Lille style chicken

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Chicken breasts and mushrooms, cooked separately, then mixed with a tasty cream sauce before serving. It's a dish with a "cuisiné" taste, but which unfortunately is becoming increasingly rare in restaurants.

Soufflée omelette with cheese

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Halfway between an omelette and a soufflé, this quick recipe give a light and delicious result. The secret is mainly in the two cooking methods: frying pan, then oven.

Almond dacquoise

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A dacquoise is a sort of almond meringue that can be eaten like a biscuit or can be used as the base of more sophisticated desserts.

Onion fondue

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Onion fondue is a delicious classic of French cuisine: finely-sliced onions, cooked long and slow until they are melting and caramelized. This can be used in many other recipes.

Sliced veal with leeks and mushrooms

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

Tomato sauce (with fresh tomatoes)

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When we make a classic tomato sauce, we generally use tinned crushed tomatoes, and that's already very good. But it's possible to do much better, using fresh tomatoes (when in season, of course), which are gently preserved in the oven with thyme and garlic. See how in this recipe.

Galette Charentaise

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This is a traditional cake from France's Charente region. The recipe is straightforward and the cake is slightly dense in texture, but quite delicious.

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.

Benoîton

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This curious name (explained below) applies to a small bread fingers made with a blend of wheat and rye flour, enriched with raisins and almonds.

Gratin du Nord

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This gratin combines the flavours that are so characteristic of France's northern region: endives (chicory), beer and Maroilles cheese.

Seared tuna with lemon and lime

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This is a very simple way to prepare and cook tuna - a fish that tends to dry out very quickly if you are not careful about how you cook it. In this recipe the tuna medallions are marinated in a mixture of olive oil, lemon and lime, before being seared briefly on both sides. Serve with rice cooked beforehand, then just heated through in the left-over marinade.

Red mullet fillets with a reduced white-wine sauce

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For this recipe, the red mullet fillets are fried in a large saucepan, then removed and kept hot. The "jus court" sauce is made by reducing dry white wine with spring onions in the pan used to cook the fish. The small quantity of sauce left (its French name literally means "short juice") is very concentrated and flavoursome, so you only need serve a tablespoonful to each guest.

Apple and almond gratin

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Imagine a gratin, but sweet, made with apples and toasted ground almonds. This delicious dessert combines apples and almonds with a vanilla custard-like mixture - simply yummy!

Gâteau Nantais

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This traditional cake from the French city of Nantes is deliciously moist, flavoured with almonds, vanilla and rum. For the finishing touch, the top is covered with boozy white icing.

Toffee apple upside-down cake

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With a flavour reminiscent of the French classic tart tatin, this cake is made with a ring of tart apples arranged on a layer of caramel, then covered with the batter. After baking, the cake is turned out while still hot so that the caramelized apples are on the top with the moist cake underneath.

Pork chops with a duo of brassicas

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In this recipe, the pork chops are pan-fried and served with a sauce of the reduced pan juices and white-wine, and two different brassicas: Brussels sprouts and romanesco.

How to cook potato grenaille

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The French call very small potatoes "grenaille". This is a typical way of cooking them: the tiny potatoes are pan-fried in their skins and make an excellent accompanient for meat. Grenaille can be made with any kind of potato; it is a question of size, rather than variety, though I think that firm-textured potatoes, such as rattes or charlottes, work best. I am using rattes in the photos. The cooking is a combined method: boiling first, then frying. This is quicker than using a single method.

Fried eggs with tomatoes

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In this recipe, thick slices of tomato are cooked first, then the eggs are left to cook gently in the spaces between them. Particularly delicious served simply with a trickle of balsamic vinegar.

Amiens macaroons

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These macaroons, famous since the 16^th century, are small, soft almond-flavoured cakes. This recipe is much easier to make than the one for the classic Parisian macarons.

Fish fillet with preserved lemons

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A thick fish fillet stuffed with slices of preserved lemon - crispy on the outside and tender inside.

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

In cooking, a charlotte is a delicious moulded dessert, with biscuits around the outside that have been soaked in a flavoured syrup, filled with a light cream or mousse. The charlotte is left to set in the fridge before being turned out and served in slices. It is very light and a lovely sweet...
February 27^th 201349 K4.3

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

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 202511 K5

We often read in a recipe where a pastry is put into a mould that, just before pouring, the mould should be buttered or greased. But what's the difference between these 2 terms?
December 1^st 20255,6175

Pan

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The basic utensil in cooking, for everything that needs to be cooked, boiled, heated, etc.
16 K4.1

Tart rings, moulds or tins

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For cooking tarts and tartlets, you can use classic moulds or tins (left photo), or rings (right photo) which are moulds with no base that are placed on a non-stick baking sheet for cooking. This is what pastry chefs use, because with no base, tart cook faster and more evenly, and it's easier to...
18 K4.5

Baking sheet

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This is a metal sheet or tray, covered with a non-stick coating, similar to the lining of an oven. It can be used for cooking a wide range of things, but mainly small items to be cooked together such as rock cakes or profiteroles. .
28 K4.1

Silcon baking mat

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Sometimes using a nonstick baking sheet is not enough when cooking items that stick well, such as macarons or coconut tuiles for example. In this case it's possible to line the sheet with cooking parchment,but one can also use a silicone baking mat which is a flexible sheet with a silicone coating,...
16 K4.2