Galettes de pommes de terres accompagnées d'une compote pommes-oignons nappée d'une sauce au vin et au miel

It has been quite a while. I have been a bit busy and althought eating was not stopped, creativity was put a little on hold and when it managed to emerge, I did not have the time to record it. The meal here was an improvisation, once again, and I suppose was quite costly since it required a fair amount of wine.

Cut onions and make them fry slowly in a pot. Cut 5 apples in bits and add them with the onions once they look cooked.
In the meanwhile, grate 6 potatoes and mix with some grated cheese. Pour 2 eggs in a bowl, add salt, pepper, paprika and herbs. Mix well.
Now take some of the potato-cheese mixture and make little cakes out of them (5 cm in diameter). Pour into the ball with the egg solution. Take the liquid out and make sure the galette is kind of solid. Store them in a plate. Once they are all done, cook them in a little oil in a covered pan. Do not forget to cook both sides.

The sauce. In a bowl, mix honey, wine, crême fraîche, ginger, paprika, salt and pepper. In a pot, melt some butter, Add some cornflower and mix well. Then add the mixture just prepared. And mix well. When it looks thick, add milk. Mix thoroughly. If it is too liquid, wait longer. You must boil the sauce one, to help the spice reveal themselves and to help the cornflower to thicken the sauce.

When evertyhing is ready, serve the galettes, add the compote and the sauce on top of it.
A good addition is to add ham bits in the pan with the galettes as they finish cooking.

Tarte aux oignons, tomates et pommes de terre, servie avec une fondue de poireaux

Still in the line of "oh my God, I don't have anything left in the fridge and no money is in the common pot" this meal was designed.

Cut 3 onions in half circles. Let them sweat in some oil and butter in a covered pan on the smalled fire you can find.
Cut potatoes in small cubes and add them in a another pan with oil on a small fire (and cover that pan as well).
Cut tomatoes in bits.

Take already made dough and place it in the quiche pan. Do holes in the dough with a fork.
In a bowl, mix 1/3 of a crême fraîche pot and 150 ml of milk with 3 eggs. Add seasoning to your taste. Mix again and ad some grated cheese. Mix well.
By now the tomatoes have to be put in with the onions.
Start cleaning the dishes.

Once everything is cooked, the potatoes should be a bit roasted and well cooked in side, put the potatoes (without the cooking oil) on the dough. On top spread the onions and tomatoes. And then put the batter you have prepared. Finish by adding some more cheese on the top.

Put in a preheated oven for 50 minutes at 200°C.

While this cooks, cut three leeks and put them in the pan that contained the onions. Cover and leave it cook for a while. Once the leeks are cooked. Add some crême and milk and, an idea by Sebastian, a drop of sherry. salt pepper.

Serve hot with the quiche.

Mayonnaise au crabe

On Sunday I bought 7 medium size crabs at the Harbour for the price of £3. Worth going, especially that the fishing season is ending.

I cooked all 7 seven and put 5 in the freezer for later purposes.
I prepared a Salade chinoise (see earlier note) and in it added the crab flesh (most of it is in the legs).
In a bowl I put flour, chili, ginger and pepper. Mix in it prawns and lay them in a pan with a little little bit of oil. Fry, once ready, add a little bit of rum and wait for everything to dry out.

With the creamy parts inside the crab, I prepared a mayonnaise to eat with the prawns.

In a bowl, take the creamy bits and 2 yolks. Mix well and add seasonning. Pepper, a little bit of salt (not much because the crab is already salty). Add a teaspoon of mustard. Mix. Add oil until bit by bit until you have a mayonnaise.

Agneau en boule servi avec pâtes et chou-fleur nappés d'une sauce moutarde

Again, an improvised meal. It happens so often. A wee look in the fridge gave the following results : we have crême fraîche, 2 tomatoes, and mustard and some white wine. Look elsewhere : shallots, pasta and eggs. Great, let's do some thing with that.
Go to Morrison's, see 250g of lamb for 45p, well, we will do meat balls. Buy some frozen cauliflower.
Overall cost of the meal £2.50 roughly.

Put about 30g of butter in a pan and 6 small shallots cut in fine bits in it. Small fire. Add a glass of white wine in it. It start already to smell damn good.

Put 2 pots with water in them, one for cauliflower, the other for pasta (although both could theoretically cook in the same).

While all these is getting ready. Take 4 yolks and mix them with 3 teaspoons of mustard (with grains, it is better). You just found by accident a lemon, put the lemon juice in there as well. Mix well, put in a pot and add the shallots plus butter and wine in the mixture. Put the pot on small fire. Add 100g of crême fraîche and some milk to have a liquid but not too much sauce. Add salt and pepper.

Use the shallots pan to cook your tomatoes cut in 12 bits each. Cook fast and not for long. Once they look like being cooked, put the tomatoes in the sauce.

take the lamb mince meat and do little balls that you form in the white of the eggs (that helps keeping them in one ball). Put the meat in the pan that used to have the shallots and the tomatoes. Cook small or medium fire. Get rid of the fat from time to time.

As some point you must cook the pasta and the cauli flower in boiling water.

Serve everything when it is ready.

