Hamburgers

(Found inTexts)
Hamburgers don't have to be the greasy flabby things you find in fast-food outlets, well-made they can be excellent. It's a very convivial recipe as everything goes on the table, and everyone assembles their own burger according to personal taste.
December 6^th 2015414 K4.8 35 min.

Five hours poultry

(Found inTexts)
Perhaps simplest recipe on this site, but what a result! The idea is to cook the bird, without fat, at low temperature, covered, and for a long time. In this way, the poultry cooks so as to be almost like a "confit": soft and very tasty. The effect is more spectacular with duck because it is a...
January 27^th 2012535 K3.8 5 hours 15 min.

How to cook bacon and remove excess fat

(Found inTextsStagesComments)
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.
February 21^th 2011378 K 44.8 15 min.

Potted meat (rillettes)

(Found inTextsComments)
Potted meat (rillettes) is cooked long and slow in fat. Rillettes can be of pork or duck. Here is the pork version.
October 3^rd 2019434 K 25 6 hours 50 min.

Endives

(Found inTexts)
A very classic recipe, but which can easily fail due to two main errors: too much water in bottom of dish because endives give off a lot, and endives that are too bitter so that children hate it. Here is a method which avoids these two problems.
February 14^th 2012312 K5 1 hour 30 min.

Sarladaise potatoes

(Found inTextsStagesIngredients)
Potatoes fried in a little goose fat, with a mixture of chopped parsley, garlic and shallot added just before serving. Greedy folks (like me) melt a few thin slices of foie gras over the top.
October 13^th 2010239 K4.7 1 hour 25 min.

Leeks in vinaigrette

(Found inTexts)
A classic dish of French family and bistro cooking. It's both simple and good. The secret lies in cooking the leeks until they are only just tender, so that they keep their lovely green colour. The special vinaigrette includes herbs and hard-boiled eggs.
September 29^th 2012177 K4.3 45 min.

How to slow cook meat

(Found inTexts)
By cooking meat slowly with no added fat, it will become very tender - almost melt-in-the-mouth - and can be cut with a fork.
November 6^th 2011162 K5 4 hours 45 min.

Fried rillettes

(Found inTextsStages)
Rilletes formed into thin cakes and fried. This allows the fat to drain off during cooking and leaves crunchy and tasty discs of lean meat which can be served with mashed potato (purée).
December 11^th 2011121 K4.9 30 min.

Tomato omelette

(Found inTextsStages)
Tomato omelette is a great classic of Provençale cuisine. This is my personal version with mushrooms.
May 10^th 2023118 K4.6 1 hour 1 min.

Spinach brik parcels

(Found inTextsStages)
Crispy brik parcels, filled with a mixture of spinach, feta and chopped shallot.
May 5^th 2013118 K5 45 min.

Chocolate Chantilly

(Found inTexts)
If we look at the more scientific side of Chantilly cream we can see that it's mainly cream, and cream is a mix of very small droplets of milk fat and water, which is called an emulsion. When we whip this emulsion, we incorporate air into it and so create a mousse or foam. In the end Chantilly is a...
September 25^th 2013171 K5 15 min.

Foie gras Chantilly

(Found inTexts)
Chantilly is a method which is applied to cream of course, but also to other surprising ingredients. If we look at the more scientific side of Chantilly we can see that it's mainly cream, and cream is a mix of very small droplets of milk fat and water, which is called an emulsion. When we whip this...
September 17^th 2013112 K4.6 30 min.

Biscuit de Savoie sponge cake

(Found inTexts)
Biscuit de Savoie is not a "biscuit" in the English sense, just a very light sponge cake. It is delicious plain, but it can also be filled with cream, fruit, etc.
December 23^th 2014107 K5 1 hour 8 min.

Spring veal sauté

(Found inTexts)
This sauté combines small chunks of veal with spring onions in a white-wine sauce with just a dash of cream.
May 18^th 201481 K4.5 60 min.

Gisèle's Pasties

(Found inTexts)
These small pasties ("rissoles" in the original French version) are made with shortcrust pastry, filled with a mixture of cooked meat, onion, parsley, garlic and egg.
September 10^th 2018205 K3.8 1 hour 15 min.

Sausagemeat

(Found inTexts)
Sausagemeat is a mixture of fatty pork (belly bacon here) with leaner meat, all minced and seasoned. In this version I have used veal as the additional meat.
October 3^rd 2019207 K3.8 15 min.

How to remove fat from meat juices

(Found inTextsStages)
After cooking meat, we are left with the delicious cooking juices, but these can often be rather fatty. Here is one simple and effective way to remove much of the fat.
May 11^th 2016132 K3 3 hours 4 min.

Bonnevaux apple tart

(Found inTexts)
This is without doubt the easiest apple tart you can make: a simple pastry case (a sweetened sort of shortcrust pastry without egg) and apples - that's all! It's the tart my grandmother Jeanne made when I was a boy (a long time ago, as you can probably gather) and my father's favourite dessert.In...
November 2^nd 201642 K4 2 hours 7 min.

Truffade

(Found inTexts)
Truffade is a traditional dish from France's Auvergne region. It is made with potatoes and local cheese. Truffade originated in the mountains and is a proper winter dish, quite rich and delicious. This recipe, like with all traditional food, comes in many versions: different cheeses, ways to cook...
August 12^th 202158 K4.3 1 hour 10 min.

