The cold autumn air is a great excuse to stay in and eat !

I went back to Bordeaux last friday for my first full week-end since september. I love going there in the fall, it always reminds me of christmas ! We had some guests over so I decided to try out my new cooking skills and made a 3 course meal : porcini mushrooms with chestnuts, parsley and a white wine sabayon, then a roasted canette ith glazed carrots and turnips, and finally for desert a fruit salad.
I enjoyed being creative and using all the skills I've learned. My first semester is over, I have my exams this saturday, which is stressing me out a little bit but hopefully it will all go well.
Anyway here's how I made the dessert :

- I cut the suprêmes (skinless slices) of grapefruit and oranges, and i peeled the clementines and simply sliced them. For the figures, i just cut a cross on the top to open them.
- I also made some orange blossom madeleines : you mix in a bowl 150 g of sugar and 150 g of melted butter, then add 3 eggs, and 150 g of self-raising flour, and a table spoon of orange blossom water.
- I candied orange and lemon peel : you put julienne zests in water and bring it to boil, since out and repeat a second time. Then cook the peel in water and sugar until you have a syrup, take the peel out and cover them with caster sugar.
- I also made a syrup to put on top of the fruit by cooking orange and grapefruit juice with brown sugar.
- I zested a lime on top, and added mint leaves for decoration.

And voilà !
I love citrus, they feel like christmas to me, when clementines are in season I could easily eat 3 kg of them everyday ! This dessert is truly one of my favorite that I've made and it's super simple ! I truly recommend it :) !

My life has changed for the better !

It's high time I confessed something to you all !
I haven't written a blog post in a while and there is a reason, I have started my school year. You might be thinking that I have started the second year of prepa torture, learning all about biology and agriculture, however that is not the case, I quit. That's right I put my foot down and decided never to go back to that hell hole !
What am I going to do with my life now ? Well I'm still not sure about that, still I do know what I'll be doing till next year : I'm learning about cooking !
I started classes at The Ecole Cordon Bleu Paris on the first of september and it was the best decision I've ever made, I'm loving it.
I'm not allowed to show you pictures of the school or what food we make there but I'm still going to tell you all about it !
Up to now, we've cut learned how to cut vegetables, and I had to practice :

A lot...

So much it made me cry...

We also learned how to make stocks, sauces, pastries and today I'm going to make a puff pastry from scratch, how exciting !
I'm living the Julia Child dream !

Chard gratin and chicken for supper.

I love chard, I honestly do, my father grows it every year in our garden ! The thing is I like chard only one way : in a gratin ! So since we have to use up all this chard from the garden we end up eating many, many, many chard gratins !

Here's how I make it :

 First you start by preparing the chard, separate the leaves and the stalks, wash it all (dah...of course), then you want to remove the stringy bits of the stalk the same way that you do with celery !

You then cook the stalks for about 10 minutes and the leaves for about 2 .

Then you have to make a white sauce :
 Melt 50g of butter in a pan, than stir in 50g of flour.
You end up with a roux.

 Slowly stir in 50cL of milk.

Whisk until it becomes thick.

Add salt pepper and a bit of grated nutmeg.

 Cover a pan with oil and butter.

Then alternate chard stalk, leaves and white sauce.

 And this time I also added tomatoes on the second to last layer.
Finish with white sauce, and top it off with grated Emmental cheese.

Put it in the oven at 180°C until gold and crispy on the top.

I also cooked a chicken to go with the gratin.
I simply covered it in olive oil and butter , I also put butter between the meat and the skin on the top of the chicken (so the skin gets very crispy) and stuffed it with peaces of garlic bread (just peaces of baguette that you rub a bit of garlic on).
Then I put it in the oven at 190°C at first and then 180°C after 10 minutes. A normal chicken takes about 45 minutes to cook.

The tricky carving session (curtesy of my father).

And voilà, yumsters ! 

Tomato risotto per favor !

Risotto is definitely one of my favorite meals ! Not to brag but my mother makes the all time best risotto in the entire universe and no other risotto can compare ! However she was not here with me during the holidays so I attempted to make one myself and it was quite delicious !
You start by letting chopped onions sweat out in the pan with olive oil and then you had the risotto rice and let it cook till translucent!
You then turn the heat down a little bit and add wine then stir until it's been absorbed, then add some stock and stir until absorbed and then do the same with water. The key is to never stop stirring, it takes about 25 minutes.

