By Colin, on January 2nd, 2011% The continuing tale of Christmas Dinner. Truth be told I’m getting a bit bored with this series of posts, I started so I’ll finish and in any event the dessert was a recipe from Essence that I wanted to write about, but I think this post might be quite short.
Where were we, hmm after a short break we enjoyed some Cheese which I could write about but for the sake of brevity I will resist the temptation then on to Dessert.
As I said I wanted to do something from Essence and had opted for Lemon and Pine Kernel Iced Mousse with Fromage Blanc and Black Pepper Sorbet this was great fun to make but with one minor catastrophe and one observation. The recipe uses liquid glucose, not that unusual an ingredient for a top flight chef, buy liquid glucose in France is difficult and unnecessarily expensive, fortunately visiting relatives came to the rescue.
Making the Fromage Blanc and Black Pepper Sorbet was pretty straight forward, though next time I will put in more black pepper, trying to season sorbet or icecream is always difficult, more a process of trial and error. I didn’t use the called for cubeb peppercorns as I couldn’t find them.
The Lemon and Pine Kernel Iced Mousse for also straight forward, the key to this is patience. Patience when toasting the pine kernels, patience when beating the egg yolks and sugar syrup and so on.
 Lemon and pine kernel iced mousse weith fromage blanc and black pepper sorbet ( with out the caramel bloody craquant) We had some decent quality lemon curd as Julie is a dab hand at making that.
The disaster was making the caramel craquant, the first stage of making the powdered nuts and caramel was fine, the second stage of melting the craquant powder on a tray in the oven just resulted in a black sticky mess, this was caused by using a brand new oven, though the temperature was correct, I think if I was to do the dish again I would use a lower oven temperature or even try making the craquant in a pan.
et voila that was it, the plate was intensely lemony, balanced by the clean tasting sorbet and the deep nutty flavours of the pine nuts but unfortunately no caramel craquant. Yum
By Colin, on January 1st, 2011% In my last post I blogged about Christmas dinner and the Amuse Guele. In this post I am going to write about a frugal gourmet approach to the remainder of the Christmas dinner savoury courses.
Premier Plat – Prawn Cocktail
I like prawn cocktail and after hitting my guests with crispy pigs ears it seemed only fair to give them something more familiar. Prawns turned out to be a surprisingly frugal choice as I think peoples’ attention was focused on to more exotic fare such as Saint Jacques (scallops) and huitres (oysters), so I bagged myself a little bargain.
Duexieme Plat – Homemade Bresola
 Home made Bresola hanging to dry Only a little bit of this, Julie made this for me. Essentially marinading the beef in salt, wine and a some herbs for a few days, then hanging the beef wrapped in muslin in the porch. It was to be honest a bit salty so I gave it a soak overnight and it ate perfectly well a couple of days later. I will do a detailed how to for Bresola at some future point, perhaps in the early summer because Julie and I particularly like it with Rocket and Parmesan for a summers lunch.
Plat Principal
Back to an Essence recipe, Crispy belly of gloucester old spot pork with surf clams and pumpkin puree, however there are one or two changes that were needed in France as Gloucester Old Spot are a bit hard to come by. Gloucester Old Spot is an orchard pig, and I have recently bought half a Perigord forest pig so the meat was a perfect match. Surf clams where another problem, I live quite far from the sea so even if France you need to take what is available, I opted for fresh cockles. Belly pork you don’t get much more frugal than that but definitely gourmet, as any decent cook or butcher will tell you it is the most flavoursome part of the meat.
The dish is complicated but is broadly in three parts. The belly pork is braised in stock for about 3 hours, cooled then flattened with a weighted board overnight in the fridge. You then simply slice into suitable pieces and fry to crisp and finish.
To cook the pumpkin puree you simply cook your pumpkin with cream, milk and butter, then puree to make a delicious sumptuous puree that could easily be made into an ice-cream.
The third element was the sauce a complicated process in reducing the braising stock, fried pork ribs, Madeira, red wine, flavourings, and the addition of cockle juices from the cockles that have been cooked in white wine. The sum total was an intense dark sauce rich and rounded in flavour, very yummy.
