The Hundred Foot Journey + Recipes #100FootJourney #FoodieFriday

The Hundred Foot Journey open August 8th. It's a FOOD movie. I love a food movie. It also stars Helen Mirren. I love Helen Mirren. So we're off to a really good start!

The studio describes the film as the story of Hassan Kadam (Manish Dayal) a culinary ingénue with the gastronomic equivalent of perfect pitch. Displaced from their native India, the Kadam family, led by Papa (Om Puri), settles in the quaint village of Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val in the south of France. Filled with charm, it is both picturesque and elegant – the ideal place to settle down and open an Indian restaurant, the Maison Mumbai. That is, until the chilly chef proprietress of Le Saule Pleureur, a Michelin starred, classical French restaurant run by Madame Mallory (Helen Mirren), gets wind of it. Her icy protests against the new Indian restaurant a hundred feet from her own, escalate to all out war between the two establishments – until Hassan’s passion for French haute cuisine and for Mme. Mallory’s enchanting sous chef, Marguerite (Charlotte Le Bon), combine with his mysteriously delicious talent to weave magic between their two cultures and imbue Saint-Antonin with the flavors of life that even Mme. Mallory cannot ignore. At first Mme. Mallory's culinary rival, she eventually recognizes Hassan's gift as a chef and takes him under her wing.

It looks and sounds like a fun ride. Until it opens next month the studio has been releasing great recipes on Fridays. You can see all the recipes on The Hundred Foot Journey facebook page. Here are 3 of them that I think look particularly yummy! I only have one suggestion in Scalloped Potatoe recipes I always substitute thyme for nutmeg.

Now, who do I know who might have a Madeline pan???

Left Over Corned Beef And Potato Soup

If you have left over corned beef and potatoes like I do from St Paddy's day, here is a good soup recipe to use them up. My kid had three bowls so you know it's good.

1 medium onion diced
2 stalkes celery diced
2 good sized garlic cloves
32 oz chicken stock
3 large potatoes
1/2 cp milk
however much corned beef you have leftover.
Salt Pepper and Thyme to taste

Sautee celery, onion, and garlic add stock and potatoes. cook until all is soft.
Optional: use immersion blender to puree all for smooth soup
add corned beef and milk simmer for an hour to allow flavors to blend.

I served it with warm bread and they all gobbled it up.

Enjoy!

Good Gravy Recipe

With the season on us it occurs to me that gravy is important. Looking around the interwebs I find gravy recipes that call for everything from ketchup to cream of mushroom soup??? Really people...

So here is my incredibly simple (if I can do it, it must be) fool proof gravy recipe.

Begin by putting one tablespoon of flour in a cup of milk. The best way to mix these together is by shaking it vigorously in a sealed container. I use a small mason jar for this. Then once you remove meat, be it a roast, turkey, meat ball from the pan stir the milk mixture with the pan drippings over a low flame. You can add a second cup of milk/flour mixture if you have that much drippings. Salt and pepper to taste. You're done, I told you, easy!

This yeilds perfect lump free gravy every time and really could not be easier. It's how both my grandmothers made gravy and they probably got it from their grandmothers, so more than 100 years of gravy making can't be wrong.

Hope this reaches you in time for your christmas dinner.

Pumpkin Soup Recipe for Thanksgiving

Pumpkin soup is one of my favorite Thanksgiving treats. One of my cousins started making it a few years ago and now I have to have it every Thanksgiving. Unfortunately this cousin isn't attending Thanksgiving this year so I decided to make it myself.

Of course I can never follow a recipe as written so here is my version of Pumpkin soup.

First you're going to need a big pot of chicken stock. I like to make my own stock.

Making stock:
Buy a whole chicken, cook it, eat it and then boil the bones with an onion, carrot, celery, salt, pepper and bay leaf. Let this simmer for as many hours as you can manage.

Now that you've got stock, Saute an onion and 3 cloves of garlic in a couple tablespoons of butter.

While you're doing this take a pumpkin, slice it in half, clean out the seeds and guck, place on a lightly oiled cookie sheet like two mountains and bake it at 400 for about an hour till the skin gets bubbly.

While that's baking, mix your sauteed onion and garlic into the stock. You can add salt, pepper and thyme at this point to taste and let it simmer.

Once your pumpkin is done and cooled scoop out the pumpkin meat and add it to the stock let that simmer and then take a hand mixer and blend it till it's almost smooth but still has a little texture. Now add a cup or so of cream and more salt, pepper, and thyme to taste.

Now optional: is to add Rooster sauce. I like a little spice to it don't go crazy though, that stuff's hot.

It was served to me with Asiago cheese, but you can use whatever you like. I used Manchego and it was really good.

Sorry about the vagaries of my recipe, but it's soup once you have stock just throw in all the stuff you like and blend, you can't really go wrong.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

Here's last years Celery stuffed with Cream Cheese recipe. That's another favorite of mine. It's got a secret ingredient....