one expat's life

mme. Mamans’s chopped liver

Posted on 13/12/2013 by oneexpatslife

Liver. What can I say? It gets a bad rap. If the flurry of panic caused by this week’s French Fridays with Dorie recipe, Mme. Mamans’s Chopped Liver, is any indication, I seem to be one of the few Americans who actually likes it.

Why is that? It never made an appearance in the meat-free household of my childhood. I think that I was at least a few years out of college before I tried it in the form of foie gras. Yep, I’m almost certain that was the gateway drug. Somewhere along the line I took Nigella Lawson’s advice and started adding the sautéed turkey liver to my thanksgiving gravy. Then I started eating most of the sautéed turkey liver before it had a chance to make it into the gravy. And then I moved to Germany, where liver seems to be more common and all around less of an issue.

But each time it comes up (or even almost comes up) in the FFwD roster, I am reminder how much we Americans hate it. Oh well, more for me I guess. And with this week’s recipe, more was definitely better. This recipe was crazy simple and delicious. Sautee some onions until nicely browned, same for the liver, throw in a little seasoning, maybe a dash of mayo, and serve. I admit to having been a bit pressed for time (a.k.a. I didn’t read the recipe ahead of time and didn’t know that it would need to sit – HOW MANY TIMES do I need to be reminded to read the recipe BEFORE I start cooking!) and thus just served it warm. As luck would have it, it was delicious warm. I almost wonder if I wouldn’t prefer it that way.

In any case, like most of the meat recipes in this book, it’s not winning any prizes for looks. Or maybe that’s just my lazy photography. I’ve yet to figure out how to make a hunk of brown meat look attractive. But it’s what’s inside that counts (right?) and my husband and I both loved this one.

Posted in french fridays with dorie | 11 Comments

French apple sauce

Posted on 08/11/2013 by oneexpatslife

The name of this recipe is Compote de Pommes Two Ways. Basically, Dorie gives us a very basic recipe for apple sauce (way 1), and then tells us that we can just leave it on the stove for another hour or so and see what happens (way 2). I’ll be honest, as I was cutting up my apples and putting them on to cook, I still had no idea which way I was going to do.

So I cooked the apples until the were done the first way and tried them with a bit of yogurt. Yep, it was apple sauce. Tasty, but hardly anything to write home about. Ok, let’s try the second way.

An hour later, my apples were thicker, but still pretty much the same color. For some reason I had expected them to get a bit darker. Dorie suggests adding vanilla and salted butter. I may have made a snide comment about “only in France do they add butter to apple sauce.” But that was before I tasted how delicious it was. I tell ya, those French know a thing or two about food.

But it was still a lot of apple sauce. I mean, I eat a lot of yogurt, pretty much every morning in fact, but how much apple sauce do I really need. So I decided to use half of it to make a cake. Not just any cake. But Dorie’s Double Apple Bundt Cake from her Baking book. What can I say, it was an appley kind of weekend.

In the end, the one that stuck with me was the second apple sauce. I had it pretty much every morning this week for breakfast with yogurt. And it was really delicious. Worth being glued to the stove for 1 and a half hours? Ouch, hard to say. But maybe.

Posted in french fridays with dorie | Tagged Around my French Table, breakfast, seasonal - autumn, side dish, vegetarian | 21 Comments

hurry up and wait roast chicken

Posted on 01/11/2013 by oneexpatslife

Bring on November. I’m so ready. The holidays start on November 11th here in Germany and we are already looking forward to our Martin’s goose. The menus is always exactly the same: goose, red cabbage, potato dumplings, and chestnuts. It’s SO good.

But in the meantime, we have this week’s French Friday’s with Dorie recipe, Hurry up and Wait Roast Chicken. The “hurry up” seems to refer to the high oven temperature and the “wait” part to the fact that you have to let the chicken rest for 15 to 20 minutes after to comes out of the oven. Well, after reading that last part I just thought that there was no way my husband was going to be able to stand this recipe. I’m usually chasing him out of the kitchen so I can let the roast bird sit for 5 measly minutes, how the heck was I supposed to keep him away from it for 15 minutes?

