Our Scottish pen-pals were so happy to receive French food in the Christmas package we sent that they decided to have a French Feast in their school in February. They asked us to send them some French recipes.

 To know more about food in Europe, we asked all our other partners to send some recipes from their country.

 In March, we sent our  pen-pals French recipes like «  le Cassoulet », « le fondant au chocolat »  ,  « la tarte tatin » ,« la quiche lorraine » , etc … and we received some recipes from our pen-pals' countries.

You’ll find these recipes below!

By Marine, Cassie and Charlotte

Yummy! 

 

 

 

Le fondant au chocolat

( it’s a delicious chocolate cake)

 by Cassie

 

Ingredients (for 4 people) :

• 4 eggs

• 75 g of sugar

• 30g of flour

• 100g of butter

• 100g of plain chocolate

Preparation : (oven th 7 ,200°C)

-Melt the chocolate in a bowl

-Melt the butter and pour in the melted chocolate

-add the flour ,eggs and sugar in the bowl and mix everything

_pour the contents in cake pan

-put in the oven ( for 15 MINUTES only)

• ENJOY !!

 

 

Cassoulet de Castelnaudary

(by Pierre)

 

 

Ingredients for 4 persons:

 

- 500g dried great northern beans

- 4  confit duck legs

- 4  pork sausages           

- 4 soup spoons of duck fat

- 3 carrots 

- 1 onion

- 150g of tomato purée 
- Thyme ( 2 or 3 sprigs)
- Laurel

- 12g of salt
- Pepper

- 4 liters of water

 

 

-The day before you cook this dish, soak beans in some cold water during 12 hours. Go to bed, have sweet dreams, the next day you’ll start the preparation.

 
- In a pot, cook beans in 4 liters of water with the 12g of salt, the peeled and whole carrots, the peeled and whole onion as well as the branch of thyme and 2 bay leaves. From the boiling, count one hour of cooking.

 

- Meanwhile, in a frying pan,  put the coarse pork sausages in the fat of duck. Prick regularly sausages so that they do not explode. When sausages are cooked well and gilded well, add one half-liter of cooking water of beans as well as the tomato  purée . Make simmer during 10/15 minutes.

 

- Juices from the cooking of the meat are going to become loose and to embalm the cooking. Remove from the pot  the carrots and onion ( you can prepare a soup with them for example!

Pay the contents of the frying pan into the pot. It is very liquid and it is normal... Make simmer during 1:30 am. It is still liquid and it is normal!

 

- Go for a walk, or make the dessert during this time.  Why not  try  making a  chocolate cake?
Pour the whole preparation  into a big oven-proof dish, put down  on the top the thighs of duck confit and cook in very hot oven  for 2 hours by coming regularly "to burst" the skin. (Operation to be approximately renewed 7 times).

 

Serve very warm !

 

 

 

  Castelnaudary is a small town which is not far from Sigean (120 km).

 

 

 

 

 

“ La fondue Savoyarde ”

                    ( By Cyril )

 

 

 It’s a speciality with cheese, garlic and white wine. It’s excellent!!

 

It’s not very hard to make but the recipe is long ….

 

Here it is! 

 

 

·           1 clove of garlic 

·        2 or 3 cups of dry white wine

·        1 tablespoon cornstarch ( Maïzena )

·        200 gr of Comte cheese, coarsely grated

·        200 gr Emmenthal cheese

·        200 gr Gruyere cheese, coarsely grated

·        a pinch of ground nutmeg

·        a pinch of black pepper

·        3 tablespoons of Kirsch

·        bread ( cut in small cubes )

-Put in a saucepan the  cheese with the white wine and a bit of  crushed garlic.
Melt slowly the cheese in the white wine. Stir slowly ( never stop!). It is rather compact at the beginning then little by little it forms a mixture of solid and liquid and at the end of the cooking, everything is homogeneous.

 

When the mixture is homogeneous,  add   half a tea-spoon of cornstarch in a glass with some  kirsch liquor. Let cook 3 minutes more and serve  very hot.

 

Cut bread in small pieces and put the pieces one by one in the mixute! Enjoy! It’s delicious!!!

 

 Les crêpes Bretonnes   (French pancakes )

 by Charlotte 

It’s a speciality from Britanny ( in the North-West of France )

To prepare these delicious pancakes,

you need:

 

 

                                          

                                                         

 

 

 

 

- 2 cups of flour

- 4 eggs

- a pinch of salt

- oil

- 3 cups of milk

- 1 lemon ( you can add rum)

- sugar

 

Preparation:

1. In a bowl, whisk the eggs and salt together.

2. Slowly add the flour. Mix very well ( no lump please!!).

3. Add the 3 cups of milk. Whisk the preparation.

4. Add the lemon zest ( or rum)

5.Heat a bit of oil in a frying pan.

