Lime Pie

Jacqueline inspired this pie. 

and then I realized I had a similar recipe from my grandmother

whose cooking I never really knew,

but whose recipe box I photographed extensively.

So I melded their recipes,

Then I added some of my own inspiration

and I must say

the product was QUITE delicious!

I divided it into two small pies

to serve to two different groups of friends

and everyone raved

even the 'I dont like lime tarts' naysayers

But I'd guess it could make 1 good 9x9in dish

Crust:

18 petit beurre cookies, crushed

or 5-6 graham crackers

stirred in with 4tbsp coconut flakes

and 2-3 tsp sugar

and finally, 125g/8-9tbsp melted butter

the crumbs should stick in a ball when squeezed in your fist

if not, add more butter!

Press firmly into the bottom of a spring release pan

or a tin lined baking sheet like I did

bake for 15-20 minutes at 185ºC/350ºF

or until lightly browned

let cool 

Lime layer:

2 eggs + 2 yolks (save the whites for next step)

plus 1/2c sugar

grate the zest of two limes

or three if you really like the tartness!

then squeeze in their juice

1/2 c crème légère

Whip all this together and place in your double boiler

Meaning, mix it in a metal bowl,

put a pot of water on to boil

and fit the metal bowl over top

but make sure no water gets in your batter

it should leave a film on a wooden spoon dipped in

cool, pour in crust

Meringue:

Preheat the oven to 180ºC/350ºC

 put 2-3 egg whites in a very large bowl

add pinch of salt

and beat the heck out of it with a whisk.

Until you get stiff peaks, in fact

there are a million videos of this online, 

and it can be done easily with a mixer!

add 2-3 T sugar and beat just a minute more

 pour over top of the lime layer

sprinkle coconut and lime gratings over top

bake at 180 till just browned

Refrigerate for at least 5 hours!!!!

remove from pan, remove

Jacqueline's shortcut, but oh so good as an idea all on its own, version coming soon!

Tube of Frozen Celery: what to do with celery leaves

When I buy a bunch of fresh celery - which I do quite often because I am convinced that celery makes everything better - I feel guilty throwing away the leaves. They LOOK like all the herbs I buy that are so freaking expensive, but they're trash? So I started researching. They ARE indeed an herb, and they add the celery freshness without needing to always have branches on hand!

So now I wash, chop, and freeze them. If they are completely (or almost) dry when I stick them in the freezer, they don't stick together at all, and I can just scoop out a fourth of a cup when I cook soups, lentils, sauces, etc.. Wrap the dried, chopped leaves in plastic wrap, and then in tin foil as seen above, in a sort of light saber shape or in a freezer box, and then you can just open one end and scoop/pour out the desired amount each time.

How to toast almonds

From scratch cooking has led me to realize the hundreds of industrial products that we accept each day without consideration. And yet I continue to be surprised when the homemade version is immensely superior! These toasted almonds, another lesson from Sabrina this weekend, are another universe of crunch and flavor than the stale almonds that come in a package.

Start with raw almonds.

If they have skins (the brown film) boil them gently for 10 minutes and drain.

Pinch each one and the skin should slip right off. Discard the skins.

Dry.

Place the dry almonds in a small frying pan with just one tablespoon of oil on medium high heat.

Stay with them throughout cooking because they burn oh so easily.

Stir continuously so that none of them burn. 

When they're all lightly browned, you're done! 

If the little ones get burnt, just pick them out.

Makrout - Algerien Date Cookies

I am going to jump right into this recipe, because otherwise I will spend a number of paragraphs explaining my new found, deep love for all things Algerian cooking. With five amazing meals in my stomach, my first algerian wedding under my belt, and a conviction that moving to Algeria next year is a very good idea, I have returned from my weekend with Sabrina and her family in Orléans (an hour or so south of Paris). I will be back soon. To follow are a tajine, a traditional semoule bread recipe, a roasted chicken, and of course, these cookies for you :)

My apologies if the recipes aren't exact or easily replicable. I did what I could to get good measurements, but have you ever asked your grandmother how she makes that amazing old family recipe that generations have adored? Yeah, try. She will tell you 'oh its just a pinch of this, and that and voilà.' 

