La petite biscotte

A few days ago I was browsing Elise’s wonderful blog and her last blog entry was about a pumpkin risotto which actually reminded me that I had never cooked nor eaten a risotto ever before. First I had to find out where to get the special, medium grain rice that you need for risotto, called “Arborio”. While walking around town this morning I actually discovered a charming little Italian grocer. He had exactly the rice I wanted plus some quality Parmesan cheese and prosciutto (12 € all in all, ouch :p).

Once I got home I started cooking immediately and when I got to the “add white wine” stage of the recipe I grabbed the sole bottle of wine I still had standing around (I normally don’t drink alcohol) and I was shocked to discover that it was a super pricey, Christmas present bottle of “Saint Joseph” wine from my father in law… well the stock was already cooking and the onions were in the pan so I couldn’t go to buy a different bottle fast. Well, I opened the bottle and prayed for my father in law never to find out :p The risotto itself was very tasty (it better be tasty at 20€ a portion^^), however I found it a tiny bit stiff so I’m going to add a little more stock next time.

(Recipe adapted from BBC food)

Ingredients

• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• 50g butter
• 30g prosciutto
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 400g Arborio rice
• 150ml white wine
• 1.5 litres hot chicken or vegetable stock
• 400g frozen peas
• 25g Parmesan cheese
• salt and pepper (if needed)

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Preparation

1. Prepare the chicken stock and let it simmer at low temperature.
2. Melt the butter in a large saucepan together with the olive oil until they are foamy.
3. Add the onion and cook them at medium-low heat until they get transparent.
4. Add the prosciutto and cook everything together for about 2 minutes.
5. Turn the heat up and add the rice. Cook for 2 minutes while stirring constantly.
6. Add the white wine and stir until the wine is absorbed by the rice.
7. Turn down the temperature to medium and with a ladle add stock to the rice until it’s just about covered.
8. Cook until the stock has been absorbed. Now stir the rice continuously while adding one ladle of broth at a time, allowing the rice every time to absorb the liquid before adding a new ladle. After about 10 minutes of doing that, add the peas to the rice.
9. Continue until no broth is left and until the rice is al dente (cooking time overall of the rice is 15-20 minutes).
10. Just right before taking the risotto of the heat, add the rest of the butter along with the Parmesan cheese and some salt/pepper if needed.

Serves 4.

It’s autumn which means it’s pumpkin season! Normally every market should be filled with a great variety of pumpkin/squash/acorn. Yeah well that’s normally :p Unfortunately here in the south of France pumpkin is not really a staple food. When Halloween approaches the big supermarkets import a few pumpkins but whatever they don’t manage to sell is sometimes being offered for weeks after as prepacked pumpkin slices. I’ve had a lot of bad experiences so whenever I buy pimpkin I’m extremely careful. Luckily at the moment the markets here do have a few pumpkins lying around and they still appear to be fresh.

When I decided to make this soup I thought about adding a little fresh ginger to give it a spicy kick. Although I’m not a big fan of ginger the outcome was surprisingly good, however if you don’t like ginger don’t add any.

Ingredients

• 500g of pumpkin
• 2-3 carrots
• 1 onion
• 250 ml vegetable stock
• 1 tsp of grated ginger
• 2 Tbsp vegetable oil
• 2 slices of bread (white bread works nicely but you can use any sort of bread, I for one used black bread here)
• 2 tsp of paprika powder
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• crème fraîche (optional)
• finely chopped parsley (optional)

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1. Peel and clean the pumpkin. Cut into small pieces.
2. Chop the onion finely.
3. Heat the vegetable oil in a large saucepan.
4. Peel, clean and cut the carrots into small pieces.
5. Put the carrot into the saucepan with the hot oil and cook them at medium heat for about 5 minutes.
6. Add the onions, the pumpkin and the ginger and cook everything for approximately 15 minutes on medium-low heat. (Or until the carrots and the pumpkin are nicely soft)
7. Add the vegetable stock and bring to a boil.
8. Put the soup aside.
9. Cut the bread in cubes and drizzle them with olive oil. Powder them with a little paprika and put them in the oven at approximately 180 °C.
10. Either use a food processor or an immersion blender to blend the soup until the texture is nicely smooth.
11. Run the soup through a sieve and remove the croutons from the oven.
12. Add salt and pepper to the soup if needed.
13. Serve with a little crème fraîche and chopped parsley. (optional)

Serves 4.

