Courgettes à la Marseillaise - Rice pudding with zucchinis

Hop, une recette facile, qui se prépare en grosse quantité et se réchauffe bien. Il faut juste rester pas torop loin de la poêle pendant la cuisson, mais sinon, l'effort est minimum. Un super plat complet végétarien pour le soir !

Here's a family staple, an easy recipe that can be prepared in a big batch and easily rehated. The trickiest part is not straying too far away from the pan while it cooks. This is just the perfect vegan evening meal !

Petit note sur le riz : je n'utilise que du riz acheté en épicerie asiatique. Je suppose que la recette peut fonctionner aussi avec du riz incollable ou autres classiques de supermarché, ça donnera un résultat sans doute plus esthétique, mais chez nous on aime bien quand ça devient un pudding qui grille au fond de la poêle.
Pour le bouillon j'utilise de la volaille, parfois du bœuf, en cube que je mets directement dans la poêle avec le reste.

A note about rice : we only use rice from the asian grovery store, I suppos the recipe could work with non-stick rice, but here we love the gooey texture and how it gets slightly crispy at the bottom of the pan.
As forstock, I use mostly chicken stock, but soetimes beef as well, I just throw the little cubes right into the pan with the rest.

Courgettes à la Marseillaise

Marseilles zucchini i.e. puddingy rice with zucchinis

3 poignées de riz - 3 handfuls rice

4 courgettes de taille moyenne - 4 medium-sized zucchinis
2 oignons - 2 onions
bouillon de volaille - chicken stock
huile d'olive - olive oil

Emincer les oignons et les mettre à revenir dans une poêle anti-adhésive avec une bonne bonne dose huile d'olive. Quand les oignons commencent à être transparent, rajouter le riz et touiller vivement.
Laver et émincer les courgettes. Les ajouter dans la poêle.

Verser de l'eau à niveau et y ajouter le bouillon. Couvrir. Ne pas re-saler, le bouillon suffit !

Laisser cuire doucement, en touillant régulièrement, et en rajoutant de l'eau quand on ne voit plus de jus au fond de la poêle. Quand les courgettes sont cuites, c'est prêt !

Mince the onion and sauté them in a non-stick pan with a very generous amount of oilve oil. When the onions are soft add the rice and stir vigorously for a few minutes.

Wash and thinly slice the zucchinis, add them to the pan.
Cover with water, add the chicken stock cube, cover with a lid.
Let simmer for a while, stirring regularly and adding water when all has been absorbed. When the zucchinis are cooked it is ready !

Pour réchauffer, je remets à chauffer dans la poêle en rajoutant un peu d'eau, en surveillant  et en touillant bien - ça peut griller légèrement au fond, c'est bon ! Le riz passe de collant à une sorte de pudding, mais c'est très très bon à défaut d'être très présentable ! En général, la dose donnée nous fait deux bons repas (à quatre), parfois un peu plus - et moi, j'aime ne faire qu'une seule fois la cuisine pour deux repas, vivent les restes !

Encore mieux ? Vous pouvez remplacer les courgettes par d'autres légumes (je le fais parfois en hiver avec des carottes), ajouter des tomates... et ça marche aussi !

I usually prepare this batch and it lasts the four of us for a little more than two meals. I love having leftovers and not cooking from scratch every meal ! I just put it all back on th estove, add more water and stir regularly, keeping an eye on the pan so that it can get a little crispy at the bottom but not stick. It gets more gooey but I really love the taste !
Even better ? Just replace zucchinis with other veggies - I live to use carrotts in winter or add tomatoes... - and it still works !

Je me suis faite rare sur ce blog en 2014, promis j'essaie de me rattraper, et de songer à rattraper aussi le Historical Food Fortnightly !

Guaca-truc - Guaca-thing

Bon, je savais que c'était risqué, des avocats sur notre marché, en ce moment... c'est pas l'idéal on va dire. J'ai fait le pari de les prendre pas mûrs et d'utiliser le voisinage de pommes pour pallier à cet inconvénient. Ben laissez-moi vous dire que ça marche vraiment mieux avec les bananes. Une semaine après, les avocats étaient toujours aussi verts et aussi durs, mais avec un goût qui lui commençait à tourner vers le un peu trop mûr. Bref, pas fameux.

