Blog de la Bouffe

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Tags : Apple and Almond crumble tart, cookbook, France, FuelMyBlog, UK
Categories : Cooking, Recipes

Squishy Flapjacks

27 10 2008

I made squishy flapjacks yesterday….something to keep the troops happy!

Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients

80g brown sugar

60g butter

40g margarine

250g porridge oats

Salt..pinch

Banana….mashed

2tbs Golden Syrup

Method

Melt butter and margarine gently in a saucepan.
Add the sugar and golden syrup and stir well.
Mix in the oats, adding gradually, covering well.
Add a pinch of salt
Stir in the mashed banana until fully mixed.
Spread the mixture evenly over a non-stick baking tin.
Place into a pre-heated oven gas mark 5 and bake for 15 minutes until golden brown.
Remove from the oven and leave to stand for 5 minutes and then score with a knife into portions.
Cover the tray and leave for a few hours before removing the flapjacks.

Lovely with a cuppa on a rainy day!

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Tags : flapjacks, recipe, oats, golden syrup
Categories : Cooking, Family Eating, Recipes

Apple and Almond Crumble Tart

9 10 2008

We went to Intermarché today and as usual spent many a lingering minute drooling over the tarts and gateaux in the bakery department. The patisserie selection is stunning here. Beautifully presented, shiny, colourful, fruity, light and healthy looking. From apricot flans to cherry tarts to the classic apple tart. Sometimes with a custard/crème anglaise base, sometimes a compôte base. Always with meticulously and perfectly placed fruit, that has us ‘ooh’ing’ and ‘aah’ing’ and pointing and salivating!

In fact, so inspired was I, that I came home, shunted the children off to footy and riding and made one of my own.

It was lovely, well received and so easy to make.

Brief description follows:

Line pastry base with cheats’, ready-made pastry, bake blind in hot oven for 5 to 10 minutes. Cover pastry base with a generous few dollops of apple compote, arrange, very neatly and precisely (for that extra dash of authenticity) peeled and sliced apple slices, sprinkle on pre-prepared crumble mix and flaked almonds, sprinkle with sugar and put in the oven for 15 to 20 minutes until browned.

Serve hot or cold with pouring cream, squirty cream or ice-cream. Delicious!

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Tags : apple, apple tart, almond and apple tart, crumble
Categories : Cooking, Food, Recipes

Let’s Hear it for Prunes

24 09 2008

Lot et Garonne is justly proud of their prune industry. Agen prunes are exported worldwide and I have heard that many a Californian prune, is an Agen prune in disguise.

We are surrounded here by vineyards, fields of sunflowers and prune orchards. Some friends of ours have a prune orchard and I am always amazed at the variety of prune-inclusive recipes that are served up at their dinner parties. From aperatives, to main meals to the cheeseboard, from sweet to savoury and back again.

I no longer react to the prune as any Brit does, with faint amusement and horror. They have such bad press in the UK, perhaps due to their unglamorous reputation and infant-school-pudding-association. But I am now quite familiar with the humble prune and am able to appreciate it for it’s versatility and delicious taste.

Tonight Diddy and The Boy made chocolate covered prunes. So simple to do, with melting of dark, bitter chocolate over a bain marie, the delicate dipping of prunes balanced on the end of a cocktail stick, leaving them to set on the parchment paper and the liberal sprinkling of desiccated coconut and hundreds and thousands.

We enjoyed them after dinner and even The Boy after half a nibble, ‘testing’, had to be rationed to 3.

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Tags : prunes, chocolate, snacks
Categories : Family Eating, Food is Fun, Healthy Eating, Recipes

Sunny Tomato Tart

10 09 2008

Suddenly, our tomato’s are ripening….all at the same time.

So, in an effort to use them up, I have been bottling, pureeing, slicing and serving with cheese…etc,etc. It would be easy to become a bit sick of them, but they are so tasty…reminiscent of Spanish tomato’s eaten on holiday, with real, juicy tomato flavour, that they are a joy to eat.

Here is a recipe for Sunny Tomato Tart…tonights dinner…

Ingredients:

Shortcrust pastry…(I cheat and use ready-made…can’t be bothered to make my own!)

2 tlb’s Creme fresh

2 tsp’s Dijon mustard

Fresh Thyme

Tomato’s

Olive Oil

Method:

Set oven to hot….200 degrees centigrade. Line flan dish with pastry and smooth over creme fresh and Dijon mustard mixture. Sprinkle with thyme.

Thinly slice tomato’s and arrange on top, (probably a few more than I managed here!) drizzle with olive oil and cook in the oven until it resembles the photo above.

Good,that used up two tomato’s, what can I do with the other 10 kgs?

Stir-fried chicken with lime and coconut.

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Categories : Cooking, Food, Healthy Eating, Recipes

Stir-fried Chicken with Lime and Coconut

4 03 2007

Well, last nights meal was gorgeous!

It was a recipe that caught my eye when I first flicked through the Delia book. It was scheduled for the night before, but as is my wont, I left my shopping list at home and forgot most of the ingredients. About the only thing I remembered was the chicken!

