It’s not that I don’t want to. Really, I do. But I just don’t have the time anymore and my job involves me cooking for hundreds of people every weekend and leaves me too tired to be creative. All I am capable of is cheese on toast!

So, if I am going to be honest, then I have to make this blog a Winter thing. Which is no bad thing. I have more time and I also get hungrier! Cold weather naturally makes me want to feed. I need to build up my Winter tummy ready for my grueling Summer workload where I inadvertently get a bit thin every year.

And when you are out of the practice of blogging, coming back can be hard. My first attempt at a recipe to post was just not good enough! So that delayed me for a while, until I worked out a way to rescue it.

And you know what, there is nothing wrong with telling the story of a failure that comes good in the end. I think it makes a better story.

So it all began at a restaurant in near-by Lectoure where we had the most glorious slow cooked lamb. Literally melt in the mouth stuff, falling apart the moment you nudged it with your fork. And so I was inspired.

My slow cooker gathers dust in the Summer, but is cleaned up and appreciated once more once the cold weather sets in. So I bought a leg of lamb, wrestled out the bone and butterflied it. Spread it with garlic, sun dried tomatoes, rosemary and anchovies. I popped it in the slow cooker with some wine and stock and left it on low all night long.

Strangely, the resulting lamb was dry. I guess I cooked it too long. And perhaps leg of lamb was not the right cut for long slow cooking. I needed something fattier.

But what to do with the leftovers? It required moisture so I decided on a soupy stew packed full of beans, peas and lettuce. A sort of lamb version of ‘Petit Pois a la francais’. With a dollop of perky mint sauce on the top, it was simple, hearty and delicious.

A Winter dish for a Winter blog. A few more failures that turn out like this and I will be well fed indeed!

Lamb Stew with Beans, Peas & Lettuce

Serves 4-6

1 tbsp olive oil
1 red onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
3 heads of gem lettuce, chopped
200g frozen broad beans
200g frozen peas
1 400g can of haricot blanc (or any white beans)
200-500g left over lamb, shredded
500ml – 700ml chicken stock  
Mint sauce to taste

In a large pan, heat the olive oil and add your onions and garlic and cook for a couple of minutes. Then add your lettuce and cook until wilted, around 5 minutes.

 Then add your broad beans and heat through for a few minutes. Then add your peas, white beans, stock and lamb and gently cook for 10 minutes.

Serve in bowls with a dollop of mint sauce and crusty bread. How simple is that?

And finally, I am delighted to say that I was selected as one of the Top 20 Food Bloggers of 2015 by HolidayLettings.co.uk ! A lovely surprise and an honour to be selected.

And I was also interviewed by The Wall Street Journal! For their article – 14 Expat Food Blogs to Read Right Now. I couldn’t be prouder !

The post Lamb & Bean Stew / Petit Pois a la Francais appeared first on Delicieux.

If you are a regular reader of my blog, there may be times when you think I have gone a little mad with my food. But I did not start out that way. When I started cooking, I was a rigid follower of recipes and it taught me a lot. But as the years have passed and my kitchen confidence has increased, I have found I have tendency to opt for unusual flavours, challenging ingredients and curious combinations .

I also love a challenge so when I was asked by Betfair to come up with a dish inspired by one of the 14 nations in the Cricket World Cup, I jumped at it. Out of the 14 contenders, I chose Afghanistan on impulse and because I really know nothing about their cuisine.  This was an opportunity to indulge my foodie curiosity and learn something new.

(I must also add that I took this challenge in order to impress my Dad who is just about the biggest Cricket nut known to man. I can tell you he was suitably excited that I was doing something for the Cricket World Cup, having spent the best part of my youth trying to make me learn the rules of the game….I still don’t know them today)

So anyway, I started to browse recipes for traditional Afghani cuisine and found some really interesting sounding things. Lots of exotically named dishes with lots of spices, but the recipes still had a rustic honesty to them. And I love that style of cooking.

