One French word: moutarde, a French recipe: maquereau à la moutarde

Maquereau à la moutarde

Mackerel is just about the cheapest fish you can buy. And one of the healthiest. It is full of the fish oils we should all be eating, and it is caught wild, it cannot be farmed. When I was a child in Dorset, my father used to take us mackerel fishing from Weymouth, in a small fishing boat.  The catch was always abundant, which was exciting, and we had mackerel in the freezer for quite a few meals. They are such attractive fish, a bit bony, but iridescently  beautiful.

At the fishmonger in France, you can ask to have your mackerel filleted. It makes it easier to avoid the bones, of which few remain. I don’t know if you can get your local fishmonger to do this. If not, mackerel is actually one of the easiest fish to deal with oneself.

The French language bit:

moutarde (feminine noun), une moutarde, la moutarde = mustard. Pronounced mootard (see header audio clip above).

France produces several types of mustard, of which the most famous comes from Dijon. It is strong, and there are several variations, often flavoured with other ingredients such as tarragon or grape must.

Moutarde comes from the Latin mustum ardens (burning (hot) grape must, also the origin of the English word “mustard”). The Chinese cultivated mustard for its seed 3000 years ago, and the ancient Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans used it to add savour to their food.

There is a French expression “La moutarde me monte au nez!”

which means literally, “the mustard is going to my nose”, in other words, “I am getting angry” or “I am growing impatient”.

My recipe is for mackerel with a cream and mustard sauce, maquereau à la moutarde. It is quite simple, calls for few ingredients, and doesn’t make the whole house smell of fish!

Main ingredients

Ingredients for two people:

• 1 large mackerel, filleted (or if you really can’t fillet it or get it filleted, leave it whole, but cook it for twice as long to make sure it is cooked through).
• 100ml liquid cream
• 2tbs Dijon mustard (if you can’t find Dijon, use a good strong flavoursome mustard, nothing sweet)
• half a glass of dry white wine
• 2 fresh figs, or fresh apricots, or another sweet, fresh fruit
• freshly ground black pepper

Preparation:

• Spread the underside of the mackerel fillets with the mustard. Grind fresh pepper on top of that.
• In a shallow pan with a lid, heat the cream and place the mackerel fillets skin side up (mustard side down). Place the lid on the pan, and simmer gently for 3 minutes.
• Turn the fillets with two spatulas so that you don’t break them, add a teeny bit of water if the sauce is too thick, replace the lid and simmer for another 3 minutes.
• Check that the fish is cooked through, but not over-cooked or it will crumble as you serve it. Remove the fillets to two separate, warmed, plates. Add the white wine to the cream and mustard remaining in the pan, and use a gravy whisk to mix it into the cream and get rid of any little lumps there may be.  Spoon the sauce over the fillets, garnish with the fig opened up into four from the top side (see photo)  and serve with boiled potatoes if you wish, or just a green salad.

In your country, are fishmongers accommodating? Do they offer to scale and fillet fish? I’d be really interested to know whether we are indeed privileged in France!

One French Word: frit, a French recipe: Pâtes fraîches aux épinards, aux câpres et à la coppa frite

Pâtes fraîches, coppa frite

We are lucky in France to be able to buy really excellent fresh pasta. All sorts. I use mostly tagliatelle. I’ve tried making them myself, but it seems to be something I’m not really very good at. Maybe I’ll take myself off to Italy one of these days and do an intensive course with a wonderful Italian lady who makes it every day… Pasta is so versatile, you can always find the ingredients for one sauce or another, and even plain, with just a little olive oil, a squeeze of garlic and a few shavings of parmesan, it is always so satisfying.

The French grammar bit (rather a lot today, if you are not interested, scroll quickly down to the recipe!):

frit, adjective, frit (m), frite (f), frits (m.pl), frites (f.pl) = fried, pronounced free (for the masculine), freet (for the feminine), don’t pronounce the s

From the verb frire = to fry (je fris = I fry)

But also a feminine noun, une frite = a chip/French fry.

Pommes de terre frites (or simply pommes frites or frites) = chips/French fries (literally fried potatoes, but when they are not in the shape of chips/French fries, they are called pommes de terre sautées, slices or cubes for instance).

Steak frites    (also written steack frites) = steak and chips/French fries, is the French national dish, the food most consumed in France, despite all the gastronomic dreams non-French nationals may have of what the French eat on a daily basis. It is the dish most often served in French restaurants, according to a recent survey. I personally eat it about twice a year, never at home, always in a brasserie (an old-style French restaurant), as I eat little red meat and few chips come to that.

