Betteraves or beets!

Sunday, 22 May 2011

One of the things I love most about France is how the French eat in harmony with the seasons. Beets have begun to make their appearance at the local markets. Betteraves or beets, an excellent source of potassium, folic acid and magnesium, a delicious and incredibly healthy vegetable. 

And they come in several colors!

Here in France, you can get them pretty much all year round, precooked and hermetically sealed in plastic. With these, I love to make a simple Beet Tapenade to spread on crackers, thinly sliced baguette or simply dip with a chip.

Take your precooked beet, cut it up in rough chunks and toss in your mixer. 

Add a little olive oil

salt

pepper 

and mix!

Beet Tapenade, so simple and it adds a real zest of color to an aperitif.

Yesterday, I rummaged through Epicurious.com's beet recipes and the following caught my eye, I made it yesterday and it was exquisite!

• 6 medium beets with beet greens attached

• 2 large oranges
• 1 small sweet onion, cut through root end into thin wedges
• 1/3 cup red wine vinegar
• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/2 teaspoon grated orange peel

Preheat oven to 400°F. Trim greens from beets. Cut off and discard stems. Coarsely chop leaves and reserve. Wrap each beet in foil. Place beets directly on oven rack and roast until tender when pierced with fork, about 1 hour 30 minutes. Cool. Peel beets, then cut each into 8 wedges. Place beets in medium bowl.

Cook beet greens in large saucepan of boiling water just until tender, about 2 minutes. Drain. Cool. Squeeze greens to remove excess moisture. Add greens to bowl with beets. Cut peel and white pith from oranges. Working over another bowl and using small sharp knife, cut between membranes to release segments. Add orange segments and onion to bowl with beet mixture. Whisk vinegar, oil, garlic, and orange peel in small bowl to blend; add to beet mixture and toss to coat. Season with salt and pepper. Let stand at room temperature 1 hour. Serve.

I popped the beets in the oven to roast while I did a little (ahem, a lot of!) housecleaning. 

Aidan, over at Conjugating Irregular Verbs cooked up some beets yesterday on her Seasonal Sunday blog. Her recipe looks great, but then again, everything she cooks looks great!

I found a huge amount of truly varied recipes for  beets on a French website. Remember, you only have to copy and paste the recipe into Google Translate to have the translation plus conversion.

Betteraves are used more often than you would think in cooking. Here are a few photos to make your mouth water:

Shredded cooked beets served with tender baby greens and goat cheese melted on toast.

A typical French apero.

Yummy yellow beets sliced thin and drizzled with olive oil, fresh basil, salt and pepper.

Beet and beet greens bruschetta! 

Beet soup with a dollop of fresh cream.

Beet greens are tastier than you would imagine. I loved them as a kid and love them even more as an adult. (Yeah, I know, weird kid!)

Salad!

A classy beet dish: beets with fennel pesto.

Almost looks like a desert, doesn't it! Another French apero of betteraves and crème fraîche. 

Gros bisous, bon dégustation des betteraves et a très bientôt!

Love, Charley

comments | | Read More...

Guest Blogger Kirsty on what she loves about France

Wednesday, 18 May 2011

Kirsty is sharing the love!

A very special event happened back in March, Aidan organized a Blogapalooza where a number of us anglophone bloggers met up for lunch in Aix-en-Provence. One of those bloggers was Kirsty at You Had Me At Bonjour. Her profile says,"An Australian mother of three and lucky wife to the mister, this is my record of our life in southern France." Kirsty is quite the quilter and photographer. She has a wicked sense of humor and a wonderfully original regard on France and all things French. I always have a good laugh when I read her blog.

So, here is what Kirsty has to say about France. Enjoy!

Thank you Charley for inviting me to write a guest post on what I love about France. All I can say is where do I start? 

- The postman delivers six days a week here in France. Coming from a mail-only-on-weekdays country, I find this awesome. He still only rings once though. 

- Duckfat. It's so bad, but so good. 

