This is the simplest recipe you can make when craving for a fresh salad on a hot summer day. It’s extremely easy to prepare and you might even have all the ingredients at hand already

It’s a very typical Mediterranean bean salad recipe. A very good basic you’ll be able to play with. Try replacing vinegar by lemon juice, add chopped cilantro, parsley and small chives and you’ll get into a whole new world!

Preparation time: 5 minutes – Refrigeration time: 10 minutes

Ingredients (for 4 servings)

1 can (15 oz/ 425 g) of white navy beans
1 medium sized green bell pepper
1 medium sized red bell pepper
1 red onion

Vinaigrette

1 tablespoon of red wine vinegar
3 tablespoons of olive oil
Salt & pepper

Instructions

1/ Peel red onion. Dice it finely. Plunge onion dices into a glass of water. (Before using raw slices of onion in a salad, you should always plunge them into fresh water for a while so they don’t taste too strong.)

2/ Wash and dry red and green pepper. Remove the core, pith and seeds. Dice pepper.

3/ Rinse and drain white beans.

4/ In a salad bowl, combine white navy beans, onion, red and green pepper. Season with salt and toss ingredients together.

5/ Prepare vinaigrette: In a small bowl, pour vinegar and oil. Stir energetically until vinaigrette is homogeneous. Add salt and pepper and stir again.

6/ Sprinkle two pepper and bean salad with vinaigrette. Refrigerate for 10 minutes. Serve cold.

Watch out, fabulous entrée recipe coming out! Ok, there are a lot of weird ingredients involved but they can easily be replaced. Kumatoes are a brown kind of tomatoes. They taste a little sweeter than regular tomatoes but f you can’t find any, you’ll be fine with tomatoes. Same story for the purple basil, any fresh basil leaves would do the trick

It’s fresh, tasty and full of vitamins. Perfect for spring time!

Preparation time: 15 minutes    –   Cooking time: 2 minutes

Ingredients (for 4 servings)

7 oz (200 g) of cooked shrimps
4 oz (120 g) of fresh baby spinach leaves
8 green asparagus
2 tomatoes kumato

Vinaigrette

1 tablespoon of red wine vinegar (you can also use balsamiq if you like)
3 tablespoons of olive oil
1/2 teaspoon of honey
1/2 teaspoon of crushed cilantro seeds
10 to 15 purple basil leaves
Salt & pepper

Instructions

1/ Fill 2/3 of a large pan with water, add some salt and get it to a boil.

2/ Wash and dry spinach leaves thoroughly. Pinch off the stems.

3/ Pour asparagus into boiling water and leave them in for 2 minutes.

4/ Peel shrimps. Set aside.

5/ Rinse and dry tomatoes kumato. Take off the hard part curving with a knife. Slice them.

6/ In 4 individual plates, share out spinach leaves, kumato slices and shrimps. Top each plate with 2 asparagus.

7/ Rinse and dry purple basil leaves. Cut them into thin stripes with scissors dropping some on each plate.

8/ Prepare vinaigrette: In a small bowl, pour vinegar, oil and honey. Stir energetically until vinaigrette is homogeneous. Add crushed cilantro seeds, salt and pepper and stir again.

9/ Sprinkle a pinch of salt and dash vinaigrette on top of each plate. Serve right away.

This recipe is a huge classic. French supermarkets sell tons of the frozen version everyday. But let’s face it, these industrial substitutes are pretty much awful. Nothing compared to the real flavor and most important: you never really know for sure which meat is in it!

It’s one of the easiest recipes I know and the result is always a big hit. Don’t look for it, there is no excuse not to make them from scratch

Preparation time: 10 minutes – Cooking time: 12 minutes

Ingredients (for 4 servings)

4 chicken breasts (boneless, skinless)
4 slices of ham
4 slices of Emmenthal cheese (Swiss cheese)
1 egg
6 tablespoons of bread crumbs
3 tablespoons of flour
1 tablespoon of olive oil
Salt & Pepper

Instructions

1/ Unfold one chicken breast, season with a pinch of salt and place it between two pieces of waxed paper or plastic wrap. Flatten the breast by  pounding it with a meat mallet (or the bottom of a heavy pan) until it’s about 1/4 inch thick. Repeat with the other chicken breasts.

2/ Place one slice of ham on each chicken breast and top with a slice of cheese. Ham and cheese slices must have the same size than the flattened chicken, cut any sticking out part.