Expressions include avoir la frite, or avoir la patate, both meaning to be on good form  (il a la frite, il a la patate = he is on good form).    (You can also say avoir la pêche to mean the same thing, as we saw in a previous post, probably used more than frite or patate.)

The recipe today is for pâtes fraîches aux épinards, aux câpres et à la coppa frite    (fresh pasta topped with wilted spinach, capers and fried crispy coppa). Coppa is italian cured rolled pork, something like raw ham. You can use bacon, but it’s not quite the same, or raw ham, but it needs to be a little fatty to crisp up properly.

Do read this recipe through before starting to cook! It is not complicated at all, but you need to go very fast, or the pasta overcooks or goes cold, and the crispy coppa uncrisps.

Main ingredients

Ingredients for 2 to 3 people:

• 1 packet of fresh pasta of your choice (mine are tagliatelle and the packet weighs 350gr) . You can use dried pasta if you wish. 
• 1 packet or about 12 thin slices of coppa
• 2 tsp of capers drained of their vinegar
• three good handfuls of spinach leaves, washed, destalked and dried in a tea towel (they don’t have to be baby leaves, mature ones will be just as good)
• a clove of garlic, chopped finely
• fresh parmesan cheese, either grated or shaved (a couple of tbs per serving) 
• olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste

Wilting the spinach

Preparation:

• If you are using fresh pasta, which only takes a couple of minutes to cook, prepare all the other ingredients, lay the table and pour the wine before cooking the pasta in salted water. If you are using dried pasta, you should have enough time to do all that while it is cooking. Whatever you use, follow the suggested cooking time on the packet and don’t forget to salt your cooking water.
• Cut the slices of coppa into 2cm (3/4 inch) strips (stack the slices and cut them with kitchen scissors).
• In a frying pan or wok, with a little olive oil, fry the coppa until it is quite crispy. Stir it to separate the slices.  Remove from the pan to a plate covered with a double layer of kitchen roll.
• Fry the garlic rapidly in the same oil, stirring, for about 30 seconds.
• Throw in the spinach leaves, stirring rapidly, just to wilt them. Have the capers ready prepared, add to the spinach as soon as it is wilted, turn off the heat.
• Drain the pasta. Divide between individual plates. This all has to be done very fast. Top with a drizzle of olive oil, a portion of the spinach and capers, finish with the crispy coppa. Grind a bit of fresh black pepper, and sprinkle with grated or shaved parmesan.  Don’t insult this dish by using ready grated, packeted parmesan, which is inferior and tasteless usually, compared to the real thing. Treat yourself to a chunk which you must keep wrapped in the fridge. Expensive but classy!
• Serve quickly, accompanied by a glass of lusty red, something from the Languedoc or Gaillac if you are serving French wine.

Which pasta do you prefer, fresh or dried? Can you get fresh pasta where you live? Or maybe you are good at making it (in which case you can give me a lesson!).

Bon appétit!

One French word: à l’ancienne, a French recipe: chocolat chaud à l’ancienne

Here in Quimper we have a lively cultural season, especially in winter, incuding a series of solo concerts which are entitled “Concerts au chocolat”. We also have one of the best chocolatiers  in France (check out their website, they deliver all over the world). They come to the concert and serve us a cup of chocolat chaud à l’ancienne, and a little saucer with two beautiful chocolates. Their chocolat chaud is thick, rich and creamy, and very hot. Their chocolates are mouthwatering.

 The French language bit:

A l’ancienne (invariable adverbial phrase) = old-style, old-fashioned, traditional (pronounced a laan syenne, one hardly hears the first n at all), 

anything that is made as it was yesteryear, anything that tastes good just as it did in times gone by. It is always nostalgic: ex:  de la moutarde à l’ancienne (usually with whole mustard seeds), and is good marketing. The term is often used in recipes and cooking to denote traditional methods.

My recipe is a real chocolat chaud à l’ancienne = old-fashioned hot chocolate. Nothing like it.

