Things to come, with any luck...

The tiniest little carrot seedling!

Bay leaf (and lavender)

Garlic

Rosemary and thyme (and snapdragon)

Back in business

Bonjour bonjour!

I have indeed still been eating these last eighteen months, I was just too lazy to write about it. Many other things were going on and I just never got round to it. However, I'm feeling just about ready to start doing this again, so here goes. Since my last post, I've moved and acquired a rather lovely terrace which I'm absolutely loving. It's only been six months, so I've only just started to plant things. Garlic and carrots are currently growing, as well as rosemary, thyme and bay leaf and several plants and flowers. I'm looking forward to incorporating my home-grown things into recipes so watch this space!

I've got several photos of things I've made over the last year or so and will gradually start putting them up. In the mean time, I decided to start with a simple, cupboard-staple classic which is the only thing I could be bothered to do last night when I was feeling particularly tired. Anyway, taking a photo of it inspired me to get back on here, so I won't knock it too much. Besides, for an English girl living in France, baked beans on toast is a LUXURY not to be sniffed at with cans of beans being a little trickier to come by than back home and about twice the price. What is Sunday-night-what-can-I-feed-these-hungry-mouths or student no-money-until-don't-know-when-so-it's-beans-until-then food has become my equivalent of steak with foie gras.

So here you have it:

Baked Beans on Toast

1 can Heinz Baked Beans
Worcestershire sauce
Coarse black pepper to grind
Coarse salt to grind
Mature Cheddar cheese (optional)
Two wholemeal English muffins (halved) or two slices of wholemeal or granary bread, toasted

While the muffins or bread are toasting, heat the can of beans over a gentle heat. Once they've started to bubble, add a generous splash of Worcester sauce and a quick grind of pepper and salt. Stir continuously, taking care not to burn the beans or let them catch on the bottom of the pan. Once the sauce has started to become slightly cloudy and thick, take the beans off the heat.

Lightly butter the muffins or toast and pour the beans over the top. Grate some Cheddar over the lot, quickly, so it melts in slightly, then add another quick grind of salt and pepper. (I eat more salt than most for medical reasons, weird but true, so feel free to skip any of my salt-adds!)

Delicious, simple, cheap and healthy (especially if you skip on the Cheddar which I actually very rarely add, I generally prefer it without.)

P.S. My brother likes to add a little tabasco or a couple of chili flakes to his beans, (right around the time you add the Worcester sauce) which also makes for a tasty variation with a little bite!

Flopsy's Krot Cake

It's fairly 'artisanal' looking but it's tasty!

This is another post, except this time a REAL recipe, for my colleague and dear friend, Flopsy. Flopsy is a big fan of carrot cake (or Krot cake as he refers to it by text message) and sometimes we get a factory-made version which is fairly good in the supermarket on the corner for an afternoon treat. However, it's a little dry and a little commercial tasting, as well as being overly sweet. I happened to mention to Foxy one day that my Sam makes an excellent carrot cake and that it was always one of my favourites as a little girl and from that day on, he pestered me for the recipe until he took it upon himself to write to Sam and ask for it. (My memory is like that of a goldfish so I kept forgetting.) Sam dutifully sent it off, as mothers always do, and Flopsy set about making the cake. The result was rather good for a first attempt, though a little thin because he just did it in one layer, in a small tin, rather than doubling it or doing it in a deep baking tray. The cake itself was yummy, but he made a fatal error with the icing on the top. He used granulated brown sugar to make the buttercream, resulting in what he himself described as a rather 'sandy' topping, which I have never let him live down as it was quite hilarious at the time: a sandy, underweight Krot cake which was nevertheless very tasty.

Ever since this carrot cake episode, he has been asking me to make one and I have been rotten and not delivered on my promises several times over. Finally, this Wednesday, I got around to doing it. This is a cake I actually tried out last week on a friend in muffin form, minus the carrots. The flavours were nice so for Flopsy's cake I decided to base it on that and just add carrots and bake it in cake tins. Worked okay!