I found myself particularly drawn to Boulanee, a kind of cross between a samosa and a tortilla. Some recipes used a special dough, others used fried egg roll wraps; some contained beef, others were vegetarian; some were served with chutney, others with a yoghurt dip. It seemed to me that the traditional recipe was one that had been adapted over the years so everybody has their own way of doing it.

So the road was open for me to do it my way! And this is how my Gascon Afghani fusion Boulanee was conceived…

Basically, the typical main ingredient for the filling is mashed potato which is spiced with ground coriander, tumeric and cayenne pepper. So, of course, I added some shredded duck confit meat. And instead of making a dough, I wrapped my mixture in Brick pastry which created a wonderfully crispy skin, stuffed with the super soft and spicy potatoes.

I loved the idea of a yoghurt dip but the traditional Afghani version is flavoured with just garlic and lemon. I also threw in some extra cayenne pepper, cumin and a squeeze of honey which really worked with the duck.

Honestly, they were delicious. Aromatic with wonderful contrasting textures and fantastic when dunked into the silky yoghurt dip. This recipe is a keeper.

This was a challenge from Betfair that I really enjoyed taking part in. It was liberating and inspiring to try to make something Afghani whilst finding a way to ‘French’ it up. I should do it more. Who knows what madness I have lurking inside!!

It sure makes for interesting eating.

Gascon Afghani Duck Boulanee with Silky Yoghurt Dip

(Makes 8 Boulanee)

Boulanee

500g potatoes, peeled, boiled and mashed
1 tbsp olive oil
2 finely diced shallots
1 tsp of salt
a good grind of black pepper
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp turmeric
a small handful of chopped fresh coriander
shredded and chopped meat from 2 legs of confit duck
olive oil to brush over and seal
8 sheets of brick pastry

Yoghurt Dip

250g greek yoghurt
juice of 1/2 a lemon
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1 small clove f garlic, crushed
1 tsp of runny honey
Salt & pepper

Start by boiling your peeled potatoes in salted water for around 20 minutes until well cooked. Then mash them well (no lumps!!) with 1-2 tbsp of olive oil and some seasoning. Add your shallots, spices, fresh coriander and duck meat and mix well to combine.

Then you need to make the boulanee. Take a sheet of brick pastry and part fold in the sides to create a straight(ish) length. Take  heaped tablespoon of the potato mixture and shape it into a rough triangle. Place it at the bottom of the pastry. Fold the bottom edge to make a straight end. Then fold it all the way up to create a triangle. Chop off the last edge so it is straight. Brush the edge with oil to seal and place on an oiled baking tray.

You can flatten them a bit in your hands to ensure the filling spreads as far into the corners as possible. They should look like this:

There are two ways to cook these. You can fry them in a pan with a good tablespoon of oil for around 5 minutes per side until golden. Or you can brush them with a little oil all over and bake them in the oven at 200C for 15 minutes, turn them and cook for another 10 minutes. The frying method makes them crispier but the oven method is also good.

Whilst they are cooking, make your silky yoghurt dip. Put the yoghurt into a bowl, add the lemon juice, spices, garlic and honey and mix well. Be sure to season. And thats it! You are now ready to dip and dunk and devour…

The post Gascon Afghani Boulanee with Silk Dip appeared first on Delicieux.

As I understand a pie, it must have pastry somewhere, either all around or just as a lid. And then you can pretty much fill it with whatever you like. So, my moon shaped version does meet the criteria, or at least as far as I am concerned.

I have been toying with the idea of using turkey recently. Turkey is much underrated in comparison with it’s more expensive sibling; chicken. I wonder if that is due to the general opinion that turkey meat is dry? Well, it does not have to be, it all depends on what you do with it!

I remember when I worked in London, there was a sandwich shop near my office that served everything freshly made, with truly inventive and appetizing fillings. My hands down favourite was a warm baguette, filled with turkey, bacon, cranberry and brie. It was my special lunchtime treat, on days when something decadent was required!

So the idea of my pie was born out of my pining over that memorable sandwich. Chunks of turkey and salty bacon, bursts of sweetness from the cranberry, all married together with the creamy, oozy melted brie and encased in flaky pastry.

