Montbenoit's canapés

(Found inTexts)
A recipe from Franche-comté (lovely region of eastern France): large slices of bread coated with melted shallot, grilled bacon dice, a big slice of Morbier (cheese from the same region) and a brief spell in the oven. It really is a winter dish.
October 13^th 2010273 K4.6 1 hour 45 min.

Leavened bread

(Found inTexts)
It might be harder to achieve good results than with traditional yeast bread, but what a flavour! It also keeps better. This recipe is designed for baking bread in a wood-fired oven but, of course, you can use the conventional oven in your kitchen.
May 23^th 20171.19 M 23.8 6 hours 30 min.

X-Files cookies

(Found inTexts)
These cookies made with lime and almonds are a sure-fire hit with children. They enjoy the amusing shape, of course, but also the delicious flavour.
May 27^th 2012107 K4.1 3 hours 35 min.

How to peel tomatoes using a flame

(Found inTexts)
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.
July 17^th 201970 K 15 min.

Classic French white bread

(Found inStages)
This is the recipe for classic, everyday French bread raised with yeast. French bakers call this "pain courant". It is quicker and easier to make than leavened bread or new leavened bread, so ideal for a beginner.
June 6^th 2017295 K4.1 3 hours 50 min.

Naan

(Found inStages)
Naan is a type of Asian bread made from wheat flour. This kind comes from the Punjab region of India.
September 25^th 2011184 K4 3 hours 45 min.

Pears in red wine with blackcurrant

(Found inStages)
Pears cooked until soft in a red wine and blackcurrant syrup, served with the reduced syrup and custard sauce (crème anglaise).
February 21^th 2011240 K4.1 2 hours 35 min.

Beans with tomatoes

(Found inStages)
Fresh white haricot beans and leftover chicken cooked with stewed tomatoes, a sprig of parsley and it's ready.
February 21^th 2011199 K4.1 1 hour 55 min.

Smooth mixed vegetable soup

(Found inStages)
Any vegetables you have, cut into small pieces, mixed with a shallot cooked in butter, cooked together then blended. Even better when it's cold outside.
January 3^rd 2014342 K4.4 2 hours 3 min.

Express sauerkraut

(Found inStages)
Sauerkraut (choucroute in French) is a traditional Alsatian recipe. It consists of fermented cabbage slowly cooked with white wine, potatoes and a variety of salted pork meats. This is a simplified and fairly quick version.
February 21^th 2011359 K 13.9 2 hours 25 min.

Pears and caramelised walnut samosas

(Found inStages)
Samosas are small parcels of filling wrapped in brik (or filo) sheets and either shallow or deep fried. Here is a sweet version, with pears and caramelised walnuts.
October 13^th 2010326 K4 1 hour 25 min.

Pitta bread

(Found inStages)
This Lebanese speciality is made as a flat round pocket, which can be filled with all manner of things.
February 21^th 2011519 K 14.5 2 hours 55 min.

Couscous

(Found inStages)
In couscous, the meat and vegetable mixture is rather long to cook, but not difficult. And the couscous itself (a kind of coarse semolina) is simple and quick to prepare.
November 16^th 2017513 K4.3 2 hours 40 min.

Clarified butter

(Found inStages)
This is a way of melting butter to eliminate all the impurities. The clarified butter can then be heated without spoiling, and is more digestible. It is ideal for cooking at high temperatures where small black specks would spoil the appearance, or for emulsified sauces like béarnaise or mousseline.
June 21^th 2017458 K4.2 2 hours 15 min.

Eggs meurette

(Found inStages)
Eggs meurette or "œufs à la bourguignonne" is a great classic of French cooking, and of Burgundy in particular. It consists of poached eggs on a bed of fondue onions and bacon, served on a slice of fried bread. This is topped with a tasty reduced red wine sauce.
March 29^th 2020197 K 14.1 1 hour 15 min.

Marinated tuna with herbs

(Found inStages)
Here is a very simple recipe, preferably for a barbecue or plancha, but could be made in the kitchen. As for any summer-barbecue-backyard recipe, all proportons can be varied according to taste.
February 21^th 2011266 K4.3 1 hour 25 min.

Meringues

(Found inStages)
A very simple recipe but which always impresses.
June 10^th 2019390 K4.5 4 hours 20 min.

Boeuf (beef) bourguignon

(Found inStages)
Bœuf bourguignon is a traditional recipe of French cuisine (bourguignon means from Burgundy). It's chunks of meat cooked slowly with bacon, onions, carrots and mushrooms in red wine.
February 21^th 2011469 K 32.5 4 hours 20 min.

Eggs "en cocotte" with spinach

(Found inStages)
A buttered ramekin, a layer of mushroom duxelles, a layer of spinach, a bit of cream, and an egg, in two layers, on top.
May 10^th 2023136 K5 1 hour 15 min.

Home-made terrine of foie gras

(Found inStages)
Preparing your own home-made foie gras from raw is immensively satisfying: good quality liver and a simply amazing flavour – much better than anything you can buy. This recipe is a bit tricky, but quite within everyone's grasp, as long as you follow the 3 most delicate stages carefully. These are,...
December 16^th 20245.24 M 64.2 4 days 15 hours 50 min.

