FrogPrincesse

Squash pie is nice but I can never get enough chocolate. So I made the Chocolate Pavé from Ready for Dessert this weekend. It's a fairly light chocolate cake that is cut into rectangular pieces, like paving stones (pavés). I made sure not to overcook it and it was ready after only about 25 minutes in the oven. The recipe says to dip a fork in chocolate to create abstract patterns on the cake. My melted chocolate was very thick, so this was really impossible. I ended up adding water to the chocolate. The cake looks a little "rustic", but that's probably ok for a dessert that was created at Chez Panisse. It tasted very good and was not dense as pavé cakes can sometimes be. Slice with pool of crème anglaise

These lobsters look fantastic, and I would love to try the tandoori version. Can you share more details regarding the preparation? Thanks!

Easy . . . it's a roasted bird breast, or a baked tuber, or possibly a strange fish. Looks like fish to me.

No, you are not the only one making soup! It's getting a little chilly here in San Diego. Yes, I know, it's not too bad at 65F but for us it's starting to look a lot like winter!!! So tonight I made a Carrot Ginger Soup. I used Nantes carrots from my CSA. The soup was very flavorful with a nice bite from the ginger. A few weeks ago I made a Fennel and Tomato Soup (details on the Les Halles thread here). And I also made this very decadent Pumpkin and Leek Soup with Foie Gras (details on the Cooking with Anne Willan’s "The Country Cooking of France" thread here) So I've had lots of delicious soups recently. It looks like they are all some shade of orange though, so I need to vary my color palette a little... I really love soup. It's so comforting.

On a related note, in the future I shall refrain from adding blanched and still wet vegetables (in my case, Brussel sprouts) to a very hot cast iron skillet to avoid redecorating my whole kitchen with grease!

choux, That is strange because my copy calls for fresh apricots. I have the French version of the book. Maybe something got lost in translation? Problem solved then!

I was sold on the Pavé du Faubourg cake until I realized I would need apricots. Good apricots are hard to come by in San Diego, especially at the end of October. I am not sure that dried apricots would be a good option. Any other ideas?

This is fascinating. Can you elaborate on the "Bombay fresh duck"? How does it taste, and how is it prepared typically?

Thanks to all for the suggestions. I may have to make all of the above! The Pavé cake sounds wonderful and simple enough to make (and it did get rave reviews on this thread). However I have this unwritten rule against all milk chocolate as I typically find it too sweet and never really understood the point of "adulterating" perfectly good dark chocolate with extraneous ingredients. Do you think that this recipe will make me reconsider my position on milk chocolate?

I received this book as a gift many years ago but haven't used it much. So far I've only made a couple of (very simple) recipes: Suzy's Cake, which is good (but I still prefer my mom's chocolate cake recipe), and the Chocolate and Lemon Madeleines, which I did not really care for as I prefer more traditional honey madeleines. Overall the recipes seemed a little complex so I have not used the book much. I am looking for a recipe to make this weekend for a birthday party and would like to cook from this book. Medium difficulty is ok. What would you recommend? We are dark chocolate lovers in the family.

A couple more recipes from Happy Days with the Naked Chef (it seems that Jamie Oliver uses prosciutto quite a lot in his recipes!). I've made both and they are really good. Magnificent roasted monkfish (substitute another white fish now that monkfish is endangered). A paste of sundried tomatoes with basil is added on the fish, which is then rolled in the Parma ham and baked. It's quite elegant and easy to make. "The easiest sexiest salad in the world" - this must be one of my favorite salads. It's a combination of figs, Parma ham, and fresh mozzarella, with basil and a honey, lemon juice, and olive oil dressing.

Here are a few other ideas. Prosciutto is great as a pizza topping with arugula. I add both the prosciutto and the arugula after the pizza is already baked. In Jamie Oliver's The Naked Chef Takes Off , there are several recipes that I make regularly. Most recipes should be available online. Salmon fillets wrapped in prosciutto with herby lentils, spinach and yogurt Roasted fillet of beef rolled in herbs and porcini and wrapped in prosciutto "Fantastic roast chicken", with prosciutto under the skin Risotto with goat cheese and prosciutto Mixed greens salad with mozzarella, mint, peach and prosciutto You can also use prosciutto to stuff ravioli. One good example is the ravioli with prosciutto, sun-dried tomatoes, basil and mozzarella, also from Jamie Oliver (in The Naked Chef).

Just a quick note that I had a couple of memorable lunches at Le Comptoir du Relais in June and last week. In June we had a coques (clam) consommé (a special of the day); escargots; penne with veal, morels, & foie gras sauce; rack of lamb with red bell peppers; and an incredibly delicious beef cheek daube. I still think about this daube and would love to be able to replicate it at home. The sauce was very concentrated and rich. Here is a picture of the daube (in the foreground) and penne dishes, taken after we had already started devouring our plates. (I apologize for the poor quality of the picture. If you click on it you will be able to see it a little bigger) Last week we started with some terrines. The foie gras terrine was very good but the lamb and eggplant terrine had the most interesting flavor for me. I could not stop eating it. Then, for the mains, we sampled from the specials of the day. The scallops in the shell were braised with endives and lemon zest which enhanced their delicate taste. The wild duck was very tender and flavorful, and cooked rare which I love. It was served with a celery root puree on the side. Dessert was a classic baba au rhum. I have to say, I love this place. Lunch for two (including wine and coffee) was about $160 and I feel that's a great value for Paris. Yes, there are plenty of tourists in the restaurant, but the quality and the talent are definitely there.

This pasta dish looks really tasty!

