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Endives and ham ‘au gratin’ and cantankerous journalists
I keep reading articles in the English-speaking press about how miserable the French are at the moment and that morale has never been lower. I can’t help feeling that this is no more than a bit of misguided wishful-thinking on the part of ill-humoured hacks (I’m talking about you, Toby Young), but let me nonetheless reassure everyone that however down-at-mouth the French are, they still know how to eat…
This is a deliciously light and good-humoured dish to serve with a side salad and a wide grin đ
Ingredients (serves 4)
8 endives
8 slices ham
200g of grated hard cheese (I use ComtĂ©, but you could use Cheddar or GruyĂšre…)
For the gluten-free béchamel sauce :
30g chickpea flour
15g butter
2 tablespoons’ olive oil
250ml milk
200ml vegetable stock
1 tablespoon mustard
Seasoning to taste: sea salt, black pepper, nutmeg
Boil or steam the endives until cooked (about 15 minutes in salted boiling water or 8 minutes in a steamer). Preheat the oven to 220°C. Once cooked, drain well and try to press out any remaining water. Wrap each endive in a slice of ham and lay in a baking dish.
To make the bĂ©chamel sauce, melt the butter and heat the olive oil in a saucepan. Add the flour to the butter/oil mixture and stir rapidly with a whisk until you obtain a mousse-like mixture. Add the liquid (stock and milk) little by little, whisking vigourously to avoid lumpiness. Keep whisking and adding liquid over a gentle heat until there is none left and the sauce thickens slightly – you are aiming for a smooth, glossy, creamy pouring sauce. Add the mustard and the seasoning and leave to heat for a further five minutes over a very low heat, whisking from time-to-time.
Pour the sauce over the ham-wrapped endives and add the grated cheese. Bake for about 20 minutes until bubbling and golden-brown. -
Thai carrot and cumin soup
I love everything about this soup – the taste, the colour, the texture, its warm spicyness… It’s also extremely nourishing and with its combination of healing vitamins (A and C, amongst other things, Â in the carrots), coconut oil, garlic and ginger, it can be guaranteed to knock a cold on the head in no time. And if you eat enough of it you’ll even end up with a healthy glow đ
Ingredients (serves 8)
1 tablespoon coconut oil
1 large onion, sliced
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 leek, sliced
600g carrots, peeled and sliced
2 litres of vegetable or chicken stock
150g coral lentils
1 teaspoon of fresh, grated ginger
2 teaspoons cumin powder
1 teaspoon chilli powder
Rock salt and ground black pepper to taste
100ml coconut milk
Start by browning the onions, leeks and garlic in the coconut oil. Add the carrots and continue to brown gently for a couple of minutes. Add the stock and bring to a boil, then add the lentils, ginger, cumin, chilli and salt and pepper. Cook until the carrots and lentils are soft – roughly half and hour. PurĂ©e, add the coconut milk and serve. -
Ceps in the country (and unhinged Frenchmen)
When it comes to mushrooms, the French become homicidal maniacs. Though only when it comes to mushrooms, of course đ  My husband is a case in point. Last year, before he’d got ‘into’ mushrooms and ceps (also called king bolete or porcini) in particular, he announced that anyone mushrooming on our land was more than welcome to keep whatever they found. Our land was there for  everyone – for the greater good, blah, blah, blah. Well not anymore. No siree.
The greater good pitch vanished the moment we discovered how best to cook and savour them. We now have tacky signs up everywhere saying, roughly translated, ‘Cep bugulars get out!’, ‘Steal our ceps at your own peril!’, ‘Beware! ferocious cep-guarding dog’… During The Season, he gets up at the crack ofmushroomdawn and skulks out into the half-light, a rifle over his shoulder. OK, I’m making the rifle bit up, but he definitely would if he owned one.
Mocking aside, ceps really are worth it; they have a deep, earthy, woody taste and are rich in vitamins A and C, iron, potassium and selenium. They can mostly be found in the early Autumn under mature trees such as spruce, pine, hemlock, birch and oak. Just don’t come looking for them on our land đ
Ceps fried with garlic and parsley
Ingredients :
Fresh ceps
Olive oil
Butter
Garlic, chopped
Rock salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Fresh parsley, chopped
Any earth or sand clinging to the ceps should be brushed off gently with soft-bristle brush. Â Avoid rincing in water if possible. They should then be cut with a very sharp knife (to avoid bruising) into half centimetre slices. Heat the olive oil and butter in a frying pan – there should be enough oil to coat the bottom of the pan easily. Once the oil is hot (but not smoking), add the ceps. Cook for seven minutes on each side – the white flesh should become golden brown. Add the chopped garlic and parsley two minutes before the end of cooking.