My solution was to assign this week’s recipe to him and thereby make him responsible for following the instructions. I figured if Dorie told him what to do instead of me, we stood a better chance of surviving the week without incident:-)

Dorie introduces this recipe by pointing out that France is the land of pedigree chickens. So off we set to the market to see if we couldn’t find a well bred bird. Which of course led to the question, why do French chickens always come with their feet (or at least part of their feet) still on? My research is inconclusive, but yielded two interesting theories. Theory 1 is that it is proof of pedigree. Not knowing much about the difference in pedigrees, this doesn’t help me much. Theory 2 is that it is somehow a sign of freshness because the feet will change color as the bird ages. But again, since I have no idea which color to look for, this is also not much help. If you know the truth, please share.

So, we had a designated cook and a bird. I threw some veggies into the mix and into the oven it all went. And then back to give it a turn (thank goodness for silicone oven mitts). And then back to give it another turn. And then started the waiting.

In the end we survived the waiting and agreed that our chicken was very tasty. But all that running back and forth to the oven was not for me. I’m more of a Lazy Chicken kind of gal.

Posted in french fridays with dorie | Tagged Around my French Table, main course, poultry | 18 Comments

_______ fish with frilly herb salad

Posted on 28/10/2013 by oneexpatslife

My work travel schedule has quieted to a dull roar and I am bound and determined to get back into the kitchen and get caught up on my French Fridays with Dorie cooking before the holiday madness hits. Honestly, if it wasn’t for my participation in this group, I’m not sure that I would have done any cooking at all this year. All of my other cookbooks are probably feeling a bit dusty and neglected.

I’ve never been much of a swordfish fan. Like cooked tuna, it just always seems so dry. So I can’t say that I was particularly distraught when my fish guys said that they didn’t have any. I asked them to recommend something else… they did… it was delicious… and now I just don’t remember what it was. So, that’s why this week I am catching up with ~~Mediterranean Sword~~fish with Frilly Herb Salad.

I also decided to dust off one of my other cookbooks (Campagna by Mark Strausman) and whip up a batch of my very favorite Tomatoes Provencal. I’ve tried a lot of recipes for this particular dish and Mark’s is simply the best, I make it at least once a year. In fact, this cookbook is one of the most used and abused in my kitchen. His French Green Beans have become a Thanksgiving staple.

What can I say? Dinner was absolutely delicious. I loved Dorie’s fish preparation and will definitely try this recipe with other types of fish in the future. And the tomatoes paired surprisingly well with the firmer fish (whatever it was) and I have been happily dipping into the leftovers ever since. All in all, a success!

Posted in french fridays with dorie | Tagged Around my French Table, fish, main course | 2 Comments

muenster cheese souffle

Posted on 25/10/2013 by oneexpatslife

I am slowly getting more comfortable with souffles. S-L-O-W-l-y! I keep my expectations low and each one feels like a major victory.

But this week Dorie decided to test my souffle confidence with a hunk of smelly cheese. If you have never encountered French muenster before, let me just say that it is not one of those cheeses which you tuck away in a corner of the fridge and then promptly forget. No, every time you open that fridge door, sniff, there it is. Yep, it’s a smelly one. But in comparison to the pungent smell, the taste is surprisingly mild. At least it is if you remove the orange skin, which is what Dorie suggests for this souffle recipe. I purposely bought a little extra and munched on it as I was getting the souffles together.

Aside from the smelly cheese, the rest of the recipe was pretty standard and came together without too much drama. And into the oven, that’s where the drama is, and so that’s where I decided to take my first picture, so that I was sure to have at least one in which you could see that 1 of my 5 souffles rose perfectly! I’m so proud. See what I mean about keeping your expectations low:-)

I served the souffles with Dorie’s recommended fresh salad. It took seconds to throw together and was simply seasoned with cumin, salt, pepper and olive oil. That’s what I love about Dorie. This little side note was a worthy recipe in and of itself. So simple, but but a delicious combination that I never would have thought of on my own.

