Fooding Toulouse 8 juin/june

The food event of the year in Toulouse will take place June 8th at Les abattoirs from 6PM to 10PM.
For only 5€ you can have a taste of some original goodies from (local) chefs like the man himself: Michel Sarran.
And all the money will go to ACTION CONTRE LA FAIM.
Check out the menu/program at www.lefooding.com

Kitchen Gadgets

Really Cool: astronaut ice cream
Food technology at it's hottest. Originally made by the Whirlpool Corporation for the Apollo missions. At Thinkgeek the freeze dried ice cream comes in three flavors: Neapolitan (chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla); mint chocolate chip; chocolate chocolate chip


The designers at Umamy think up beautiful objects. You can look at them on the website, you can't buy them in a store unless you ask the makers if you have the budget...
Funny little kitchen helper that avoids the pages of your cookbook flipping back and you trying to fold them down with your hands full of butter...


Nice table to eat at when you're in a hurry.



Things to eat or to look at ? Edible design by unicahome


Handy bag when you go to the market. When you don't need it you roll it like a pair of socks in a small package. So now you can say NO to plastic bags and always have your own AND collect all colors.

Slow food: Caviar d'Escargot

I woke up this morning sweat-broken and feeling confused with a this voice in my head repeating "caviar d'escargot". And I remembered vaguely somebody had said something lately about this new snail caviar graze ...
So while waiting for the appointment with my shrink to help me work through this snail childhood issue, I decided to do some research what's this food is all about.
In France snails are quiet common staple and dish served in restaurants. They're not as bad as it sounds, provided they are Fresh and not the canned version (but isn't that the same rule for every thing?). When you're new to snails or want to make sure you get the real thing go to L'Escargot 38 rue Montorgueil Paris 1e. Metro Sentier.

Eating the eggs of snails could be the next culinary frontier for some. In the 1980ties they started to produce the caviar from the snails' eggs. Just preserved in brine they were pretty tasteless and uninteresting. Now the pearly white and rather big eggs from the Helix Aspersa Maxima get a more delicate treatment with fleur de sel de Guérande, rosemary oil and citric acid. They come out tasting like a walk in the forest after the rain with a hint of mushroom and oak leaves and a pleasant crush (is that the shell?)
A real delicacy with a price to match: around 1500€ per kilo.
1 snail produces about 100 eggs that's 4g per year. And they are not killed to get the eggs unlike the real caviar.

For recipes and buying online in English: www.bienmanger.com



pour des recettes de caviar d'escargot: (aussi commender en ligne) www.bienmanger.com
www.750g.com




sources: de Jeager and Reuter

Fruits de Hasard

Des fois un truc fait avec des "fruits de hasard " peut être une grande réussite.
Comme la semaine dernière quand j'ai improvisé un "kebab aux coeurs de canard". Les enfants aiment bien le coeur de canard et je ne savait pas quoi faire comme accompagnement. Car les pâtes et le riz on avait déjà mangé tout la semaine...
Donc pourquoi pas le mettre dans un pain de pita et servir avec une salade de tomates et concombre pour faire un repas rapide.

Comme sauce j'ai "inventé" le houmous-tzatziki :
mixer

• une boite de pois chiche
• avec un pot de yaourt
• 1 cuil. de tahina (pâte de sésame)
• 1 gousse d'ail ou plus pour les courageux
• 1/3 concombre
• un peu de huile d'olive
• sel, poivre, coriandre (feuilles et poudre)

Les enfants n'ont pas trop aimé, heureusement comme ça il reste plus pour les adultes (:

brique-à-brac

Today we made tapas partly from leftovers. I just love to have different things on my plate. The variety of textures, colors and tastes is what turns me on like a kid in a candy store!

Brique à l'aubergine:

• left over cooked egg-plant-red onion- garlic-olive oil mix
• and feta
• roll in to the very thin pastry (called feuille de brique in France) I think it's what you use for baclava or other Greek dishes.

heat in a bit of olive oil until golden brown

Oeuf de caille-Chorizo on toast:

• First you fry the chorizo slices in a dry pan, put aside.
• We use a Dutch "poffertjes pan" to fry these little eggs in, so they stay in a rounded shape
• Make thin toasts and dress them with the chorizo and eggs

Red pepper-goat cheese-feta spread:
I wanted to stuff the canned red peppers, but they turned out to be hugh and not the small ones i was expecting. So to big to stuff with soft goat cheese.

