I often bake this bread for the French Odyssey - Journey through France cooking classes, especially if we are making the walnut and Roquefort cheese terrine. Walnuts are grown widely in SW France, and when I was in the Dordogne with various culinary tours we always took the group to an ancient walnut mill and [...]
Pain d’épices is a Burgundian classic; it is a lovely unusual ‘bread’ or ‘cake’ made with rye flour, spices and honey, without yeast, using baking powder and bicarbonate soda instead. It tastes something like gingerbread, although ginger is not one of the spices I use. In France, it is sold in loaves, sometimes, in [...]
For this rich terrine, use a sharp blue cheese like Bleu d’Auvergne, Roquefort or Shadows of Blue. Serve it as a cheese course with my walnut and onion bread,or with a pear, rocket and salad. Ingredients: 250g blue cheese 125g butter 1 tbsp brandy or cognac 65ml cream or ¼ cup [...]
This is a versatile bread served either fresh or toasted and is a wonderful accompaniment to cheese and wine. I always serve it with the ‘Blue cheese and walnut terrine’, which you will find in the website recipe collection as well. Bread is not time-consuming to make, but it does require a little forward [...]
Serves 4 This is one of my favourite chilled soups and is a delight for lovers of garlic. A traditional and popular Spanish cold soup, Ajo Blanco is typical from Granada and Málaga, Andalusia. It is older than the more common red version, with tomatoes, which was not possible until tomatoes were introduced into Europe [...]
Makes 2 loaves There are many versions of this recipe. Anne Willan, of La Varenne Cooking School in Burgundy, included her pain d’épices in a couple of her many books on French Cuisine, ‘The country cooking of France’ and ‘Real Food’. Recently, in St Jean de Losne, Burgundy, our host cooked her grandmother’s pain d’épices for [...]
