A Cheese Soufflé for the Lazy Cook

It’s quite out of fashion, the soufflé. And it’s got a bad reputation to boot; difficult to make, difficult to cook and not worth eating. Wrong on all counts! Bear with me just a little longer and you will show you how easy it is to make and how rewarding it is to eat. Well,

Coq au Vin Façon du Chef

There is an easy way to make coq au vin and then there is my way. It’s a little more involved, but it will give you a beautifully clean looking sauce with perfectly cooked vegetables and an incomparable depth of flavour. Most recipes will as you to marinate the chicken in wine overnight and I

Pâté de Campagne – Rustic Pork Pâté

Pâté is the kind of thing you see in French butchers’ windows or served by slice in a Brasserie in Paris, so you naturally assume that making it is complicated, fraught with risk and really belongs in the domain of the experienced chef. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s easy to make and

Escargots de Bourgogne

It’s a bit of a weird tradition, but my mother used to serve either snails or frog’s legs in garlic butter for our New Year’s Eve starter. In hindsight, it’s probably a good idea to fill everyone up with lashings of butter before they start the serious drinking. It’s a tradition I am going to

A Sunday Feast – Slow Roast Lamb

I was going to share this recipe with you yesterday, but then I ended up doing instead of writing. Eddie and I had some friends over for lunch and I broke my cardinal rule and made something I’d never cooked before, which is generally a bad idea. Of course you will know that it worked

Leek & Ham Gratin

Gratins have gone completely out of fashion. I guess it’s a kind of a 1950s Hausfrau dish and together with stuffed vegetables, it’s gone off and retired. Which is terrible, really, because a good well made gratin is a wonderful dish. Served with rice or potatoes it makes an entire meal and is just deeply

Blanquette d’Agneau

Eddie and I had a little dinner party yesterday and I made a great French classic, Blanquette d’Agneau, lamb in a creamy white sauce. It’s probably one of the simplest things to make, it keeps in the chiller for 3 days and in fact improves with age, it freezes extremely well and is hardly any

Cheat yourself to a Croque Monsieur

The difference between a ham and cheese sandwich and a Croque-Monsieur lies in the cheesy bechamel, a white sauce made with butter, flour, milk and cheese. Now I don’t know about you, but when I’m in the mood for a sandwich, I don’t exactly want to start making cheese sauce. And so, according to my