Chocolat chaud à l’ancienne

For two people (two tea-cups) you will need:

• 325 ml milk of full cream milk (not UHT please)
• 35gr of dark chocolate squares (I got my cooking chocolate from the Comptoir du Chocolat, see link above)
• 1 ½ tbs powdered drinking chocolate (slightly sweetened)
• ½tsp ground cinnamon
• ½tsp ground coriander
• 1 heaped tbs of thick cream
• some sweetened whipped cream and a little extra powdered chocolate

Ingrédients

Preparation:

1. In a saucepan which will not be damaged by a whisk, heat the milk with the dark chocolate, powdered chocolate and spices. It is important to use a whisk and not a spoon or a fork.
2. Whisking vigorously all the time, melt the chocolate and heat the milk to nearly boiling.
3. Add the thick cream and whisk again. The mixture should be frothy.
4. Pour into pretty cups with pretty saucers (not old mugs) and top with whipped cream sprinkled with a little powdered chocolate.

I think you will quickly find you are in heaven. But a little goes a very long way.

Chocolat chaud

Bon appétit.

One French word: navet, one French recipe: pétales de légumes

navet, masculine noun (un navet, le navet, des navets) = turnip (pronounced nah-vey)  .

Not most people’s favourite vegetable, but when they are young and fresh in spring their flavour is delicate and not overpowering as it often is in autumn and winter, and they can easily be eaten raw. Or used to accompany a meat dish, boiled briefly then glazed in a sugar and butter mixture.

Un navet is also currently used to denote a flop, when talking of a bad film, theatre performance or book.

My recipe today is a little different to the taste buds: pétales de légumes = vegetable petals. 

Main ingredients – looks a bit like a still life, doesn’t it…

For each person you will need:

• One small raw spring turnip
• One small raw beetroot
• One ripe tomato (I used a beef tomato)
• One small courgette (zuccchini)
• and any other vegetables you may feel like that can be cut into fine slices (radishes?), or fruits (oranges, strawberries?)
• salt
• chili flakes
• olive oil
• raspberry vinegar

Preparation:

Wash and trim all the vegetables. Peel the beetroot but do not peel either the turnip or the courgette.

Slice the courgette into as many thin lengthways strips as possible, discarding the first slice, which is just skin (simply for aethetic reasons), and place around the edge of each person’s plate in wavy, curly shapes.

Peel and slice the beetroot into very fine slices and being careful not to taint the courgette with beetroot juice (again for the aesthetics), place an overlapping circle of beetroot slices inside the ring of courgettes.

Wash your hands, the knife and the chopping board. Finely slice the turnip and place another ring inside the beetroot ring. Do not season.

Core and skin the tomato (plunge it into boiling water for a minute or so, the skin will come off easily). Cut into small cubes, place in a bowl with the equivalent of one smallish dried chili (outside and seeds), flaked. Quite a lot of salt (tomatoes need salt), but you can rectify later. One tbs raspberry vinegar. 2 tbs olive oil (if you are several at table increase the oil and vinegar). Mix to a smooth paste with a soup mixer. It makes a sort of rather thick gazpacho-like mixture. Taste and rectify seasoning. It should be fairly chili hot, vinegary, with a good strong flavour of olive oil.  Place a spoonful of this mixture in a tiny bowl in the centre of your vegetable plate. Leave the rest of the tomato dressing in a larger bowl on the table, because it is more-ish and people can help themselves and drown their plates in it if they like. But it looks better to present only a small quantity.

This is an excellent starter, fresh and appetizing-looking, but you can also make a main course of it if you are feeling fragile and only want raw vegetables, maybe accompanied with crusty bread and butter, or viande des grisons (thin cured beef slices). Or parma ham.

Bon appétit!

One French word: moules, a French recipe: moules marinières

The French language bit:

moule, feminine noun (une moule, la moule, des moules) = mussel (pronounced mool, never say the s in the plural) 

I remember in 1965, arriving at my grandparents’ house in Bordeaux in south-western France with my younger brother on one of the hottest days in living memory. My diminutive grandmother, still then a fantastic cook, although she forgot how at the end of her life, trotted out to the fishmonger next door to get fresh mussels, and made us a big panful of moules marinières. Here’s how she did it:

Main ingredients for moules marinières

For 4 people as a main course you will need:

• 2-3 litres (or kilos, depending on how they are sold) of fresh mussels
• a bunch of fresh parsley
• 4 plump shallots
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 60gr butter
• a glass or two of dry white wine
• pepper (you shouldn’t need much salt)

Mussels cleaned and ready to cook

A word about buying mussels: there is a season for mussels, which varies depending where you are in the world. Mussels are best and plumpest when they are in season and should be firmly closed when you buy them. There are always a few that are not; these should be discarded. They should be cooked immediately and eaten the day they are bought, from a reputable fishmonger where the fish is fresh, well prepared and on lots of ice. Best not to buy them when it is too hot, best also to have a cold bag to bring them home in.