I love brussel sprouts! It's really an acquired taste for me as I hated them as a child. Dinner a few nights ago was leftover short ribs (in the background; details in the Les Halles thread here) served with crispy brussel sprouts drizzled with a balsamic-port reduction. The brussels sprouts were inspired by a dish from a local San Diego restaurant (recipe here). They are cooked very briefly so they don't develop the bitter taste that can make them unpalatable.

Inspired in turn by Hassouni (on the dinner thread), I also tried the Fennel and Tomato Soup. I went with the flavor-boosting options suggested in the book, so I added a couple of slices of garlic at the beginning, and a few drops of pastis (Pernod) at the end. It was very good! It's not the most photogenic recipe, but here it is anyway.

The recipe from Sunday Suppers at Lucques is very good. The shanks are marinated overnight in olive oil, herbs, and garlic, browned, and then braised with white wine and stock, onion, fennel, carrots, and herbs. I love lamb shanks. They are one of the most succulent cuts of meat.

I made the short ribs, my favorite recipe from the book, a couple of nights ago. It's dead simple and I was able to pull it off on a weeknight. Step one consists of heating white wine, sherry vinegar, and demi-glace to a boil. For step two, all the components are added to a roasting pan - a sliced onion, the wine and vinegar mixture, some garlic, a bouquet garni, and the short ribs. The short ribs are cooked for a total of two and a half hours, starting with a cold oven. That's it! He does not say to degrease the sauce but I would do it, especially if I am serving this dish to guests. Here is the result.

Wonderful! I have a fennel bulb from my CSA and was trying to figure out what to do with it. The fennel and tomato soup sounds great!

Wow, gorgeous food FoodMan!

Moving on to winter desserts with the Butternut Squash Pie. A couple of weeks ago, I got a confection squash, a type of kabocha squash, in my CSA that I needed to use. I had already made squash soup, so I decided to make a squash pie for a change. Kabocha is quite close to butternut in taste. The squash was baked in the oven and then mixed with a blend of spices that is similar to the blend used for the chocolate spice bread (cinnamon, ginger, cloves, nutmeg, and some black pepper). Heavy cream, milk, eggs and brown sugar are added to complete the filling. Two other ingredients, vanilla extract and Cognac which I have not seen in other squash pie recipes, really round up the flavor. My yield was way too large and, in addition to a 9-inch pie, I was able to make two small individual pies, and could easily have made a third one if I had not run out of pastry dough. Note that I am using French tart pans which are not very deep, and may explain my "problem". Another minor issue had to do with the pie dough. I baked it blind with weights first, and then without the weights. Usually I poke it with a fork so it does not attempt to escape from the pan. I did not do this and ended up with a large bubble. The pie was very flavorful. We ate it cold with some whipped cream.

I like blended soups so the texture was fine for me, but it took a while to get it completely smooth and there were still a few bits left at the end.

As mentioned in my eG foodblog, Anne Willan’s The Country Cooking of France is one of my favorite cookbooks (together with Les Halles, Lucques, and a few others). It’s very complete and covers regional specialties as well as a wide variety of techniques. I like the fact that the recipes are authentic and contain detailed instructions. Every time I think of a French specialty that I miss, I can find a recipe for it in this book. It won a James Beard award in 2008 in the international cookbook category. Here is some additional information from the publisher: Renowned for her cooking school in France and her many best-selling cookbooks, Anne Willan combines years of hands-on experience with extensive research to create a brand new classic. More than 250 recipes range from the time-honored La Truffade, with its crispy potatoes and melted cheese, to the Languedoc specialty Cassoulet de Toulouse, a bean casserole of duck confit, sausage, and lamb. And the desserts! Crêpes au Caramel et Beurre Salé (crêpes with a luscious caramel filling) and Galette Landaise (a rustic apple tart) are magnifique. Sprinkled with intriguing historical tidbits and filled with more than 270 enchanting photos of food markets, villages, harbors, fields, and country kitchens, this cookbook is an irresistible celebration of French culinary culture. As I was using this book few days ago, I thought that I should start a thread about it. I’ve been cooking from it regularly since I bought it a couple of years ago. Hopefully other people will join me. Pumpkin and leek soup with foie gras This is a simple but flavorful soup. The pumpkin is boiled with leeks and potatoes until soft, and then pureed in a blender. The soup goes from a simple and comforting dish to a great course that could be served in a dinner party thanks to the addition of a slice of seared foie gras. I used a cast iron skillet and it only took a minute or two per side to cook the foie gras. D’Artagnan sells frozen foie gras slices that work great in this application. Lastly, the soup is topped with thinly sliced chives. There is no cream in the soup, but the foie gras more than compensates for it!

Thank you eldereno! The weather is getting cooler here in San Diego (it's all relative though) and pot-au-feu seems appropriate. I strongly recommend that you revisit this book. I made about 30 recipes from it and they've all been great. My favorite recipes so far are: the onion soup, the scallops with Champagne, all the steak recipes (beurre rouge, sauce Porto with shallots, onglet gascon, steak au poivre, etc), the roasted chicken, the skate grenobloise, the gratin dauphinois, the pommes puree. The desserts are great too including the chocolate mousse, the clafoutis (discussed upthread), and the charlotte aux marrons. If I had to pick just one recipe it would have to be the roasted short ribs though. I make it with beef as veal is harder to find, and you get an amazing result for a recipe that requires very little effort. I tried a lot of short ribs recipes and this one is really a keeper. The key is to use a little bit of demi-glace as explained in the recipe. One time I forgot to add it and the sauce was not as rich.

It looks like the picture embedded in my pot-au-feu post (#199) no longer works - maybe a moderator can fix it. Here it is again.