Yesterday With My Children We Made - Wild Berries Cupcakes - Gluten Free

In my quest to bake easy (and somewhat healthy) petits gâteaux for my family (especially for my children 4pm goûter), I have been baking a lot lately. Nobody complained about it ... EVEN when the petits gâteaux are gluten-free! Un miracle! We are fortunate enough not to have food allergies in our family. Baking gluten-free is therefore more of a way to bake something different for me than a necessity. It keeps things different, ie interesting, for me. And that's important because since I am not keen on sweets, I could well live without baking any petits gâteaux. The reason why I do it in the evening is to avoid having my children eat the same store-bought petits gâteaux over and over again. Now, I bake one or twice a week and rely on store-bought petits gâteaux the rest of the time. It's healthier. It's also cheaper... and it gives me an opportunity to bake with up-until-now unknown ingredients (sorghum flour anyone?)
My children can't tell the difference between with gluten and gluten-free petits gâteaux yet, even when I have them bake with me and therefore exposed to different flours,... they are more interested in what's in the petits gâteaux (wild berries and chocolate chips are big hits), than what it tastes like. My husband, on the other hand, is the one who always complained about the texture of gluten-free petits gâteaux, especially if they are not sweet enough to his tastebuds. But since I tend to feel that his tastebuds have been polluted by too much sugar, I am not paying attention anymore. I just keep baking. If he is hungry for dessert or petits gâteaux, he'll eat them. I know. Same with my children who open the sac du goûter after school and can be disappointed with what they are offered. 99% of the time, they eat what's given to them because they are hungry after school. That said, I do try to make good cookies so as to have a few recipes I could just make over-and-over again, with limited adjustments in the filling for instance. This would save me time and make everybody happy. With no complaints, even if the cookies are gluten-free. That's good! Bon appetit!

Ingredients
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup (250ml)  buttermilk (or plain yogurt)
- 1/2 cup (125ml) neutral oil
- 1 lemon (juice + zest)
- 1/2 cup millet flour
- 1 cup coconut flour
- 1/2 cup brown rice flour
- 2 ts baking powder
- pinch of salt
- frozen berries (a few per cupcakes)

• Preheat oven to 350F (175C)
• In a bowl, cream the egg and sugar together until light and fluffy
• Add the buttermilk, oil, lemon zest and juice
• In another bowl, mix dry ingredients together
• Mix in the dry ingredients into the wet and mix a few strokes.
• Pour into molds, add a few berries per cupcakes, and bake in the oven for 25-30 mn or until a knife comes clean.

My Personal Comments:

• You could make them with AP flour if you did not have the gluten free flours available. 

• I used frozen wild berries but fresh would be ideal 

White Beans and Sausage Stew

Patrimoine génétique... I am not talking (again) about GMOs (but yes, try to avoid them as much as possible!!)... but about the inherited diseases that we might face one day for just being the children of our parents'. I never realized how important it is until we started talking about cholesterol in my family (they speak arthritis in my husband's!!). I won't go into much details but having had a blood work done recently, I had the unpleasant surprise to discover that I, too, have a cholesterol problem, albeit minor at this stage.

But I am not even 40! And I eat quite a healthy diet, exercise, don't smoke, drink a glass of red wine  (or Pisco) here and there, and I am definitively not overweight!! Quite unfair, I want to say! Fair or not fair, that's what genetics is about...and we have to accept it...

So what do I do to avoid having to take medication? The only adjustments I could make are eating less cheese (but considering the price of good cheese here, it's not like we eat triple-cream cheese every day!!), banning red meat while increasing fish such as maquerel, salmon and other omega-3-loaded fish, and reducing the amount of butter and eggs I use when I bake. Quite a challenge, especially when it comes to baking! That said, I feel that, as for anything else, I'll just make compromises: eating a very low-cholesterol diet to be able to have a nice piece of cheese once-in-a-long-while. Voila!

The other thing that I worry is how much will my children inherit: between le cholesterol de maman (dad's needs to be checked btw because he claims that he does not have any but I yet have to see the results!!) and l'arthrose de papa, I just hope that genes dilution won't make our children suffer from any of it. Time will tell...

