A good year and a good soup!

My dear, poor, non French people

Comment ça va?
I'm so happy to write to you again after these terrible Christmas holidays. 
Oh, don't misunderstand me, I have loved going back to France to see my family and friends. But excusez-moi, there's too much good food there! After days and hours of family banquets, foie-gras get-togethers, chocolate éclairs snacks and other "you definitely should take the vol-au-vent AND the tête-de-veau: after all you never get it there", I am so glad to be back THERE, in California! Finies les tentations! 

That's when I get to tell you about the most important Holiday tradition in France. 
It's not Bûche de Noël, it's not marrons glacés nor Chapon roti... (Although all these great dishes are compulsory in any Christmas dinner or NYE Reveillon).

It is crise de foie.
Crise de foie, or litterary "liver crisis" is another part of the French paradox. 
No other country or culture IN THE WORLD suffers from this sickness which only appears once in the year.
Tv news and newspapers make their headlines with it every premier de l'an, the first day of the year... And you can be sure that it's the first thing your butcher or your pharmacist would want to know when you come back from the holidays: "Vous l'avez eue?" 

So what is it about crise de foie?
It's not a stomachache, it's not a hangover, it's both and it's none... 
Thousands of doctors have tried to convince the French people that it actually doesn't really exist... It's just that we ate and drunk too much during the holiday season. 

But you know how we are. 
We French people like to stand for what we believe.
So we may have a little crise de foi (faith crisis, disbelief) from time to time,  but will always believe in crise de foie. 
(how strange my mother tongue is... Foie is liver and foi is faith...)
Anyhow, I just wanted to give you my little tip to get better after too much stomach pleasure...
It's not "detox" or raw or anything, it's just good and soothing.




La soupe au chou-fleur


Ingrédients

1 cauliflower
1 cup of chicken broth
1 cup of water
1 star anise pod
1 tbsp Tumeric and or Curry





 
 Wash the cauliflower, cut the green parts
Put in in a pan with the chicken broth and the water
Add the star anise pod.
Put to a boil, and then let it gently cook (on medium) for at least 20 minutes
When the vegetable seems soft (and cooked) enough, mix it
Add the turmeric and/or curry.

Et voilà!

A soup very light in calories but full of récomfort, just for you and your crise de foie les amis!

Bonne année! et Bon appétit!


PS: it's not Cauliflower soup, but you should know that Cabbage soup is a huge pop-culture thing in France... A hit movie from the 70's pretended that the smell of it was able to attract aliens and their UFO's...
La soupe aux choux, with Louis de Funes and Jacques Villeret

Remembrance of recipes past... Pain d'épice

My dear, poor, non French people,

Remember the good old time when you spent hours next to the mailbox (the real one, not you average hotmail-yahoo-gmail electronic version) waiting for a letter of your dear chéri? And then reading it again and again trying to figure out what he actually meant by "I like soccer and you too"?

Where are all those letters now? 

I wonder how kids today will have a reminder of their first love letters... 
That's what I thought a few months ago when I was sorting out old drawers at my mother's house. All those silly post cards and pink note-letters suddenly confronted me to the funny, romantic, and a little bit too dreamy 10 year-old me. Trop bizarre! And that's when I found it. Written on a pink cardboard, with a very cautious hand. My first recipe.


Pain d'épices (du cahier de Mamie)

Ingrédients

1 cup sugar

1 cup honey

1 cup water or milk

4 cups flour

1 tbsp baking soda

I remember exactly when I wrote it. Another day of summer vacation. Sun, public swimming-pool, bike in the woods... and boredom. I was back at my grand-mother's farm and didn't know what to do. 

She herself was more than busy as usual, in between the garden and the hens and the rabbits and the dinner to prepare. "Why don't you look in the recipe notebook and see what you can do?"

How I loved her recipe notebook! 
She had started it during World War II, when she was just une jeune fille en fleurs, a 20 year old mademoiselle. It was full of handwritten recipes copied from other friends notebooks, or cut out from the local newspaper. 
That day I decided to start my own collection. And copied her famous pain d'épice recipe.

Her gingerbread was awesome. So so simple. 
It's basically milk and honey and flour and c'est tout (that's all). Which makes it very very different from the anglo-saxon version of it. 
No spices for a cake called "Spices bread" (pain d'épices)! I know it's strange, but who cares when it's good!

She would bake one every wednesday, for me to have as a snack after the Ballet class. I would always share it with my friends, who loved it. So much that 15 years later, when my friend Stéphanie called me to invite me to her wedding, she asked for just one gift: la recette du pain d'épice de mamie Laurence. This recipe...

I still like to have it as a post work-out treat, but it's also great for a winter breakfast. Slice it and spread butter and you forget about cold feet and running nose! 

La Recette 

Put the milk (or the water, but really, milk is better) to a boil, 

and then mix it with honey and sugar.

Add slowly the flour and the baking soda. 

 Mix it well.

Grease a pan in butter and pour the mix

Bake for one hour at 200F

The pain d'épices is great the next day, and even the following days.

Bon appétit les amis!

PS: I have to talk to you about my favorite processed pain d'épices: "Prosper" de Vandame. I can still see my little brother spreading tons on Nutella on it for his "4 heures" (litteraly 4pm, the time French kids were supposed to have their afternoon snack). And we loved their ad, a remake of a song of Maurice Chevalier, Prosper.