Y is for Yoghurt and Z is for Zest

French food alphabet advent calendar

Welcome to the final post in my French Food Alphabet Advent Calendar where I have been working my way through a selection of delicious food posts and recipes. I hope you have enjoyed your virtual tastings.

It’s the 24^th December and Y is for Yoghurt and Z is for Zest.

I first became aware of how good live natural yoghurt is for you and how easy it is to make, when I read Mireille Guiliano’s book French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure and it is now one of my secrets to weight loss and maintaining my weight through a healthy diet. I have owned a yoghurt maker since 2007 and regularly make both yoghurt and soft cheese with it. The soft cheese is simply a litre of freshly made yoghurt with a teaspoon of salt added, that is hung in a muslin cloth for twelve hours until the whey has drained away, leaving a thick and creamy cheese with a tart flavour. A yoghurt maker is great as it ensures the correct temperature required to turn the milk to yoghurt, but it isn’t essential, a warm place like an airing cupboard would be fine.

Making Natural Yoghurt

You will need a litre of milk and a few tablespoons of live natural yoghurt as a starter.

Heat the milk and then allow to cool to 45 degrees c.

Pour a small amount of the milk onto the starter yoghurt and combine.

Gradually add this to the remaining milk, but don’t over do the stirring.

Place in the yoghurt maker, or cover with a heavy towel and put it somewhere warm, but not hot or draughty. An airing cupboard, or an oven with a bowl of hot water should work fine too.

Do not disturb or move it until it has set as this may stop it working.

I recommend starting it off in the evening and you should have (warm) yoghurt by the morning that is ready to refrigerate and enjoy.

I have many uses for natural yoghurt, here are just a few:

To top muesli or cereal for breakfast.

A generous dollop added to a slice of cake or tart in place of cream.

Mixed with fresh pesto to make a herby dip.

Added to mustard and a splash of vinegar to make a creamy salad dressing.

Mixed with tinned tuna instead of mayonnaise for a sandwich filling.

Used with apple cider vinegar to make a tangy coleslaw dressing.

Mixed with walnuts to make a walnut cream (see here).

Z is for Zest

I have reached the end of the alphabet and the end of advent. There is not much I can say about zest, except that the zest of an orange added into a pastry mix makes the most delicious mince pies at Christmas.

Thank you for joining in with my French Food Advent A to Z and I would like to wish you all a Happy Christmas, a Healthy New Year and Bon Apetit!

If you have missed my previous posts you can catch up by clicking on the letters A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U and V, W and X.

Provençal Style Yoghurt Cake with Olive Oil and Quince

Provencal olive oil and yoghurt cake

Provençal Style Yoghurt Cake

Following on from yesterday’s France et Moi interview with Alice Alech here is the recipe she has kindly shared from An Olive Oil Tour of France, for a Provencal style yoghurt cake made with olive oil and quince. This cake is a simple French classic. A cake that is often the first thing that French children learn to bake because they do not need to be able to read any scale to make it because the “pot” used to measure the ingredients is the first yogurt pot, emptied, rinsed and dried. It also helps with the confusion between grams, oz and cups!

Recipe

1 quince

2 pots of plain yogurt

1 pot of sugar

2 pots of flour

2 pots of ground almonds

1 pot of olive oil

4 eggs

A 15g sachet of levure chimique (baking powder)

1 lemon zest

Method

Core the quince then place in a saucepan with a spoonful of sugar and cover with water. Bring to the boil, cook uncovered until tender.

Preheat the oven to 180°C.

In a large mixing bowl whisk eggs and sugar until quite pale.

Stir in the yogurt, olive oil and lemon zest until all the ingredients are fully incorporated.

Add the flour, baking powder and almonds and combine.

Grease a baking tin and pour in the batter. I used one with a hole in the middle purely as my oven cooks cakes better this way.

Arrange the quince on top.

Bake for about 45 minutes checking the centre of the cake with a fork to make sure that the cake is cooked.

Leave for 10 minutes or so before removing from the cake tin.

Our quince blossom this week

Olive Oil

Thank you Alice, this recipe is likely to become a favourite here as it is moist and delicious, plus we make our own yoghurt and grow our own quinces (if only we had a productive lemon tree too). This week I made it without fresh quince, but instead added some cooked rhubarb. However as our two quince trees are heavy with blossom at the moment I am looking forward to using them later in the year and I may even get Ed interested enough in what goes on in my kitchen to give it a go too.

More recipes and information on French olive oil can be found in Alice’s book An Olive Oil Tour of France, available on Amazon. You can read my review of it here and my interview with Alice here.

Viva Mayr week two

I am now at the end of the second week ‘loosely’ following the main principles of The Viva Mayr Diet and things are still looking good. I say loosely as I am really not very good at totally following any hard and fast rules! However my waist has reappeared as if by magic, which has led to my clothes feeling far more comfortable and the numbers on the scales are still moving in the right direction (I have lost just under 2kgs) so I am very happy.

In the first week (see here for my report) I struggled to drink enough water and herbal teas between my meals, as liquids with food dilute the digestive process so are a no no for Viva Mayr, but this week that has been a little easier. It is just a matter of adjusting my routine, which I’m sure in time will become more normal.