Carrot Cake

For the cake:

200g wholemeal flour
200g soft dark brown sugar
200g unsalted butter
1-2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp épices pour pain d'épices (I think in England/U.S. this would be All Spice)
2 tbsp maple syrup
2 big handfuls chopped walnuts
2 big handfuls of sultanas or soft big raisins
2-3 big handfuls of grated carrot
3 medium eggs
1-2 tbsp crème fraîche

For the filling:

100g unsalted butter, softened
150g icing sugar
zest of half a large orange

Beat the orange zest into the butter, slowly adding the icing sugar until you have a thick, creamy filling.

Preheat your oven to 200°C and grease two round 7" cake tins and line them with baking parchment.

In a saucepan and on a gentle hear, melt the butter with the sugar, stirring continuously with a wooden spoon until you have a brown liquid. Add the maple syrup, the walnuts, the sultanas/raisins and the carrots and stir well. Leave to soak for 5-10 minutes. In a large mixing bowl, put the flour, the baking powder, the cinnamon and the spice and mix together. Once the sugar/butter etc mixture has soaked a little, add it to the dry ingredients and stir in well, with a metal spoon. Add the three eggs, stir in, then add the crème fraîche and stir that in too.

Make sure that you have really stirred the mixture well so that the walnuts/sultanas/carrots are evenly distributed throughout. Split the mixture between the two baking tins and sprinkle a little soft brown sugar over the top of each before putting in the oven for 30 minutes.

Leave the cakes to cool on a wire rack. Once cooled, spread the filling over the bottom of one and place the other on top. The cake's ready!

Lasagne

This is the England home version, made in a real dish, cooked in a real oven and served on a real table...

...and this is the Paris Fairy version, fairy dish, fairy oven, fairy table!

I have finally, FINALLY, plucked up the energy to get back to my blog. The last few weeks I have been so tired that even the thought of taking my shoes off when I get home was almost enough to make me want to cry, mostly thanks to the ever-increasing concoction of medication I take for unimportant reasons I won't bore you with. However, I'm getting used to the new combination and despite my hair which was once thick and healthy becoming limp, dull and a lot thinner (and my house looking like I've emptied out a hairbrush all over it) I'm feeling almost normal again, therefore ready to cook. A friend of mine came to see me the other evening (yes, even once I had cooked, it still took me quite some time to bother to write about it) and requested lasagne and chocolate cake and given that I was in the mood for some high-carb, high-calorie food myself, I was more than happy to oblige. I decided to make her my Conversion Lasagne. There's a reason behind the weird name: my brother's girlfriend has only eaten poultry and sometimes bacon since childhood. The very thought of red meat or such delights as pork and crackling absolutely disgusted her and various attempts on my brother's behalf to tempt her with steak or sausage or other such morsels were in vain. My brother, Jack on the other hand, is a meat-fiend. He would be quite happy if you just served up an entire cow for lunch and left him to it. That would be his idea of heaven.

A couple of years ago, during the Christmas holidays, we were all at home, including Helen and we were having a birthday dinner for my elder brother, Edward. Edward is also a big meat lover but almost more than that, he's a pasta lover. He asked for lasagne and as I had offered to cook that evening to give my mother a rest from all of her spectacular Christmas efforts, I set about making one. I had never really made one before but it looked easy enough and I saw this as my opportunity to sneak in as much cheese as possible into a main meal. Too much cheese = rarely a bad thing. The finished product was a bubbling, juicy effort which, though I say it myself, looked delicious. Helen ate fish that evening and though I'm a huge fish fan, I have to say it looked pretty humble next to lasagne. Apparently, she thought so too. These last two years or so, she has begun eating other meats again. She enjoys steak, bolognese and pork and regularly eats and prepares them all (much to Jack's delight.) The last time I was home, we were talking about the fact that she eats meat now and she said 'Well you know it all started with that lasagne you made for Edward's birthday that time. It looked so delicious and I was so jealous that you were all eating it that it made me think I'd like to try real meat again.' So that's the story behind the name.

