Savory cake: chorizo, olives and dried tomatoes

What’s going on in Pauline's Cuisine ?

With this changing weather is really hard to cook something that fits with our mood. The salad can be disappointed with a rainy weather and a hot dish really not appropriate when the sun shines. So this week, I wanted to find a recipe that can fit for every day. I decided to go ahead with a savory cake. It has been a while that I have not taken the time to cook one of them because my last trial was not a great success, it was too oily. This week I will share with you a new recipe of savory cake with chorizo, olives and dried tomatoes.

Last week, I went to my favorite grocery shop, a big one that is located in the centre of the new Business centre: Canary Wharf. This particular shop is the flag shop of the brand, so everything is perfect and you have a lot different counters for bread, meat, charcuterie, cheese… everything is done for “helping” you to buy. As I was buying some charcuterie in order to prepare a cheese dinner, the chorizo was on sale. Usually I don’t like chorizo but this time, due to the attractive windows, I decided to buy chorizo. Back home, I had a quick look at my various cooking magazine in order to find a way to cook it in a savory cake. I found a recipe with chorizo and olives. As I bought some dried tomatoes, I decided to amend largely the recipe and added dried tomatoes in the savory cake and in order to maximize the flavor I added dried tomato oil. The cake was delicious. The taste of the chorizo was not too strong and the cake was perfectly balanced at the oil level.

This recipe of savory cake with chorizo, olives and dried tomatoes is a "must have" for your aperitif and your lunch box. You can eat it warm or cold. Don’t hesitate to give a trial this weekend. Still hesitating, need one more word for trying: the savory cake can be frozen easily and keeping all the flavor when you defrost it, is not it perfect?

Lunch box: mix of wild rice with vegetables

What’s going on in Pauline-Cuisine ?

This week, I will share with you an easy and colourful recipe for lunch box: mix of wild rice with vegetables. I discovered a large variety of rice when I came to live in London. When I lived in France, I only know a lot of white rice but I didn’t notice this kind of colourful rice: wild, Camargue, brown rice.

The first time that I bought a mix, it was just for trying but I was a little bit afraid about the cooking time, you need to plan at least 35 minutes. Fortunately, I escaped really quickly this “waste” of time by using my lazy option: using my rice cooker that it can do it in 35 minutes as well but without check. From this time, I took the habit to cook more and more of this kind of rices, I usually serve it as a main dish, whereas the white Basmati rice is usually use for accompanying a fish.

Last week, I went to my usual supermarket after work and I found an attractive selection of mini vegetables, it was a mix of small corn, mange-tout, broccoli and a small chilli. It was colourful and I thought that could be a nice addition to my mix of brown, wild and Camargue rice.

I sliced in small pieces mange-tout and mini corn and prepare the chilli. I used a pan in order to roast them. I have already tried to cook them with boiling water but the taste is not as strong as roasting them. I cook the broccoli really quickly, 5 minutes only in boiling water, if you let them too long in the boiling water, they lost their crunchy. When all the mini vegetables are cooked, add the rice and mix all of them together.

You can serve this dish warm or cold, if you serve it cold, you could add some dressing on top. I like this recipe both cold and warm:  so easy to do, healthy, tasty and so colourful. Don’t hesitate to try it and post some comments.

Have a nice weekend and see you next week with another tasty recipe.

Roasted apples and pears with pecan nuts and almond

What’s cooking on in Pauline-Cuisine ?

I recently put myself in the fact to create dessert for lunch box. Indeed, I am a sweet tooth and sometimes after delicious lunch box, I would appreciate a dessert. I didn’t want to have high sugar dessert or simple fruit salad; I wanted something in the middle, something with a nice touch on it. It took me quite a while before finding the right recipe that will tick all the boxes: roasted apples and pears with pecan nuts and flaked almond.

The two main goals of this dessert were: fruit based and healthy. As I have the habit to go to the market every Saturday, I am used to buy some apple but at the moment I quite fed up of the compote. So I decided to roast some apple and sweet pears in a pan with small pieces of butter. The smelling in the Kitchen was amazing :). After having roasting the apples and pears, I decided to add sliced pieces of soft prunes. I love this mix, but once again, I would like to add something, so I added pecan nuts and roasted flaked almond. The taste of the mix is great and the presentation of this dessert is amazing.

I hope you will find some time to try this dessert, easy to cook and so convenient as a dessert for lunch.

I wish you a nice week and see you next week with another delicious recipe.

Savory cake: Turkey, cheddar and fresh mushrooms

What’s going on in Pauline-Cuisine?