To prepare mussels, tip them all into the sink, and under running water and with a small sharp knife, check through each and every one. Any that are broken or that do not close promptly when you press them shut, throw in the bin. Debeard them by pulling on the bit of weed that comes out of one side of the shell with the knife. As you prepare them, put the clean ones into a colander. It doesn’t matter much if, after sorting them, any of the ones in the colander open up. They were closed a short while ago, and are about to be cooked. If any mussels have barnacles on the outside of their shells, scrape them off.

Peel and chop the shallot and garlic. Wash and chop the bunch of parsley.

In a very large pan, over moderate to high heat, put the butter, the shallot and garlic and a little pepper. Add the glass of wine and boil briskly to reduce a little and soften the shallot and garlic. (You can also use good quality wine vinegar instead of wine if you wish, they are very good that way too and in fact that is how I usually cook them.) Add the mussels all in one go, put the lid on the pan, and shake quite vigorously. Cook for a minute or two, raising the lid to see if the mussels are opening, stir to bring the bottom mussels up to the top and distribute the shallot evenly.  Add the parsley and a couple of grinds of the pepper mill. You should not need to add salt. Put the lid back on, stir again, and as soon as all the mussels are open, serve without delay. There is NOTHING worse than an overcooked, shrivelled mussel. They should be steamed in their own liquid, just open, and very moist. Ladle into large individual bowls with some of the liquid, and keep the unserved ones warm.

Don’t use forks to eat mussels, choose a largish shell, remove and eat the mussel, and then use that shell as an eating iron, pinching and grabbing successive mussels with it. And to save space, don’t just chuck your shells into a bowl, pile them up neatly as in the photo below.

Don’t forget to spoon up the juice or to pump it up with pieces of fresh bread. Serve the mussels with chips (French fries) as the Belgians do (the French copy them more and more). Moules frites   you will see that on menus all over France.

Bon appétit!

One French word: olive, a French recipe: tapenade

The French language bit:

Olive, feminine noun (une olive, l’olive, des olives) = olive (pronounced oh-leave)  

Olive verte = green olive, olive noire = black olive, de l’huile d’olive = olive oil, de l’huile d’olive vierge = virgin olive oil, des olives dénoyautées = stoned (pitted) olives, un olivier = an olive tree, une branche (or un rameau) d’olivier = an olive branch, du bois d’olivier = olive wood, une oliveraie = an olive grove.

It is also a colour: vert olive = olive green,

and a (very out of fashion) female first name, Olive; but a quite fashionable and inter-generational male first name, Olivier.

Olive oil is of course widely used in Mediterranean, and therefore French, cuisine, as are olives. My recipe is for tapenade, a paste made with black olives. Recipes for tapenade vary, ingredients sometimes trade green olives for the black, and it is used widely as well as an ingredient in other dishes such as lamb or rabbit stew, pasties, etc.

Main ingredients for tapenade

For a cupful you will need:

• 100gr stoned black olives
• 25gr capers
• 25gr anchovy fillets
• 1/2 clove garlic
• about 15cl olive oil
• a little lemon juice

The anchovy fillets can be the very salty, thin, deep red kind, or the less salty, fatter silvery kind. Do not re-salt your mixture.  I also added a few dashes of tabasco, but this is not traditional.

Drain the olives and the anchovies and put all the roughly chopped ingredients plus a tbs or two of olive oil into a mini blender and pulse to obtain a smooth paste. No recognizable bits should remain. If the paste is not smooth enough, add a tiny bit more olive oil, until you get it to the right consistency. It should be like jam that does not fall off your piece of toast, not sloppy.  A bit more liquid than peanut butter? Difficult to say really. It is a little bitter and should be moderately salty.

Spread it onto biscuits, blinis, or squares of toast, or slices of baguette cut at an angle for apéritif nibbles. You may garnish these with chopped chives, half a cherry tomato, or any other embellishment that comes to mind (but you don’t have to, it’s nice just by itself, just not very exciting looking). Try it with a glass of wine while preparing a meal.

Tapenade will keep in a jar, covered, for a few days in the fridge. Do cover it or it will garlic up your whole fridge.

Not brilliant presentation, but never mind…

Bon appétit!

One French word: petit pois, a French recipe: cake à la feta et aux petits pois

The French language bit:

Petit pois  (un petit pois, des petits pois) = garden pea (pronounced peuh-tee pwah) 

We’ve had pois cassés = split peas, but these are the nice tender variety that we shall have on our plates in a month or so.

