Christmas cooking

I love living in Paris, the only problem there is that apartment are small and mine don't even have a proper kitchen. And the small place that's supposed to be a kitchen is so small that no oven can fit there.
Going back home for hols means means seeing all the family, and also having an unlimited access to a real kitchen !!! with more than 1 functional stove and an oven !

Needless to tell that I spent most of my holidays time in that wonderful room.

First thing I've done was testing a recipe of macarons. Wandering around the internet, I found a delicious website which is offering a lot of macaron recipes (in french). Marina, the author of this website also gave a lot of tricks that will help you cooking the perfect macaron.

I tested the "confiture de lait" (dulce de lece/ milk jam) and the raspberry recipes.
My attempt was almost a success but I think I need to practice more...

December again

If you haven't noticed yet, chrismast is approaching... Paris is more than ever the city of lights and everyone starts wondering about christmas presents.
December also means going back to Nantes for christmas and having an access to a real kitchen!! My mother is not fond of cooking and so I'm in charge of preparing the lunch on the 25th. So I put my nose again in my cooking books and magasines and went for some wandering on my favorites cooking site and blogs. I still haven't decide yet what I will prepare. But one of my favorite recipe is marinated salmon (gravlax kind). So if you're looking for something to prepare as a starter, maybe it can help you.

Marinated salmon (serves 6)

PREPARE A DAY BEFORE SERVING !

2 salmon filets with their skin (500g in total)
2 tablespoons sugar (brown is better)
4 tablespoons of salt (i take "gros sel" from Guerande)
1/2 tablespoon black pepper
some dill (I don't like to have a too strong taste of dill so I don't use much)

Mix sugar, salt and black pepper.
Wash the salmon and dry the remaining water.
Put the 1st fillet, skin down, in a dish. Spread the salt & sugar mix all over salmon and add the dill.
Cover with the second filet (skin up).
Cover with plastic film, and find something to press the salmon (eg. other dish, plate+died beans).
Put for 6h in fridge. After 6h, remove the water from the dish, turn the salmon upside down (upper filet is now down), and put it back in the fridge for 2 more hours. Do this 2 more times -> that will be 24h to marinate.

Take out of fridge 1h before serving.
Remove the salt & sugar mix using absorbing paper.
Cut in thin slices, normally the skin will go by itself, but if not, remove it!

Serve with toasts.

You might want to serve a sauce with it. My favorite one is made of 1 tablespoon of cream and 1 tablespoon of yogourt, with a pinch of salt, dill and chive.

Salon du chocolat (Chocolate show)

Last sunday was my first experience at Salon du Chocolat.

I had heard good and bad things about it and it was time to try by myself. Actually I didn't get there by myself since Chloe and Lilian convinced me to join them in their chocolate adventures. Needless to say it was not too difficult to persuades me to come. At 10am on sunday we were a group of 9person ready to taste any kind of chocolate.
At 10:05 there was already a group split : it was too difficult to stay together to wander around. The crowd was reasonable until 11-11:30 but later it became too difficult to navigate from 1 place to the other.
The smell was amazing, and so were some of the samples I managed to taste. I just regret some sample were ridiculously small... how can you really taste a chocolate cake with something that is less than 1cm²?
I could attend the cooking lessons since it was too crowded but the smell was amazing... I might take a day off and go there during a week day next year...

The O&A experiment

or "Using leftover orange juice to make amazing dessert"

On a boring evening I decided to entertain myself experimenting with agar-agar again. The tricky point was I was coming back from almost a week out of town and the fridge was empty because I hadn't had time and energy to fill it.
The only things left to prepare a dessert were orange juice and dried apricots...

So I came up with the idea of a "cocktail cream" made of apricot, orange and rhum.

When I tried to eat it as a cream (remember? last time I tried it has a texture similar to a "crême aux oeufs"), I found the texture was more like jelly with small pieces of apricot inside and I dislike it.

The O&A experiment remained in a fridge... Until I had a new idea: process it! I put the "jelly" in the food processor for 2min and it came out with a fluffy texture between a cream and a mousse.
And it makes the difference: it was good! To make it more appealing I used some melted chocolate to built a multilayer dessert.

Chocolate leaf (for 5)
25g chocolate
1 tablespoon chocolate
1/4 teaspoon oil or butter

Melt all ingredients together. When melted form a leaf and refrigerate 20min (or more).

Orange cream
-250ml orange juice
-cinnamon
-1 tablespoon rum
-5 dried apricot (not mandatory)
-1g agar-agar

Cut apricots in small pieces and let them in the orange juice to humidify.
After 10 minutes, add the rum and a pinch of cinnamon to the juice. Then boil the juice+apricot with 1g of agar for 30s and let it cool down for 2h.
After 2h process in food processor and eat as a cream or build the dessert : cover 1 leaf of chocolate with the O&A cream and alternate layers of chocolate and cream.

Fou rire

Once again a post in french... it was too difficult to write in english today. But if you want a translation of the recipe, you can for it in the comments...