Posted in french fridays with dorie | 19 Comments

boeuf a la mode

Posted on 22/10/2013 by oneexpatslife

Over the course of cooking through an entire cookbook, one gets to know the author a little through her recipes. I have never had the pleasure of meeting Dorie, but after cooking over 150 of her recipes, I’ve learned a few things about her. For example, her guests never go home hungry. This recipe, Boeuf a la Mode (a make up recipe from a few weeks ago) was a prime example. When the butcher measured out for me Dorie’s recommended amount of meat, I just about fell over, and then asked him to cut it in half.

And, while my fellow Doristas may have rediscovered an old favorite, I was introduced to a classic. Dorie describes this as “french pot roast”. Not that that told me a lot since I’ve never had pot roast before. I had some vague notion that it was some kind of beef stew. I wasn’t too far off.

This one took some time. The night before I emptied a bottle of wine over the meat, veggies, and herbs and left it to marinate. Then you need to prepare everything for the oven. Then let it cook for a few hours.

The end result was tender and delicious. Sadly, my sauce was a tad over-salted. Probably because I wasn’t thinking about the anchovies when I added “salt to taste”. Oops. I was also impressed by how economical this dish was and I can see why it’s a family favorite.

Posted in french fridays with dorie | Tagged Around my French Table, beef, main course, seasonal - winter | 5 Comments

caramel-almond custard tart

Posted on 18/10/2013 by oneexpatslife

Why is the last day of vacation so sad? For the last two and a half weeks I have been visiting friends and family in the US, with two teenage nephews in tow who had never been to the States before. It’s been interesting, and at times depressing, to see my homeland through their eyes. Overall they had a great time and I just need to remind myself that teenagers the world over are… well… teenagers, and I need to not be too offended by the fact that of all the places we took them and of all the sights we showed them, their favorite aspect of american life seems to be the concept of free refills on soda. Sigh, c’est la vie.

So, on Monday it’s back to work, but today I am up in Vermont soaking in my last day of laziness. My only plan for the day is to sneak in one more maple ice cream from Bragg Farm before I pack my bags. If you are ever in the Montpelier area and do not take the opportunity to get one of their maple creemees, you are missing out my friends!

Before I left for vacation I did manage to make this week’s French Fridays with Dorie recipe, Caramel-Almond Custard Tart. If memory serves, the baking of the tart did not go so smoothly because I was trying to do too many things in the kitchen at once and ended up doing everything which I could to screw it up. First off, instead of a tart pan I used a pie dish. Then I put the almonds on to toast and forgot about then. Then I forgot to take my cream out and let it come to room temp, holy cow did it spatter! What else? Oh, this and that.

Possibly because of some of these little slip ups it also took much longer in the oven (I think about an hour in total) before it puffed up. Good grief.

Luckily for me, the recipe resisted my best efforts to screw it up and came out delicious! Really, I LOVED this one. Both with and without cream it was absolutely perfect. Come to think of it, I bet it would have been even better with some of that maple ice cream. Oh how I wish I could bring some of that back with me.

Posted in french fridays with dorie | Tagged Around my French Table, dessert, pies & tarts | 12 Comments

salad nicoise

Posted on 05/10/2013 by oneexpatslife

You can read a thousand different recipes for Salad Nicoise and, while the authors may tweak or play around a bit, the basic ingredients remain the same: tuna, boiled potatoes, green beans, olives, and anchovies. And, while I love salad nicoise, I must admit that I rarely make it correctly at home. Somewhere along the way in my life I learned that boiled eggs and canned tuna make a great base for what I call “leftover salad”. Why?

Have leftover potatoes? Add boiled eggs, canned tuna, tomatoes if you have them, and anchovy dressing. I never bother with the lettuce.