It’s pie, but not as we know it. It’s Moon Pie, and I love it.

Moon Pie with Turkey, Bacon, Cranberry & Brie

(Serves 4)

1 tbsp olive oil
200g smoked lardons
200g turkey breast, chopped into small chunks
a knob of butter and a drizzle of olive oil
1 small leek, sliced
3 new potatoes, diced
1 ready made puff pastry
a few tsps of cranberry sauce
4 long slices of brie
1 egg, beaten

Heat your oven to 200C. In a frying pan, heat the olive oil and fry your lardons and chunks of turkey until cooked through, 8 minutes and season. Meanwhile, boil your potatoes in salted water for 5 minutes until just cooked. And in another frying pan, gently fry your leeks in the butter and oil until cooked, 8 minutes also. Season.

Stir the leeks and potatoes into the bacon and turkey for your pie filling. Unroll your pastry, leaving the baking paper underneath so it will not stick, and place on a baking tray. Place your filling over half the pastry leaving a 1 cm edge. Use a teaspoon to dot dollops of cranberry sauce around the top of the filling.

Lay the slices of brie over the filling to cover nicely.

Carefully pull the pastry over the filling to encase it. Then fold or crimp the edges together all around. You don’t need to be over arty with this, once it cooks it will make a beautiful crust no matter how it is folded! Brush the whole pie with beaten egg and bake in the oven for 30 minutes until golden.

Serve with salad. This pie is also delicious cold and would make a great portable dish for a picnic (if it was that sort of weather which it most certainly is not as I am currently snowed in!)

I am popping this recipe into a couple of blogging challenges. Firstly, #RecipeoftheWeek, hosted by A Mummy Too

And the Clever Chicks Blog Hop

The post Moon Pie – with Turkey, Bacon, Cranberry & Brie appeared first on Delicieux.

What I really respect is the notion of no waste. They use just about every morsel of a duck and they are far more open to offal of any sort on the whole than we Brits. They honour the animals by eating every last bit of them. Just as it should be.

There is a real sense of history and tradition here when it comes to food. Just this week I went for dinner at my neighbours house and they cooked me a Pot au Feu – in a stunning weathered black pot hanging right over the burning logs of their open fire. Such a simple dish but utterly delicious. They offered up 5 different cuts of beef, braised for 5 hours with unfussy chunks of vegetables.  Honestly, I was in heaven.

I am a big fan of the Winter dishes here. The rich stews and daubes, the cassoulet and the gratins and panades. Fortifying and unpretentious, making Winter so much more bearable.

Another such local speciality on my Winter wonder food list is Garbure – a sort of cross between a soup and a stew. Traditionally made with shredded confit duck meat and loaded with vegetables and haricot beans. It is so easy to make and will surprise you with it’s depth of flavour. Not to mention that it is cheap to make and goes an awfully long way.

It’s a dish that would have been cooked in a big pot over the fire which could bubble away for hours, adding whatever bits and bobs of vegetables there was depending on the season.  A peasant dish, undoubtedly made over and over again in the farmhouse kitchens of the many old houses round these parts. A dish that has stood the test of time and for good reason.

I have in fact posted my own recipe for traditional Garbure on here before, a long time ago. And so this time, I decided to somewhat re-invent it. It occurred to me that those of you living in the UK might find some of my recipes hard to make as the ingredients are not so readily available for you. Confit duck is everywhere here, bought in a tin, it is almost a ready meal! But I am guessing that it might be expensive and hard to find back in England…

So, why not make a Garbure using chicken? I was a little worried that it might not have the same powerful flavour without the duck, so I opted to add lots of garlic and rosemary. I used the shredded meat from two leftover chicken legs and by the time I had crammed the pot full with bacon, onions, potatoes, leek, cabbage, peas and haricot beans, the resulting Chicken Garbure gave me 8 hearty portions!

Trust me on this one, what might seem to be just a big pot with various stuff thrown in with not much thought, is in fact one of the most delicious, value for money, and comforting dishes I know. A Gascon great – this is Winter super food at it’s best.

