A Meal Outside of Arrondissement 16

For possibly the first time this semester, I cooked outside of the apartment building, (and by this I mean in a different arrondissement altogether). For the main course, I made a beef- and veg-filled cannelloni dish and followed up with a Nutella chocolate sauce over ice cream and fruits, the recipes of which are presented here.

Beef & Veg Cannelloni
(15 April 2009; Pat, Camille, and Dorothy)

What you'll need to fill the cannelloni (enough for 4 people):
16 cannelloni shells (a standard 250g box gives you more than enough, and if you have a bigger baking dish, you can definitely cook more)
350g ground beef
400g (or standard size equivalent, depending on type) pasta sauce
50g butter
2 carrots
1 leek
1 large onion
1,5 cloves of garlic
1 medium-large red pepper
1 medium-large green pepper
20cl liquid cream
2 semi-big tsps pepper purée (depending on your affinity for spice)
salt
pepper

To top off the dish, you'll also need:
50+ grams of parmesan (I like the thinly-sliced square pieces; the cheese is mainly to top off the cannelloni, so this is all very much up to you)

Finally, you'll also need:
1 or 2 pans (depending on how much you're making and the size of your pans; it's easier to split everything between the pans) + lids
rice
a deep baking dish
aluminum foil
cutting utensils
chopping board
stove
oven/toaster oven

Whew! After reading that whole list, you may be wondering why you would even bothering making it. Trust me, it's rather worth it and it's not as complicated or expensive as the list suggests.

What you need to do:
[N.B. Life is just a bit easier to live if you've pre-cut your vegetables before following along with the recipe.]
[N.B. All of the vegetables are rather straightforward to cut, perhaps except for the leek. To cut the leek, I take a knife and make a vertical cut starting from about 1 inch away from the root/base all the way to the end of the leaves. Then, I make a perpendicular, vertical cut. I then cut the leek in such a way that if I hadn't made the previous cuts, I would have round pieces, i.e., the final result should be strips of quarter-circumference leek pieces.]
1) Together, melt the butter and brown the beef.
2) Once all of the beef has been browned, add all of the chopped ingredients (except for the cloves of garlic, which should be minced). Simmer for about 10 to 15 minutes, covering the pan(s) with lids.
3) Add the salt, pepper, garlic, sauce and pepper purée, carefully stirring everything together. Continue cooking this for another 10 minutes or so, or until the vegetables become soft.
4) Finally, add the liquid cream and simmer for about five more minutes, stirring the cream into the mix. The cream should turn the red-ish sauce to an orange-cream colour.

5) Preheat the oven to about 180 degrees Celsius and turn off the heat of the stove (assuming you had already turned it on from the start). CAREFULLY, spoon some of the filling into the cannelloni and line the cannelloni in the baking dish side-by-side. With this recipe, you can fill about 16 cannelloni shells and have enough to top off the cannelloni.
6) Once all of the cannelloni that can fit into the baking dish have been filled, top off the cannelloni with the remaining filling. It's important that you try to cover all of the cannelloni with the filling. Top all of this off with parmesan cheese.
7) Bake the dish for about half an hour, after having first covered the dish with aluminum foil.

8) While all that yummy goodness is baking, put the leftover sauce, etc., into one, deep pan (using the same pan you cooked everything in--as long as it's deep enough--works great).
9) Fill the pan half-way with water and add about 1/3-1/2 that amount in rice.
10) Cover the pan with a lid and let the rice cook, adding more water, if necessary. Do check on the rice every five minutes to make sure it's not under/overcooked. Generally speaking, the rice and cannelloni will be done at about the same time.

11) Once everything has finished cooking, let things cool a tad and serve! Sweet cidre goes quite well with this dish.

Strawberry-Banana Split, with a Nutella Chocolate Sauce
(15 April 2009; Pat, Camille, and Dorothy)

Check out the photo above, if you'd like to prepare the fruits in a similar fashion. Of important note is that the bowls contain two halves of half a banana. Furthermore, one strawberry has been cut in half and the other has been cored and filled with Nutella.

What you'll need to make the Nutella chocolate sauce:

50g dessert chocolate
10cl liquid cream
2-3 heaping tablespoons Nutella

What you need to do:
1) Carefully melt the chocolate in a pot, making sure to not burn the chocolate.
2) Once the chocolate has melted, add the liquid cream and Nutella, stirring quickly to avoid burning the mixture.
3) Take the pot off the heat once you can start to smell the chocolate cooking. This is usually at a heat hot enough that stirring the mixture will continue to melt everything together and become smooth.