In the short term, this is one of the few recipes I'll stop eating for a while (or at all), well at least with the sausage option.  This is nothing like a French cassoulet but since we don't have the right beans nor the right meat to make a real cassoulet in Philadelphia, this is a nice proxy. Which makes me think that I won't be eating the canned cassoulet we brought back from France last Summer. Anybody wants to come for dinner? Bon Appétit!

Ingredients
- Great Northern White Beans (preferably dry&soaked but canned will do to)

- 1 small onion, minced

- 2 garlic cloves, minced

- a few carrots, cut into small pieces.

- Fresh thyme

- Cumin seeds (1/4 ts, more if you like it a lot)

- Kielbasa sausage (enough to feed your family; more if you want leftovers)

• In a thick-bottom pot (like a cast-iron), saute the onion and the garlic in olive oil.
• Add the cumin seeds , the carrots and coat with olive oil
• Add thyme.
• If you are using canned beans, pour the beans into the pot, add the sausage and cook at low temperature for 15-20 minutes (you only want the carrots to be cooked)
• If you are using pre-soaked beans, you will want to cover the beans with water, add the sausage and cook at low temperature for about 1h30 (or until the beans are tendered). 

My Personal Comments

• You could add a few pieces of bacon or ham or even pork butt into the dish for extra cholesterol flavor!
• Don't hesitate to make more because it makes great leftover!

Food Inc. ... What do we do now?

I recently watched Food Inc (merci Netflix!!) , the documentary made by Robert Kenner...and while I had watched other documentaties along the same lines (Supersize Me or Fast Food Nation), and while I am aware of the power of large agro-business and distributors companies in this country, I have to say that it made me think even more on how to best feed my family.
My conclusion is that it's a "quadrature du cercle" unless you are either wealthy enough (but we are talking REALLY wealthy) to be able to eat LOCAL ORGANIC food ALL YEAR ROUND... ! Since I can't, what do we do?

As I like to tell my daughter when she has a hard time making a decision as to whether she wants honey or jam on her tartine (and boy, that drives me crazy!!) , we process by elimination...
First, we eliminate processed food as much as possible, especially GMO products. In our family, the only processed food we eat these days are frozen dumplings, fresh cut ham, yogurts, apple sauce pouches, a few cookies, jam, and a few sauces (chutney, BBQ sauce, tomato sauce, etc.). I have started to use dry beans more (I buy them in bulk) instead of the canned ones. I find that once you have cooked dry beans, you can freeze them. This saves me time and enables me to have some "on hand". Besides, it's cheaper by the pound and has less sodium...
Then we try to go for organic when "affordable"; it is my experience that sometimes organic produces and products are not THAT much more expensive that conventional ones. Forget organic raspberries in the middle of winter... but for instance organic pears (on sale) this morning at Wholefoods were not more expensive than conventional ones at the Reading Terminal Market where we also shop.  And when there is a bargain on some organic products, especially the ones we eat a lot, I stock. This comparaison-shopping requires time though...
The hard question to answer is:  is it better to purchase organic pears that come from Argentina or conventional ones that come from California?  If prices are equivalent, no matter the carbon foot-print, I purchase the organic ones. Why? Because the lack of pesticides in organic products is not only better for me and the environment, it's also better for the people who work in the fields... and that's worth it!
When it comes to meat and fish, I purchase less so that we can afford the better quality products (organic or grass-fed or free-range.)  It has worked fine with us for the last few months...Even my meat-eater husband feels OK with our semi-vegetarian diet (he just does not want to say that he feels better!!)
When organic products are just not within the reach of my wallet, I try to buy "local".
And if none of the above options are available, I either go for frozen products or I make exceptions. And  I do make a lot of exceptions. I figure that if 50% of the time, I am able to purchase either organic or local foods, then it's OK for me to purchase conventional products, even if they come from the other side of the world. And I think that even if it were 10% of the time, it would still matter. No need (who can afford it in the first place) to be radical... just a few changes will do everybody good! Especially in the longer term.. and that's what matters to me... being able to raise healthy kids and leaving them with a better place...
What's for dinner tonight? A salade composée made with (conventional, from California) wild rice, organic fennel, (conventional, from Florida) cherry tomatoes, fresh organic dill, and toasted (conventional, from California) almonds.  Bon Appétit!