Chicken Garbure

Serves 8

1 tbsp duck fat (if you don’t have it then olive oil will do)
1 onion, chopped
200g smoked lardons
1 large clove of garlic, finely chopped
2 sprigs of fresh rosemary, leaves finely chopped
200g new potatoes, cut into bite size chunks
1 leek, sliced
2 litres of chicken stock
1/4 of savoy cabbage, finely sliced
800g can of haricot  blanc beans (could substitute cannellini beans)
2 cooked chicken legs, meat shredded from the bones
3 handfuls of frozen peas
2 heaped tbsp of creme fraiche

In a large pot, heat your duck fat and fry your onion and lardons for 5 minutes. Then add your garlic and rosemary and cook for 2 minutes until it all smells divine.

Add your new potatoes and leek and pour in the chicken stock. Leave to gently simmer for 25 minutes.

Once the potatoes are cooked through, add your cabbage, beans, peas and chicken and heat through for 5 minutes. Stir in the creme fraiche and serve,.

This soup will keep in the fridge quite happily for a few days.

I am entering this recipe into a competition Destinology Reimagine a Classic competition. I think my chicken Garbure fits the bill.

I am also popping it into the following blogging challenges: Extra Veg hosted by Utterly Scrummy Food for Families & Fuss Free Flavours.

And Credit Crunch Munch hosted by Fab Food 4 All & Fuss Free Flavours.

The post Winter Wonder Food – Chicken Garbure appeared first on Delicieux.

As is normal with me, I now long to save money and eat healthily, give up alcohol and become a saint. All of which are utterly unachievable. But for the next 7 days at least, I can fool myself….

So this little dish that I knocked up made me feel righteous even if just for the night. Firstly, it is meat free. I cannot call it vegetarian as it is bathed in duck fat and chicken stock (much like kidding yourself that having just one glass of wine is abstaining). But it did feel good to skip meat none the less.

Secondly, as I said many times over the course of the evening – I made dinner for four out of 3 courgettes, 3 carrots and some stale bread – well almost. And so I felt pretty clever and thrifty.

And thirdly, this dish is unbelievably good. I was not even cheating myself. The way I might be when I eat tripe…. Although tripe is actually quite good, but thats another story.

So anyway, I digress. The thing about this dish is that it’s based on a recipe from an old post of mine for Swiss Chard Panade. And I never really considered what a ‘Panade’ is. So I did a bit of research and came up with…not  much. But who cares, it tastes good. And really, thats all that matters.

So I may not be a saint anytime soon, but at least I have good intentions and isn’t that what counts? Happy New Year to you all.

Meat Free Panade

Serves 4

2 onions, sliced
1 tbsp duck fat
1/2 a stale baguette, cut into cubes
2 tbsp duck fat
3 carrots, spiralized or grated
3 courgettes, spiralized or grated
6 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
250ml chicken stock
2 handfuls fresh breadcrumbs
150g grated gruyere cheese

Pre-heat your oven to 160 C. First prepare your carrots and courgettes and put to one side. Always so pretty.

Heat 1 tablespoon of duck fat in a pan and fry your onion for 20 minutes gently until soft. In a separate pan, heat 2 tablespoons of duck fat and fry your bread cubes until golden and crispy.

Add your spiralized vegetables to the pan with the onions and cook for 5 minutes. Add the oodles of sliced garlic and cook for another 2 minutes. Then layer your panade. Place the croutons on the bottom of an oven proof dish to cover in one layer. Top with the veggies. Pour over the stock. Sprinkle over breadcrumbs and finally cheese and bake for 45 minutes.

Enjoy in a saintly way ….

I am popping this recipe into a couple of blogging challenges. Firstly, my old favourite, Credit Crunch Munch hosted by Helen from Fuss Free Flavours and Camilla from Fab Food 4 All.

And also Extra Veg hosted by Michelle from Utterly Scrummy Food for Families and Helen from Fuss Free Flavours.

The post Incredible Twisted, Meat Free, Leftovers appeared first on Delicieux.

