Three days to go & more recipes

Right now I’m in bed. I have just said goodbye and goodnight to 15 lovely people who traveled quite far to be here. The last few days we’ve spent our time together cooking, eating, sharing stories and laughter in my kitchen and at our big table in the harvest room. That’s what we do here at 1 rue de Loudenne. Cook, eat and enjoy. And drink good wine of course.

Last week I was in Paris, at Colette, in a very different setting, cooking the same recipes, offering the same wine and some of the same mood to those who cared for it. It was strangely rewarding. Waking up at 5 in the morning to bake chocolate cake or orange cake in a typical tiny Parisian kitchen, then heading to the Palais Royal, where our friends from Verjus, Braden and Laura, generously lent us their kitchen to prepare quails, ducks and celeriac soup. Then we somehow moved it all to Colette where we applied the final touches.
It was, quite literally, a moveable feast.

The occasion was of course the publication of my new cookbook, French Country Cooking. It’s only coming out on the 25th but this was an “avant premiere” and I must admit that I was a little nervous. To cook for over 50 people every day, to showcase my new book that I’ve put so much love and effort into. Every day I got the chance to meet so many readers of the blog and at the end of it all we had an official book signing where I met the most wonderful people.

All this had made me think of my book in a slightly different way. And not just my book, any cookbook. They are all, in their own way, moveable feasts. To think that in the coming weeks, people all over the world will be receiving my book in their mail, picking up a copy at their local bookstore, flicking through it and most importantly, cooking from it. This Christmas somebody’s feast will be made from my book and I must say that it’s quite a privilege and one that I never expected.

Over the last year I have talked a lot about the story of the house we live in, which is also partly the story of the book. I have, however, always said that the most important thing in a cookbook are the recipes, that they come to life in someone’s kitchen, end up on someone’s plate, bring people together at the table. Any table. People and Food.

Right now we are entering the final hours before the official publication day, Tuesday the 25th of October. Which means this is the last chance to preorder it and get our little notebook.

onionsoup

mushrooms

Anyone who preorders the book before October 25th will get a special, pocket-sized notebook for keeping notes and planning meals.

To receive the notebook all you have to do is sign up here and provide proof that you have preordered French Country Cooking. The many who have already preordered the book are of course also eligible for the notebook.

French Country Cooking‘ available for preorder at:

Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Indiebound

And for Canada

Indigo
Amazon.ca

plumandham

walnuts

cheesewalnutfeuillete

Here are 2 recipes from my new cookbook ‘French Country Cooking’

Comté, Ham, and Walnut Feuilleté
Serves 2

If I were teaching at a French cooking school, this dish would be on the curriculum;
it’s the perfect crowd-pleaser, and it uses so many wonderful French ingredients.
Take the best cheese and ham you can find. Make a velvety béchamel sauce. Add
some moist, tender walnuts just out of the shell. Wrap everything in puff pastry, one
of the most agreeable inventions of French cuisine, and bake it. I knew you’d like it.

2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon / 35 g unsalted butter
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
¼ teaspoon grated nutmeg
fine sea salt and freshly
ground black pepper
1 cup / 250 ml whole milk
1 shallot, thinly sliced
1/3 cup / 50 g walnuts, chopped
8 ounces / 230 g frozen puff pastry, thawed
1 teaspoon whole-grain mustard
2/3 cup / 100 g grated comté cheese
5 ounces / 150 g sliced ham
1 large egg yolk

Preheat the oven to 400 F/200 C. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a small saucepan, melt 2 tablespoons of the butter over medium heat. Whisk in the flour until the mixture thickens. Add the nutmeg, season with salt and pepper, and gradually whisk in the milk and simmer, whisking until thickened, up to 5 minutes. Set the béchamel sauce aside to cool.

In a sauté pan, heat the remaining 1 teaspoon butter over medium heat. Add the shallot and cook until slightly golden, about 3 minutes. Add the walnuts and cook for 1 minute more.

Cut the puff pastry into two 9 x 5-inch / 23 x 12.5 cm rectangles. Place one rectangle of pastry on the lined baking sheet. Spread ½ teaspoon of the mustard in a thin layer over the pastry. Spread with one-third of the béchamel sauce, half of the cheese, half of the ham, and half of the walnut mixture. Repeat the layering. Finish with a layer of béchamel sauce and top with the second pastry rectangle. Seal to the bottom rectangle by pinching together the edges of the pastry.