Consulté en urgence, mon blender a accepté de s'en charger, mais quand même, ce n'était pas assez bon pour des avocats, même à guacamole. D'un autre côté, j'avais des tomates qui criaient. Et puis quelques épices et aromates, il faut bien.

I knew it was a bit risky, buying avocados at our local (cheap) market this time of the year... let's say it isn't ideal. I took a gamble and hoped the unripe  avocados would ripen next to the apples. Turns out bananas are better at this job. One week after I brought them home, the poor sad avocados were as green and hard as ever, but starting to develop a slight overripe taste.

Not daring to turn them into a regular guacamole, I took out the blender, some also overripe roma tomatoes that were lingering in the pantry, and my spice rack - because honestly, what would I do without it ?

Guaca-truc - Guaca-thing

3 avocats - 3 avocados

3 tomates roma bien mûres - 3 Roma tomatoes

1 gousse d'ail - 1 garlic clove

1 cac de tamari - 1 teasp tamari

1 cac de vinaigre de cidre - 1teasp cider vinegar

2 pincées de sel - 2 pinches of salt

1/2 cac de baies roses - 1 teasp pink peppercorn

Lavez les tomates, pelez l'ail, coupez le tout en gros dés et passez au blender... et voilà ! Une petite entrée, à consommer en dip ou sur un peu de pain frais. Et mes avocats ont été sauvés !

Wash the tomatoes, peal the garlic glove, roughly dice everything and blend with the spices and liquids...  And... that's it ! It's probably one of the easiest and fastest recipes Iever made, and my avocados did turn out great !

Plummylicious

Quand on a acheté la maison, on n'a pas vraiment regardé ce qui poussait dans le jardin. Mais le prunier, c'est un chouette bonus ! C'est un prunier plus ou moins sauvage, qui s'est planté tout seul tout contre le mur du garage, et qui nous inonde de fruits sucrés dedans, avec une peau un peu acides, tous les mois de juillet/août (surtout août cette année. L'an dernier, on en a ramassé plus de 70 kilos ! Cette année a été un peu moins prolifique et nous un peu moins déterminés à faire de la prune à toutes les sauces, mais quand même, il y a eu plein de (gros, très gros) crumbles.
Et puis on a acheté une sorbetière (c'est la faute à Grenadine !), alors on a fait de la glace à la prune... Et vous savez quoi ? La glace à la prune, c'est tellement bon que je me demande pourquoi on en trouve pas en magasin.

We have this old plum tree that grew in a little nook in front of the house. It's a wild thing, nobody planted it there, it just appeared. Last year we harvested around 155 pounds of plums. They are sweet and a greenish yellow on the inside, with a red-blue skin that gives a good punch of acidity. They are okay raw, and delicious cooked.

This year, we had a lot of rain and cold in the spring, and the plums are late, and from what we see, we won't get as much of them as last year. Which is good, as I don't want to make much more jam and all the visitors who left our house last year with 10 kilos each have come and gone before the fruit was ripe.

But we bought an ice cream maker. And let me tell you, our plums make a FABULOUS ice cream.

Glace à la prune - Plum ice cream (vegan)

500g de petites prunes rouges prunes - 1 pound small red plums

100g de sucre  (à moduler selon le sucre contenu dans les fruits)- 1/2 to 1 cup sugar (adapt depending on how sweet or acid the plums are)

1 brique de crème de soja (j'étais à corut de crème d'avoine) - 1/2 cup soy cream (because I was out of my favorite oat cream)
1 pincée de gomme de guar - 1 pinch  guar gum

Lavez et dénoyautez les prunes. Si vous voulez limiter l'acidité, pelez-en tout ou une partie. Mettez-les dans une petite casserole avec le sucre et faites cuire jusqu'à obtenir une purée de fruits. Ajoutez la crème, vérifiez le dosage du sucre et adaptez si besoin. Passez au blender. Ajoutez la gomme de guar.
Laissez la purée de fruit refroidir une ou deux heures. Quand elle est bien froide, versez-là dans la sorbetière et faites tournez une bonne demie-heure (à moduler selon les capacités de votre sorbetière, bien sûr, la nôtre c'est le modèle ultra-de-base). Voilà !