Bread oven

Building a bread oven was until a few years ago a job for the professionals. But now you can buy a kind of kit which allows you to build your own bred oven without professional masonry know-how. You should know that the kits only provide the main part of oven, the hearth, where you light the fire...
October 15^th 20241.16 M3.6

Films and papers in the kitchen

It's now fairly easy to find a range of papers and plastic films that are invaluable, and sometimes indispensable, kitchen aids. Here's a quick overview of the main products available, and what you can and can't do with them.
August 29^th 2023574 K 93.6

Foundations

A bread oven is very heavy (over a ton), so you should start by preparing a solid base on which it can be built.
August 24^th 2024118 K4.1

A Mendeleiev periodic table in 3D

It's an old idea that was in my mind for years: making a real periodic table of Mendeleiev (who always fascinate me) in 3D, where in each element box, there is some atoms (at least) of this element.
August 24^th 2024201 K 13.6

The name of the elements

The names of the elements in Mendeleyev's table are generally derived from Latin, Greek or German, and refer to properties such as color, brilliance or geographical origin. Here's the origin of each element's name.
August 24^th 202473 K3.6

Recommended Dietary Intake or RDI

The various agencies and organisations in the field of nutrition have defined a standard measure for the necessary daily nutritional requirements; these are the RDI or "Recommended Dietary Intake".The RDI represents the required energy, expressed in kilo-calories or kilo-joules, which our food needs...
August 24^th 202460 K4.1

Start off well to cook well

What do I need to get started in the kitchen? First of all, a good website! That's it, you're there ;-), then a minimum of equipment, and the few products you should always have in your cupboards or fridge. Here are a few things to help you make your choices.
August 29^th 2023308 K 13.6

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 201239 K4.5

Fats for cooking

If you need to fry or sear anything a frying pan or saucepan, the temperature is likely to be high. In particular, I have cooking red meat in mind. In this case, what should fat should we use? And at what temperature?
January 23^th 201817 K5

Maillard reactions

This subject cropped up recently in a discussion with my three charming nieces; do you know what Maillard reactions are? With a name like that, they could well be some principle in mechanics, but in fact the term applies to something much closer to all of us: it's what gives food more flavour...
January 28^th 201533 K4

Cream and sauces

Have you ever wondered why making beautiful tasty sauces is so easy when you use cream? .
October 15^th 201218 K4.4

Preservative oil, an asset for taste

When you prepare a dish using an ingredient that has been preserved in fat, for example a springtime mixed salad with tuna in oil or sun-dried tomatoes, you're probably going to make a french dressing (vinaigrette) next. In that case, why not use the preserved oil from the tuna or tomatoes?
June 5^th 20243,9935

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. .
November 6^th 2012106 K 14.0

The different cooking modes

In cooking, cooking means bringing food into contact with a source of heat, to transform it: improving its taste, and sometimes its texture. This contact with the heat source can be achieved in a number of ways: these are the cooking methods, and let's take a look at the main ones.
July 24^th 20244,3764.7

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 201620 K4.9

There is vanilla and vanilla

The vanilla is a delicious taste that can be found in many many dessert recipes, creams (the cream and the cream for example), ice creams, but also cakes and entremets. Whenever you need to add this vanilla note, you have several possible choices because vanilla is commercially available in...
December 14^th 20179,1685

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.
September 29^th 201843 K4.1

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...
July 12^th 201919 K4.1

How to avoid lumps

You've probably come across this unpleasant phenomenon where, when you try to incorporate an ingredient (usually a solid or powder) into a preparation (usually a liquid), the mixture doesn't mix properly and you end up with little "balls" or little lumps of the solid part that refuse to mix with the...
October 9^th 202016 K4.8

Roasting spices

If you like your food a little, or a lot, spicy, you'll no doubt have a jar or sachets of mixed spices in your cupboards from which to draw when preparing a dish. I'm thinking, for example, of curries, chili and couscous, all of which fill the kitchen, and sometimes far beyond...
October 30^th 20206,0154.9

Balancing flavours

In the kitchen, we sometimes use ingredients that can be a little overwhelming in taste. Grilled lardons, for example, are very good, they give a great taste to a lot of recipes where they are added, but you have to be objective, they're still pretty fatty!
November 7^th 20205,4575

Croutons

Do you use croutons, that typically French trick of toasting small pieces of bread on the side to add to a recipe? They're just delicious, but you need to know 2 or 3 things about them. .
December 30^th 20206,0605

Let's rehabilitate the burger

The burger is a sandwich that is very fashionable at the moment, and as for all other sandwiches, the worst (often) rubs shoulders with the best (much more rare). In principle, I'm probably not teaching you anything, it's a sandwich made of a small round bun, rather soft, like a sandwich bread,...
April 10^th 20215,8354.9

Incise some meats before cooking

Have you ever had this rather unpleasant phenomenon: you grill a meat, a pork chop or a veal cutlet for example, and during cooking it becomes completely deformed? It takes a very strange shape, a bit difficult to describe, a sort of cone around the central area of the meat, which also hinders...
June 19^th 20218,1814.9

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 20228,5144.9

Half milk, half cream

In a multitude of recipes, savoury or sweet, milk is used as the main ingredient, or at least as the main liquid ingredient. Milk is used instead of water, for example, because milk contains a proportion of fat, which adds roundness and softness to the recipe. This mellowness is very pleasant on...
February 27^th 20245,7265

Pastry doughs

To make a classic tart, you'll need a pastry of course, and if you don't use puff pastry (normally reserved for "fine", in french, tarts), you'll have a choice of shortcrust, shortbread, sweetcrust or "à foncer". Let's take a look at the differences between these four.
August 16^th 20244,0164.4