CCC: Concluding chocolat chaud

Almost every night, we each end with a bowl of chocolat chaud in conjunction with a pain au chocolat. Since we've become so used to this duo, one just doesn't taste the same without the other. Though this ending is a variation of my breakfast in NLR the first time I came to France, the way I prepare the chocolat chaud is more or less my secret, keeping this dish my signature dish. ;-)

Chocolat chaud et pain au chocolat (Hot chocolate and chocolate croissant)
(early February)

Cooking with alcohol

Recently, I've made two dishes that use some kind of alcohol as one of the ingredients. The following are recipes I've created after going through myriad versions one can find on-line (many of which are on other people's blogs). I had to alter some of the ingredients and cooking methods that others have used, given what I had here, so this is what I came up with!

Baked pears cooked in a sweet, white wine sauce, and topped with chantilly crème and dark chocolate shavings
(last Thursday of February; Gerald, Jill, and Sam)

What you'll need to cook the pears:
Pears (one per person)
Sweet white wine
Cinnamon
A baking dish or two (I found that 5 halves fit in a standard round, ceramic baking dish)
An oven

In addition, you'll need the following for plating (optional):
Chantilly crème (whipped cream)
Dark[est] chocolate possible (shaved, to garnish)

What you need to do:
1) Pre-heat the oven to 180°C (350°F, I think).
2) Halve the pears keeping the stem in-tact, if possible. Face-up, sprinkle some cinnamon on each pear half.
3) Arrange the pear halves face-down in the baking dish(es). It's totally cool for the halves to touch each other; just try to make sure that the face-down bits are in contact with the bottom of the dish(es).
4) Add enough of the wine to cover the entire bottom of each dish, pouring the wine directly onto the tops of each half and letting it fall to the bottom.
5) Sprinkle a bit of cinnamon on top of each half (the wine should allow the cinnamon to stick for the moment). Then, add a bit more wine in the same manner as above. The total volume of wine in each dish should be enough so that the pear halves are submerged about 1/4 of the way in wine. For 10 halves (for 5 people), I used about half a bottle (about 37,5 cl) of white wine.
6a) The cooking time will definitely vary, depending on how soft you want the pears to be. If you're not going to serve the pears with a full-course meal, I'd estimate the cooking time at around 45 minutes. You can have your meal and by the time you get to the pears, they should still be relatively hot.
6b) HOWEVER, if you're serving this with a full five-course meal like we did: Bake the pears for about 30 minutes. Begin baking them at the start of the apératifs, and by the time you start the main course, the pears should be done. You'll know when the pears are ready for the next step when you can just barely stick a fork easily into the pear halves. (P.S. / Watch out for the first time you open the oven door; it'll get very smokey!) Turn the heat off and let the pears sit in the heat of the oven until you're ready to serve them. About 5-10 minutes before you actually serve them, turn the heat to about 220°C just to get them warmed up again. Generally you can do this towards the end of the cheese course (our order of courses is: apératif, main course, salad, cheese, dessert; to finish, chocolat chaud and pain au chocolat.)
7) Be careful when plating, as the pears can get very hot! To plate, I placed one half face-down, and one half face-up. Once all of the pear halves have been plated, I took the remaining liquid and, carefully transferring it to a sauce pan, reduced the sauce by cooking it a bit. Then, I drizzled the sauce over the pear halves. Then, where the points met, I put some chantilly crème, and finally topped the dish with freshly-shaved dark chocolate shavings.

Left: Fresh citrus strawberries topped with chantilly crème and dark chocolate shavings
Right: Fresh mango cooked in rum and brown sugar
(first Friday of Lent; Elise and Jane)

What you'll need for the strawberry dessert:
Strawberries (halved, with leaves removed)
Orange juice (fresh preferred)

Lemon juice (fresh preferred)
Granulated sugar
Bowl (big enough to hold all of the strawberries, whereby the strawberries don't go past the rim of the bowl)

In addition, you'll need the following to plate the strawberries (optional):
Chantilly crème (whipped cream)
Dark[est] chocolate possible (shaved, to garnish)