Last night my cupboards were bare and living in rural France means ordering a life saving take away is utterly impossible. So I was forced to make a quick dash to the shops for something which doesn’t involve much effort.

A pack of duck hearts seemed to be the answer. They really only take a few minutes to cook. But on the drive home, my irrepressible foodie brain would not accept defeat and so began to concoct a tempting plan.

Risotto is super comforting and in theory, simple to make. So why not use up some dried wild mushrooms and a bit of bacon and throw in those tasty duck hearts too I asked myself?

And that is how I found myself standing up and nursing a pan of garlicky bubbling rice for what felt like hours! I mean honestly…did I really have to make things such hard work?

Because a risotto needs love. It needs constant attention. It needs to be nurtured. But in return for all that care, it will reward you with a rejuvenating, soothing feast.

So despite nearly collapsing from the effort, I can categorically say that it was worth every laborious minute.

Hence I have inadvertently discovered the cure for the common cold. Risotto with wild mushrooms, garlic and duck hearts. Washed down with a couple of glasses of compulsory red wine.

It put a smile on my face. And I felt great (well, for at least 20 minutes, after which time I crawled into bed and began to snore….)

Happy Christmas everyone!

Winter Risotto with Wild Mushrooms & Duck Hearts

Serves 4

50g mixed dried wild mushrooms
30g of butter
200g smoked bacon lardons
1 onion, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
300g risotto rice
1 small glass of white wine
500ml chicken stock
150g duck hearts, trimmed and quatered
50g grated parmesan cheese

Put your wild mushrooms in a large bowl and pour over 1.5l of boiling water. Leave to soak for 20 minutes and then drain, reserving all the mushroomy water. Then melt the butter in a large pan and add the onion and lardons and fry for 5 minutes gently. Add the soaked mushrooms and the garlic and cook for 2 minutes. Then stir in the rice and coat with all the butter and juices.

Pour in the wine and let it cook until absorbed by the rice. Then begin to add the mushroom soaking liquid, a slurp at a time, letting it absorb after each addition, stirring from time to time. Once all the mushroom liquid has been added, start to do the same with the chicken stock.

Before you add the last of the stock, quickly fry up your duck hearts in a separate pan until cooked – 5-10 minutes. I added a sprinkle of persillade which is nice if you have it but not imperative. Add the duck hearts with final slurp of stock and let the risotto bubble until creamy and oozy. Finally add your parmesan and season. Let the risotto rest for 5 minutes before serving.

Wash it down with some really good red wine. I can highly recommend this local one – produced by Elian Da Ros – one of the 10 best wine producers in France. It is aptly named – ‘Le vin est une fête’ meaning ‘Wine is a party’. This man clearly knows what he is talking about!

The post Winter Risotto with Wild Mushrooms & Duck Hearts appeared first on Delicieux.

I have moved 5 times in 9 months…and I have learnt to carry what I need with me. My children, life’s necessities, all the basics you need just to live really.

Life is a funny thing. When you think you are safe with your home on your back, quite suddenly you find yourself, shell-less. So, I have been quietly growing a new shell – just like a snail would do.

I present my new shell – a 700 year old medieval village. Full of history and stories that I feel surround me and hold me close so that my story does not seem so big after all. Not in the really big scheme of things anyway. I feel my place here and it is just a moment in time. Not too bad at all!

So with my new shell in place I begin again and offer you my new profile: I an 38 years old. I am a mother of 2. I am now a manager of a venue that can sleep nearly 100 people and I cook for them all regularly.

I have been quiet for a while and some of my readers have been kind enough to ask me why? Well, the answer is because life is a journey, like the travels of a snail. Slow but determined. What may not seem like much to some, is in fact far to go.

So I offer my respect to the snails. Now let’s eat some!!

Snails with Peppers & Chorizo (Sort of Catalan Style)

Serves 4

4 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, finely sliced
3 peppers – red, yellow & green, sliced into thin strips
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 400g can of chopped tomatoes
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 teaspoon of sugar
100g ordinary chorizo, sliced
1 can of 48 snails
salt & pepper

Start by cooking your onions in the oil for a few minutes. Then add the peppers and cook for 5 minutes. Cover the pan and let it simmer on low for 10 minutes.

