cookbook addict

Croissant homemade J'en ai longtemps rêvé, voici les croissants maison. Pour la recette j'ai suivi tout le tuto de Sabrina sur Rêves de Gourmandises . Tout est expliqué clairement. Je n'ai pas mis d'oeuf dans la pâte et j'ai fait un tour double et un simple, plus pour une partie de la pâte  quelque chose approchant d'un troisième tour car j'ai dû la replier pour la remettre au frais. Add caption Par contre j'ai eu quelques soucis techniques. Ma pâte s'est déchirée lorsque je l'ai étalée avant la découpe, je n'ai pas pu l'étaler très fin, disons plutôt 5 mm que 3, voire plus, mais ça n'a pas trop affecté le goût ni l'aspect de la pâte cuite. J'ai eu du mal à former de beaux croissants et comme je n'ai pas été rapide, la pâte a ramolli, j'ai dû la replier et la remettre au frais. J'aurais dû faire un gabarit pour faciliter la découpe. Je me suis rendue compte que c'est bien quand ils ont une longue p...

Dear Reader, I have let you down. Seriously, I haven't posted in over two months, where has the time gone? Anyway, it hasn't been too exciting, or perhaps I haven't had much energy to cook and write. I have fed the other blog a little (it's easier in French I guess), but I have fed myself well (a little too well probably). Anyway, I offer you this recipe for a microwave chocolate cake, just because it's dead easy and super quick to whip up, even if a three-year-old is helping. It's not mine, it's from the other Julie , the stick insect one, a pretty, popular, pretty popular thin TV cook. -do you hear the envy in my italics?- It's done the rounds on French blogs, because we don't cook much with our microwaves, let alone bake with them, and this cake is surprisingly good, considering. It won't rise, and only fills half a standard loaf pan, but it's dense, intense and impossible to resist. It's called "black cake", yes in English,...

I have only recently read the mega success book French women don't get fat , in its French translation. You could ask, as I did, if I really needed this book, what with being French myself and all... the answer is no. But it did no harm to be reminded of a few evident facts one tends to forget. While Guiliano's book would make me abhor French chicks if I weren't one myself, with her authoritarian look at life, self-disciplined and self-righteous pedantic monologue, it is full of the common sense derived from a 1950s bourgeois education in the French provinces. Which is probably why I cringed a lot while reading it. It took her far, up to the top position of CeO of Cliquot US, but it left no space for a bit of humane understanding of the human condition, which accounts for a lot of the overweight people, and especially women, carry around. But there are shrinks for that!!! OK, so I've started to jot down all the food that passes my lips while simultaneously reducing its...