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So today, in our French ancestors honor we made Gratin Dauphinois (French scalloped potatoes) and roasted chicken.
Gratin Dauphinois (French Scalloped Potatoes)
Usually when I think of scalloped potatoes I think of cheese and potatoes. But to make true Gratin Dauphinois, you DON'T USE CHEESE! I know! I was skeptical at first, but really this turned out so delicious! You still get a crispy brown top from the starch in the potatoes.
Some tips for make Gratin Dauphinois
Just look at that beauty. Gratin Dauphinois was so wonderful! And the leftovers are great too. And it was really easy to make. If you con't have cream on hand, I saw some recipes where it could be made with just milk. So if you're craving scalloped potatoes, try Gratin Dauphinois, you won't regret it. Roasted Chicken
To go with the Gratin Dauphinois, I thought a roasted chicken would be delicious. I was just going to buy a rotisserie chicken from the store but then thought it would be fun to try my hand at roasting a chicken. It was so good too!
I did look up how the French roast chickens but I didn't have time nor ingredients for Julia Child's recipe. So I'll just say the flavors are French inspired though not classically French at all. I don't have a recipe for you, but I rubbed my chicken with butter, and sprinkled it with thyme, salt, and pepper. A squeeze of fresh lemon juice and some extra pats of butter finished up the outside of the bird. I rubbed up under the breast skin with butter and stuck some cloves of garlic up there. Inside I stuffed it with lemon, garlic, and bay leaves. I meant to grab some rosemary from the plant outside but I forgot. I tied the legs together with some baker's twine. Then roasted it at 400F for 20 minutes. After that I reduced the temperature to 375F for another 90 minutes. I had a 5 pound bird that came out with nice crispy skin and beautifully moist meat. It was so delicious. With the leftovers we made chicken tacos the next night.That's the great thing about this chicken the flavors are subtle enough that the leftovers can easily be transformed.
So I hope you give those Gratin Dauphinois a try. They're so delicious! Best scalloped potatoes I've ever had. If you do let us know in the comments how you liked it!
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Alicia back again with another Irish recipe for you. This will be my last recipe for Ireland. Next month we're moving on to French food! This has been a very fun experiment so far. I hope you get the chance to try something like this out sometime.
Today I'll be sharing a recipe for Cottage Pie. Cottage Pie
You may be thinking that this Cottage Pie looks a lot like Shepherd's Pie. That's because they are essentially very similar. But one thing is very different between them. Shepherd's Pie has to use ground lamb or sheep meat! Never Beef! This makes sense if you think about how Shepherd's watched over sheep and not cows.
I didn't have ground lamb, however, so I decided to make Cottage Pie withe the ground beef I had i the freezer. And it was so tasty, we "accidentally" ate half the dish in one sitting, going back for thirds. Even my 6 month old daughter was digging it. She is so fascinated by food. Every time we would bring the fork to our mouths she would open her mouth. It was really cute. I ended up giving her some of the mashed potato topping, and she loved it!
Cottage Pie is layered. A delicious beef layer with veggies and gravy, and a topping of champ and cheese.
Champ is mashed potatoes with diced green onions, lots of butter, and milk. They are mashed until they are really creamy smooth. You definitely don't want any lumps for this dish. So get those potatoes as smooth as you can. Because you want it layered, dollop small amounts of the champ on top of the beef mixture, and then gently smooth them together with a fork or spatula. You don't want any holes in the top. The cheese I used was Kerrygold Dubliner cheese. It's an Irish cheese, and it tastes a bit like Gruyere only a bit sweeter. It's very tasty!
This is such an easy meal to make and pretty inexpensive. I hope you give it a go. Let us know how you like it!
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Hey Alicia again with another recipe from our culinary travels around the world. If you're new to 3 Winks, each month my family is picking a country from our heritage and making one meal a week from that country. So far we have done Germany, Ecuador, and Ireland. To see all the food I've made in this experiment so far, look through the slideshow below. If something looks delicious, clicking on the picture will take you to the post with the recipe. Enjoy!
This week I made Irish stew. I made it before St Patrick's Day actually because we were going out of town over the weekend. It was very delicious!
