Drowning in Zucchini

This summer our kitchen garden has not exactly been spoiling us - the cold and far too wet month of May and then nothing but fierce Mistral winds in June have seen to it that most of our lovingly planted beans just drowned, tomatoes are trying to turn red just now and the garlic  doesn't look too promising either. So we are real happy that at least our zucchini plants are not letting us down - actually we are kind of drowning in zucchini right now. So I have to figure out how to make the most of them. I wish I'd still remember and could give credit where I saw how to turn zucchini into pasta like strips but I don't (sorry!) because this has become my new favorite new trick of  of turning them into a très, très tasty zucchini side dish - perfect for BBQ's or with steamed fish.
Top and tail the zucchini,then finely slice them with a vegetable peeler. Peel and very finely chop a garlic clove or two. Finely chop five sundried tomatoes (the ones that come in oil). Add a generous handful of cherry tomatoes and toss all into a frying pan with a good slug of olive oil. Gently sweat over moderate heat until the cherry tomatoes begin to collapse, then add the zucchini and cook gently until just tender but still al dente. Season with a good pinch of  Herbes de Provence and a few rounds of pepper fresh from the mill.

How to peel a lot of Garlic real quick

Reading recipes online I stumbled upon a more than useful method of how to peel a lot of garlic real quick. So simple, so useful!

 

Separate a head of garlic into individual cloves

Pour boiling water over the cloves, let sit for one minute, rinse with cold water

 

You will have those cloves peeled in no time at all - great!

Roasting Garlic in the Microwave

Having bought a huge bunch of garlic at the Garlic Festival in Piolenc I  now tend to use these deliciously pungent bulbs even more generously than I normally do. For tonight I have a Côte de Boeuf, panroasted cherry tomatoes and potatoe & garlic mash on the menu. For this absolutely divine mash the garlic has to be roasted. But to turn on the oven for at least half an hour to roast a single bulb of garlic? I don't think so. Plus it so happens I have just read an article by the three starred Michelin chef  Heston Blumenthal on microwave cooking. If he can cook fennel in the microwave I can roast garlic, right? So I wrapped the bulb tighly in plastic wrap, gave it 3 minutes full power -  eh voilà - perfectly "roasted" soft garlic to be squeezed out of its skin into the steamed potaoes to be then happily mashed up with some of our very best olive oil, kosher salt and freshly ground pepper. Can't wait....

Roasted Butternut and Garlic Soup

Butternut Squash

We are lucky - this winter so far has been sunny and mild but we still leave it to the smokers to take their coffee (or pastis) on the terraces of the cafés on Vaison's Place Montfort. As far as I am concerned it is cold enough to cook hearty warming winter soups and this one has fast become a firm favorite.

All you need to serve 6 generous portions is a nice little butternut squash, a head of garlic, some vegetable stock and a dollop of cream. But first you have to drizzle the main ingredients with a little bit of olive oil and then roast them for about 30 minutes or so  in the oven to really bring out the flavor.

Roast for 30 minutes

Once cool enough to handle, just peel the skin off the squash (far easier now than if you try to peel it raw) and squeeze the garlic cloves out of their skins, puree all in a cup or so of vegetable stock, season to taste with some chilli flakes and pepper fresh from the mill and stir in a bit of double cream. Because it is roasted, the garlic will not make you smell but give the soup  a wonderful earthy flavor.

Roasted Butternut & Garlic Soup

How to beat Cooking Fatigue

The holidays over I am suffering an acute attack of cooking fatigue. So the first evening of the New Year we had a real lazy dinner.

I just cut a small opening into this wonderful unpasteurized Vacherin cheese, stuffed it with some garlic cloves and moistened the cheese with a few drops of white wine, then wrapped it in aluminum foil and off it went into the oven for about 30 minutes,

slowly melting and giving me just enough time to boil a few potatoes, cut some gherkins and tomatoes, set the table et voilà: cheese fondue for two! All you need is some freshly milled pepper and a good glass of wine, bien sûr!

Garlic - the Perfume of Provence

The new garlic has arrived! I tried growing it myself some years ago and although garlic is even growing wild around here it wouldn't in my garden. So I always get all excited when it starts to appear at the farmer's market and throw out whatever old garlic I have left because the new one is so much more delicious and very mild. And what is Provençal cuisine without garlic? A little clove minced up to go into “Caviar d'aubergine” (a heavenly eggplant spread), a whole head of garlic thrown into the roasting bag with a chicken, some crushed garlic stirred into a lamb marinade – I wouldn't know how to cook without it!

It is snowing again....

It is snowing again! Yesterday I saw a headline on one of the local papers: "On a marre de cet hiver!" which perfectly sums up the way I am feeling: I am "fed up with this winter", too!
So I went through all my cut out recipes (I am real big on cutting out things and then go through them every three months or so and throw half of them out...) and found one I'll go and prepare right now:
Crème d'ail - cream of garlic. "Facile et bon marché" it says on the recipe - easy to prepare and cheap -  always good. And garlic is good for you, especially in cold weather.

Crème d'ail - Ingredients for 4
8 cloves of garlic
40 cl liquid cream (no half fat stuff, please!)
salt, pepper fresh from the mill

Blanching the garlic cloves

Peel the garlic cloves. Pour water into a small saucepan, bring to the boil. Throw in the peeled garlic cloves, let boil for one minute, drain and discard the water. Repeat this process two more times, changing the water every time - this takes the garlic smell away but leaves the taste.
When done, boil the cream, add the blanched garlic cloves, salt and pepper to taste. Let boil for two minutes (supervise carefully - this will boil over the second you so much as glance somewhere else). When done, mix with a hand mixer until smooth. Serve in shot glasses as a prevention cure against cold viruses and vampires.

Cream of Garlic

Soupe au Pistou

This heart and body warming soup is named after an ingredient that is added at the very last moment before you serve the soup: "Pistou" which is more or less the same thing as pesto, except that in pistou you leave out the pine nuts and the parmesan. So in summer, when I have an abundance of basil in my kitchen garden, I take a big bunch of basil, pick off the leaves, peel two or three cloves of garlic and, together with some salt mix it all up, adding a bit of olive oil. Purists would do this in a mortar of course, but I believe that life is too short and anyhow, what are modern kitchen gadgets for? You end up with a beautifully green and pungent paste that I fill into ice cube trays until frozen and then keep in plastic bags in the freezer for days like these when you are snowed in and need some sunshine in you soup bowl.
And although the season for Soupe au pistou really is early summer when all ingredients are availalble at our beautiful Provençal market, the cheat's version can easily be cooked in winter - just use frozen vegetables.
Boil green beans, cannelini beans, borlotti beans, some diced carrots, diced white leek, diced potatoes, a tomato or two until tender in a litre and a half of good beef or vegetable stock, add a handful of very small pasta and when tender, stir in a generous tablespoon of pistou and serve with crunchy baguette. Voilà: instant sunshine, even at minus 2°C!