Wash and stone the plums. Put them in a saucepan with the sugar, and cook until the fruit gets mushy. Add the soy cream. Blend until creamy. Add the guar gum.
Let the fruit purée cool for a solid hour in the fridge. Basically, make sure it is already cold when pouring it into the ice cream maker. Let the machine turn for 30 minutes-ish, depending on how fast yours processes ice (ours is a slow, very basic and cheap one). Voilà !

Now you "might" have noticed I added the french version here. Yup, I am going to try and make this a bilingual blog. Wish me luck. The downside of this ? I lost the picture of my pretty ice-cream. I took it, and I just lost it. And I don't really want to eat another bowl of ice-cream just to take a picture... So I give you some lovely flowers and leaves my kids picked up on the way home this morning.

Comme vous l'aurez remarqué, voilà, j'ai ajouté une version française, et je vais essayer de continuer en mode bilingue, si ça ne me bouffe pas trop de temps. Souhaitez-moi bonne chance !
La photo ? La photo, c'est malheureux à dire, je l'ai perdue. Prise, et égarée sur un disque dur quelconque. Pour éviter le post sans photo, que quand même ce serait mal, j'ai un jolie petit bouquet automnal cueilli par mes mini-trolls ce matin en rentrant de l'école. On peut même arguer que la moitié de ces éléments pourraient se manger !

Spread the beet

I adore red beet. Cooked in stews, mashed, or diced into fresh salads all year round. My husband usually does not care for it, but we did find one recipe that he loved. It was a spread, and it involved mixing the beat with fresh goat cheese. That wouldn't do in our house. I thought about it for a bit, decided to try something out and... bingo ! It worked AND the home geek loved it.

The best part is that it is super quick and easy to make, as long as you have an immersion blender and can buy the red beet already cooked (if not, peel it, dice it and use your pressure cooker, red beets takes a rather long time to cook).

Vegan red beet spread

1 cooked red beet

2 teaspoons tahini (sesame paste)

3 teaspoons almond paste

1 or 2 garlic clove(s)

Peel and dice the red beet, peel the garlic. Put all ingredients in your mixing bowl and mix until they have blended into a soft, purple paste. Serve cold over fresh bread, or as a dip.

Don't tell me I can't do that - or a slight case of masochism

I swear, I'm not forgetting the main focus of this blog - easy, everyday recipes. But every once in a while, I do get ambitious. It's not really my fault, you see, I can't help it. When someone tells m "oh, this is just so complicated, I'd never do that !", I have to try it out for myself. Happily, this is something I share with my wonderful husband, who has become a master in puff pastry, cream puffs and a lot of other things I deem too complicated to make myself.

This time, it was my mother telling me about a fried eggplant dish a friend of hers does. I love eggplant. I had eggplant in the fridge that was a tad overdue. I also had zucchini, canned tomatoes, and motivation. This is what came out of it.

Fried eggplant and zucchini

5 eggplants

8 zucchinis

2 cups canned tomatoes or tomato paste

a lot of oil

kitchen paper

Wash the eggplant and zucchini, cut them into really thin slices (1/8 inch if you can). Pat them dry.

In one (or better : two or three) large flat cooking pan, pre-heat enough oil to cover the bottom of the pan. When the oil is hot (but not smoking), place zucchini and eggplant slices flat on the bottom of the pan. Cook them until the underside is lightly golden, Flip the slices onto the other side, cook until golden. Place the slice onto kitchen paper to absorb the excess oil. Repeat until all slices have been cooked - you might need to add more oil to the pan(s) between batches.

In a large oven-proof dish, alternate one layer of fried vegetables and one layer of tomato. Place in the oven (around 360°F) for 10 minutes, just enough for the tastes to infuse... and for the first slices you fried to be reheated.

