All posts tagged: Jura

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

Published by

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

Published by

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

Published by

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 …

Taste of Savoie and Jura / Healthy Buckwheat Banana Bread

Published by

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 …

Market Day in Jura

Published by

I’ve tried to write as many posts as I could while on holiday in Jura, but I am once again being swamped with so many photos that have been added to my already-overloaded hard drive. One has to have strong willpower to stay sober and focused when good food and wines are always around. That’s what I think whenever I’m in France. I’ve collected so many cheeses and discovered some great local sparkling wine Crémant du Jura and the best Comte shop, which I will share with you in another post. The Jura wine tasting happened to start at a local market. Jura wines aren’t cheap so I didn’t want to buy whole bottles to try at the risk of disappointment, especially when I’m not a white wine drinker. Luckily, the golden opportunity to taste and learn about Jura wines came and I went to the market. This farmer’s market rotates around Jura and it was in Bellegarde-sur-Valserine two weeks ago, which you can catch only once a year. I was worried that the market …

Confit de Carnard / Quick Easy Fondant au Chocolat

Published by

The days of blue sky, as in the photo, seem to have ended in this part. The trees have lost their charming colours and now have more naked colours of brown. As I’m having my last week in Jura, I’m already being nostalgic, looking at all the photos from my crazy 3 week-long adventure of the Jura mountains and Jura wines. I have the last mission to complish, which is to visit the froggy lakes that were featured in Triplets of Belleville and eat frog legs, which will be the last supper to celebrate the end of my gastronomic holiday.