min. February 21^th 2011

Boiling potatoes in their skins

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Boiling potatoes has given rise to two sayings: 1) You should not peel potatoes before boiling. 2) You should not leave potatoes to cool in the cooking water. The first suggests that potatoes should be always cooked in their skins, to prevent water penetrating and making the potatoes go soft and...
608K 34.4 30 min. July 25^th 2017

When to add salt to cooking water?

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Is it better to salt cooking water, for vegetables for example, at the beginning when it is cold or when it boils? I always heard that one should salt "after", when water is boiling, because if it is salted "before" it will take longer to boil. True or false? Let's try the experiment...
141K4 12 min. July 25^th 2017

How to prepare asparagus

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Preparing asparagus spears properly involves washing and peeling, then cooking them just right. Here is a simple way to do this.
260K4.9 33 min. June 26^th 2013

Pork medallions with "full" turnips

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This recipe brings together sautéed medallions of pork filet mignon and turnips, pan-fried then filled with a creamy mixture made from their own green tops. As in all the best cookery, nothing is wasted.
45K4.7 1 hour 4 min. December 30^th 2019

Langoustine gratin

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This elegant gratin has a layer of brunoise vegetables in the bottom, with langoustine tails (scampi) cooked in two stages on top, finished with a thick creamy sauce, made with the "fumet" from the langoustines. This recipe is quite long to make, but can be prepared in stages over a number of days....
61K3.9 2 hours 15 min. December 30^th 2019

How to peel tomatoes using a flame

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The classic and most usual way to peel tomatoes is by plunging them first into boiling water, then into cold. But there is another method, "flame peeling", which is quicker than boiling water as it bursts the tomato skins open very rapidly. Here is how to do it.
65K 11 min. July 17^th 2019

Split peas "à la française"

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To cook fresh peas à la française (French style), they are first blanched in boiling water, then combined with fried lardons and onion. This idea can also be used with split peas, but they need cooking for much longer.
163K 54 min. February 5^th 2020

Fish terrine with spinach and tomatoes

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This terrine is made up of alternating layers of fish fillets with spinach and preserved tomatoes. It is cooked gently in the oven, then served in slices (yes, it really is a kind of terrine) with hollandaise sauce, for example.
29K5 1 hour 52 min. November 8^th 2020

Smoky sausage and mash

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This is sausage and mash with a smoky Gallic twist: the smoked sausage (Morteau sausage here) is cooked in with the potatoes, so that they take on its smoky flavour. The potatoes are turned into a French-style purée – softer and richer than British mash.
27K 1 hour 35 min. July 21^th 2021

Pistachio powder or paste

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Pistachio paste has a similar texture to almond paste, but the similarity ends there, as its flavour and colour are quite characteristic.
363K 154 48 min. October 13^th 2010

Stock-pot fish

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A julienne of vegetables (small sticks) mixed with choice morsels of fish, slowly cooked in vegetable stock.
304K4.3 2 hours 36 min. December 31^th 2013

Herb olive oil

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This flavoured olive oil, easy to prepare, goes very well with Mediterranean cuisine: pizzas, pastas, pan bagnat, etc...
300K3.8 21 min. February 21^th 2011

Quick orange marmalade

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Just oranges (organic) and sugar in this simplified marmalade recipe.
147K3.9 1 hour 11 min. February 26^th 2014

Warm autumn salad

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Not quite "surf and turf", but land meets sea in this salad which combines poached fish with cauliflower and buttery fried croutons.
42K4.3 45 min. November 22^th 2017

Ice-cream and sorbets

All about ice-creams and sorbets, their differences and how to make the most of them .
425K4.0 August 29^th 2023

The time of the jams

We are well into summer as I write this, and this is the time when most of the fruit is giving or about to give in full. And for many of us, it will also be the time for jams and jellies, one of the best ways to preserve fruit for the next winter.
23K4.5 July 12^th 2021

Different kinds of pastry and dough

When cooking in general, and particularly in baking, we can make and use many different kinds of pastry and dough. All built on the same "base": flour - a powder to which we add fat, liquid or both to produce the dough which is then cooked. .
105K 14.0 November 6^th 2012

One should cover a pan while heating?