Tarte Tatin

Voila one of the most famous French desserts : more famous than the Mousse au Chocolat but maybe tied with the Crème Brûlée, at least in the US. La Tarte Tatin happens to be one of my husband's favorite desserts... but unfortunately, as he would claim, we I don't make it often. I don't really know why because it's not that difficult. Sure, it's a little bit time-consuming and can't really baked in advance (or at least, I don't dare to do it)... but the rest is just dough + caramelized apples... so nothing fancy there. Trust me! AND please, no-store-bought crust for this dessert. You might have saved time but you would have spoilt the dessert....(don't tell me I did not warn you!).

I made this Tarte Tatin for a dinner we hosted a few weeks ago. Since there were only 3 of us eating that evening, there was Tarte Tatin left on the kitchen counter. On Sunday morning, our son came to our bedroom and one of the first things he asked was " c'est quoi ce qui est sur la table de la cuisine?"I had forgotten about the Tarte Tatin. I thought he meant his "pâte à sel" objects  (sort of playdough made of salt and flour) that needed to be baked to solidify before being painted. So I told him that he had to wait because it was not cooked. He insisted, talking about the other plate... but since it was too early and I had no idea of what he was talking about, I asked him to wait until I got ready for breakfast...  I should have known my son better (he is his dad's mignature in a way): he is very fast when it comes to spotting something sweet that can be eaten!!! 

So, Tarte Tatin for breakfast? Mais oui...I could not say no, n'est-ce-pas? And you can be sure that the Tarte Tatin did not survive past breakfast! I guess that la Tarte Tatin might now be my son's favorite desserts as well... (my daughter liked it as well to tell you the truth but she did not spend 5 minutes at 7.30am (that's early for a Sunday morning, no?) trying to make me explain "what was on the table.") Bon Appétit!

Ingredients:
For the crust:
- 1 stick plus two tablespoons cold salted butter (5 ounces), cut into small cubes and chilled in freezer
- 1 1/2 cup flour
- A pinch of salt- 3 to 6 tablespoons iced water

For the filling:

- 7 medium apples (firm apples and flavorful). Purchase more than you would need because they tend to "shrink while cooking.
- 1 stick (4 ounces or 110gr ) salted butter
 - 1 cup sugar

• Prepare the dough:
• Put the flour in a bowl and make a well ; add the butter and mix in so that you reach pea-size pieces.
• Add the water, one teaspoon at a time. 
• Don't overwork the dough, especially with your warm hands. Wrap in plastic film and cool it in the freezer for one hour or more.
• Prepare the filling:
• In a pan/dish that can go in the oven, put the sugar and butter (in pieces).
• Once melted, add the apple pieces. Make sure to add more because they will shrink. It does not matter at this stage if some pieces are on top of each other.
• Cook over medium-heat for 20mn until the sugar turns to caramel. 
• Pre-heat oven to 375F
• Take the dough from the fridge and roll it (over flour-covered surface) into a disc that will be bigger than your pan/dish.
• When you are ready to bake the tarte, lay the dough over the apples and place in the oven.
• Cook for about 25-30ms.
• Flip over a serving dish with caution.
• Serve while still warm.

My Personal Comments:

• Make sure to purchase firm apples.
• Some people add one tablespoon of sugar in the dough; I don't because the caramel is so sweet that you don't need extra sugar.
• You could make the dough in a food processor but you want to make sure that the blade/bowl are cold when you make it.

Little Pumpkin Spices Tea Cakes

Kids love routine. Pediatricians told me that many times... but somehow, I also discovered the hard way when agreeing to listen for the same CD over-and-over again on the same day... At first, I found it funny and cute but when I caught myself being able to hum the next song on that (and all the other CDs), I just realized that too much of the same thing, not matter how comforting, can't be that good. Except for two routines I really strongly believe in: bedtime and meal routines. The rest, I feel that it's actually a great idea to prepare children for change.  I have met SO many adults who can't deal with change that I want my children to be to handle change well. At their level, that is. Evidemment.

Despite my belief in mealtime routine, I decided to start making a change in the goûter routine (4pm snack), no matter hard it's going to be. You see my children love their goûter (and I love mine too!) However, I feel that, and as I already wrote, I now have a Pavlov son who has the hard time when the sac du goûter is not brought to school (either because I baked something that could not be transported, or we bought some pains au chocolat from the school to support the parents association or because my husband forgot to take the sac du goûter in the morning!! (Oops! BIG MISTAKE!!).

