Chestnut mousse in a whipper

Rustic chicken and mushroom pie

This homely looking pie gets back to what good, old-fashioned pies are all about: it's round, deep and has both a proper bottom and lid. The one small concession to modernity is the use of puff pastry for a lighter, crisper crust. The filling combines mushrooms, leeks and diced chicken in a cream sauce.

Bouquet garni

Used very frequently in French cuisine, a secret of French chefs, it adds flavour to a lot of recipes, and it's easy to prepare. The basic principle is to make a small bundle of herbs, bind them in green leek leaves and to tie it up, so that the whole thing can be removed and discarded easily after cooking.

Clarified butter

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.

French dressing (vinaigrette)

Here is a very simple recipe, but it could completely transform, maybe even transcend, your salad.

Natural leaven

Leaven is a natural raising agent, a fermented mixture of water, flour and the microscopic yeasts which are present in the air. It's a delicate living substance, sensitive to the external environment. The recipe is around 4000 years old and dates back to the Egypt of the Pharaohs, via a beautiful history...(note: the ancient Egyptians seem not to have had exclusive knowledge of the process: in Germany evidence of cooking a fermented dough has been found from 8000 BC (the Neolithic era). The...