all the recipes
Feeling weak ? Feeling hungry ? Feeling carnivorous ? Raw meat… mixed in with more raw stuff, this is the original "steak tartare" in France. Raw, fresh quality ground beef (sometimes hand-cut) served with a selection of condiments and an egg yolk that you mix in yourself (or sometimes pre-mixed) alongside a simple green salad and...
I really thought I could stay away from my traditional Greek recipes but the spinach and leeks and green onions and dill caught my eye at the outdoor market today… I was helpless. The pack of rolled filo dough waiting for me in the fridge didn't help much either. The filling is simple enough to prepare and can easily be varied. I...
I keep forgetting how much I appreciate salty-fishy flavours. Fish eggs, tarama dip, anchovies, sardines and now "bacalhau". A portuguese staple (or so it seems), I was fortunate enough to discover this dish having dinner 2 summers ago with my gorgeous cousin Angie and her portuguese husband Gil and my niece Kayla. In their version, they had...
If you could have only one thing handy when friends pop over for a drink or two, I think this may be it, in replacement of the usual yet appreciated medley of bread, cheese, dried sausage and olives or pickled vegetables… it’s bready, salty, herby, with olives and cheese (I avoided adding some cured ham or sausage but feel free to add...
Usually, I use spinach and feta cheese for making those little greek spanakopita triangles, a type of soft cheese and egg filling to which you add some cooked vegetables and wrap up in sheets of buttered filo dough (a simple recipe but requiring a longer preparation that you can see here). In the meantime, you can quickly whip these...
"Baklava" is right up there with moussaka and spanakopita for things we love to eat and rarely make (or at least not often enough). The preparation of the baklava filling, the layering of the fragile filo dough, the buttering and the assembly could hinder anyone's good intentions as well as their wavering appetites. A big thanks...
The wintery months are all about potatoes, cabbages and apples. I'm always amazed (having spent half of my life in North America and the other half here in Europe) how people here in France are acutely aware of the different varieties of fruits and vegetables and herbs and of "what's in season" and acquire their fruits and...
Chips are good… chips are very very good ! When I used to buy chips, I’d buy 7-10 bags at a time, they were large bags, one per day. I stopped buying chips, not the healthiest of snacks, but anyways I’m not a nutritionist, i just cook/bake/fry stuff. I do miss them. But once in a while, when they’re homemade, they become...
Flammekueche (pronounced fla-mu-kush) is an Alsatian (eastern region of France bordering Germany, and part of Germany in the past, so kind of in-between) specialty of a bacon, onion and sour cream topping over a flat bread base, baked in a wood-burning oven. Strata is a clever mix of ingredients (and/or leftovers) laid over a base of day-old bread...
"There are two kinds of people in this world… there's them and there's us." …funny words surprisingly uttered to us by a then-waitress now-kind-of-superstar living in London, while sitting in a Greek-run coffee shop in Montreal, sometime in the late 80's. "Us" Greeks (also known as "my...
Time is not always on our side. One more day until the next outdoor market in my neighborhood here in Paris (which is, by the way, chilly this week) and I still have loads of greens and vegetable leftovers and yes they are taking up a lot of space in the refrigerator… half a cabbage, lots of celery, green onions, parsley, dill, a few...
There’s a legend about roquefort (that bluish-green specked cheese from southern France) and its accidental invention. I have a thing for legends, folktales, fairytales and myths (and a collection of hundreds of books about these from around the world) so I want to believe it. A young shepherd, whose eye was caught by a fair damsel, left...
"Keftedes" is the mediterranean version of a meatball and quite often (when larger) the meaty part of a juicy home-made hamburger . . . A comfort-food as well as a simple and easy dish whether prepared as a bite-sized appetizer or as part of a main dish, served up with fries and a tzatziki sauce (yogourt, cucumber and garlic...
There seems to be something magical (yet crazy) about making your own versions of simpler things we usually can buy at the store such as chips, bread sticks and/or crackers but how about crispy seed crackers. What more can I say ? They’re seedy, they’re crispy, they’re wholesome, they’re great on their own, they go...
Now why would one even bother making one's own homemade chicken livers terrine (which is a denser/chunkier version of a pâté) when one could just as easily buy just about any type of terrine for a just few euros ? (I used "just" 3 times here)… Because terrines can be like some processed meats, mysterious in...