Foooood!

Because I didn't get much comment on the Pilot, I think it's wise to make a post on food. Food is always a good subject. Free food always bring non-enthousiast people (looking at the free food that you usually get, I would rather not go at all to those events, but that's how it is).

You won't have free food here (unless you come knock at my door in the next few hours), but you'll get an idea of what's in my kitchen right now.

To start with a fresh note, and because I'm still in Canada (which means diverse ingredients and food lovers friends), here is a post about food. Not much cooking, but food.

I've made a collection of ingredients I've discovered recently and/or ingredients I use all the time, in smoothie, juices, salad...

You can recognize kale (typical eco-friendly/green/eco-activist food), edamame (japanese soy bean... so gooood) and ingredients I can't leave without (which is a shame because I can't find most of them in France), like Cocoa nibs, raw as you see them they taste very bitter and almost like turpentine (memory from childhood paint lessons and my father polishing furnitures). But hot they taste cocoa with a crunchy texture: I've recently put them in a pear pie with a bit of nutella and same in crêpes.

I have to notify that I am now addicted to expresso beans, which are literally roasted coffee beans covered in a thin layer of chocolate. I've recently tried just the coffee bean without the chocolate around, it's still good but I think you need to be pregnant to fully appreciate it. I still prefer it chocolate covered ones!

Matcha green tea is also one of the main ingredient of my sweet cooking! Love it!

I've found in Chinatown some brown sugar sticks! It's unbleached sugar, packed in sticks and easy to break to make sugar cubes with the recognizable taste of brown sugar.

And because we've tried a lot of coffee shops in the last 2 years, being mostly disappointed, good friends of us got me that italian coffee maker for my 28th birthday!! Yeah! Thanks!

There are also yogurt, honey, mustard/Dijon and maple syrup, but I couldn't make a yummy picture with those.

Sounds like I'm finally doing this 'Graines & Tubercules' blog (grains/seeds and tubers/roots) that Francois has asked me about for so long.

Popup is of course my little chef assistant and let me present you my kitchen fairies.

There is something bizarre: I can't find the translation of the french word "gourmand" I'm starting to worder if this word really has a meaning here in North America. The best translation I get is "greedy" which to me means more something like a hole rather than someone that really enjoys a delicacy and craves for it. In french, it's still cute and appropriate to say someone is "gourmand". I suggest to all the english-speaking people that read that blog, that you start using this french word as-is (pronounce it your way, it's still good for me!).

The first thing I'm gourmande for is bread! Freshly baked in a wood-oven bread! You can smell it miles away and you can eat a bite on the way back from the bakery. Because I don't have a nice wood-oven french bakery close by and because I know how to work with yeast (yeah, same species: Saccharomyces cerevisiae! fortunately not the same strains...) and also because I have time, I can bake my own bread (the electrical oven looses a bit of the charm of the whole process but it still tastes good homemade bakery).

Here are the ingredients. Do not forget a wet dishcloth and a smart cat watching over your shoulder.

Mix the dry yeast with warm water and just a bit of sugar to wake them up (I can't believe as a biologist I use these terms :s ). Wait about 10minutes. If the yeast hasn't fermented, try an other batch!

Add two cups of flour (any kind, here it's a fancy flour with grains but that could really be any, just pick the one you like).

While my bread was raising, I got time to run to my yoga course and enjoy the sunny weather outside! It's good that my cat is keeping an eye on the yeast in the bread :)

Once the pre-bread has risen, knead the dough and make a round thing that you allow to raise again in a warm oven.

After 15minutes you can actually turn on the oven on 400°F and let bake for 30minutes.

Hum! It's ready to eat!

To summarize all that post, I would say that it corresponds to me in the process of experimenting food photography, completing standard food recipe, keeping a healthy diet and sharing my tips with you.