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.

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.

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.

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.

Apple Pie

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This classic of family cooking is quite simple: just a puff pastry "shell" sealing in lightly sweetened slices of apple. During cooking, the fruit softens to resemble stewed apple. Serve warm, if possible, to enjoy at its best.

How to make ravioli

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In theory, making ravioli is fairly simple: just roll out wide bands of thin fresh pasta dough and encase small pieces of pre-prepared filling between two sheets of pasta. In practice, it's a bit trickier than that and having the right equipment is important. This recipe shows you how to make beautiful ravioli step by step.

Tarte Normande

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This tart showcases ingredients from Normandy: the sweet pastry case is baked blind, then filled with apple sticks sautéed in Calvados, and a cream-egg mixture. The tart is then baked and dusted with icing sugar when cold.

How to make a good pastry tart case

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Lining a tin or mould with pastry to make a tart or pie seems simple enough: you roll out the pastry, put it in the tin and trim off any overhanging bits. It may not be rocket science, but if you want a tart with a perfect pastry case, it really helps to take care over a few details, which I will show you here.

Crab Cakes

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These crab cakes are a mixture of crab meat - of course - with onion, parsley, breadcrumbs, egg and mayonnaise. The cakes are made fairly thick and shallow fried in a pan, but they can also be deep fried.

Fillet of salmon meunière

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A fillet of salmon can be cooked in a similar way to sole: à la meunière. The fish is lightly floured, pan-fried in butter and served drizzled with lemony butter and flat-leaved parsley. Every bit as good as sole.

Croute à thé

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Under this strange name (literally "crust for tea") there hides a delicious cake in crusty sweet pastry, filled with a smooth almond mixture and icing sugar on top. It's an excellent cake for tea time, but it goes very well with fruit salad for example.

Quiche Lorraine

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Quiche Lorraine is a recipe that is both simple and delicious. This savoury tart combines bacon and grated cheese with an egg and cream filling in a short-crust pastry case.

Deep leek and potato quiche

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The French make a "tourte" that is smaller and deeper than a normal quiche. This recipe makes the most of this difference: it has plenty of texture and flavour, with bacon, potatoes, leeks, two different cheeses, and an egg and cream filling poured over.

Angevin plum pâté

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The Angevin pie, as its name does not indicate it, is a dessert, a kind of plum pie made with a shortcrust pastry. It is a dessert from the old days, which has crossed the ages while remaining in Anjou (the famous "Loire valley" in France).

"BN style" chocolate-filled biscuits

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These are similar to the BN biscuits so well-known in France. They are a sandwich of chocolate filling between two layers of biscuit. Children adore them!

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.
November 16^th 2025255 K 44.2

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 201135 K 14.4

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 201248 K4.5

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 201349 K4.3

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 201626 K4.9

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 201817 K4.9

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 201917 K4.7

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 201919 K4.5

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 202070 K4.3

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 202114 K5

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 202215 K4.9

Foncer

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Lining a tart mould or tin with a circle of pastry.
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Brush

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For coating or glazing with a liquid, water or beaten egg-yolk for example, or for gently removing excess flour or sugar.
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Short-handled brush

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This is a small hand brush with very fine bristles, used for gently brushing the dough during bread making, to remove excess flour. Very useful, indispensable even, for bread recipes where the soft dough has a high water content, like French baguettes.
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Brush

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For brushing the bottom of loaves, straight from the oven, to remove excess flour and any remaining bits of charcoal.
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Short-handled brush

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This is a soft brush, used to brush dough gently during working to remove all excess flour. It's essential for working soft very hydrated dough like for French baguettes.
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Yeast

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Yeast (also called "brewer's yeast" or "baker's yeast") is a living product, made up of microscopic fungi which grow slowly when they are in a warm place.Baker's yeast is for use in breads and viennoiseries. It it is incorporated gently into the dough, then you need to wait for it to work.It should...
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