Twirling Your Way To a Recipe.

And here is the recipe!

                                  Pork Chops with a Mushroom-Sorrel Sauce

Cook the pork chops on medium-high heat until they caramelize but not until cooked through. Remove them from the pan and add a sliced onion and the mushrooms of your choice. Cook until the onion is golden and the mushrooms are cooked almost all the way through. Add the Sorrel and cream. Cook for 2 minutes and add the pork chops to the sauce. Cook together for about 15 minutes.

I served it with steamed Potatoes.

Everybody loved it including the toddler.

The Bowl with the Rotting Fruit in It.

I don't know how things work in your family but in mine there are weeks where everybody wants to eat fruit all the time. All week long you can hear things like "who took the last pear, it was mine" or "how come there are no more tangerines??". The one-in-charge-of-keeping-the-fruit-bowl-stocked-up scratches his head and logically thinks that next time he goes to the farmers market, well, he'll stock up on fruit since everybody is eating so much of it. And it'll all get eaten quickly. Since everybody wants it so badly. Well, logically.
And on the next Saturday morning as he is about to cross the threshold he'll inquire again what everybody wants from the market and the house will echo with remarkable unison "FRUIT".
So he goes and still thinking logically buys fruit. A lot of it. Persimons, pears, apples and pomegranates. And tangerines, oranges and lemons.
And then, 2 days go by. Some fruit is being eaten and a lot is left. And it is Monday and the postman comes by bearing two enormous packages marked France. The packages that had been eagerly awaited before Christmas but didn't make it because planes were not crossing the ocean at that time. Snow they said.

And the packages were full to the brim with chocolate and a multitude of other French goodies that were promptly munched on by everybody.

And the fruit you ask?
Ah, the fruit. It stayed piled up high in its bowl. Days passed. Turning into a week. And the fruit became squishy at first. And I thought that really I should do something about this.
And then the fruit discolored until inevitably it started to rot.

So I made Fruit Compote: 

I cut all the parts that  I could from the pears and apples. Cut the persimons in half and scooped the pulp out. And I cut the pomegranates in quarters and took as much of the juice and seeds as I could. It simmered on low with vanilla and orange flower water  until it was nice and soft. I added a large handful of slivered almonds and turned off the heat.
Be warned that if you add pomegranates the seeds will be very noticeable in the compote. It does not bother my toddler or myself but it does bother the rest of the family. That's too bad. More for us I guess.
If you don't want the seeds, it is still worth it to put in the juice.

You can serve as is or add whipped cream or make a crumble with it.

I froze the pomegranates shells... I want to try to dye yarn and linen and see how that goes.

Epiphany.

My favorite part of the holidays has always been the food. Well, that and sleeping in but since I now have 3 children the only thing left is the food.
And what I love about the epiphany is the galette des rois, the king's galette. The puff pastry drips with butter and the dense filling smells of almonds and orange flower water. And then there is the feve, a little porcelain figurine that is hidden in the filling. It replaced the dried bean of old. The lucky person to find it is crowned king... or queen for the day.
The youngest person hides under the table and designates the person whom each slice is going to. Traditionally there is only one feve in the cake but nowadays a lot of families will put as many feves in the cake as there are children present.

Some people celebrate the epiphany the first Sunday of January like my sister . Others celebrate it on January 6th. And in France at least, numerous others celebrate it all month long. Like me.

Here is a recipe for the galette. Try it, it's very easy.

Galette des rois:

Enough puff pastry to cut 2 circles into
100g sugar
2 egg yolks
125g almond meal
1 tsp almond extract
1 tbsp orange flower water
75g butter

Mix the sugar and egg yolks until the mix is pale and makes a ribbon. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well. Spread onto one dough circle leaving 1 inch of space all around. Press the feves or a dried kidney beans slightly into the filling. Cover with the other circle of dough and press the edges together with a fork.
I always glaze my dough with cream or milk because our eggs come from our own chickens and they don't lay much in winter.

Goose bouillon.

                                                                      Spices for Goose Bouillon.

Well, that goose was expensive but I got a quart of fat from it and 5 quarts of bouillon that I froze. The extra expense and time was well worth it!
To make the bouillon I put all the bones and trimmings that we didn't eat in a very large pot, put onion, garlic and carrots with it. Covered with water and added a few spices: bay leaves, pepper corns, anise, cumin and fennel seeds, and cloves.
I let it simmer for about 6 hours. Now I have a base for many many winter soups.

New Year's dinner.

                                                   Frost on Brussels Sprouts Leaves, December 2010.


Was very french and very delicious. Like every year we had a pate made by my aunt with foie gras. She lives in the southwest of France and uses a very very old family recipe. It is delicious. We had a green salad with it with a garlic vinaigrette like my father always do. We were going to have salmon but considering the price we had to pay for our plat principal, a goose stuffed with apples, I decided against it. Traditionally the goose is served for Christmas but we had ham for Christmas because there was so much to do and it is so easy. But I really wanted goose fat and goose bouillon so here we are.
I don't like stuffing too much so I decided to pat dry the goose salt and pepper the inside and out and rubbed it with a bit of dark beer. I put peeled and cored whole apples inside and trussed the bird.  Well kind of. I don't know how to do it well so the results looks more like a packaged present than anything. But the point is, it works.

It will be served with potatoes and turnips that will be steamed first and then warmed up in the goose fat. You should get a lot of fat that should be drained from the roasting pan. If you want to make gravy, leave a bit of fat in the pan, deglaze with white wine and add chicken broth. Let it reduce for a few minutes.

Yum. Big time.

Tomorrow, I'll make broth with the trimmings, herbs and spices.