Macarons (the original French macaroons)

(Found inTexts)
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,...
October 3^rd 20191.58 M 714.6 2 hours 40 min.

Chocolate mousse

(Found inTextsStages)
Here is a simple quick recipe for chocolate mousse. It is just necessary to be careful at the final stage, when mixing the melted chocolate and the beaten egg-whites.
February 21^th 2011472 K3.7 40 min.

Fruit coulis (fruit purée)

(Found inTextsStages)
Contrary to what people usually think, coulis is not just a simple fruit purée with sugar. Of course, this is the general principle, but it's possible to make something much better and more refined. This recipe is for a strawberry coulis (see below for other fruits): how to make it, but also how...
October 20^th 2012770 K 44 25 min.

Home-made terrine of foie gras

(Found inTexts)
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 17^th 20235.23 M 64.2 4 days 15 hours 50 min.

Half-cooked chocolate cake with raspberry coulis

(Found inTexts)
A small chocolate cake, still runny in the middle, served with a raspberry coulis.
October 3^rd 2010329 K5 1 hour 25 min.

Sautéd mushrooms with spring onions and cured ham

(Found inTexts)
Fresh mushrooms of your choice, cooked just right, thinly sliced spring onions and morsels of cured ham. Straight from the pan to your plate.
May 10^th 2023239 K 15 50 min.

Butter cream

(Found inTexts)
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.
October 13^th 2010320 K4.6 60 min.

How to make fleur de sel (salt flakes)

(Found inTexts)
French "fleur de sel" is a salt with a special texture, formed by the action of the wind on salt marshs. The wind dries the surface of the water which has a high salt concentration (this will later become sea salt) producing thin flaky crystals.
May 4^th 2011235 K 43.9 1 hour 7 min.

Lentil and cold-meat salad

(Found inTexts)
This salad combines lentils, chunks of cooked meat, sliced hard-boiled eggs, shallot and herbs, with a good vinaigrette dressing.
December 7^th 201469 K3.8 45 min.

Gâteau Basque

(Found inTexts)
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...
September 11^th 201866 K4.7 2 hours 55 min.

Colcannon

(Found inTexts)
Colcannon is a traditional Irish dish, made by mixing creamy mashed potatoes (or purée) with cabbage, chives and spring onions. There are many different versions and ways to adapt this classic recipe. My version here serves it with baked sausages.
April 23^th 201749 K4 1 hour 8 min.

Agen prune cake

(Found inTexts)
This cake from Agen, in southwestern France, is a type of brioche. Inspired by the famous "tarte au sucre" (sugar tart), it is like a thick "galette" with a moist texture, filled with prunes and marzipan with Armagnac.
September 16^th 201839 K3 1 hour 55 min.

Provençal braised carrots

(Found inTexts)
Chunks of carrot (different coloured varieties here), braised in a vegetable stock with herbes de Provence and served on a bed of couscous.
January 27^th 201961 K 1 hour 15 min.

Craquelin (sweet cracker dough)

(Found inTexts)
This sweet cracker dough ("craquelin" in French) is a very simple mixture: equal parts of flour, butter and light brown sugar. It is simlilar to a shortbread dough and can be rolled out very thinly and cut into any shape as desired. Craquelin is mostly used (though not exclusively) on top of choux...
February 10^th 2019104 K5 55 min.

Tuna pasta

(Found inTexts)
This is typical Sunday night fare, or for when you've simply had enough of cooking. An easy but delicious, creamy combination of pasta and tuna.
March 14^th 202136 K 15 min.

Mousse with two chocolates

(Found inTexts)
Chocolate mousse is a great classic home-made dessert. Here's a version using two different chocolates (dark and milk) with a hint of vanilla, that owes much to a recipe by Christophe Michalak.
April 25^th 202130 K 45 min.

Green and red salad with sardines and eggs mimosa

(Found inTexts)
This colourful salad combines green lettuce, rosy beetroot, the flavour of eggs mimosa and sardines, and crunchy croutons.
March 13^th 202220 K 30 min.

Bistro-style cabbage salad

(Found inTexts)
This salad, inspired by French bistro cuisine, combines cabbage with fried potatoes and lardons, and hard-boiled eggs in a vinaigrette dressing.
April 6^th 202219 K 40 min.

Provençal remoulade sauce

(Found inTexts)
The classic remoulade sauce is, in this recipe, declined in a Provençal version, where we use olive oil and to which we add chopped basil before mixing. You will obtain a classic remoulade texture, but a very typical and fresh taste.
September 18^th 202219 K 9 min.

Lime meringue tart

(Found inStages)
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.
July 1^st 201836 K 1 hour 55 min.

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 2024565 K 63.9

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 2023300 K3.9

The right way to use a blender

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 201720 K5

A few tips for effective kneading at home

When you have to knead dough for bread or some other recipe, you may well use a food processor or the type of machine known as a stand mixer. The best-known brands are Kenwood and KitchenAid. They are useful tools, but here are a few tips to help you get the best out of them.
June 23^th 2021272 K 23.7

Egg yolks and caster sugar

We often come across recipes where we need to mix egg yolks with caster sugar. This would appear to be a very ordinary and simple thing to do but, be warned, these two ingredients can behave oddly together.
February 15^th 201875 K 24.3

Salt and yeast

Let's take a look at an old baker's legend: You may have already read that somewhere in a recipe that uses baker's yeast(bread, pastries, leavened doughs in general) it is often specified "Don't put salt in contact with the yeast, you'll kill it (the yeast)"! Well, that's a belief, and there are...
March 15^th 201969 K4.3

Fruits and their syrup

As I write these lines, we are finally in the summer, the holidays are approaching, and above all, the fruits are pouring onto the market stalls, if they are ripe, it's time to enjoy them to the full! .
July 24^th 20197,9364.7

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 201933 K4.5

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

The 3 secrets of successful mousses

When you make a traditional mousse, that is to say without using a siphon, whatever the recipe, it's always the same principle: on one side you have a dense mixture, very tasty, and on the other side egg whites beaten until stiff. All the difficulty of the success of a mousse, it will be to mix the...
April 3^rd 20216,2904.6

The super powers of cornstarch

I start this new year by evoking an old product, that you most probably have in your cupboards, a white powder, often in a small cardboard package with a slightly outdated look, only the "gluten free" is relatively recent, it is simply cornstarch, hence its name of maïzena. It's used for a lot...
January 14^th 20229,703

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 20237,0075

Toss the salad

When you've finished preparing a salad, green or otherwise, it's usually time to add the dressing and toss. It's often said to "toss the salad", which means to season and mix. Is it easy? Not so easy...
March 8^th 20246,3315