But in my information starved state, at least I didn’t starve. As a matter of fact, I somehow had much more time than I normally do, and put it to good use whipping up this week’s French Fridays with Dorie recipe, Coupetade, a.k.a. French Toast Bread Pudding.

So it’s like this: first you make some french toast, and then you make it into bread pudding. Sounds like a tasty brunch idea actually. Instead of maple syrup, I topped mine with cream and strawberries, because the berries are so gorgeous right now and I can’t seem to go more than a day without gorging on them.

My husband loved it. I was not as big a fan. Not sure why as I usually love bread pudding. But now that I have my internet back, I just can’t be bothered to spend too much time wondering why. After all, Jon Stewart is waiting.

After much sampling, the eclair fiend decided that the offerings from L’eclaire de Genie in the Marais were the best. I can only agree.

So, what was I supposed to be talking about? I can’t seem to drag my mind away from the eclairs. French Fridays with Dorie? Oh, right, this week’s recipe, Swiss Chard Pancakes.

With the spring veggies finally starting to make an appearance (and it’s about darn time!) it was actually not so easy to find chard. My regular product market didn’t have, but I did finally find some lonely bunches hidden at the far back of my local grocery store. They looked ok when I bought them, but by the next day they had seriously wilted and were not so pretty looking. From the two bunches I bought, I was only able to salvage enough leaves for half a batch of Dorie’s pancakes.

Making the pancakes was easy as could be. Just throw all of the ingredients into the blender and blitz. The color of the batter was St. Patrick’s Day green and had me thinking that these might have fit better in the March schedule.

I fried up my pancakes and served them with a fresh salad and a dollop of creme fraiche. All of which may sound very healthy, but my pancakes seemed to be awfully greasy, despite all the paper towels I went through trying to soak up the oil. Possibly I didn’t turn up the heat high enough. Whatever it was, these were sadly not a hit.

Yes indeedy, from my perspective, this was one of the most intimidating French Fridays with Dorie recipes yet. I even tried to enlist the help of my trusty sous chef, but he took one look at the recipe and decided that he would prefer to be the photographer. I thought he did a pretty good job.

We took it one step at a time and it actually worked. The individual recipes of fish mousse, spinach filling, and tomato sauce were actually pretty easy. It was more the assembly and cooking method which had me spooked. But in the end, the fish mousse was far easier to work with than I had feared and my plastic wrap held up in the steamer without melting.

I would now love to tell you that the whole thing was a success story and that we loved the finished dish. Sadly, not so much. But this recipe was WAY outside my comfort zone and I enjoyed the trip anyway.

Yes, here I am, trying to remember what the heck I wrote last night right before hitting the “publish” button and going to bed. It had something to do with being a bad Dorista because I have been on the road and not had time to check in with my fellow cooks to see what they have been up to. It may have also mentioned that I haven’t been in my kitchen in weeks and how grateful I am that our super team of admins got the April recipes up so early so that I could (kind of) participate. I don’t really remember anything else, but I’m certain that it was some of the most brilliant writing that I’ve ever managed and is now forever lost in the WordPress circuits. Sigh, on to the bit that did actually get published, hopefully next week will be better….

Even so, it’s been a hectic few weeks and my participation has been pretty low. I think I’ve only read one or two of your olive sable posts… hope I wasn’t the only one who love those. And now, this week I’m posting without pictures because those happen to be at home on my personal computer and I forgot to upload them before I left. Oh well, such is life sometimes.

So, what do I remember about this week’s French Fridays with Dorie recipe, Financiers? I remember that the dough was very different from any I had made before, calling for browned butter and cooking the egg white mixture over low heat. I remember being impatient because the dough then had to sit overnight in the fridge. And I remember that the little cakes were awfully tasty. Even better with a cup of tea. My favorite financiers are pistachio so some day I would like to try my hand at making those.

In addition to my initial qualms, I had continued doubts all the way through the process. Which olives should I buy? Dorie recommends cured olives, but surely those are too salty. Should I make a full recipe or cut my loses and try for a half batch? Should I lie to my husband in order not to scare him off from this recipe? Are they dessert or are they appetizers? What the heck is this thing going to taste like!

In the end I decided to just go for it and follow the darn recipe to the letter by using cured olives to make a full batch and hope for the best. Thankfully, once I had finally decided to stop fighting it, the whole thing came together quite easily. In fact, I found the dough to be much easier to work with than normal sable dough, which I often find to be crumbly and difficult to mold into a log.

And do you know what? These were delicious! After all that hemming and hawing, my goodness. Dorie accurately describes these as perceptibly sweet and salty at the same time. I’m still none the wiser as to whether to call these an appetizer or dessert. But I also don’t care any more because they are highly addictive no matter when they are served. My husband, however, was not convinced. His exact review was, “good, but they would be better without the olives.” Oh well, can’t please em all I guess.

