Olive Oil

Coming from the south of France in Provence, Olive oil takes a big part of my life for cooking. 
We don't really cook with butter in Provence. 

I am lucky that my parents have a lot of olive trees in their garden. 
My mom does the picking and then goes to the mill and they make her own olive oil. 
She starts to harvest the olives in November when the color is still green but almost turns to black. She brings every night the olives to the mill because olives need to be grinded the same day. And then the olive oil is ready in mid december. In average she harvest around 120kg (265lbs) of olives per year. To make 1L (34oz) of olive oil, you need 6kg (13lbs) of olives.

Photographed by La Bastide D'Eyragues

This year for Christmas my parents offered to each of her children a bottle of olive oil from their production. 
Olive oil is the gold of Provence, it is a very precious gift. It can be sold around 30$ per liter. 

It is so good comparing to the one you buy at the grocery store. 
The color, the smell, the taste is different. It is called the "fruité vert" : the oil is greener and has a fruity taste and tastes like artichoke, it does not taste just like something oily. 

It is an extra virgin olive oil. Extra virgin is the highest quality and most flavorful olive oil. It must be produced entirely by grinding whole olives and extracting the oil by mechanical. It means without the use of any solvents, and under temperatures that will not degrade the oil. 

I remember at my parents home sometimes we just have a dinner with salad, cheese and olive oil. 
My favorite way to eat olive oil is with salt and a piece of bread. Yummy!! 

Tip: Do not try to eat olives directly from the tree, they are inedible. Olives are a naturally very bitter fruit, they need to be fermented or cured with water and salt to make them more palatable.

American cookies

I am not really into american sweet treats like doughnuts, cupcakes and layered cakes with cream cheese frosting. 
I find them too heavy and too sweet to my taste. But cookies are my favorite. 

We have the similar kind of cookies in France, we call them Sablé (it is made with butter sugar egg and flour) . I will do a post later about Sablé.

I like them just out of the oven because they are still gooey in the inside and crisp on the outside. With a cup of tea it is the perfect treat for a cold winter day. This week the weather is so so cold... 2˚F (-17˚C) yesterday and today it's snowing . So I am in a mood to have a nice warm cup of tea.  And I can not have tea without any sweets to go with . So today is cookies day !!

I have a book called "1 dough, 100 cookies" by Linda Doeser that my mom bought me. There is a basic recipe and then you can make 100 types of cookies  with fruits, nuts, jam. They are quick and easy to make.
I have tried already the double chocolate chips and the almond with raspberries jam cookies.

But today is going to be the original chocolate chips cookie. There are so classic and comforting.

Here is the recipe (makes about 30):
Ingredients:
1 cup butter softened
3/4 cup sugar ( I use brown sugar, I prefer the taste)
2 tbs vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup of semisweet chocolate chips 
pinch of salt

1. Preheat oven 375˚F/190˚C. Line 2 cookie sheets with baking parchment.
2. Put the butter and sugar in a bowl and mix well with a wooden spoon, then beat in the egg yolk and vanilla extract. Sift together the flour, salt and chocolate chips, and stir until combined.
3. Scoop up tablespoons of the mixture and shape into balls. Put them on the prepared cookie sheets spaced well apart and flatten slightly.
4. Bake for 12-15min. Transfer to wire racks to cool completely or not if you are like me and you can not wait to eat them all.

There are so many recipes in this book to try but the next one that has catched my eyes is the recipe with hazelnut and Nutella. Looks yummy !! Who does not like Nutella ? 

An hot cup of earl grey tea and a few cookies and I am fine for this cold winter afternoon.

My Favorite Hot Beverage

I love tea, it is my favorite hot beverage!!! I drink tea all day long. Usually I have an Earl Grey for breakfast, one or two green tea in the afternoon and a green tea with mint after dinner.

I have tried so many brands and the best tea for me come from Mariage Frères, a well-known company for the French Art of Tea.

It smells so good and tastes even better. I like tea that have been enhanced with subtle fragrances of rose, bergamot, citrus and jasmine.

I have always at home all these different kind of tea, they are my favorites:

Thé au Tibet: Black China tea scented with vanilla, jasmine, mandarin orange, rose, and bergamot.

Thé à l'Opéra: Green tea with fragrance of red berries and precious spices. 

Thé Casablanca: Green tea with Moroccan mint and bergamot.

Thé Vert Provence: Green tea with lavender, rose petal and black and red berries. (I was born and raised in Provence so when I smell it, I feel like I am in Provence on a sunny spring day)

Thé Earl Grey: Premier black China tea with bergamot.

Thé sur le Nil: Green tea with citrus fruits and spices.

And around Christmas I have a blend of spicy tea with orange, almond, vanilla and Christmas spices.

Most of the tea come from China, India and Japan. But as well from Turkey, Africa, South America and Russia. There are so many varieties of tea: white, green, blue and black.  

But each tea is different, subtle delicate and refined. Steeping time and water temperature are very important. And the best quality comes in loose leaves.
It needs to be store in a metallic container because tea doesn't like air, light and humidity. It is better to use filtered water to preserve the tea flavors and scents.