Such lovely colours! Now add the chopped tomatoes, sugar and garlic and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring from time to time. Then add your chorizo and cook for 5 minutes. And finally the snails, drained. Cook for 5 more minutes and season to taste. Serve with lots of lovely bread to mop up the juices.

The post Respect to the Snails! (with peppers and chorizo!) appeared first on Delicieux.

Wonder of all wonders, the humble quiche is French! But I guess you all knew that and it was only me who naively associated it with tea parties and British Summers. I feel deceived…

But who am I to complain? After all I live in France and love all things French, so I guess I should not be surprised. So on to the reasons why j’adore la quiche:

• First of all, a quiche tastes great hot or cold. The combination of pastry, eggs and cheese which are all 3 imperative ingredients, taste equally good straight out of the oven as they does out of the fridge although the texture changes somewhat.
• A quiche is a crowd pleaser. It can happily feed up to 12 if sliced thinly as part of a buffet, or will fill up 4 greedy gannets also.
• There are so many ways to fill a quiche! I love the versatility. Be it vegetarian, meat or fish, the possibilities are endless. If all you have in the house are some frozen peas and some left over cheese, voila!, you have a quiche filling.
• Quiche are pretty! Golden on top and moist and colourful within.
• They are easy to make and often you find you have left overs so they stretch for more than one meal.
• On the whole, they are inexpensive to make. Obviously if you fill yours with fresh organic salmon, the price will rise, but basic eggs, cheese and bacon for example, provide a great value for money dish.

Need I go on? I think I have made my point.

So I decided to make a quiche that I could not confuse as British. Obviously being a big promoter of Gascon cuisine and the produce of this region, it had to contain duck. In particular gesiers – those funny little nuggets of moist rich duckyness that taste so good. (I know that they are not easily available in the UK so I would suggest using cooked shredded duck leg meat instead)

Quiche Gascogne – duck, lardons, leeks, a smear of wholegrain mustard and gruyere cheese – mais oui, it needed nothing else and tasted truly French and delicieux.

Quiche Gascogne

Serves 8

1 x short crust pastry
1 x tin of gesiers, sliced (or use shredded duck leg meat)
2 x leeks, thinly sliced
1 x 200g smoked lardons
1 tsp of fresh thyme leaves
1 x heaped tbsp of wholegrain mustard
3 x large eggs
284ml double cream
50g grated gruyere cheese

Start by blind baking your pastry. I often use shop bought pastry as it saves time and I find it to be good quality on the whole. Butter a tart case then lay in the pastry, fork the base a few times, then cover with the baking paper it was rolled in and pour in some baking beans. Cook for 15 minutes at 180 Fan / 200 C. Then remove the tart, take out the baking beans and throw away the baking paper and return to the oven for around 7 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a large frying pan, with a little olive oil, start frying your lardons. Once almost cooked, add your gesiers and fry for 5 minutes. Remove and set aside. In the same pan, you can now fry your leeks with fresh thyme leaves for around 10 minutes until soft..

Once the tart case is blind baked, you can spread the base with the wholegrain mustard. Stir the lardons and gesiers into the cooked leeks and then pour the whole lot into the tart case.

In a jug, measure your cream and beat in the eggs. Seasons and pour gently over the tart and make sure to over all the filling. Then top with grated cheese and bake for 30 minutes until golden. Slice and serve with salad.

I’m adding this recipe to a couple of challenged. Namely Cooking With Herbs hosted by Karen over on Lavender & Lovage as this contains ever reliable fresh thyme from my garden!

And also into #Reciepoftheweek hosted by Emily over on A Mummy Too.

The post Quiche Gascogne appeared first on Delicieux.

Last month was all about Al Fresco dining, hosted by my foodie sister Louisa from Eat Your Veg. And the theme for this month is ‘Tomato Crazy’ to celebrate all those wonderful juicy red fruit. Just link up any recipe you have this month using truly top tomatoes! Can’t wait to see what you come up with.