 

6. With a laddle, pour part of the batter to make a thin pancake.

7. Cook 1 or 2 min. Wait untill the pancake browns.

8. Flip over and cook 1 min on the other side.

 

Your pancake is ready!  You can eat it with lemon and sugar, nutella or jam  =)  It's delicious!  =)

 

 In our class, Théo 2 is a pancakes specialist! He cooks pancakes very often, almost every week!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

YUMMY !

=)

 

 

 Recipe for tarte tatin

( Our Scottish pen-pals told us it was the dish they prefered from France. Here is the recipe!)

by Lisa V.

 

Ingredients:

8 apples

100 g sugar

100 g butter

175 g ready-made short-crust pastry

1 tea spoon cinnamon

Vanilla sugar

 

Preparation:

<              1) Peel the apples and cut them in quarters.

                  2) Put the sugar in a frying pan, add 50 mL of water. Cook until the colour of the apples changes and until the    sugar becomes fudgy.

             3)    Take off the heat and stir in the butter and a pinch of salt. Arrange the apples in the pan. Cook for 5 minutes.

            4)   Pre-heat the oven to 200 °C. Roll out the pastry.

             5)   Put the pastry on top of the pan. Bake for 30 minutes. Invert the tart on a plate.

 

 

 

 

Our Spanish friends posted information about food in Catalonia on our first blog. Follow this link!  « catalan-culture-foods.html »

 

They chose two typical Catalan dishes: pa amb tomàquet with fuet and crema catalana. They put a video to show us how to prepare these recipes.

 

Look, we prepared one of them at school!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's really easy to cook!

 

and it's delicious!!

 

by Nicolas and Théo 2

 

You'll find here a selection of recipes we received from our pen-pals.

 

 

A cake from Poland :Babka

(by Ewa, Bénédicte's pen-pal)

In Poland, they eat babka to celebrate Easter. 

Ingredients:

-4 eggs

-1 cup of sugar

-1 cup of flour

-½ cup of potato flour

-1 cup of warm oil

-2 teaspoons of baking powder

-Orange flavor ( extract)

 

Making:

Beat the eggs with the sugar and add 1 cup of flour,½ cup of potato flour,1 cup of warm oil,2 teaspoons  of baking powder and orange flavour.

Bake at 170° C for 50 min.

 

 

 

La coca de Sant Joan    ( Catalonia )

 

Our friends from Barcelona sent us information about culture and food in Catalonia .

They told us on June 24^th , they eat  a special cake:  

la coca de Sant Joan.

 

Here is a recipe for making this delicious dessert!

 

Ingredients

 

    250 g   plain flour

    100 g   sugar

    100 g   butter

    2   eggs

    20 g Powdered yeast

     a cup of milk

    1 Cinnamon stick

    Grated rind of half a lemon

    pine nuts

    Selection of candied fruits

 

Method: 

 

Mix the powdered yeast into the slightly warmed milk.

Add three spoonfuls of flour and work it into a smooth dough; leave to rise

until it doubles in size.

Make a mound of flour on a work surface and place in the centre the butter,

eggs, sugar, salt, grated lemon rind and the aniseed.

Work the ingredients in the middle with your hand or a fork, add the

fermented yeast and continue working in the flour until you obtain a fine,

compact dough.

Grease a baking sheet with oil or butter and roll the dough out on it in an oval

shape about 1 cm thick.

Paint it with beaten egg and set the candied fruit, cut into slices, into the top

of the dough, and leave it to rise until it doubles in size.

Scatter pine nuts on top of the coca, sprinkle sugar over it and bake at 180º

for 20 minutes.

 

 

Haggis ( a Scottish dish)   Ingredients 1 sheep's stomach bag 1 sheep's pluck - liver, lungs and heart 3 onions 250g beef Suet 150g oatmeal salt and black pepper a pinch of cayenne 150ml of stock/gravy     Traditional Haggis Recipe 1. Clean the stomach bag thoroughly and soak overnight. In the morning turn it inside out. 2. Wash the pluck and boil for 1.5 hours, ensuring the windpipe hangs over the pot allowing drainage of the impurities. 3. Mince the heart and lungs and grate half the liver. 4. Chop up the onions and suet. 5. Warm the oatmeal in the oven. 6. Mix all the above together and season with the salt and pepper. Then add the cayenne. 7. Pour over enough of the pluck boiled water to make the mixture watery. 8. Fill the bag with the mixture until it's half full. 9. Press out the air and sew the bag up. 10. Boil for 3 hours (you may need to prick the bag with a wee needle if it looks like blowing up!) without the lid on.

 

Recipe for cotoletta alla Milanese!

