Showing posts with label French Fridays with Dorie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label French Fridays with Dorie. Show all posts

18.4.15

Eggplant Caviar


For the Doristas the final countdown has begun. Just four recipes  to go before they complete their journey through "Around My French Table". I had joined the group late and owing to grid-shift and unavailability of the ingredients in this part of the world, left the group early. Nevertheless I hope to catch-up with the others in the years to come and cook my way through all of Dorie's books as and when I find the ingredients and the time...

This week I did a bit of catching up. I tried Dorie's version of Eggplant Caviar....
Read more..
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21.8.14

Tomatoes Provençal # French Fridays with Dorie (Catch-up)


Its been almost two weeks since we moved to India.  My toddler hasn't yet come to terms with the move. He constantly insists that we get back "home." I guess it takes time to get used to the heat and dampness .... the very things that breathe home to us....

My toddler celebrating my grandma's birthday in Kolkata
After living with my parents in Kolkata for a week, toddler and I finally moved to Bhubaneshwar over the weekend. The city of Bhubaneshwar, experienced a IT boom a couple of years back. As a result apartments with basic facilities are mushrooming everywhere, but so far, we have not been able to find a place that is close enough to the institute where my husband works. So we are living out of our suitcases in a guest house and looking for a place we can call home.   

Under the present circumstances, cooking is not an option. We've been eating in the student's canteen. The food in the canteen is tasty but spicy. Way too spicy if you ask me... The toddler wisely has turned towards healthier options. He has been surviving on plain white rice, oats, boiled eggs, milk and bananas. The combination has been keeping him happy and energetic, so we are not overly worried about the lack of greens and colors in his diet. Afterall this arrangement is temporary and hopefully things will start falling in place soon....



In an effort to keep pace with the Doristas, I prepared a few dishes from AMFT, before we left US. This baked tomato dish was a particular favorite. Because tomatoes were cheap, and preparing the dish is easy, I kept including Tomatoes Provençal (sometimes an "almost-Indianized" variant of it), as a side for every other meal. In all its avatars this dish was well received... So, in case you are running out of ideas or enthusiasm for an  elaborate side for dinner tonight,  consider this simple baked tomato dish..

To prepare it, preheat your oven to 375°F,  cut few tomatoes in halves, mix crushed garlic, basil plus few other herbs of your choice, salt and pepper and olive oil in a bowl, rub the mixture over the open halves of the tomatoes, place them in a greased baking tray and bake for 50 minutes, basting the tomatoes once in between with the juice released from them... and viola ! Tomatoes Provençal is ready to enjoy. I think, baked with a sprinkle of pesto and mozzarella on top, these baked tomatoes will also make excellent starters at any girly party ....

You can find Dorie's recipe for Tomatoes Provençal in her book Around My French Table . Also it has been published in Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
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26.6.14

Salmon Rillettes # French Fridays with Dorie (Catch-up)


This month I have been sitting off of the French Fridays with Dorie. The reason ? Well, so far June has been all about Fishy Fridays with Dorie. So I was staying away until I read some of the reviews and decided to try them out this week. First one I tried was the Salmon Rillettes.


The other Friday, while reviewing Dorie's Tuna Rillettes I had described what rillettes are and their place in French cuisine. I will not go into that, however I must mention that rillettes are fast becoming my favorite recipes for preparing fish. They are quick, easy and tasty !

Unlike the Tuna Rillettes, this one requires a bit of cooking.  Only a bit. You cut a salmon fillet into small cubes,  poach them for a minute in a simmering bath of half and half mixture of water and white wine speckled with tops of spring onion, some spices, namely red bay leaf, white peppercorns, coriander seeds and salt.  You then strain everything into a strainer, drain and discard the spices and vegetables, transfer the salmon cubes to a bowl and mash them with the back of a fork. Next you toss in some smoked salmon, lemon zest, a red chile pepper, finely chopped shallots into the bowl, mixture everything well, then add a dollop of butter, some lemon juice and bit of crushed pink peppercorns to it. Finally you adjust the salt in the rillettes and chill the mixture for two hours before serving. 


I being me of course upped the spices and simplified the steps further. I added an extra helping of peppercorns into the simmering mixture, discarded nothing, blended the poached fish cubes with spices and all into a not-so-smooth mixture, then stirred in the remaining ingredients plus a chopped green chile to it and chilled the rillettes until it was set. I LOVED the way it turned out and for once I was glad that I had the full bowl of fish spread to myself :D 


Visit French Fridays with Dorie to know what the other members thought about this spread. You can find the  recipe for the salmon rillettes here . For more such delicious recipes order your copies of Around my French Table and join the Doristas in this tasty adventure.
I shall be sharing this spread at these parties...