Irish Stew![]()
To make this Irish dish, I looked up a lot of recipes. They all varied in some ways, but all had one thing in common; you have to use lamb. It's not Irish stew if it doesn't use lamb. Lamb is a must for Irish stew. Never beef! In my area lamb isn't something they have in plenty year round. But now that Easter is coming the stores are stocking up. This could be a great dish to make with your leftover Easter lamb! (If that's what you eat on Easter).
Because this is meant to be a meal that feeds a crowd, it's very filling itself and doesn't really need any side bread etc. Every version of this stew I saw used slightly different vegetables. Some used turnips, rutabagas, and even beets! I used more traditional stew ingredients such as carrots, celery, onion, and, of course, potato. Some of recipes baked their stew in the oven for about 90 minutes. While others let theirs simmer for at least 3 days on the stove! I decided a few hours would be good for my stew and let it simmer (covered) for 3 hours. The leftovers were delicious! It reheats really well! Everyone in my family loves this stew. My husband was skeptical at first because he doesn't really like lamb. But as he was eating he kept telling me how good it was. He also was sad to find the leftovers were all gone. My 3 year old had 2 helpings of this stew! He almost never does that. So that will tell you something. He is also the culprit for eating the leftovers before Dad could get any.
I hope you give this stew a go. It was really so delicious and perfect for the rainy weather we've been having in the Bay lately. I think I would really be enjoying it in the early spring snows I know are happening around the world now too!
Tomorrow I'll be sharing my last Irish recipe for Cottage Pie! Be sure to come check it out!
This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase after clicking them, we will be compensated, but there is no additional cost to you. All opinions expressed are our own. Thank you for your support. Hello dear readers. Today we have a guest post from Alicia's husband, Adrian. Bonus Recipe!! This is Adrian Maruri. The Ecuadorian food recipe month was a crazy one and we are already on the Irish month which so far has been quite tasty. My wife couldn’t post weekly about the meals in the Ecuadorian month as she likes to, so I volunteered to post the last recipe plus a very special bonus dessert: Plantain Cake! (which has got to be the most Ecuadorian desert) As always, desert is the last course so we’ll start with the last meal of the Ecuador series, the delicious “Arroz Con Menestra y Carne” (steak, rice, and lentils). Arroz Con Menestra y CarneThe recipe I used can be found in the great Laylita’s website where she has a wide range of Ecuadorian recipes so I’ll copy the recipe here and only comment on the things I did differently or in addition to it and any comments I may have. As you can see in the picture, instead of serving this meal with sliced avocados, I like to make Guacamole to dip the fried plantain slices in. The side fried plantain for this meal is usually green and preferably so in my opinion. As a traditional occurrence when making lentil menestra, you’ll always end up with leftovers which is best to keep in the freezer and will be great later when you’re in a pinch since the lentils are great on their own, better with rice, and best with an added sunny-side up egg on top. Plantain CakeNow what you came for… The Plantain Cake! There’s probably not a more Ecuadorian dessert out there, at least not a proper one (some people call a fruit salad a desert which is fine but I think cake wins the “dessertiness” contest) Now, full disclosure, you don’t really use green plantains in this recipe as depicted in the thumbnail, they must be very ripe. I should add, I have never made or had this before until now so I can’t confirm whether this is the best or the worst recipe for this cake, but I really enjoyed it. I also know that the have different versions of this cake in Colombia and Venezuela but how different or in what way, I don’t know. So without further ado, here it is: For reference, here is a link to the recipe site, although be warned, it is all in Spanish: https://cookpad.com/es/recetas/116152-torta-de-maduro-ecuatoriana I was so curious when I saw cheese as part of the ingredients but I have to say it added a nice contrast to the sweetness of the cake which in part makes sense because in Ecuador we eat plantain with cheese all the time, green or ripe, but a cake with cheese was new to me. The consistency was a bit more like a plantain flan than a cake, which doesn’t take from its deliciousness, I was just left wondering if a different recipe would get me vastly different results… who knows. Hope you enjoy these recipes! |
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Helen Reynolds: Mother of six children , grandmother to eleven! I love to cook, craft and create things and I especially love doing that with my family, So, when my lawyer daughter, Lindsey, my artist daughter, Madalynn, and I came up with the idea of Hot Cocoa Bombs, this blog was born. Then, one more daughter, with her technical and science skills, plus creativity has joined in to round us out! Read more about us here! Archives
June 2024
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