Home » Archive for December, 2006

Do you remember this vegetable? L’endive Do you buy it? I used to dislike its taste. Bitter in my salad? Ah, non merci ! I hate when it is amer! I do not want this, please! It was even worse when les endives were cooked. But one French proverb says: il n’y a que les [...]

Sacred Valley around Cuzco At midnight, there was not much that we could discern from high above, on board of the AA Boeing that we boarded in Miami. We landed in Lima safely, late as planned, after about thirteen hours shared between two connecting flights. We knew that we would not have much time for [...]

Mini Pear and Berry Charlottes A Quick Note, en passant…. I woke up yesterday morning to realize that one of my pictures (above) — my Mini Fruit Charlottes — had been chosen and placed number one to the November DMBLGIT event hosted by Andrew at Spittoon Extra. What a nice surprise! Thanks so much! I [...]

I wondered why I could just not get out of bed last Monday morning. I must have sensed what was in the air. The lack of noise outside made me believe that everything had been wrapped into du papier bulle (bubble wrap), into un silence d’or (golden silence). After managing to reluctantly get out of [...]

Pasta can also be a fun thing to play with. I only wished that I knew how to make those! Yet, I will show you how I devored them. Les pâtes, on peut aussi s’amuser avec. Si seulement je pouvais faire cela ! Cela dit, je vous montrerai comment je les ai dévorées.

Oh boy I am happy. My first time baking les macarons parisiens. They were good to me, allowing me to work well with them. I was so excited that I could not wait and had to give them life. Next week, I will let you know their story. Bon weekend !

Macarons The Macaron Story The truth is that I fell for them too. It was simply impossible not to. After discovering Parisian-style macarons not even too long ago, after tasting the Pierre Hermé’s or Ladurée’s et j’en passe, after seeing so many blogs presenting delectable recipes on the how-to, or reading pastry cookbooks including recipes, [...]

Do you remember this event organized by Pim last year? I do. And I also remember how successful it was. Last year no less than $17,000 was raised for UNICEF.

I swear that most of the time, the things that I do not cook often taste much better. This is called “créer le manque” (to create a situation where you miss a thing), even if P. does not believe in it at all. Right. This is something that I like to do when he hates [...]

This is this time of year. Food Blog Awards, Nomination Stage The nomination stage for the Food Blog Awards is happening at WellFed. What we can do is simple: Nominate our favorite food blog(s) for one of the several categories below — leave the food blog names and URLs in the comment section under each [...]

Tradition, tradition! Do you smell something special? You have about ten days left to decide what to make for dessert! As to me I already know…. Christmas is just like this. Every year, I think that I have plenty of time to think about the following year, and about two weeks before D day, I [...]

What is up around here? I acknowledge a weakness in making desserts these days. In my search for desserts for Christmas, I liked this one. Festive, no? Come back to see the following part.

“Obsessive? Moi? You must be joking! I don’t think that I am obsessive. I am just persistent. See the difference?” “No”, P. replied. “Têtue mais pas obsessive.” (Stubborn but not obsessive), I insisted. I will have to admit that at times, it can be hard to draw the line between these two characteristics. They overlap, [...]

C’est simple comme bonjour ! or “It is as easy as saying hello”. I swear that this is an expression that we use. I had not used it in so long! The idea of adding vanilla to celery root had been with me for a while. I knew for a long time that these two [...]

Raspberry and Mascarpone Mousse Verrines I know what you are going to say. Yet another one! Oh please, do not be hard on me. I have good reasons! Well, what can I say, it is the season of desserts just like this one and as I am feeling pretty experimental layering food in glasses, eh [...]

Will you believe me if I tell you that I did not get a chance to bake any petits gâteaux (cookies) for Christmas? Bad bad me! I just didn’t. So today, although we are preparing to leave to visit P.’s family, I thought I needed to repair, and made these two chocolate petits gâteaux. Irony [...]

P. and I love to eat nuts. Les pécanes, les noix de cajou, les noisettes, les pistaches, les cacahouètes, les pignons de pin, les noix du Brésil, les graines de sésame, les graines de tournesol, les amandes. Ouf, I need to take a breath! We must have tried them all. You might not believe me [...]

I cannot believe that we are only done with the first half of the holidays and I am already thinking about “what comes next?” Because this is really what happens at this time of year, isn’t it? We move from one celebration into another one, from a more traditional family gathering at Christmas into a [...]

As soon as I poured the oil in the pot and switched on the heat, I paused for a second and wondered: how was I going to do with this project? I had not touched a bath of deep frying oil in at least more than a year, and even then, I do not often [...]

Orangettes I am late, I know. Although I miserably failed to be ready on time to prepare many of the sweet Christmas treats I usually like to bake, I yet managed to squeeze in a few of the many delicacies that are always on my to-do Christmas list. This little hiccup actually triggered the following [...]