Guacamole

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For this typically Mexican recipe there are two main methods: smooth mashed avocado (made with a blender), or simple mashed avocado (made with a fork) with small pieces. And you can add, or not, finely diced tomato. You will find the first version (smooth) below.

Ramekins of duchess potatoes

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Duchess potatoes are a mix of mashed potato and egg yolks, cooked in the oven, in a decorative shape and delicious. In this recipe they top a ramekin containing a layer of mashed potato, cooked leek, and thinly sliced bacon.

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...

Half-cooked chocolate cake with raspberry coulis

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A small chocolate cake, still runny in the middle, served with a raspberry coulis.

How to slow cook meat

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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.

Seven-hour lamb

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Seven-hour lamb is a good old country recipe and very simple. There's really not much to do, just long, slow cooking and the result is always amazing: the lamb is so tender it can be cut with a fork.

Ham "friand" pie

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A "friand" (the word means "fond"!) is a sort of French pasty. This pie-style version has two layers of puff pastry filled with a mixture of cheese, ham and bechamel sauce.

Melt-in-the mouth meat and vegetables in a sealed casserole

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In this recipe a good joint of beef is slow-cooked, surrounded by an assortment of vegetables in small chunks. To concentrate the flavours, the cooking time should be long at a moderate temperature and, most important of all, the dish should be sealed. By the end of cooking, the vegetables will be meltingly soft and the meat can be pulled apart with a fork. This is an appealing dish to serve and share, leaving everyone to help themselves as they like.

Roast beef "like they do it in Santa Fe"

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For this delicious roast, the beef joint is seared all over, then wrapped in slices of grilled (broiled) bacon before the final long, slow roasting in a bag with aromatic ingredients (bayleaf, shallots, carrot, thyme and chilli). Cooked this way, the meat will be well done on the outside, meltingly tender inside and can be pulled apart with a fork. The pepped-up spicy flavour is to die for!

Mackerel rillettes

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This recipe for mackerel rillettes (or potted mackerel) starts with poaching the fish. The flesh is then taken off the bones and forked into a seasoned mixture of butter, mustard, cream and lemon juice. In France this is traditionally eaten as an aperitif snack, served on small slices of toast.

Cajun pulled pork

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Pulled pork is a joint cooked long and slow so that it can be shredded easily with a fork. This Cajun-spiced version can be eaten like a classic meat meal or served in burger buns.

Mashed Potatoes with Artichokes and Feta

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For this recipe, use large cubes of cooked potatoes mashed with a fork and small cubes of artichoke hearts, combined with grated feta and a little chives.

Lime meringue tart

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For this delicious tart, you will see how the crisp, sweet pastry is the perfect foil for the distinct taste and slight sharpness of the lime filling and, of course, the smoothness of the Italian meringue topping.

Green avocado salad

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This salad is all green and fresh, with diced avocado, lettuce, spring onion and the softness of pieces of hard-boiled egg. The flavour is brought out further with a lime and olive-oil dressing, pepped up with a touch of Tabasco.

Herb olive oil

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This flavoured olive oil, easy to prepare, goes very well with Mediterranean cuisine: pizzas, pastas, pan bagnat, etc...

Chocolate cereal bars

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These have a chocolate sweetcrust pastry base, topped with dried fruit, toasted nuts and seeds, bound with a brown-sugar and butter mixture, then gently baked. Once the flapjack-like cake has cooled, it can be cut into bars.

Gâteau Basque

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This traditional Basque dessert is similar to a gâteau breton (brittany butter cake), but very moist as it is filled with a rum-flavoured confectioner's custard (crème pâtissière, or french pastry cream). This is a fairly simple recipe, though as the dough is fragile and difficult to handle, I offer a useful tip to make this easier.

Gâteau Breton (Brittany butter cake)

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Gâteau breton is a rich cake that uses a lot of butter (from Brittany, of course) with sugar, egg yolks and a little rum to add flavour. This cake is traditionally served with coffee.

Avocado with Tuna

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Here is a quick recipe for a simple starter: avocado, tuna, chopped herbs and mayonnaise.

Winegrowers' sausage casserole

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This sausage casserole is a simple mix of vegetables with smoked sausage, but the cooking liquid in this case is dry white wine (and hence the name). The casserole is cooked long and slow in the oven with a lid. This allows all the flavours of the vegetables, wine and sausage to mingle harmoniously.

Flours

At the most basic level, wheat grain is put through a mill, which produces a white-ish powder flour... Well, actually it's not quite that simple. First of all we need to distinguish between the different grains that can be made into flour: wheat of course, but also rye, barley, buckwheat, etc. So we...
June 3^rd 2024773 K 413.6

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

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

As I write these lines, we're deep into winter, and it's often time for raclettes, tartiflettes and other dishes that keep us warm, especially when the weather's as cold as it is right now. But we mustn't deprive ourselves of salads, precious sources of vitamins in these cold and sometimes dark...
January 11^th 20218,1804.9

Where we see that a non-stick frying pan, if it is very practical in general, sometimes it is not enough.
February 26^th 202213 K4.7

Ménagère

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Housewife. The term, unfortunately condescending and rather pejorative, used by chefs to refer to someone who cooks at home and is therefore not a professional chef. In France, a "Ménagère" it's also a nice set of spoons, forks and knifes presented in a pretty box. A classical wedding gift...
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Pique-vite (pastry pricker)

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For pricking over the base of a tart, or sheet of puff pastry, to prevent bubbles during cooking. This is usually done with a fork, but this small roller does the same thing very fast and evenly. It's very cheap and useful.
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