These cookies are known all over the place, but according to Sabrina the Tunisians and Moroccans usually fry them, while Algerians bake them and then dip them in honey. We skipped the honey.

Cookie dough:

400g melted butter

~they actually said margarine is better, melted, and only using what rises to the top, and not the sediments

750g fine semoule 

1 large tablespoon salt

1 cup heated orange blossom water

~should be easy to find in an international market

more water as needed

Throw together the salt and the flour. Make a well in the flour and pour in the melted butter. Rub in the butter until it resembles a pile of moist sand. Pour in the heated orange blossom water and continue rubbing together. 

This will be almost more of a crust dough than a smooth bread/pasta dough. Meaning, you don't want to overwork it (making it too smooth by forming gluten bonds) or the cookies wont be flaky. 

You know its done when a handful of dough, squeezed tightly in your fist, forms a kind of ball. 

Pat the dough into a ball and set it aside for about 30 minutes.

Date filling:

1/2 kg date paste

a generous pour of olive oil

a generous 1/4c (or more?) orange blossom water

~ in the US, you'll probably have to visit an international grocery for this

1generous teaspoon of cinnamon

Work all this together like a dough until it is uniform and set aside.

To form the cookies: make hotdogs

Taking a fist sized chunk of the cookie dough at a time, roll it into a log then press into it with your fingers to form a hot dog bun shape. Roll the appropriate size of date paste into a hotdog and place it in the bun. With great finess, close up the bun and roll out the log.

There seem to be a variety of stamps available, and all kinds of dos and don'ts with shaping, but I won't pretend to know anything. These seemed really nice to me. We stamped them, cut them, and placed them on a cookie sheet. It made easily a hundred cookies...

After stamping and placing them, a small sliver of almond went perfectly in the middle, and had a surprisingly delightful taste in the finished product!

Bake at really high heat, maybe 400ºF/205ºC, but maybe much hotter. Their oven said it was 260ºC, but it didn't feel that hot to me. 15-20 minutes, juuuust until they start to brown.

Traditionally, they're dipped in and dripping with honey, but we all preferred them without.

Algerian Mint Tea

I am in love. with Algerian tea.

1 heaping tablespoon green tea
1 botte of mint leaves (six branches or so)
~ did you know it's just a weed?
6 tablespoons sugar
boiling water

1. Rinse the mint and stuff it in your kettle with the sugar. Boil your water.

2. Put the tea in a glass and pour in just enough hot water  to cover it, but not more. Pour that water out. This gets rid of some of the bitterness, but if you add too much water it will also take away from the flavor.

3. Add the tea and hot water to your kettle.

4. The really fun part of Algerian tea is aerating it before serving it. This mixes it, and more importantly oxygenates it. Pour a glass of tea, then pour it back in the pot. Pour from high above, and do it five or six more times. It

Algerian Roasted Chicken with Mushroom and Olive Sauce

This might be more of a Sabrina creation than a traditional Algerian dish, but when it is this good, no one cares, right? But do note that you will need a pressure cooker.

Take each of these steps slowly. The generous time, slow heat and attention is what makes traditional cooking like this so rich and layered. The load of spices helps, too.

2 onions
1 generous tablespoon of each:
- salt
- pepper
- cumin
- ras el hanout
~ a spice mix that is all over the place in Moroccan and Algerian cooking. Should be findable
a fistful of parsley
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 chicken + another couple legs if you like
2 cloves garlic
lots of water
3-4 cups mushrooms
3 large tablespoons crème fraiche, or sour cream
1 can green olives

4 potatoes to fry as as garnish, if you'd like

Hash one onion and grate the other. Add all your spices, the parsley and the oil and put it on medium-high heat for five minutes or so, until they start to clarify. Add a cup of water and grate in the garlic.

Add in the chicken and let cook for just a couple minutes and then add enough water to cover the chicken. Close the lid on the pressure cooker and cook for about 20 minutes after it starts to sing.

Open the pressure cooker, take out the chicken and put it in a pan to roast. At about 250ºC/230ºF until it browns.

