I know this blog is beginning to look like a chocolate blog, but with 2 little kids around me all the time, chocolate it’s just what you need (and crave) after a long exhausting day!

Ingredients

150 g chocolate

250 ml double cream

50 g butter

100 g petit beurre (or other kind of thin, dry, plain cookies)

60 g sliced almonds

100 g sugar

50 g cocoa

Serves 6 to 8 people

• Melt the chocolate with the cream and the butter. Let it cool.
• Crush the cookies in a plastic bag. Add them to a bowl with almonds, sugar and cocoa.
• Add the melted chocolate and mix well.
• Cover a plumcake mold with plastic wrap. Fill it with the chocolate mixture.
• Freeze it overnight.
• Serve straight from the freezer with a nice glass of whisky, possible Scottish.

Thanks to Sandra, who I follow on Pinterest (and read her blog I think since 2007) I found this gorgeous One bowl chocolate cake!

Useless to put here the original recipe! I followed to the letter except for one minor change: I added less sugar to the Chocolate fudge frosting, let’s say 4-5 tablespoons.

Few notes:

- I would have used a not ventilated oven if I had the choice, so the cake would have been flat.

- Next time I would use a simpler frosting, like a simple chocolate ganache, and I would cut the cake in two and fill it with the same ganache or simply with whipped cream.

Gravadlax sounded like the perfect recipe to come back writing on this blog.

I have the great fortune to have found a wonderful fishmonger at the Saint Louis (in Alsace, France) market on saturdays morning: she has everything fished, nothing from farms, and most of the fish is from French part of sea and ocean.

She has an outstanding salmon, fished in the Atlantic ocean. So what a better use for a wonderful fish to be cured in the traditional Swedish way?

Ingredients

1 salmon fillet, skin on, approximately 1 kg
500 g vergeoise (if you don’t find it you can use cane sugar)
350 g sea salt
3 oranges
1 lime
100 g de ginger
1 bunch of dill

For 6-8 people

1. Wash the salmon under fresh water and pat dry.
2. Lay the salmon, skin down, in a glass baking dish.
3. In a bowl mix together salt, sugar and the roughly chopped dill.
4. Directly over the salmon, grate the zest of oranges and lime, then the ginger. Cover with the salt mixture.
5. Cover with film or close hermetically.
6. Let it marinate in the fridge for at least 48 hours.
7. Scrap away all the marinade from the salmon and pat dry.
8. Cut it the thinest you can and serve with black bread.

Freely adapted from this recipe, first found on the printed copy, december 2011.

Inspired by Jamie Oliver and Amanda Soule, with the last tomatoes I’ll find at the local market, what a better way to use them if not simply roasted in the oven?

You can have them as a side dish, or blend them and use it as a sauce or for the pizza.

Ingredients

1 kg tomatoes, washed

3-4 shallots

2-3 garlic cloves

Basil

Thyme

Salt

Extra-virgin olive oil

1. Pre heat the oven at 210° C.
2. Slice the tomatoes: not too thin, not too thick, let’s say 1 centimeter wide.
3. Pell and halve shallots. Leave the garlic cloves with their skin on.
4. In a big roasting pan, pour 2 table spoons of olive oil. Add tomatoes (and all the juices came out from  cutting), shallots, garlic, basil and thyme and sprinkle with salt.
5. Roast in the hot oven for 30 minutes or until well roasted.

La tarte flambée, or flamme-küche, is a speciality from Alsace.

Imagine the thinnest pizza base covered with crème fraîche, lardons, onions, and if gratinée, rapé. In the oven, and oplà, piping hot under your nose!

I’m not entirely sure it’s pizza base, because you do not sense any yeast and there no proofing involved, but every time I ask they say it’s pizza dough…

I’m a speaking a strange language? Yes, I know and it’s called French!

Let’s get to the anatomy of this Alsatian staple:

The base: I’m not entirely sure it’s pizza base, because you do not feel any yeast and there is no proofing involved, but every time I ask they say it’s pizza dough…

Crème Fraîche: it’s basically a very thick (aka very fat) and not so acidic sour cream. They make a thin layer of it over the pizza base.

Lardons: it’s stripes of think bacon, not smoked. They lay them over the crème fraîche.

