French Fridays with Dorie: Bacon Egg and Asparagus Salad

I dig the photo.  I didn't dig the salad as much as the photo.  To be fair, I did not execute this recipe as written by Dorie Greenspan.  It was sort of close.  Ok, not really.  I made a lot of substitutions based on what I had in the house. I used red wine vinegar and olive oil in the dressing instead of champagne vinegar and walnut oil.  I used romaine lettuce instead of mesclun or baby greens.  And lastly, I used croutons instead of toasted hazelnuts (not because I wanted to, but because I burned the hazelnuts beyond recognition in the oven).  But the star ingredients in this salad were prepared (mostly) as directed....the bacon, egg and asparagus.  The asparagus is a bright and refreshing addition to the salad and the bacon....is just delicious. 

The thing I was most on fence about was the egg....I love me a nice fried egg every once in a while where the runny rich yolk spills out over the plate to be sopped up with bites of bacon and toast.  The egg in this salad was only mildly runny, but I wasn't really digging it on my salad.  Honestly, I should have known better.  My husband is keen to remind that when we visited Paris several years ago, I got the brilliant idea I would order a pizza with a sunnyside egg on top.  Not good and I ended up feeling sick (which I blamed on the jet lag, insisting the egg was fine).  With 2 egg dinner mishaps, I think I'll limit my runny egg intake strictly to breakfast.

Overall the salad was just fine, but I'm pretty sure my substitutions robbed this salad of it's true potential.  I'm curious to see how the other French Fridays with Dorie guys and gals liked this recipe.  Head over the FFwD website to see their results.     

Even though this recipe wasn't a home run for me, I can say I have had great success with a number of recipes from Dorie's cookbook, Around My French Table, and think this is a cookbook everyone should have in their arsenal.

French Fridays with Dorie: Salted Butter Break Ups

Check it out.  It's Friday and I'm actually posting this week's French Fridays with Dorie recipe on FRIDAY.  I think that's only happened one other time since I've been participating in this online cooking/baking group starting back in October 2010.  Miracles do happen.  This isn't so much a miracle, but I'm pleased to be on time once in a while!

The group cooks/bakes once a week from recipes in Dorie Greenspan's Around My French Table.  The recipes for each month are selected by a group voting process and there is typically always one sweet treat during the month.  I am not as consistent as I would like to be with participating every week, but I always try to make at least the sweet treat for the month.  This month the sweet is Salted Butter Break Ups.  What in the heck is a salted butter breakup?  It's a giant shortbread-esque cookie with a slightly salty finish.  There seems to be quite a trend with salty/sweet goodies these days. 

This recipe is very similar to pie dough recipe but with a generous addition of sugar.  It has an egg yolk wash on top and a little cross hatch pattern that you make using a fork.  The giant cookie gets baked for about 35 minutes until the edges are browned and the center is golden and springs back a little bit when you press in the middle.  The cookie cools and then you just break it up in free form pieces.

How is it?  Good??  I am on the fence to be honest.  I did enjoy the crispy edges.  But in all fairness, I'm not big on shortbread and sugar cookies in general.  I'm more of a Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookie girl or a.....Ginger Snap girl. ;)  But I did think I could make these my kind of cookie with a little Nutella love.  Or a little touch of jam. 

So how was it slathered in Nutella?  Good!  But who are we kidding?  Nutella makes everything taste better. 

I also had a few pieces with raspberry and strawberry jam along with cup of hot tea.  Yep, that was my breakfast this morning.  Dessert for breakfast always makes me happy.  Crumbled salted butter break ups would be a great topping on your favorite ice cream.

To see how the rest of the French Fridays with Dorie bakers fared this week click here.

French Fridays with Dorie: Savory Cheese and Chive Bread

Baked melty cheeses.  Fresh oniony chives.  Baked into a savory bread (or mini muffin in my case) sounds like pure deliciousness.  That's why I was excited to bake this week's French Fridays with Dorie recipe for Savory Cheese and Chive Bread.  When it comes to bread I love bread that has a crispy, chewy outside and my Hubby likes the soft pillowy inside.  So when I made this bread, I knew mini muffins would be perfect for me.  I could maximize the chewy, crispy cheesy exterior with each little muffin.  Check it out!

How do these mini muffins rate on the deliciousness meter?   They get high marks across the board.  This would be the perfect accompaniment to a chili or a soup.   This is no cakey "muffin".  It's a hearty bread.  I used 3 types of cheese, grated gruyere, small cubes of sharp cheddar and grated parmesan.  For extra flavor I used basil flavored olive oil.  And they get a nice little kick from white pepper.  These savory treats will definitely make a repeat appearance at our house.  Next time I plan to add pancetta or finely diced bacon.  That would make these just about perfect.  My mouth is watering just thinking about how they will taste with salty yummy bacon!  Mmmmm.