I also added beef and lardons.

Start with one glass of white wine and then 1L of any broth you like.

I added a can of tinned tomatoes.

 And one or two cans of water (whatever it takes to get the rice perfectly cooked i.e. still slightly crunchy)

I topped it off with buffalo mozzarella and parmesan, a few basil leaves would be nice as well.

Summer fruit jam and Madeleines !

You know what helps the medicine go down more than a spoonful of sugar ? A spoonful of jam !
My go-to jams are plum, apricot, peach, and quince. I had a lot of fruit leftover and they were rotting in a corner, so I decided to make jam, luckily for me all those fruit were my favorites (except the quince unfortunately).
I cut up the plums, apricots and peaches and put them in a bowl with sugar and rum to let them give up their juices for a little while.
I suggest using 40% of sugar for 60% fruit, but 50/50 is also good if you've got a very sweet tooth.
Then you put it on a medium heat until it's ready.

The ultimate test : drop a bit of jam on a cold plate and check that it's not runny

Put the pots upside-down to sterilize them :

I made Madeleines to go with the jam, for me that's how you go straight back to childhood on an express train !
Here's a good recipe for Madeleines : http://www.anneshealthykitchen.com/madeleine-cakes/
It's the Paul Bocuse recipe, because if you're going to make a traditional french dish he's your best bet !

YUMSTERS !

Pommes boulangères, O how I love thee !

I've discovered my new favorite way to eat potatoes : Pommes boulangères !

You rub an oven pan with garlic and butter, afterwards layer thin slices of potatoes, butter, tomatoes and bay leaves. Top it with potatoes and put it in the oven at 180°C for 30 minutes minimum, you want the top to be nice and crispy !

Oh, yummy yumsters !

I finally made a soufflé !

As promised, I made soufflés. And I'm very happy to say they turned out quite well.

I made them with bananas because they were lying around the house crying out "please, eat us, we'll be yummy cooked in sugar !".

 You start by peeling the bananas.

 Then you melt butter in a pan (or a wok in my case because it was clean and available).

 Then you add the sliced bananas with the butter and brown sugar cubes (about one per banana).

Then you cook together milk and sugar and essentially make a chou pastry but instead of adding whole eggs you add the yolks and then fold in beaten egg whites.

This is the roux (equal pats butter and flour) to which you add the sweet milk.

 Nice stiff fluffy egg whites.

 Fold it in.

 And after a trip in the oven voilà !

 You can also cook it in the banana peel but it doesn't really look as nice as it should, will have to work on that one !

If you want to know, I used the Paul Bocuse recipe for the Appareil à soufflé.
I don't know if it's a good thing, but I feel so proud to have made a soufflé, like it's my biggest achievement since macaroons...is that ridiculous ?

A bowl full of minestrone.

What is the nicest thing to eat on a stormy night ?

Soup.

And what soup is the most flavorsome and comforting ?

Well it has to be minestrone !

What is minestrone ?

It is basically a lot of vegetables cooked together in water with small pasta and at the end you add tomatoes, basil, parmesan and olive oil.

Here's how I made it :

- chard (both stalks and leaves)

- leeks

- carrots

- celery

- mange tout

- green beans

- peppers

- potatoes

- alphabet pasta

- lardons

- basil

- tomatoes

- parmesan

- salt

- pepper

- olive oil

 Chop the celery.

 Chop chop chop.

And chop chop choperou.

 Fry in a casserole until lardons are cooked then add water and bring to the boil.

 Chop the peppers.

 And guess what you do to the potatoes ?!

Rince the beans (finally something that doesn't need any chopping).

 After 20 minutes add the potatoes and peppers for 30 minutes.

 Then add the beens for 10 minutes, and then the pasta for another 10.

 Prepare bowls with crushed tomatoes, CHOPPED basil and parmesan.

Serve the soup with a drizzle of olive oil, a pinch of salt and pepper.

















Basically if you're in the mood to do some chopping then this is the recipe for you !