Since my children ride the public (not yellow) bus with their babysitter on most days, the goûter has to be easy to carry, not too messy, and let's face it, easy to prepare.  Hence, my favorite choices these days: a pouch of apple sauce with a few store-bought cookies. The weather was cold enough that chocolate-covered cookies could survive a whole day in school, so my children did get a lot of those over the past few months.  To the point that, in addition to the sac du goûter, they had come to expect chocolate-covered cookies. The minute I was sending them with something else, they came back asking me  "maman, pourquoi on n'a pas eu de gâteaux au chocolat pour le goûter?" That's when I realized that their goûter routine had to change. I'll keep the same bag (that's the easy part as long as my husband does not forget it)... but I'll change the content, especially if Spring settles in sooner than later! I'll use the weather as the perfect logical explanation (yeah, right!)... I know that they'll rebel a little bit at first but if I can find good alternative options, I'm sure I'll make their goûter more interesting. One of my trump cards (for the "starchy-sweet" part) are these kind of little tea cakes. They are so easy to make that I actually wonder why I have not baked more (well, working full time sounds enough of reason, non?).  I used Pumpkin spices because that's what I discovered in my cupboard (leftover from past Halloween), but you could really work out any kind of options. I'll add chocolate chips one day together with vanilla extract instead of the spices; that might keep my little rebellion at bay! Bon Appetit!

Ingredients:

- 1 1/4 cup flour

- 100 gr (3.5 oz) sugar

- 1 1/2 ts Pumpkin Spices

- pinch of salt

- 1 ts baking powder

- 85 ml 2.87 Fl oz) milk

- 85 ml (2.87 Fl oz) cream

- 80 ml (2.7 Fl oz) vegetable oil

- 1 egg lightly beaten

• Preheat ovent to 350F
• Butter cake molds and set aside
• In a bowl, mix in all the dry ingredients together.
• In another bowl, combine the egg, milk, cream and vegetable oil.
• Pour the liquids onto the dry ingredients and mix well.
• Pour the batter onto the molds about 2/3rd full.
• Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes or until a knife comes out clean.

My Personal Comments:

• You could use different spices (cinnamon, cardamon), add pieces of fruits (apples, pear, etc.) or even make it gluten-free...  

Carrots - Sweet Potatoes Soup Thai Style

"Hmm, elle est super bonne ta soupe maman" did I get as a compliment when I served this Thai-style carrots and sweet potatoes soup a few weeks ago (honnest, that's what they said!). From both my children! I was surprised because I did not expect them to like it as much (it has fresh ginger after all).. How wrong was I! It has become my daughter's favorite soup. And mine as well these days...(just had some for lunch today actually!)
The first comment my children made was that this soup tasted like their favorite mussels recipe, "tu sais la bonne recette, pas celle que j'aime pas" (meaning "the good one, not the one I don't like") and of course I knew which recipe she liked better than the other when it comes to mussels : just timing how much time it takes them to finish their plate is generally a good indication of a pass/fail test!)
All in all, what they really like is the combinaison of lemongrass and coconut milk...so I might try to cook different recipes with this combo so as to introduce new dishes to them.
This recipe from Mark Bittman is rich : so make sure you don't serve two full bowls of it before a main dish. If it's going to be an appetizer, a small bowl will be enough (well, not enough because you might enjoy it so much that everybody will want a second serving!) At home, I generally serve it "as a main dish" together with bread and a salad or I make sure that my children have a piece of fresh fruit for dessert.
Simple. Easy and "super bonne"! Coming from a 5 1/2 and a 3 year-old, it's worth giving it a try, non? Bon Appetit!

Ingredients:
- 3 stalks Lemongrass

- 10 nickel-size fresh ginger pieces (about 2cm)

- 2 cloves garlic, peeled

- about 1 pound of carrot & sweet potatoes, cut in cubes.

- 1/4 ts Cayenne pepper (more to taste)

- 1 quart Coconut milk (about 2 cans)

- 1/4 cup fresh Cilantro (cut but keep the stems)

- Neutral Oil (grapeseed or corn) or Coconut oil salt.