Just as a noix (= walnut)  is used to indicate a tablespoon sized portion, often of butter, so petit pois denotes a pea-sized portion, of a cream from a tube for instance.

Petits pois à la française are peas cooked with silverskin onions, a little fried bacon (lardons) and the braised heart of a lettuce. It always seems strange to me, but then I was at one time Anglo-saxon, that the French really prefer their peas from tins (cans) and not fresh or frozen. We like them bright green, they prefer khaki. Same with “French” beans (haricots verts). One gets used to them, but I could never prefer them.

When you see on a menu “à la Clamart“, it means the meat is served with peas.

Avoir un petit pois dans la tête (= literally to have a pea in your head) means to be stupid, to have a pea-sized brain 

My recipe is for a cake à la feta et aux petits pois = a loaf-shaped cake with feta cheese and peas. This is really useful as an apéritif nibble recipe, you can put it in mini molds to make bite-sized portions (but do reduce the cooking time accordingly). It is also good for picnics or taking to the office. It makes neat slices that aren’t too crumbly. It contains protein and vitamins.  It is good cold, with mayonnaise, or hot with a homemade tomato sauce. Very versatile, and ridiculously easy to do.

Main ingredients

For four people you will need:

• 150gr flour
• a heaped tsp baking powder
• 2 eggs
• 10cl vegetable oil
• 10cl milk
• 130gr frozen peas
• 130gr feta
• 1/2 tsp salt, 4 grinds of the pepper mill
• a handful of chopped fresh mint
• a handful of grated cheese

Preparation:

1. Heat the oven to 180°C.
2. Grease a loaf tin.
3. In a large bowl, beat together the eggs, the salt (but taste your feta first to make sure it is not too salty, in which case reduce the amount), the oil and the milk. I used virgin organic rapeseed oil, which is bright yellow and has a delicate flavour. You can use olive oil just as well.
4. Add the flour and the baking powder and beat thoroughly so that there are no remaining lumps.
5. Bring a very small amount of water to the boil (do not salt it) and put the peas to boil for 3 minutes.
6. Cut the feta into small squares.
7. Chop the mint.
8. Add the drained peas, the feta and the mint to the egg and flour mixture and pour into the mold. Make sure you are using real Greek feta and not some imitation. Not at all the same thing.
9. Put a handful of grated cheese (pale yellow cheese NOT orange cheese, this will spoil the aesthetics of the dish) in a stripe down the centre of the cake.
10. Bake for 40 minutes – it may need 50 but watch it after 40.
11. Unmold and allow to cool slightly if you are serving it hot, cut into slices (slicing is a little tricky when hot as the feta is far from firm). Allow to cool completely if you are serving cold and chill in the fridge.

Any left over cake should be wrapped in tin foil or cling wrap and kept in the fridge. Try not to slice more than you are going to use, it keeps better in one piece.

The colours of this cake are delicate and springlike (printanier, we just had that word). Very appetizing.

Bon appétit!

One French word: anis, a French recipe: saumon en papillote à l’anis

A nostalgic parenthesis: do the British among you remember aniseed balls? Do they still exist? The size of a small marble, deep rusty red, but when you sucked them they became white and your tongue went rusty red instead? And when you got right to the middle after hours of work, there was the prize: a single aniseed to crunch between two incisors! My favourites when I was little.

 The French language bit:

Anis, masculine noun (l’anis) = aniseed (pronounced a-neesse, or sometimes a-neee), but you never say un anis or des anis. If you want to say one aniseed, or lots of aniseed, you say une graine d’anis, or des graines d’anis (one aniseed seed, or lots of aniseed seeds). 

Anisé = aniseed flavoured, such as all the Mediterranean apéritifs, pastis in the south of France, ouzo, raki, arak… each Mediterranean country has its version.

I bought some organic aniseed the other day, not for any particular purpose, but I have since been using it for making tisane (herbal tea), lovely, a teaspoonful with boiling water poured over it and a bit (or not) of honey. And you can eat the seeds when you’ve drunk the tea!

Aniseed is very different from fennel, or dill, or cumin, or caraway. I use it in this recipe for salmon: saumon en papillote à l’anis and it complements the fish perfectly.

You will need a piece of salmon per person. I prefer slices across a fillet (called le filet in French), not through the whole fish with the bones (called a une darne). A teaspoonful of aniseed per portion, and a little butter or cream.