Before flying to Germany this summer, I bought a magazine at the airport called “Cuisinez comme un chef” (Cook like a chef) with a few recipes from French celebrity, 2 Michelin-star chef Joël Robuchon. Usually I’m not a fan of “celebrity chef recipes” because I’ve been disappointed one too many times. Often these recipes are extremely complicated, require an arsenal of ingredients and spices which are either hard to get or are way too pricey and the end result is more often than not disappointing compared to the time and money invested.

I don’t know about you but when I want to cook something there is nothing that “turns me off” quicker than a huge list of ingredients. I don’t really like adding components (like spices) to a dish for the sake of it. If I use an ingredient I want to be able to taste it while eating.

I highly doubt that all those recipes have really been cooked and developed by the big chefs themselves. Just like the products you can buy which carry the name of a celebrity chef and often the stuff simply tastes gross and isn’t worth the money (Maki made an interesting post about this topic on her blog).

This time however I was pleasantly surprised. The recipe was quite simple, didn’t require $100 worth of ingredients and the outcome was actually very tasty. Of course the recipe itself was adapted to the summer months, but I don’t think that eating light food is only something you do in summer. I’m actually looking for healthy, low-calorie recipes the whole year round. And this is definitely one I’m going to cook regularly from now on. What’s great about those wraps is that you can either eat them as a main course or you can take them along for lunch at work.

Ingredients (recipe adapted from “cuisinez comme un chef”)

For the light Cesar dressing:

• 3 Tbsp light mayonnaise
• 1 tsp balsamic vinegar
• 1/2 clove of garlic (crushed) [optional]
• 2 Tbsp milk
• 2 Tbsp grated parmesan cheese
• 1 tsp Dijon mustard
• salt and pepper

For the wraps:

• 2 tortillas (I used store bought ones that had a note of salsa)
• 2 chicken breasts
• 1/2 avocado
• 1 carrot
• 2 big lettuce leaves
• 1 tomato
• 1/2 yellow pepper (or any colour you prefer)

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Preparation

1. Make the light Cesar dressing by mixing all the ingredients for the dressing mentioned above. Add salt and pepper to taste. If you added whole pieces of garlic, remove them before using the dressing.
2. Put a teaspoon of oil in a non-stick frying pan and heat it up well at medium-high heat.
3. Cut the chicken in bite sized pieces and put them in the hot pan. (Remember never put meat or fish in a pan that’s not hot, it turns the meat to rubber)
4. Cook the meat while stirring frequently. At the same time wash the yellow pepper and cut it into thin stripes. Add those to the meat and let everything cook together until the meat is nicely brown and the pepper stripes are soft. Add a little salt at the end and put aside.
5. Peel the carrots and cut them in julienne stripes. Wash and cut the tomato in slices. Peel the avocado, remove the core and slice it in stripes. Wash the lettuce leaves.
6. Cut two pieces of baking sheet the approximate size of a tortilla.
7. Cover one of those sheets with a tortilla. Start by covering the tortilla with one of the lettuce leaves and continue with a layer of 2-3 tomato slices. Be careful to put the ingredients in the middle of the tortilla rather than the sides else the filling won’t stay in the tortilla once wrapped.
8. Season the tortilla with some of the Cesar dressing. Now add lengthwise: the chicken and pepper, the carrot stripes and the avocado slices. Fold in the sides a little and then roll your tortilla using the paper as help when needed. The baking sheet is supposed to be wrapped around the tortilla at the end.
9. Repeat for the second tortilla.
10. Cut in a half and serve. Serves 2.