In my opinion, the best way to eat ceps prepared in this way is on their own or perhaps with a plain omelette. They go nicely with green salad and some crusty French bread. -
Chilli con carne and itinerant horses
This is the sort of dish that is even better a day or two after it’s made, which is just as well really as I had no time to prepare lunch, having spent all morning chasing our Houdini horses. They escape more regularly than I like to admit – let’s just say that they are well-known by everyone within a 5 km radius and by the town ‘Mairie’.
Ingredients (serves 4)
250g dried red kidney beans (soaked overnight and boiled for 10 minutes)
500g minced beef
2 tablespoons of olive oil
2 medium onions, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
6 tomatoes, blanched and skinned
1 red bell pepper (cut into strips)
4 chilli peppers (sliced)
6 mushrooms, peeled and sliced
2 tablespoons of tomato purée
2 glasses of red wine
250ml beef stock
1 sprig of rosemary and 2 bay leaves
1 tablespoon Worcester sauce
1 square of 80% dark chocolate
Seasoning to taste : sea salt, black pepper, chilli powder
Preheat the oven to 150°C. Pour the olive oil into a medium-sized casserole dish and heat. Add the onions, garlic, mushrooms and mince and brown well, stirring around a bit. Once browned, add the bell pepper, the chilli peppers and the tomatoes and continue to cook until gently simmering. Add the tomato purée, the kidney beans, Worcester sauce, seasoning, stock, red wine and herbs and bring back to a simmer. Cook in the oven for about two hours, checking from time-to-time that there is enough liquid. Add the dark chocolate, stirring well to melt, just before serving.
May be served as a standalone dish, like soup, or with coleslaw and green salad. -
Cassoulet and mouthfuls of sand
My annual flirtation with vegetarianism will have lasted almost a month. Hugo, our labrador, is having a whale of a time ‘playing’ with pheasants at the moment. He waits until I’m in the saddle, then goes out in front to lift a pheasant as close to the horse’s nose as possible. This makes my horse spook flamboyantly (Iberian horses are total show-offs and exceedingly supple to boot) and I end up, more often than not, with my nose in the sand. Which brings me back to why I’ve surmised that hunting isn’t all bad; I’m anxious for them to hurry up and butcher a few of the pheasants near us, to give myself a fighting chance at staying in the saddle đ
This cassoulet is, perhaps for some people, slightly unorthodox in that it has no breadcrumbs on top. In any case, it’s well worthy of a break from half-hearted vegetarianism and is the epitome of ‘real’ food.
Ingredients (serves 8)
1 large onion, sliced
1 red pepper
4 chilli peppers
1 tablespoon olive oil
8 mushrooms
4 medium-sized carrots, peeled and cut into large pieces
5 cloves of garlic, crushed
8 Toulouse sausages
300g salted pork breast
4 pieces of duck confit
2 sprigs of rosemary
2 glasses of dry white wine
5 medium tomatoes, blanched and skinned
500g white haricot beans (these should be soaked overnight if dry)
Seasoning to taste (seasalt, black pepper, Espelette pepper or paprika)
1 teaspoon juniper berries
Start by de-fatting the duck confit in a pan, heating and removing the fat gradually. Put the onions, garlic and olive oil into a large casserole dish and gently brown. Add the mushrooms, carrots, red pepper, chilli peppers and tomatoes and continue to brown on a low heat. Add the sausages, duck and pork and continue to cook for a couple of minutes. Add the white wine, juniper berries and rosemary and bring back to a simmer. Lastly, add the white beans and season well. You will need to add some water – probably about 500ml – enough to come about half the way up the casserole dish. Cook on a lowish heat (140°C) for about two and a half hours, checking from time-to-time that there is sufficient liquid.
This is a very rich dish and should just be served with a crisp green salad. -
Green beans with pesto and flashbacks to the ’70s
Apologies to those not familiar with the hysterical British comedy series ‘Fawlty Towers’, but everytime I make something with basil I think of Sybil Fawlty’s dulcit tones shouting; ‘BASIL! BASIL!’ and his comeback, which was more often than not something along the lines : ‘Coming my little piranha fish’.
Basil is high in vitamins and minerals in general and vitamins A and K and iron in particular. It also has anti-inflammatory and anti-bacterial properties.
Ingredients
Two handfuls of fresh basil
1 handful of pinenuts
1 handful of cashew nuts
8 cherry tomatoes
3 tablespoons of olive oil
2 tablespoons of freshly-grated parmesan cheese
Sea salt, pepper and paprika to taste
Blend all of the ingredients in a food processor to form a paste. Serve with either green beans or pasta. -
Chestnut celeriac soup and how to put your foot in it
I’m a train wreck; my hands of full of spikes from over-zealously collecting sweet chestnuts without gloves and my foot is elevated, soaking in vinegar and at least twice its normal size from ‘antagonising’ a family of hornets that had taken up residence in my riding boot. If anyone has some good advice on treating the pain of wasp/bee/hornet stings please let me know đ
The chestnuts were worth the pain, as this soup will testify. The hornet sting brought nothing good, just some ardent cursing that surprised even me.
