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 !

Nice summer vegetable salad.

Last night I put my foot down. Because you see, my dad loves meat, and loves pasta, and loves fatty things, and, I do to, but there's a limit to how many steaks you can eat in a row you know? So last night I decided to make a fest of vegetables and it was delicious, but also it felt great !

 Aubergines (from the garden ;) ) thinly sliced and lade on aluminium foil with olive oil in the oven at 220 °C.

 Lettuce (from the garden ;) ) torn into a bowl.

 steamed beans (green beans and mange tout, not from the garden :( )

Chopped tomatoes (from the garden ;) )

 Basil, oh how I love thee !

Note : in salads like this one, I like to use herbs, for example basil, as if they were a lettuce leaf, i.e about the same quantity of basil and lettuce.

 Thinly chopped spring onions (not from the garden :( )

 A simple vinaigrette made with olive oil, wine vinegar, salt, pepper and piment d'espelette.

 Parmesan.

Mix it all together

 Tada !

Yummy, even Dad had to admit it was delicious.

Arriving in Bordeaux

Monday, July 14th i.e. the french national day, I travelled on the train to go to my father's house ( with said father) in a little town near Bordeaux. It's a very typical country house with a big garden, my favorite part is the "potager" which is the vegetable garden. We arrived and there were many courgettes ready to be eaten. But most importantly, there are 4 basil plants, and basil just happens to be my favorite  herb ;).
So for dinner, we hadn't done any shopping yet so I made pasta, it's sort of the tradition to eat pasta the first night because there's never anything else to eat.
I cooked the courgettes in a pan, and I made a "pesto" (not really because there was no parmesan or pine nuts in the fridge) by mixing basil leaves, garlic and olive oil.

 No one was ready to have dinner but the pasta was cooked, so I ran some cold water over it to stop it from cooking and saved some of the water the pasta had cooked in.
Then when dinner time arrived, I mixed together the courgettes, the pesto, the pasta and the cooking water all in a pan to heat it up a bit.

And it was ready to be taken down to the garden for dinner.

YUMSTERS

Afterwards we just had some nice mint and verbena infusion.

Then we left to go watch the fireworks ... :)