The dough is simple.  There is no yeast in this bread.  It's a quick bread.  Which really means dry ingredients (flour, salt, white pepper and baking powder) are mixed together (gently) with the wet ingredients (eggs, milk and olive oil) and then you stir in the mix ins (cheese and chives).  Easy. 

I halved the recipe and ended up with 14 mini's. 

My Hubby, who doesn't really like cheese, or crispy bread, ate 4 right off the bat.  Either he was starving or he really liked them.  Hard to tell.  I baked them for about 19 minutes.  The truth is the interior of the muffin was done at 15 minutes but I left them in a few minutes longer to get more browning on top. 

Next time I will take them out at 15 because they were just a touch on the dry side.  Though these aren't intended to be "moist", they would have benefited if they came out of the oven a few minutes earlier.

To see how other French Friday's with Dorie bakers did click here.  The recipe can be found in Dorie Greenspan's book, Around My French Table.

French Fridays with Dorie: Orange Almond Tart

I have been making a pretty poor attempt to keep up with the weekly cooking and baking for the online group, French Fridays with Dorie.  The goal is to cook and bake our way through Dorie Greenspan's cookbook, Around My French Table.  Though with more than 300 recipes (according to the tag line on Amazon.com) in the book, making 52 recipes a year, we'll be done sometime in 2016!  Good grief.   I have never done the math on that before.  Anyway, if you are interested in joining the fun click here.  That probably wasn't my best effort to convince you to join our group!  The nice thing about this group is there are no frequency of participation requirements.  So cook and bake along as it suits you.  Ok, that's a little better.

The group made Dorie's Orange Almond Tart on February 11th.  So I'm only a couple of weeks behind.  I'm clearly engaging the bake along as it suits you concept.  This recipe was a stand out and I knew I wanted to make it, even if it's a little bit late.  I love oranges and have had a constant supply of them in the fridge for the last month and half.  I've never a seen a recipe with baked oranges, so this was definitely intriguing.  This is also my first time making a tart so I had to go out and purchase a tart pan. 

This recipe has been described many of the FFwD folks as "fussy".  And it is.  This isn't something you can just throw together.  It's best made over the course of 2 days.  You can do all the prep on day 1 and then assemble and bake on day 2. 

The preparation starts with making a sweet tart dough.  The dough is made in a food processor and then can either be pressed into a buttered tart pan or it can be chilled then rolled out and laid into the pan.  I opted for the press in method. 

I don't think I got the same thickness all around, but it still worked out ok.  Once the dough is pressed in, you prick the bottom all over with a fork and then freeze it for at least 30 minutes.  It bakes for about 25 minutes until the crust is lightly golden. 

The second step in preparation is cutting and segmenting the oranges.  This also has to be done in advance because the oranges need to dry out on paper towels for an hour or more, or Dorie even suggests overnight.  I went for overnight. 

The third step is preparing the almond cream.  This part of the recipe also comes together in a food processor.  The almond cream really isn't technically a cream, however, has a creamy texture.  It's a mix of almond flour, butter, sugar, vanilla and egg.

The fourth step is assembly.  The cream goes in the tart shell.

The orange segments get distributed in a design of your choosing on the top. 

Finally, you are ready to bake! 

60 minutes in the oven or until the almond cream puffs up around the oranges and turns lightly golden brown.  Mine took the full 60 minutes.

So?  How did it turn out?  To be honest, it was a little weird.  The almond cream is amazing.  It's almondy and creamy and has a rich brown sugary taste (even though there is no brown sugar).  It almost reminded me a little of pecan pie filling.  The tart dough was thick and on the "tough" side.  I think I overworked the dough (Dorie warns against this).  But the taste of the tart dough is nice, just slightly sweet and shortbread like.  The oranges were the "weird" part.  When baked they had a slight bitter flavor.  They were hard to cut through and were almost chewy.  Dorie also suggests trying this tart with other fruit, such as pears or plums.  Both would be a wonderful compliment to the oh so delicious almond cream.

Good enough to make again?  Yes!  With variations and hopefully a little more finesse on my tart dough.

For the recipe check out Dorie's book, Around My French Table.

French Fridays with Dorie: Paris Mushroom Soup

Only 2 days late posting. Could be worse.

Are you feeling like I am? Like all those holiday goodies are hanging around a little too long....like around the waist and thighs? It's high time to get back to healthy sensible eating. Well at least for a minute. Because just after this post, I will be posting some yummy almond raspberry and lemon cupcakes. Even more reason to work in lighter and healthier fare.