Leftover cooked beets? Add boiled eggs, canned tuna, and a light vinaigrette. Voila!

Leftover broccoli? Add boiled eggs, canned tuna, and thinly sliced red onion.

I’m telling you. It works with so many combinations.

In fact, I’ve made so many variations of this salad that I sometimes forget the original. So it was fun this week to follow Dorie’s instructions (well, except for forgetting the tomatoes) and rediscover a true salad nicoise.

And now that we’ve checked off 3 years of French Fridays with Dorie, let me just say that I am looking forward to year 4. I have so much fun cooking along with my fellow Doristas and I can’t wait to see what the next year brings.

Posted in french fridays with dorie | Tagged Around my French Table, main course, salad | 6 Comments

tzatziki

Posted on 30/09/2013 by oneexpatslife

I’m mere days away from hopping on a plane home. 🙂 To say that I’m excited would be an epic understatement. Just yesterday I called my parents to make sure that they had stocked the pantry with my favorite tortilla chips and salsa. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. To be clear, I mean that last sentence literally, not figuratively.

To take my mind off of it (hmmm, clearly not working out so far) and help pass the time, I am trying to squeeze in a make up post for French Fridays with Dorie before I go. I don’t even remember when the rest of the crew made Tzatziki or what my excuse was for not joining in. What can I say, better late than never.

By this point you have likely already heard me lament the lack of decent Latin American food on this side of the pond on multiple occasions. I know, I know, I’m tired of listening to myself complain about it. But what we lack in this area is made up for with plentiful and delicious Mediterranean and middle eastern food.

Tzatziki is Greek. But similar salads (or dips if you will) can be found all over the region under different names. I remember having a similar dish when we visited Armenia. Here in Germany (at least in my little corner of the country) it is so ubiquitous that you can find it in the refrigerator section of pretty much any grocery store. Much like salsa in the US, it’s gone mainstream.

The fact that it’s so easy to buy means that I’ve never attempted to make it myself. Until, that is, it popped up on the French Fridays with Dorie roster. I decided to serve it alongside roast chicken and greek salad. And while it was quite tasty and easy enough to put together, well, like salsa in the US, it’s just easier to just buy it at the store.

Posted in french fridays with dorie | Tagged Around my French Table, salad, seasonal - summer, side dish, vegetarian | 4 Comments

rice pudding and caramel apples

Posted on 28/09/2013 by oneexpatslife

I was introduced to rice pudding relatively late in life. Growing up, my mother had (still has?) a somewhat limited dessert repertoire, which included fruit pie, assorted cobblers, and something called indian pudding, which I have never seen outside of New England. Come to think of it, it’s been forever since I had indian pudding, I may need to add a few things to the grocery list. It’s comfort in a bowl a la mode my friends.

But back to the topic at hand. As you can see, rice pudding wasn’t on the menu, and since it doesn’t exactly have great word of mouth, it’s not something which I actively sought out after I was out of the house.

But then I moved to Germany, and around here it seems to pop up with a bit more regularity. I remember being out to lunch with my husband one day, at a place which sells fresh sandwiches and salads to hungry corporate types without a lot of time. I picked up my standard order, a falafel sandwich – extra scharf, and he picked up his standard order and threw in a rice pudding.

Apparently, for him, it’s his indian pudding, it’s his comfort food. I was curious, having never encountered rice pudding before. It had a simple cinnamon-sugar topping and nothing else. And, do you know what, it wasn’t the horror which I had always heard about. In fact, it was tasty. Who knew?

It turns out that the homemade version is even better. This week’s French Fridays with Dorie recipe had us topping our rice pudding with a caramel apple sauce. I also happened to have some leftover caramel from last month’s floating islands (though I didn’t remember that part until after I’d taken the pictures). Even the German liked it.

Posted in french fridays with dorie | Tagged Around my French Table, dessert | 18 Comments