Put the pressure cooker, with all the juices (sauce) back on the stove and bring to a low simmer. Add the chopped mushrooms to the sauce and simmer for about 10 minutes, until the mushrooms are cooked. Taste the sauce and simmer more as needed, reducing as you go.

Add in the can of green olives and the crème fraiche/sour cream on a low heat and let simmer so the flavors mix until all the pieces are ready to be assembled.

If you want the potato garnish (I loved it, but I'll be honest... I'm not very good at frying things...) peel, slice them and fry them.

When the chicken is browned and the sauce tastes delicious, you can assemble. Place the chicken on a large platter, pour the sauce over top. Throw the potatoes over top.

Tajine: Prune and Almond

French cooking might be world famous, but Tajine is all the rage in Paris. The method comes from the Maghreb, and uses a 'tajine,' which is an earthenware base and conical lid. The lid is put on to cook, and removed to serve the dish in the plate underneath. The dish itself can be composed of meats, fish, vegetables, and even fruits that are all cooked together at a low heat for an extended period, usually smothered in spices. It seems like this system creates a special circulation of the liquids, but I won't pretend to know anything about it.

This particular dish is Sweet&Salty, but if you want to avoid most of the sweet, just be sparse when you add the liquid from the prunes.

If prunes aren't your thing - though I would definitely suggest trying it at least once before deciding so - you can use apricots, dried figs, and even raisins their place. Ditto for the meat, just make sure to adjust the cooking period depending on the meat you choose.

One last note: we cooked this dish in a pressure cooker to save time, but you could easily do it in a good deep dish that closes well. Just add lots more time, and possibly a lower heat.

1 onion, hashed
1 onion, minced
4 T oil
1 heaping tablespoon each of:
salt
cumin
pepper
ginger
coriander
ras el hanout (check an international grocery, its an arab/oriental spice)
1 tsp cinnamon
and a touch of saffron powder for color and flavor, if you have it
4 T chopped parsley, the punched up kind
at least 1-2 lbs meat - beef or veal, cut into large, rough cubes
~any rough cut will do, even if some of the bones are still stuck on
1/4 c raw almonds
15 or 20 dried prunes
~ or dried figs, apricots, and/or raisins to your taste
2 tablespoons sugar
1 (more) large tsp cinnamon
oil
4 hard boiled eggs for decoration

1.Combine the onions, spices, parsley and oil and meat all together in your pressure cooker and bring to medium high heat.
~yes, French cooking would demand that you sear the meat first, but we didn't... so I won't pretend to know better!

2. After just a few short minutes, add enough water to cover the meat, close the pressure cooker and cook for 45 minutes if you're using large chunks of beef.
In the meantime, prepare your sweets and your decorations:

3. Prunes and prune sauce:
- Bring about 3 cups water to a low boil and add your prunes, 2tbsp sugar, and 1 heaping tsp cinnamon.
-Let simmer until the sauce is a deep, rich maroon. Probably 10 minutes.
- Not too much water here, because you'll have a sauce in the end, and want it good and concentrated.

4. Hard boil your eggs: Yes, this eludes me too... here is a good step by step tutorial. And here is Sabrina's method:
- Put the eggs in a small pot with cold water and a pinch of salt and bring to a low boil.
- Cover the pot, turn off the heat and leave it alone for 10 minutes
- Remove from the water and let cool before peeling, or if you're impatient like my mother, you can peel them under a running faucet.

5. The toasted almonds

- If you're starting with raw almonds you'll need to remove the skin. To do so, boil your almonds in generous water for about 10 minutes, strain, and just by pinching they should come out of their skins.
- Dry them
- In a skillet with just 1 tablespoon of oil, bring to a medium high heat to start to toast them
- Stay with them the whole time!!! Stir as you go, and stop as soon as they have a healthy brown on each side, but don't burn them! If the smaller almonds on the side are burning, just remove them.

6. When the 45 minutes in your pressure cooker is up, open the lid (using all safety precautions it demands!) and let it continue to simmer for 5-10 minutes to reduce the sauce, making it more concentrated in deliciousness.