The whole thing is then garnished with cockles and wild mushrooms (Chanterelles).
The food tasted fantastic, the plate however looked like a dogs dinner  Never mind, cookery books spend thousands of pounds and hundreds of hours making the food look prefect, but it could of looked better. The old adage we eat with our eyes first is true and is something that I try and get right, c’est la vie.
At this point we decided that an adjourment for an hour or 2 would be a good idea.
I think an adjournment from this post will help to keep the tale of Christmas dinner alive and fresh.
By Colin, on December 30th, 2010% Christmas day dawns and an unmissable opportunity for a culinary show off such as myself. Currently at Chez Nous we have my partners family staying for Christmas 4 adults and 4 lovely kids subjected to the full Frugal Gourmet experience 
This is a blog about Christmas dinner, but I have decided not to blog about the entire dinner in one go, but to spread it over a few days. Today I am just going to write about the Amuse Guele.
Amuse Gueles are from a cooks view point great fun, you can offer nearly playful titbits to excite the palate for the treats to come (the gourmet part of the Frugal Gourmet comes to the front for this post).
So what was on offer;
Amuse Guele
- Veloute of Pea and Coconut with Coconut Froth
- Spiced Chocolate Macaroons with and Foie Gras
- Crispy Pigs Ears with Tartare Sauce
Yummy
The Pea and Coconut soup is something I have already blogged about the post can be found here. It was just a little bit appreciated by all concerned.
Moving on to Macaroon’s this is something that I don’t want to write about in detail now, though I will at some future point. Suffice to say that making Macaroons is much easier to do that people make out, the recipe that I followed can be found at Pure Gourmandise an excellent little site, but it is in French, you can however put her exquisite recipes through a translation engine, a bit of commonsense should yield positives .
Sow on to my pigs ears which I endeavoured to turn in to a gastronomic silk purse. The recipe is an Essence one, not complex but not quick. I will run you through it, but I won’t give you the detailed recipe out of respect for the copyright. However if you are a reasonable cook you can deduce the method.
 My Pigs Head First off get your pigs ears, this may be difficult in Tesco’s and therefore a chat with your friendly butcher will be useful. If you are lucky you might get them for free, I got the whole head 
Cut off your pigs ears then simmer in a fragrant broth for 3.5 hours, the ears should be very tender, with the cartilage very soft.
Carefully remove the ears and press overnight in a fridge between two trays.
To prepare to serve; cut the ears into 7mm strips, coat in flavoured flour, beaten egg and breadcrumbs and fry in a deep fat fryer until crisp and golden. Drain and serve.
 Crispy Pigs Ears with Tartare Sauce To make Tartare sauce just take a portion of Mayonnaise a how to is available here from one of my earliest posts. Simply add some capers, gherkins, grain mustard and mashed anchovies. I nicked the picture from the net but the finished article did look very similar, its just that I was busy eating.
The ears went down very well partly because I didn’t actually tell everyone what they where (particularly the Kids). The kids all assume they where eating some type chicken nuggets
In my view they where good fun and I would do them again but onl;y for a similar occasion. The bigger question is what am I going to do with what the ears were attached too. Watch this space!
By Colin, on December 11th, 2010% My garden has a Chestnut tree only a small one, a teenager really but it fruits and each year the size and quantity of the nut increases. Like many Brits I quite like the idea of the Chestnut but don’t really know what to do with it.
Up till now my experience of eating Chestnuts has been confined to roast Chestnut which lets face it are tedious long before you get to the bottom of the bag and here in France the Gateau Paris-Brest and some sublime Chestnut ice cream served with Chestnut liqueur from the Restaurant Agnes Sorrel in Genille.
My experience of going beyond the roast chestnut in France confirmed that this was a culinary treasure that I needed to get to grips with. In addition I have a tree and provided I can beat the squirrels and wild boar plenty more are available in in the surrounding countryside. Once again gourmet and frugal.
 Chestnut Soup Ingredients But what to do? Well lets start gently so I turned to my Essence cookbook and decided to make Chestnut soup.
I like soups, particularly in winter and I had already made Essence’s Pea and Coconut soup which was absolutely lovely so I was very happy to test drive a different recipe.