• Grate about 1/2 inch of each lemongrass stalk and cut the rest of in 1-in pieces.
• Heat the oil in a saucepan and add the lemongrass, the ginger and garlic and cooke, stirring until the garlic is golden (about 5min)
• Add the carrots/sweet potatoes, the Cayenne pepper. Stir to coat with oil and cook for about a minute.
• Add the coconut milk, 2 cups of water, and the stems of Cilantro. 
• Bring to a boil and then lower the temperature. Let is simmer for about 15 minutes or until the carrots/sweet potatoes are cooked.
• Take the Cilantro stems out and puree the soup.
• Adjust seasoning. 
• Serve with  fresh cilantro and lime wedges.

 
My Personal Comments: 

• I tend to keep the cilantro stems in the soup and puree them together with the rest.
• Use good quality  coconut milk and not the non-fat version!
• Since I bought coconut oil, I use it in this soup as well.
• I just eat this soup with a piece of bread for lunch or dinner!

Homemade Nutella - Hazelnuts Chocolate Spread

Tuesday is Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday). In France this is the day when children dress up in school, have a little parade and then eat crêpes. Since our children go to a French International school, they get to celebreate both Halloween and Mardi Gras. However, they won't dress up in their Halloween-like costumes on Tuesday. Instead, they (at least in the pre-school) have created funny hats and maracas to have a little parade within the school. The other major difference is that parents are not invited on Tuesday!! The only thing we are asked to do is to bring crêpes or/and filling for the crêpes. 
My husband and I will be making crêpes for our daughter's class ; and while we I am at it, I'll bake some for us at home as well. As I already wrote last year, one of our my husband and children' favorite toppings is Nutella. However, this year, I made my own!! ENFIN!!  I had wanted to do it for a long time.... and since one of my friends gave me hazelnuts she did not know what to do with, I took the plunge and decided to give it a try. I knew I was going to face a very hard jury in the persons of my husband and two children. I knew that they my husband was going to start with an negative-already-made-up mind (the one he has when it comes to me cooking something he likes a lot but differently!) but it did not matter to me. I wanted to be able to produce a hazelnut-chocolate spread that was close enough to Nutella so that we could stop purchasing Nutella alltogether (and therefore avoid all the palm oil /soy/other strange ingredients in it). 
The results? "hmm, c'est bon, maman" said my children ; "hmm c'est pas mal du tout", said my husband. Which, in his terms, means that I totally passed the test and can keep making our own hazelnut-chocolate spread! 
Since starting this blog, here are the few things we hardly ever purchased anymore, just because making them from scratch at home, turned out to be much much easier/healthier/cheaper than I thought: baguettes, Nutella, falafels, pizza dough, hummus, granola, polenta, lemoncurd...  
Challenge yourself and try make one dish for your family that you would otherwise purchase. You will be surprise... 
What's next on my list? Tomato sauce, Indian naans, pita chips/tortilla chips... any recipes to suggest? Bon Appetit?

Ingredients:
(adapted from the Los Angeles Times)
- 2 cups raw hazelnuts
- 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
- 3 tablespoons hazelnut oil, more as needed

• Pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees. Spread the hazelnuts evenly over a cookie sheet and roast until they darken and become aromatic, about 10 minutes. Transfer the hazelnuts to a damp towel and rub to remove the skins.
• In a food processor, grind the hazelnuts to a smooth butter.
• Add the cocoa, sugar, vanilla, and oil to the food processor and continue to process until well blended. The finished spread should have the consistency of creamy peanut butter; if it is too dry, process in a little extra hazelnut oil until the desired consistency is achieved.

My Personal Comments:

• Hazelnut Oil is expensive. I used Coconut oil because I could not find hazelnut oil and it worked perfectly fine as well. 
• Splurge on the chocolate so that it has a great flavor. This is key.
• You can find already blanched hazelnuts to avoid to have to remove the skin. However, do toast them in the oven as indicated : this liberates oil and give extra flavor.