Preparation:

• Heat the oven to 180°
• Prepare large squares of aluminium foil or greaseproof paper, and place a piece of salmon on each
• Salt and pepper each portion and add the aniseed
• Place a teaspoonful of butter or cream on top of the lot and close the papillote
• Cook in the oven for about 12 minutes for a small portion, 15 minutes for a larger. Don’t overcook salmon, it must be moist

Serve with new potatoes and some fresh crunchy celery. Salmon always looks so lovely next to something pale green like celery or cucumber.

Bon appétit!

One French word: printanier, a French recipe: printanière de légumes au blanc de poulet

All sorts of tender, colourful, flavoursome Spring vegetables are appearing in shops and on market stalls. You must seize the opportunity now, they will soon lose their tenderness, and their attraction. When we come out of Winter, we are hungry for something different and fresh.

 The French language bit:

Printanier, adjective (printanier (m.), printanière (f.), printaniers (m.pl.), printanières (f.pl.) = springlike, Spring seasonal (pronounced prah-n-tan-yeah, prah-n-tan-yair). 

Le printemps = Spring (literally a sort of prime time (prin-temps)). Summer = l’été (estival = summerlike). Autumn= l’automne (automnal = autumnlike). Winter=l’hiver (hivernal=wintery). 

Une printanière is a dish made with Spring vegetables.

 

Printanière de légumes au blanc de poulet

My recipe is for a printanière de légumes au blanc de poulet, which uses a small quantity of several different vegetables together to accompany a chicken breast cut into strips.

Chicken breast in strips

For two people you will need:

• 1 good sized chicken breast, cut into strips
• 1tbs cornflour
• salt
• 6 small mushrooms cut into quarters
• 6 small broad beans cut into one inch pieces with their pod (better to use organic)
• a tender inside stick of celery
• a couple of spring carrots
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 4 new onions (the bulb of a largish spring onion
• and anything else you find that you fancy
• 1tsp fond de veau (veal stock, failing that, concentrated chicken stock)
• 100ml water or white wine
• oil for frying
• fleur de sel

Cornflour added. The bits of yellow you can see are strips of ginger I added, just for me!

Preparation:

Main ingredients

1. Slice the chicken breast into thin strips, put into a bowl with a good tbs cornflour to coat and 1/2 tsp salt.
2. Wash, prepare and chop the vegetables: chop the broad beans into one inch pieces, with their pods; peel the carrots and slice into four lengthwise; take the outer skin off the onion leaving a couple of inches of stem and slice into four lengthwise; chop the celery into long pieces; crush the garlic with a cleaver and chop roughly; cut the mushrooms into four.
3. Put a little oil into a non stick pan and fry the chicken pieces quickly, turning, for about 2 minutes.
4. Add all the vegetables (and a little more oil if necessary) and fry for about 5 minutes, stirring.
5. Dilute a tsp of fond de veau in 100ml water or white wine and pour over the vegetables and chicken. Simmer gently for about 10 minutes.
6. Serve in soup plates, seasoned with a little fleur de sel.

Chopped broad beans

A word about fond de veau: this is a rich stock which you can make from scratch with pieces of veal, veal bones and vegetables. You can also buy it in powder form, made by Maggi, which is very good. It’s a bit like a powdered stock cube. If you can’t find any, use a crumbled chicken or vegetable stock cube. Together with the cornflour from the chicken, this makes a rich sauce, slightly thick and shiny. If you are using a stock cube, be careful about resalting.

Frying the chicken and vegetables

And a word about fleur de sel: the very cream of salt, not to be used for cooking but sparingly, as it’s expensive, to season dishes on your plate. I shall be doing a whole post about it one of these days.

Savour every mouthful, eat each vegetable separately, taste the flavours: Springtime in your plate.

Bon appétit!

One French word: vin, a French recipe: fraises au vin

A variation on a previous recipe of strawberries with limoncello liqueur: since it is the strawberry season, we should have a whole stock of recipes at our fingertips!

Fraises au vin

Vin = wine of course. Probably the word that the world over is most connected with France.  The French cook a lot with wine, and often the wine is as good as that served at table.

Fraises au vin, main ingredients

This recipe is very simple, but no less good for that. Strawberries, nice and ripe, cut in four, sprinkled with a little sugar and the grated or zested rind of one or two oranges, depending on the quantity of strawberries, with a glass or two of red wine poured over them. Stir delicately, leave to infuse for an hour, or overnight. If you don’t want to use alcohol, use the juice of the same oranges.

Bon appétit!