7. Assembly: as we did not actually make this Tajine IN a tajine... we have to assemble it on a plate to serve it. Shame.
- Pour the meat and sauce onto the plate
- Garnish with the prunes, keeping the prune sauce aside
- Garnish almonds and the hard boiled eggs, cut into fourths
- The final step, drizzle the sweet sauce over top, according to your taste. We drizzled just a few generous spoonfuls, and even the two that had sworn they didn't like sweet and sour ended up in love.

Galette - a Smitten Kitchen jewel with a simple filling

I continue to be absolutely smitten by Smitten Kitchen, which I have recently learned to be the most amazing cooking blog on earth.

And I have been drooling over her galettes for a while. One of my least favorite things, though, is trying to match a recipe exactly because it usually includes multiple trips to the store to get specific ingredients and the fear that the one substitution you were forced to make will make it all turn out wrong. The blending of all things left in my fridge turned out BEAUtifully.

Smitten Kitchen's flaky galette is a yes.

But as per most blogging (we can chant this together, if you want) I changed just a couple things... I then also found that a year later she also blogged the galette with zucchini in it. Not surprising. She is brilliant like that. Of course she would be years ahead of me! And just to give sufficient shout outs, here are her zucchini and ricotta galette, her roasted butternut squash and caramelized onion galette, and

anyway. onward.


Galette, as per the Smitten Kitchen:
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, chilled in the freezer for 30 minutes
1/4 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces and chill again
1/4 cup sour cream (yogurt worked fine! buttermilk probably, too)
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup ice water

Filling:

2 zucchinis

1 shallot

chunk of blue cheese

handful of swiss cheese, grated

splash of crème fraiche

salt and pepper

marjoram

1 egg

I'll refer you to her directions for the dough, but the filling:
-Dice the shallot and put it over medium heat with a bit of oil and the zucchinis, chopped.
-Once they start to turn clear, turn off the heat, stir in all the rest, and your filling is ready!
note: it should be thick enough to hold its form as in the photo. If its too liquid it will be hard to close the crust around it.

Assemble the galette directly on parchment by laying out the dough and pouring the filling in the middle and folding in the sides, one small section at a time.

Preheat oven to 205ºC/410ºF and slide the assembled galette in the oven, turning the oven immediately down to 195ºC/380ºF and bake for 33 minutes, or until nicely browned. 

Zucchini Coconut Cream Soup

Yep, still going strong on my coconut milk kick.

I realize Zucchini is not considered gourmet in the US, but here in France it is simply luxurious. "I looove zucchini" is one of the phrases I hear the most often here. After "shit... I'm sick of that!" and other lude expletives, of course.

Anyway. DEEEElicious soup. Its really more of a velouté... a creamy, smooth vegetable soup. Perfect for Versailles, I'd say.

This was a 30 minute job and made enough for 4 large bowls of soup.

2 small onions
2 stalks of celery
1 carrot
1 garlic clove
3 zucchinis
1 bay leaf
1 tbsp marjoram
enough stock to cover all of it
(uh... 5 or 6 cups? I used 2 bouillon cubes and water as needed)
1/2 can of coconut milk
2-3 tbsp olive oil

In a pot (something about the size you would boil noodles in - you don't want it too wide or it will be too low to blend with the immersion blender)

Chop all the vegetables into rough chunks.

Sautee the onions, celery and carrot on medium-high heat.

When the onion and celery turn clear (about 7 minutes) throw in the garlic and the chopped zucchini.

Stir every couple minutes until the zucchini turns clear. If it starts to brown or stick/burn to the bottom of the pot, go ahead and go on to the next step.

Stir in your spices and the bay leave and then add the stock. Enough to cover the vegetables, and then some, depending on how thick or thin you like your soup.

Simmer for about 15 minutes, remove the bay leaf, blend that sucker with your immersion blender and stir in the coconut milk. I would say a whole can wouldn't be bad...

mmmmmm.

Carrot Coconut Soup

This soup was inspired by lunch yesterday at a chic, 'bio' cafe in Paris yesterday - and also by Karen and Mohammad's great love of coconut milk... Mohammad is from Comoros and his coconut milk rice is magically delicious. Karen caught the bug and serves us endless coconut milk delights these days, so now I have an eye for all things that contain it...