Now, that took about two hours to make. After I was done, half of the kitchen was greasy and needed a good clean-up. And I can't say it's a light dish. But I must admit, it was quite tasty. Would I make it again ? Probably not, as my body sent me a very clear message "hey ! You know that lactose thing ? We think fat is just the same as lactose !"

On eating a female gardener

What ? Cannibalism ?

Not really. Just a simple jardinière, a tasty plate of spring vegetables.

Jardinière de légumes

2 broccoli

8 carrots

1 cup frozen green peas (I admit it, they take too long to prepare fresh, so I mostly buy them frozen)

3 potatoes

Wash the broccoli and cut it into small bits. Peel and dice the carrots. Put the broccoli, carrots, potatoes and peas into your trusted pressure cooker and cook for 20 minutes.

Peel and slice the onion. In a large cooking pan, preheat a good dash of oil and cook the onion until soft and lightly golden. Add the other vegetables, stir well and sauté everything for a few minutes.

I have been neglecting my blogs a little of late, I'm really sorry about that and I'll try to be more regular in my posts. I have some posts I want to make, but the crème brûlée is not playing nicely. I'm on my third try and still not 100% happy, drat !

[insert movie title here]

I *adored* the movie. But I've loved the dish even longer. I know it's not perfectly right for the season, but Ihad those poor, sad eggplants in my fridge, the zucchinis were cheap and.. well, I just love ratatouille. As with all good stuff, the proportions are just a suggestion, make with what you love and what you have at hand !

Ratatouille

3 eggplants

4 zucchinis

10 small tomatoes

3 bell peppers (1 red, 1 yellow, 1 green, I love to get a little bit of each taste)

2 onions

Peel the onions, wash the other vegetables. In a large pan, preheat a small blob of olive oil. Don't be shy, it's not going to be much compared to the amount of vegetables anyway, and it tastes good ! Slice the onion and start cooking them, stirring regularly. Dice the eggplants, tomatoes, zucchinis, peppers and dd them to the pot as you go. Stir, stir, stir. Once everything is on the stove, cover the pot  and let simmer for 15 minutes. Then come back and check how much liquid has formed in the pan.  If there's too much juice, leave the lid off while the ratatouille cooks. If the quantity of liquid is right for you, then keep it covered. Cook until the vegetables are soft, then cook ad little more, checking the juice level now and then. It's not a soup, but it should stay pretty juicy.

It reheats well, either on the stove or in the microwave.

Chards - it all goes in !

Today I learned that some people only eat the leaves of chard and discard the rest. This is a new concept to me, as my mother was from the opposite "religion" - cook the ribs, discard the leaves.

As for myself, well, I love chard. It's one of my favorite vegetables - always has been. My kids tend to think the same. So here's my current staple chard recipe, both for very little ones and grown ups, and you can pretty much use the whole plant for it.

Purée de blettes - chard purée

Chard

A few potatoes

Oat milk

Vegetal butter substitute (or real butter if you will eat it)

A pinch of curry

Wash the chard, cut off the very base of the ribs (the really hard part that holds them together) if it's still there, discard the bits that are damaged or dry, cut all the rest into small-ish bits.

Peel and dice the potatoes.

Cook the vegetables in your pressure cooker for a good 20 minutes. Pour the water out.

Add a little butter, one glass of milk, curry to taste. Using a hand mixer, mix thoroughly.

It has a little taste of comfort food while still being full of good greens. I'm afraid to say we all licked our plates clean (figuratively speaking... ) and the hubby had none of it.

Caviar...

Not real caviar, no, I'm not that full of cash to cook anything with it. I must even admit I've never tried it. But I do make eggplant caviar on a regular basis. You can eat it as a dip, or as a spread. We generally eat a few mouthfuls over a little bit of fresh white bread.

I have to give credit where it's due, though, and say that I didn't personally make this one. It was made by my dear friend Eysméralda - but it still fits the title of this blog, and I wouldn't have made it much differently.

I know it's not the traditional way to cook it - usually, one would roast the eggplants in the oven. I tried. I burnt my fingers removing the meat from the skin. And there was one casualty. The first time I cooked this, I killed my oven. I had forgotten to cut off the ends of the eggplants before roasting them. They exploded, taking the door of the oven with them.