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31.5.14

Pipérade Stir Fry #French Fridays with Dorie

This week we prepared  Pipérade Stir Fry for French Friday's with Dorie.


 A traditional pipérade from the Basque region of France, is a ragout of red and green bell peppers, onions and tomatoes, seasoned with piment d'espelettet that is served alongside rice, scrambled eggs, chicken or fish stew. The pipérade we tried this week was however a simple stir fry that Dorie's created using the ingredients which go into a traditional pipérade.


As per her recipe, which is almost a none recipe, saute an assortment  of colorful bell peppers in HOT olive oil until they are crisp tender. Deglaze the pan with some red wine vinegar, season with salt and pepper and set it aside until the stir fry has somewhat cooled down. Then toss in some thinly sliced red onion, garlic and piment d'espelette or habanero pepper(as I did) into the pan and viola ! Your  Pipérade Stir Fry is done. Quick, easy and delicious ! And with the mélange of colors, an absolute delight to bring to the table.


Since summer beckons simple meals, I just paired it up the with a spinach-feta frittata and served. The combination was light and lovely. And even as I swept clean the last of the pepper strips from our plates, I kept wondering when to make it next, and what to pair it with next time. May be some grilled chicken or fish or perhaps an a gourmet omelette with cheese and lots of veggies.

  
Visit French Fridays with Dorie to know what the other members thought about this dish. You can find the actual recipe in Dorie Greenspan's book  Around my French Table and for Dorie's recipe of a traditional  Basquaise pipérade, check out the Washington post.
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17.5.14

Hummus # French Fridays with Dorie # Food Revolution Day 2014


Guided by Mardi Michels,  this Friday the Doristas are participating in Food Revolution Day. Food Revolution is a movement started by Jamie Oliver to inspire parents, kids, teens, workers and everyone else to get back to basics and start cooking good food from scratch. This year he chose “getting kids excited about food” as the theme for Food Revolution Day, which is today and our charge from Mardi is to share a recipe from Around my French Table that we think every child should know how to make.


Now my son is only two and a half so I wasn't really thinking of making a meal when I signed in for #FRD2014. The idea was to make something simple that would give the little boy a feel for cooking.. Since last January, we have been experimenting with a lot of recipes. Mostly smoothies and some muffins like this Chocochip Cherry 'n Coke Muffins whose ingredient list alone was good enough to excite him. Keeping his familiarity with the blender and his love for apple and cheddar in mind, I thought Hummus and Savory Cheddar Chive Bread with chunks of apple would be an exciting for him. And I was right. He enjoyed the process of making both. However something about the bread was not right so I decided to keep it off the post and talk about hummus today. 

Personally, I think hummus is a great recipe to have in ones repertoire. It can be prepared in no time... just whir together chickpeas, tahini, lemon juice, garlic, cumin powder, salt and pepper in the blender and you are done...  


And once you are done, the possibilities are endless.  You can build simple or fancy sandwiches with it as the base, serve it with crackers or make appetizers of all kinds to entertain friends...


And if you are like me, you could simply sit with a spoon and your bowl of hummus and call it a meal..



Thanks Mardi for involving us in #FRD2014. This was fun !

Visit French Fridays with Dorie to know the recipes from Around my French Table that other kids found exciting !


I shall be sharing this at some of these weekly parties. 

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2.5.14

Tuna Rillettes (+ Salad Niçoise Sandwich ) # French Fridays with Dorie


In French cuisine, rillettes are appetizers usually made with pork or goose meat that is diced, seasoned, cooked, then pounded or ground and served as a spread.  As the title suggests, this week the Doristas were assigned to prepare Tuna rillettes... that is a spread with tuna. 

The recipe was quick and got done in less than 10 minutes. All I had to do was to empty two drained cans of tuna in the jar of the blender, add a finely chopped shallot, bit of curry powder, bit of ground all spice, few tablespoons of heavy cream, salt, pepper and lime juice to it, blend the mixture to a smooth paste and refrigerate for a couple of hours before serving.

Of course we, that is my son and I did not wait that long to taste the rillettes. As soon as the spread as ready, I scooped out a spoonful, tasted and immediately decided to make myself a Sandwich along the lines of Salad Niçoise, the salad that had inspired the Mediterranean Chicken salad. Little boy on the other hand tasted the spread and asked me if I had made a fish smoothie... Yes my rillettes did seem like a smoothie because of the 4 tablespoons of heavy cream that I had added at a go, but it was tasty nevertheless...

And in my "Salad Niçoise sandwich" it was simply wonderful ! 