Bon appetit !

Gnocchi is one of my favorite Italian dishes. Usually I eat them with just a little grated cheese and I don’t think that any type of sauce is necessary for them to taste good. It’s actually not easy to find a good sauce for Gnnochi and I’ve been searching for a long time :p For me usual pasta sauces (bolognese, basil pesto, carbonara etc.) were simply to heavy for a Gnocchi dish. Sometimes I ate them with a simple tomato sauce but my stomach isn’t always happy about that, so I continued the search and finally today I decided to try and make a Pesto Rosso.

I’m actually not quite sure if Pesto Rosso is a traditional Italian sauce. I didn’t find anything about it on Wikipedia. If you happen to know where Pesto Rosso comes from and if it’s used in traditional Italian cuisine, please leave a comment
The only thing I know is that I found two different types of recipes on the internet. One type involved a lot of olives and fresh thyme. The other type leaves out olives entirely and uses basil as herb. The latter is the type of pesto rosso I tried here in France before and that’s the one I tried to reproduce with this recipe. However I don’t know if this is the “original” recipe (should there be one).

Unfortunately I didn’t make the Gnocchi myself as the process is quite time consuming and requires some practice. But if you’d like to give it a shot check out this video.

Ingredients

For the pesto (recipe adapted from this site):

• 200g fresh, firm tomatoes
• 10 sun-dried tomatoes, drained of their oil
• 2 cloves of garlic (optional, I didn’t put any)
• 2 tablespoons of fresh basil, chopped
• 50g walnuts, chopped (you can also use 100g almonds)
• 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil (the best you have)
• salt and pepper

Other than that:

• 500g of uncooked Gnocchi
• grated parmesan or mozarella cheese (optional)

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Preparation

1. If you are using almonds, cook them in some water for approximately 5-10 minutes. Drain the nuts, cool off with cold water and peel away their skin. If you are using walnuts you can omit this step.
2. Put the fresh tomatoes in a bowl and pour some hot water over them. Let them in the hot water for about 2 minutes, drain and remove their skin (should be easy now because of the hot water). Cut in cubes and put aside.
3. Roughly chop the dried tomatoes. Put aside.
4. If you are using garlic, chop finely.
5. Bring water to a boil in a large saucepan and add 3 teaspoons of salt.
6. Put the fresh and the dried tomatoes in a food processor. Add the nuts, the garlic and the basil. Turn on the processor on high speed while slowly adding the olive oil. Once all the olive oil is incorporated continue to process everything until you are happy with the texture. Personally I like it as smooth as possible, but that’s up to you.
7. At last add salt and pepper to taste.
8. Turn of the food processor and put the pesto rosso aside.
9. Cook the Gnocchi according to manufacturer’s instructions.
10. Drain them well and serve with 1-2 spoons of pesto rosso. Sprinkle with some grated cheese if you like.

Serves 3-4. If you have some pesto rosso left you can conserve it in the fridge for a couple of days. Some even say that it conserves for up to a month if covered with a film of olive oil but I’m a little sceptical about that. Enjoy

How to make California Rolls? Let’s start with the list of ingredients & utensils.

• 2 cups of Japonica Rice (There is no good substitute for this, check this post for more information)
• 4 cups of water
• 1/4 cup of sushi vinegar (You can get this in Asian/Japanese supersmarkets, but if you have troubles finding this -I’ll add a recipe later)
• 2 nori sheets - cut in half (If its full size nori sheets, which is mostly the case, fold it and halve it along the longer side)
• 1 ripe avocado (to check this, press a little with your finger on the skin… if it gives slightly the avocado is ripe, if your finger leaves a mark, it’s too ripe)
• toasted sesame seeds (for a greate visual appeal try to buy black and white sesame seeds, they don’t have to be toasted as you buy them, you can toast them yourself in a frying pan in five minutes easily)
• half a cucumber (don’t peel it, just wash it very well)
• imitation crab sticks (surimi), just buy a package of those, you’ll need about 5
• bamboo sushi rolling mat
• clingfilm