Lasagne (for 2 people like me or 4 normal people)

You will need:

400g ground beef
6-8 lasagne sheets
1 batch of tomato sauce (made with 3 chopped mushrooms this time)
Bechamel sauce (see below)
125 grams mozzarella, sliced
125 grams grated comté
150 grams grated gruyère
75 grams parmesan shavings


For the Bechamel sauce:

500 ml semi-skimmed milk
75 grams butter
3-4 tbsps plain flour, sifted
pinch of salt

Heat the milk and butter together in a pan over a medium heat being careful not to burn the milk. Add a pinch of salt and then slowly add the flour, spoon by spoon, stirring with a wooden spoon as you do so. Keep stirring as the sauce heats up and becomes thicker, until you get a thick but still liquid consistency. If you see that the sauce is not thick enough after a few minutes, slowly add a little more flour until it as as thick as you would like. It should still be pourable. Leave the sauce to cool on the side.

For the meat sauce:

Follow the instructions for tomato sauce but just after sautéeing the shallots, add in the ground beef and brown it before continuing with the rest of the sauce. Cover and leave to simmer for at least an hour until the sauce is thick and glossy. Once finished, leave it to cool.

Assembling the lasagne:

Take an oven dish roughly in the region of 20cm by 15cm and of a good depth. Spread a layer of bechamel sauce along the bottom followed by a layer of meat sauce on top of that. Cover with sheets of lasagne then begin again with bechamel sauce and meat sauce. This time however, sprinkle a covering of grated comté (laveing a little aside) over the meat before layering again with lasagne. Bechamel, meat again, then a layer of gruyère (leaving a little aside) and lasagne sheets. Bechamel, meat again, then the remaining comté and gruyère, topped with sliced mozzarella then sprinkled heavily with parmesan shavings.

Bake at 200°C for 30-40 minutes until you can easily put a knife through the pasta and the cheese is browned and bubbling.

You can continue with as many layers as you like, depending on the depth of your dish and pretty much add the cheese wherever you want it (but not on the bottom layer, to avoid burning), this is just how I like to make it because this way you get a nice cheesy topping. Don't make your bechamel layers too thick or it will overwhelm the other ingredients. Adapt ingredients measurements according to taste or size of your lasagne!

The civilised version...

...The Fairy version! But it tastes just as good!

Creative Insomnia Part 2 / La Grande Eloise

As I've already mentioned, I had a few sleep issues last week which seem to be creeping in to this week too. However, as I also mentioned, I've learned to milk the most from those witching hours. In the dead of night, I feel like I've beaten something. Beaten myself? I'm not sure. But that pedicure I'd planned to do the following evening, the pile of delicate clothes that needed hand washing and was scheduled in for that Saturday morning right before sewing the hem back up on my trousers and washing the floor? Well it's all done now. So I've gained that evening spot and that Saturday morning. I can do whatever the hell I want with them. I could go to the early morning showing of a film, I could get to the swimming pool before the hoards of screaming children arrive and start dive-bombing the water. I live alone, which means that I can pretty much do what I want when I want anyway, but I do have a habit of imposing schedules on myself (okay, so I'll be home by about 5:45 which means that I will have showered by 6, I'll clean the bathroom and that'll take me to about 6:20, then I can paint my nails, 6:45, clean the windows, 7:00, read for an hour before the news which will finish in time for me to make a cup of tea before whatever's coming on at 8:45 that evening.) And somewhere in that dictator-esque schedule, there'll be some sort of food of course. Do I sound like a freak? Well I should do, because I am. My name is Kate and I'm a freak. Nice to meet you.

Anyway, all of that to say that the hours I'm awake in the middle of the night are free from schedules. It's gained time in which I can either get ahead in order to gain a chosen morning/afternoon/evening, or I can use it freely to do whatever I want without interruption by myself or anyone else. Sometimes, I just watch television until it's time to get up. Sometimes I mess around on Facebook. Sometimes I stare at the ceiling and think. Occasionally, I call a friend (those who will definitely still be awake for entirely more cool reasons, i.e. they just got home from a night out in the latest fun place to be.)

