Here in France I have a LOT more free time than I do back home. I'm taking a similar amount of credits here as I would back home, but the classes are structured a bit differently, and I wind up with a 4-day weekend. I also live in an apartment, and have several markets and small grocery stores within a mere 5 minute or less walk of my apartment. So of course I've been improvising a lot of little dinners and snacks and desserts. All of them are simple to make but yield a complex-looking and clean-tasting result, and all have taken 20 minutes or less to make. (My one beef with the apartment is no oven, just a toaster oven, but I'll live.) I've made Italian, Japanese, and of course, French. No Mexican foods yet except a sausage I bought that turned out to be chorizo, but I'll probably start cooking Mexican when I get homesick. The only thing I really want from home is my little serranos, but no chile is sold here but picantes. Oh, and tortillas. I ate my first sunny-side up egg without tortilla my first week here. It was...a bewildering 5 minutes from serving myself until I ate it, during which I was just trying to decide how to eat it!
So the food I've made here that I plan to start posting up in proper recipes or as cooking inspirations on this blog:
- French toast with peach walnut syrup (from peach wine)
- mini flaky artisan pizza with gouda, brie, caramellized onion, bell pepper, and mushroom.
- a croque madame (just google this one if it's not familiar, you WON'T be sorry)
- pasta with merguez sausage, bell pepper, olive oil, peach wine, and herbs
- chicken and caramellized onion roasted in peach wine, served over sticky rice
- Japanese-inspired sweet omelette
- crêpe with roasted pear and caramellized onions