Open fire cooking

In this method the fire is kept going in the oven, and we put in dishes that cook in a minute or two. It is, of course, the method for pizzas, pitta bread, etc...
August 24^th 202490 K3.9

Closed fire cooking

For this method, the oven is emptied of embers, cleaned, and door closed until it drops to the cooking temperature of 250°C or 482°F. It's the method used for breads, pies and tarts, cakes, etc.
August 24^th 202452 K4.4

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 20241.17 M3.6

Making your own bread

You'll find a whole range of bread and pastry recipes on this site, but before you get started, perhaps you'd like to know more about the subject, get some tips and tricks, and find out what the main mistakes beginners make? If so, this page is for you.
August 22^th 2024566 K 63.9

Some hints for a pizza-party

A pizza party is always a very pleasant and convivial occasion. Good people (friends and family) get together to enjoy delicious pizzas, baked right in the oven. Here are a few tips to help you make yours a success.
August 30^th 2024187 K3.7

Oven housing

Once the domed oven is finished and dry, we can start to construct the housing around it.
August 30^th 2024115 K3.9

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

Finishing touches

Is an oven really ever finished? Well there are always ideas for improvements. Here are af few...
August 30^th 202472 K4.4

Advice on heating oven

For good results with a wood-fired oven, it's very important to manage the heating process well. Here is some advice to help you succeed in this delicate operation.
August 24^th 2024177 K4.0

Elements in the table

It's not always easy to represent an element. Some are obvious because they're used as such (iron, copper, lead...), but for others it's much trickier. In this list, you'll find the objects/materials that have been chosen to fill in the boxes in the table.
August 24^th 202436 K3.9

Small history of elements classification

The road to Mendeleev's table of tables has taken centuries. Here's a brief chronology.
August 24^th 202441 K3.9

A mist free mirror

I don't know if you're like me, but I find it very annoying after a shower or bath to have to wipe down the bathroom mirror 36 times with a towel just so I can see myself shaving (or putting on make-up for the girls).How do you solve this tricky problem? First of all, by looking at the cause of the...
August 29^th 2023219 K 13.6

Make your own hot-wire or styrofoam cutter

A filicoupeur is a hot-cutting tool for polystyrene, which can be used to enhance any piece of polystyrene you've salvaged, and to do all kinds of things with it: model building, model making, arts and crafts, and so on. See here how to make your own.
February 20^th 2024510 K 433.5

Homemade plancha

The plancha is a cooking method that originated in Spain. It consists of a very hot metal plate on which food, usually cut in small pieces, is cooked with little fat.Contact with the hot plate means that cooking is very rapid, only a few minutes, and there is an obvious "cooked" side. Food is well...
June 3^rd 2024258 K 43.7

Thermal inertia or "out of the fire"

When you're cooking, you need a lot of heat to cook, and most of the time it's on the fire, literally if you're on gas, more indirectly if you're not. An expression that comes up quite often is "Off the heat", but what does it really mean?
December 12^th 20206,5724.6

The ideal restaurant

Like all passionate cooks (I suppose), from time to time I dream of opening my own restaurant. I imagine loads of things: it will be like this or like that, we'll do this, I'll cook that, the room will have this or that – in short, I dream.
October 15^th 201213 K4.4

20 measures to protect your privacy

As we use more and more new technology, we leave ourselves increasingly vulnerable to companies who make money out of collecting our personal data. For instance, when we use the internet, we need to be wary of what is collected about what we do, our habits, etc. Here is a list of simple...
April 16^th 201318 K3.9

Perpetual stock

It's something you have probably have done yourself: cooked or pre-cooked vegetables before adding them to a recipe. This is almost always done the same way: peel the chosen vegetables (carrots, for example), cut them up, boil them in salted water (using a tablespoon or so of coarse salt per litre),...
November 22^th 201625 K5

Vegetable soups

As I write this post, we are slowly slipping into winter, and this late autumn is the perfect time for soups, especially vegetable ones. Soups, that somewhat "soft" dish, often associated with our childhood, infallible remedy against a cold evening or an ugly weather, or both.
December 5^th 20178,3585

The first breads of humanity?

I have already told you in a previous article the beautiful story of the croissants, but do you know what it is about the bread, who "invented" it, where and when? Well, you can imagine that recent discoveries, in 2018, have profoundly changed the history of bread.
February 16^th 20199,9285

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 20228,7104.9

The two frying pans

Where we see that a non-stick frying pan, if it is very practical in general, sometimes it is not enough.
February 26^th 20228,0924.7

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.
March 5^th 20226,9764.7

Tranché, dissociated, failed, in short... missed!

When preparing a sauce or a cream, there's always a (small) risk that the creamy preparation you're working on will suddenly separate into two parts of different textures: a liquid part, for example, and a more or less solid part, or even become lumpy. It's terribly frustrating, but we'll see...
June 19^th 20237,3435