Pork loin and lemon tajine-style

This recipe could not be a proper tajine recipe. To my knowledge, tajines come from North Africa where most people are muslim and thus do not eat pork. And I don't have a tajine dish. But this dish has some tajine-ish flavours and is baked into the oven. This experimentation using pork loin, summer veggies and lemons was stunning. We loved it!

Alright... I am not very happy with the pictures (well that's a good reason for replicating the recipe again and making new pics! yay!). Trust me it tastes much better than it looks. Plus it is a very healthy option, full of flavours and veggies, that you can serve with couscous for a complete meal. The sauce is awsome - rich but made out of the veggies and the lemons, with just a little bit of fat from the meat and the olive oil. Quite a healthy and addictive sauce. Believe me when I said that I loved this dish!

Even No.2 (nearly 1!!! yay!!!) loved it. The mix of veggies is perfect, the kumara and the tomatoes bring a little bit of sweetness to balance with the lemon. The veggies can be pureed, but they are so soft that it's easy for babies to eat in chunks.

Grapefruit and coconut chicken salad

Another great spring day - Summer is just around the corner! Here we are like busy bees in the garden: we started the herb patch, strawberry flowers are turning into small fruits, the raspberry plants are reviving and the earth of the veggie patch ready to get new seedlings. We already sow cucumber, zucchini, sweet basil, and lettuce in trays. Every day No.1 water his tray of veggies. I really enjoy watching him so excited about the sowing/growing vegetable process.
And you know what? while we were digging the ground, my little paleontologist even found a dinosaur bone. Yes a real one! He said that it would probably be a T-Rex arm. I did not make a picture so I was overwhelmed by the little stars in his eyes... love...

The garden kept us so busy all week end that I had very little time left for the kitchen. After a busy week end in the garden, nothing much was available in the pantry or the fridge. Leftovers of roast chicken, some grapefruits kindly given by a colleague - thanks! - and a need for raw veggies, all in a fresh mix that would suit an 11 month-old. Half an hour later we were all enjoying a fresh grapefruit and coconut chicken salad!

Goat cheese, bacon and Rata honey tartines with dried figues

You'll love this classic French and simple dinner. You just need some bread, bacon, and goat cheese. Any real French has goat cheese in his fridge! Then to make those goat cheese tartines look and taste more fancy, just add a little bit of honey - I used Rata Honey kindly offered by Airborne for me to experiment NZ honey -, thyme and dried figues. Serve with green salad with Rata honey dressing and don't forget a glass of Pinot Gris or Chardonnay.

Airborne Rata Honey suited these tartines to perfection: creamy, buttery and slightly salty, it brought a nice balance to the saltiness of the bacon and to the tang of the goat cheese. This honey revealed its whole potential in the dressing while it brings sweetness and softeness in to the sharpness of the mustard and vinegar mix. Nice!

Quick, easy and a touch of fancy - ideal for busy moms and for busy host!

In France, we often prepare such tartines for quick dinners or as a gourmet entry when hosting friends. One may like replacing the goat cheese with blue cheese or cream cheese and sprinkle with some nuts, but my preference goes to the goat cheese.

There are not limits to your creativity to make gourmet tartines! What would be your favourite topping?

Ingredients (3 servings - 2 tartines/serve)

- 6 thick slices of bread*
- 125 g of soft goat cheese (more or less to meet your greediness!)
- 3 slices of bacon, stripped
- 2 tbsp of honey, slightly heated (15-20 secs in the microwave)
- thyme
- 6 dried figues

Dressing:
- 1 tsp French mustard (generous)
- 1 tsp sunflower oil
- 1 tsp red wine vinegar
- 2 tsp white wine vinegar
- 1 tsp Rata honey
- 2 tsp warm water

Preparation (~ 20 mins)

1. Pre-heat the over, grill function, at 210C.
2. Toast the bread under the grill until slightly coloured - takes approx. 4 mins each side.
3. Take the bread out of the oven and crumble the cheese over and sprinkle the bacon strips. Drizzle the heated honey and sprinkle fresh thyme over the cheese..
4. Bake under the grill for 6-7 mins - but check the colouration.
5. Prepare the dressing: brisk together the mustard and the oil until smooth and well combined. Then gradually mix in the vinegar, the honey and the water. It's ready!
6. Serve the tartines on the top of greens and drizzle a little bit more honey.
7. Don't forget the figues! I forgot them on the pictures, but they definitively add a plus to the dish

Bon appétit!

