Ginger and Chicken Soup

I planned for severals weeks to put on the internet the recipes I was trying to succeed. I was not totally satysfied of my original blog and didn't want to mix food with anything else. If you do not know already : Food is sacred. As sacred it has a special place in my life ;-) I had some free time last days so I test and taste dishes I never cooked before. My first success (not my first test ;-) was an asian recipe.

Ginger and Chicken soup

Serves 4
- 1L Vegetable stock
- 350 gr Chicken (or turkey) bites
- 40 gr Potatoes’ starch
- 1 tablespoon Soya sauce
-20 Cl Coco milk
- 1 teaspoon Sesame oil
- 1 teaspoon Fresh ginger

Bring to a boil vegetable stock. Add ginger, sesame oil and chicken. In a bowl, add potatoes’ starch, coco milk and Soya sauce. In a saucepan, stir in until soup brings to a boil and thickens. Serve in small bowls with chopped welsh onion (or parsley).

Salted Cake

I finally bought the mini cakes silicon mould which everyone seems so keen on! I wanted to check all the advantages of those expensive things. And actually I sould admit that's an efficient device. So I cooked salted cakes I didn't eat for long time. I've got a really good cook book of salted and sweet cakes: "Quiches, cakes & compagnie" by Ilona edited by Marabout. This is the first cook book I bought five years ago and since it never failed to my expectations. I discover with this one that cake was only a question of basic. whatever the taste you wanna give to your cake the batter is identical.

Cake

- 180 gr flour
- 1 backing powder bag
- 3 eggs
- 100gr gratted cheese
- 10 cl olive oil
- 10 cl milk
- Salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 180°C (th6). Mix flour with backing powder (Flour can be adapted to the fat of ingredients you wanna add). In a large bowl whip eggs, oil and milk. Add salt and pepper. Add this mixture to flour and melt gently. Add gratted cheese. Then add ingredients you want. For my part I add dryied tomatoes and basil (and bacon if I prefer to add some meat)

Beurre Blanc made in Nantes

That's the first speciality from my new region I tried and I'm proud to succeed it. It's like my new region had adopted me ;-) The recipe is a shallots sauc which goes perfectly with white fishes. This one is proposed on the website of Nantes tourism office by Mister Gueho from the restaurant L'atlantide awarded in 2005 by the "academie of Charles Monselet". This is the occasion to introduce you to the Charles Monselet Awards which proposes to consumers to award the best restaurants of Nantes and its region.

Beurre Blanc made in Nantes

Serves 6 to 8
- 10 shallots
- 1dl wine vinegar
- 1dl dry white wine (Muscadet or Gros Plant)
- 2 tablespoon double cream
- 500 gr salted butter
- Pepper

Finely chop shallots. In a heavy pot wet shallots and pepper with vinegar and cover with dry white wine. bring to a boil, reduce the fire and make reduce til dry. Add cream and bring to a boil. Whisking with energy, Add salted butter bites. Keep warm the preparation til time to serve.

Macaroons

After the pastry course we took last week from my friend Julien, pastrycook, I tried to succeed by myself the "Macaroons to salted butter toffee". And I SUCCEEDED! And it's SOOO TASTY! If I could give you these little meringues filled with that great Britton toffee you would never believe it's me who cooked them!

Macaroons to salted butter toffee

- 4 white of eggs
- 25 gr of sugar
- 1 tea spoon of lemon
- 10 drop of coffee extract
- 225 gr of icing sugar
- 125 gr of almond powder
- cacao powder (for decoration)

In a large bowl, beat whites of eggs with sugar. Add lemon (to make them shiny) and coffee extract (for the colour). Set aside. Blend incing sugar and almond powder. Dust this mixture little by little on eggs and blend carefully. With pastry bag make 3 centimeters diameter macaroons on oven paper. Shake the hotplate to flatten the macaroons. Let them drying for at least 20 minutes. Put them in the oven at 150°C during 10 minutes (the oven has to be at 150°C when you put macaroons inside) Put them in the freezer (the thermic shock helps to separate macaroons from the oven paper). Spread the salted butter toffee on macaroons and paste two macaroons together.

Macaroons can be conservated in the freezer during 1 month, but they won't survive to this period!