Duck Hachis Parmentier

I grew up eating à la cantine in France (ie, at school) and even though I was not a picky eater there were a few things I did not like and that would make me sick even before eating them.  Hachis Parmentier was one of them and it was dramatic (oui, oui, dramatique!!)  for me since it was on the menu at least once a month! Hachis Parmentier, a mix of ground meat (generally leftover) and potatoes puree, is a pillar of French traditional cuisine. Not the cuisine you'll be served in a top restaurant in France, but rather the one that you cook for your family or for a large group of people (like à la cantine).
It took me a long time to be able to eat Hachis Parmentier without gagging (too much school history)... and even longer to cook it myself. I still don't consider it "a real dish" but because it's so easy to make and generally popular among children, I have been cooking it more often. It 's the perfect dish when you ave 10 children age 1-to-12 driving you crazy running around you. I even think that it is a great alternative to the boring traditional pizza that people serve when five children pretend to come and sleep at your place!

The good thing about Hachis Parmentier is that you can make your own version depending on the meat leftover you have. In this case, we had Duck confit one evening and I had leftover so I used duck meat. You can also serve it with or without cheese on top (I prefer cheese) and with additional vegetables if you feel like it. What would prevent you from making it this week? Bon Appétit!

Ingredients (serves 6)
- 1 pound (500 gr) of ground meat, cooked
- 3 shallots, minced
- 1 clove of garlic, minced
- 2 Tb of tomato paste (two small tomatoes, diced)
- Olive oil, salt and black pepper
 - 2 pounds (or about 1kg) of potatoes
- Milk or/and light cream.
- Parmesan cheese

• Pre-heat oven to 360F (180C)
• In a large pan, saute the shallots and garlic in olive oil. 
• Add the meat and tomato paste and cook for 10 minutes under low heat.
• In the meantime, boil the potatoes. Once cooked, drain them.
• Mash the potatoes and add warm milk/cream until you reach desired consistency. Season with salt and pepper
• Place the meat in a large deep dish. Cover with mashed potatoes and cover with ground Parmesan cheese
• Cook in the oven for 20-30 minutes until cheese is fully grilled.

My Personal Comments:

• You could add a carrot or a few dices of celery to the meat for extra flavor/veggies or make a sweet potatoes/carrots puree instead of mashed potatoes.

Veal Roast with Carrots

Tendrons de Veau aux Carottes is one of my husband's favorite entrees. It is a very traditional French recipe along the likes of Boeuf Bourguignon or Pôtée Lorraine.  And like many recipes mu husband likes, they remind him of his summers spent in France with his grand-parents when is grand-mother (and mother) would make traditional dishes for their family.
We would make it often in the US if only we could find the same cut of meat (at an affordable price.) That's another thing we have to adapt to when we travel : the way meat is cut! You would assume that meat would be cut the same way in France, Argentina, Chile, or the US! Et bien non! My husband being a vet by training, I have seen him engage with chefs or butchers around the world trying to find out which cuts of meat they were selling... or if we could find the cut we needed to make this or that particular dish! Sometimes with disappointment (like when we can not find tendrons in the US) or sometimes with great success (when we ate amazingly good and tender large huge pieces of meat in Argentina or Chile.)

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Guacamole

Until I came to California, I think that I had Tex-Mex food only twice in my life. For cultural, geographical and geopolitical reasons, Mexican food (and it's US-adapted Tex-Mex food) did not make it to France the way it made it to the US: pico de gallo salsa does not mean anything to my friends; we don't have fancy-burrito chain and definitively no Taco or Chili chains! The only two things French tend to associate with Mexican food are margaritas and corn chips. But that again is  more the result of the influence of large agro-business companies that have pushed their products on the French market rather than culinary tradition!
Living in the US, I have adapted and adopted Tex-Mex ( I would be ashamed of calling it Mexican) food in my daily cuisine.  I find that corn tortillas are a great variation of my buckwheat galettes; I find that a large bowl of chili (con or sin carne) is a great alternative to lentils; but more frequently, we have corn chips with guacamole.

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Yesterday With My Children We Made....Veal, Cilantro and Ricotta Meatballs

I had meant to make meatballs to my children for a while. Meatballs are not something I cook often. I don't know why because they are really fast to make and always a hit with my children. I wrote the other day that we don't go out a lot. That's true. On the other hand we tend to entertain (recevoir as we say in French) a lot . Or, to be more accurate, I tend to recevoir during the week while my husband is still at work. I have come to have my friends and their children over for a late-afternoon playdates, especially in the Winter when getting together au parc is not an enticing option. Since I feed my children early (because my older one is on her school schedule and requires a lot of sleep), I always offer to feed my friends' children together with mine on a week night. On Fridays, another friend generally comes with her children after school and we only have the goûter together.
When I cook dinner for three or four kids, I try to make something easy that all children would enjoy and that would be different from what my friend's children would eat at home. Juste équilibre but so far so good. It's always a pleasure to see other children eat what I cook for mine.

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