Cauliflower creamy soup with peas

Hard to take a nice picture of a soup but this one is really really lovely and easy to make. This is a perfect balanced dinner meal for kids and they will love it, like my son!

Ingredients (4-5 servings):

1 cauliflower

2 cups of peas

4 cubes of chicken stock

300 ml of cream

3 Tbs of gratted parmesan

Salt and pepper

1 cup of small pasta for soup (facultative)

Method:

• Steam the cauliflower until very smooth, using 2 liters of water (that will used later).
• Then save the remaining water used to steam the cauliflower (at least 1.5 liter) and bring it to boil. When boiling, add the chicken stock and salt.
• When the stock cubes are completely dissolved, add the peas and 5 minutes later the pasta. Cook for about 8-10 minutes.
• Mix the cream and the cauliflower in a blender. Add some chicken stock if necessary to get a smooth cauliflower puree.
• When the peas and the pasta are cooked, gradually pour the chicken stock with the peas and the pasta into the cauliflower puree which has to be on the heat. Do not stop stirring.
• Finally, add the parmesan and some pepper into the soup and serve.

It's ready! Bon appétit!

Let's make play-dough!! Not for eating!!! ;-)

Well, my blog is about cooking, traveling and more... So let's talk about more today!
Little ones are very keen to play with their hands. One very easy, quick and cheap method is to make your own play-dough.


Ingredients:
2 cup of flour
1 cup of salt
1 Tbsp of oil
3/4 cup of water (to adapt to get the desired texture)

Mix together the flour, the salt and the oil. Add gradually the water while kneading the dough.
Ready to use in 5 minutes!

For the colour, I used spices but you can of course use food coloring or painting.
For example:
- yellow --> turmeric, curry, curcuma
- red --> paprika, ground chili
- brown --> cocoa powder

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Eggs-cauliflower en cocotte

Today, I want to propose a new recipe of mine. This is a very easy and fast recipe that will wow your guests as an entry or a main. But where would this idea come from? I have no idea at all!
This recipe is an original way to propose cauliflower.
Originally from Asia, the cauliflower is mostly produced in China, India, France, Italy and USA. Usually white, it can be purple or orange (see here).

My recipe also uses a white sauce that is very common in French cuisine.

Ingredients (2 servings)

For the white sauce:

500ml of milk

40g of butter

40g of flour

Method: 

Melt the butter in a hot pot and then mix with flour. Out of the heat, gradually pour the milk and do not stop stirring to avoid lumps. Put it back on the medium heat. Do not stop stirring until you get a nice and smooth texture. When ready, add pepper, salt and nutmeg, a pinch each.

For the eggs en cocotte:

half a cauliflower

500ml white sauce

1 generous tsp tomato paste

1/2 cup of fresh cream

shredded gruyere or any other cheese you like

2 eggs

salt, pepper, parsley

2 toasts

• Steam the cauliflower for about 15 minutes. It is important that the cauliflower is just slightly undercooked after this stage (as it will finish cooking in the oven).
• Drain the caulifower and place half of the cauliflower in each cocotte (or ramekin or bowl, just use any dish that goes into the oven).
• Add 1 tsp of tomato paste into the white sauce and spoon the "rosy" white  sauce over the cauliflower.
• Mix the cream with salt, pepper and parsley
• Then spoon the cream over the rosy white sauce (1/4 cup in each dish, just make sure a slight layer of cream cover the white sauce).
• Break an egg without breaking the yolk and put it down in the dish (one egg in each dish or 2 if very hungry)
• Salt and pepper (just a little bit)
• Add the shredded cheese on the top, but avoid to cover the yolk.
• Bake in the oven for 7 minutes. Be careful, the yolk must still be raw.

Serve with toasts.

Click Here for more nice recipes!

France or Belgium? The Carbonade Flamande

Pic from here

French and Belgian people are always kidding each other, but they really like each other, maybe just like kiwis and Aussies (?) ... Well, humour is just a way to show affection, isn't it?

Grand Place of Bruxelles, Belgium (Pic from here)

Anyway, to avoid some huge debate about the origin of the dish that I am going to introduce to you today, let's say that Northern France and Belgium share at least one famous dish: the Carbonnade Flamande. This is a beef casserole cooked in a beer sauce that is lovely with fries and a pinte of beer, of course! A very easy but tasty dish to make for family or friend events!

Grand Place of Lille, France (pic from here)

Ingredients (6 servings):

1,5kg beef, e.g., blade steack, gravy beef, chunk beef (you can even mix various cuts of the beef)

5-6 onions

40g of butter

3/4 cup of soft brown sugar

3/4 cup of flour

1 liter of blonde beer, e.g., leffe (the better the beer is, the better the dish will be)

6 slices of ginger bread (pain d'épice)

French mustard of Dijon

salt, pepper, baie leaves, thyme

Preparation time: 20 min
Cooking time: 2h30 (the longer it cooks, the better it is!)