The Guidelines To Enter:

1. Any recipe that fits the current months theme can be entered, new or old.
2. You can enter as many times a month as you wish. And of course feel free to enter your recipes to any other blogging challenges you like.
3. Please give due credit if your recipe is not your own.
4. Add your recipe URL to the Linky or email your URL depending on the current month host. Please include the recipe title, the URL, your email address and if emailing, also a photo of the dish.
5. Please include a link to Delicieux & Eat Your Veg on each entry.
6. Please add the relevant seasons badge – Spring, Summer, Autumn or Winter. Please update old posts that you enter to include a badge also.
7. Please Tweet your entries using the hashtag #FourSeasonsFood and include @Delicieux_fr or@Eat_Your_Veg and we will retweet all that we see.
8. All entries will be added to the Pinterest Group Board – Four Seasons Food.
9. The winning entry each month will be promoted via Twitter, Delicieux & Eat Your Veg Facebook pages and Google+ by both co-hosts.

 Please use display the badge and link back to the co hosts sites.

The post Four Seasons Food August Challenge is Open! appeared first on Delicieux.

So where have I been and what have I been doing? Well, I have been working….and I mean a lot. I became manager of a medieval village here in Gascony just before Christmas and when the Summer season hit, it swallowed me up whole.

I have just finished seven weeks of back to back weddings and seminars. I have had the privilege of watching some wonderful people get married and I have met some amazing and colourful characters along the way.

Not only that but I have fed them! So although I have not posted any recipes on the blog, I have been cooking for 90 people at a time which is most definitely challenging and fairly exhausting!

I did mean to take photos of the various meals and buffets that I have been doing but in the heat of service, I mostly forgot and when I remembered, there was very little food left! 90 people decimate buffets in seconds you know…

But I did catch a few to give you some idea.

Anyway, I am very happy to have managed to find some time to cook something just for the blog. I was inspired by these little pastries that I kept seeing here called ‘Chaussons’ which translate as socks! Typically filled with apples, they are like turnovers.

Such a simple idea, reminiscent of a sweet cornish pasty I guess. And so why not make a savoury Chausson and make it as French as possible by stuffing it with snails. (The idea of a Chausson aux Exscargots or a Snail Sock tickles me!)

A super speedy dish, this made for a lovely lunch or could be miniaturized for a starter. I am always looking for ways to play with ingredients that seem to only get served one way. So rather than just serving snails dripping in garlic butter (although they are pretty darn good like that), why not try this instead.

Chaussons aux Escargots (Snail Pasty)

Serves 2

1 pack of puff pastry
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
6 button mushrooms, sliced
1 can of 2 dozen snails
4 tbsp of garlic and herb cream cheese
2 handfuls of gruyere cheese
1 egg, beaten for egg washing the pastry

In a frying pan, heat your olive oil and gently fry your onion for 5 minutes until soft. Then add your mushrooms and fry for a few more minutes until cooked through. Drain your snails and add them to the pan and heat them through also.

Then add your garlic and herb cream cheese and let it melt into a sauce. Remove from the heat and add the gruyere cheese and mix.

I used a medium sized saucer to cut out two circles from my puff pastry. Cover a baking tray with foil and brush with a little oil to stop the chausson from sticking. Then place as much filling as you can on one half of your pastry circles. Fold the pastry over to cover and fold the edges over to seal. Repeat with your second pastry circle.

Place on the baking tray and brush with egg wash. Cook in the oven for 30 minutes at 180Fan/200C until golden. Serve with salad.

I am entering this recipe into a few challenges. First of all, Four Seasons Food hosted this month by Louisa from Eat Your Veg and alternative months by me. The theme is Al Fresco and this was a supper I enjoyed outside and a Chausson would also make an easily portable outdoor dish.

Then I would like to enter it into #Recipeoftheweek hosted by Emily over on A Mummy Too.

And finally, #FridayFoodie hosted by Otilia over on Romanian Mum Blog.

The post I Am Back – With Snail Socks appeared first on Delicieux.