My French Classics section definitely lacked beef Bourguignon. It’s an easy to make recipe although it will require time. If you have a pressure cooker, you’ll be able to reduce the cooking time. If not, there is no way you’re going to get away with it! Only time gives this wine sauce its amazing flavor

The most common side dish to be served with beef Burgundy is steamed potatoes but you can also serve it with rice or pasta.

Preparation time: 15 minutes – Cooking time: 4 h 30 to 5 hours – Marinating time: at least 5 hours

Ingredients (for 4 servings)

2.2 lbs (1 kg) of beef cut into 2 inches pieces (Rump roast, chuck roast, sirloin tip, top or bottom round…)
3.5 oz (100 g) of bacon
1 carrot
2 onions
6 portobello mushrooms
1 garlic clove
1 bouquet garni (2 bay leaves, 5 sprigs of parsley, 4 sprigs of thyme)
3 cups of red wine (Côtes du Rhone, Bourgogne…)
1 cup of beef stock
2 tablespoons of olive oil (click here to buy online)
1 tablespoon of flour
Salt & pepper

Side

2.2 lbs (1 kg) of potatoes
2 springs of parsley
Salt & pepper

Instructions

1/  The night before (or at least 5 hours before preparing it), rinse and chop thyme and parsley. In a large dish, season meat with salt and combine it with the red wine and the bouquet garni. Cover and leave marinade in the fridge.

2/ Peel and slice carrots, mushrooms and onions.

3/ Dice bacon.

4/ Peel and crush garlic clove.

5/ Heat oil in a large casserole or stew pot over high heat. Add beef pieces moving them so all sides get cooked equally. Keep marinade aside.

6/ Add bacon, carrots, onions and mushrooms. Sprinkle ingredients with flour and stir until flour gets a golden color.

7/ Cover with red wine from the marinade and get to a boil stirring continuously.

8/ Add garlic clove, bouquet garni, beef stock, salt and pepper. Cover and leave over low heat for at least 4 h 30. (Try checking on it and stirring  every 30 to 40 minutes so ingredients don’t stick to the bottom of the stew pot. If your sauce keeps being too liquid, uncover for a while. If it’s not enough, you can still sprinkle a little more flour. Meat is ready when soft.)

9/ 40 minutes before serving, peel and steam side potatoes.

10/ Rinse and chop parsley.

11/ Serve beef Bourguignon with potatoes seasoned with parsley, salt and pepper.

Seafood and fish have always been of my favorite dishes. I’ve grown up close to the sea and, as a result, my mom did cook it pretty often. It never came to my mind the whole eating fish habit could come to an end. Then widely consumed fishes species started collapsing like Canadian cod back in the 90s.

A very frightening documentary called « Global sushi : demain nos enfants mangeront des méduses »  (Global sushi: tomorrow our kids will be eating jellyfishes) was aired the other day on TV here. I can’t stop thinking about it since I saw it. Some scientists were explaining that we now know it’s impossible to reverse the effects of overfishing;  fishing prohibition usually comes when a species has reached a very critic level and these fishes populations never get to grow again, even after decades.

Fish farming doesn’t seem to be a solution either given that we still need to feed these fishes with smaller ones. Count something like 10 lbs of small wild fish to get 1 lb of salmon…

It got back to being a hot topic because of the actual concern for tuna, especially bigeye and yellowfin  which should be extincted over the next 3 to 5 years if we don’t do anything about it being overfished.

Think about it. We, occidental consumers, have been eating it all our lives. And, let’s face it, we’ve been eating most of the fish predators like swordfish, cod, skate and tuna. Now that huge populations in the world are in the process of accessing the western way of consumption, this will not get any better… Less and less predators in the sea, more and more smaller plankton-feeding fishes. If nothing changes, jellyfishes could replace the ones we eat in our seas during this century, Greenpeace says.

I had already stopped eating tuna sushis but I’m definitely going to cut down my fish consumption and get more information on the one I actually buy. As for scallops, you shouldn’t buy any from New Zealand as they’re endangered in that region. They’re now being farmed in most places and, as they eat plankton, it seems sustainable.

Here is a recipe I adapted from French magazine « Elle à Table » (last December issue). I used fresh scallops already opened and cleaned but if you buy them with shell, click here for explanation on how to clean them.

Preparation time: 5 minutes – Baking time: 8 minutes

Ingredients (for 6 servings)

12 big fresh scallops (18 if they’re small)
4 thin slices of Parma ham
1 garlic clove
3 tablespoons of dried breadcrumbs
2 tablespoons of parsley
2 tablespoons of olive oil
Pepper

Instructions

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

2/ Mix breadcrumbs, Parma ham, garlic, parsley and 1 teaspoon of olive oil in a food processor.

3/ Fold a piece of kitchen paper, pour 1 teaspoon of olive oil on it and use it to grease an oven rack.

4/ Place scallops on the greased rack and top them with Parma ham mix.

5/ Pour a dash of olive oil on top and bake in oven for 8 minutes.

