Haven’t updated my blog for a long time.

After my last Cook­shop expe­ri­ence, my other friend and I decided to try the French cook­ing. Every­thing tasted pretty good, I thought. We were divided into groups where each group was respon­si­ble for dif­fer­ent dishes.

Here was the menu:

• Olive tape­nade on crostini
• Bouil­l­abaisse – Clas­sic French seafood stew of fish, shell­fish, toma­toes saf­fron & garlic
• Roasted Leg of Lamb Proven­cal — with gar­lic, olive oil and herbs de Provence
• Rata­touille – sea­sonal veg­etable stew cooked with gar­lic and herbs
• Apri­cot Frangi­pane Tart – a sweet tart with an apri­cot and almond filling

Our group made the tape­nade and roasted leg of lamb. I am actu­ally not a big fan of olives but this appe­tizer was bet­ter than I expected and the method was very easy — just blend­ing the ingre­di­ents together to form a paste. It was served on a sour­dough bread. The salti­ness of the olives was off­set by the sweet­ness of the dried apri­cots, but still quite salty though.

I really enjoyed the Bouil­l­abaisse, the stew was very aro­matic and flavour­ful with all the fresh seafood. The rouille on the toast had to be res­cued — the oil sep­a­rated the first time so the chef had to take time to whisk it by hand so it forms properly.

The roasted leg of lamb and rata­touille was served together. Since there wasn’t a sauce of the lamb, the rata­touille served as the a side with a sauce for the meat — worked quite well. The leg of lamb was trimmed of excess fat and but­ter­flied so it cooked faster than whole and bone-in. It was then rubbed with salt, pep­per and herb de Provence and roasted to medium rare — so ten­der and juicy!  The chef told us that there is no herb de Provence in France because it is a herb blend of what­ever they grew in Provence (I didn’t know that). I loved the rata­touille, it is a deli­cious and ver­sa­tile side dish, very easy to pre­pare as well.

The orig­i­nal dessert on the menu was the apri­cot frangi­pane tart but here we used a plum instead because it was in sea­son. This was deli­cious — the almond and plum went together very well. It is usu­ally served at room tem­per­a­ture but since we didn’t have time to cool it before serv­ing, we had it slightly warm and topped with whipped cream. The ten­der­ness of the plum and fill­ing with the crunch of the toasted almonds and sugar was so good. I would totally remake this. Appar­ently this tart is also very good with pears. One of tips of mak­ing this tart is that you have to adjust the sweet­ness accord­ing to the tartness/sweetness of the fruit you are using.

I was quite full after the yummy meal. I always thought French food was dif­fi­cult to pre­pare but after this class, I have more con­fi­dence in tack­ling French food recipes!