Macaroons.

Sorry about the long absence. I was secretly preparing a few posts.
First of the series is about macaroons!!

I am not so much into macarons. I don't find the taste extraordinary, but I find them really beautiful and the flavors can be very creative.

I would think it deserved to be in the "Eat before 30" list and even better if you eat them in France. I will make it a "Cook before 30" priority. I've already tried, once, that was good but nothing unforgetable.

Look at these watercolor painting by Lucileskitchen. A macaron a day...

To be inspired I bought a few at M le Macaron in Bordeaux. They make nice colors and they always have crazy flavors. This time they had Cotton candy and Osseau-Iraty ones (even better if two of my Eat before 30 are coupled in one!).

Then I saw Fimo paste macarons. I am into that polymer clay creative mood these days, so I couldn't resist in trying to reproduce them (I'll soon blog on that new passion of mine). It took me a while to get an approximate shape.

And finally, after savoring every single one of that huge macaroon box, I got myself into baking these delicacies. Moka, Matcha, Mango and Tagada!

First the ingredients: you need egg whites, icing sugar and almond powder.

Then you need to sift the mix of icing sugar and almond powder. That's the longest part. And mix it with very stiff egg whites until it makes a silky, flexible dough. 

You can add edible dyes in your preparation, then with a pastry bag you make small domes that you allow to sit for 30 minutes so they make a crust. Then bake at 110°C for 12 minutes. If you're lucky (in my case only 20% of them) they'll make the perfect lace like collar (this puffy thing at the bottom).
During all the waiting times you can prepare the filling. In my case a mix of chocolate and coffee powder, plus a few Tagada strawberries to use as gelatin to thicken things up.

 A lot more people were supposed to try them, but I kept all the nice looking ones (only 10) for Julie (see next post) to thank her for her very instructive fimo lesson! and don't worry, the misshaped ones didn't last long ;)

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!

Make pasta with sauce in a coffee machine...

Cleaning the dishes with shampoo in a hotel or while doing camping, everyone has done it before. Whatever the reason was: you forgot the dish washing detergent, you on purpose didn't take it for lack of space, baggage weight... anything, or you did it many times for all of the reasons above.

You've also attempted to make coffee with toilet paper as filter, but have you ever tried to make pasta in a coffee machine? 

This was not just a stupid reason to make a post, no. We usually have a kettle or a microwave in most of the hotels we go to, and if not we think of taking the camping gaz... This time, we just forgot to check. So we ended up trying to make a bit of cooking on a very cold morning before going cross-country skiing for the entire day!

Almost 45minutes after, our pasta were just cooked!

It actually turned out to be very good, even cold... well... we were quite hungry! We ate the rest at home when we came back to Toronto, and it was very less tasty.

This is not such a challenge, it just requires time and a bit of imagination. But don't even think of trying that with a fancy expresso machine or worse a machine working with pressurized coffee in capsules. Maybe one day they'll invent a sauce capsule and air hydrating instant pasta... In decades...

We were wondering how that would have been if we had kids. Do you think making them eat that could be called child abuse? Good thing we don't have kids!

But one thing I have to try before I'm 30 is actual mountain dry food: I've heard it's expensive and not good. I would probably have no other choice if I want to properly train for the Kilimanjaro anyway.

On the same post, I'll notify I can now cross-check on my list that before 30, I have successfully skied across more than 15 Km of forest in Arrowhead Provincial Park, and that I have actually enjoyed it! Do I become old? or do I become Canadian?

To make sure you'll still read my blog again despite of that junk food, here is how I try to make up to you. I just candied some tiny lime! The limes are still a bit bitter, but the caramel that came out of it deliciously tastes lime! 

My last attempt with kumquats gave very good candied kumquats but very bad caramel. Next time will be perfect!

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.