All posts tagged: France

Confession to a lucky drop

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Well, how lucky am I to have found this intriguing challenge just two days before the deadline? Wine and Writing, two things I love. Who came up with this fascinating idea in the first place? It’s The Drunken Cyclist. If I’d known this, I’d have participated in the earlier competitions. To reverse the mirror and see the shiny side, now that I’ve discovered this writing competition, I have a new aim. Having an aim is a good remedy for a happy healthy life, like my love for wine has been my aim and brought many challenges and luck along the way. Thus, this piece of writing is dedicated to the wine that has helped me stay sane. The first paragraph pretty much sums up the topic for the Monthly Wine Writing Challenge(#MWWC8), Luck, however, I’ll continue on to share my real lucky story so that my writing meets the criteria. I find myself pretty lucky to have developed the taste for wine. Or was I born with the lucky genes? The reason I’m saying that …

Autumn Colours of Jura / Seafood Tartare / Blue Prawn Gratin / Fondant Ice Cream

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Yesterday I made tartare au saumon fumé, well, smoked salmon tartare;please excuse my overuse of French. I’m still in the holiday mood. The smoked salmon was a gift from a Canadians guest, which is home-made. I happened to have some avocados so I threw it in a bowl with chopped tomatoes, onions, garlic, dill, etc. It’s simple but delicious. That dish reminded me of this post I had been meaning to post but been delaying because there is so much rambling in it. I hope you don’t mind it but at least enjoy the magnificent photos of the Jura mountains at their best. Just down the road from the house there is a path in the woods that leads to a bridge or a river. We set off for a walk to look for mushrooms, but the walk was the main and the mushrooms were just extra bonus, just the way one’s life works. Reaching a goal isn’t important; what’s important is what you meet on the way there. We didn’t have much luck with …

All Blacks Risotto – Wild Mushrooms Wild Rice Risotto / Comte Apple Fritters

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Sorry if you clicked it, thinking it was about the NZ soccer team. This photo was taken at the beginning of my holiday and the last week I hardly saw a blue sky. Just around the corner and behind the house is a grassy space with laundry lines and walnut trees. One day we took a walk in the woods, looking for mushrooms, but we didn’t find any. Alas, we stumbled upon a sight of mushrooms spread widely across the grass. These were the most beautiful looking mushrooms I’d seen. They are called Petit Gris due to the grey colour. While Cyrille was looking for information to make sure they were edible, though he was 99% sure, because he had another life at risk, ME, I cleaned the mushrooms by just shaking off the soil and grass. Last time we experienced that mushrooms had been left uncooked bred hundreds of wiggly creatures overnight. So this time we cooked them right away even though we didn’t plan to eat them that night. These mushrooms contained a …

Papilles en fête / French Belgian Fair

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I dream, therefore I live…. this is the signature of my email. A dream is to dream but some people live their dream, or at least live to reach their dream. I know a few people who have gone out of their way to live their dreams, and most of them made a life-changing decision in their 40s so it’s never late to live your dream. Perhaps, the later the better; you appreciate it more when it happens late, like in the film, “In pursuit of happiness”. Having been hopelessly obsessed about food, I know what it is like to go to a job every day and think of nothing but food while working and to find yourself gawking at cookbooks and food magazines, and to feel most as if you are in heaven when inside gourmet stores. It’s time to do something about it if the voice keeps nagging at you. The long introduction was to tell you a little about my recent inspiration, the person behind the kitchen top, creating delicious things out …

Stuffed Cabbage Rolls with Lentils / Wine Tasting Revision

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I will be cramming for the next few days using the period of the calm before the storm as I have so many stories from my holiday that I’d like to tell you, whether you’re interested or not. But I can make you interested with my food shots or make you stop doing whatever you’re doing and put little thoughts into food and life for a few seconds. I made this dish from leftover confit de canard that I cooked on the previous night. I couldn’t eat two legs but Cyrille, the gourmand, easily finished two legs. I saved one leg for next day’s lunch but I didn’t eat it. Instead I used it for the dinner menu. Without the confit, this can easily make a beautiful vegetarian dish as in the one stuffed with wild rice and nuts. So-called stuffed cabbage rolls exist in many countries. Polish Golumpki is one example but all eastern European countries have it one way or another. Turkish dolma is one variation and Morrocan stuffed cabbage, stuffed with rice …

Taste of Savoie and Jura / Healthy Buckwheat Banana Bread

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Cyrille and I cooked amazing dishes every night during the 3-week holiday, which wasn’t good for his regime, however, sometimes having a guest is an excuse to spoil yourself. Now I’m back home, next stories on my Jura holiday would be written in retrospective. One of the longest exploring the region was to Gex, the town of Bleu de Gex cheese, up the Jura Mont Rond, down through Mijoux, a ski town, and through Comte farms. So this post will have many photos of the beautiful sights but not as many as I’d like to share. I visit each cheese town as if I were a holy pilgrim; paying a visit to the towns where my favourite cheeses are made and that give me so much pleasure is almost spiritual, and the same goes for wines. We walk through small streets, soaking in the sun and autumn colours. Stalls at the weekend market were packing up but we managed to get a few goat cheeses, one of which I’d forgotten of and had on my last …