• So i diced the peppers and mushed them with
• some left over feta and soft goat cheese
• herbes de provence.

Caviar d'Aubergine:

• 1 eggplant cooked in the oven the day before.
• mixed with garlic
• olive oil
• lemon juice
• salt and pepper

Tomato salad with olive oil and spring onions

Fresh crusty bread

Wine was out, we had emptied the bottle while cooking (:

Red and greens follow-up

As I had bought a bunch of new beet-roots. And i've used the root to make the fried beet-root slices. But the leaves you can eat as well! I cut the stems of because they are too tough. The leaves you wash and cut up. Then you can use them as spinach. Like spinach there's not much left once cooked.
Stir-fry beet greens:
Heat some olive oil in a wok, add as much fresh garlic sliced or with a garlic press as you can handle, stir until lightly golden brown, add the washed and sliced leaves, stir. Add salt and pepper and you can spice it up if you wish with some chili pepper or flakes. What's nice also is to add thin slices of parmesan and serve it with pasta
The result is a green and red vegetable dish.

Rouge et vert, la suite

Comme j'ai acheté des betteraves nouvelles bio avec leur fanes et j'avais utilisé les betteraves en forme de frite-beignet, il me restait des fanes. trop dommage de les jeter. On peut les manger comme les feuilles de radis. Pour en faire un plat rapide:
Il faut couper les cotes car trop dur. Laver bien les feuilles, les couper et réserver. Couper ou presser de l'ail (autant que vous voulez) et faire revenir dans de huile d'olive dans un wok. Quand ça commence à bronzer vite rajouter les feuilles de betterave. Remuer, saler - poivrer. Et c'est prêt-à-servir. Une fois cuit il ne reste pas grand chose, donc il faut prévoir d'autre légumes ou acheter plusieurs botes de betteraves, pour en avoir assez pour une famille! Le résultat est un légume comme l'épinard et vous pouvez faire autant de variations.
Par exemple servir avec un peu de piment, copeaux de parmesan et des pâtes. Ou en béchamel, ou mélanger dans un hachis.

Ok that's it ! Let's just start this and see how it develops, because the circumstances won't get any better or more perfect anyway. If I wait till the season is in full bloom or i have more time, i'll be dead and buried. Time is just one of these professional procrastinators excuses.
So no more excuses here we go with the first recipe.

I sometimes help out on a farmers market (south of France). The assortment is a bit small at the moment because of the heavy rainfall, little sun and low temperatures. So there's not much to sell at the moment except for spring onions, fresh garlic, beet root and last years potatoes.
Today this men came to buy cooked beet-root and he told me what he does with the raw ones:
peel them and cut them in thin slices. (you might want to wear gloves because these fresh ones do have a lot of color in them!)
Whisk one egg in a soup plate and prepare an another plate with dried bread crumbs. Slice by slice put them in the egg, then in the bread-crumbs and then fry them in a pan with some (olive) oil until golden brown and crisp. Sprinkle with sea salt and with the green of fresh spring onions.
Makes a nice side dish and even kids might like this.

Please let me know your comments and alterations of this recipe.

Je travaille dés fois sur un marché local, dans le sud-ouest de la France, avec un agriculteur néerlandais.
Okay je me lance aujourd'hui avec la première recette du marché:
L' assortiment est très basique en ce moment car le printemps est en retard. Il a perdu 3 semaines de salades à cause de la pluie et le froid. Aussi les pommes de terre nouvelles se laissent attendre. Aujourd'hui il y avait des oignons blancs et l'ail frais, des pommes de terre d'hiver et des betteraves. Un client est venu pour acheter les betteraves cuites et il m'a donner ça recettes pour les betteraves crues:
éplucher les betteraves crues et coupez-les en rondelles assez fines.
Battre un oeuf dans un plat à soupe et dans une autre assiette mettre de la chapelure. Tranche par tranche passer dans l'oeuf puis chapelure. Faire dorer dans une poêle avec u peu de huile (d'olive). Saler ( et poivrer) et servir avec le vert des oignons blancs.

Laissez-moi savoir vos commentaires sur la recette et faites partager vos recettes de betteraves ou autres légumes/plats de saison !