Carrot Coconut Soup

2 small onions
2 branches of celery
I had a parsnip, too and it was good
6 young carrots, or about as much chopped carrot as the rest of the veggies combined
6-10 cups broth ~ a cube or two of bouillon in water work just fine!
1 bay leaf
a handful of cashews
~almonds dont blend quite as smoothly, but you can soak them overnight first if you would like to try
1 can (or a bit less) of coconut milk
2-3 tbsp olive oil
spices: a dash of cinnamon, nutmeg, and curry was super yum, but spices aren't my strong point, so please do post some recommendations below!
Parsley as optional garnish

Heat oil in a pan. Chop all the veggies into chunks. Throw them in.

Sautée for about 10 minutes on medium high heat, until the onions are clear and the carrots softened.

Stir spices directly into sautéing vegetables.

Throw in broth and simmer for 10 more minutes, enough to cover the veggies, and another inch or so. Throw in cashews, 5 minutes more.

Pick out the bay leaf and immersion blend. A conventional blender would work too, but if you're working with curry pay attention to what the soup touches!! All plastic surfaces will turn immediately yellow... says the girl with a perpetually yellow-stained kitchen.

Stir in the coconut milk and let sit for a bit, but don't put it back on much heat after adding the milk, unless you're super vigilant and then even on super low heat. It will curdle/cause big chunks to form in the soup...

 Garnish with Parsley. Serves about 4

Cakes Salés - Savory cakes

Salty cake. I realize it doesn't sound appetizing to the American ear, but the reality is a rich palate into which you can add any savory ingredients that you fancy and end up with a delicate, salty, cake-like bread. Cut into large chunks and dipped in white sauces, this is the supreme appetizer. Especially with Karen's white dipping sauce...

She first cooked this for me nine months ago, but I only recently have both an oven and a cake pan in which to make it... She has a tremendous love of cheese, so the original here has 3 different cheeses as the "throw ins" but any other three will do! See below for ideas

The Base

Beat together, in this order:

3 eggs

1/2 cup milk

1 tablespoon baking powder

a little bit less than 1/2 cup oil (.42 cups, technically...)

150g flour (about 1 1/4 cup)

salt and pepper

"throw in" ideas:

100g swiss
100g blue cheese
100g cheddar

~or~

a palm full of dried (or fresh!) spices of your choice

a handful of whatever cheese you have on hand

a half an onion, chopped

~or~

a handful of sliced olives

cubed feta cheese

fresh basil leaves, chopped

~or~

1/2 cup cubed ham

Bake for about 30 minutes at 200ºC/390ºF

Cut into cubes and serve as an appetizer with a dipping sauce. Also really good chilled - it brings out the flavors of the cheeses!

Note: This freezes wonderfully, and thaws fairly quickly if you want to prepare ahead for a party or keep something on hand. Just throw it in the fridge the night before to thaw. Cube before freezing to make it even easier

Vinaigrette

I always thought that dressings were something you had to buy. Why do I continue to be surprised every time things turn out better homemade?

1 spoonful ketchup

1 spoonful dijon mustard

salt, pepper, dried spices to your taste

a splash of lemon juice

1/3 red wine vinegar

2/3 oil

Stir or shake up everything but the oil until homogeneous. Add the oil, and shake well again. The amount of oil and red wine vinegar is variable - its really just a matter of how concentrated with the other flavors it will be. This small container is about 1 1/2 cups, so its fairly red. But you could double the amount of red wine vinegar and oil for more.

Carrot salad

Yes, I too would probably look at this photo and say "that looks too healthy to be good." But fear not, the boiled veggies might look "healthy," but they are surprisingly tasty and it is not lacking in yummy fresh dressing and cheese. The perfect combination, in my opinion. I am learning that boiling fresh veggies gives a very full flavor and filling results. Amazing with a sauce on top.

There is a concept for carrots, celery, and onion in french cooking called Mirepoix - or 'the holy trinity' in creole cooking. I always thought they were optional when I saw carrots and celery in a recipe, but I have been amazed recently at how much flavor is in each of them. This is just one permutation of that discovery.