For the sandwich, I toasted two slices of bread, generously slathered the rillettes on both of them, then piled  a handful of baby spinach, 4-5 strands of boiled green beans, 3-4 thin slices of boiled potato, 4 halved cherry tomatoes, 3 halved black olives, 2 capers and an anchovy on one slice of bread, seasoned it with salt and pepper and sandwiched it with the second slice of bread. Since the rillette had enough flavors, I decided to skip the vinaigrette. That was a good idea for the sandwich was perfect as it was. In fact I enjoyed it so much that I decided to repeat today's lunch menu for the next few days....   



Visit French Fridays with Dorie to know what the other members thought about this spread. You can find the  recipe for the tuna rillettes here . For more such delicious recipes order your copies of Around my French Table and join the Doristas in this tasty adventure.

I shall be sharing this recipe at some of these parties.
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27.4.14

Green-as-Spring Veal Chicken Stew #French Fridays with Dorie


This week the Doristas were assigned to cook Green-as-Spring Veal Stew. We do not eat veal, so I tweaked the recipe a bit and cooked a green chicken stew instead.... I almost followed Dorie recipe, except that I left out the tarragon and returned the veggies into the pot of simmering green sauce along with the meat. I thought the orange of the carrots and the greens of the leaves and herbs presented a pretty contrast. Husband disagreed. He did not like the green at all.. though he thought that the soup was nice. I thought it was lovely. The dill and the lemon was very refreshing and the stew as a whole paired wonderfully with plain rice and Aloo bharta, a Bengali style mashed potato, that we had made to go with it. I guess the toddler felt the same way for he ate his chicken and rice without any fuss.


From experience I have learnt that chicken recipes do not need as much lemon juice as veal ones. So I reduced the amount of lemon juice in the stew and added slices of lemon as garnish. That way I could squeeze in the extra juice I wanted and husband could steer away from it.  

 Green-as-Spring Chicken Stew

Recipe by Tanusree Khandai
Prep time: 15 minutes                                                                                                 Total time: 2 hours
Serves : 4 adults + 1 kid

 Ingredients
  • 2 Chicken legs
  • 2 cups chicken broth
  • 2 cups water
  • 3 small carrots, trimmed, peeled and quartered
  • 2 celery stalks, trimmed, peeled, and quartered
  • 1 onion, quatered
  • 3 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 1 + ½ tsp dried thyme
  • 1 bay leaf
  • salt and freshly ground white pepper
  • 2 cups arugula leaves
  • 2 cups spinach leaves
  • ⅓ cup fresh coriander
  • ⅓ cup fresh dill fronds
  • ½ cup heavy cream
  • 2-3 tsps fresh lemon juice*
  • lemon slices for garnish (optional)
Cooking Directions
  1. In a large vessel, bring the chicken broth and water to a boil. Drop the chicken legs, cover and simmer for 30 minutes.
  2. Stir in the carrots, celery, onion, garlic, 1 teaspoon of thyme, bay leaf, salt and pepper, lower the heat to a gentle simmer, cover and cook the vegetables along with the chicken legs for 45 minutes.
  3. With a slotted spoon, scoop out the chicken legs and vegetables, cover and keep them warm while you make the sauce.
  4. Toss in the arugula, spinach, coriander, dill and ½teaspoon of dried thyme in the liquid that is left in the pot.
  5. Cook the greens till the leaves wilt. 
  6. Switch off the heat, let the mixture cool down slightly, then puree them in the blender.
  7. Return the green sauce to the pot, stir in the heavy cream and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice, adjust the salt and pepper and simmer the mixture for 5 minutes.
  8. While the sauce is simmering, pull off the meat from the chicken legs and slice them into bite-size pieces.
  9. Finally return the cooked vegetables and the chicken pieces into the pot, simmer everything for 5-7 minutes.
  10. Switching off the heat. Then garnish with lemon slices and serve with rice or noodles.

Visit French Fridays with Dorie to know what the other members thought about this stew. You can find Dorie's recipe for Green-as-Spring Veal Stew here. For more such delicious recipes order your copies of Around my French Table and join the Doristas in this tasty adventure.

I shall be sharing this recipe at some of these parties




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22.4.14

Baby Bok Choy, Sugar Snaps and Garlic en Papillote #French Fridays with Dorie


Cooking something 'en papillote' means wrapping the food in a pouch and baking it in the oven.. That has been my husbands favorite method of cooking for sometime. Ask him to cook dinner and thats what you see him do next. Of course neither of us knew that he was cooking 'en papillote.' It was a method that he had tried on impulse and it seemed to work pretty well...