Crêpes au levain

Leaven crêpes recipe, very light and soft and great for 6 people 25-30 large crêpes

Ingredients:
1 l of milk;
400g of flour;
yeast (fresh or not);
8 eggs; butter;
rum;
salt

Preparing the leaven:
take 100g of flour and 0.4l of milk and mix, then add the fresh yeast into it. If you don't have fresh yeast, buy some dried active yeast, awaken (0.1l of warm water, 1 small teaspoon of sugar and 2 teaspoons of yeast) and use 0.3 of milk instead of 0.4.
Mix very well, then let it wait for an hour at 40° Celsius. the leaven should double its size.

Preparing the crêpe mixture:
Put 300g of flour in a large bowl, mix the salt in, create a well in the flour and pour slowly the milk while mixing (avoid blobs of flour), add the leaven with the same technique. beat the eggs separately and add to the bowl while mixing. Then add 30g of melted butter and the rum (as much as you want). Mix well.

Let it rest for 4 hours at 40°C (temperature at which yeast is active). Mix every hour.

For savoury crêpes, I add some oregano in it, some more salt (one pinch per half litre of mixture and pepper.
For sweet crêpes, add 100g of sugar per half-litre (after the mixture has rested for 4 hours), some vanilla, some cinnamon and rum.

To cook, put a ring to 4 or 4.5/5 let the pan heat up. when it is put a little bit of butter in it, once melted spread it through the pan with a twist of the wrist. Then add some of the mixture and try to make something circular and thin. If the mixture is too heavy, add some water in. If the first crêpes breaks while you turn it, either it was too early or else you need more flour in the mixture

Salade Chinoise composée à la vinaigrette Nahiz

A big salade can feed quite well a few people, be very good, tasty, spicy and good for the line. The price for that one is kind of ridiculous. I suppose, it cost around £1, maybe £1.50. Again, this is a recipe invented on the spot. The vinaigrette has a base recipe, but all the flavouring was decided from what the lettuce tasted like and what I was going to have in it.

Cut the chinese lettuce and wash it. Dry it.
In salad bowl, put one dessert spoon of vinegar, a teaspoon of mustard, salt, pepper, Espelette chilis (red dry chilis), ground ginger, oregano, curry and 2 teaspoons of honey.
Mix well.

Then had two dessert spoons of olive oil and mix very well to create an emulsion (a very interesting metastable state of matter, could do a physics lecture with a simple vinaigrette. (Aaaah, Gibbs free energy).

Cut some cheese in little cubes, add some bits of ham, an avocado cut in bits and a boiled egg per person.
Add the chinese lettuce (it has a taste of its own, very good with ginger-chili-curry-honey).

Mix, it is ready.

Cake aux poires, au chocolat et au rhum

That is a cake, said cake in French.

In a large bowl, put 250g of flour, 150g of sugar, salt (only a pinch) and a sachet of yeast (can get some in the Meal Shop, Rodgers& Rodgers, on South Street). Mix everything well so that it is about evenly proportioned. Then dig a well in the centre of the mixture.

Take 2 yolks (keeping the egg white aside for later use) and mix them with 0.1l of milk. Add the pears, rum and little bits of chocolate. Pour all of this in the well in the flour and start stirring until you there is no liquid left.
Melt 150g of butter and add carefully in the bowl (might have some weird things happening if the butter is too hot). Stir everything. Now take the egg whites and whip like for meringue (in snow). Add into the salad bowl and … stir again. Once everything is not quite solid but not that liquid either, pour into the cake pan (about 30cm by 5 cm) and put in a preheated oven at 160ºC for an hour and a quarter.

The cake is good when fresh but is also very nice after about a week or more waiting in the fridge which is very handy for parties as you can start preparations a week before and have less stress during the day.

Crêpes, Crêpes, Crêpes, salées et sucrées

What is more easy than doing crêpes? Easily done, easily cooked and opened to any kind of stuffing. We were 8 eating. I did about 30 savoury crêpes and 30 sweet ones. The price is ridiculously small, less than £2. What costs is what you want inside.

For roughly 30 crêpes:

Prepare a basic batter. Pour in 1l of milk in a large salad bowl. Add a little bit of melted butter. Take the yolks of 4 eggs, mix them with some milk in an aside bowl and pour in. Keep the whites in a separate bowl.
Add roughly 400g of flour, very slowly, always mixing. It avoids having bits in it. Actually there will be some, so do not panic too much if after 30 minutes you still see some flours not very well mixed.

Transform the eggs' whites into snow (not sure how you say that in english). You can whip it by hand (takes a long while) or use a machine. To check if they are ready, put the whip in it. When you take it out if must contain some of the snow, like if it was a solid and no more a liquid.

Add a pinch of salt in the milk, mix and then add the snow and mix very well to get a homogenous batter.

Let it rest for about an hour and mix again.

Then you can prepare it as you like. For savoury crêpes, add more salt, some pepper and spices you like or herbs. For sweet crêpes, add sugar, some vanilla, rum and cinnamon if you feel like it.

The cooking:
warm a pan and put a little bit of butter in it. If it boils immediatly, then the pan is at the right temperature (should not be too much either, beware). Pour some batter in it and do a motion of the pan to spread it through the pan. Let it cook a bit and when the border start getting brown, turn it around.

Advice:
you can prepare them long in advance and then just warm them in a pan.
For savoury crêpes, warm the crêpes, and put what you want on it. Ham, cheese, egg (maybe prepare it in a separate pan), tomatoes, peppers, whatever.
Once it is finished (eg the cheese is mellted or the tomato is hot), fold a bit the crêpe over the stuffing and serve.