This week, I would like to share with you another recipe that could fit as a lunch box or main course, even as a starter for welcoming your guests. I will give you the recipe of a delicious savory cake with turkey, cheddar and fresh mushrooms.

Last weekend, I was thinking about my lunch box timetable and I was quite fed up of my weekly quiche. Even if I have a large variety of quiches and dough for quiches, I wanted something different. I was thinking of an alternative when I just thought about a dish that I like to cook when I was student or when I organized finger food diner in Paris for my friends. This savory cake is easy to do, hard to fail and it always makes a good impression. The original recipe was made with Italian ham and white wine but as I am not really keen in using alcohol, I decided to amend the recipe. Moreover, I replaced the Italian ham with turkey as the Italian ham is quite hard to slice in the cake. When I made the recipe I was a little bit worried about the size of the Turkey bits, I didn’t want them too big because it will be hard to eat as a savory cake is quite compact, I decided to make small square pieces and it works really well. The cake was airy and it was really tasty.

I encourage you to bake this delicious savory cake with turkey, cheddar and mushrooms as it is really tasty for your lunch break and easy to prepare. Don’t hesitate to comment the recipe.

Have a nice week and see you next week.

Lunch box: courgette quiche with courgette salad

What’s cooking in Pauline-Cuisine ?

This week, I would like to share with you two recipes that are perfect match for Lunch box. The first one will be my favorite courgette quiche with a small variation at the dough level. The second one is a salad of fresh courgette which is perfect to eat with the quiche, all in one amazingly tasty lunch box.

I remember the first time that I ate a courgette quiche, at this time I was a child and I was not really keen to the courgette. But my parents decided to have a small vegetable garden and courgettes were perfect to grow up, so one day, the garden gave us plenty of this "awful" vegetable. My mother knew that it was not my favorite vegetable and she decided to ask to her friends how do they eat courgette? and that it is the courgette quiche arrived on my life. Since this day, it is one of my favorite quiche, it is really smooth. Few weeks ago I decided to re-invente the recipe, I didn’t change the mixture but I have amended the dough, I decided to use a vegetable dough (made from a vegetable flour). That is a quite new product that I found last time when I came back to France. The flavor of the vegetable dough is spinach and the taste is great addidtion to the courgette.

In order to change with the traditional salad that I serve with quiche, I decided to give a try to a courgette salad. I read a lot of different recipes and decided to not cook the courgettes and I think that is the best way to eat them. In order to add some flavour I added roasted pine nuts and bacon pieces. This courgette salad is really tasty and it changes to the usual green salad with tomatoes.

I hope you will find time to try these two recipes. Don’t hesitate to leave a comment.

I wish you a please week. See you next week with another delicious lunch box recipe.

Lunch box: Bulgur salad with vegetables

What’s cooking on in Pauline-Cuisine?

Another lunch box recipe for this week: Bulgur salad with vegetables, we need to keep on track with the new resolutions.

I wanted to taste the bulgur, so many times, I saw it mentioned in my cooking magazines as great alternative to the more traditional semolina. In order to help me to cook it for the first time, I took the inspiration from a well known French cooking website: Marmiton. I mixed different recipes with what I already know on my favorite mix in order to achieve this tasteful and easy recipe. It is a kind of Taboule but the fact to use the dried tomatoes gave a something different to the usual recipe. Moreover, as the cucumber has been replaced by olives and that mozzarella has been added, this lunch box has a kind of Italian way.

I was surprised how easy it is to cook the Bulgur. The first time, that I saw the seeds, I though that will be more like the Quinoa, which is for my part quite difficult to find the right cooking timing. Moreover, I was impressed by the volume of it. So the first time that I tried, I cooked far too much of it and I wasted it, so in the recipe, I have taken care to give you the right amount of dried seeds.

I hope you will enjoy this nice salad, don’t hesitate to comment it.

Have a nice week and see you next week with another delicious recipe.

Lunch box: Leek and cheddar Tart

What’s going on in Pauline-Cuisine?

That is a new year and I am willing to discover new products and new recipes.

For Christmas, I went to France for visiting my family and my favourite thing when I am back to France is to go to big supermarkets in order to discover new products. Usually, I spend a lot of time in the sugar and flour area, always looking for new thing for my baking. This time, my eyes were attracted by some small box of flour. On the box, it is written vegetable flour. You can choose 3 different tastes: green vegetables, tomatoes or curry. I had a long hesitation between the green flour and the red one, I finally chose the green one because I thought that can be a great match with my leek tart or the courgette version.