1. Cook the rice using these instructions. At the end of the article she describes how to make sushi rice, follow these instructions as well (when you are about to cook the rice, you do not have to substitute the water with dashi stock, I personally don’t like the smell of dashi stock at all and my sushi rice tastes just fine without it). Note: It is really important that you wash the rice. Many people omit this step but it actually helps giving the rice exactly the texture it needs, not too sticky. Also cooling the sushi rice can be painful but you’ll get used to it and as fancy as it might sound, the blow dryer is a huge help.
If you didn’t find sushi vinegar you’ll find the recipe for it at the end of her article as well.

2. While the rice dries, cooks or rests, cut all the vegetables length wise: Peel the avocado and halve it. Then slice down 5 mm thick stripes from the middle to the edge.
Halve the cucumber lengthwise and remove the seeds, then slice into 5mm thick stripes.
The crab sticks are best halved lengthwise as well.

3. In a frying pan toast the sesame seeds on middle heat and keep stirring them until they are golden brown.

4. Wash your hands carefully and put them under cold water, then let them wet and take about a handful of your prepared sushi rice. Dispense it over the whole norisheet by leaving about a cm space at the bottom. Don’t squeesh the rice; just keep your hands wet, that’s the whole trick to easily work and shape Japanese rice. Don’t put too much rice either, biggest mistake at the start is to put too much rice. You are supposed to still see some places of the norisheet through the rice. Don’t worry about evening out the rice, the bamboo mat’ll take care of that.

Try to always free your hands of the rice starch between each step and after washing them, leave them wet.

5. Now take about a teaspoon of sesame seeds and sprinkle them over the upper half of the rice on the nori sheet. After that grab the nori sheet by the upper and lower corner on the left or the right side and flip it upside down. The rice free area is still at the bottom.

6. Put two stripes of avocado in the middle of the sheet, followed by two and a half of the imitation crab sticks you cut before. Those are placed ABOVE the avocado slices. Just under the avocado slices position two cucumber stripes.

7. Now wet your hands and roll the sheet starting from below as firm as you can without squeeshing it. After having the role in front of you, position the clingfilm over the Sushi roll followed by the bamboo mat. Now gently press the mat with your hands around the roll to make it firm.

8. Remove the clingfilm and the mat and take a sharp knife with a wet blade. Cut the role in six pieces.

8. It’s quite hard to describe the procedure clearly. But luckily there is a video from an experienced Sushi chef, which will clear up a lot of questions you might still have: Check this video, (the video about California Rolls)

“Indian curry is really the best!”

“Nah, I love the curry they make at the Chinese restaurant not far from here…”

“Personally, I prefer Japanese curry :)”

“What??!!? Japanese don’t make curry!”

As a matter of fact Japanese do have a curry dish :p It’s actually one of the most popular dishes over there. According to some recent surveys the average Japanese family eats curry about 2-3 times a week. If right now you think “probably some variation of Indian curry, boring -_-”… you couldn’t be further from the truth. Japanese curry has a completely different taste. The texture, while thicker than other curry types, is much lighter and has a sweet distinct flavour that hits the taste buds when you eat it for the first time and you just go like “wow, I like!”. Surprisingly though, Japanese style curry is the least known over here.

Approximately 2 years ago, I ate my first curry. It was one of those premade curries from house that you heat up in the microwave and then just pour over freshly cooked rice. I found out later that the taste of that curry was far from what you can produce yourself, but still, I liked it so much that I started cooking curry every week. Bit by bit I improved and I managed to get it just right. The perfect curry!

