Now we're cooking! First real night of cooking in class... en Francais

If I was concerned about this class not being advanced enough for me, I realized on Tuesday night that this would not be the case.   Chef is giving our team the opportunity to choose which dishes we want to cook and is also giving us extra tasks to complete.  Definitely a challenge!

This week we learned about French cuisine, and each team made a french dish.  Our team made three dishes!  We chose to make a Cherry clafouti and an Italian plum clafouti.  The cherry one came out great.  We followed the directions to a "T" and it looked gorgeous when it came out of the oven.  Unfortunately we left out an important ingredient in the plum clafouti, ground almonds, which was a result of miscommunication with chef.  Not a big deal, we were able to mix that last ingredient in before cooking and all ended up fine.  Pictures of both are below. We also made a shallot butter sauce which was served with Group 1's potatoes.  This came out divine.

Cherry Clafouti
serves 4


2/3 c all purpose flour
2 eggs
1/2 c sugar
3/4 c milk
3 T heavy cream
3 T unsalted butter, melted
12 oz fresh sweet cherries,washed and pitted
confectioners' sugar for dusting


1.  Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.  Sift the flour into a mixing bowl and make a well in the center.  Add the eggs and whisk until smooth.  Add sugar, milk, cream and melted butter, mixing well after each addition.  Strain to remove any lumps.


2.  Butter a 6 cup ovenproof dish.  Sprinkle the cherries over the bottom, then pour in the batter.  Bake in the oven for 30 minutes or until an inserted knife tip comes out of the batter clean.  Serve warm, generously dusted with confectioners' sugar.
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Clafouti is basically a flan or custard like dish with fruit in it, made in a buttered casserole dish.  This dish is typically made with cherries but any stone fruit could be used instead. The dish is finished with powdered sugar and served at room temperature.  Here are the two we made:

cherry clafouti

plum clafouti

Other dishes from class included a beautiful, fresh nicoise salad, a bright orange carrot and coriander soup, tomato and goat cheese on french bread toasts, and ratatouille.  Dishes in bold are pictured below...  All in all a fun first class and a round of applause for the students who are learning how to cook in the class as they did a great job!

Do you have any favorite french dishes?  Feel free to share with me!

Chow for now! :)