This week's French Fridays with Dorie recipe fit the bill perfectly. Paris Mushroom Soup. It's low in fat (only 2 tablespoons of butter for 6 very generous servings). Mushrooms, onions, garlic, fresh herbs, chicken stock and little white wine. No cream. The soup gets pureed and served over some fresh parsley, green onions and thinly sliced mushrooms. Unfortunately I didn't have any mushrooms to spare for this step, so it's the one thing I left out. Though next time I would make sure to have ample mushrooms because I think it would really take this soup to the next level.

The soup was light and tasty, though it wasn't as amazing as I hoped it would be. But it was good enough to keep on the make again list to see if the extra mushrooms do the trick. Check out French Fridays with Dorie to see how the Paris Mushroom Soup turned out for the rest of the group. To get the recipe, pick up a copy of Dorie Greenspan's fabulous cookbook Around My French Table.

French Fridays with Dorie: Spiced Butter Glazed Carrots

10 pounds of carrots. We bought 10 pounds of carrots from Costco last Sunday. For a 2 person household. I had 2 dishes in mind this week featuring carrots...and at $4 something it seemed perfectly sensible to buy 10 pounds. Right? So what that I still have 7 pounds left? Maybe there is a really big carrot cake in my future.

The first dish I made this week with our carrot cache was a slow cooker pot roast with onions, carrots and potatoes. It was tasty, but I didn't get a chance to snap any photos. Sorry. And dish number two is my French Friday's with Dorie pick for this week. December is another free form month where we can cook the 5 recipes selected by the group during whichever week we choose. And given my abundance of carrots...this week was the perfect week.

Dorie's recipe for Spiced Butter Glazed Carrots is simple and tasty. But I think I missed the boat on the true "spice" factor because I left out the cardamom seeds. They didn't have a gallon size at Costco for us to buy! But I did use plenty of fresh ginger and garlic. Oh, and butter. The carrots were good. Wow good? Na. But still good. I will likely make them again. And soon...because I don't think that carrot cake requires all 7 pounds sitting in the fridge.

I served the carrots with Dorie's Chicken Diable recipe. I really, really like this recipe and have made it twice now. The sauce is delicious. Wow delicious. Especially if you are a dijon mustard fan. So good. To get Dorie's recipes pick up her fabulous book Around My French Table.

French Fridays with Dorie: Speculoos (Christmas Spice Cookies)

It's officially cookie season! For some reason the Christmas season is totally free reign to make mass amounts of cookies. Well I should say I take free reign to make crazy amounts of cookies. I guess I save up all my cookie mojo until December and then I just go nuts. In a given holiday cookie season I make upwards of 600-800 cookies of all shapes and sizes. Even though it seems a little crazy...I know I'm not the only one...you other crazy cookie people know who you are.


Anyway, I always like to try at least one new cookie each holiday season, and this weeks French Fridays with Dorie pick seemed perfect. Speculoos cookies are a small crisp spice cookie that scream holiday. I'm not normally a crisp cookie girl, but for some reason I couldn't stop popping these little babies into my mouth. They were addictive. The spices were perfect...a lot of cinnamon, a little ginger and bit of clove. A perfect blend of warm spicy goodness that makes me smile.

The recipe calls for you to divide the dough into discs and to roll each disc between 2 sheets of parchment paper. This is my first time rolling out dough this way and it worked beautifully. I will be trying this with other rolled cookie dough and even pie crust. Dorie is very specific that the rolled dough must be refrigerated for at least 3 hours before cutting and baking. I waited exactly 3 hours and had no issues getting the cookies cut with my 1 1/2 inch scalloped shaped cookie cutter.

If you think that you should under bake these for a less crisp cookie, don't bother. They just have a stale crunch....sort of crisp but not all the way there. Accept these are crunchy cookies and bake them accordingly.


But you can dress them up a bit by dipping them in dark chocolate. Dorie also recommends sandwiching them with Nutella or dulce de leche. Both would be delicious for certain.


If you want the recipe check out Dorie's newest cookbook, Around My French Table. Perhaps this is going to be corrected in future publications of the book, but my version leaves the egg out of the ingredient list and instructions. So be sure to add in 1 egg to the butter sugar mixture....cause if you don't you won't have cookies....you'll have crumble...and you can't add the egg in at the end. Cause it doesn't work. Trust me.

These are tasty little holiday cookies. Give them a try!

French Fridays with Dorie: Roast Chicken for Les Paresseux

This is my first time roasting a whole a bird. The recipe was choosen as November pick for the online cooking group French Fridays with Dorie. This recipe is roast chicken for the lazy (or les paresseux). Seemed like a good way to roast my first chicken. I have mixed feelings about the process. It took forever...90 minutes. It made the bottom of my pan black and splattered all over my oven. And I'm pretty sure the high heat was the cause of my pan cracking the next day when I took it out of the water where it was soaking. I used a pampered chef stoneware 9x13 casserole dish which is now destined for the trash can...I'm a little sad about that. The flavor of the chicken was not anything to write home about. It's not all bad though. It was easy. The skin was brown and crispy. And the infamous piece of bread that cooked under the chicken was pretty tasty. But I could only eat a few bites because you know its soaked with chicken fat that has gotten crispy and delicious. My feelings aren't really mixed. I didn't think the chicken warranted the effort, mess and waiting time that went into it.