2 carrots

1 onion

mozzarella

vinaigrette

Bring a pot of water to a boil and salt. Pull or cut the mozzarella into shreds and set aside.

Clean the carrots and cut to your fancy - rounds, thin sticks, whirls if you can pull it off. Peel if you must, but if you can simply clean them well, there is a lot of flavor to be had in the peel. Cut up the onion, too. I just peel it and cut it into slices. It falls apart in the water.

Throw them in the boiling water and cook until you can pierce the carrot with a fork. About 10-15 minutes.

Drain, throw together with the mozzarella and season with vinaigrette. How can boiled vegetables have so much flavor?! I find that with real ingredients like these - though they might not have the nutrition facts attached - you can know that its a good, healthy, and filling meal. Even with oil based dressing and cheese.

Apple and Pear Tarte à la française

This is more of a method post. I was reading a french cookbook and this is just one step further than a fruit tarte, and I'm kind of in love. It means taking an apple tarte, and adding a cream, egg mixture overtop halfway through baking, which this cookbook apparently calls "à la française." The egg-cream mixture baked on top adds an almost pudding-like layer but because it is so thin, it retains the refined feeling of an apple tart for desert. The consistency makes it a bit more substantial than just the fruit and crust of an apple tarte. I added the pears because we bought too many and they're going bad. I will now do so every single time I bake apple anything.

1 crust

1 apple

1 pear

1 egg

a big scoop of a cream: crème fraiche, greek yogurt, marscapone, cream cheese, or maybe even sour cream if you like tart tarts

1/4 c sugar

1 tsp vanilla (optional, to make it killer)

a couple spoonfuls of almond powder/flour (ditto on the optional)

Preheat oven to 180ºC/350ºF

Butter your mold and prepare the crust. Use a fork to poke holes in the bottom of the crust so

it won't puff up too much.

Thinly slice your fruit and lay it in the crust only one layer thick. The french do this really beautifully in a spiral... but that's too much work. I call this art.

Bake for 10-15 minutes.

Meanwhile, beat together the egg, cream, and sugar (plus the vanilla and almond powder until

smooth, if you're using them). No fancy mixer necessary, a fork and bowl will do fine. Pour this over the tart and put it back in the oven for 20-30 minutes, until it browns a bit.

la Chawba

My favorite part of having a cooking blog is the excuse to invite myself over and learn other people's specialties. The problem is that generally, these recipes will never be the same twice, BUT this is one is a Ramadan specialty from an Algerien-French friend named Sabrina and everything in it is so good, I think it would be pretty hard for it to go too wrong. Merci, Sabrina!! A pillar of hospitality...

There are two basic ways to do this: if you have a pressure cooker, and if you don't. I don't, so it is much easier to leave out the meat.

I.

1 large onion, finely diced

a large handful of chopped up celery stems and leaves

2 spoonfuls dry lentils

1 large spoonful of black pepper

1 large spoonful of cumin

1 large spoonful of ginger

1 large spoonful of saffron powder

1 large spoonful of red pepper powder

1-2 large spoonfuls of chopped parsley

a large dose of oil

a pound or so of cubed meat of your choice, veal and mutton are especially good, add another cube of bouillon if its veal or beef

2 liters water, after sautéeing

Sautée all this for a few minutes. Add the water. If you are using a pressure cooker, close it tightly and heat it up to medium/medium high. Once it starts singing, leave it for about 20-25 minutes, until the meat is cooked. If you're not using the pressure cooker, bring it to a boil, turn down to a simmer, cover, and start checking after about 20 minutes to see if it's all cooked. If there is no meat, it shouldn't take too much longer.

II.

1/2 c vermicelle (those thin noodley things)

1 can of chickpeas, drained

1 large spoonful of rice

1 cube of bouillon

1 can tomato purée, or something like that. Other purées are better, but whatevs. a cup or two, in that case

Add II when I is cooked and let simmer for another 10 or 15 minutes, until the rice and vermicelle are cooked.

III.