Okay, the door still hung to the oven. But it never agreed to close again.
For the love of quick cooking, preserving my fingers (the skin stays tender enough to be blended with the rest), and functioning ovens, I turned to the pressure cooker.

The caviar (on top)
with bread and cucumber-paprika salad

Caviar d'aubergines

4 or 5 eggplants

2 cloves of garlic

1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley

a few leaves fresh coriander

olive oil

salt

Wash and dice the eggplants, put them in your beloved pressure cooker and cook until they're tender. By the sight of my nose, that should be something like 20 minutes.

Cut, peal and hack the garlic and herbs.

Put the eggplants and oil into a bowl and use a hand mixer to turn them into a somewhat smooth paste - don't worry if its not perfectly smooth, it doesn't have to be perfect to taste good ! Add the garlic and herbs. Serve cold. Or hot if you're very hungry and don't have the time to wait until it's completely cooled.

Now, there are dozens of way to prepare this. You can mix up spices and herbs, add lemon... Try a few things out and find what you like best ! You can cook a lot of the caviar, and keep it in the fridge for a few days.

All orange spiced carrot soup

I bought carrots last week, and when I looked at them this morning... ewww, not good. They weren't rotten or anything, just extremely dry and hard and definitely not looking like they'd do a great job as carrots. So into a soup they went ! In the summer I put tomatoes in it as well, but I've learned to NOT buy tomato when it's not the season, because they taste like cardboard - or worse. You could add canned tomatoes if you want.

All orange spiced carrot soup

10-15 carrots

5 oranges

3 potatoes (for a creamier texture)

1 cup almond cream -or almond milk

1 cube chicken stock

cinnamon, black pepper, ground chili pepper

Peel and sorta slice the carrots - you don't have to make thin slices, it will all get puréed in the end.  Put them in a pressure cooker. Peel the oranges and add the quarters to the carrots. Peel the potatoes, dice them, add them to the rest. Add 4-5 cups of water and the chicken broth, close the pressure cooker, cook for 20 to 30 minutes. Add spices to taste and the almond cream. Mix using a hand mixer (or something else, you choose your weapon). Serve.

Prep time : 30 minutes. Cooking time : by the time the older has finished his sausage, the vegetables were ready to be mixed. The baby loooved the soup. That's the neat thing about soups, I can serve the exact same thing to everyone in the family, them being 9 months or 32 years old.

ETA : that was a LOT of soup ! It serves at least 6, more likely 8 people.

What's cooking tonight ?

I may or may not post complete menus on a regular basis. I was quite happy with yesterday's productivity, so here it is. Fast,  mple and tasty.

Entrée : small red radishes, with salt and butter.
Meat : boudin blanc, grilled in the pan
Vegetables : sautéed zucchinis
Cheese, fruit, yoghurt for those so inclined.
The baby had some zucchinis mixed with left-over fish, and some (purposely) over-cooked rice and peas.

Total prep time : 30 minutes (+ about 10 minutes where everything was simmering on the stove and I was putting the plates on the table), for 4 persons including a toddler and a baby. The only real recipe for this is the zucchinis.

Sautéed zucchinis
7 big zucchinis
2 garlic cloves
1 shallot
1 fresh green onion
oil
1 cup beef stock

Wash the zucchinis - if you're reasonably confident they haven't been dipped in fertilizers and pesticides, you don't need to peel them. Cut them in two or four lenghtwise.
Put a big pan on the fire, with a dash of oil in it. Peel, slice thinly and hack the garlic, schallot and onion, put them in the pan over strong heat and stir regularly so that they don't get brown.
Slice the cut zucchinis and add them to the pan little by little. Stir each time you add something to the pan. After adding the last zucchini to the pan, pour the cup of stock over it - most of the time I used the ready-to-use dices of stock, I just crumble them over the pan and add a cup of water. Cover, let simmer for 10 minutes, then leave uncovered so that the liquid evaporates a little.
The zucchinis should be soft, somewhat mushy once cooked.