Fresh mint ice-cream

(Found inTexts)
This well-flavoured ice-cream is excellent on its own, or in profiteroles with a chocolate sauce for example.
February 21^th 2011530 K4.6 1 hour 35 min.

Clarified butter

(Found inTexts)
This is a way of melting butter to eliminate all the impurities. The clarified butter can then be heated without spoiling, and is more digestible. It is ideal for cooking at high temperatures where small black specks would spoil the appearance, or for emulsified sauces like béarnaise or mousseline.
June 21^th 2017462 K4.2 2 hours 15 min.

Real custard sauce (crème anglaise)

(Found inTexts)
Real custard or vanilla sauce consists of egg yolks beaten with sugar and cooked slowly in vanilla milk. It is the base or the accompaniment for many desserts.
January 17^th 2018418 K 24.3 45 min.

Chocolate sauce

(Found inTextsStages)
This rich smooth chocolate sauce, with its full flavour, is one of the indispensable ingredients of profiteroles, but it can be used with many others desserts.
February 21^th 2011306 K 24 35 min.

French dressing (vinaigrette)

(Found inTexts)
Here is a very simple recipe, but it could completely transform, maybe even transcend, your salad.
July 7^th 20111.05 M4.5 7 min.

Couscous

(Found inTextsStages)
In couscous, the meat and vegetable mixture is rather long to cook, but not difficult. And the couscous itself (a kind of coarse semolina) is simple and quick to prepare.
November 16^th 2017517 K4.3 2 hours 40 min.

Parcels of fish fillet in spinach

(Found inTextsStages)
These parcels are made with small pieces of fish fillet, wrapped in a blanched spinach leaf and lightly fried in butter. They can be served with a salted white wine sabayon (as in the recipe of scallops with crunchy vegetables), a beurre blanc, a dash of olive oil with herbs, or any other sauce of...
March 18^th 2013238 K4.8 2 hours 25 min.

Artichoke hearts forestier

(Found inTextsStages)
This recipe is not very complicated, but does involve some work: an artichoke heart with a layer of mushroom duxelle, a layer of fried bacon, topped with a poached egg and cream sauce. Everything can be prepared in advance (the day before for example), but the final assembly should be done just...
May 10^th 2023268 K5 1 hour 50 min.

Green parsley sauce

(Found inTextsStagesComments)
This sauce, with a great parsley taste, is perfect with steamed vegetables or fish. At the bottom you will find the coulis version of this recipe.
February 21^th 2011522 K 44.3 25 min.

Pizza dough

(Found inTexts)
Pizza dough is a lind of bread dough with olive oil, which make it softer. This is the same dough that I use for pizzas and flammenkuches, this is no doubt incorrect, but it's very good nevertheless. At home we used to make pizza dough quite thick, and flammenkuche as thin as possible.
September 22^th 2024506 K4.6 1 hour 60 min.

Tomato sauce (for pizzas)

(Found inTextsStages)
This is the sauce to put on pizza bases before the toppings.
October 19^th 2010526 K4.3 1 hour 15 min.

Fish petals, vegetables julienne, and beurre blanc

(Found inTextsStages)
This recipe consists of delicate flakes ("petals") of poached fish, cooked with smoked ham, served on a bed of julienne vegetables (fine sticks of carrots, turnips and cabbage), with a "beurre blanc" sauce made with vinegar and shallots. Not difficult, but entails some work.
December 31^th 2013256 K4 1 hour 35 min.

Rosemary steamed fish

(Found inTextsStages)
In this recipe the fish is cooked in steam perfumed with rosemary, which makes it tender and aromatic, served on a bed of onions fondue and finished with a dry white wine sauce.
March 29^th 2020336 K3.8 1 hour

Scallops with crunchy vegetables and wine sabayon

(Found inTexts)
This is a bed of vegetables cut small, lightly cooked to stay crunchy. The scallops are cut in half and fried, filled with a morsel of foie gras, and served coated with a savoury reduced white wine sabayon. It entails some work, but the result is impresive.
June 11^th 2011309 K4 2 hours 60 min.

Hamburgers

(Found inTexts)
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.
December 6^th 2015419 K4.8 35 min.

African style chicken

(Found inTexts)
This is a sort of smoked chicken, cooked in a tomato-coconut sauce, and served with kidney beans and plain rice. It's quite a simple recipe, with ready-made ingredients, but which needs a long cooking time on low heat (one hour).
February 21^th 2011408 K5 2 hours 4 min.

Chinese style chicken

(Found inTextsStagesIngredients)
Only "chinese style", not a true chinese recipe.
February 28^th 2012303 K4 1 hour 40 min.

Lille style chicken

(Found inTextsStages)
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.
May 10^th 2023359 K3.8 50 min.

How to heat milk without it catching on the bottom of the pan

(Found inTexts)
Very often when you heat milk in a saucepan, it forms at the bottom of the pan (especially if the milk boiled) a sticky and brown bottom of milk that burned and attached. To avoid this here is a very simple and very effective tip.
February 21^th 2011255 K 24.2 1 min.

