This week's Weekend in a French Kitchen (Café Boulud) recipe is Cremini and Fontina Tart. To translate that for the uninitiated, it's a mushroom and cheese tart.
I have never heard of cremini mushrooms until this week, which made it a pretty fair bet I wouldn't be able to buy them. Apparently they are brown mushrooms, and might be something like Swiss browns. However, my research showed that button mushrooms are an acceptable substitute, and much cheaper than Swiss browns, so I just used white button mushrooms.
Also, Fontina cheese was a little too fancy for my local supermarket, and I couldn't be bothered hiking to the market, so after another piece of research, I learned that Gouda would be an acceptable substitute. Done - even the Woolies express near work had Gouda.
I wasn't sure whether I'd like this tart much or not, but was pleasantly surprised. Despite the absence of meaty filling, it is still a very tasty tart, which I put down to the preparation of the ingredients, which seemed fussy at the time, but worth it in the end.
As this tart is awash with butter, cream and cheese, it is hardly diet food, but was tasty for a change.
To check out whether anyone else made this tart and what they thought about it, check out the LYL section of the WIAFK (CB) website tomorrow, Australian time.
For Weekend in a French Kitchen this week, we had to make Sweet Swiss Chard Tourte.
Despite the "sweet" moniker, I fully expected this to be savoury - but it wasn't. If you have trouble imagining chard in a sweet pie, you wouldn't be alone, but this was truly delicious.
Take blanched Swiss chard, honeyed pine nuts and raisins, put them in a sweet dough with an egg and cream filling, and bake - et voila:
You have a rather delicious sweet pie, which defies definition but is really good. This may be my favourite Café Boulud recipe so far.
To see what the others thought of this dish, visit the LYL section of the Weekend in a French Kitchen website.
Life is full of compromises. Despite your best efforts, sometimes you just have to compromise to get anywhere at all.
And so it was for Weekend in a French Kitchen (Café Boulud) this week, where I compromised quite a bit to get the finished product due to a lack of time. Our recipe was Vegetable Couscous. the recipe required us to make harissa and vegetable broth from scratch before making the couscous. I had been away for the weekend, so this was never going to happen. I used harissa out of a jar and vegetable broth out of a tetrapak, but I was still happy with my jewelled couscous.
To see what the others thought of this dish, and to see if they made all of the components, visit the LYL section of the WIAFK website.
Our dish for Weekend in a French Kitchen (Café Boulud) this week was Gazpacho with Anchovy Toast. This is of course a classic cold soup that needs no further explanation.
I am not sure why I needed three colours of peppers when the whole lot gets blended up to give a red coloured soup, but nonetheless I complied with the recipe. I didn't put the extra raw vegetables on top as that is not my kind of thing, but I did make the anchovy butter for the toast.
Overall, I liked this dish, but not enough to make again.
To see what the others thought of this dish, visit the LYL section of the Weekend in a French Kitchen website.
For Weekend in a French Kitchen (Café Boulud) this week, our recipe is Lemon-Thyme Sorbet. The catch with this one is the requirement for an icecream maker. I have the Kitchen Aid icecream maker attachment, but that needs to go into your freezer for half a day before use and takes up heaps of freezer room that I just don't have. Accordingly, my sorbet was left largely to freeze itself.
The end result was surprisingly delicious, especially as the recipe was very simple. The sorbet is pleasantly lemony, and not overly sweet. I really enjoyed it as is.
To see what the other WIAFK (Café Boulud) cooks thought of this sorbet, visit the LYL section of the website.
Our Weekend in a French Kitchen (Café Boulud) recipe this week is Salsa Cruda with Horseradish and Avocado Mousse - say what? Yep, that was my reaction too. I went from that to dismay when I read the recipe - it did not sound like my kind of thing at all.
However, as the whole point of being in a group is to try things that I would never try on my own, I made the recipe - and I was pleasantly surprised. Sure, I subbed mustard for horseradish. Sure, I left out all of the herbs except mint (simply because I did not have them). Yeah, my mousse is not as mousse-like as it should be because I made a serve for one, which my food processor could not register, and yes, I skipped the garnishes. However, never in a million years did I think I would enjoy a tomato, scallion, cucumber, radish and chilli salad - but I did.
I may not make it again (don't get too hasty), but this dish pleasantly surprised me, especially when the vegetables were mixed with the avocado mousse.
To see what the other WIAFK (CB) cooks, thought of this dish, visit the LYL section of the Weekend in a French Kitchen website.
Our Weekend in a French Kitchen (Cafe Boulud) recipe this week is Lacquered Chicken with Noodle Salad. This is a really nice dish comprising chicken pieces marinated in honey, ginger, soy sauce and spices, then baked in the oven, while the side is a noodle salad with carrot, shallot and leek.
The "noodle" salad called for spaghetti; I didn't have any, so I used penne instead. I don't think it made much difference. I also served the salad warm, given it is winter here.
I really enjoyed this dish - it had really nice Asian-inspired flavours and was relatively quick to make.
To see what the others thought of this dish, visit the LYL section of the Weekend in a French Kitchen website.
For Weekend in a French Kitchen (Cafe Boulud) this week, our recipe is the mysteriously named Trao-Mad with Peach Compote. This actually ends up being beautiful, melt in the mouth, buttery biscuits served with a saffron-spiced peach compote.
These biscuits disappeared like hot cakes at work. They are so short that you are better off spooning the compote on them rather than dipping the biscuits into the compote, as the biscuits are quite delicate and tend to break if you dip them. I thought that there might not be enough compote, but my colleagues tended to just eat the biscuits sans compote because there was a lovely big spoonful of it leftover that had my name on it.
I used canned peaches for the compote without any problem. I just skipped the initial roasting step.
To see what the other participants thought of this dish, visit the LYL section of the WIAFK website.
Our Weekend in a French Kitchen (Cafe Boulud) dish this week is Boston Mackerel au Vin Blanc. Essentially, this is mackerel fillets pickled in white wine that has been flavoured with spices. This was not what I envisaged from the title of the dish, so I was a little disappointed when I went to make it.
I bought two mackerel from the fishmonger:
and had the not fun task of gutting and filleting them - and I made a bit of a hack job. The hot pickling mixture is poured over the raw mackerel fillets, and the fish are left overnight to pickle.
The end result is pictured at the top of the post, on toast spread with tomato relish (Kayte, look away!). I ate it for breakfast and it was fine, though not a repeat - pickled fish are not exactly my thing.
To see what the other Cafe Boulud cooks thought of this dish, visit the LYL section of the website.
Today's Weekend in a French Kitchen (Cafe Boulud) feautures Andrew Carmellini’s Bow Tie Pasta with Tomato, Arugula, and Mozzarella.
This dish took longer to prepare than you might think because we had to peel, deseed, chop and reduce six tomatoes, and infuse some oil for 15 minutes. However, the end result was subtly flavoured and delicious - I liked it a lot.
I think the extra cherry tomatoes on top and rocket are not totally necessary, but they do add texture. What I loved is that when I reheated the leftovers, the mozarella on top melted into an ooey, gooey sauce - yum.
To see what the other members of our group thought of this dish, visit the LYL section of the Weekend in a French Kichen website.