1 bowl of water

2 huge spoonfuls of flour or cornstarch

Mush this up into a white mush and start pouring this into the soup a bit at a time, stirring continuously, until it is the consistency that you want. This is optional, as its really only meant to thicken the soup. Yum yum

Perfect with a squeeze of lemon!!

Mayonnaise

FINALLY. Good lord, this has taken me a million tries over two years and any number of hours reading all the detailed directions online. I may be exaggerating, but I've failed a good handful of times!

All the while my french friends tell me "oh its so easy...!" or "I make it all the time, of course I'll show you." but no one did. Curse the gods of mayonnaise!!

And then, in an extreme anti-climax, Karen showed me sunday. I am now very angry at all those sites that tried to tell me it was difficult, that i should buy special equipement, tricks, tips... I feel so betrayed.

You will need a bowl and a whisk. An egg, a spoonful of dijon and a spoon of red wine vinegar (optional). And about a cup of oil. Vegetable oil, probably.

I. Put one egg yolk in a bowl. Add a generous tablespoon of dijon mustard. Stir.

II. Add a small glug of oil. As in, a tablespoon or two. Choose your oil according to your personal taste because your mayonnaise will taste like the oil you use. Sunflower seed oil worked well. Vegetable oil seems to work well, too. Olive oil, Karen tells me, is a little harder to get to "climb" but it can work. Whisk until it goes from looking like little white bugs in oil to looking like mayonnaise. Its called emulsion, but thats not important.

III. Add another glug of oil. Repeat. A couple times.

IV. Add a tablespoon of vinegar oil for flavor along with your next glug of oil. Continue adding a glug at a time and whisking.

V. When it starts to look more white than yellow, and you have about a cup and a half of mayonnaise, you can call it finished.

I am not going to add all the tips and tricks here, because they only confused me for a long time. I can see why people added them, but good lord! way to throw me off my game, bloggers... But there is one good trick. If all is going well and then suddenly it breaks down into a bowl of oil and you can't get it to "remount," break another yolk into another bowl and start over, adding this "broken" mayonnaise instead of oil.

Egg, celery and bean sprout stir fry

This was simply made out of what was handy, but it turned out really delicious, even on the second and third try! So I am sharing. A quick dinner for two; absolutely perfect with sour cream, crème fraiche, ou bien soy sauce.

1 onion (any but red)

2 celery stalks

a handful of bean sprouts (mung beans - the kind you get in asian dishes)

2 eggs

a good salt; I've been making celery salt... more to come on another post

a tablespoon of two of butter or olive oil for the sautéing

I/Dice the onion and celery and sautée them in the oil/butter on a medium high heat until they start to color a bit (meaning, brown a bit).

II/Throw in the bean sprouts just as the onions brown and let them sautée for a couple minutes.

III/Break the eggs straight into the pan and keep stirring until the eggs cook. This will be fairly fast. Its best not to overcook them, but don't worry about it too much.

IV/Salt and pepper and serve hot with rice, sour cream, soy sauce, or whatever you like. I eat it with ketchup. because I am classy like that.

Tarte au Chocolate

I feel like I just conquered the world. That is the kind of chocolate filling this is. I feel like I just surpassed the
whole chocolate industry (by not melting a bar of chocolate and calling it homemade) and I want to sing. The kind of singing where birds fly around you as you spin, your skirts twirling outward. Yes, I

imagined the opening scene of The Sound of Music in describing my

feeling.

Takes a good 30 minutes to make, an hour if you make a homemade crust, but my mind is

already flying with the possibilities of this...

I.

4 tablespoons of coco powder

3 tablespoons of corn starch

1/2 c sugar

a pinch of salt

II.

1 1/2 c cold milk

III.

1 egg yolk

1 tablespoon butter

1 teaspoon vanilla

AND one pre-cooked crust

1/ Set up a double boiler; boil a big pot of water, turn it down to a simmer and put another dry pot or bowl - i set a bowl in a colander that will fit in the pot of water - on top. Put all your ingredients in this second bowl, making sure that no water from the first ever gets into it. Google this for all the possible configurations.

2/ Put I. in the boiler and add II half a cup at a time, stirring to avoid clumps.

