cookbook addict

hot and sticky Dans la famille pascale, je convoque les hot cross buns une nouvelle fois , avec une recette un peu différente dont j'ai déjà parlé. * Une recette de la grande Elizabeth David trouvée dans mon bouquin chouchou d'il y a 5 ans ( déjà , OMG je vieillis, bientôt mon anniversaire en plus), Ladies, a Plate de la Néo-Zélandaise Alexa Johnston, dont les recettes marchent toujours bien. Modifiée, avec moins de levure, et des pépites de chocolat au lieu des raisins de Corinthe. Les hot cross buns se dégustent traditionnellement le matin du Vendredi Saint, donc demain. Je sais pas pour vous, mais ici au Luxembourg on travaille (alors que dans certains pays, c'est férié). De plus les vacances commencent vendredi soir. Il me tarde de quitter la grisaille et la pluie mais je digresse. Délicieux encore tièdes avec du beurre, ou toastés le lendemain matin, ils se congèlent aussi très bien. Avant cuisson Hot cross buns 2ème édition, adaptés de ...

Salut les amis. Les dix derniers jours m'ont lessivée, pas vous? Lectrice occasionnelle de Charlie Hebdo, parisienne déracinée, ces nouvelles m'ont retourné le coeur et l'estomac. C'est pourquoi je partage, avant de continuer, ce ruban noir avec vous. Je suis Charlie, et tous les autres (image trouvée sur le net sans crédit) Voilà, c'est dit. Passons au reste. Folle de sucré et de pâtisserie, chocolique, rondouillarde, j'ai d'abord rigolé en apprenant que certains arrêtent le sucre et le diabolisent. Puis, en quête d'informations, et à la recherche d'un mode d'alimentation plus équilibré (ce qui est cyclique, tous les mois de janvier, n'est-ce pas) et parce que franchement, je ne sais pas m'arrêter à un morceau de gâteau ou de chocolat sans baffrer, je me suis intéressée de plus près à ce que ces hurluberlus anti-sucre avaient à dire. Le sucre est une drogue! Du moins, il rend accro et perturbe l'équilibre de l'appétit...

Devil's double chocolate malted cookies Pfiou, quel titre mes amis! J'ai survécu au mois de septembre, probablement grâce à un taux d'ensoleillement et de chaleur record (au Luxembourg en tout cas). Et un peu grâce aux heures thérapeutiques passées devant mon four. Et je vous reviens avec ces magnifiques cookies maltés de Jamie, mon vieil ami imaginaire, et cette recette issue de son dernier livre Comfort Food . Et entre autres nouvelles, je participe pour la première fois aux Golden Blog Awards alors n'hésitez pas à voter pour moi TOUS LES JOURS! (je sais pas, utilisez une alarme sur votre portable ou quelque chose dans le genre...) J'ai aussi participé de façon gracieuse à un guide gastronomique sur New York que vous trouverez sous le lien ci-joint chez House-trip . Mmmhh, j'y retournerai bien, comme à Tokyo, enfin, pas cette année, pour les mois qui restent je ne m'éloignerai pas trop du Benelux... Bon, trève de blabla, revenons à nos cookies....

I don't know what got over me, it's not as if I have any resolution for the new year. I do want to eat healthier food and less sugar but I can't seem to stop baking or craving something sweet. That will probably be the end of me, but oh, well, at least I don't smoke. And yet here I am trying new recipes using healthy ingredients like kale, virgin coconut oil, spelt and miso. My aim is to try and eat lighter, veg-packed dinners. Maybe it does sound like a resolution after all. Before I knew it I had made or adapted three recipes from Heidi Swanson's  Super Natural Every Day, all this week. I love the photography in this book, and it makes me dream of living in California. I have to make do with cooking from it, and everything I have tried has been super tasty. Remember the tortelloni salad ? The other day I tried kale chips and they were a success, except for the batches that I let burn because I was multitasking. This kale salad is a variation on kale chips, ...

Pulla bread installation I don't know about you, but this year I find it hard to believe it's almost Christmas already. Today is the first Sunday of Advent and I haven't done any Christmas baking, unless you count the ruined batched of macarons that fills some of my tins right now. Shopping wise I did get a head start on my usual schedule of last-minute present search. So there's that. This weekend is the annual International bazar in Luxembourg, an international marketplace for crafts, foods and folk dance exhibitions all for a good cause. I have found a few interesting items. Sake directly imported from Japan! Chipotles in adobo sauce! And as always an armful of used books, among which a Moosewood. I don't know why but every year among the discarded old copies of Weight Watchers and Sainsbury's books, there are some Mollie Katzen's (although this Moosewood Sundays one has nothing to do with her). Perhaps it's the lack of photographs that d...