This soup is a lot of work if you use fresh chestnuts, so if you don’t relish the idea of being totally incapacitated, you could always use tinned. If you do use freshly-picked chestnuts, I recommend cooking them in their shells for about 45 minutes in salted boiling water with a couple of fig leaves (if you happen to have some to hand!). They will then need to be shelled, so try to nab someone nifty with a knife. I think if I’d tried to shell them myself today, I’d have ended up in emergency!
Ingredients (serves 10)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
1 onion, chopped
4 garlic cloves, crushed
400g of pre-cooked chestnuts
1 celeriac
1 carrot
1 apple
2 litres of chicken stock
Sprig of rosemary
Seasoning (sea salt, freshly ground black pepper, curry powder…)
1/2 cup of cream
Fry the onions and garlic in the olive oil and melted butter until golden brown. Add the celeriac (peeled and cut into rougly 1cm cubes) and apple (also peeled and chopped) and continue to lightly brown. Add the drained chestnuts, the sprig of rosemary and the chicken stock and bring to the boil. Add the seasoning to taste and cook for about 30 minutes. Add the cream and purée until smooth. -
Three-bean vegetarian chilli for sensitive souls
Every year at about this time I become a born-again (and again, and again) vegetarian. My ideology coincides with the start of the French hunting season and usually lasts two or three weeks; Fickle is my middle name!
This vegetarian chilli is so good that it actually makes you wonder why you would ever bother putting meat in it at all. From a nutrional standpoint, it’s certainly not lacking. Beans in general are high in fiber, protein, antioxidants, vitamins and minerals. Black beans have plenty of folates, kidney beans are a rich source of manganese and vitamin K and white beans are full of molybdenum. Finally, beans are low on the glycaemic indew, which makes them both healthy and diet-friendly.
Ingredients (serves 6)
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 red pepper, cut into strips
2 chilli peppers, cut into strips
1 large carrot, peeled and cut
1 courgette, sliced
5 mushrooms, peeled and sliced
3 tablespoons’ olive oil
110g dry black beans (you can also use pre-cooked but make sure to drain and rinse well)
110g dry white beans (you can also use pre-cooked but make sure to drain and rinse well)
110g dry kidney beans (you can also use pre-cooked but make sure to drain and rinse well)
1 tin of tomatoes (400g)
250ml vegetable stock
1 glass of red wine
2 bay leaves
Sea salt, pepper, paprika, chilli powder
Pre-soak and cook the beans if using the uncooked variety.
Brown the onions and garlic in a medium-size casserole until golden. Add the mushrooms, courgettes, carrots, red pepper and chilli pepper and continue to brown. After about five minutes, add the red wine and simmer gently for a couple of minutes. Then add the tomatoes, beans, stock and bay leaves. Bring back to a gentle simmer and add the seasoning. Stir well and cook in a medium oven (about 175°C) for an hour. You can cook for longer than an hour, but will probably need to add more fluid. Check from time to time anyway, as the beans soak up quite a lot and may need to be rehydrated. This is also good cooked in advance and reheated.
Delicious served with brown basmati rice and a crisp green salad. -
Fresh tomato sauce
We’re drowning in a tomato torrent at the moment. We also have a steady stream of bell, chilli and Espelette peppers to complement them. I was naively imagining myself being able to relax a bit at the beginning of September after a very hectic summer. That was before the tomato frenzy. And as if our own aren’t enough to contend with, well-meaning (or perhaps sadistic?) neighbours donate to our tomato fund as well. We’ve been ringing the changes with tomato risotto, tomato omelette, stuffed tomatoes, tomato and basil salad, spicy chicken with tomatoes and black olives… Â Are you sensing a theme? Even the hens are indulging; if anyone has any good tips on how to protect tomato plants from hens’ destructive beaks, please let me know.
Tomatoes are overflowing with vitamins, minerals and antioxidants, most notably lycopene which is thought to be capable of fighting and preventing cancer and heart disease. I justify my lax attitude towards the hens’ tomato fest with the fact that their eggs will be full of lycopene this Autumn.
As you can imagine, I’m absolutely tomatoed out and am now mindlessly brewing up this old favourite, which freezes well to use in the tomato-barren winter months. It may be used as a sauce for pasta, added to risotto or any tomato-based dish.
Ingredients (serves 8)
1 red onion
5 cloves of garlic
4 tblsp olive oil
8 medium size organic tomatoes
1 red pepper
1 green pepper
2 chilli peppers
Sea salt and pepper
Lightly fry the chopped onions and garlic in olive oil in a casserole dish. Skin the tomatoes by blanching in boiling water for a minute or so and then add to the dish. Cut the peppers into thin strips and add to the tomato mixture. Season with salt and pepper and leave to simmer on a low heat for at least an hour, or until the mixture begins to caramelise very slightly.
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