I was reminded of this today by someone mentioning “impossible pies” — an all in one mixture that produces crust, filling and sauce “by magic”. I love lemon-flavoured dishes, and lemon surprise is one of my favourite classic desserts, known since childhood — mix everything together and get a light sponge floating on top of a lemony sauce when it comes out of the oven. My version is even low-fat!
This is a great dessert to follow a substantial one-pot meal (such as couscous, for example). In addition it’s healthy, low-fat, easy to do, and is prepared entirely in advance. What’s not to like?
A good way of using melons that are not as tasty as they might be. We use the local Charentais melons (which are wonderful), but you could use any sweet melon (ideally with orange flesh, because it looks nice).
The second year we had our garden we had a fine crop of guignes (wild cherries) which we used to make guignolet, an aperitif made from cherries and rosé wine, with added alcohol and sugar. It’s a bit sweet for our tastes, and five years later, we still have a stash of bottles under the stairs and need to find ways of using them up. Here’s a good one, rather similar to Cherries Jubilee.
If you don’t have guignolet available, you’ll just have to use your imagination — maybe Dubonnet would be a good substitute.
Red mullet is a very special fish, and this recipe makes the most of it. I usually serve it with a tomato vinaigrette (a vinaigrette dressing gently warmed (not cooked!) in a pan with peeled, seeded and diced tomatoes).
This is a smoky little number adapted from Nigel Slater. Very tasty, but if you cook it indoors I recommend opening all the windows and disabling any smoke alarms you may have. Mr Slater recommends a soothing pile of buttery couscous with it — in my experience it’s a good idea to have some yogurt and cucumber salad on hand as well.
A summery Catalan recipe for those days when it’s too cold to eat in the garden.
Yet another recipe for sea bass, one of my favourite fish. Where bass is concerned, simple is best — and the success of the dish depends entirely on the quality of the fish. Serves 2.
The Polynesian national dish, as prepared on a Tahitian beach.
Note: when not on a beach in Tahiti it is much more practical to just buy coconut milk in a can or package. We found it was thicker than the fresh-off-the-tree variety so you could dilute it a bit with water.
All recipes in this blog tested using the most stringent quality controls (French guests). Read on ...
A note on weights and measures
A selection of cookbooks from our shelves, brought to you by Amazon.com
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