Hé, oui, encore une fois je poste en français, en effet, je ne crois pas que j'aurais réussi à expliquer ce qui va suivre en anglais...

La réalisation de cette brioche fut épique.... Commencer à 21h une recette qui inclut 3-4h d'attente était un peu fou mais nous étions en week-end, une énorme buche flambait dans la cheminée et nous voulions des brioches fraîches pour le petit déjeuner.

La recette en elle -même n'a rien de drôle... seulement les personnes présentes étaient toutes fan du SAV d'Omar et Fred diffusé sur Canal+.
La fatigue et certaines intonnations de voix aidant, le pétrissage de la brioche a fini en pleurant (de rire).

La recette originale vient du livre "Le recette de Marie-Louise Cordillot"

Les brioche "d'Omar et Fred"

Ingredients pour 9 brioches individuelles environ :
200g de farine
160g de beurre (dans la recette originale, mais 100-150 devraient suffir)
10g de sucre
7-8g de levure de boulanger
2 oeufs

Préparer le paton:
Melanger du bout des doigts :1/4 de la farine (soit 50g) , la levure et 3 cuillières à soupe d'eauchaude.
Former une boule et inciser en croix sur 2cm. Recouvrir d'eau chaude (50°C) et l'aisser lever jusqu'à doublement du volume). Le notre a fini quasi dissolu dans l'eau... La technique doit pouvoir être améliorée.

Pate à brioche :
Disposer le reste de farine en couronne dans un grand saladier. Déposer les oeufs au centre et incorporer doucement la farine en tournant à la cuillière en bois. Pétrir jusqu'à ce que la pate soit homogène. Ensuite, il faut lever la pate à 30cm et la plaquer violemment dans le saladier. Répéter l'opération jusqu'à ce qu'elle soit élastique et non collante.
Ajouter ensuite le beurre ramolli mais non fondu.

Quand le paton a doublé de volume, incorporez-le à la pate avec les mains.

Ramassez au fond de la terrine, couvrir et faire lever dans une pièce à 20-25°C sans courant d'air pendant 3-4h.

Quand la pate a levé, la battre du bout des doigts pour la faire retomber. Et réserver dans un endroit froid jusqu'au lendemain.

Cuisson:
Former des boules de la taille d'un oeuf et les faire lever dans un endroit chaud pendant 25-30min. Cuire à four chaud (200°C/th7-8) pendant 8-10 min.


Et le sucre? Je n'avais pas noté quand l'ajouté, nous l'avons donc incorporé après les oeufs... mais peut-être aurait-il fallut le mettre dans le paton... Quoi qu'il en soit les brioches étaient bonnes et il n'en restait plus après le petit-déleuner!

Evil week-end and terrific chocolate cake

It was supposed to be a "playing and cooking" week-end at my grandmother country house. We were supposed to be 10 friends spending the week-end together and we had a long list a meals we wanted to taste. Well...

To make a long story short, destiny was against us and we were finally 3 remaining after the timetable/conference/car problems that happened. Not enough to play but some cooking was involved !

I will post the recipes we follow (or not!) in the forthcoming days... But the one I want to share first is the Chocolate and salty butter caramel cake we prepared for sunday lunch.

This recipe was inspired buy a recipe I saw on David Leovitz's blog. I had a big plan about preparing my own dulche de leche a week in advance, but was unable to find enough time... So I came with that new plan of using "caramel au beurre salé" (I found it "taste" better in french) instead.


That's very easy...

1/ Prepare a cup of salty butter caramel (recipe there)

2/Follow David's recipe and use caramel instead of dulche de leche... I also reduced the amount of sugar (100g) and didn't used any nuts.
You can also use your favorite browny's recipe...

Tip: put more caramel in the cake than at the top of it. But we all liked the caramel crust that appeared over the cake and on its sides...

Next time I'll tell you the story of our brioches.

Crumble

I'm leaving for the land of chocolate tomorrow, and so it wasn't reasonable to go to the market during the week-end. For once I bought some fruit in the supermarket on thursday, but I was desapointed by the greengages (reine-claudes) I had. And after few days it was obvious I wouldn't be able to eat them if I didn't cook them.

Then arrived the coincidence: on friday, Lilian told me she was planning to bake a crumble and when I turned on the TV on saturday I saw a show where they were talking about english food, and a woman was explaining her crumble recipe.

I had no choice...
What was particularly interesting for me in Rose crumble was that it didn't needed an oven to be baked.

Greengage and almond crumble
for 2
5-8 greengages (depending on their size
1/3 of stale bread
4 table spoon almonds
2 tablespoon "vergeoise" (I think you can use brown sugar instead, it was actually the only suger I had at home)
butter

Cut the greengage in 2 (or 4) and remove the stone. Cook in a pan with 1/2 teaspoon of butter for 5 min. Put in the dish you choose to serve them.

Process bread, almonds and sugar until it's like a powder.
In a pan, melt 1 tesponn butter. Had the powder you made and cook it until it browns. Don't stop stering (I did and it started to burn!).

Cover the plum with the bread and almond mix.
Serve warm.