Cauliflower and sesame.
A delicious purée that changes from the classic potato version. It’s extremely creamy nutty and later, it’s very light in your tummy. Ideal for lunch on day behind your desk.
Cauliflower boiled till it’s half-cooked, plus home-made roast sesame tahini, salt, pepper.
Roasted sesame seeds on top.
Sprouts of water morning glory around.
That’s the basic classic hachis parmentier served by all French mamans. It’s economical comfort food that children love. Including grown up kids…
Today, they are small, in ramequin (what you may call cocottes) and verrines (it’s a glass, I hope baking won’t damage it too quickly).
The ramequins can be prepared in a large quantity and frozen. Their shape and size is ideal for quick thawing.
That starts with a leftover of boiled beef. It’s minced into hachis, then refried with a brunoise of veggies.
Mashed potatoes, flavored with butter. My only eccentricity is I’ve left the pink skin. I don’t buy pink potatoes to throw the skins.
Layered : puree, hachis, puree, butter.
Then baked and enjoyed !
Kabocha, the sweet Japanese pumpkin are ripe in this season. There are several types. This one is the very common Nankin. So buy one, and have fun.
Everything is edible : flesh, rind and seeds.
It can be sliced and cooked very simply.
with soba (poached)
roast (chick sand)
Purée is very easy to make, just steam and mash with a fork. It’s very versatile :
New dishes 2012-13 :
Summer kabocha stir-fry, Indian style
kabocha salad
millas (cake)
chana dal chilled soup
kabocha yokan (Japanese sweet)
The grated raw flesh of the fresh Summer Nankin kabocha is excellent too.
August veg’
color slaw
shred veggies
Often, you have cooked skin unused because it would have messed the orange color of the dish. It is excellent, use it.
miso soup
salad with fried tofu
mabo tofu
One kabocha is filled with a good cup of seeds. Take them, rinse and grill in the oven-toaster or in a skillet.
grilled
opened with the teeth
the green seed, to enjoy with a little salt
Do you need more ideas to cook a pumpkin :
Compil’ for Cinderella
Boeuf bourguignon.
Our May 2012 Daring Cooks’ hostess was Fabi of fabsfood. Fabi challenged us to make Boeuf Bourguignon, a classic French stew originating from the Burgundy region of France.
There are 2 other posts for the challenge :
Making the boeuf bourguignon shown here.
Alouette sans tête, variation.
Bring the stew. (Making of here)
Prepare simple garnitures with season ingredients : a classic boiled potato, green beans, Spring fava beans, a light puree of carrot and potato.
Serve with a few buttered croutons. And wine. The same as for cooking, or ideally something better.
Mizuna leaves for a closing meal salad. If you eat your greens, you’re saved !
You want to taste ? Well cook yours. The best I can do now :
That’s how Mum tricked us into eating hamburgers. She was hiding the meat between veggies we loved so much. And she was hiding cookies under the leaves of salad. She was ordering us to swallow chocolate bars pretexting that was a medicine for our arthritis.
You don’t believe me ? You’re right.
Yummy carrots ! The color is bright and appetizing, isn’t ? When we were kids, with my brother and sister, we refused to eat one spoon of that. I don’t even say “that food” as we considered it to be table decoration that we’d push aside to get the food.
So my Mum would *hide* them inside the mashed potatoes. That’s not very discreet, we could see them. We couldn’t separate them from the precious potatoes, so that worked.
That was her version of “hachis parmentier”.
One more variation : instead of using ground beef, or leftovers of beef, I used duck meat. That’s what I scrapped from the bones I used to make stock a while ago. I refried it with onions in duck fat.
Layers.
Bread crumbs, black pepper and a little butter to make the crust.
That was good !
GOURMANDE in OSAKA 