Provence fragrances escaping from the oven

A South French Sunday lunch. Think about a dinner, enjoyed slowly between noon and 5 p.m., talking and eating food cooked by the grandma.

The roast : A chicken baked inside a salty crust, with lots of perfumed herbs.

It gets very tender.

The zucchini that believed they were bananas.

Colorful Mediterranean Summer vegetables. They must be full of vitamins.

Layered, then baked. Tian is also the name of the pottery in which this dish is baked.

Teaser about the dessert (to be posted soon) :

Tarte automne-été aux trois fruits (Summer-Fall triple pie).

Electrolyte refill smoothie

When it’s hot, we sweat a lot and lose water. And we also eliminate precious elements, electrolyte or ions, whatever sports drink maker call them. We don’t need to buy their powders to replace them. Let’s get all the nutrients with a natural drink.

Moloheya (molokhia), this herb has a jelly texture like okra (gumbo), and that comes with the property of maintaining hydration. Like those sports gels.

It’s a smoothie of frozen banana (for its carbs and potassium) , molokhia and a little lemon juice. Now we need sodium ? Well on the glass.

I know the color is not superb, but the taste is very fruity, the texture deliciously creamy and it’s very efficient.

Carrot tofu pancakes and ‘caramel salé’ spread

Soft red pancakes, with a very creamy spread of caramel salé, caramel flavored with salty butter.

Tant pour tant, equal weight.
(1 : 1 : 1) sugar : cream : salted butter.
Melt the sugar into blond caramel, add in the warmed cream. Remove from stove, add butter.
See what you can do with it here, I mean besides eating it all with a spoon.
You can also continue :

To the hot tant pour tant caramel, I have mixed in 2 additional volumes of cream. It became very liquid, it has a cream textured when cooled. I have then added a few bits of rock salt.
It can be used like a jam or a spread.

The pancakes are also tant pour tant, 1:1:1. It’s flour (plus baking powder), tofu, carrot paste (grounds when I juiced kintoki carrots with mandarin oranges).

Sekihan pan – Red rice bread

My reader Nippon-nin thought the black rice bread (bread with added rice) looked like o-seki-han, Japanese red sticky rice.
sekihan

Today this is the real Canada Dr… well, the real sekihan-pan.

The other had not the flavor of the festive rice. This one has it 100%…

It’s really made of red azuki beans and of rice. I used “rice bread flour”, a mix of milled rice with gluten so I could make a classic yeast bread dough. The product is a bit expensive and I don’t think I’ll buy it again. I think regular rice flour and baking powder could make a good version too. Both dough could be steamed in a rice-cooker instead of baked in the oven. There are many possibilities.

I made the dough with the cooking broth of the azuki beans, then added boiled beans to it.

On top of that pink rice you often add gomashio. Normally, it’s crushed sesame with salt. I’ve let them whole.

Many shapes.

Back side.

Inside. You can see the beans in a quite moist pink bread.

Enjoy with green tea. Hot or cold, it really tastes like seki-han. That could be a great bread for a hanami picnic under the cherry blossoms if…
If I still have some left when the storm stops and the flowers open.
If the storm lets a few branches on the trees.
It’s apocalyptic today. Ffffffffffffff… the wind. Good point : the wind has cleared the air from pollen so we can breath better.

Quail eggs in brine

I tried to make brine salted eggs. You can see the recipe at the end. It’s an old way to preserve duck eggs in the Philippines. And now that the preservation is no longer necessary, they do it for the taste and texture.
I’m a small player, so I’ve used quail eggs.

They were a necessary ingredient for :

the bibingka (click here)

After 2 weeks in the jar, they became yellow outside.

When I prepared the brine, I simmered it, but the salt didn’t want to dissolve. It’s still here with the Sichuan peppercorns. That was smelling bad, the hot brine. I worried about the result.

But no problem ! I boiled the eggs… and they were delicious. Nicely spiced and salted.

The texture differs. The yellow is slightly creamy. And the white too. I’m not so clumsy to the point I can’t peel boiled eggs properly… I mean I’d have done one neat for the photo. It’s not smooth because the egg is not normally hardened, surely due to the picking.

Great ! I’ll make more.

(recipe from DB challenge)

Salted Eggs

Ingredients
1 part salt
4 parts water
sichuan pepper corns
1 tablespoon brandy or whiskey
Eggs, duck or chicken (duck is traditional)

Directions:

1. Boil all ingredients except eggs on the stove until the salt is dissolved. Let the liquid cool.
2. Place eggs in a clean mason jar, pour in the salt water, seal.
3. Place in your pantry for 2-3 weeks. To check if they are done, remove an egg, cook it, and taste it. You may decide that the rest of the eggs need a few more days.