Back to London, for my first lunch box, I gave a try to this flour. It is quite surprising when you open the box to see the green colour even if it is not too aggressive. I decided to bake the dough with my usual recipe, I love the fact to have self-raising flour and corn flour on it. My dough was definitely green and it was strange to put that in my tart mould. Then I add leeks, cheddar and fresh cream and bake it for 25 minutes. The dough was not as green as at the beginning of the cooking, so it was more appealing. The taste of the dough is not really strong; it is stronger if you eat the tart cold. I will definitely try my courgette version with this green flour.

I hope you will enjoy this new recipe that is really great for your lunch at work.

I wish you a relaxing weekend; see you next week with another delicious recipe.

Spring salad

What’s going on in Pauline-Cuisine ?

This week I would like to share with you a new lunch box recipe: spring salad. This salad is really easy to do and healthy, so that checks all the boxes for a great lunch at work. That can be a served as a dish for a light dinner as well.

Last time when I went to the corner supermarket, I was struggling to find lamb lettuce, so I decided to give a try to the iceberg salad. It was a good experience because it is really tender to eat and it is really easy to prepare. You washed it quickly with the bottom on the top, then take a large sheet and cut it in small pieces. The light green of this salad add some colour to the salad.  This try was a huge success and I totally adopted this new salad. Moreover, the value-added is that it is easy to find and it is cheaper.

For doing this salad, if you are struggling with peeling the eggs, don’t forget to put some cold water on it when they are cooked, the cold water on the hot eggshell helps to break the shell.

I hope you will like to cook this spring salad. Don’t hesitate to post a comment on it.

See you next week with another delicious recipe.

Lunch box: salad with 2 cabbages

What’s cooking in Pauline –Cuisine?

The sun is back and that is a great news because the salads are back too. This week, I have enjoyed cooking fresh lunch boxes and eat them in the office’s terrace. Yes, I need to confess that I am really lucky to have this terrace which allows me to have sun bath during lunch time. Salads are perfect match with that. As I would like to celebrate sun, I wanted to create something new to eat. I had a quick review of some cook books, I picked up some idea of dishes and idea of sauces, then rushed to my kitchen in order to create my new lunch box: salad with 2 cabbages.

I am not a huge fan of cabbages but this mix of colors is so attractive. The crispy of the cabbage, fresh raped carrots and beansprot is so delicious. But the “must have” of this salad is the sauce.  I was fed of the basic vinaigrette but I was too tired to do a complicated sauce. So the fact to use lemon juice instead of vinegar was really great idea. The mix of mustard + lemon juice is so tasty that you don’t need to add pepper or salt.

For sure, I will eat a lot cabbages salad as I like the texture and the mix of colors add a joyful touch to my lunch break.

I wish you a nice weekend.

See you next week with a quick and delicious chocolate dessert.

Lunch box: fresh salad with prawns

What's cooking in Pauline-Cuisine?

This week, I will share with you my last salad lunch box. Indeed the days become colder and colder and I caught the flu this weekend, so I am not in mood to create salad. This week, I give you the recipe for doing a colourful salad with prawns for your lunch box.

I created this lunch box because I was fed up of salad with chicken or bacon and I wanted to innovate a little bit with seafood. In fact, when I went to the fish wholesale market two weeks ago, I was really surprised by the good quality of the fish for such a small price. That encourages me to do more things with seafood.

Talking about the wholesale market, I tried with a friend this weekend, the fruits and vegetables fruits market but I was really disappointed. First of all, it was quite far from the underground. Secondly, it was really dangerous to walk on this wholesale market because of the pallets trucks that they went everywhere really fast for transporting huge amount of fruits and vegetables in order to put them into trucks for supermarkets. I suppose, you have already guessed what is the third point, we can’t buy under 4 or 5 kilograms of fruits or vegetables, so it is too big for us. And sometimes, the fruits are not really fresh so we need to use them quickly if we buy it.  

Finally, we have only bought cherry tomatoes and pineapples. With pineapples, I used one part for doing my multi exotic fruits dessert and with the other part, I tried to do my first jam but it is not a really success. The taste is really good but the texture is not what I want, so I will try it again before sharing with you the recipe.

This weekend, I have also organised a little diner and I have tried to do new things. I tried to do an exotic whipped cream. In fact, since I discovered the exotic fruits, I want to incorporate them in a lot of my traditional French recipes, in order to change a little bit the taste and add sun at the table. I will share with you this recipe of mango whipped cream this week (just let me time to take the picture and create the article).

I wish you a nice week and see you next week with an amazing recipe: French Chocolate Macarons with Guava filling.