french food

Clafoutis - The French Cherry cake

Hello everyone, Today I have a very French recipe for you: Clafoutis. It is a French cake with cherries, which is very easy to bake, that is eaten a lot all over France in the summer. The recipe is very easy to make, and children love it. My husband Mr. Love  really doesn't like clafoutis, I must say, and I had to wait for my sister's visit to bake one with her. He says that Clafoutis tastes like an omelet with cherries... which is not completely wrong, but I still love this cake and its wonderful smell! Nowadays, you see a lot of clafoutis recipes with various fruits, but the real one is made with cherries - and they are really delicious at the moment. I hope you will enjoy it too! xxx Elodie

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Preparation time: 10 minutes Cooking time: 30 minutes Ingredients (for 8 people):

  • 600 g cherries
  • 40 g salted butter  + 20 g for the baking tin
  • 4 eggs
  • 20 cl milk
  • 100 g flour
  • 60 g caster sugar
  • 1 sachet of vanilla sugar
  • 1 pinch of salt
  • icing sugar

Preparation:

Pre-heat the oven to 210°C (thermostat 7). Wash the cherries, remove the stalks and dry them. You don't remove the stones, the traditional recipe states that you leave them in, and I think it tastes much better that way. Melt 40g of butter in a small saucepan with a thick base. In a large bowl, mix the flour, sugar, salt and the vanilla sugar. Add the eggs bit by bit and then the milk, also in stages whilst continuing to mix. Add the melted butter. Butter the baking tin, put the cherries in and then pour in the mixture. Place in the preheated oven for ten minutes at 210°C and then reduce the temperature to 180°C and bake for a further 20 minutes. Serve the clafoutis cold or luke warm, covered with icing sugar.

Soirée provençale in Hamburg

Dear all, I had a great start to the weekend. I went to a "soirée provençale" in Hamburg on Friday night. It was organised in the French café called Metropolitain that I already presented on the blog in December - you can read more here.  It was the French concept of "table d'hôtes". Our hostess was the French cook Eve based in Hamburg. Table d'hôte literally means "the host's table" in French. The term is used to denote a table set aside for residents of a guesthouse. Everyone sits down around a large table and makes small-talk. It is not like in a restaurant, there is only one sitting, the price is fixed and the menu set in advance. The theme of the evening was Mediterranean cuisine. We had taboulé to start with, an aioli -  a speciality from Marseilles with cold fish, vegetables and a garlic mayonnaise - perfect for the hot weather we are experiencing, and a lovely fruit salad with a madeleine to finish with.

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We sat at a table with 15 people in front of the Café Metropolitain and the atmosphere was great, we met lovely people, shared a great meal, a mix of French and German conversations started around the table, mainly about food, as is traditional in France.  It was like being in the middle of a Kinfolk dinner. soiree provencale_Metropolitain

We all had a great night and I was very happy to help the organisers Melody, Ulrike and Eve with the flower decoration. Here are a couple of pictures of the flowers and the food:

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The next Mediterranean "table d'hôtes" in Metropolitain will take place on 27th September. You can book on Eve's Website. Have a great day!

Elodie

crêpe de chine et macarons

Hello everyone, yesterday, I was lucky enough to be invited to visit the great pop-up store of the label 7 Chic Avenue. This is the gorgeous label of designers Marianne and Jutta. The pop up store is open until this Saturday in the Isestrasse 79 in Hamburg-Eppendorf. If you can't make it, you can purchase their very elegant and feminine creations online. They use some very exquisite fabric such as crêpe de chine. Another highlight of this event was the catering, made by Aurelie Gourmet. Aurélie is well-known in Hamburg for her macarons. You can find them every Saturday at the Marktzeit in Altona (currently on summer break). Yesterday, we didn't just have macarons but also chouquettes - a small choux pastry sprinkled with sugar and cannelés (the sweet speciality from Bordeaux) - and it was delicious - It felt like home for an hour or so. Thank you Aurélie!

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Have a nice Friday evening. Talk to you soon

xoxo Elodie