Local ingredients.

As I promised, I have to feed my blog, even from France. 

Here is some local food, promoting ingredients from my region. Fresh oysters from Arcachon! 

And because the Osseau Iraty was one of the thing to eat before you die, here it is. A variant of the well known Osseau Iraty, Le Petit Basque, and two aging of the Osseau Iraty. It is highly recommended to savor with sour cherry jam!

Pine nuts and slices of duck magret! Bread is mandatory, at all time!

And something different, I've seen it on Pinterest for a while and I wanted to try. Mine actually looks like a vertical Christmas log. As a first time, it's not as pretty as I imagined but now I know how to make it!

And to digest all of it, a good freshly momy-made coffee is required!

Carbs.

So, before I go back to France, the idea is to take pictures of all the food that I could find in my kitchen. I'm almost done, don't worry.

"Carbs" is a term I learnt when I came to Canada. In common language it imprecisely describes complex polysaccharides, and especially starch-containing ingredients. But biochemistry speaking, carbohydrates are saccharides in general, from mono-saccharides to poly-saccharides: i.e. sugars! Simple and complex sugars. 

And sugars are everywhere, for example the glucose (monosaccharide) in our blood is the convertible energy that makes mammals live: this is the first regulated element in our body: our liver regulates the glucose concentration in our blood to make it uniform so that the brain is constantly supplied with the same amount of glucose (the almost sole nutrient that the brain can use), all day long, whatever your diet, whatever your activity. For that purpose, the liver makes stocks (glycogen) and induces a release of glucose when needed. Glucose is a nearly universal and accessible source of calories. 

Lactose is a disaccharide (Glucose + Galactose), for those of you who wonder what this is, you've certainly heard about lactose intolerance (I'm a sorry victim of that adult syndrome). The use of lactose by our organism to get energy requires the split of lactose into separated glucose and galactose, which is done under the action of an enzyme called lactase. This is the enzyme that mammals tend to produce less when they become adult and stop being exposed to milk. What makes lactose-intolerant people sick is the fact that the unbroken lactose goes to their intestines, which contain nice, friendly bacteria and those bacteria are now able to ferment that lactose, which produces gas, responsible for the abdominal pain. Lactose free milk have been added external lactase that has already pre-processed the lactose into glucose and galactose: it makes the milk sweeter (a complex story about adding the sweetness level or each individual sugar) and drinkable by lactose intolerant people.

The more complex the sugars are, the more tricky they are to break down to monosaccharides and to use as nutrients. They are more resistant to degradation and that's why other organisms use polysaccharides to form their shell (insects for example use a polymer of glucose called chitin or plants make cellulose out of a different arrangement of the same glucose) or to make storage. This is where the food carbs come into play. Starch is the most common storage association that plants use. Starch is also a polymer of multiple glucose molecules arranged in again an other organization than chitin or cellulose. 

We commonly find starch in potato, wheat (pasta, bread) and rice.

Beans, lentils and peas are also starch storage from plants.

Carbs are a big source of energy for athletes and it is usually recommended to eat carbs the night before an intense sport. In the contrary to monosaccharides which assimilation is very quick and can almost immediately load your organism with usable glucose (or if you don't need it, you liver will make you stock it under glycogen or fat), carbs are slow assimilable sugars, that first need to be broken into monosaccharide to be used as energy. If you eat carbs the evening before, on the next morning, your body is filled with usable sugar.

Best thing: they are easy to cook (water, pepper, salt and olive oil would be enough) and you can eat them with any side! They will last forever in your cupboard and they are so light that you can bring them on a long hike!

Bon appetit!

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.