3/ Simply fold chicken breasts so ham and cheese are inside the chicken.

4/ Pour in three different plates the the flour, the egg and the bread crumbs. Beat the egg with a fork.

5/ Carefully dredge each chicken cordon bleu into the flour first (eliminate excess but make sure it’s entirely covered with flour). Then dredge it into the beaten egg and finish with the breadcrumbs.

6/ Heat a frying pan over medium heat, add olive oil.

7/ When olive oil is hot, add the chicken cordons bleus and cook 6 minutes on each side or until they have a golden color. Season with salt and pepper.

Serve with some greens.

This recipe was inspired by a mashed potatoes soufflé recipe from French magazine ‘Elle à table’. It’s called soufflé because of the puffy texture the purée gets when being baked in oven. Good news is it doesn’t involve any beaten egg white! It’s such an easy recipe, I invite you to try it with any mashed veggies you like.

Preparation time: 10 minutes – Cooking time: 30 minutes – Baking time: 20 to 25 minutes

Ingredients (for 4 servings)

1.1 lbs (500 g) of broccoli
4 big potatoes
1 tablespoon of creme fraiche
1 oz (30 g) of butter
1 pinch of nutmeg
Salt & Pepper

Instructions

1/ Peel, rinse and dry potatoes.

2/ Rinse and dry broccoli.

3/ If you have a a pressure cooker, steam potatoes in it for 10 minutes after water starts boiling. Then, steam broccoli for 5 minutes. If you don’t, get water to a boil in two separate saucepans. Boil potatoes for 30 minutes and broccoli for 10 minutes. In all cases, add some salt.

4/ Preheat oven to 450° F (230° C/Th 8).

5/ Mash potoatoes and broccoli in a food processor. Add creme fraiche, half of the butter. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg.

6/ Grease 4 ramekins with butter or margarine.

7/ Pour broccoli purée into the ramekins. Top with a piece of butter.

8/ Fill half of an ovenproof dish with boiling (or very hot water) and put ramekin on it. Bake in oven for 20 to 25 minutes.

Serve right away.

Making chocolate truffles was a big first for me. It’s so easy, I’ll definitely try this recipe with different fruits… Raspberry is next on my list. The original idea is from Pierre Hermé. But I’m pretty sure my version is quite far from his as I adapted a recipe from the French magazine « Cuisine et vins de France » which had already been adapted from Pierre Hermé’s passion fruit and chocolate truffles! If you want to find out, you can always check out the famous Chef’s chocolate desserts dedicated book (Click here).

Now, I said it was easy but I must admit I had a texture problem on my first attempt. The recipe I originally followed was asking for much more honey and I ended up with a sticky ganache impossible to roll between my hands.
So I melted and added more chocolate to get it a more convincing texture… and it worked

Preparation time: 45 minutes – Cooking time: 5 minutes – Refrigeration time: 3 1/2 hours

Ingredients (for about 40 truffles)

0.6 lbs (300 g) of milk chocolate
1.7 oz (50 g) of dark chocolate
10 passion fruits
1.7 oz (50 g) of butter
2 tablespoons of acacia honey
1.7 oz (50 g) of unsweetened cocoa powder

Instructions

1/ Place a sieve on top of a saucepan. Cut passion fruits in half, take pulp with a teaspoon and pour it into the sieve.

2/ Get the juice to run into the saucepan mashing the pulp and seeds with a wooden spoon. (It may take a little while, but you’ll end up having almost only seeds left in the sieve.)

3/ Add honey to the passion fruit juice and slowly get to a boil stirring continuously.

4/ Break chocolate (milk & dark) in a small salad bowl and pour the hot passion fruit and honey mixture on top of it. Let chocolate melt.

5/ Gently whisk chocolate mixture until it has a smooth texture and a shiny color.

6/ Cut butter into small pieces, add it to the chocolate and let it melt. Once butter is totally melt, whisk gently. (Butter has to be perfectly combined but the less you whisk it the better.)

7/ Let chocolate ganache cool down. When it’s cold, cover with a plastic wrap and leave in the fridge for at least 3 hours.

8/ Sprinkle cocoa powder in a plate.

9/ Take a small amount of chocolate ganache with your fingers and roll it between yours hands into small balls. Roll truffles in the cocoa powder. Cover with a plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before serving.

10/ Right before serving you can roll truffles again in cocoa powder in order to give them a nice look.