Onions: they cut them thinely but not to much, and they go on the same layer of lardons.

In case the tarte flambée is gratinée, over the crème fraîche they put a layer of rapé, grated gruyere cheese.

They are cooked in wood or electric oven, at a very hot temperature, like pizza.

It’s one of the most delicious crunchy dish I’ve ever tried!

The move and the new life took a considerable part of my time. And I’m not yet completely adjusted to the new situation.

But, hey, I live in France! That’s the best part of it!

Baguette at every corner, usually accompanied by eclair or other bakery goods!

Fromage blanc (a sort of very rich greek yogurt, velvety and yummi!), mirabelles (yes, it’s the season!!!), any sort of smelly and lavish cheese, tarte flambée (an Alsatian speciality I’ll soon speak about) in every direction!

France is good, France is child friendly, France is not Paris, is just France

Soon back to posting new recipes and some new insight in this wonderful country!

Or better, home grown redcurrant and local peaches!
When we moved in this house, one of the main plus was the garden. Coming from a 80square meter appartement in a big city, we need a real change.
And so we choose a little village and a big house with a garden. And with the garden came a bush of redcurrant and one of raspberries. But next year, if my big garden project will take place in the way I’m dreaming it, there will be more

For now we are enjoying our redcurrant harvest, and waiting for more raspberries!

The recipe I followed for this muffins is from BBC Good Food, with minor ingredients changes, like redcurrant instead of blackberries, goat yogurt and fromage blanc instead of soured cream, and molk instead of sparkling water. Basically another recipe

Enjoy!

Our life is changing.

We are in the middle of our big great move to France!

We are going to live in a 1.000 souls village in South Alsace, near the Swiss border.
We always dreamed to go back to live in France, expecially now that we have 2 small children.

So here we are, ready for a new adventure!

This post was scheduled before the move and I do not yet know when we will have an internet connection.

I love Greece and every year, when summer comes, I think about it and how much I would love to go back!

So I try to sunken myself in Greek recipes! This combination, feta cheese and spinach, just scream Greece, and the fillo pastry, with its crunchiness is perfect!

Ingredients

1 pack frozen fillo pastry, thawed following the manufactures instructions

1 shallots or 1 little onion

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

1 kg fresh spinach

1 handful raisins

1 handful pine nuts

200 g of feta cheese

2 eggs

50 ml milk

50 g butter

For 6 people as starter, 2 as main dish

1. Pre-heat the oven at 180° C.
2. Finely chop shallot or onion.
3. In a big pan fry the chopped shallot or onion, then add all the spinach: it will look like too much, but believe me, they will fit once cooked. Cover with a lid.
4. After a few minutes, when spinach are reduce, add raisins and cook for few more minutes. Remove from the eat and add pine nuts.
5. In a bowl mix spinach, crumbled feta and 2 eggs.
6. In a sauce pan, melt the butter with the milk. Let it cool.
7. Brush the bottom and the sides of a cake tin with some butter and milk.
8. Open the fillo pastry, take 4 sheets and let the rest under a damp tea towel.
9. With your 4 sheets, cover the bottom and the sides of the cake tin.
10. Add half of your spinach, cover with more sheets of fillo pastry, add the rest of the spinach.
11. Fold all the over layer of fillo pastry inside your cake tin, add two more sheets and fold them to fit the size of the cake tin.
12. Brush with loads of milk and butter.
13. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until golden.
14. Serve still warm.

A simple, yet satisfing and quick arab metze. It’s always worth a try!

Ingredients

400g cooked chickpeas (canned chickpeas are ok, as long as you rinse them before use)

1 garlic clove (more if you dare!)

2 tablespoons tahina (or tahini, a sesame seeds cream, widespread throughout the Middle East and North Africa)

Juice of 1 lemon

1 teaspoon sweet paprika

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

Sesame sedds or chopped parsley to serve

Serves 6 people as a starter, with flat bread

1. Place all the ingredients in a blender, turn on and blend until smooth and silky.
2. If the hummus should be too dry, add more thaina, a tablespoon of lemon juice and a teaspoon of oil at the time.
3. Transfer everything in a serving bowl adding sesame seeds or chopped parsley on top.
4. It keeps in the fridge for at least 2-3 days.