Beat the egg yolk with a little water and use it to glaze the top with a pastry brush. Using a knife, cut a little round hole in the middle of the pastry to let the steam escape. You can decorate the top with cut pieces of puff pastry (leaves, for example) or lightly score a diamond pattern on top.

Bake the feuilleté in the oven until golden brown, 20 to 25 minutes. Slice and serve hot.

mimiinthedark

silvertrays

roastchicken2

roastchicken1

Roast Chicken with Chestnuts and Cabbage

I have a few staple roast chicken recipes that I use all the time. One is simple, with
thyme and lemon; another one is rich, with a lot of crème fraîche and delicious
herbs. I didn’t really need a third one, but I came up with this recipe because I was
looking for something festive, almost like a pheasant or guinea hen—which means
chestnuts, my favorite. Finally, I needed a way to use up all that cabbage that my husband
keeps growing and buying (because he says it’s the most photogenic vegetable
in the world). This chicken dish is the answer.

For the chicken
1 whole chicken (3 ½ pounds/1.5 kg)
4 tablespoons / 60 g salted butter
fine sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 garlic cloves, unpeeled
1 bunch of fresh thyme
1 small onion, halved
1 bay leaf
8 peeled cooked chestnuts (bottled or vacuum-packed)

For the cabbage
1 head savoy cabbage (dark green leaves discarded), cut into 1-inch / 2.5 cm strips
20 ounces / 570 g peeled
cooked chestnuts (bottled or vacuum-packed)
5 tablespoons / 75 g unsalted butter
fine sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/3 cup / 80 ml chicken stock
1/3 cup / 80 ml dry white wine

Roast the chicken. Preheat the oven to 350 F / 180 C. Take the chicken out of the refrigerator at least 30 minutes before cooking.

Rub the chicken with the salted butter and season generously both inside and out with salt and pepper. Put the garlic cloves, thyme, onion halves, bay leaf, and chestnuts in the cavity. Put the chicken in a roasting pan and roast for 50 minutes.

Transfer the chicken to a big plate; it will not be fully cooked just yet and will be returned to the oven later, so leave the oven on but increase the temperature to 400 F / 200 C.

Make the cabbage. Keep all the fat and juices in the roasting pan and add the cabbage, chestnuts, and 4 tablespoons / 60 g of the unsalted butter. Season with salt and pepper and toss everything together. Return to the oven and roast for 10 minutes.

Pour in the stock and wine and stir to combine. Brush the chicken with the remaining 1 tablespoon / 15 g butter to gloss the skin and return to the pan. Return the pan to the oven and roast until the chicken is golden brown and cooked through, 10 to 15 minutes.

Let the chicken rest for 15 minutes before serving with the cabbage and chestnuts.

cover

48 thoughts on “Three days to go & more recipes

  1. Ma chère Mimi,

    Quelle joie de recevoir ce livre dans quelques jours par la poste! C’est vraiment comme cuisiner avec une amie. Les photos sont belles et simples, de délicieux moments de vie!
    Et chez Colette, quel beau moment aussi! Quelle énergie inépuisable!
    Bon week-end, try to slow down a little bit… et bravo!
    Je t’embrasse
    Cécile

    1. Coucou! Et vives les vacances! C’était très sympa de partager ce petit moment chez Colette. Et oui, une semaine agitée suite à notre retour. Nous avons encore quelques petits ‘hics’ à réparer point de vue technique sur le blog, mais apart pour ça, tout va bien! Le livre sort sous peu! A bientôt, Mimi x

  2. Is “Anyone who preorders the book before October 25th will get a special, pocket-sized notebook for keeping notes and planning meals.” restricted to specific countries?

    Cheers and thanks in advance, Lisa | Joy Della Vita

    1. Hi Lisa,

      It seems so. I’m from Australia and I didn’t get the notebook. I think it’s only for US.

      Cheers,
      Siska

      1. I was wondering, I did fill out the request for the little book back in August, I believe, when I preordered the book. I have not yet seen it. Is there any way to check in on this? Is there someone I can ask, as I was so looking forward to the little book. Thank you, and I have loved the book so far. The photos and stories, as well as recipes have been so nice to read and lose myself in. Thank you.