Method:

Cut the beef into cubes (4 cm).
Slice the onions.
Heat the butter into a large pot and fry the beef briefly on each side. Then take the meat out of the pot and rest it.

 

Fry the onions into the rest of the butter. When gold, add the soft brown sugar and caramelize a little bit. Then stir the flour in and pour the beer gradually. Do not stop stiring to get a smooth sauce.

Slow down the heat and add the meat, salt, pepper and herbs. Stir and let cook on a very low heat for 45 minutes.

Spread the mustard onto the slices of ginger bread and put them on the top of your casserole after the first 45 minutes, and let cook for 90 minutes, at least. Sti occasionnally, when the slices of ginger bread will be wet enough, they will dissolve into the sauve, giving it a great flavour.
Remember, the longer you let the casserole stew, the smoothest the meat will be. It's even better when reheated the next day.



Serve with french fries or pasta. Enjoy this very friendly dish with the same beer you used for the sauce or with a red wine!

Sorry for this awfull picture! I have messed up my photos ;-)

I'll download a new one the next time I do this recipe! Click here to see nice pictures of the Carbonnade Flamande.

Red cabbage and beef casserole

Automn is here in NZ, sunny as ever but winter is coming. It's time for dishes that warm you up! Let's go around the Franco-German border, the Rhine Valley, the Vosges and Alsace in France and the Black Forest (Schwarzwald) in Germany.

Farm in the Schwarzwald, Germany (pic found here)

Riquewihr, medieval village, Alsace, France (pic found here)

Farmhouse Ostein, Alsace/Vosges, France (pic found here)

Roasted chestnuts (pic found here)

Around there, automn brings a lot of delicious food that can bring you some comfort during the hard winter time... Chestnuts, which are rosted in the streets, are particularly enjoyed to warm up your hand.



 

Pic found here

Automn is also the time eat various pork deli food freschly made, e.g., bacon, blackpudding sausages, wieners, pâté... In France, we name it the "Cochonnailles". This is fat but delicious food that gives you everything you need to face the cold winter time.

Pic found here

Today, I propose you to use these ingredients in a red cabbage and beef casserole perfumed with chestnuts and smoked bacon and wieners.

Ingredients (5-6 servings):

1 big red cabbage

1 onion

1 big apple

1+1/2 bowl of fresch chestnuts (or 1 can)

2 smoked wieners (facultative)

250g pieces of bacon (off cuts are very good, but streaky bacon also work)

1kg of chuck steak

25cl of red wine (preferrably Pinot Noir)

15cl of water

1+1/2 Tbsp sugar

3 baie leaves

Thym

Coarse salt

Pepper

Method 

If you are using fresch chestnuts, start preparing the chestnuts. This is a long and fastidious work, so it's preferrably you use a can of already prepared chestnuts, if you can. I have been unable to find one here in NZ, so I used fresch chestnuts. Here is the preparation method:

1. Incise the shell of each chestnut (make a cross)
2. Put them into boiling water for at least 20 min
3. Peel when still warm.

• At this stage, the chestnuts are only precooked. They will cook with the cabbage later.

 Precook the red cabbage:

Raw cabbage

• Slice the red cabbage as thin as you can, or it may be better to use a food processor
• Wash it
• Put it in a large pot and add water (to cover the cabbage) and 2 pinches of coarse salt
• Bring it to boil and let it boil for about 20 min. The color will change from flashy purple to dull purple, but the cabbage is still a bit hard.
• Drain it
• At this stage, the red cabbage is preccoked.

Precooked

The casserole:

• Slice the bacon, the onion and the wieners
• Cut the apple into quarters
• Cut the steak into 2 or 3 large pieces
• Heat a large pot with a little bit of oil
• Stir fry the bacon, the onion and the wieners into. Add some pepper.
• Add the apple when the onions are brown (not black! hehe ;-))
• Then add the meat but do not allow it to fall on the bottom of the pot, let the bacon, onion, wieners and apple; 4-5 min each side. Add 2 pinches of coarse salt

• Add the precooked red cabbage, the herbs, the sugar, the water and the red wine, mix together
• If using fresch precooked chestnuts: Stew on a low heat for about 20 min, then add the chestnuts and let stew for 40 more min
• If using a can of chestnuts: Stew on a low heat for about 40 min, then add the chestnuts and let stew for 20 more min
• Stir occasionnaly and make sure it does not sitck on the bottom of the pot. Add some more water if too dry.