 

(This is a dish loved by teenagers!!! …. And not only….) 

Cooking time: 12/16min 

Preparation time:  20min  

 

Ingredients(for four people):

 4 veal cutlets 

 100g butter 

 2 eggs

 Salt 

 Pepper

          + bread crumps 

 

Beat lightly the cutlets that should not flatten out too much, then practise a couple of incisions on the edge. 

 

Break the eggs on a dish, beat them with a pinch of pepper but no salt, soak into the eggmixture the cutlets one at a time, then roll them in the bread crumps - the bread crumbs must stick on the cutlet. 

 

Melt the butter in a large pan, when the butter fries, put in the cutlets so that they do not touch each other and fry them for about 6/8m on each side, until they are golden. Arrange on a dish and salt them. 

 

 

“ RISOTTO, BRESAOLA, BITTO AND SASSELLA”

 (by Arianna Vola, Marine's Italian pen-pal ) 

Valtellina is the valley up our lake and this is a typical dish of our valley…….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ingredients for 4 people:

-gr. 400 rice

- ½ onion

- 20 cl of olive oil

- a glass of red wine (Sassella of  Valtellina is better…. But a red wine is ok…)

-butter

- Parmigiano  (grated Parmesan cheese)

- gr. 200 bresaola of Valtellina

- gr. 100 bitto cheese DOP of Valtellina           

 

 

Preparation :

 

First put oil with the onion to slightly fry. Mix the rice with the oil and the onion.

 

Slowly add sassella Valtellina wine to the rice and stir until all the wine is absorbed. Then, little by little, add the broth to the rice to cook it and stir continuously.

 

meanwhile chop the bresaola  and the Bitto cheese

 

When the rice is cooked  mix  in bresaola, Parmigiano , Bitto Cheese and butter – stir until it’s creamy .

 

Wait a few minutes and you can eat it.

 

 

 

Pasta with tomato sauce

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

        

Ingredients for the sauce:

 

 2 medium onions;

 

 5 small mushrooms;

 

 2-3 tbsps of olive oil;

 

 3 chopped tomatoes;

 

 ¼ litre of water;

 

 2 tsps dried basil;

 

 2 tsps dried oregano;

 

 a pinch of salt and pepper.

 

                + some grated Parmesan cheese for topping.

    

 

           Ingredients for the pasta:

 

 250 g pasta;

 

 2 litres of boiling water;

 

 salt.

 

 

            Make the tomato sauce:

 

            Chop the onions and fry them gently in a little olive oil with the mushrooms.

 

            Drain the chopped tomatoes, basil, oregano, salt and pepper.

 

            Simmer the sauce for about 20-25 mins.

 

 

            Make the spaghetti:

 

            Put the pasta into boiling, salted water and cook for about 8 mins.

 

            When cooked, drain the water and place the pasta on a warm plate.

 

            Pour the sauce over the pasta.

 

            Sprinkle some cheese on top and serve.

 

 

 

 

 

 TIRAMISU’ (8 servings)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

You need: 

 

        6  eggs

       120 gr sugar

       500 gr  mascarpone (double cream)

       400 gr savoiardi ( typical Italian buiscuits )

       Coffee

       Cocoa

 

     Divide the egg whites from the yolks, add half the sugar to the yolks and mix with an electric mixer until you get a nice mixture which is light, fluffy and creamy .  

 

     Add the mascarpone to this mixture; then with an electric whipper, mount the egg whites, little by little add the other half of the sugar and continue whipping until they are stiff. Add this to the other mixture of yolks and mascarpone.  Mix from the bottom upwards.

 

    Now that the cream is ready, place a spoon on the bottom of each cup or in a single pan, soak the biscuits into the coffee, then arrange them into the bowl or pan.

 

    Arrange a spoonful of cream over the savoiardi, level the cream and cover with another layer of savoiardi soaked in coffee.

 

     Sprinkle with cocoa powder.

 

    Store in the fridge for a few hours

 

Last week we were in London and we asked our host family to give us a recipe from London.

Here is the recipe for a cheesecake.

We've received new letters from our penpals and some of our friends added new recipes so... 

Are you ready to cook? 

 

CHOCOLATE SALAMI

Ingredients for six people: 

● 250 gr dry biscuits 

● 125 gr soft butter

● 125 gr icing sugar

● 75 gr unsweetened cocoa

● 2 eggs

Procedure:

Mix broken biscuits with the icing sugar and cocoa. Add eggs-yolks, eggs whites (mounted to snow) and the soft butter. Mix all and make a salami. Finally leave in refrigerator for 4 hours.

It is advisable to prepare this dessert the day before.

 

Enjoy it!


( ByAnisia, Cassie's penpal)