Sometimes..........I. Make. Cake.

This is called La Grande Eloise because it basically takes its shape from the Eloise cupcake recipe I did for Lauren's daughter a few weeks ago. This is the big girl's version though. This one's for you a bit later on Eloise, but in the mean time, your Mama can enjoy it on your behalf.

For the cake:

200 grams plain flour
150 grams caster sugar
200 grams unsalted butter, softened
2 tsp baking powder
3 eggs
90 grams dark chocolate
2 tbsp crème fraîche
*I've highlighted where the recipe differs from the cupcakes with italics

Preheat your oven to 190°C and grease two 7" cake tins, then line the bottoms with baking parchment circles.

Sieve the flour into a mixing bowl and add the sugar and baking powder. Cut the butter up into cubes and add to the dry mix. Mix together with your hands until the mixture is slightly soft and starting to blend together a little.

Melt the chocolate.

Add the chocolate to the mixing bowl and stir in with a METAL spoon (a wooden one will mess everything up.)

Add the eggs and stir in.

Add in the crème fraîche and stir everything again with a metal spoon.

Split the mixture equally between the two cake tins.

Place in the oven and bake for about 30 minutes, or until you get the clean-knife go ahead!

For the filling:

Follow the instructions as for the topping on the Eloise.

Make sure the cake layers have cooled before adding the filling and topping.

For the topping:

100 grams milk chocolate
2 tbsp crème fraîche
50 grams white chocolate, shaved

Melt the chocolate and stir in the crème fraîche. Leave to cool slightly before spreading it over the top of the cake and letting it run down the sides.

Sprinkle the white chocolate shavings over the top and it's ready for eating!

Creative Insomnia Part 1 / Rochers Coco

Last week, from Monday right up until Friday, I woke up at 3am every single night without fail and every single night without fail I couldn't get back to sleep again. I go through phases like this and learned many years ago to embrace them rather than fight them. The middle of the night is, in fact, a wonderful time to be wide awake. Everything is quiet and time feels sort of...suspended. It's the perfect time for reading, sewing (I'm currently making a fabric rug but won't bore you with the ins and outs until I have a finished product to show off) writing (except for this blog which I totally neglected last week) cleaning and also, of course, cooking. I think it was Wednesday night at 3am when I woke up with my first thought being 'desiccated coconut.' Yes I did. I really can't say why, but that's the first thing I thought of. So, upon realising that this night was going to go the same way as the previous two, I jumped out of bed and headed to the cupboard to dig out the coconut. What should I do with it? Make a coconut cake? No, all my butter was in the fridge and I'd have to wait a good hour for it to soften before being able to start. At this point, I turned the packet over and whaddyaknow? There's a recipe for 'rochers coco' on the back! Okay so it's cheating because it's not really a recipe of my own, but they were so good and so very quick and easy to make that I wanted to share it. I modified it a little because I was a little scared of how sweet they'd be so here's my version:

40 grams Acacia honey
125 grams caster sugar
150 grams desiccated coconut
30 grams plain flour
2 egg whites
1/2 sachet vanilla sugar

Preheat your oven to 150 °c.

In a small pan over a low heat, melt the sugars and the honey together until they form a smooth paste then take off the heat.

Add the flour and coconut to the sugar and honey and stir until you have a thick mixture. Mix in the two egg whites.

Take a teaspoon and place evenly sized blobs of the mixture on a greased baking sheet.

Bake for 15 minutes until golden.

Serve warm (but not straight from the oven, all that sugar and honey can and will take the roof of your mouth off...I found out the hard way by helping myself to a little stray blob) or cold.

Happy Fish update

This weekend, Felix had the great idea of adding a couple of chopped fresh tomatoes and a few shallots to the Happy Fish recipe. Just add them both in a couple of minutes after the salmon has hit the pan and continue as normal with the rest of the recipe. We ate it with rice and a salad of frisé lettuce, cherry tomatoes, cucumber and fresh figs and it was delicious.


* This dish tastes soooo much better than it could EVER look in a photo!