Core to the soup was 500gms of shelled Chestnuts. Well that’s when I remembered why I hadn’t used Chestnuts before! 45 minutes and some knackered finger nails I finally had 500gms of Chestnuts, of course the problem was compounded by the fact that my juvenile tree was producing undersize nuts.
Once I had my Chestnut flesh I could get on with it, I’m not going to give the recipe, if you want that you will have to buy the book, but some key components are the white of leeks, onion and the sweating of ingredients in duck fat which helps to add depth and complexity to the flavour of the soup, as does the addition of smoked bacon, cognac, milk and some herbs. The whole mixture is further enriched by whisking in a good pat of butter. At this point the girls started muttering about diets.
 Chestnut Soup But the finished article was luverrly, rich (of course), smooth, velvety and full of flavour. If you are worried about diet, cholesterol or some such have a small bowl, it was noticeable however that everyone had seconds including the girls! Must have got something right.
I think I will cook it again over the Christmas period but I plan to con some one else in to shelling the bloody Chestnuts. As a recipe I think it is near perfect for what it is, but next time I might reduce the butter and I think I will top the whole thing of with a roasted Hazelnut foam. I’ll mention how it went in a future post.
By Colin, on August 14th, 2010% In my last post I said that I was about to prepare dîner for some French friends who recently got married. I wanted to do something special for them (and for me cos its nice to push the boat out sometimes). I posed the question at the end of the post – Fit for a marriage or a one night stand? I think I managed to get in to the marriage zone
So what did I cook?
I used the occasion to cook up a couple of recipes out of Essence which I posted about here and a couple of other dishes. So from the top;
An Amuse Bouche
velouté of pea and coconut with coconut froth
A really nice little recipe this, easy to do and full of flavour. I was to busy to faff about taking photos of each stage, but essentially you simply flavour a good chicken stock with sweated onions and celery, add coconut milk and peas, puree and sieve.
Making the coconut froth was a little more involved, you simply add coconut and chicken stock together with a gram of lecithin to help emulsify the foam. The recipe called for a stick blender (which I don’t have) or the use of a liquidiser (which was rubbish) to create the froth. Fortunately I have a hand powered swizzle stick (being frugal) that did the job nicely. The only difficult bit was getting hold of the lecithin as its a rarer ingredient and the process was not helped by my inability to pronounce the name correctly! Blank looks and shrugs all round.
Here’s a picture of the finished article, its not in the most suitable of glasses but still looked nice, the two different consistencies of the soup and the froth kept the two components separate until the finish.
 velouté of pea and coconut with coconut froth It went down a storm, which was good foot to get off on, I think this one will be reappearing again soon!
Premier Plat
stuffed courgette flowers with a salad of flowers
Bit of an invention this one. I was in the garden staring at my courgette plants that where in profuse flower. I like courgettes but there is a limit. Then I had a rare light bulb moment eat the bloody flowers. A quick cruise on line and I had mapped out a basic recipe.
You need a bunch of courgette flowers, see below
 Courgette flowers mix up a tub of ricotta, a bit of lemon, finely chopped mint and a good turn of pepper. Carefully check each flower for bugs and stuff a couple or more teaspoons of mix into each flower. Gently twist and seal.
Quickly mix up a tempura batter using 200g of flour and some bicarb (or self raising flour) and about 300g of very, very cold sparkling water. Dip the stuffed courgette flowers in the batter and fry 2 or 3 at a time in a deep oil until brown. Keep the finished ones warm in a low oven until the rest are done.
We grow some flowers around the house with an eye for the table and I thought a salad of roses, nasturtium and borage flowers with some bitter salad leaves would be a pretty and tasty contrast. I thought it worked quite well, what do you think?
 Courgette flower fritters with flower salad Julie liked it and has already asked for more!
Deuxième Plat
braised blade of beef with nettle risotto and spring onions
Another Essence recipe, but took a bit more doing than the first one 
First of get a blade of beef, being in France this is not so straight-forward as the is no equivalent standard cut. My butcher who is a real star sorted through his collier cuts and picked out the sections from the planche as the cut is called in France and I was off.