I can say, without exaggarating, that Japanese curry is my favourite dish. By far. Even though I grow tired of just about any food if I eat it too often, I can’t get enough of this one. If you’ve never eaten Japanese curry before, I can only urge you to try it out. You are missing out on a piece of heaven on a plate!

To make Japanese curry, you need very simple ingredients. However there is one thing, that might be a little difficult to get: the curry roux. Curry roux is a sauce mix (mostly in the form of a dried block) which gives the dish its particular flavour and which thickens the sauce at the same time. Of course you can make this yourself (click here for a recipe) but let me tell you from experience: it’s tedious, takes long, requires a lot of trial and error and the final result will be far from what you can make with curry roux cubes. You can find curry roux from two different brands: S&B Foods Inc. and House Foods Coorp. Both offer good sauce mixes which you can buy in about any Japanese/Asian supermarket.

You can choose among three different levels of “heat”: hot, medium and mild. In America S&B’s Golden Curry seems to be more popular, whereas Japanese seem to like House’s Vermont Curry better. The choice is up to you, personally I like both equally. If you have troubles finding Japanese ingredients, please check out this post.

Japanese curry is actually always eaten with rice. The sauce, once done, is poured over one side of the plate while the rice is on the other side. I’ve found out that this way the rice actually doesn’t get mushy from the sauce and stays firm until you are done eating. You can use any type of western style rice, but I highly recommend you to eat this with authentic Japanese rice. It simply mixes perfectly.

Ingredients

• 3 cups of uncooked Japonica rice
• 1 box of curry roux (the one that yields 6 portions, however sizes differ so check the manufacturer’s instructions)
• 2 potatoes
• 2 carrots
• 1 onion
• two pieces of chicken breast (you can use beef, veal or shrimp if you prefer)
• water
• oil

______________

1. Wash the rice and cook it according to these instructions.
2. Cut the onion.
3. Cut the meat in bite sized pieces.
4. Heat up the oil in a pot at medium-high heat.
5. Cut the potatoes and carrots in bite sized pieces.
6. Once the oil is piping hot, put the onions in the pan and cook them while stirring. It is very important that you do not put the onions or the meat in the pot before the oil is hot. If the temperature is too low (aka if you don’t hear a psssssshhht when you drop the meat in the pot) the meat will turn to rubber.
7. Add the meat and continue to stir everything. Cook the meat with the onions until they get a nice brown color.
8. Add the potatoes and carrots. Cook those along with the rest for about a minute while stirring.
9. Now fill up the pot with water. The amount is specified by the manufacturer on the package of the curry roux. Cover the pot with a lid and let simmer for 20-30 minutes (again check package).
10. Finish the curry sauce according to instructions on the package. (Because Golden Curry cooking method differs from Vermont Curry… etc.)

Serves 6. Enjoy!

“Les soupes, c’est pour les vieux” (Soups are for old people)

“Errm… mais moi j’aime la soupe :p” (Uhm… but I like soup :p)

“Pas possible!” (Can’t be!)

I remember having a similar conversation with my husband’s adorable aunt. Well I’m not quite sure if young people really have come to hate soup nowadays, but I can’t imagine autumn without colorful vegetable soups. I must admit that the above soup looks more like a purée but that’s exactly the consistency I like

Ingredients

• For the soup:
• If you live in France, you can buy a bunch of vegetables together (”Pot au feu” - vegetables). One of those boxes is what I used here (minus one onion). If you do not have anything similar where you live use 4 carrots, 1 onion, 2 turnips, 1 leek. You may, of course substitute the vegetables in any way you like (with what you got at home), you can even use 1-2 potatoes.
• water
• salt

• For the Zucchini Pancakes:
• 200g of flour
• 1 cup half milk half water
• 2 eggs
• 100g yoghurt
• 1 big Zucchini, finely shredded
• salt
• pepper
• optional: grated emmental cheese
• oil (olive oil for example)