Chewing, and by this I mean really chewing each mouthful is already becoming more routine and has led to some odd discoveries. A small handful of crisps with a homemade wrap for lunch when chewed correctly were absolutely disgusting and the salt burnt my mouth. I can’t see myself ever wanting to put another crisp in my mouth again, so that should save me quite a few calories over the years. You really do get enhanced flavours from your foods when you chew, it really does fill you up and it is better for your digestion too. I still haven’t felt hungry between meals, which (unfortunately for Ade and Ed) has meant I haven’t baked a cake since returning from the UK – shock, there is usually always cake in the kitchen. I do feel a little guilty and I will get my baking mojo back I’m sure, however at the moment I’m enjoying a delicious walnut yoghurt cream dessert (inspired by one of the recipes in the Viva Mayr book) where I would usually have eaten cake. I am also not yet ready to put temptation under my nose, especially as a packet of Cadbury Mini Eggs nearly ruined everything over Easter. As it is so delicious I thought I would share my walnut yoghurt cream recipe with you.

Walnut Yoghurt Cream with kiwi and banana

Walnut Yoghurt Cream

Take two handfuls of shelled walnuts and blend in a food processor until quite fine. Add a tablespoon of cold pressed walnut oil and two tablespoons of water and blend again. This will give you a lovely wet walnut paste that I mix with five tablespoons of homemade live natural yoghurt. The result is delicious and very healthy, walnuts are a super food, Viva Mayr sings the praises of using cold pressed oils and natural live yoghurt is also very good for your insides. For breakfast I pour some over a sliced banana and for lunch I add it to a mixed fresh fruit salad. I could easily become addicted as it is delicious on it’s own too.

Rouillac Market

In the local town of Rouillac, nestled in amongst the Cognac vineyards, the 27^th of each month is an important date. For on the 27^th, whether it falls on a weekday or weekend and come rain or shine, the whole town becomes a huge market place. This tradition goes back over two hundred years and is likely to have originally been a horse-trading market. Rouillac is situated both on the Voie Agrippa, an ancient east/west route across France linking Lyon with Saintes, and also an important trade route between Brittany and Spain. People still come from miles around (it is BIG in the local calendar) and one of the main attractions now is the poultry, although there are still a few horse sales too as well as everything else you would expect to find at a French market.

Mucky ducks at Rouillac Market www.frenchvillagediaries.com

For some time now I have wanted grey speckled hens and with Ade’s permission (he keeps a very tight control over my animal purchases) that was my goal and the search was on. Those seriously looking for a bargain are there very early, but on a cold, wet Sunday we decided a mid morning outing was a better idea, so set off after a coffee and croissant breakfast. The drive down was grey and damp, the Cognac vines, some neatly pruned some still scruffy and twiggy looked bare and wintry. A quick tour around the poultry stands and we found our girls. Wanting 2 or 3 grey speckled hens fate led us to the only stand offering a discount for buying 3 birds, and they just happened to be grey speckled birds – sold to the short lady in mauve! To top it all the weather was dry for our wander around the market where we could have been tempted by all sorts from day old ducklings, to strings of garlic, to huge turkeys (alive), to fish (dead), to sausage and chips (hot) to locally grown kiwi fruits. We did scoop up a bargain on the kiwis as they are full of vitamin C and make a great winter breakfast smoothie with a banana and some natural yoghurt.

Fifty, Phyl and Kirstie

The new girls, Fifty (the light grey one), Kirstie (the bold, bossy speckled one) and Phyl (the other one) are settling in well, they haven’t met the others yet, but I hope they will enjoy their free range life in our orchard very soon (and lay us lots of eggs).

Eggs, all sizes, all colours at Rouillac Market

Fish at Rouillac Market

Garlic at Rouillac Market

Our purchases from Rouillac Market

Fat Free Cherry Cake Recipe

Cherry harvest at www.frenchvillagediaries.com

Here is my most baked cake recipe; I like to indulge in a slice of cake every day, and making it without fat means I can do so without worrying about the consequences. I generally make it with cherries as in our orchard we have five huge old cherry trees as well as about the same again in younger trees. There are at least three different varieties with red and yellow fruits, all with a slightly different harvest time. In a good year we could pick, over a six-week period, hundreds of kilos of cherries. We can’t pick them all and we can’t use all that we do pick, but the birds and the neighbours help us out there. Our freezer comes into it’s own as a lot of the cherries are stoned using my fantastic Leifheit Preserving Cherrymat Cherry Pitter Machine, Plastic, White, frozen on trays and bagged up to be turned into Fat Free Cherry Cakes all year round. You could of course use any fruit of your choice, if we have them I also use halved plums or peaches and sliced apples, pears or quince, all are delicious.

Cherry stoning at www.frenchvillagediaries.com

Ingredients:

Enough cherries (or fruit) to fill the bottom of a lined flan tin

3 eggs at room temperature

65g sugar

110g plain flour

1 tbsp cornflour

1 tsp baking powder

2 tbsp natural yoghurt

50g ground almonds

a few drops of almond essence

Fat Free Cherry Cake www.frenchvillagediaries.com

Beat the eggs and sugar for at least five minutes until very frothy and pale. Gently fold in the yoghurt and almond essence, and then half the dry ingredients sieved, then the remainder. Try and lose as little of the air as possible. Pour the batter over the cherries and bake in a preheated oven (gas 4) for about 20 mins, or until the top is golden and springs back to the touch. Leave to cool and then turn out upside down onto a plate. This cake will dry our very quickly as there is no butter, however it never lasts too long in our house and we always serve it with a healthy dollop of natural yoghurt which helps to keep it moist and adds a touch of luxury.