Macarons (the original French macaroons)

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This recipe really is "of the moment": the success of these small, highly-coloured cakes, in an infinite variety of flavours, is impressive. It's a recipe which needs some care, in order to produce a result worthy of a professional pastrychef. No problem, I will guide you through the recipe, particularly the tricky parts. This variety of flavours means that I test many alternatives, so don't be surprised if in the pictures the colour of the macarons changes, I used the best photograph available...

Marzipan (almond paste)

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Very easy to do if you have a food processor which can slice or grate a lot of things.

Leavened bread

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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.

Hamburgers

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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.

Five hours poultry

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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 rather firm meat, tough even, but with this method it can be cut with a fork like a confit. This recipe is applicable to big poultry too, it's also a response to questions like "How to cook a turkey?" or...

Stock-pot fish

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A julienne of vegetables (small sticks) mixed with choice morsels of fish, slowly cooked in vegetable stock.

How to cook rice in rice-cooker

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Cooking in a pressure cooker, often called a "rice-cooker", is a simple and practical way to cook rice: you don't have to watch it, it's quick (15 minutes) and the appliance switches to the "keep warm" position automatically. Here's how it works.

How to heat plates

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In restaurants serving "à l'assiette", wich means that your dish is presented already served on a plate, it's very important for the plates to be hot, otherwise dishes arrive cold and it's the customer that (rightly) becomes heated. At home it's worth doing the same thing: you are sure to serve hot dishes to your guests, and as a hot plate can wait longer than a cold one, it can sometimes help to avoid panic in the kitchen at serving time. Here are some simple ways to heat your plates.

You should not put an aluminum container directly in the oven

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If you put an aluminum container, containing food to be cooked or reheated, in your oven directly on the shelf, the shiny base will reflect a large part of the oven heat (like a mirror). This means that the food will take much longer to cook or heat through than usual.

Paella

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Paella is a traditional Spanish dish made with round rice, associated mainly with the Valencia region. The name comes from the large two-handled pan in which it is traditionally prepared. This is an adapted version with a mix of meat, vegetables and shellfish.

Butter cream

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Butter cream is made with egg yolk, sugar syrup and, of course, butter. These days it has fallen rather out of fashion, probably because it's very rich, but it still has its aficionados. Here is the classic plain version, which you can lighten and flavour as you wish.

Greek salad

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This is a classy version of that perfect summer food, Greek salad. The only difficult part is the care and patience needed for dicing the vegetables.

Croque-monsieur

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A classic of French "street food" or bistros: a slice of ham between two slices of bread spread with béchamel sauce. The sandwich is then sprinkled with cheese and toasted in the oven.

Ocean bread

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The idea for this bread was inspired by an amusing coincidence: the proportion of salt needed for good bread is 35 g of salt per litre of water, which just happens to be the exact concentration of salt in the Atlantic Ocean. So it's possible to make bread using sea water to provide all the salt needed, rather than normal fresh water. Not only does it work, the resulting bread is excellent!

Seafood sauerkraut

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The French version of sauerkraut (choucroute) is normally served with meat, especially pork and sausage, but here is a seafood version with fish and shellfish. Do give it a try, as it's simple to make and delicious!

Royal icing

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Royal icing is a mixture of egg white and icing sugar. From its pasty consistency when fresh, it dries to give a lovely white crust.

Cassoulet

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Cassoulet is typical, even emblematic, of southern French cuisine. It is a "slow food" casserole in which meat and vegetables, particualrly dried beans, are cooked together for a long time. Here is a simplified version of this famous dish.

How to prepare cockles

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Cockles are small Atlantic shellfish which can be used in many delicious dishes. However, they need to be prepared with care before cooking. Here is a simple way to do this.

Seafood feuillantines

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Little savoury "millefeuilles" with a very Breton taste of the sea: a mix of crab and salmon in a herb mayonnaise, piled up between crisp circles of buckwheat pancake.

Crispy prawn rolls

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The prawns are fried, then mixed with finely diced carrots and courgettes before being rolled up in a sheet of brik or filo pastry.

Other cookery websites

List of my other favourite sites.
August 29^th 2023223 K3.9

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 2023618 K 93.6

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 2024580 K 63.9

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 20241.21 M3.6

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 2024286 K 43.7

My best addresses...

Quite a few of you often ask me where I can find this or that? or is such and such a thing a good buy? or which brand is best for this or that? On this page, I'm going to group together my good addresses for suppliers of this or that product or utensil, and good books on the subjects that interest...
August 29^th 2023338 K4.0

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 202477 K4.1

On this site you can...