Serve when still hot and enjoy with a glass of your favorite Pinot Noir!

Personnally, I like to eat the meat with a pinch of coarse salt on the top or with some horseradish condiment. But some other people like it with mustard.

Note that the red cabbage can be cooked the same way but without the beef that can be replaced by a roast beef or pork.

Strawberry guava jam - a special kiwi jam!

Strawberry-guava jam on a greekstyle yogurt... Yummy!!

What's better than a homemade jam to mix into a creamy greekstyle yogurt or to eat with the fresch French baguette you've just made?

New Zealand has a lot of surprises for tourists but also for kiwi themsleves. In my new house, I have a very nice garden with several fruit trees. Some were very easy to identify... golden peach, perfec for yummy puree, passion fruits, grappes, lemon tree... and one tree had many little red fruits that smells strawberries but are obviously not strawberries! Hard to figure out what are those fruits... most of the kiwi I know could not tell me...

The mysterious fruits in my garden

Guava

The gardener said: "I'm pretty sure it's eatable..."
Well, "eatable"... cool... let's try... weird taste, but nice... Wikipedia says "taste like passion fruits with strawberry".

He also said: "Well, might be guava..."

Actually, those do not really look like guava... but definitively smell like strawberries and have got little stone inside, just like guava...

The gardener was not so far from the truth:
Those fruits are "Strawberry guava"!!
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psidium_littorale

Strawberry guava are good to eat fresch like many fruits... But I have so many, what could I do with?
Let's try a strawberry guava jam!

Ingredients:

1kg strawberry guava

1kg jam sugar

1 lemon

1 tsp of salted butter

Preparation:
Cut the biggest strawberry guava in two. Mix the fruits and the sugar together in a big pot and mash them. Add the lemon juice.
Then heat the mixture over a low heat until the sugar is completely dissolved. Do not let boiling.
Add the butter and increase the heat until it boils (strong boil that cannot be stopped when stirred). Let it boil for 5 minutes and test the jam. Spoon out a small amount of jam onto a cold plate, let cooling down and test. If the consistence is like you want, remove the post from heat, if not, continue to heat until you get the desired consistence.
Strain the jam through a skimmer (or something similar) to remove the nursery out of the jam.
Bottle immediately in pre-boiled jars. The jam is definitively ready when cold.

Enjoy, you are somewhere on an island like NZ or Hawaï in the middle of the Pacific ocean!

Bay of Islands, NZ

The French Baguette

 Just think about France, then French food... what's so special and also so basic in French food?

The French Baguette!! This is the French favourite snack, with butter, cheese, pâté, ham, meat or whatever else... to dip into a nice sauce or just because you like it for its punchy crust followed by the soft crumb! 10 billions* of baguette are eaten each year in France, that means about 27,6 millions baguettes each day!!! In short, this is very common food in France, but most people just buy it in the bakery every morning. I have to say, this is much easier than making it by yourself! But here in New Zealand, it's not so easy to find a French baguette, so today I have decided to make it by myself! This is not so difficult, but it's a very technical work that has to be followed meticulously to make the perfect baguette you want!

Preparation time: 4 hours (variable)
Baking time: 20 min

Ingredients:

500g flour

350ml warm water

2 teaspoon dry yeast

1 teaspoon of salt

Just as simple as that!

Method:
Dilute the yeast into 50ml of warm water and rest for 20 min. Prepare the flour and the salt in a big bowl and make a hole where to put the diluted yeast, and mix together. Add the rest of the water gradually and mix. The dough will be sticky but don't add more flour. Knead the doug for at least 20 min, and then make a ball. Cover and let rise for 20 min.

After 20 min

Then, raise the dough delicately while turning the bowl. This manipulation aims to loosen the dough from the bowl and thus strengthen it.

Before the manipulation

After the manipulation

 

Repeat this manipulation every 20 min, 5 times (about 1h30). You should see some bubble on the surface of the dough.

Then let rise for one more hour.

Divide the dough into 3 equal parts and make 3 balls very delicately, not to break the bubbles. Wait for 20 min and then lengthen each ball from left to right to make the baguettes (kind of sticks) and let rise for 20 min.

During these last 20 min, preheat the oven to 230° with a cookie pan filled with water on the bottom of the oven.
Make several incisions on the baguettes (for a nice crust), moisten sligthly the uncooked baguette and put in the middle of the oven. Turn down the temperature to 210°, let the cookie pan with the water and bake for 20 min. You can easily bake up to 2 baguette a time.

Don't wait too much to eat your fresch French baguette as they are even better whel still warm! Enjoy, you are just in France!

*source: http://www.planetoscope.com