La Recette du Jour

Our 25th wedding anniversary, and Steve’s birthday: how to resist a recipe called verrines passion, passion verrines? I love making dainty desserts in glasses too. So I launched myself into Mercotte’s complicated-looking recipe. Truth to tell, it wasn’t that difficult, and you can do much of it in advance.

One word of warning: I messed up the tuiles by miscalculating the amount of butter. They ended up chewy instead of crisp, so I zapped them in the oven after cutting them out, hence they were dark brown instead of golden like Mercotte’s. They are delicious though; the lemon and cardamom work really well. I’ll definitely do them again, and get them right next time. I couldn’t get any passion fruit juice or pulp either, so I made do with mixed tropical fruit juice for the jelly.

There are four elements: the tuiles, the caramelised almonds, the jelly and the cream. All can be made the day before, except perhaps the cream, and you can assemble them a few hours before the meal, then keep in the fridge.

This serves two, but you’ll have some almonds and tuiles left over. Tant pis!

Recipe for Pots of passion, by Mercotte »

I have become a dedicated follower of Fi’s blog, which is about all sorts of domestic matters other than food, including keeping chickens, gardening, and domestic life in general. She is also very adventurous on the self-sufficiency front, making her own bacon and salami. She’s posted about frittata a couple of times, so when I was short of ingredients and time I turned to her.

This frittata recipe is now officially a default dinner. I made it with what I had: lardons, cantal cheese, diced artichoke hearts, and a sprinkling of basil, with a couple of new potatoes steamed, sliced, and laid on top. Steve thinks Spanish omelette is the work of the devil, and even he liked it!

One of those things that seem so obvious you hardly need a recipe. But it’s handy to have one for reference. This is from Taste & Create partner Ginny’s blog, and even though I now have some cup measures I’ve converted it to metric weights because, well, how do you measure a cup of butter?

Scones aren’t as easy as you might think. The key is to mix/handle the dough as little as possible. Don’t roll it out; as soon as it holds together, tip it onto a floured work surface and pat it out with your hands. Not too thin; it should be about 2 cm thick. Then cut into triangles or squares with a sharp knife. They might not look as elegant as round ones made with a cutter, but they will be lighter. Sprinkle a little flour on top before putting in the oven. If you have any buttermilk or even milk that’s gone sour in the fridge, your scones will be even lighter.

You have to eat them the day they are made, preferably when they are still just warm. Ginny likes hers with honey, but being British I consider that you can only eat them spread with home-made strawberry jam, with a generous dollop of clotted cream on top. Or crème fraîche if you can’t get clotted cream. And a cup of tea of course!

Recipe for Scones »

Taste & Create IX already! I was lucky again, and was partnered with another person who likes pasta and vegetarian dishes: Ginny of Just Get Floury. Once again I could see several recipes that intrigued me. I started with Ginny’s mum’s recipe for Ceci ‘n Chard and I’m sorry to say I was a bit disappointed: cheap and very healthy, but it just didn’t taste very interesting even after I threw some sliced sausage and chilli flakes into it to liven it up a bit.

Never mind! I did a lot better with my next choice: goat’s cheese, caramelised onion and artichoke quiche. It was simple to make, and delicious. I didn’t have any marinated artichokes, so I used a can of artichoke hearts, diced, and added a sprinkling of fresh basil simply because I had some. I used a fresh goat’s cheese from a local farm. I cooked it at quite a low temperature (170C) for about 40 minutes, because I like my quiche to have a silky smooth texture. As Ginny says, this recipe could be adapted in all sorts of ways, depending on what you have in the fridge: I think it would be nice with spinach or tomatoes instead of the artichokes — or even the stalks left over from my chard experiment!

As for the balsamic caramelised onions … I’ll make more next time, because they are the sort of leftovers I like to have!