Our Favourite French Recipes
(vero;2023-July-22)
You'll find below some of our standard recipes, often cooked and well proven.
| Gougères | Tapenade | Daube à la Provençale | Galette des Rois | Chandeleur Crêpes |
Gougères (Vero)
Preparation: 30 minutes - Cooking time: 45 minutes
Ingredients:
- 75 g butter or margarine
- One and 1/2 glasses water and one and 1/2 glasses raising flour
- Three eggs, half a teaspoon of salt
- 150g grated Emmenthal cheese (I use 75g melted Stilton and 75g Emmenthal or reduced-fat Cheddar). Important, if you use something other than full Emmenthal (I find it's not spicy enough), make sure that the substitute cheese is not too fat - hence the reduced fat cheddar, otherwise the gougères will run.
Preparation: 
- In a saucepan, heat the water, salt, and butter until the butter is melted.
- Take the saucepan off the heat and put all the flour in at once.
- Put the pan back on the stove and mix the dough with a wooden spoon and stir the dough vigorously
- When the dough is so dry that it separates from the walls of the pan, remove the pan from the stove.
- Break in the eggs one by one and stir them in. Mix well
- Stir in the cheese
- Preheat oven.
- With the help of two coffee spoons, make small mounds.
Bake the gougères in the oven for 20 minutes at 200°C and for another 25 minutes at reduced heat. Serve warm.
Tapenade (Thomas)
An easy recipe from southern France for a tasty dip. We sometimes have it with crackers or biscuits with our Sunday evening bottle of bubbly… or even spread on bread or toast (not unlike Marmite) during the week.
- 100 gr anchovy filets
- 100 gr tuna fish (flakes are fine though I normally use chunks)
- 200 gr black olives (weight without stones)
- 200 gr capers
- 1 cup of olive oil
- 1 or 2 teaspoons of strong mustard
- pepper to taste (best is freshly ground black pepper)
- The original recipe also calls for a cup of cognac but I skip that. (And no, I don't drink it instead:-). I prefer Single Malts anyway.)
Put the ingredients into a blender and work them until you get a homogenous, dark-brown paste; the olive oil perhaps last so that the whole doesn't turn too liquid. Normally there's no need to add salt as the anchovies and the capers are salty enough on their own. (In fact, people who don't like it too salty should perhaps give the capers a quick wash in warm water before throwing them into the blender.)
The recipe comes from a French book about Provençal cooking (“Le Reboul”) which was first published in 1897. There are many more nice ideas in this book; I am sure this won't be the last recipe I will put here
Daube à la Provençale (Thomas)
Given the short list of ingredients and the small amount of work needed to prepare this dish it tastes just phenomenal. Even (or especially) if you think that French cooking is difficult… give this one a try. Daube (pronounced dob, with a loooong o) is one of our favourites. I normally take the necessary ingredients for four people, so that we can have one immediately and another one in the fridge or freezer, for next week or so. But it is entirely feasible to do this for just two people.
Here is the recipe (for a party of four):
- 1.2 kg of beef (braising or stewing meat is fine; in fact, this works better than steak because it won't dry out)
- 300 gr of smoked bacon, preferably with some fat on it (what the French call “poitrine fumée”)
- two onions
- garlic to taste
- a few spoons of olive oil
- one bottle of red wine (as the red forms the basis of this dish use a stronger grape, like a Cabernet)
- four or five cloves
- two or three bay leaves
- salt and pepper to taste
Clean the beef and cut it into portions of about the size of a small child's fist, but not too small. Chop one onion, not too finely, and cut the bacon into small pieces. Put the onion and the bacon together with the olive oil into a pot big enough also for taking the beef and the wine (preferably an iron pot that can hold the heat) and heat for a short while, steadily stirring the mixture with a wooden spoon. Once the onions begin to turn golden, put the beef portions into the pot and fry them for another minute or so. Keep stirring.
Pour the wine slowly over the meat (if you'd rather drink it at that point, don't: the recipe is really worth it). If the beef is not covered well, add a little more wine or water until it is (more or less, half a centimetre or so is fine). Add the cloves, the bay leaves and one or two cloves of roughly chopped garlic. Put a lid on the pot and let the whole thing simmer, slowly, very slowly, for about four hours. Check occasionally that the level of liquid doesn't fall too much and replace with some water if it does.
After four hours (or a little sooner, in case the nice smell becomes unbearable for your hungry stomach:-)) finely chop the second onion, a little more garlic (to taste) and put that into the mixture. Add salt and pepper and let the mixture simmer for another few minutes. Serve with small, freshly boiled potatoes or mash (delicious, the mixture of the sauce with the potatoes…) or pasta: the bigger curly noodles are not bad for this.
Galette des Rois (Vero)
This traditional French pastry used to be eaten on the day of Epiphany, January 6th, but can be found in bakeries from right after Xmas until the end of January. It is central to the fête des rois, a popular festivity, remnant of the Saturnales, the celebration of the winter solstice, and has survived until today.