This week the Doristas were assigned to do just that. Wrap quartered baby bok choy, paper thin slices of garlic, halved baby white onions and sugar snaps along with orange zest, mint, salt, pepper and olive oil in a aluminium foil and bake them in the oven at 400°F for 15 minutes and serve immediately..



Read more..
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11.4.14

Quiche Maraîchère # French Fridays with Dorie

Quiche Maraîchères (pronounced as maʀeʃe) was this week's assignment for the French Fridays with Dorie. 


Finally !      I had been longingly staring at the photograph alongside the recipe for weeks... With all the red and green market fresh vegetables, the quiche looked so pretty, springlike and so very inviting. But when it came to making it I was such a mess....


No. The recipe, though a little unusual, wasn't complicated at all.  All we had to do was to toss chopped celery stalks, leeks, carrots and red bell  pepper  in melted butter. Cook the veggies for about 10 minutes, then spoon the cooked vegetables into a 9 inch partially baked tart shell. Next whisk cream with an egg and an egg yolk,  pour the custard over the veggies and bake the quiche for about 20 minutes at 400°F. Finally sprinkle grated Gruyère or cheddar over the semi-baked quiche and bake it for another 5 to 10 minutes, or until the cheese is golden and the filling is uniformly puffed, browned and set. 

My quiche would probably have come out of the oven all pretty and dolled up had I not been over enthusiastic about letting the filling puff and brown uniformly. In trying to do so, I let the quiche bake for an extra 10-12 minutes which made it as brown as it looks below :( Anyway though thoroughly browned and somewhat over baked, the quiche tasted wonderful. I used  grated smoked Gruyère cheese on top and both husband and I thought that that cheese made it even more flavorful. We simply could not stop admiring the quiche. We loved it warm, we loved it cold, we loved it every time we cut a wedge out. It was simply fantastic ! 

update 4/27/2014: Made the quiche for dinner tonight and enjoyed it in all its prettiness...  I baked it for 30 minutes this time and was rewarded for following Dorie's instructions to the T :)   





Visit French Fridays with Dorie to know what the other members thought about this quiche. You can find the quiche recipe here and the recipe for the tart shell here. For more such delicious recipes order your copies of Around my French Table and join the Doristas in this tasty adventure.

I shall be sharing this recipe at some of these parties.
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4.4.14

Visitandine # French Fridays with Dorie

Visitandine, a simple French sponge cake with a 'pure butter-and-sugar' flavor was this week's assignment for French Fridays with Dorie.  Apparently in the pastry shops in France, they are baked in madeleine molds, financier pans, small fluted tartlet pans or tins that turn out little mini muffins. Like her friend Claudine Martina, who gave her its recipe, Dorie however likes to bake hers in a pie plate and serve wedges of visitandine at teatime or layer them with jam, whipped cream and berries for a pretty and elegant dessert. In her words, this cake "is perfect plain or paired with jam, fruit, chocolate, citrus curds, cream, frosting or glaze." Taking her cue I decided to use it as a base for a caramel apple galette.. and that turned out to be quite a treat !

The recipe for Visitandine is quite similar to that of Financier. Brown the butter, add it to the mixture of flour, salt and sugar, add vanilla extract to it then stir in the egg whites which have been beaten until stiff peaks were formed. Now bake the cake in preheated oven and thats it. You are done. Though Dorie recommended baking the  cake in a springfoam, layer cake, or fluted porcelain or glass quiche pan, I baked mine in the iron skillet.


I halved the recipe and baked in my 8 inch skillet for 30 minutes. Okay. The cake had actually started pulling off from the sides after 25 minutes.. but I let it sit in the oven for 5 minutes more... just in case... The extra baking time or the iron skillet might have made the cake a little biscuit-y. My husband however liked it ... infact he loved it so much that three of its wedges disappeared instantly.

My Rustic Caramel Apple Galette with Visitandine-base

...served with spoonfuls of rum-scented pastry cream
Finally a word about the caramel apples. Well this is the first time I tried making it. Using the leftover sugar syrup from the candied lemon peel (that I made for the Julekake) was the sole motivation behind making the caramel. I know I did a clumsy job of it... but the flavors were simply awesome. The combination of citrusy sugar and sweet apples was a complete revelation ! Also pairing the cake and the caramel apples with the rum-scented pastry cream that I made from the leftover yolks from visitandine felt like a good idea. Overall this dessert was a hit in our house and we really liked it.


Visit French Fridays with Dorie to know what the other members thought about this cake. You can find the original recipe here For more such delicious recipes order your copies of Around my French Table and join the Doristas in this tasty adventure.

I shall be sharing this recipe at some of these parties.
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