You've probably heard it before: "Cover your pan, it'll boil faster", but is it true? Let's find out.
26K 13.4 February 27^th 2015

Children and vegetables

This is an attempt to address the question that all parents and grandparents, maybe you included, face so often: how can we get children to like vegetables? And at the same time, we might get away from the familiar, day-in, day-out round of pasta, chips, toast.. Well, I can hear you say, it's...
12K5 March 9^th 2017

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.
73K 24.4 February 15^th 2018

Should a sausage be pricked before cooking?

If you are using sausages in a recipe, you may have already asked yourself the question: Should you prick it before cooking it, or not? You will certainly find as many opinions "you should prick" as "you should not". Let's try to untangle all this.
42K4.1 September 29^th 2018

The bitterness of endives

As I write these lines, we are entering the endive season, and if you like it, it's time to enjoy it, if possible with your local producers. Endive is good, but the reproach that is often made of it, and children in particular, is: "It's bitter! And it is (somewhat) true of course, endives...
9,2094.9 February 9^th 2019

Double cooking of vegetables

When you cook vegetables, it's not easy to capture and preserve the flavours. It is easy to undercook, but you can make up for it, or overcook, and then it is unfortunately a bit cooked (in the sense of "ruined"). But above all, how to get the maximum of the taste of the vegetable in the pan, then...
18K4.1 July 12^th 2019

Cooking time for pasta

What is as good and simple as pasta? Not much, I think, and it's so easy to prepare: boiling water, salted (or not, depending on your taste), a few minutes of boiling and it's ready. The only "difficulty", so to speak, is the respect of the cooking time and the risk of, unfortunately, overcooking...
18K4.6 July 18^th 2019

The perfect boiled egg

Making boiled eggs is always a delight and it pleases the young and old alike. This little transgenerational side puts them on the list of "things to do on Sunday evening when you don't know what to do" in many families (including mine)... That said, it's not that simple, you have to pay...
13K4.7 January 30^th 2021

Let's rehabilitate spinach

We are currently (as I write this) in the season of fresh spinach, and it is a delicious vegetable that unfortunately has a bad reputation among a lot of people, children and teenagers in particular. I wonder if this lack of appetite isn't due to what I call, probably unfairly, "school food...
4,3454.8 May 7^th 2021

Brussels sprouts are very good

We are, as I write this, in the season of Brussels sprouts, a delicious vegetable that often suffers from a bad reputation, let's try to fix that.
6,4854.7 March 5^th 2022

The salad spinner is not only for salad

Where we see that the salad spinner can be used for many other purposes.
7,3654.8 March 25^th 2022

Beans in primeur

As I write this, it is the beginning of the short season for fresh beans. If you've never made them before and you're just starting out (and that's a great idea) you'll find that it's a bit time consuming to prepare, you have to shell them once, remove the beans, scald them to remove the skin (and...
9,332 June 4^th 2022

Sausage broth

I've already talked to you about vegetable cooking water, which becomes a precious broth after cooking that would be a shame to throw away. Now let's look at the special case of meat cooking broth, and in particular sausages, which are often poached.
5,5925 June 28^th 2023

Cooking cauliflower

Dramatic observation: cauliflower when cooked has a bad reputation ("it doesn't smell good!" and the like), and yet it's an excellent vegetable, very Breton, that deserves to be treated well, to give the best of itself.
7,5523.3 August 29^th 2023

Should asparagus really be cooked in bunches?

You'll probably read recipes here and there explaining how to cook asparagus "en botte", i.e. in a small package (the famous "botte"). Is this really the right way to cook asparagus?
2,7245 May 22^th 2024