Here is a simplified table of how to drink your tea:

Type of tea        Water Temperature           Steeping time

 Black tea               95˚C - 203˚F                   4-5min         

 White tea              70˚C - 158˚F                    10min

 Green tea         70/90˚C - 158/194˚F             1-3min

A lot of friends tell me "how can you drink tea. It's like drinking hot water that tastes so bitter". I ask them what kind of tea do they drink and their response usually is "pouring boiling water over tea bags from the grocery store". But after having tasted a very good infused tea they change their opinion about it. And now when they come to my house most of the time they ask for a tea instead of a coffee!! 

Best French Bakery in Toronto

I wanted to share with you my favorite bakery in Toronto.

The Thobors Bakery !! 

When I go there I feel like home, the smell of the freshly baked bread and the ambiance is perfect. 

Everything is good, from the bread to the french pastries. You can go there even for lunch, they have quiche, sandwich, salad and soup.

The owners Sylvie and Marc Thobor are very nice people and are good friends of mine now.

They have been voted best baguette in Toronto in 2011 by Toronto Life Eating and Drink magazine. And this year they are in the top 5 loaves in Toronto.

I had the chance to spend a couple of days there taking pictures. It was part of my assignment for school. Telling a story with photographs. Obviously I choose a theme around food !! I called it " A day at the Bakery" . 

They have a large selection of breads (baguette, sesame seed, poppy seed, figs, whole grains) and french pastries (quiche, chausson aux pommes, croissant, pain au chocolat, financier, madeleine, macaron, tart and cake). 

Moreover I was lucky that they choose my photographs to put on their updated website www.thobors.ca

Thanks Sylvie and Marc to have given me my first job as a photographer !!

King Cake Celebration

Today is King Cake celebration to celebrate the Epiphany.
It is a tradition in France to eat a Galette des Rois on January 6th.

The Galette is a flaky puff pastry filled with a buttery almond cream or frangipane (mix of almond cream and pastry cream). 
But it depends on the area you live in. In Provence we have a Gâteau des Rois or Couronne instead, it is a ring shaped brioche filled with candied fruits and flavoured with orange flower water.

A fève (dry fava bean or a little figurine) is hidden in the cake and the person who gets the fève, will be the king for the day and will have to pick his queen. Or the queen will have to pick her king. And both get a golden paper crown.

The tradition is that the youngest child hides under the table and decides which slice goes to whom. I remember when I was a child it was so much fun.
And even at the office people bring a Galette but try to avoid the slice with the fève because the person who gets the fève will have to offer the next one. 

Every year I make my own Galette and we try to eat one every week end of Januray. Yes, we like sweets !
You can make you own puff pastry but the ones you can find at the grocery store are a good option.  
Here is the recipe. It is really easy and quick to cook.

Ingredients:
- 2 sheets of butter puff pastry
- 1 cup of almond powder
- 1/2 cup of sugar
- 1 cup of unsalted butter (beaten until creamy)
- 2 eggs + 1 yolk for the eggwash
- 1 tablespoon of orange liquor or rhum or liquor of your choice (this year I flavoured my galette with blood orange jus and zest)

1. Mix the almonds, sugar, butter, the liquor/jus and eggs to a smooth paste.  
2. Place the first pastry in a baking tray and spread the paste evenly across. Then insert a fève close to an edge.
3. Dampen the edge of the first pastry and lay the second over it. Press down with a fork to seal the sides and decorate with a knife. Pierce a hole in the center.

4. Glaze the top with the egg yolk
5. Bake 30 min until golden brown at 350F
6. Place on a rack to cool

I baked it this morning. My husband and I had a slice after lunch , a second slice with the tea this afternoon and I think by tonight it will be finished. I got the fève so I guess I have to bake one for next week end !! Who is coming to have a slice with us ??

Christmas in Provence

I just came back from my Christmas Holidays in France where I visited my family. They live in the south east of France , that we call LA PROVENCE.
This year the weather was perfect, sunny and warm.

The tradition in Provence is to have Thirteen Desserts after a light meal on Christmas eve.
Why thirteen ?? It represents Jesus Christ and the 12 apostles at the last supper.
In my family we like so much sweets that usually we have more than thirteen.

The thirteen desserts inlcude:
- Fresh fruit (tangerines, grapes, winter melon)
- Nuts and dried fruits (almonds, walnuts, dried figs, dates)
- Sweets

The list of the sweets is long:
- Pate de coing (quince paste)
- Nougat (hard candy made with honey and almonds)
- Pompe a l'huile (brioche made with orange flower water and olive oil)
- Calissons d'Aix en Provence (marzipan with sugar icing)
- Chocolate christmas buche
- Pain d'epice

My grand parents make every year the nougat, the quince paste and the christmas buche. It is so good . Everything tastes better when it is homemade !!!
Here is a video showing my granpa making the nougat: 
"Le Temps du Nougat" by my talented brother Florent Conti.  
  
My brother and I we live in North America and my sister lives in Austria. So this year my mom baked some gingerbread cookies and a Sachertorte (Viennese chocolate cake) to represent the countries where we live.

We set up a nice table on Christmas eve and the food remain on the table until the end of december. But we are so "glutton" that the day after Christmas, everything was gone.