        Smiles,
        Anna

  3. Hi Mimi,
    It looks delicious, can’t wait to try! I use your rosemary lemon roast chicken recipe almost every week! Its such a good staple,kids love it. I have a question in regards to cooking with wine. Would you use a wine that doesn’t taste particularly good to cook with? My husband says yes but I would argue that if I don’t want to drink it, I wouldn’t want to eat it!
    Thanks, Maddy

  4. That feuilleté calls my name in a loud voice, and I am pretty sure it will wake me up in the middle of the night calling my name over and over again in the loudest of voices until I cave in and bake myself some. I’m not sure I can find Comté here where I live, and since I never tried it during my stint in France I don’t even know what type of cheese it is so I can substitute it, it seems to be a hard type of cheese, so I’m guessing that any other type of hard cheese would do? No? Any tips on what else to use??? Thank you!
    http://bloglairdutemps.blogspot.pt

    1. Bonjour Mimi,
      Je suis vraiment impatiente de recevoir votre livre. Mon compagnon ne sait jamais que m’offrir pour mon anniversaire (en décembre) alors je lui donne des idées tout au long de l’année quand quelque chose me ferait vraiment plaisir. Le ‘hic’, qui n’en est vraiment pas un, est qu’il est incapable de se retenir de m’offrir de suite ce qu’il m’achète. J’ai donc déjà reçu un magnifique tableau d’une amie et maintenant je sais que votre livre sera bientôt entre mes mains ! Certes, les recettes devraient être essentielles mais je l’avoue, j’aime aussi énormément votre façon d’écrire et je me régale autant de votre prose que de vos recettes ! Votre blog est une gourmandise intellectuelle. Evidemment, les photos de votre mari sont la cerise sur le gâteau 😉 Merci !

  5. These look so yummy, can’t wait to try them (and everything else in the new cookbook, which I am eagerly awaiting!). Mimi, my comment is of a technical nature–I am signed up for email notifications of new blog posts, and didn’t get one for this. I happened to see it on Facebook, otherwise I never would have known. Did something get changed when you updated the site this past week? Should I sign up again? Merci, can’t wait for next week’s book delivery!

    1. Hi Kathleen, I am so glad you reached out about this issue. One week ago our site was down, then up and down again (coincidentally the day the world was hacked!!), and it seems to me a few links got broken, and perhaps that is the reason you did not receive a notification. I was reassured and apparently it will all be fine within a few days. But in the meantime, I would advise you to click the ‘FOLLOW’ button on the bottom right of the blog. Many thanks, Mimi x

  6. Hi Mimi,
    The last day of my stay in Paris had a pleasure to meet you in Colette and tasted the most amazing pie and Medoc wine that you paired with. Of course I wouldn’t leave without a signed copy of your new book. I got home and have already tried a couple dishes,my family loved them. I think they will reappear on my Christmas dinner table.

    Thanks for the book signing and was my pleasure to meeting you. Hope one day will be able to attend your workshops or attend your pop up restaurant.

    KallyWong

  7. Hi Mimi,
    I can’t wait to get a copy of your second cookbook! The 1st cook book is wonderful! Always is a pleasure to read your blog post.
    -Sye Ling –

  8. Dear Mimi,
    Like I mentioned at your book signing, your book is so beautiful that I read it like a novel, from cover to cover. I’m actually hoping it rains here in Germany this afternoon so that it’s even cozier when I curl up on the couch in front of the fireplace with a glass of wine and your book. That’s what Sundays are for! And again, it was so special meeting you at the book signing at Colette!
    Cheers, Amy

  9. Ahhh, October 25th is almost upon us! You’ve one well Mimi, the book, a new boy, workshops, pop-up in Paris and still sane! I’ve some Australian frozen chestnuts in the freezer, and our local (super)market sells organic chicken. Meal planning solved! Thank you, Oddur and all the lovelies @1.

    1. Just ordered your new and beautiful cookbook. Should be arriving by Nov. 1st. Cannot wait. Sincerely congratulations!!

  10. Mimi, I am posting a second comment :apologies, but I’d not ticked the “notify me of new posts by email” box. I stumbled upon the new post via your website. You any delete this once I’m registered.

  11. Mimi. Congrats on your new book! So excited and can’t wait to get my hands on it, but having trouble locating a supplier in the UK – do you know what’s happening re publication here please? Tx in advance 🙂

    1. Hi Deborah, Thank you for your message! I think it’s because it’s coming out first in the USA, that’s why UK is lagging behind. It is schedule to come out very soon with Hardie Grant, but I have to confirm the dates. I will let you know asap!
      Mimi x

  12. Bonjour Mimi,
    I Can’t wait to have your second book in my hands.
    You’re such an inspiration for me.
    Any news about the date of publication of your new book in italian?
    Wish you a good start of the week!
    And congratulations for everything!

