How to cook bacon and remove excess fat

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To prevent excess fat in a recipe using bacon, you can "blanch" it before use, leaving most of the fat in the pan with the water.

Pannacotta and blackcurrant crumble

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This is a glass of pannacotta, with a layer of blackcurrent coulis, and a crunchy almond crumble scatterd on top.

Pogne de Romans

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Pogne de Romans is a kind of brioche lightly flavoured with orange and rum. It originated in Romans-sur-Isère, a town in south-east France. This recipe dates back to medieval times, when it was made in a ring (or crown) shape to celebrate the end of Lent, as eggs could then be used again. This more contemporary version is not particularly tricky, though it takes a long time for all the kenading and resting stages.

Brioche tart with Comté cheese

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A delicious brioche tart with a creamy Comté cheese and Jura white wine filling.

Small cheese and bacon rolls

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These small aperitif snacks can be prepared in advance and heated at the last minute, or served cold.

Wiener Schnitzel

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A Wiener schnitzel is a thin veal cutlet (escalope) coated in breadcrumbs.

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.

Fillets of sole meunière

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Sole "meunière" gets its name no doubt from the flour used to coat the fish ("meunière" is French for miller's wife). It is a classic of French bistro cuisine, rich with butter, basically simple, but easy to do badly. Here are all the tips you need to succeed, using fillets rather than fish on the bone.

Calissons

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Calissons are a sweet from Provence - Aix-en-Provence is famous for them - made with almonds and candied fruit, covered with royal icing. This is a slightly simplified version, which is every bit as good.

Chocolate eclairs

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This might appear to be a straightforward recipe: choux pastry, chocolate confectioner's custard and fondant icing, but in practice it is quite technically tricky and all three stages need care to produce a perfect result. But don't let that discourage you; there are demonstration videos and I will take you through the whole process, paying particular attention to the most difficult stages.

Mixed salad

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Mixed salad is one of those simple but delicious summer recipes which go so well with a barbeque. It's a mix of several fresh vegetables, herbs and French dressing (vinaigrette).

Potato tortilla (Spanish omelette)

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Tortilla is a recipe from Spain, which can be eat hot or cold. It's a kind of omelette, with several ingredients, in this recipe potatoes, onion and smoked ham. Ingredients are cooked first, then mixed with egg, to make a tortilla which is cooked on both sides.

How to bake blind

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This method allows you to cook a tart case, and then fill with a preparation which may or may not need further cooking (fruit, chocolate, crème patissière , etc...).

Sesame fried scampi

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Scampi, coated with a sesame crust, fried quickly, and served with a herb salad.

Sweet pancake rolls from Brittany

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Stewed apples, raisins soaked in whisky, toasted almonds, rolled in a lightly caramelized pancake.

Pear tart with almond cream

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This is a very quick and easy tart to make, as everything (or almost) can be done in advance. A piece of sweetcrust pastry, some almond cream and pears? You have "everything you need".

Hazelnut and orange cake

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A very elegant cake topped with a sprinkling of hazelnut crumble, and with a double helping of orange flavour from chopped candied peel and the orange syrup soaked into the cake after cooking. The recipe is rather sophisticated, inspired by those used by pastry cooks at the INBP. It is a bit trickier than a basic cake, but the result is well worth it.

Citrus crunch

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These are fine crumbs of candied citrus peel. It can be used to sprinkle a dessert or other preparation to add both crunch and the flavour of the chosen citrus fruit. It is easy to prepare well in advance, and will keep in an airtight jar. This recipe is given for clementines, but can be made with all citrus fruits: lemon, lime, orange, grapefruit...

Fraisier (French strawberry cake)

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This classic French patisserie is a delicious assembly of 2 layers of genoa sponge filled with strawberries and crème mousseline (confectioner's custard with butter). The sponge is soaked in strawberry syrup and the cake is topped with a thin layer of marzipan.

Succès praliné (praline meringue)

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The "succès" (success) is a classic of traditional French patisserie, made with two layers of almond meringue filled with praline butter cream. It's very rich and a little old-fashioned these days, but still has many faithful fans. The original recipe comes from the master chef Gaston Lenôtre, and became one of his most famous cakes, but this version is a little easier to make.

What is this site, and who am I?

The important thing is the content of the site, the recipes and information you can find, but some of you want to know who is behind it all.
August 29^th 2023221 K 44.2

Well-cooked meat

Have you ever noticed that if you like your meat well done, it invites strange looks? For instance, in a restaurant, when asked “How would you like that cooked?” If you reply, “Well done,” it is almost as if you are swearing….
May 21^th 201131 K 14.4

Butter doesn't make you fat, unless you eat too much of it.

Whenever I'm discussing cooking and recipes, there is one idea which comes up frequently, like this: "Oh no! But that's got butter in it" (I should add, for the sake of accuracy, that this is something I hear more frequently from women, who are almost all concerned with keeping their figure). ...
March 26^th 201241 K4.5

The art of the charlotte

In cooking, a charlotte is a delicious moulded dessert, with biscuits around the outside that have been soaked in a flavoured syrup, filled with a light cream or mousse. The charlotte is left to set in the fridge before being turned out and served in slices. It is very light and a lovely sweet...
February 27^th 201342 K4.3

5 really useful cooking tips

Cooking is about recipes, of course, but it is also an impressive collection of small gestures, ways of doing things, knowing what to do and what not to do. All these little tips and tricks can be very important: they can affect the way a recipe turns out, simply because you did just the right...
March 29^th 201622 K4.9

The taste of raw tomatoes

Let's take a look at tomatoes, which are still in full bloom at the end of summer (as I write these lines), and which make for delicious salads. I had already talked to you about the interest of peeling tomatoes, which gives them an extraordinary sweetness in the mouth, but let's talk about the...
September 8^th 201813 K4.9

The cake and the raisins

When you bake a cake, like a cake or pound cake, you may have already encountered this thorny problem: How to make sure that the raisins, or the candied fruits, or any other small filling, do not fall to the bottom of the pan during the baking process?
May 31^th 201913 K4.7

When should you salt?

In the kitchen, we salt very frequently, almost all the time, and we must be careful because this salt can influence the texture of what you are cooking. I'm not going to talk about the amount of salt here, that's for another time, but rather about : When do you salt?
August 13^th 201915 K4.5

The right weight of pastry for a pie

Let's try to solve a thorny problem: How much dough will I need when I make my next pie? You're planning to make a pie, you're going to use your favourite mould or circle, but how much pastry will you need to fill it completely with a well spread pastry, without being too thin, or on the contrary...
March 20^th 202064 K4.3

Cooking scallops

We are, as I write these lines, in the season of the scallops, if you like that it is necessary to benefit from it as much as possible, although it is alas not cheap. I like scallops a lot, but I have to admit that it has naturally little taste, or, said differently, it takes the taste of what...
November 23^th 202110 K5

The dissociation of a preparation

It may have already happened to you: You prepare a sauce, a cream, a ganache etc. and then suddenly or almost, the whole thing dissociates, and from a smooth mixture that you were preparing with love, you end up with a horrible thing with a more or less solid part and another liquid part. It's...
January 22^th 202210 K4.9