Blueberries Pound Cake - Cake aux Myrtilles

At least, once a year, I have this stupid idea go through the endeavor of cleaning the freezer. Which means that for a few weeks prior to that I try to incorporate as many frozen ingredients in my daily cooking ; trying to avoid the French fries-fish fingers-ice cream dinner autant que faire se peut.
I don't freeze much food I make myself, a few soups and bread here and there excepted. The main reason behind this is that I never make too much that won't be eaten during the same week. However, I do use the freezer to stock on frozen food such as emergency dinner-type-of-food (fish fingers, Asian dumplings) or frozen vegetables that I integrate in my daily cooking.
If you were to open the freezer door tonight (knowing that I have been working on "cleaning" the freezer for about 3 weeks now), you would see : peas, corn, spinach, blueberries and other berries, store-bought pie crust and filo dough, a bag of French fries,  homemade bread, and no fewer than 8 open pints of icecream in the flavors  of Amaretto, coffee, raspberry, mango, chocolate sorbet, chocolate icecream, banana, pistachio!!
Then there is my husband's icecream collection! And that, to tell the truth, is the hardest to go through! Not not because we just do not it ice cream... but just because whenever my husband goes grocery shopping he generally comes back with another pints (or two) of icecream that happened to be on sale (and he CAN NOT resist purchasing icecream if it's on sale!!). Our icecream inventory therefore hardly ever goes down...  It would only if I were to declare an "Icecream Week"... but that's not even a thought I have despite the joy it would bring to my children... Alternatively, I could have a lot of children over to help with our icecream stock... but then again, we can't entertain THAT many kids at once in our small apartment. No matter how much my children would love it too!
That to say that I don't know when I am going to be able to clean the freezer... At least, through this recipe (inspired by Tartelette), I got a few blueberries out (but that's not the hardest to get rid of!)! Bon Appetit!

Ingredients:
- 1 stick (113gr) unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1 cup (120gr) powdered sugar, unsifted
- 3 eggs
- 1 1/4 cup (155gr) flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- Zest of one lemon (optional)- pinch of salt
- 1/4 cup (60ml) buttermilk (or whole milk)
- 1 cup (145gr) blueberries

• Preheat the oven to 350F and position a rack in the center.
• In a bowl mix the butter and powdered sugar until creamy.
• Add the eggs, one at a time and beating well after each addition.
• Add the flour, baking powder and salt and the lemon zest.
• Add the buttermilk and mix well until combined. 
• Fold in the blueberries by hand. 
• Pour the batter in a lightly-buttered prepared pan and bake for 30 to 45 minutes (tend with foil midway if the top seems to brown faster than the cakes bake).

My Personal Comments:

• I really like the additional flavor brought by the lemon zest
• You could make individual cakes with this recipe; you would have to adjust cooking time since individual cakes cook faster.

Curried Cauliflower with Fresh Ginger, Potatoes and Peas

"Mais qu'est-ce que ça sent?" did my husband ask as he entered our apartment one evening. No need to be fluent in French to understand that he totally skipped the "Hello Honey, how was your day?" part before he inquired what on earth I had cooked for dinner that evening for it to smell so bad (had it smelled good, he would have said "hmm, ça sent bon"...)

Du choux fleur,  that what it was... and for those of you who have been putting up with reading this blog for a while, you must remember that my husband is not a big fan of cauliflower... But that's not enough of a reason for me not to cook it, especially in the Winter time when the offer of vegetables-in-season is limited.  This time, in order to change from our usual recipes, I had followed a recipe found in one of the latest issues of Vegetarian Times Magazine (I got a free subscription, that's why I get it these days).. and since I had all the ingredients handy, I decided to give it a try. On top of that, it was a recipe using a pressure cooker, which I am a big fan of because it actually cut cooking time!
Cooking cauliflower is always tricky. I remember my mom trying any tricks she could (bread in the cooking water was one of them) to dampen the smell in the kitchen (no American open-kitchen in our French apartments, ie, at least, the smell is contained in the kitchen : not in the whole apartment and in the hallway by the same token!!). I don't have any truc special to share with you. I just try to make a draft, no matter how cold it can get!
The verdict for this recipe? Delicious. My children ate it (minus the ginger bits that I had not cut small enough for them not to notice them). And so dit my husband. Sure, this dish will never compete with a Boeuf Bourguignon, but 1) that was never the point 2) it's good enough to make it again this Winter. Even if it means freezing for a few minutes and/or not getting a nice evening greeting first!  Bon Appetit!

