It’s been a year since I read French Women Don’t Get Fat but the book remains close by, either on the kitchen counter or on my nightstand. The book has colorful sticky notes either indication what champagne to drink or a delicious recipe. If I didn’t mention it before the book has a bunch of wonderful recipes. I’ve tried 2 of the recipes. The first recipe I wrote about on my food blog so I’ll copy and paste that post here for you to enjoy J
I made Mireille Guilian’s French Baguettes (a previous post). I’ve never baked from scratch. Every cake, cookie, brownie or muffin I’ve ever made has come in a cardboard box. So this was my first bread making experience. The first ingredient I opened was the active dry yeast and I was not ready for the pungent smell that it had. I was just hoping that the smell would not linger on my baguettes. The process of mixing was attempted by my hand mixer. The dough was becoming thick and the harder the mixer worked the harder the dough fought back, then the mixer popped like a light bulb and stopped working. Next step, kneading. Kneading is not as easy as it seems on cooking shows. I wanted to take pictures of the process. Yeah Right! It was so sticky I couldn’t get it off my fingers and I was becoming frustrated. So, after kneading, the directions said to let it sit for an hour but for some reason I read, “Refrigerate” for an hour. Needless to say the dough rising process never happened but I tried to shape the dough into breads anyway. I ended up making 4 different sized baguettes that looked more like calzones.
I’ve tried this recipe twice and both times the baguettes looked like calzones. I’ll have to try it again and let the dough sit, stand or rest overnight.
The second recipe was Mushrooms. Years ago the mention of the word, “mushrooms” would make unknown muscles on my face move to show my dislike for the fungus. But now my palate has matured and I welcome mushrooms into my diet. So to my delight this book had an easy and great tasting recipe for mushroom. The recipe is called, “fricassee de champignons sauvages”. Sounds fancy but this recipe is super easy. The recipe has no measurements just put some mushrooms, chopped onions, parsley, lemon juice and olive oil together in a pan, cook and eat. Easy, simple and delicious.
frenchstage 