The special thing about the galette is that whoever bakes it has to hide a charm in the dough. This charm used to be a real broad bean, but has nowadays been replaced by a tiny porcelain figure. Tradition has is that the galette is cut into as many portions as there are guests plus one. A child, often hidden under the table, calls out the name of the guest who gets the next piece, the first part (the one of God) being set aside for the first poor who would come and claim it (the so-called part du pauvre).
The person who receives the piece with the charm becomes king (or queen) for the day, gets a paper crown, and choses his own queen (or king), sealing his choice with a kiss. Of course, plenty of toasts are drunk in honour of the new king. It is then his turn to buy the next galette and so on. It once happened that a friend of Vero's, while celebrating the fête des rois at work, received the piece with the charm. She realised, with a sinking feeling of fright, that the only man attending the little party was her boss, so she preferred to swallow the charm rather than to make him her king for the day…
One can easily imagine the excesses of such a day in the past! Today, however, the fête des rois has become a rather tame family or social event [hm… at least those we've attended so far, adds a mischievous Thomas]. Shall we go to work?
Here are the ingredients:
- 400 g puff pastry
- 125 g butter
- 125 g sugar
- four eggs
- 125 g almond powder
- 25 g corn flour
- a few drops vanilla extract
- two cl rum
- icing sugar
For the filling, mix the butter with the sugar until the mixture turns white. Add three eggs one by one, then the almond powder, the corn flour, rum and vanilla.
Roll the pastry and create two discs of about 40cm size each. Pick them with a fork.
Put the almond filling on the bottom disc (not forgetting to hide the charm, the nearer to the rim the better), cover with the second disc, seal the edges and brush the surface with egg yolk, draw some decorative lines with a knife. Let the galette rest for about 20 minutes at a cool place.
Bake the galette at 220°C, during 35 minutes. Powder with some icing sugar five minutes before the end of the cooking time. Serve warm with a dry white wine.
Chandeleur Crêpes (Vero)
The “Chandeleur” is a French festival of Catholic origin that's celebrated each February 2nd (US-Americans and Canadians will recognise this date as Groundhog day… and there are indeed connections between the two.) Chandeleur commemorates the day when Baby Jesus was presented in the temple, 40 days after his birth. It also celebrates the purification of his mother, Mary. When Joseph and Mary arrived at the temple, Saint Simeon is said to have welcomed them by proclaiming that the baby was the “Light of the World”. The name, Chandeleur, comes from the Latin “candelorum festum” which means festival of candles (hence it's also called Candlemas). Since the 7th century the day has been celebrated by a procession of the faithful holding lit tapers. The candles are blessed and lit at the church and the participants carry the candle home without the flame dying. This will assure a rich harvest and prosperity for the rest of the year.
It is also the custom to prepare and eat crêpes [exactly: eat something… finally we arrive at what is really dear to the French soul — Thomas] at the Chandeleur and all through the Mardi Gras (Shrove Tuesday) season. Why this particular day? It's all shrouded in mystery but many sources mention Pope Gelasius I who helped establish Chandeleur and whose custom it was to feed crêpes to the pilgrims who visited his church. The form and colour of the crêpes also calls to mind the sun which is returning after its winter sleep.
But it's not enough to just munch the crêpes, there are a few things you have to do as well:
- While preparing the first crêpe, hold a gold coin in one hand and with the other, flip the crêpe… and catch it with the pan. If successful, you are assured to have money, health and luck during the next year!
- Another tradition was to flip the crêpe and have it land on the top of a cupboard. If it stuck there, you would leave it until the next Chandeleur, this would ensure a good harvest for the coming year. Don't ask me why but people nowadays tend to skip this one… [if you do it, though, we would very much appreciate a photo — Thomas].
So here you go (for 12 to 15 crêpes):
- 250 gr flour
- 0.5 l of milk (or, for “lighter” crêpes, 0.25 l of milk and water respectively)
- two eggs
- a soup spoon of sugar (or, even better, what the French call sucre vanillé: sugar mixed with vanilla extract)
- a pinch of salt
- a tea spoon of cooking oil
- flavouring: rum, vanilla, lemon, orange, etc.
Pour the flour in a bowl, break the eggs and mix énergiquement. Gradually add the milk, then sugar, salt, oil and flavouring. Mix the whole until it forms a somewhat liquid and smooth dough (the smoothness is very important: no lumps).
Let the dough rest for at least one hour.
Grease a small pan (~22 cm) and heat to a very high temperature. Pour half a ladle of dough and fry for three minutes. Flip the crêpe when it detaches from the bottom.
Eat the crêpes with jam, maple syrup, Nutella, sugar, crème de marron… in short everything that will wreck your diet.
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$updated from: Background.htxt Mon 04 Mar 2024 16:04:48 trvl2 (By Vero and Thomas Lauer)$