Ingredients:
- 2 ts ghee or melted butter
- 1 large onion diced
- 4 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 ts minced fresh ginger
- 1 1/2 ts curry powder
- 1 ts ground cumin
- 1 ts brown mustad seeds
- 1/2 ts turmeric
- about 1 1/2 pound of potatoes
- 1 head of cauliflower, washed and cut into florets
- 1 cup frozen peas

• Heat the ghee in pressure cooker over medium heat. 
• Add onions and cook for about 2 minutes or until softened. 
• Stir in garlic, ginger, curry powder, cumin, mustard seeds, and turmeric. Saute for 2 minutes. 
• Add potatoes, cauliflower and 1/2 cup of water.
• Closer pressure cooker and bring up to high pressure. Cook for 5 minutes
• Release pressure
• Stir in peas. Season with salt and pepper.

My Personal Comments:

- I used more water than the 1/2 cup ; it will depend on how many potatoes and how big your cauliflower head is.

- The recipe calls for sugar but I never felt I needed to add it.

- You can cook it without a pressure cooker, just cook it over low-to-medium heat in a thick-bottom pot.

-The little choux-fleur was made by Leslie whose shop on Etsy.com is here.

Tiramisu

The other day, I was asking my children which cake they wanted us to bake to celebrate my husband's birthday. While we have established the tradition in our family that the guest-of-honor chooses his/her birthday menu, my husband was away (on vacation, for ONE FULL week!!), it was therefore a surprise for him! I listed his favorite desserts : tarte tatin, pithiviers, apfel strudel and tiramisu (only to list a few)...
When she heard "tiramisu, my daughter almost screamed "tiramisu, c'est mon préféré dessert!" (yes, we are getting a few English grammar mistakes in her French these days but so far we find it funny!)...  She discovered Tiramisu last Summer in France when my sister-in-law made a delicious one. .. and fell for it! She had it again when one Italian friend of ours brought one a few months ago... and since then, she has made sure that we know that "Miratisu" or "Ramitusi" or "papa, tu sais le dessert que j'adore" is her dessert préféré!  So, Tiramisu, it was.
What I like about Tiramisu is that it's so easy to make : nothing to heat, nothing to let to rest for a while... just plain easy to make as long as you think ahead of time to refrigerate it long enough. I literally made this in less than 15 minutes... and let it sit in the fridge for about 5 hours (but this was not enough).
In the end, the sad part of the story is that my daughter was not feeling well that evening and decided not to eat her dessert. Both my son and husband immediately volunteered to eat her share (my husband won; it was his birthday after all)! My daughter did eat another little Tiramisu the next day, though... and I'm sure that if I were to ask her again what she would want for dessert, "Miratisu" or "Mirasuti" or "tu sais le dessert que j'ADORE" would pop up! Bon Appetit!

Ingredients:
For 6-8 ramequins
- 125 ml (1/2 cup or 4.2 Fl oz) strong espresso, at room temperature
- 45 ml ( 3 TB or 1.5 Fl oz)Marsala (or rhum)
-  2 eggs
 - 1 pinch of salt
- 1 small container Mascarpone (about 250 grams)
- 90 gr (7 TB or 3.17 oz)sugar
- Ladyfingers cookies, about 2-3 per ramequins.
- Unsweetened Cocoa
- Bittersweet chocolate (optional)

• Mix the coffee and the Marsala and set aside.
• In a bowl, beat the eggwhites and salt together until they beging to be stiff; add half of the sugar and beat some more until stiff.
• In another bowl, beat the egg yolks with half of the sugar until light and fluffy. Add the mascarpone and beat and stirr well.
• Fold in half of the eggwhites; and then the rest until fully incorporated
• Scoop some of that cream into the ramequins (about 1/3 of the height)
• Cut the ladyfingers in half and soak them in the coffee. They have to be soaked but not soft. 
• Lay the ladyfingers on the cream in the ramequins.
• Shred some bittersweet chocolate on top (optional)
• Cover with more cream.
• Refrigerate for at least 5 hours, overnight it best
• Just before serving, spread cocoa powder on top.

My Personal Comments:

• If you don't put bittersweet chocolate on top of the ladyfingers, the Tiramisu won't taste very sweet.
• Don't hesitate about the alcohol, it's what makes the difference in the Tiramisu and the taste does attenuate after refrigeration.