La chinoise, the mythical brioche from the East

Chinois, it’s Chinese people, it’s over-complicated language, that’s it, just this cake.

Te recipe is secret… Even myself, I don’t know what I put in it.

another chinois
Yes, that changes each time.

Yum….

Matelotte de truite ayu

A matelotte is a French river fish stew, with a creamy wine sauce. It’s out of fashion now, which is a shame. It’s really delicious. Well you need good river fish. When I was a kid, we often had neighbors that were emptying their fish pond, and we had some more often that we wished. Now it’s a rarity.

Ayu is a type of small river trout. They are farmed, at least partially. It’s rarely if ever prepared this way.

Japanese ayu dish

I got a few that were a bit too large for Japanese style, but perfect for my purpose.

Garniture aromatique. Fresh veggies and herbs in butter. The sauce is based on white wine.

With lots of mushrooms.

You can have reasonably healthy side dishes. Pink sauerkraut.

Salade trévise (radicchio).

A good Sunday meal.

Le Nancy. Grandma’s so soft chocolate cake.

Gâteau au chocolat de Nancy

Nancy, the city.
Lorraine has two capital cities. The real one and the fake one that pretends. Well, I know which is real but that’s not the topic.
The situation has advantages. The region has two iconic traditional chocolate cakes. One for Metz, one for Nancy.

Gâteau de Metz

Gâteau de Nancy

The official recipe.
My proportions : 2 eggs, 60 g each for chocolate and butter, 1 tbs each for cocoa and flour, 1 ts sugar.

Springtime kneppes, sweet green dumplings and sour white sauce

A dish of contrasts. I was thinking that green kneppes would be nice. The addition of peas makes them sweet, so a sour sauce reveals them.

Blanched peas, mashed with a fork, flour, water, salt and wuxi (5 spice mix). Boiled.

For the sauce, salted new onions, later mixed with minced dill, sour yogurt (at room temperature), coriander seed, pepper, nutmeg. You can use a plant based yogurt.

Coat the very hot kneppes with the sauce and serve immediately.

Tourte lorraine au poulet et à la marjolaine (chicken marjoram pie)

Une tourte lorraine. Lorraine style meat pie. I’ve never seen my mother making one, but so many local butchers proposed great ones, even without orderning.
Here I have to make it from scratch. This time, it’s a little variation to adapt to local ingredients.