    Valentina

    1. Hi Valentina! Oh, many thanks for your sweet message! The book will come out in many languages, but as it’s all very new, I still don’t have all the details! Hang in there and I will let you know asap! So exciting! Mimi x

  13. Hi Mimi, the feuilletè looks so scrumptious!! I can’t wait to make it 🙂 Just wondered, what would you serve the feuilletè with? Is it supposed to be a main dish? With a salad or what? Thank you 🙂

  14. Dear Mimi,
    I love your first cookbook and would love to buy your new one – can you explain why I cannot buy it on Amazon.co.uk altho it is available on Amazon.com? Many thanks.

    1. Hi! First of all, thanks for the kind words! 🙂 Merci! Regarding the UK, I think it’s because it’s coming out in the USA first, and another publisher, Hardie Grant, is publishing UK and Australia soon. I just don’t have the dates, yet, but I promise I will update you asap! Mimix

  15. Apologies to Ruth Miranda. Instead of leaving a comment, I must have clicked on ‘reply’! And Mimi might not have seen your message.
    I can see your blog ‘L’air du temps’ is based in the UK. I’m French living in London and you can find some Comte in Borough market on Fridays and Saturdays. If you are far from London, I wonder what Mimi would say about using blue cheese instead of Comte…? Just thinking about it make me feel hungry :-)).

  16. Today I have received my copy. It’s such a beautiful book. I’m really looking forward to trying out all the recipes. Thanks to you and Odd for the lovely meals and pictures.

  17. I got it!! I got it!! And it’s just beautiful! It looks and feels and practically smells of a warm, wonderful kitchen. I don’t know whether to make the pumpkin quiche or the apple pancakes – got both at the farmer’s market today – and I’m so excited! Also, thank you for the little pad. It’s cute.
    I have a question that I hope you can answer. We will be in France for April vacation (U.S.) and hope to visit Medoc during our stay. Unfortunately we can’t book a dinner with you as the weeks don’t coincide, but we were wondering if there was some site that would point us in the direction of some cavs. My husband likes to visit wineshops in Paris and talk at great-very great-length with the owners as they share a passion. Since you want to promote your area, and we’d like to support that, any help you can give, maybe via a blog post? Thank you again, I know this book will bring a lot of joy to my table.

  18. Hi! I have received your cookbook and it is a delight to read! I live in the US and did not receive the notepad. Should it have come with the cookbook ? I ordered it from Amazon, just wondering….

    1. Update on my previous email…I did get the little notebook…..I ordered the book from Amazon, and the little notebook came separately, a few days later. <3

  19. I got your book as an early Christmas present from my husband. Just love it! He knew I was sad to have missed the signing this time but he managed to get a sticker autographed book from Food52! No Oddur’s autograph on this one :-), otherwise I couldn’t have asked for a better gift. Such a beautiful book! Down to the detail of the ribbon and the cloth spine. Love. Love. Love. I’ve been reading it daily (yes, I read it like a novel ha ha).
    I’ve made the orange cake from the book – so, so good! Simple and perfect! And, I’ve made your chicken w/ cabbage and chestnuts a few times since you posted it. A great variation on our weekly roasted chicken. I made crepes yesterday for breakfast too (crepe suzette recipe, but I kept them plain). Came out perfect!! Love your recipes! Dreaming of coming to one of your workshops… Happy Holidays to you and your family 🙂

  20. Congratulations on a beautiful book! I just made the “Everyday Pear Cake” and served it to my twin girls on my grandmother’s platter during an afternoon tea party (they are five and very partial to additional dashes of confectioner’s sugar, haha). Very much looking forward to trying all the recipes! The book is gorgeously inspirational.

  21. hello Mimi,
    i love the new cookbook…i pre-ordred it from amazon.ca, but i did not receive the notebook. I hope by mentioning this it will come in the mail shortly.
    En tous les cas je vous souhaite tout le bonheur du monde à vous et votre immense famille pour 2017!

  22. The photographs capture such a vibrant feeling of your nest as always. I am inspired to bring meals in my nest to life. Congratulations on your book and happy feasting of course!

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