Cooking-ez.com is a site that offers you many possibilities. Here are the main functions and information available to you. .
August 29^th 2023235 K 23.7

Maybe you use food film in your own kitchen. You know, the very thin, clear plastic stuff that you can stretch, often used to cover food and protect it from the air. It’s become so widely used that it’s now an essential item for pros. They even have a verb for it in French: “filmer”: to...
May 12^th 201825 K 14.9

One day, in the comments on the recipe for beaten egg whites, a young woman asked if you could beat egg whites stiff while having a period, as a friend had told her it wasn't possible. Sometime later another person commented that for mayonnaise it had been (get this!) scientifically proven that a...
February 6^th 201154 K4.4

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 201540 K4

You will no doubt have noticed that in cookery, it's often the actual cooking process that gets neglected. This is understandable; it comes at the end of the recipe and getting the dish in the oven is something of a relief (ah, that's done!), which frees us to cope with what's left: tidying the...
February 9^th 201144 K4.2

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 201218 K4.4

We all have a fridge at home – it's an indispensable part of the kitchen and so much a part of the furniture that we tend not to pay it much attention. But often, out of habit, we don't use it properly. Here are a few tips to help you get more from your fridge. .
April 19^th 201131 K4.4

When you prepare a dish using an ingredient that has been preserved in fat, for example a 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 20249,2975

Can you really trust your oven? This is an important question as we are always tempted to take the temperature indicated as gospel truth and, unfortunately, this is rarely very precise. .
July 4^th 201135 K4.6

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

It's a no-brainer, surely? If you want a chopping board, just find a piece of wood, and Bob's your uncle! You can happily chop away with a knife and not damage the table or worktop. But in reality, it's a bit more complicated than that. You need to be careful what you are buying, in particular the...
May 8^th 201252 K4.6

This is a real chef's skill: being able to look at a fish fillet cooking and say, "Stop – that's enough, it's cooked". I always admire this ability to see at a glance if something is done. It is what sets the professionals apart from us mere amateurs. And it's true that how fish is cooked is...
November 26^th 201223 K4.4

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 202411 K4.7

I adore foie gras... I willingly admit it, I adore foie gras: the texture, the taste, the festive aspect – I enjoy all of it. I really love eating it, preparing it and, most of all, sharing what I have made with my family over Christmas and New Year. ...but then I begin to have doubts Of...
December 15^th 201452 K4.4

It's something you have probably 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), then...
November 22^th 201634 K5

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, potatoes, rice… Well, I can hear you say, it's...
March 9^th 201717 K5

You may well have a blender in your own kitchen. You know, that useful gadget that allows you to liquidize stuff at high speed into a smooth liquid. Of course, the most obvious use that comes to mind is for soups: if you have boiled some vegetables in water, with just a quick blast of the blender,...
May 31^th 201725 K5

Vanilla is a delicious flavour found in a great many dessert recipes: creams (crème pâtissière and custard, 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 201713 K5

Rosemary, as I’m sure you know, is a culinary herb, one of the famous French "herbes de Provence", and is very effective in bringing a real taste of the Mediterranean to any dish. The classic way to use it in a recipe is to add a sprig or two and leave it in during cooking as a way of...
April 18^th 201825 K4.7

You must have heard a chef or cook say: "There’s no good cooking without good ingredients". This is very true, of course, but for any amateur or beginner it is equipment that really counts to start with. What I mean is that you should not skimp on kitchen equipment, good utensils, a food...
May 30^th 201827 K5

When professionals get to work in their kitchen, lab or bakery, they are (if they are conscientious) very sensitive to hygiene and cleanliness. It is impossible for a good baker for example to do a day's work without regularly cleaning the table where he or she works, and it is even more...
June 30^th 202122 K5

Poaching

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Poaching is a way of cooking food (usually slowly) by lowering into a hot liquid: water, vegetable stock or syrup, for example. This gentle method of cooking allows the food to retain all its flavour more easily. .
23 K4.4

Covered

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Said of cooking with a lid.
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Drain

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Refers to food or a preparation from which you want to remove the liquid part, such as the cooking water.
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Chopping board

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To cut safely, using your knives, on your work surface.
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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.
20 K4.3

Mixing bowl (of food processor)

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Very useful for hard work that's difficult to do with your hands: kneading evenly.
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Serrated knife

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Unlike a classic knife, which is ground to produce a fine cutting edge to the blade, a serrated knife has teeth like a saw. This kind of knife doesn't need sharpening, and cuts certain foods, bread and cakes for instance, more easily than a normal knife.
18 K4.1

Microplane grater

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The microplane grater (microplane is a brand name) is a very fine grater made of stainless steel, very strong, with very small holes, which allows you to grate or zest all kinds of food in a very fine way.
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Vegetable grater

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A vegetable grater is a kitchen utensil with a perforated or toothed metal surface that can be used to grate vegetables into fine pieces. It is mainly used to grate carrots, zucchini or other vegetables, but can also be used to grate cheese, chocolate, etc.
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Butter

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Butter is a fat obtained from dairy cream by the mechanical process known as "churning" (traditionally done from ancient times in a receptacle called a churn, in which the cream is agitated until it turns into butter). Simply put, the cream goes in and comes out as butter. .
26 K4.0