Fabada is a famous bean stew from the Spanish Asturias region located north west of the country on the Atlantic coast. It’s a very tasty stew that takes a while to get ready but doesn’t require much effort on your side. You’re not even allowed to stir it because you could break the beans! Peel and chop one onion and you’re basically done with your part

I sometimes use beans I can find in France. It’s definitely not the same taste but it does the job. What you can’t replace are the cooking chorizos, the onion morcilla and the bacon piece. Fabada recipe doesn’t ask for many ingredients because these three give it all the great taste. In Spain, you can buy already made packs with all the meat you need to make fabada; it’s called « Compango ».

It’s a great dish I like to make often even if I wasn’t always a Fabada lover! When I was 15, I spent a month with an Asturian family in order to learn Spanish. They were really nice, I kept excellent memories from them. A few days after I arrived, the family mom made a huge fabada and I must say I kinda liked it the first day… But wasn’t so convinced the next 6 days I ate it!!!
Imagine, middle of august in Spain, eating hot bean stew for a whole week! I never understood how they could eat that during summertime, eating can actually make you sweat! It took me years to have fabada again

Preparation time: 5 mn (+ overnight soaking for the beans) – Cooking time: 4 hours

Ingredients (for 4 servings)

1.1 lbs (500 g) Asturian beans (click here to buy online)
20 to 24 cups (5 to 6 l) of water
2 chorizos (to-cook kind) (click here to buy online)
2 Spanish morcillas (black pudding with onions) (click here to buy online)
5 oz (140 g) of bacon (not sliced)
1 onion

Instructions

1/ The day before, soak beans in about 10 cups of water and leave them overnight.

2/ Throw water out and pour beans in a large casserole.

3/ Peel and chop onion (very thin).

4/ Cover beans with 12 cups of water. Add chopped onion and whole chorizo, morcilla and bacon.

5/ Get it to a smooth boil and skim the foam. (You may need to skim the foam more than once, don’t hesitate to do so). Reduce the heat to low and leave covered.

6/ After about one hour and a half, add 2 cups of cold water. Cover and leave over low heat.

7/ After 4 hours of slow cooking, fabada is ready.  (Most of the time, you won’t need to add salt as the different pork pieces added are usually pretty salted already.)

8/ Serve beans in bowls or soup plates topping with pieces of meat.

Soup season is here! One thing I love about making soup is that you can experiment all you want, you have very few chances to come out with something really bad . Well, my last experiment was this leek and potato soup flavored with blue cheese and I must say it did taste good! It’s a very easy to make recipe that doesn’t need much work on your part. You just heat the leek and potatoes with water and mix everything together… How simple is that?! If  blue cheese’s taste is too strong for you, replace it with cream cheese.

Preparation time: 10 mn – Cooking time: 40 mn

Ingredients (for 4 servings)

1 leek
2 large potatoes
1 onion
5 cups (120 cl) of water
0.7 oz (20g) of blue cheese (a little more if you want some left for decoration)
3 tablespoons of whipping cream
Salt

Instructions

1/ Peel and wash potatoes.

2/ Peel leek by taking off the outside leaves and cutting off both the spoiled end on the green side and the roots on the white side. Wash thoroughly to take off soil that can be left inside.

3/ Peel onion and take off roots on the bottom end.

4/ Heat water in a casserole over medium heat.

5/ Slice leek, cut potatoes into 4 pieces and pour into the water along with the entire onion. Add salt and leave covered for 40 minutes.

6/ Mix together whipping cream and blue cheese.

7/ Liquidize soup and combine it with blue cheese cream. You can add half first, try it and decide how much more blue cheese flavor you wish to add. Season with salt if needed.

I don’t know if it’s due to the winter weather that’s already here but I’ve been making (and eating, do I need to say?) tons of molten chocolate cakes lately. It feels so good when it’s cold outside to be baking and eating warm chocolate cakes that melt in your mouth 

You already know how to bake a dark chocolate molten cake, even have a recipe for a white chocolate ganache. Let’s introduce the white chocolate molten cake with raspberries!

White chocolate is very sweet, it tastes better in my opinion when balanced with a sour fruit. Raspberry is perfect for it but you can replace it with cherry if you like.

Preparation time: 15 mn (+ 1h in the fridge) Cooking time: 6 to 7 mn

Ingredients (for 4 cakes)

16 raspberries
5 oz (140 g) of white chocolate
1/4 cup (50 g) of butter
2 tablespoons (30 g) of golden or brown sugar
2 tablespoons of whipped cream
1 tablespoon of flour
1/2 tablespoon of corn starch
2 eggs

Instructions

1/ In a salad bowl beat egg and sugar until mixture gets a lighter color. Add flour and corn starch and whisk.

2/ Heat a large saucepan half filled with water.

3/ Dice butter and chocolate and heat it, along with the whipping cream « au bain-marie » (click here for more detailled explanation on how to do it if you don’t have the right tool )

4/ Mix molten chocolate in with egg and sugar mixture until it gets smooth.