- The Luberon Valley

Fruit trees in blossom in the Luberon, Provence

- France's love of food and the ritual of the meal. The rest of the Western world could learn a lot from the French here - food isn't just fuel, it is one of life's most satisfying pleasures and should be given the attention and time it deserves. This love of food is encouraged from a young age, both in the family home and at school. Here is one of the daily menus from my kids' school, where they enjoy a four-course lunch every day:

For those not well versed in français:

~ Starter: Diced vegetables with a Provençal dressing ~

~Main: Provençal braised beef casserole served with penne pasta and organic, butter-glazed carrots ~

~ Cheese course: Pont l'Eveque cheese (similar to brie or camembert) served on baguette ~

~Dessert: French pound cake ~

May I stress that the maternelle school system starts at age three. Yes, three year olds are eating this meal. It's enough to make me cry into my Vegemite sandwich. 

- the French kiss. No, not the slobbery one, but rather the European tradition of kissing on both cheeks when greeting/parting, which my very young children refer innocently to as a French kiss. This isn't a cliché - everyone does it, everywhere. The police officer who mans the pedestrian crossing at school greets the parents he knows in this way (while standing in the middle of the road). Male teenagers with butt-cracks hanging out of their undies (which are respectively hanging out of their jeans) will hold their cigarettes aside to kiss their male friends. It's different to anything I've ever seen and I love it - any custom that encourages the breakdown of stereotypical macho culture is A-OK with me. 

Thanks Kirsty!! For anyone interested in being a guest blogger, the rules are simple: you have to have a blog and be able to write on something you love about France. Feel free to send me an email.

Oh, and, Aidan, when are we doing the next Blogapalooza?? :-)

Gros bisous of sharing the love et a bientôt!

comments | | Read More...

Le Potimarron!

Thursday, 13 January 2011

Acorn Squash!

One of my favorite autumn winter veggies!

Here is a link for a ton of recipes in French for Le Potimarron. (Try this link too) You can copy the French recipes, go to Google Translate, paste, and it will give you the recipe in English, complete with English measurements! How's that for progress??!!

Voila some photos of what you could cook up, once you'd put your chefs hat on, that is.

Potimarron cake with spinach coulis

Potimarron cappucino amuse bouche

Potimarron souflee

Potimarron flan

This one really temps me: potimarron ravioli. Yum!

Potimarron tart with cinnamon

Ohh, my mouth's watering for this one: fresh foie gras on a bed of potimarron

Potimarron macarone with foie gras filling

Potimarron puree

This one is classy: a scallop on a bed of potimarron

Your basic yummy potimarron soup

Impress the guests! Potimarron amuse bouche

Or you can simply cut your acorn squash up in pieces and sauté it in butter and honey, sprinkled with salt and pepper and served with chestnuts. Delish!

Gros bisous de potimarron et a demain!

Love, Charley

comments | | Read More...

Les Poireaux!

Wednesday, 5 January 2011

Leeks!

Well, today's blog started off as a way to lose a little of the holiday pounds. (sarcastic laugh) I thought, 'I know! I'll blog about leek soup or pressure cooked leek and its precious liquid which fights water retention!' So, I hopped online looking for photographs and ran into all kinds of fabulous recipes to use for cooking leeks.

So, voila, some wonderful recipes from a really super website called La Marmite. You can copy them, and paste them into Google Translate to have them in English with English measurements!

If you want to behave, make a simple leek soup.

Or pressure cook a few leeks in water. You can drink their juice hot, like a tea, and you will pee and pee all day long. Then you serve the cooked leeks cold, drizzle a little olive oil on them, sprinkle a little salt and pepper, grab a crusty bit of bread and, voila, instant healthy lunch.

OR, you could be really bad and make some of these:

The insanely delicious and highly caloric, but who-gives-a-hoot-because-it-tastes-so-good Gratin des poireaux (the best in the world is at the bouchon restaurant La Machonnerie in Vieux Lyon). Sooooo good!

Leek and ham balls

Ham, leek, and mushroom gratin

 Leek feuilleté 

Leek and ham cake

Crustless leek pie

Leek tart

Leek and salmon quiche

Leek, split pea, and ham soup

Gros bisous gourmand des poireaux et a demain!

Love, Charley

comments | | Read More...