Two Hits and a Miss

Last week I mixed things up with a couple of recipes from the Regal, a French cooking magazine that I occasionally pick up. They don't appear to have a website, but the cover does list a price for Canada, so you might be able to find it if you're really interested.

Anyway, it's always fun to try new recipes, and French recipes in particular are always a surprise. I find them to be consistently quite vague, and often the flavour combinations are not something I would ever have considered. Plus, it's good French practise.

So, I've typed up the two recipes that we enjoyed, so that you too, can cook a bit of France in your home (how cheesy is that?).

Keep in mind that measurements in particular are quite vague, and as I don't have measuring cups or a scale, my measuring consisted of either eyeballing or measuring vaguely using an empty Nutella cup. No problem.

Both recipes took less than 30 minutes to throw together.

Red cabbage braised with cranberries and spiced meatballs

400 g ground beef
1 tsp five spice powder
1 egg
2 tbsp breadcrumbs
6 sprigs of flat parsley
Salt
3 tbsp flour
1 small red cabbage
125 gr cranberries or 3 tbsp dried cranberries
Oil
3 tsp crème fraiche
1 lemon

1. Wash the parsley and chop it. Mix the meat, breadcrumbs, egg, spices and parsley with a fork. Add salt. With your hands, form the meat into balls the size of a ping-pong ball.
2. put some flour onto a plate. Roll the meatballs in the flour quickly and shake of the excess.
3. Heat the oil over high heat in a large pot, and brown the meatballs on all sides for five minutes (they’ll finish cooking with the cabbage). Set aside.
4. Wash the cabbage, and cut it into slices. Wipe out the pot, heat some oil over medium heat. Add the cabbage to the pot and stir for a couple of minutes. Add salt. Add the cranberries and a half cup of water. Mix.
5. Add the meatballs to the cabbage, cover the pot and let cook for 20 minutes over low heat, until the cabbage is very tender. At the end of cooking, if you like, add the lemon crème fraiche and mix delicately (we served it as a condiment). Serve with boiled potatoes or tortillas.

Up next is the Blesotto. It's made with Ebly, which is grains of wheat, that I think look like barley. I have no idea if this stuff is available in Canada, it's quite common here, and is sold in the rice aisle (or, due to the sorry state of our grocery store right now, the 'everything that gets boiled in water' aisle). I imagine you could easily substitute rice.

Blesotto aux champignons

150g d’Ebly
10 button mushrooms
½ square of veggie bouillon
3 shallots
50 g of Parmesan
1 slice of prosciutto (jambon cru)
100 g butter
2 tbsp olive oil
6 sprigs of Italian parsley
Salt and pepper

1. chop the shallots finely. Clean the mushrooms and slice them thickly. Grate the cheese. Cut the ham into strips. Rinse the parsley and chop.
   

2. heat the oil in a non-stick pan and brown the ham and mushrooms (separately) for 5 minutes. Set aside.
   

3. melt 50 g of butter in a saucepan. Add the shallots and cook for about five minutes until translucent. Add the Ebly, mix for two minutes over low heat.
   

4. increase the heat. Add 2 dL of water into the saucepan, add the bouillon tablet. Mix, and let it cook until the water is absorbed. Add 1 dL of water, half the mushrooms and the chopped parsley. Mix and let cook until all the water is absorbed. Taste, and continue cooking with additional water if the Ebly is still too firm.
   

5. off the heat, add the Parmesan and the rest of the butter in pieces. Add pepper and mix well. Add the rest of the mushrooms and serve immediately.

Those are the two hits, the miss was a leek and mushroom tart on a polenta crust. Sounded intresting, but it went wrong in all areas. The polenta crust was super chewy, the sauce was an unappetizing shade of pink (creme fraiche and tomatoes), that leaked over the edge of the crust when it cooked. The leeks and mushrooms were fine, but they didn't stand a chance on top of the other two failures.

Tonight Erik is making blanquette de veau, and it looks like it's almost time to eat.

Hope everyone had a nice weekend, and bon apetit!