Unfortunately, no time to post a recipe today. I’ll be on Valley Dish today at 3:30… not cooking this time, but instead showing how to set up a Mardi Gras tablescape. Tune in if you get a chance.

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Today’s recipe is another one of the many scrumptious creations we made during our week long stay at La Pitchoune. It is adapted from Simon Beck’s Marmites of Seafood with Creamy Leeks from her cookbook, Simca’s Cuisine.  A marmite is a French covered crock, by the way.

Simon Beck was Julia Child’s friend and co-author of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Simon (also known by her nickname, Simca) and her husband, Jean Fischbacher, owned the property that Julia and Paul built their Provençal home on in 1963, near the town of Plascassier, in the hills above Cannes. Julia and Paul named it La Pitchoune – affectionately know as La Peetch. Pitchoune is a Provençal word meaning “the little one” which is apt since it is a small house, just up a small hill from Simca’s larger home.

You can read all about those wonderful years in Julia’s final book, the autobiographical My Life in France, published posthumously in 2006 and written with Paul Child’s nephew, Alex Prud’homme. The book recounts Julia’s  life with Paul in post-World War II France.

The film, Julie & Julia, directed by Nora Ephron, was adapted from Julia’s memoir My Life in France and from Julie Powell’s memoir, Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously, the film was released in the summer of 2009.

If you would like to learn more about possibly taking the week long cooking classes at La Pitchoune, you can visit Kathie Alex’s website, Cooking with Friends in France, and download the brochure to get all the details. Above is a pretty little watercolor picture I found of the La Peetch, on the site… great memories, good times!

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I learned of a new, new to me anyhow, cut of beef from a most unsuspecting place; One King’s Lane, an online deep discount shopping site! I am somewhat addicted to the site and need to take a break from checking out what they are offering each day. Although I do have quite a bit of my Christmas shopping done! The one day I will not give up checking on is Sunday. On Sundays, they offer food and or kitchen products. About a month ago their featured items were lobsters (already posted about that!) and Estancia free-range, grass-fed beef. Honestly, I don’t know if the beef we purchased from there was so wonderfully delicious because of the source or if it was the beef cut, bavette steak; but wonderful it was!

If you enjoy flank and skirt steaks,  you will adore bavette steak! Also known as flap steak, bavette has much of the characteristic of flank or skirt steak. Although fibrous and chewy, all three cuts are packed with flavor.

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I seriously need your help! I created the most dazzling dish the other night but I can’t figure out what to name it. I dreamt about it that night, prayed about it the next morning, and have been racking my brain, but everything I come up with is lame and doesn’t do this divine tuna justice. So, I turn to you, my smart, cleaver, and innovative followers for help and support. If I use our suggestion, a cookbook shall be sent or delivered to you, with my undying gratitude. As Dave said, “This should be on a high-end restaurant menu!” Keep that in mind whilst conjuring up your nom de guerre. Wow, look at how my vocab has increased, just since yesterday! Incredible how using a thesaurus can change your life.

OK, enough of that, on to the tuna. I planned to sear the tuna and serve it with sugar snap peas. I was also thinking of adding cannellini beans and shelled edamame, but when I actually went to make it, I had neither. Dang it, now what? Marissa and I had been out running errands all day and the last thing I wanted to do was get back in the hot car. As usual, that meant it was time to improvise. Sometimes that turns out so so, other times the results are truly awful, but this time – pure genius! I do believe it was the red kidney beans that really made the dish pop. I understand that they appear to be a strange addition, but somehow it worked.

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Asparagus is one of my family’s favorite vegetables. I generally make Parmesan Roasted Asparagus, but it’s been too hot and humid this past week to even think of turning on the oven, so we’re back to basics. Not only with the recipe but also with the technique. What technique? Peeling the stalks, that’s what!

At the market, choose asparagus with tightly closed tips. The stalks should be bright green and firm. If you aren’t cooking the asparagus that day; stand the bundled stalks in a tall glass or vase with about an inch of water, as you would fresh flowers, and refrigerate.

