So Simple

This salad represents my first "a-ha!" moment as a cook. My mother-in-law prepared it for us one night. I was amazed by its simplicity. I realized that excellent food can be really simple and the key is fresh ingredients.

Tomato Salad:
3 cups of tomatoes (any kind cut into bite sized pieces)
fresh basil (chiffonade about 5 leaves of basil)
red wine vinegar (about 2 tablespoons)
olive oil (also about 2 tablespoons)
salt
pepper
not pictured, but delicious: chopped garlic (1-2 cloves)

stir the vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic to make the vinaigrette . Add the tomatoes and basil. Stir and voila! You have a simple, delicious and healthy salad. Serve before dinner as an entree or with your main dish as a side salad. The vinaigrette is also delicious soaked up with a baguette.

Confit de Canard

Mmmmm....if there is one big advantage to living in France it is that one can find cans of duck on the Supermarket shelves. Confit de Canard is duck thighs canned in duck fat. It is tender and fatty and absolutely delicious. I usually prepare confit de canard with potatoes as the potatoes cooked in the duck grease is a perfect match to the duck.

My sister-in-law cooked confit de canard long before me. She has an infamous story of placing the can of duck in a bain-marie so the duck fat would melt so she could take the pieces of duck out. Generally, it is necessary to melt the grease so one can get the pieces out. However, TAKE OFF THE LID! She forgot to pierce holes in the top of the can or even to remove the lid. I don't know if you have ever smelled duck grease. It is strong and can linger. Her can exploded when she tried to open it and the fat was all over the kitchen and even made it to the ceiling. I cannot imagine how she cleaned it all up and got rid of the smell. It sounds like a nightmare.

If you prepare confit de canard properly it is far from a nightmare. It is like a heavenly dream. One can find this online and get it shipped in the States. It is just 3-4 times the price it is here. I plan to eat my share of duck before we have to go back to California in Fall.

Looking for Inspiration

I have not written for a little while and I think I might be searching for inspiration. I need a new travel or a new restaurant. Or, even more inspiring would be seeing my mother-in-law cook.

One thing I did try recently was Chicken with 40 cloves of garlic. This is a recipe from one of my favorite chefs, Ina Garten. The dish was pretty simple, looked amazing and tasted fantastic! I plan to try it again next week for my family's visit.

I think that in trying someone else's recipe I learn more about cooking. However, I also find it hard to write about someone else's recipe when I first try it. It is not my own yet. So, in this case -- thank you Barefoot Contessa!

Some Old Cherries

Sounds appetizing? Well, I thought I should still figure out a way to use these cherries that were just slightly mushy rather than throw them all away. I got busy tearing the pits out of the cherries and getting dark, red juice all over me and the counter. I poured a bit of granulated sugar and water in a pan to start boiling and each pitted cherry was put in the sugar bath. I let it boil and then added a drop of left over Armagnac and poured in some Kirsch as well. It started to look and smell really good. In the middle of breaking open cherries I put some vanilla ice cream on the counter. I also took Oreo cookies and mashed them into the bottom of ramekins as a "crust" and extra flavor for my creation. With the cookies on the bottom, I put the softened ice cream in the pots. Once the cherries cooled I added them on top. I placed the dessert in the freezer.

We all really enjoyed it. I got "mmmm" from my toddler. And, we named the dessert "dirty cherry." A nice ending to a warm evening's dinner.

Bleu de Gex Part II

I tried this blue cheese again after reading a bit about more about it. The suggestions were that it is nutty and a mild cheese. I agree that it has a nutty taste. It also seems to have an aftertaste that lingers.

My sister was happy with the veal and Bleu de Gex cream sauce. She asked if we would go out to eat while she was here. I hesitated because I have two little ones. She said, "that's OK, you are a good cook so it doesn't matter."

I am certain we will be out and about enough to try some culinary delights! And, I will try my best to serve up local cuisine and let her experience the French cooking as I know it.

(the picture shows the veal cooking and the blue cheese just starting to melt. I added crème fraîche about 5 minutes later.)

Bleu de Gex

Bleu de Gex is a blue cheese from a town only a few kilometers from where we live. Gex is at the base of the Jura Mountains and so the appellation of the cheese is from the "Haut-Jura." Bleu de Gex is made from cow's milk and is great with veal, beef or at the end of a meal paired with older, red wines. When we dine at local restaurants we find Bleu de Gex on the menu. One of my favorites is veal with a cream sauce and Bleu de Gex.

I decided that I should find this cheese in the store and see if I could re-create what I tasted in the restaurants. I also bought crème fraîche and veal and started experimenting. The result was a creamy balance of sweet crème fraîche and acidic blue cheese over the tender veal.

I also tried this cheese in its raw form: just a hard, blue cheese. It really does have a strong, almost acidic bite to it. I prefer its taste balanced in a sauce.

My sister arrives tomorrow from California. What's cooking? A nice cutlet of veal or beef with a Bleu de Gex cream sauce!

Boudin Blanc

Boudin Blanc is a delicious white sausage that is primarily bread-based. It is found in the charcutrie aisle of the French Supermarkets. I am a little scared of its counterpart: boudin noir. This is made of blood and I am not thrilled by that notion. So, I stick with boudin blanc!

Some tricks to cooking up boudin blanc are 1. take off the skins and 2. find a nice white wine to cook it in. I chose a wine from this region: Haute Savoie. If you leave the skins on the boudin will puff up. If you take them off then it cooks nicely and still gets a brown crust.

Set the oven to 210 degrees Celsius. Put your boudin in a baking dish and fill the bottom with white wine to cover the bottom 1/3 of the sausages. Cook for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes turn the sausages over to cook the other side and be sure that the entire boudin gets a dip in the wine. Cook for 10-15 more minutes.

If anyone has advice on what to serve boudin blanc with then please email me! Last night we ate it with an eggplant pistou (like a ratatouille) and wedge cut fries. I still haven't found the perfect side dishes for boudin blanc.

p.s. my toddler loves this stuff!