I'm not giving up on cooking whole chickens. But will be looking for a different technique and flavoring elements next time.

I made this chicken along with homemade green bean casserole. Somehow I forgot to take pictures of the casserole....which turned out fabulous! For a beautiful photo and the recipe check out Michelle's blog, The Brown Eyed Baker. This recipe beats the canned soup version. The creamy mushroom sauce has a wonderful garlic flavor and pairs perfectly with the green beans and cripsy onion and breadcrumb topping. It's so so good.

French Fridays with Dorie: Potato Gratin

I have a pretty nice food processor. I've gotten quite a bit of use out of it over the past year...soup, pie and cookie dough, hummus, ground nuts and some other things I can't think of. My food processor has some fancy attachments to grate cheese and slice and dice stuff but I've never used them. Today was my big chance to finally use the slicing attachment...to get nice uniform slices for my Potato Gratin. After a lot of fiddling around, reading through the instruction manual that I dug out of the depths of our catch all drawer and some more fiddling, I am sad to report I could not figure out the attachment set up. So if anyone knows how to set up the attachments for a Cuisinart 11 cup food processor please leave me a comment!

I broke down and sliced my potatoes in 1/8 inch thick rounds by hand. At least I tried my damnedest. Some were thicker, some were thinner. What can you do? Oh, I know! Buy a mandoline or figure out how to use your food processor. Hmmmm. Maybe Santa will bring me a mandoline...but if I am so lucky, I will have to hide it from my husband. He has an unnatural fear of a bad accident involving fingers and a very sharp blade. But that's not what we're here to discuss.

Let's get back to the potatoes. Potatoes are the ultimate blank canvas in cooking. So many options. Cheesy potatoes, fried potatoes, buttery baked potatoes, creamy mashed potatoes, potato salad, crispy potatoes, potato skins, hashbrowns, latkes, potato soup, potato tacos (yes, there is such a thing--and they are tasty), roasted potatoes....all delicious, including Potato Gratin, this week's French Fridays with Dorie recipe pick.


This recipe has just a few ingredients....heavy cream, garlic, salt, pepper, gruyere cheese and of course potatoes. You start by warming heavy cream with minced garlic and letting the garlic infuse into the cream. Meanwhile start peeling and slicing. Potatoes are layered in the pan, topped with salt and pepper and a few spoonfuls of garlicky cream....and repeat. I am guessing I had about 7 or 8 layers. Top it off with fresh grated gruyere cheese and bake at 350 for 45 minutes to 1 hour.


This was good. The potatoes drank in all that creamy garlic goodness and the browned gruyere cheese on top was a delicious accompaniment. Though it was good, solidly good, I was looking for another layer of flavor. Maybe a little bacon? Maybe a little cheese between the layers?

Along with the potatoes I made another recipe from Dorie Greenspan's cookbook, Around My French Table, Chicken Breasts Diable. Chicken in a dijon shallot wine sauce. Mmmmmm. Here's a preview. Will be posting more details about this dee-lish dish in the next day or two.



You can see what other French Fridays with Dorie cooks made this week. November is a mix it up month and you can make 1 of 4 different recipes which ever week you choose.

French Fridays with Dorie: Hachis Parmentier

How can you go wrong with meat and potatoes? This delicious recipe comes from Dorie Greenspan's new book Around My French Table. This is my first week cooking along with the new cooking group French Fridays with Dorie where we plan to cook and bake our way through Around My French Table. I'm excited to report this was a success!

I have to give kudos to my Hubby because he did most of the cooking on this one and I supervised because I'm recovering from some recent surgery. We were both a bit confused by the recipe as we chose to go with the "Bonne Idee" or "Good Idea" and used ground beef and beef broth rather than cube steak and homemade buillion or broth. It took a few tries of reading the recipe, or ten, and finally we managed to get things on track. It came together rather easily...or at least that's how Hubby made it look. I spent a lot of time fretting about what type of sausage to use. It just seemed counter intuitive to use Italian sausage...but that's what Hubby bought at the grocery store and I was relieved to find that it worked nicely, adding a great level of flavor to the ground beef. The final result was really tasty! It is a warm and inviting comfort food, perfect to serve for a fall or winter Sunday dinner. I look forward to making this recipe on my own next time. This will definitely be making a repeat appearence in our house. Mmmmmm.


See how other members of the group did with their Hachis Parmentier by clicking here.