5/ Leave preparation for 1h in the fridge so mixture gets thicker.

6/ Preheat oven to 460° F (240° C / Th 8).

7/ Grease a muffin mold.

8/ Fill 2/3 of the muffin mold with chocolate mixture and top with raspberries.

9/ Heat in oven for 6 to 7 minutes.

10/ Take chocolate cakes out of the oven and pull them carefully out of the muffin mold.

Let your white chocolate molten cakes with raspberries chill down a little and serve them while they’re still warm.

I’m sure you all know Gazpacho, but have you ever tried Salmorejo? It’s from Spanish Andalusia as well, you eat it cold too but it has a thicker texture which makes it a cream rather than a liquid soup. You can eat it as a starter or as an appetizer. In Spain, people usually dip it with bread but it’s also pretty good with crude veggies (pepper, cucumber, Portobello mushrooms, zucchini etc.). Vegetarians can skip this part, the others will top it with a hard boiled egg and some cured ham.

Preparation time: 10 mn

Ingredients (for 6 servings)

Salmorejo

2.2 lbs (1 kg) ripe tomatoes
7 oz (200 g) of bread from the previous day
1 cup (250 ml) of olive oil (click here to buy online)
1 garlic clove
2 tablespoons of vinegar
Salt

Topping

1 egg
3 slices of cured ham

Instructions

1/ Heat tomatoes in a pan filled with water until their skin gets easy to take away. Let them cool down a little off the water.

2/ Cut bread into pieces.

3/ Peel tomatoes and garlic clove.

4/ Mix bread, tomatoes, garlic, vinegar and olive oil in a blender.

5/ Season with salt and keep in the fridge.

6/ Before serving, get water to a boil in a small pan. Add egg thoroughly with a tablespoon and leave in boiling water for 9 minutes.

7/ Rinse egg with cold water, let it cool a little and shell.

8/ Dice cured ham and egg.

9/ Serve salmorejo in individual dishes or in a salad bowl for dipping and sharing. Top with egg, ham and a dash of olive oil.

Enjoy

Today is my blog-anniversary! I can’t believe it’s already been 1 year since I started French Cooking for Dummies. Let me tell you I’ve been enjoying it a lot. I don’t always find time to cook and be ready to take a nice picture on the two hours light I get in my dark Parisian apartment a day (on sunny days only, of course)! But all your nice comments always drive me back to it. My blog-anniversary is a great opportunity to thank all of you for your kind words. It’s always a pleasure to get your feedback .

What better recipe for a blog-anniversary than a chocolate cake? It’s a fun adaptation of the molten chocolate cake recipe I posted here some time ago.  This one has a white chocolate melting heart. There are many great versions of this recipe: ganache can be made with other types of chocolate. You want a tip? It’s also pretty good with salted butter caramel…

Preparation time: 15 mn (+ 1h in the fridge/ freezer) Cooking time: 6 to 7 mn

Ingredients (for 4 to 6 cakes)

Chocolate cake

7 oz (200 g) of dark chocolate (70% cocoa)
1/2 cup (110 g) of butter
1/4 cup (50 g) of golden or brown sugar
3 tablespoons of whipping cream
1 tablespoon of flour
1 tablespoon of corn starch
2 eggs

White chocolate ganache

3 1/2 oz (100 g) of white chocolate
1 tablespoon (15 g) of butter
1 tablespoon of whipping cream

Instructions

1/ In a salad bowl beat egg and sugar until mixture gets a lighter color. Add flour and corn starch and whisk.

2/ Heat 1 large saucepan half filled with water.

3/ Prepare ganache: Dice ganache butter and white chocolate and put it, along with the whipping cream, in a smaller saucepan or a metal bowl. Put in (or over, depending the size) the heating water. (This technique is called bain-marie; it’s the best way to melt chocolate without burning it).

4/ Pour white chocolate mixture in an ice-cube tray and leave in the freezer.

5/ Prepare cake: Melt dark chocolate along with butter and whipped cream « au bain-marie » like you did with white chocolate.

6/ Mix molten chocolate in with egg and sugar mixture until it gets smooth. Leave preparation for 1h in the fridge so mixture gets thicker.

7/ Preheat oven to 410° F (210° C / Th 7).

8/ If you’re going to use a muffin mold, grease it. If you have round pastry cutters, line baking tray with parchment paper and place pastry cutters on it. Cut pieces of parchment paper a little bigger than the height of your pastry cutters, circle them and cover pastry cutters sides with it (see picture here).

8/ Fill 2/3 of the pastry cutters with chocolate mixture. Add on top one or two cubes of white chocolate ganache (depending on their size) and push a little with your finger so ganache gets inside.

9/ Heat in oven for 6 to 7 minutes.

10/ Take chocolate cakes out of the oven and pull carefully parchment paper first and pastry cutters next. (If cooking paper doesn’t come out easily, they’re not cooked enough… Don’t break them! Put them back in the oven a minute more).