I marinated the chicken in the lime juice and zest for an hour, as told to by the recipe. I must admit, I have often wondered if marinating really works, after all, surely the flavours would burn off and cook away? But I’m glad to say that the lime flavour was well and truly present…it was great!

The coconut juice was surprising too, more creamy than coconutty and the fresh coriander rounded it all off nicely.

I reckon, up to date this was my favourite meal, a beautiful flavour, easy to prepare and cook, fairly cheap. I did cock up with the Thai rice, which was a bit soggy but edible all the same. It soaked up the coconut and lime juices really well!

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Categories : Cooking, Recipes, Uncategorized

Roasted plaice fillets with a parmesan crust

28 02 2007

Tonight you are witness to a first, a record in culinary feats, an event never recorded in history, for tonight, I cooked fish for the 2nd time in 6 days!!

Yes, tonight I cooked Roasted plaice fillets with a parmesan crust, courtesy of Delia and Book 2.

Delicious it was too! And a different taste/texture sensation in the fish department…todays fish was tender, succulent and, forgive me if I’m a bit naive, it reminded me of blancmange! Sort of jelly-like! (Does that mean it was under cooked?)

It was certainly not ‘meaty’ like the salmon. I really surprised myself and ate most of the skin too….unheard of! Quite frankly, I didn’t know I was at the time! The crunchy, cheesy topping was a good contrast to the soft texture of the fish and the sharp lemon. Enjoyed it with brocolli and pine nuts again…my favourite!

Super!

Now, please help me if you will….would you like me to include a full run down of ingredients, top tips and instructions (ie.the recipe) on these culinary explorations or are you quite happy with my enthusings, without the detail? I will happily oblige if you want the full monty!

Answers on a post card….or in the comments section, if you prefer!

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Categories : Cooking, Recipes, Uncategorized

Tortilla (Spanish Omelette)

27 02 2007

Delia Smith was my inspiration today. I must admit, I have never been a real fan of hers….I have always found her sort of prudish and well, boring!

Sorry!

But my sister has been a follower for years and after a trip to her place this weekend, I managed to pinch the complete set of the Delia’s How To Cook trilogy. It has made very good reading; now that I am a fully fledged convert, an evangelical maestro of the kitchen!

Tonight, I randomly opened a page of book one, (which has a lot to do with eggs, and apparantly caused a bit of a stir back in the 90’s when it was first published) and found Tortilla (Spanish Omelette). Looked easy enough and quite tasty to boot!

I couldn’t find Desiree potatoes, so made do with some little new potatoes instead. I did what she said, turned up the heat, then turned it down, measured the base of the omelette pan, ‘combined’ the eggs, without over doing it, left it gently cooking. I did come a cropper when I had to invert it on a plate and put it back in the pan…..it just sort of disintegrated really! But I got there in the end!

It was really tasty, cheap and cheerful and perfect with a crunchy Cos salad and a glass of Rioja!

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Categories : Cooking, Recipes

Pan roasted salmon with purple sprouting broccoli and anchovy-rosemary sauce

22 02 2007

Ok, I know, we should all eat more fish….2 to 3 times per week apparantly.

Who are they trying to kid?! I don’t remember eating much fish whilst growing up…fish and chips being the exception.

Even now Mum will turn her nose up at fish, with the usual…’Too many bones’ remark. And as the food provider in our house, for the most-part, I would conclude that fish was never a staple of my diet.

And so it remains! I know it sounds stupid but fish is too damned fishy! It just tastes too fishy and why eat cod, for example, because it doesn’t taste fishy? May as well eat meat or cardboard or white chocolate! And it’s true, there are too many bones….

So tonights journey into the above recipe…(I can’t be bothered to type it again!) was different, yeah, unusual, yeah, novel, roight …to quote Kath and Kim. In fact 3 times a week…I’m closer to 3 times per year!

It was very nearly a disaster too, which would have been a travesty, to say the least. For one, I don’t want to break my record, 3 recipes, 3 successes and two, if this hadn’t worked I may never have attempted a fishy dish again!

Problem number one….make a rosemary and anchovy sauce in the pestle and mortar…whoops! Pestle and morter is now in France, 400 miles away. I never used it, which is why it is where it is! I did manage to cobble it together using the Moulinex and the back of a wooden spoon though.

Then I took the salmon out of the oven too early and it was a bit under cooked! I know you can eat raw fish, the Japanese seem to thrive on it, but a combination of raw and cooked? I wasn’t sure, so whacked it back in the oven for a while. I put the purple sprouting broccoli back in too, which meant that the lemon in the sauce intensified.

And there we go, it was actually really rather lovely in the end. I still have no idea if Yvonne pinboned it, there were certainly no bones in it. It tasted of lovely salmon, not too fishy! It was a really ‘meaty’ fish that I wasn’t too nervous to sink my teeth into. The rosemary and anchovies and lemon were super….d’you know, if Keith Flyod were to read this he would be very worried by now!

Final comment 4 successes out of 4! I will be entertaining soon, soirees and dinner parties, I can see it now!!