I made up a stock and braised the beef for 5 hours in the coolest of ovens, then rolled and chilled the whole lot in to a sausage shape
I split the cooking stock in half, one half I reduced to a glossy rich sauce, the rest I saved to help finish the beef.
I picked about 40 spring onions (we’ve got loads) and blanched them until soft and set them to one side.
Then I pick some nettle tops, (we’ve got loads of them as well cos we like to leave a few doted about for the butterflies), I blanched and finely chopped them.
Then on to finish the dish. Cut the Beef in to disks, then in to a warm oven to finish with the remaining stock.
Make the risotto, straight forward enough, just don’t rush it, and use good quality stock.
Refresh the onions.
Risotto on plate, beef on risotto, add spring onions and sauce et violà, un plat.
 Braised blade of beef with nettle risotto and spring onions A stong tasting dish bursting with flavour, with the spring onion providing a clean almost watery contrast to the beef that was so tender it fell apart as you nudged it with a knife. Lovely, tasty and frugal three out of three winners, my head will grow so big I won’t be able to get back into the kitchen.
Fromage
I live in the Loire as long as you buy decent cheese and serve it at room temperature you couldn’t muck it up if you tried. I did make some bread caraway seed bread buns which where tasty.
Dessert
dessert des cygnes
A fairly simple dish of a rich creme anglais made with a vanilla pod and seeds together with some piped choux pastry made into swans filled with fresh cream.
To be honest this is where the wheels got a little wobbly. The choux pastry components where a little clumsy and fresh cream in France is always a bit rubbish so the cream was a bit soft for the dish but c’est la vie .
Everything was very tasty but I think it didn’t quite hit the mark. Here is a picture, I think you can see what I mean.
 Dessert des cygnes Never mind. Overall I think dîner was fit for a marriage and no marriage is perfect!
By Colin, on May 25th, 2010% I have been thinking about this blog. I am quite content with the general posting (such as they are) but I think it lacks focus. Lots of people have cooking blogs, some are quite good, many a bit indifferent, most rather bland. I don’t do bland I do gourmet so I have made three decisions.
One – Carry on with what I am doing, that is odd recipes that interest me, observations about French/Loire food, restaurants, wine and life as the mood and opportunity takes me.
Two – I have as already stated in my Hello World entry a long time interest in wild foods, seasonality and traditional recipes. I will develop that theme further, looking a mushrooming, sausage making, preserving and all that.
Three – As I have gotten in to blogging I found and was much takenby a blog called French Laundry at Home, in which an American woman heroically cooked every recipe in the French Laundry cookbook and in the process produced an intriguing, fascinating and funny blog. Having completed this notable feat she is now working her way through the Alinea Cookbook at her new blog called Alinea at Home, brave and inspiring stuff.
It turns out that there is a little section of the blogosphere dedicated to this kind of thing, which has given rise to a film called Julie and Julia, a film I haven’t seen (soon to be corrected) based on the idea of a woman called Julie Powell cooking all the recipes in Julia Childs classic cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
So accepting that I like the idea, and that the idea is not original should the notion of doing something similar put me off…. Of course not! But what tome should I bestow my limited favours upon.
Well…
I have as ever been in a state of getting around to doing something with something, in this case with David Everitt-Matthais’s book Essence. David (hark at me I’m on first name terms already) is the chef proprietor of a Michelin two starred restaurant in Cheltenham called the Le Champignon Sauvage. He has a passion for wild food which he uses regularly in his cooking which has given him a cook’s reputation and an intriguing and appealing aspect to his food. The idea of this pushes all the right buttons for me, Wild Food and Posh Cooking got to give it a go. His cookbook Essence even has a foreword by Gordon Ramsay…but I’ll get back to you on whether that is a good or bad thing.
 Essence Cookbook So there we are then,
- Carry on with what I am doing.
- More wild food, preserving, mushrooming as availability and season allows.
- Posh up wild food in a cook along with David.
Its got to make this blog required reading.
I’m at home all next week, so I’ll have time to get stuck in, I’m thinking something with Elderflowers, maybe sausages hmmm can’t wait!!
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