3/ Let this thicken for 15 to 20 minutes, stirring frequently with a whisk to keep it homogeneous.

4/ There will be a point when you say "shit, this is really thickening!!" Take it off the heat then and stir in III, whisking vigorously when the egg yolk goes in.

5/ Pour into your pre-baked crust, or find some other beautiful use for it, like the filling between layers of a cake. Or just eat it with spoons from little cups. 'tis wonderful

There will be another tarte au chocolate to follow that Estelle taught me (you know its good if it came from Estelle...), but I have to make it first...

Beautiful Beans

Yes, dried beans can be a pain in the ass. There are so many ways it can go wrong, and the process is drawn out. But I've been practicing making all the possible errors, and it has finally started to go right. As it turns out, there is no secret. You just throw everything, raw, into a big pot and make sure the water doesn't all evaporate before the beans are done.

I was inspired by Tamar Aldar in reading her The Everlasting Meal. Her recipes read like poetry, making them fluid and graceful, and she simultaneously weaves in the morality of eating. There is one. Trust me. (Read Michael Pollan or Barbara Kingsolver for more)

Even better, while you read you never have to say to yourself, "I don't have this or that ingredient" because she teaches you how to make soup, and what you're looking for while cooking vegetables. The details fall away when you understand the process. Her first chapter, How to Boil Water, says it all.

And so, she inspired me to learn to cook beans. Or to make bean broth, as she would say. You're trying to make the water taste good just as much - or more - than you want to bean itself to cook.

And so i began burning beans and learning what to add for flavor. This one succeeded. Wonderfully, even. And so I am sharing it.

Beans. White ones. Tender beans with a precious broth. Beans that could be a soup or a bowl of beans, or mushed into a sauce over pasta:

1-2 c small white beans or Butterbeans

4 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp salt

7c WATER plus another 5 as you go

Good additions, include a handful of as many of these as you have, roughly cut into chunks

onion

celery

carrots

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1-2 bay leaves

Fennel

crushed coriander

4 tsp dried marjorum

the rind of parmesan cheese

a cup of white wine

A handful of whatever soft herbs you have, thrown in at the end.

Notes:

1. Don't add veggies that will break down into mush after 3 hours of cooking. No potatoes, no parsnip, no leafy greens at this point, though they'd be great additions once the beans are cooked.
2. On the other hand, my celery was so soft that I bent it in 3 before chopping, and it was still delicious. Veggies simmered with olive oil for 3 hours are very forgiving.
3. Two lessons for good beans: you only have to have two things to make them good :time and lots and lots of water. All the rest just makes them better.

Throw the beans in a bowl and cover them substantially with water. Leave them. For a while. Up to 24 hours, I guess, but at least overnight.

Drain them. Put them in a fairly large pot with more than double the water (thats my first 7 cups in the ingredients).

Turn on the eye and bring it to a boil. While this arrives, wash and cut up all the vegetables you are adding into bite-size pieces. Whatever size will work. Throw them into the pot with your spices.

The minute the water hits a boil, turn it down to right below a simmer. Do not cover. Scrape off the scummy white stuff that rises to the top if you want. If not, no worries.

Check this every 30 minutes, adding a cup or two more of water as the water boils off. I added 6 cups before the end of this... I could have added 2 more, I do believe.

2 hours later start checking for doneness. Then cook them a bit longer. Adlar suggests tasting 5 consecutive beans. When all five are done, you can turn off the heat. She also quotes another author as saying you should be able to blow off the skins with a breath. Yes, I said.

Mine took 3 hours. I threw in the parmesan rind in the last hour, and that was good. I also added more water than I needed to in the last 30 minutes because I wanted to have mooooore of that delicious bean broth.

More notes:

1. If you have none of the "additions" listed above, cook the beans in water with olive oil and salt. When they're done sautée an onion (or garlic or whatever) and throw in chopped tomato. Then the cooked beans and broth. Also amazing.
2. For a soup: Adler says to "add more broth than beans" and heat it up. For another soup, purée it.
3. For a sauce, mush these beans up and serve over pasta. Probably more olive oil would be a good addition.