Serve as a starter with a few leaves of lamb’s lettuce or rocket if you like.

This is a special recipe for me, one of my top 5 favorite. Again, nothing very recommended for a strict diet but believe me duck parmentier is succulent

It’s a French classic, the classy version of ‘Hachis Parmentier’ (Shepherd’s pie). The original recipe doesn’t use Comté cheese, you can replace it by parmesan cheese or simply skip the cheese part.

Preparation time: 15 minutes – Cooking time: 30 minutes – Grill : 10 minutes

Ingredients (for 4 servings)

2 legs of duck confit (Click here to buy online)
1.6 lbs (750 g) of potatoes
1.4 oz (40 g) of Comté cheese (Click here to buy online)
3 tablespoons of crème fraiche
2 tablespoons of parsley
1/2 tablespoon of butter
1 pinch of nutmeg
Salt & pepper

Instructions

1/ Peel potatoes and cut them into 2 or 4 pieces depending on their size (bigger pieces will need more time to be done).

2/ Boil potatoes into salted water for 30 minutes (they’ll be easier to mash if overcooked). Drain water and let them chill.

3/ Meanwhile,  take duck legs off their fat and separate meat from bones and skin.

4/ Rinse and dry parsley. Chop it.

5/ Heat a pan over medium-low heat, fry duck meat  with a little bit of duck fat from the can. Add parsley and leave for 10 minutes stirring often.

6/ Mash potatoes (you can use a a food mill or potato ricer, if you don’t have any use a potato masher or heavy fork.) Pour mashed potatoes into a pan heated over low heat. Add butter, cream, nutmeg, salt and pepper. Stir well.

7/ You can use either an ovenproof dish or individual round pastry cutters. Whatever you’re using grease it with a little bit of butter and add a layer of duck topped with a layer of mashed potatoes.

8/ Grate Comté cheese and sprinkle on top of duck parmentier.

9/ Heat oven on grill position and bake for 10 minutes or until cheese has a golden color.

10/ Serve right away with a salad. (If you used individual round pastry cutters, separate melted cheese with a knife and carefully take cutter out.)

Here is a recipe for the last fish stock I made using sea bass. The ingredients I used are the ones I had on hand; keep in mind you can add any herb or flavorful vegetable to a stock. In this recipe, I used fennel trimmings because my fish stock was made to be used in a fennel puree but I could have used celery instead for example. Sometimes I even add it a glass of dry white wine, it gives it a great taste

Once you’re done, there are plenty of uses for your homemade fish stock. You can use it to cook pasta or rice (when making a seafood risotto for example). It’s also a great base for making a flavorful sauce for a fish or seafood. Don’t be shy, experiment with it

Preparation time: 5 minutes  – Cooking time: 30- 35 minutes

Ingredients (for 12 cups of stock)

1.1 lbs (500 g) of fish heads, bones and fins
16 cups (4 l) of water
1 thyme branch (or 3 tablespoons of dry thyme)
3 tablespoons of tarragon
2 tablespoons of parsley
2 tablespoons trimmings from a fennel bulb
2 tablespoons of chervil
1 bay leaf
2 shallots
1 carrot

Instructions

1/ Rinse fish pieces and dip them in 3 cups of salted water so all the remaining blood gets out.

2/ Peel shallots and carrot. Cut them by half.

3/ Fill a casserole with 13 cups of water. Add all herbs, fennel trimmings, shallots and carrot and get to a boil.

4/ When water is boiling, add fish pieces and reduce heat. Leave covered for 20 to 25 minutes.

5/ Take fish, carrot and shallots out and filter passing your stock through a strainer.

That’s it! Let it cool down and  freeze or refrigerate (if you’re going to use within a few days).

My twitter followers might have been aware my Internet connection has been down for the last month and a half… Well, I’m back! And since we’ve been spending vacation in Andalusia with my Spanish family-in-law, I came back with a bunch of Spanish recipes in stock

Let’s start with this very easy to make garlic and parsley calamari recipe. If you have a great olive oil at home, use it. The better your olive oil tastes, the better this baby squid recipe will come out…

Preparation time: 5 mn – Cooking time: 15 mn

Ingredients (for 2 servings)

1.1 lbs (500 g) of baby squid (fresh or frozen)
3 garlic cloves
3 tablespoons of olive oil (click here to buy online)
3 tablespoons of parsley
Salt & pepper

Instructions

1/ Clean baby squid or defrost them if you’re using frozen ones.

2/ Peel garlic cloves. Clean and chop parsley.

3/ Heat a frying pan over medium heat. Pour olive oil and add garlic.

4/ Move garlic around the pan so the oil gets garlic flavor.

5/ Pour baby squid into the pan.

6/ After 10 minutes, add parsley, salt and pepper to the calamari and cook them for 5 more minutes or until they’re firm.

7/ When they’re done, serve baby squid leaving the garlic cloves and all the oil you can in the pan.

You can serve these garlic and parsley baby squid alone, as a starter or with wild rice as a main dish.