Rémoulade dressing

(Found inTexts)
This dressing is a kind of mayonnaise with vinegar, used for some salads like celeriac rémoulade. Usually it is prepared from mayonnaise, but here is another version, simpler and just as tasty.
October 3^rd 2010877 K3.8 6 min.

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 2024260 K 43.7

Some hints for a pizza-party

A pizza party is always a very pleasant and convivial occasion. Good people (friends and family) get together to enjoy delicious pizzas, baked right in the oven. Here are a few tips to help you make yours a success.
August 30^th 2024188 K3.7

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 2023303 K3.9

Cooking with herbs

Herbs: there's nothing else so small that can add so much to a recipe. They are not only for garnishing, but are a true part of the dish, sometimes one of the main ingredients. A small example of the "power" of herbs: you make a chopped carrot salad, which is very good with a vinaigrette, but if you...
June 3^rd 2024192 K 13.9

Start off well to cook well

What do I need to get started in the kitchen? First of all, a good website! That's it, you're there ;-), then a minimum of equipment, and the few products you should always have in your cupboards or fridge. Here are a few things to help you make your choices.
August 29^th 2023310 K 13.6

Cream and sauces

Have you ever wondered why making beautiful tasty sauces is so easy when you use cream? .
October 15^th 201219 K4.4

The (small) miracle of béchamel sauce

Making a béchamel sauce is going to confront you with a little miracle that happens every time: You pour milk over a roux, it's very liquid, you stir over a low heat, and then all of a sudden, miracle, the sauce sets, it thickens, you've got your béchamel. Let's see what happened.
August 27^th 20245,2794

Sauce and salad: When and how to mix them?

When dressing a salad, there's a kind of golden rule: add the dressing very shortly before serving, especially if your salad contains crunchy elements such as croutons or fresh vegetables, which will retain their crunchiness or crispiness. But, as is often the case in the kitchen, there are...
November 29^th 20243,2415

Properly cooked! (the taste)

Going out to a restaurant is getting harder at the moment. In France, at least, you have to try and find one that has agreed to pass on the new lower rate of VAT at anything other than a symbolic level, and there aren't many. And then, most importantly, you have to find a good one: one where you...
February 6^th 201115 K 14.6

Maillard reactions

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 201534 K4

Preservative oil, an asset for taste

When you prepare a dish using an ingredient that has been preserved in fat, for example a springtime 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 20244,4965

Well-cooked meat

Have you ever noticed that if you like your meat well done, it invites strange looks? For instance, in a restaurant, when asked “How would you like that cooked?” If you reply, “Well done,” it is almost as if you are swearing….
May 21^th 201130 K 14.4

Too much sweet and savoury

There is a food trend which is creeping in everywhere in France right now: mixing sweet with savoury. In some restaurants, it is becoming difficult to order a classic dish, like “roast veal” for instance, without being served fruits in the garnish or honey/conserves/syrup in the sauce or cooked...
November 3^rd 201124 K4.5

The art of the charlotte

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 201340 K4.3

The different cooking modes

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 20245,2824.7

One should cover a pan while heating?

You've probably heard it before: "Cover your pan, it'll boil faster", but is it true? Let's find out.
February 27^th 201527 K 13.4

Vegetable soups

As I write this post, we are slowly slipping into winter, and this late autumn is the perfect time for soups, especially vegetable ones. Soups, that somewhat "soft" dish, often associated with our childhood, infallible remedy against a cold evening or an ugly weather, or both.
December 5^th 20178,7015

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 201877 K 24.3

Rosemary in recipes

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 201820 K4.7

The taste of raw tomatoes

Let's take a look at tomatoes, which are still in full bloom at the end of summer (as I write these lines), and which make for delicious salads. I had already talked to you about the interest of peeling tomatoes, which gives them an extraordinary sweetness in the mouth, but let's talk about the...
September 8^th 201813 K4.9

Double cooking of vegetables

When you cook vegetables, it's not easy to capture and preserve the flavours. It is easy to undercook, but you can make up for it, or overcook, and then it is unfortunately a bit cooked (in the sense of "ruined"). But above all, how to get the maximum of the taste of the vegetable in the pan, then...
July 12^th 201920 K4.1

When should you salt?

In the kitchen, we salt very frequently, almost all the time, and we must be careful because this salt can influence the texture of what you are cooking. I'm not going to talk about the amount of salt here, that's for another time, but rather about : When do you salt?
August 13^th 201914 K4.5

Roasting spices

If you like your food a little, or a lot, spicy, you'll no doubt have a jar or sachets of mixed spices in your cupboards from which to draw when preparing a dish. I'm thinking, for example, of curries, chili and couscous, all of which fill the kitchen, and sometimes far beyond...
October 30^th 20206,5754.9

Thermal inertia or "out of the fire"

When you're cooking, you need a lot of heat to cook, and most of the time it's on the fire, literally if you're on gas, more indirectly if you're not. An expression that comes up quite often is "Off the heat", but what does it really mean?
December 12^th 20207,0904.6

Do you know Yotam Ottolenghi?

Do you know Yotam Ottolenghi? Maybe not, in which case let me tell you a little about him.
December 19^th 20204,9164.8