France

Vive La France

 

And up next, we go to France.

 

To help me get inspired (and the required items) I went to the local "French style" farmers market at La Cigale. This is a market every Saturday and Sunday outside the La Cigale restaurant in Parnell, Auckland which has fresh seasonal produce and other yummy things (think paella, fresh bread, crepes, etc..!). Information on the market can be found at : http://www.lacigale.co.nz/french-market/

Again, I've run into problems of sourcing ingredients. This time it was chicory. Which for a "chicory and walnut salad" it's a bit hard to substitute the main ingredient. I tried asking with it's more common name "endive" but again no luck. While rocket (aka argula) fits the "bitter lettuce" bill, it didn't seem quite right and so I've left this dish off the menu this week. Seems I'm going to have to do a re-visit to France if I ever manage to find some!

Mushrooms & Béchamel in puff pastry

The market was a great place to pick up fresh ingredients. I used a nice mix of mushrooms (including portabellos) and picked up beautiful vine ripened tomatoes to use.

 

 

I roasted the tomatoes with a nice amount of EVOO and fresh ground salt and pepper. My mom recently gave me some flavoured olive oils and the basil infused oil would have been a great addition here.



The element I was most excited to learn here though was the béchamel sauce. Considered by many one of the key sauces to have under your belt, I have never made one. Lasagna? Nope, instead of the traditional béchamel I use ricotta cheese as a healthier ingredient. And you can see why with the amounts of butter and milk. No way this one could be decently veganised.

 

Doesn't this look good? So I won't lie. I cheated here and used store bought puff pastry. This was delicious meal and would made a great lunch. I would pair it with a fresh white wine (maybe a nice sauv blanc or pinot gris) and in the oh-so-French way, with a cheese plate for dessert.

Tofu with mustard sauce

I used pre-fried/packaged tofu here so that all that was required was re-frying it.

The mustard sauce was so simple and (again) went for a non-vegan option using real sour cream in the recipe. This will be a new favourite sauce of mine and can so easily be whipped up to serve overtop a dish (I could see this on top of chicken if you didn't want to go down a veggie route).

Chives were fresh picked from my garden. Garlic chives would work great on top of this as would parsley as an alternative.



Tarte aux pommes

I redeemed myself from my earlier store bought pastry efforts and made my own for the tarte as per the recipe. Someone shared with me the tip of rolling out dough between 2 pieces of baking paper and I haven't looked back. It makes rolling so much easier (no sticky bits sticking to the rolling pin) and allows for you to easily drape the dough into the pan.

 

I ended up slightly baking this blind as I was concerned that it wasn't going to stay down and again, un-veganised it by using real milk/cream.

 

It looked amazing in the pan.

 

 

I found the cream filling not quite as set as I had hoped for in the final product. I expected it to have the consistency of the vanilla/custard filling in a vanilla or custard slice, but this seemed a bit more runny. Not so runny that it went to bits when you cut into it, definitely drooped a bit as opposed to holding firm. Next time I might see about mixing in some agar agar as a substitute for gelatin.