Dorie says that these pair well with champagne, which is awfully handy because my husband and I just visited the Champagne region over the Easter holiday weekend and may have come back with a trunk full of bottles. Thanks goodness for the EU open border policy.

But in the meantime, we’re making spinach this week. Spinach is one of my favorite vegetables and we eat it rather often around here. To be honest though, I can’t remember the last time I tried a new spinach recipe. Come to think of it, I can’t remember the last time I tried a recipe for spinach period. Usually I just throw it in a pan with some garlic and olive oil and call it a day. But this week, French Fridays with Dorie has us cooking up Lemon-Steamed Spinach, and I was looking forward to giving it a try.

Dorie’s spinach recipe is hardly more involved than my usual preparation. She tosses her uncooked spinach with olive oil and lemon zest before throwing it into a steamer. The whole recipe took about 5 minutes from start to finish.

Instead of plain spinach I used a bag of salad greens which was composed of baby spinach, rucola, and beet greens. We paired it with lamb and potato gratin. All in all it was an absolutely delicious meal and this week’s recipe was an incredibly quick and easy side which we will use again.

For anyone who is interested in Ispahan Loaf Cake, I encourage you to check out what my fellow Doristas got up to this week.

As for mine, well, the darn thing just wouldn’t cook through. Dorie suggests 50 to 60 minutes in the oven. I left mine in for 90 minutes (checking the oven thermometer several times along the way) until the toothpick finally came out clean. But after letting it cool, turns out that the darn thing still wasn’t cooked all the way though. I doused it with whipped cream and hoped for the best. But apparently there are some problems which even cream can’t save.

If anyone has any brilliant ideas as to what I can do to use up a massive bottle of leftover rose syrup and extract, I’m all ears!

What better week for a nice warming bowl of soup. Yes, it was perfect timing actually for this week’s French Fridays with Dorie recipe, Orange-Scented Lentil Soup.

Now, I’m a big fan of lentil soup and was looking forward to giving Dorie’s version a try, though I was admittedly a bit skeptical about the orange-scented bit (which Dorie achieves by adding a healthy piece of orange peel to the mix). She also calls for Puy lentils, a household favorite which are always to be found in my cupboard. These little slate green lentils are simply delicious.

Otherwise, there were no more surprises in the soup and it was easy enough to pull together. I topped mine with a dollop of goat cheese and declared it to be delicious. The orange flavor was noticeable but not overwhelming. Really good in fact. This may be my new lentil soup recipe.

So into the kitchen I went, turned on the oven to preheat it, pulled out the book to review the recipe, and half an hour later I found myself still puttering around the kitchen, still completely unmotivated. So I decided that I had better go read how my fellow Doristas did this week, pick up some tips, and hopefully some much needed inspiration for making this dish. Sure enough, tips abounded and the reviews were mostly positive, so armed with the following ideas, I headed back into the kitchen, determined to just make the darn thing:

1. Because Ei said that she found hers to be a bit greasy, I decided not to butter the ramekins. I don’t seem to remember ever buttering my ramekins when making classic creme brulee, so I reasoned that it should work here too. And it did, no butter needed.
2. I shredded my cheese instead of cubing it, with the result that my cheese wasn’t really heavy enough to stay put on the bottom of the custard, but instead incorporated itself into the cream as I poured it over.
3. I turned up the oven temp to 250°F, because I am not a famously patient person. That may have actually been a bit too high because they were bubbling a bit when they came out and had already formed a bit of a crust on top, but they set up nicely and the consistency was perfect.
4. And finally, I left my kitchen torch in the cupboard and used the broiler to “brulee” the cheese.

But with all those mini-alterations, I did stick with Dorie’s recommended cheeses: parmesan and comte (a personal favorite).

In the end, I’m still left confused by this dish. It was quite rich and definitely needed to be paired with something to cut through that. Dorie suggested Champagne and I decided not to argue with her. It didn’t taste bad; really, could a mixture of cream and cheese ever be bad? Maybe I just lack the imagination needed for this kind of dish, or maybe I need to throw more multi-course dinner parties, but I wasn’t convinced.

And I’m so glad that I did. This recipe made the apartment smell like Christmas and it would have felt out of place in warm weather. The pears were gently poached in a honey-sweetened, vanilla spiced bath, and then left to cool in the marinade. All in all, it was pretty darn simple.

We stirred a little of the poaching liquid into some greek yogurt and served it with the pears. The next morning I sprinkled a little granola over.

I have to say that it was very tasty. Maybe not the recipe which I would pull out for a decadent dessert. But certainly one that I can see making again for my husband and myself.