What you'll need for the mango dessert:
Mangoes (riper the better; 1/2 for each person)
Brown sugar
Rum (okay, really, I don't know how much I used; however, I can say I got a 20 cl. bottle and used 1 cap full for 2 mangoes, i.e., 4 mango halves)
Knife
Shallow dish
Pan

What you need to do:
A) For the strawberries:
1) Once the strawberries have been washed and halved, place them in the big bowl and cover with the granulated sugar. I'd estimate about 1/3 cup of sugar for every container (500 g) of strawberries. CAREFULLY toss the stawberries and sugar together.
2) Cover the the strawberries with the orange juice. Stop adding juice to the bowl until it reaches the top of the strawberries, not necessarily until it reach the top of the bowl.
3) CAREFULLY transfer the bowl to the refrigerator during the citrus infusion process. I prepared this before the apératifs, and plated everything during the cheese course. To plate, strain the juice from the strawberries (save it for later if serving this with the mango dessert), and distribute the strawberries evenly, topping it all off with some chantilly crème and dark chocolate shavings.

B) For the mangoes:
1) Cut the mangoes more or less into halves, trying to cut as close to the pit as possible.
2) Take the same knife you used to cut the mango, score (create a grid) the mango halves, cutting close to (but NOT through!) the skin of the mango.
3) Arrange the mangoes in a shallow dish, face-up, and top off each mango half with some brown sugar. Add a bit of rum to the top of each mango half. It's okay if the rum falls through the cracks or over the mango (that's what the shallow dish is for, to collect the sauces, etc.)
4) In a heated pan (I cooked at about 6,5/7, in terms of heat), place the halves on the pan face-down, allowing the skins to touch each other, but not overcrowding the room or the pan. You'll know when the mango is done when there's a bit of steam or in about a minute on high heat. [N.B. Some of mine actually had some charred pieces, which could easily be removed without destroying the dish.]
5) In terms of plating, see the photo above. What is also important to note is that the sauce (which you would drizzle first over the fleshy side of the mango half and then use the rest to decorate the plate) is made by adding about 3 tbsps of sugar to the combined sauces (the citrus sauce and the rum & brown sugar sauce), and reducing the sauces together.

My first formal food post

So, it occurred to me as I was writing in my other blog that I should start to separate food from fun. However, as the two have gone hand-in-hand since I started cooking a lot more in France, I've decided to dedicate this particular blog to recipes of my favourite courses and meals, whether or not they were cooked by me. I'll be starting this blog with food from the last few weeks of February, including recipes and/or photos along the way. And now, voilà, the first recipe must be my favourite to prepare, because of it's simplicity and taste: salmon.

N.B. Each photo will be accompanied by a short description of the food presented. In parenthesis, one will find the approximate time I cooked/ate the food, followed by any dinner guests we may have had.

***

I've cooked salmon twice in my life, both times of which were here in Paris. However, for the amount of fish I eat back home (which is nothing, really), I've had my fair share of it given that it's my favourite of them all.

Best cohesive salmon meal: Salmon with asparagus and wild rice
(first Friday of Lent; Elise and Jane)

Best salmon I have ever had, served with green beans
(end of January; Lauren, for her birthday)

What you'll need to cook the salmon:
Salmon filet (I've found that the fresher, the better. Check out your local poissoneries!), one per person or if the filets are really thick or you plan on serving a huge dinner, 1/2 per person works, too.
Salt and pepper (use freshly ground pepper, if you can)
Lemon
Extra virgin olive oil
A pan

What you need to do:
1) Season both sides of each salmon filet with the salt and pepper.
2) Flesh-side up, squeeze some fresh lemon juice onto the filets.
3) Cook at medium heat. Heat up some olive oil in the pan, and once hot (the viscosity of the extra virgin olive oil gets to be really low, i.e., runs smoothly), fry the salmon filet skin-side up for 4 minutes.
4) Gently reposition each filet so that you're cooking one side for 1,5 minutes; then, finish flipping the salmon halfway (meaning now it's skin-side down) and cook for another 4 minutes. Cook the other side of the filet for another 1,5 minutes, then reposition the filet one last time so you've returned skin-side up. This may seem like more time than usual, but that's because the filets I've been working with have been quite thick. Lessen the time (or even just the heat) if you think the fish is cooking too fast.
5) Once you can gently separate the fish with a fork, the fish is done and ready to serve.

Note: Do try and be extremely careful during the flipping process. The aim is to serve the salmon in as whole a filet as possible!