French cooking spree

Lately, I have been on a French food cooking spree. I am excited about all these good fresh vegetables (ok and sometimes meat too), cooked properly, and with a lot of butter and garlic. I mean, a LOT of garlic.

One thing I don’t get is: what do the French have against cinnamon? They have so many delicious apple based desserts, but nothing contains cinnamon “to let the pure apple flavor shine through” or whatever. Frankly I think they are just plain wrong about that. Cinnamon makes everything better, especially apples.

Pommes De Terre à La Lyonnaise. This was absolutely delicious. Lots of butter and ridiculous amounts of garlic (I doubled what the recipe called for), and of course it’s hard to go wrong with potatoes and onions. I made a double batch last night, and this is what I’m having for lunch today, over some mixed greens. Link to recipe.

Salade Niçoise et pain à l’ail. I do fully realize that potatoes and green beans are not present in a “real” salade Niçoise, but in the spirit of the salad (which is to combine what’s available in terms of fresh veggies along with things like eggs and tuna), I have included them anyway. This one was pretty half-assed, I do admit. The potatoes were frozen pre-diced red potatoes that I air fried. The tuna was from a can (it was solid albacore and not chunk light, at least). It was good anyway, with a mustard and shallot vinaigrette and a lot of capers and freshly ground black pepper.

Tarte aux pommes Normande — avec cinnamon because the French are just wrong about that. This baby was gluten free and dairy free, to boot. A lightly sweet pâte sucrée tart shell, frangipane, and Honeycrisp apples, glazed with apricot jelly. And it was somehow even better the next day, cold from the fridge. Link to recipe, which I modified to use gluten free flour and plant butter, and here’s the crust I used.

Gâteau invisible — it was good but not necessarily my favorite. I think I had the ratio of apples to custard batter a little off. It needed more apples, which would have resulted in a taller cake. And, once again, the cinnamon thing. I didn’t include any here, and I think it would have absolutely improved this cake. Link to recipe.