Good to know...

* Here I used home-made cereal bread, but any rustic-ish bread would suit.

Lemon confits / Preserved lemons

Thanks to my FB follower who spotted a inconsistency between my FB page and the blog! I had accidentally removed this post from the blog... I probably got distracted by something... or someone... wonder who this might be... Anyway lemon confits are back!

The winter has ended; it is a good time to finish harvesting the lemons (or to buy them at a fair price), but you don't know what to do with all these lemons!? Let's prepare some jars of lemon confits or preserved lemons for summer salads and tajines. This is a very simple preparation that will add the little plus to your, sweet and savoury dishes, cakes and cookies...

Ingredients

- 1 kg lemons (~ 8 lemons), preferably organic if not coming straight from your garden
- 200 g salt
- hot water
- 1 big jar

Instructions

1. Incise the lemons in four quarters - do not cut them, the quaters must keep together (see picture above).
2. Stuff with one tablespoon of salt.
3. Squeeze all the salted lemons in a steril jar.*
4. Add the remaining salt in the jar and cover with hot water.
5. Close the jar tightly and store for at least 3 weeks before use.

Tips

* To sterilise the jar, first clean it, then keep it in boiling water for 10-15 minutes.

Sunday lunch: Marinated pork fillet, orange and cranberry sauce with quinoa, amaranth and green beans

When I was a child, in France, Sunday was a special family day. All the shops were closed. Only bakeries, patisseries and restaurants would be open. Everybody gets well dressed, some goes to the church, then to the local pub to take the 'apero' (apéritif). I sometimes went with my grand father and would be given the permission to drink a lemonade with a tiny bit of bier, we call it a panaché. Then, it's lunch time, with the close family or the extended family.

In my family, it was a tradition to have Sunday lunch in the dinning room while we would have our meals in the kitchen the rest of the week. This lunch was not just a quick, improvised, lunch, but well planned. It could sometimes be a 3-course meals, but often offered a dessert. This Sunday meal looked amazing on our plates. As children, we were looking forward to this special family moment. But once the lunch finished, our tummies were so full that the elder ones could not resist a nap.

This has probably changed now, 25 years later... But I remember those Sundays. They are good memories. 

Now, we live in New Zealand, a lovely and amazing country but far from our extended family. For these reasons and others, we tend to spend lot of our time keeping ourself busy with varying activities every Sundays, thus leaving little room to develop such custom in our family.
But now we have two kids, both working full-time, after the older one's activity on Saturday morning, we must acknowledge that we quite like spending a nice and quiet family Sunday at home - especially since we moved into our new house. Such a family Sunday would not be the Sunday of my childhood without a classy family lunch made with heart by mum.
Last Sunday, I spend just a minimum of time in the kitchen to make this surprising dish: Marinated pork fillet, quinoa, amaranth and green beans, with an orange and cranberry sauce. The pork marries very well with sweet flavours, and the sauce is very easy to make. While you could serve this dish with a classic butternut puree or egg noodles for an Asian twist, I opted for a healthy side: quinoa, amaranth and green bean. Even dinosaurs loved it!

What about YOU? Where ever you are, how does a Sunday lunch look like in your family?

Ingredients (4 servings)

- 2 pork fillets (1 kg)

- 1/2 cup light soy sauce

- 1 cup orange juice, freshly squeezed

- 3 tsp raw sugar*

- 3-4 tbsp dry cranberries* (to your taste)

- 1 cup quinoa and amaranth mix

- 250g green beans

- a pinch of chilli powder

- 1 orange, finely sliced (for garnish)