Peach Melba

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Peach Melba is a famous dessert created in 1893 by an equally famous chef, Auguste Escoffier, and inspired by the singer Nellie Melba. There have been many versions of this well-known dish but, in principal, it consists of vanilla ice cream, poached peaches, raspberry coulis and sweetened whipped cream (Chantilly). This is a simplified version.

Multicoloured cucumber-tomato salad

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This salad is a good way to enjoy tomatoes at the height of their season, and all the different varieties available with their different flavours and colours.

Gratin Dauphinois

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This recipe is a bit sensitive for people from Dauphiné (a French area around the city of Grenoble), many of them are sure to have the "true" recipe. Here is the version of the famous French chef Michel Guérard. The most interesting thing about gratin Dauphinois, is that it has a delicate hint of cheesy flavour, without cheese in it.

Yeast-based flaky dough (for croissants)

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This yeast-based flaky dough (or croissant dough) is where puff pastry meets a yeast dough (such as brioche dough). This means that not only will we get flaky layers, but the dough will also swell and rise. The method is along the same lines as for a feuilletage: the basic dough is first kneaded, then layered with butter and folded over several times (in...

Apple charlotte with toasted brioche

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This rather special charlotte is made with toasted slices of brioche instead of finger biscuits and stewed apples. Cooked once assembled, it can be eated warm or cold.

Individual charlottes with morello cherries

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The French "griottines" are delicious little wild morello cherries, stoned and macerated in a Kirsch syrup, used here in individual vanilla charlottes.

Comtoise apple charlotte

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This "Comtoise" charlotte, inspired by the Franche-Comté region of eastern France, is a more rustic take on the famous dessert. It is made with sliced bread, lightly buttered and fried, then filled with sugared apple pieces, drizzled with clarified butter and baked.

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.

Four-tier glasses

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This starter recipe, served in a glass, consists of four tiers of different vegetable preparations. Each can be made the day before, and it's only the assembly that is tricky.

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.

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.

Avocado with Sautéed Prawns

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Just a classic prawn cocktail with avocado? Oh, no! The prawns in this recipe are sautéed briefly to enhance the flavour, then mixed with a curry mayonnaise.

Veal with mushrooms and green asparagus

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Small strips of fried veal partnered with mushrooms and boiled green asparagus.

Sliced veal with leeks and mushrooms

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Small strips of veal sautéed with mushrooms and leeks in a creamy sauce.

Sautéed turmeric chicken with mushrooms

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For this dish, the chicken and mushrooms are first sautéed separately, then combined in a cream and turmeric sauce.

Mushroom bourguignon

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These bourguignon-style mushrooms are cooked in a similar way to the classic beef dish, simmered with red wine and onions – flavours that go really well with mushrooms.

Mushrooms à la grecque

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Mushrooms "à la grecque" (Greek-style) is a simple way to enhance sautéed mushrooms with the flavours of olive oil, herbs and lemon. A common variation is to add tomatoes – just one of many possibilities.

Glazed mushrooms with plain rice

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In this very simple recipe, the mushrooms are lightly sautéed, then glazed with soy sauce and lemon juice, and served on a bed of plain white rice.

Spaghetti with mushrooms

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In this recipe, the mushrooms are cooked in the oven first and are then combined with the cooked spaghetti, shallots and dressed with white wine and soy sauce.

How to prepare fresh mushrooms

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Preparing fresh mushrooms for a recipe is not very complicated, but there are a few pitfalls to avoid, which will be pointed out here.

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 2024575 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 20241.19 M3.6

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 2023326 K4.0

Oven housing

Once the domed oven is finished and dry, we can start to construct the housing around it.
August 30^th 2024120 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 2024124 K4.1

Finishing touches

Is an oven really ever finished? Well there are always ideas for improvements. Here are af few...
August 30^th 202478 K4.4

The amateur baker

You may have noticed over the pages of this site, I am passionate about everything that is related to the bakery: I love making bread, pastries, maintain my leaven, etc.. This page contains links to all the different parts of the site where we talk about bread: recipes, special pages, etc.
October 15^th 2024199 K 44.1

Oven height

When we put a dish or cake in the oven, we naturally tend to put it on the middle shelf, and that's what we usually do. But in some cases, this position and height can be a little tricky, so let's find out why.
October 8^th 20251,3225

The window-pane test in bread-making

The home bread-makers often ask themselves “Have I kneaded my dough long enough?” . A good question, as dough that is insufficiently kneaded will not rise properly or will fall flat when the top is slashed, which is very frustrating. To know when the dough is ready, one can rely on the length...
June 16^th 202196 K 23.9

Stand mixer tools

Whether we call it a stand mixer, food processor, or simply refer to it by brand (Kenwood, KitchenAid, etc.), this machine is a valuable tool for amateur cooks, bakers or pastry chefs like ourselves. All these machines come supplied with 3 different tools. Let’s take a look at their names and...
November 2^nd 201937 K4.5

Kitchen ovens

You certainly have one in your kitchen, an oven, the essential tool for all kinds of cooking, whether in the kitchen of course, but also in pastry, bakery, pizza, and many others. Here is some information on its structure and operation.
May 16^th 202033 K4.4

The perfect boiled egg

Making boiled eggs is always a delight and it pleases the young and old alike. This little transgenerational side puts them on the list of "things to do on Sunday evening when you don't know what to do" in many families (including mine)... That said, it's not that simple, you have to pay...
January 30^th 202117 K4.7

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 20229,9514.7

Cake moulds

When we make a cake, or a cake of the same rectangular shape, we usually take out our usual mould and tell ourselves that the recipe is anyway "for a cake", but is it really that simple?
August 25^th 20256,3605