Asparagus comes in all different thicknesses, from pencil-thin to nearly an inch in diameter. The bottom woody inch or two of any asparagus should be discarded. Whether or not you peel the stalks depends upon their thickness. If you were to peel the pencil-thin size, you would have nothing left. I generally peel if the stalks are 1/2-inch in diameter or thicker.

Begin by snapping off the bottom end of each asparagus stalk. It will naturally break at the spot where it is tender. Cutting the ends off with a knife makes it impossible to estimate just how much to take off since tenderness varies from one stalk to the next.

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A happy coincidence, meant to be, just by chance, lucky, a fluke, a quirk, or a twist of fate… whatever you call it, I like it! And I love that word, happenstance, awesome word! What, by chance, was the fateful occasion for me?

I had about 1/2 head each of green and orange cauliflower from the Colorful Cauliflower Purées of 5 days ago and was trying to decide what to do with it. Of course, I could just make a vegetable side dish or purée and freeze it for later use, but that felt mundane. I was leaning toward cauliflower soup, but it’s so dang hot outside. Instead of pondering it any longer I decided to waste time on Facebook and, as luck would have it, there staring me in the eye was a recipe for a frittata using cauliflower, delivered directly to my home page from my Facebook friend, Food & Wine! Problem solved, and proof that perusing Facebook isn’t always a waste of time.

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Who are your culinary heroes? I have several; Julia Child, of course, and Jacques Pépin to name only two. Then there is my friend and mentor, Barbara Fenzl.

Another is Alice Waters, the owner of the world-renowned Berkeley, California restaurant, Chez Panisse. Ms. Waters opened Chez Panisse in 1971 when she was only 27 years old. Since that time it has become one of the most awarded restaurants in the world and she has been cited as the most influential culinary person in the past 50 years and is considered the mother of American food. Add to that the fact that Ms. Waters has been a leading proponent of the local and the organic food movements for more than 40 years, long before you could find organic produce in just about every grocery store. Before I go on, please know that the picture above of Alice Waters is not how she typically dresses, she is innovative, but not necessarily eccentric! The photo is her Halloween costume at a 2008 benefit at which she was honored for her amazing works.

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Another day, another post without a recipe. Sorry, but it’s the holiday weekend, right?  More news to share though. I found out too late to pick up a copy, but in the August 2010 issue of AZ-Lifestyle magazine, LPG was featured. Don’t get me wrong, I knew we’d be featured, the reporter was here in June interviewing and taking pictures. I just did not know it had come and gone from newsstands.  Oh well, here’s what the LPG portion looked like. And following in yesterday’s footsteps, here is a link to the previously posted Coconut Mango Cupcakes seen in the photo below! As an added bonus; it’s a great recipe to revisit if you need a refresher course on how to cut open a mango.

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I admit, that title is a little misleading, but it is catchy! If you read yesterday’s post, you already know what I am thinking though. One day you cook a large piece of meat and then use that meat all week to make quick-shortcut meals on busy weeknights. Today I shall give you the recipe for perfect roast chicken. You’ll actually roast 2 chickens and from there you’ll have several options.

The first choice is to cut off 4 pieces of the roasted chicken (preferably 1/2 breast, 1 thigh, and 2 legs) and use those for the first dinner of the week, along with sides of your choice. Maybe mashed potatoes and green beans would be nice. The meat from remaining 1 1/2 chickens will then be shredded, refrigerated, and used for meals the rest of the week.

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After putting up the cocktail recipe on Sunday, then posting it on the LPG facebook fan page, I found that my “followers” want and need more cocktail recipes. I am here to serve!

We have a built-in 50 bottle wine refrigerator in the kitchen. It is generally stocked about half full with everyday, drinkable, and reasonably priced bottles. My favorite summer wine is rosé. I find it to be the perfect “cool me down” hot-weather choice. For some unknown reason, my dad figures that if I like rosé, I must love Riesling and Gewürztraminer. I despise both! In fact, I find them so cloyingly sweet that I can not bring myself to serve them to others either. So what to do with the three bottles I have? Yup, that’s right, it took me three weeks to tell my dad, that I do not like these wines – and yes, it hurt his feelings. A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do to stop receiving bad “gifts”! What I’ve decided to do is make lemonade out of lemons, or in this case, sour up overly sweet wine with a bit of acid.

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