Cupcakes glaçage chocolat au lait Jivara Joyeux Premier Mai! Sur ce blog il est déjà question de cupcakes , mais pas de recettes de cupcakes au chocolat (à part les vegans ). Or, ceux-ci sont à tomber, vraiment.  Je fais une petite pause dans mes aventures pâtissières version tradition française pour me détendre avec de bonnes vieilles recettes américaines, chacun sa relaxation. Enfin, relaxation, c'est vite dit, le cupcake permet de travailler le pochage, comprenez, le maniement de la poche à douille. Glaçage au chocolat noir Cette recette est adaptée du livre The Back in the Day Bakery Cookbook , de Cheryl et Griffith Day, qui ont une pâtisserie dans la ville de Savannah. Elle utilise uniquement du chocolat et non du cacao, pratique quand on est en panne de cette poudre, justement (j'avais envie de tester une autre recette mais elle utilisait uniquement du cacao, pfff). Par contre il faut du chocolat sans sucre, soit à 99%, dans le gâteau et on ne trouve ici que...

Everybody knows cinnamon buns but Sweden has a long tradition of spicing things up with cardamom. These vega buns are nice and buttery, golden and spicy and hail from one of my latest cookbook acquisitions, Under the Walnut Tree by mother and daughter food writers Anna and Fanny Bergenström. I am told that Anna is THE culinary writer in Sweden. This book is wonderful, very thick and rich of hundreds of recipes from Sweden, France, South America and other places. Each chapter covers one of their favourite ingredients, from avocado to chocolate, cardamom, tea, tomatoes, etc. If you had just one book and this was it, you could happily cook from it forever, daydream about the pictures and gain knowledge from the intros. It's that kind of book. The buns will be wonderful when autumn and winter come, but since the weather is decidedly un-summery, and I needed a project for the end of the afternoon to dissipate the black cloud on my mind, I found them quite perfect even right n...

It's been a long while since my last post in English so it's only fair to try and break that bad habit :) One thing I particularly like about my new job -beside the fact that I speak English every day, have great workmates and enjoy the work itself- is that I can bring my lunch in and most people enjoy seeing my sometimes eccentric foodstuff. Last time I brought onigiri in they were really popular, probably because of my cute box and the fake grass they were sitting on. Onigiri are Japanese rice balls plain or stuffed with savoury things like tuna, ham, umeboshi (pickled apricots, pictured above), etc: They are Japan's answer to sandwiches when it comes to food on the go. I have shown how to make them here , but basically you need cooked and still warm Japanese rice -for which you need a rice cooker to save you the trouble of badly cooked rice that becomes mushy or stays too dry and hard- possibly some special molds or just your hands to shape them, and plenty of water...

Having a break from my breathtaking adventures in New York City to share a couple of pics from my day. Today has been really nice and warm, Indian summer like, not chilly and rainy and a day to turn on the heating like last week. Today, I received my long awaited new Nigella book, Kitchen, so I made a little teapot of Mariage (Black Orchid) and sat down with it, then later on read it in the garden as it was so nice and mellow outside. I thought of my blog and took some pictures both in and out and of the new book. Let me show you my squah scultpure Kürbis , haha!   No, seriously, pumpkins rock and make excellent seasonal decoration before being turned into food. Oh, yeah, we had some birthday celebrations with Elmo, more on that later...perhaps. Autumn brings out fabulous colours from otherwise boring shrubbery inherited from past tenants. I can't help but think of Monty Python when I hear shrubbery. My dad planted these a couple of weeks ago before going h...

This post is brought to you via the amazing restorative power of Mojito :D I spent the afternoon trying to look after both children on my own during a birthday party on a farm. Then I drove 20km back home on winding albeit scenic backroads because the motorway was closed. I don't usually drink on my own but suddenly, the Havana Club, the organic limes and the mint on the balcony beckoned and were calling my name. Coming home I was exhausted, but now that I have nearly finished my first Mojito I must say the evening is looking pretty dandy -and I am grateful for the party, which was fun. Enough of that, I had this post in the making earlier today so I'll skip to that now. I have been sewing up a storm, trying to finish gifts for lovely people I'm about to see when I'm on holidays next week instead of packing up boxes for our impending move . But not only. Look at this pretty dress for Maya. OK, it looks a bit classic with its dainty fabric covered in cherries and...

Hay fever allergies : check. Hormone-laden days : check. Sick baby : check. It's been a pretty good fucked up week so far. Sorry about the language. Let us not dwell on the negative, there are worse things in life than not getting enough sleep and feeling like a wired zombie with a blocked nose and itchy eyes. But there are better, happier days too. Like the days when you are planning a cozy tea time with lots of dainty goodies to share and you look at your freshly planted spring flowers and rejoice about the new season because the trees haven't started releasing their f...ing pollens yet. For those days, I have made good use of this book : Ladies, a Plate by Alexa Johnston.* I'm sorry this post has started with bad language because there's nothing bad to say about this book, it is a treasure of old-fashioned, in a good way , recipes from New Zealand housewives who published them in community cookbooks, books sold to raise funds for local projects. And ...