Paupiette de Veau

Ingredients for Paupiettes :

- 5 thin veal escallops
- 5 thin bards of Lard (you can also use bacon)
- 120 gr of sausage meat
- 40 gr of mushrooms
- Parsley
- 1 Egg yolk
- 1 Slice of bread
- 10 cl of milk
- 1 Garlic clove
- Cooking string


Preparation :

- Soak the bread into the milk for 10 minutes, then take it out and make crumbs with it.
Crush the garlic clove.

- For the stuffing, in a bowl, mix the following ingredients together : Sausage meat, mushrooms, milky bread, chopped parsley, the crushed garlic clove and the yolk, add salt and pepper.

- Put some plastic wrap on the escallops and smash them using a little pan in order to make them as thiner as possible.

-  Put some stuffing in the center of each escallops and close the escallops toward the center, roll a bard of lard or a slice of bacon around them and close them good using some cooking string.

- Now you can put them in the freezer to use them for a recipe, or in the fridge if you want to cook them right away.

We'll cover some recipes soon for those.

Home made Raviole du Royans

I don't think it is easy in America and in other continents than the European one, to find french products. You can, but you need to search a loooong time. So I will every time it is possible, put the recipe of a base just so you can cook what you can being in a other country than France.

As I recently published a recipe using Raviole du Royans, I will now give you the recipe of themselves and link my other recipe to this one.

Those are really easy to make, but they may ask a little bit of your time.
Just don't forget that after you made them, you can easily store them in the freezer for when you'll cook them.

Ingredients :

(you can multiply the quantities if you want more of them to store them in the freezer)

Dough :

- 6 eggs 

- 600 gr of flour

Stuffing :

- 2 fresh tome cheese

- 2 bouquets of parsley

- 250 gr of swiss cheese

- 125 gr of butter

- 2 Yolks
- Salt and pepper


Preparation :

In a big bowl, mix the eggs and the flour together to create a ball of dough. Set it aside.

Chop the parsley very finely and quickly cook it in a frying pan with the butter.
When done, set aside the heat and add the eggs yolks, pepper, the tome cheese, the ground swiss cheese and salt.
Mix all the ingredients very well together and avoid lumps as much as possible.
Now set the stuffing aside for an entire day in the fridge.


Now, the best is to use a simple ravioli maker. You can find one easily on the internet and they are not really expensive either.
Form 2 balls of dough with the dough that you previously set aside.
Spread one of them on a simple ravioli maker. Using a pastry bag, form little balls of stuffing in the middle of every hole (that you can see from the ravioli maker through the dough), cover with the second dough, with your fingers, press between the holes to avoid the stuffing to spread incorrectly when you'll roll the dough out at the end.
Roll all the preparation on the ravioli maker a good time so the 2 doughs are well integrated with each other.

The Ravioles will detach with the cooking.

Cook them fir 3 minutes inside of boiling stock.

Green Tomatoes Confiture

Ingredients :

- 1.6 to 1.8 kg of green tomatoes

- The juice of 2 organic lemon

- 1 kg of sugar

- 2 teaspoon of vanilla extract

Preparation :

Boil some water while preparing the tomatoes. cut the skin of the tomatoes two or three times on each tomato. When the water is boiling, put the tomatoes inside for 2 or 3 minutes, then take them out and put them into very cold water. The skin should be very easy to take off now, so peal the tomatoes.

Cut the tomatoes into quarters and take all the seeds away. Put all the pieces of tomato inside of the Confiture pan and add the sugar, the vanilla extract and let it sit for 24 hours in the fridge.

Add the lemon to the preparation in the fridge and boil it all. When it boils, drop the heat to low and while stirring from time to time, cook the Confiture for 40 minutes.

Put the Confiture into jars and let it cool down before closing them.

Home made chicken stock

Ingredients :

- 2 or 3 carcass of chicken

- 1 liter of water by carcass (so 2 or 3)

- 1 Onion inside of which you put 3 cloves

- 1 leek

- 2 carrots

- 1 Celery

- 1 bouquet garni (Thyme, Bay leaves and parsley)

- Some coarse salt

- Black pepper

Preparation :

Inside a stew pot, put your carcasses and the liters of water, boil them. Take the foam away. When there is no foam anymore, add some coarse salt, black pepper bays, the onion, leek carrots celery and bouquet garni. Put a lid on the stew pot and let it cook on low heat for 2 hours.

Filter the stock and use it for soups, sauces... 

You can freeze it like you would do it for ice cubes ( you would have a better dose on the quantity when you'll use them this way).

I advice you to eat the vegetables cooked inside, because they are delicious !! (or serve them with a dish)

Caviar d'Aubergine (Eggplant Caviar)

L'Aperitif is a sacred moment for all the Mediterranean.
Today throughout all France, this special moment is widespread, and it is not surprising to see families on their baloney or gardens,  around 7 PM in a nice and warm summer day, taking their Aperitif.

It is a very refreshing moment and it's a true mediteraneen tradition. We can observe it in Spain too with the Tapas.

There are several type of dishes but all of them are refreshing to savor.
There are Ratatouille, or dishes based on pepper or olives. The dishes are generally based with vegetables as they are known as very refreshing food.

One of the most fantastic dishes is The Caviar d'Aubergine.


Preparation :      15 min
Cooking     :       60 min
Rest            :      20 Min

Ingredients for 4 people :

- 2 big eggplants
- 2 little oignons or shallot
- 10 cl of olive oil
- 1 Table spoon of finely chopped parsley or basil (like you prefer)
- 6 Garlic clove
- Salt and pepper



Preparation :

- Wash the eggplants and cut the tips.

- Cut the eggplant in two half and slash inside of the two parts. Add salt and pepper.

- Introduce the garlic cloves that you had cut in quarter just before. Moisten the eggplant with the olive oil and envelop them inside of aluminum foil like if you wanna cook them en Papillote.
Bake for 60 minutes at 170 º C / 340º F

- Take the Papillotes out of the oven.
Extract the pulp of the eggplants and stir it to mash them. Add salt and pepper as you need and let the mixture cool down.

- When it has cooled down, put them in the fridge for 20 minutes.

- Savor it well cool on toast or crackers.



You can eat it with a nice refreshing salad (roquette, mâche), or with a tasty cheese on toast like goat cheese.

Pistou

As I come from the region of Provence, I am going to begin my blog with a French Provencal recepie. A must in gastronomy.

I grew up myself eating this. My mom use to cook it, friends of my mom, my granparents, my oncles and aunts...

Pistou is a preparation witch is not really expensive to make and that's the reason why our family, in southern France always knew how to preparate it and cook with it.
Coming from a modest family I have always been fascinated by the fact that the dishes coming from our ancestress, even though we didn't come from great money, have always been taken by big chefs, big wealthy restaurants throughout the world and proposed to the people of other countries for an insane amount of money !

I would like to share this recepie with you.
This is a recipe that you'll use to cook some other preparations.

Ingredients:

- A big bouquet of basil

- 3 garlic cloves

- 60 gr of Parmesan

- 50 gr of pine kernel

- 10 cl of olive oil

- salt

Preparation :

Rince the basil leaves, wipe them off and finely chop snip the leaves inside of a mortar (or a blender).

Peal the garlic cloves and crush them into the choped leaves (or blend them together).

Add the Parmesan and the pine kernel and crush them all together (or use the blender). Add the olive oil and the salt, mix all of the ingredient together.

Pour the mixture into a jar and place it in the fridge.

You can freeze some of the mixture in an ice tray in order to use them later.

We will use this preparation in many of our recipes as an ingredient.