Light, full of flavour, tender and succulent. So much better than my best memories of that succulent meat ball in rich gravy that we used to buy ready prepared in a foil container.
A quick and easy recipe for Moules Marinieres, a classic French dish. Includes tips on choosing and cleaning your mussels!
A recipe for Valentine Pavlova – a heart shaped pavlova topped with strawberries, raspberries and blueberries. You could experiment with different shapes. Perfect for celebrating any occasion!
Brawn can be eaten on toasted brown bread lightly buttered and topped with tomato, or in with a salad in the summer.
Perhaps like me you have good childhood memories of brawn, or you have seen it on the charcuterie counter and bought it or hesitated to buy it. Now could be the time to have a go; it is easy and cheap to make, give it a try!
A recipe for roast rabbit in a Chinese style marindade of honey, spices and ginger.
This works equally well with pork and is great with stir fried and steamed vegetables.
Ratatouille is a lush succulent dish that can be enjoyed hot or cold and merits a crusty baguette to mop up the juices.
You can use this recipe as a guide, as it’s easy to create your own versions depending on what vegetables you have to hand.
This is probably the first of several experimental recipes using gesiers – what the British call gizzards, part of the giblets that go into a good chicken stock. They are a speciality here in South West France and I have just opened a 5 kilo tin!
My neighbour taught me how to confit gesiers by salting overnight, rinsing and drying, then simmering in duck fat for ¾ hour before being packed into glass “Kilner Jars” covered with duck fat and then sterilised. They become tender and packed with flavour and can be kept in a cool place for several years.
You will frequently find them as a starter served warm on a bed of lettuce so if you see Salade de Gesiers on a menu, take the plunge, it is a delicious experience.
We rear our own rabbits, generous friends have a walnut tree and other friends from Brittany arrived, last autumn, with gifts that included a string of shallots. Today I have combined these ingredients with an onion and a swede from our own garden to create a warming winter casserole; very appropriate as the temperature has fallen below zero.
The addition of walnuts made the casserole taste more gamey but rabbit avoids that well hung flavour that does has never appealed to me. If you hesitate to eat rabbit or game, substitute with chicken and possibly a few small mushrooms.
A receipe for Mediterranean Vegetable Flan with peppers, aubergine and courgette. The non Vegans can top with goats cheese, as an extra special treat!
Also contains a recipe for the pastry case.
In France this is called the lovely sounding Potage au Potiron, but we’ll just call it Pumpkin soup! We harvested only one potiron, but with it weighing 16lbs I decided to use just a quarter of it. If you can’t get your hands on pumpkin I think you could successfully replace with carrots. The smell when cooking this is wonderful.
Loading ...