____________

1. Cut the vegetables roughly and put them in a pot. Add water to the pot to cover the vegetables. Cover with a lid and bring everything to a boil, then reduce heat to low and let simmer for about 45 minutes. If the water level gets low, don’t hesitate to add more.
2. 15 minutes before your soup has finished simmering, start preparing the pancake batter. Pour the flour into a mixing bowl then slowly add the milk/water while mixing well. Adding the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients while mixing prevents lumps. Then add the eggs, the yoghurt and the spices. Mix everything well, then fold in in the shredded Zucchini (if you leave the skin on, it gives the pancakes a nice color).
3. Put some oil in a frying pan and heat it up well at medium heat.
4. With a laddle pour some of the batter into the pan until the whole surface of the pan is covered. Let it cook until the pancake is golden brown on the down-side then flip it. Sprinkle some shredded cheese on it and let the pancake cook until it reaches the same golden brown color from the other side. Once that is done you can fold the pancake in a half or you can fold it the way I did in the above picture (the cheese must be inside though).
5. Once the soup is done, remove it from the stove and let it cool off a little while finishing the rest of your pancakes.
6. Once that is done, pour the soup into a blender and blend it really well until there are no bits of vegetables left. You can then pass the soup through a sieve if you’d like a really smooth texture. It is not necessary though.
7. Season the soup and add a little crème fraîche or some chopped parsley as garnish.

- Serves 4. Enjoy

[image to come soon]

“Ok, what would you like for dinner tonight?”

“Pasta, Pasta!”

“Again? :p”

“Yes :)”

I’m sure you know this type of conversation just too well. What can you do if your family likes Pasta a lot but if you’d still like to cook something healthy?

While strolling over the vegetable section of a local shop here in Aix en Provence, I found a bunch of different vegetables which all looked very appealing but I simply didn’t know how to put them together. So while browsing the wonderful foodblog of Elise I stumbled on a recipe that I’ve always wanted to try out: Pasta Primavera.

Pasta primavera is an Italian dish that consists of pasta and fresh vegetables. A meat such as chicken, sausage or shrimp can be added if desired, but the focus of primavera is the vegetables themselves.

This recipe is so interesting because it is a healthy, low-fat alternative to all those pasta dishes with heavy sauces. Refreshing, light, a taste of autumn and italy on a plate. A great recipe to use up vegetable leftovers you might have in the fridge.

Ingredients

(You can substitute/adjust the following vegetables in any way you like)

• 2 carrots
• 1/2 zucchini
• 1 red pepper
• 1 yellow pepper
• 1 green pepper
• 1 onion
• 7 cherry tomatoes, cut in a half
• garlic (if you do not like garlic, don’t put any)
• olive oil
• 200 ml tomato purée
• 200 ml water
• thyme or herbes de provence
• salt and pepper
• 1 vegetable stock cube
• 200g pasta (penne for example, you can also use whole-wheat pasta)
• grated parmesan cheese (optional)

_______

1. Chop the onions finely. Wash and cut the vegetables in bite sized pieces, stripes for example. Put a large pan on the stove and heat the olive oil in it. (medium heat)
2. At the same time bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add some salt and a bit of olive oil.
3. First put the onions along with the garlic in the hot pan, stir them once and cook them for 30 seconds. Then add the rest of the vegetables and stir to cover with the olive oil. Let the vegetables cook like that for approximately 10 minutes (while stirring once in a while), until they are almost soft.
4. Once the water is boiling, add the pasta and cook them according to manufacturer’s instructions.
5. After the vegetables are soft enough for your taste, add the tomato purée, the water and the vegetable stock cube. Stir well and let everything cook for a minute while adding some thyme (or herbes de provence) and salt/pepper.
6. Drain the pasta and add it to the vegeatables. Mix everything well and adjust seasoning if needed. Add the cherry tomatoes and remove from heat.

Serves 4. You can add some parmesan cheese but personally I left it away. Enjoy