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Time to try making a buche de Noël!
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03 December 2009
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Your shopping basket this week should include sweet potatoes, wild mushrooms (cèpes if you can find them), pak choi, spinach, chicken, haddock, fresh parsley and passion fruits. Don’t forget to buy a good chunk of aged parmesan cheese and plenty of eggs, pears and dark chocolate if you want to practice making a b?che de NoĂ«l. The three WorkWeek recipes are a waterfall of tastes and colours, with a rolled chicken recipe that is great fun to make, a hugely satisfying pasta dish and a delicious and sunny fish combination. The Weekend Meal takes a break from expensive Christmas menus and features a more reasonably budgeted meal for those of you who prefer splurging on presents. The dazzling dishes, which we all absolutely loved when testing them (including my mum and dad, the highly discerning guests I wined and dined this week), are a proof that money is not a requisite for fabulous taste. The Tasty Extras section gives you a quick recipe for delicious multi-use feuilletĂ©s, which you can serve either as pre-meal snacks or with tea. It also features a splendid present idea for treating a real foodie or just yourself (I am a huge fan of self-rewards). Enjoy the recipes, shopping and Christmas lights et Ă la semaine prochaine! Anne-Laure x.
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QUICK week treats
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Chicken rolled with spinach pesto and thyme roasted sweet potatoes
Busy: 20 min, Total time: 35 min
| This great dish is not only pretty, colourful, deliciously moist and tasty, it is also a great stress buster. I’m telling you, beating chicken breasts with a rolling pin can be surprisingly liberating. By meal time, midweek frazzled mum had become wonder mum, all zen and cool attitude - the roasted sweet potatoes, reaching absolute perfection in only 25 minutes, did their bit to help too. |
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Tagliatelle with cèpes, lemon and garlic
Busy: 20 min, Total time: 20 min
| I rediscovered wild mushrooms, and cèpes more particularly, with intense pleasure this Fall after years of total oblivion in my cooking. (I know, how could I?). The curved, smooth and dense flesh of cèpes has a distinct hazelnut taste, making them a particularly fine mushroom to use as lead flavour in simple dishes. This fine pasta is exactly that, and oh my, did we love it. True, elegant simplicity. |
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Haddock with passion fruit and lime glazing, coconut rice and pak choi
Busy: 30 min, Total time: 30 min
| Bye bye frizzy hair, dissolving shoe soles and wet socks, hello beach, fun and tropical sun, coconut and passion fruits have come to the rescue! In 30 minutes they will help you create your little piece of sun right in your kitchen. The deliciously zesty fish, combined with sweet rice and my favorite exotic cabbage (found in all supermarkets), will instantly renew your inner summer tan. A must this week! |
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Weekend THERAPY
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Clams en persillade
Busy: 20 min, Total time: 25 min
| Start your Christmas meal with a chic breeze from the sea by serving these clams, generously spread with bubbly and garlicky butter, richly flavoured with parsley and shallots. I have to warn you though that chic will quickly give way to decadent pleasure with everybody licking their plump shells or saucing every inch of them with thick slices of bread. The true spirit of Christmas, as I like it. |
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Slow roast lamb shoulder with dried apricots and pommes duchesse
Busy: 50 min, Total time: 6 hours
| Exquisite taste needs not be expensive. This fabulous main proves it by starring a shoulder of lamb braised over five hours with apricots, brandy and spices. The apricots are gorged with the meat’s juices and melt into absolute sweetness, lavishly wrapping the succulent soft, confit meat. Paired with potatoes festively dressed as pommes Duchesse, this dish will make you more popular than Santa. |
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Ma bûche de Noël
Busy: 1 hour, Total time: 1H30 min (plus 3 hours setting time.)
| I have no clue why we French insist on putting our exhausted liver through a buttercream-ladden bûche de Noel after a rich Christmas meal. This year, I am making this gem instead. A soft meringue rolled around a dense, dark chocolate mousse and luxuriously layered with juicy vanilla poached pears. Rich but not heavy, brilliantly decadent, intensely flavoured and yet refreshing. Now we’re talking. |
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IN SEASON
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Bonjour Ă tous! Christmas is approaching fast so if you intend to make the Christmas dessert yourself, (which you should, be brave!), make a dry run now. You will love the recipe I have in store for you in this issue... | |
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KITCHEN TALK
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Parmesan and rosemary feuilletés
hese attractive feuilletés are really simple to prepare and will make a tasty mise-en-bouche on Christmas day. The parmesan and rosemary combination is truly delightful but others are as exciting, so let your creativity guide you! Try poppy seeds and gouda for instance, or make a sweet version to serve with coffee, using sugar and crushed almonds or honey and hazelnuts. Oh, c’est si bon!!
read more .. >
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The Conscious Cook: Star of the week: Coco book (Phaidon)
A few weeks ago I sat in the meeting room of a PR agency with a display full of cookbooks. My neurones went into overdrive as I started browsing this treasure trove, crossing my fingers the people I was about to meet would be awfully, terribly late. A beautiful book caught my eyes: "Coco, 10 world-leading masters choose 100 contemporary chefs". With a devilishly pretty cover, a masterful page layout full of pictures and a multitude of colourful ribbons to mark the pages you want to go back to, I was already taken over. But the best part is the contents. As the title of the book indicates, it is a compendium of 100 global rising tale[...]
read more .. >
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Ask Anne-Laure:How can I preserve fresh herbs beyond their standard fridge life? (Jenny)
In an earlier newsletter I already shared with you my trick on how to drastically extend the lifespan of fresh herbs. Just put them in a tall glass of water , like you would do for flowers, and cover them with a plastic bag pierced in several spots to allow the humidity to escape. Store the glass in the door of your fridge, you will be amazed at the effectiveness of this trick. If you want to keep your herbs even longer, the best is to freeze them. Herbs that freeze well include parsley, coriander, sage, chervil, tarragon or chives. Just wash them and dry them properly. You can freeze them whole with the stem if you want to, just[...]
read more .. >
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