After a month (or two or three) hiatus, it’s time to get cooking the books back up and running. Recently my friend who has possibly more cookbooks than me, had a big clear out and I inherited 10 new-to-me cookbooks which was very exciting! Dave was less than thrilled to see the arrival of even more cookbooks on already overloaded bookshelves but sod him I say!!
As usual, I put three books to the vote on Instagram and you did your thing – choosing Rachel Khoo’s My Little French Kitchen. It’s not a book I’d have bought to be honest as French food isn’t really my bag and although I enjoyed watching Rachel Khoo on TV, I found her recipes a bit fussy. That said, here we are and I’ve spent some time reading through the book and planning which recipes I want to cook. In true cooking the books style, I picked a recipe at random to try alongside my review of the book as a whole. The recipe I landed on is Rachel’s Rouleaux Niçois (cannelloni Niçoise-style).
Little French Kitchen at a glance
My Little French Kitchen is a pretty book! Bright colours and charming, country-style photography. Each chapter focuses on a different region – from Brittany to Alsace – and opens with a hand drawn illustration and a cursive font. The overall affect is really attractive and makes you want to dive into the book. It’s a fairly text heavy book too, with flowing descriptions of each area and introductions to each recipe. Personally I prefer this to a book which is literally a list of recipes. It adds personality and you certainly get a feel for Rachel and her love of France from the pages.
There are over 100 recipes in the book (it’s a thick one!) and they cover everything from cakes to slow cooked meat dishes and soups. Whilst everything sounds very French – and there are a lot of classics – there are some surprises too. Beef koftas with flat breads, Alsacian noodles which echo thai street food and even sticky ribs. On reading though, these are very much French dishes with regional influences. It’s this that I love about the book – it deep dives beyond brioche and mille feuille to bring some really unusual and interesting sounding dishes to the table.
The recipe: Rouleaux Niçois
So at first glance, this looks like an Italian dish and in the intro, Rachel says “You might begrudge the use of pasta in a Franco-centric cookbook but this is where France and Italy meet (Provence), and, despite their intrinsically stubborn nature, the French love a bit of pasta’.
The reason for cannelloni is that it captures the sunshine ripened olive, tomato and courgette flavours of the Provence region and I have to say, this recipe is tasty but… making it is hella-fiddly and the end result is not as attractive as the picture in the book. Ours was dog ugly. Would I make it again? Hmmm… useful for a courgette glut but honestly, probably not. That said, I’ve not been put off the book because there are lots of really great looking recipes, and it’s rare to find a book where every single recipe is a winner. East by Meera Sodha is a rare example!!
The whole point of my cooking the books series is that I pick a recipe at random and test it. I’ve been lucky so far in this series not to have too many duds but as I say, this Rouleaux Niçois from My Little French Kitchen wasn’t bad, just not… mind-blowing. I’d say a solid 7/10 but too faffy for a midweek meal.
Ingredients, Serves 4 (see original here)
Cherry tomato sauce
I skipped this step and used a tin of tomatoes
- 500g cherry tomatoes, halved
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- A pinch of salt
Cannelloni filling
- 2 courgettes
- 8 large sheets of lasagne (16cm x 22cm) – I used 6 small sheets.
- 200g grilled red peppers (from a jar), drained and roughly chopped
- 8 tsp black olive tapenade
- 200g cooked artichokes, roughly chopped – I used a tin.
- 200g crème fraîche mixed with freshly ground black pepper
- 1 small handful of fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves – I used a mix of basil and parsley!
- Finely grated zest & juice of 1⁄2 a lemon
Method:
- Preheat the oven to 180°c. Pop the tomatoes, oil and salt in a small saucepan. Cover with the lid and cook over a medium heat for 8 minutes or until the tomatoes have burst and become mushy. Meanwhile, top and tail the courgettes and, using a speed peeler, make long ribbons. Stop when you get to the spongy seed core, and discard.
- With the lasagne sheets laid portrait, spread the tapenade thinly over them. Lay a few of the courgette ribbons down the length of the sheets to just cover each sheet in a thin layer. Mix together the peppers and artichokes and spoon 3 tablespoons of the mixture down the centre of each of the sheets, then roll up tightly from the long side to make a roll, trapping the filling in the centre. Place in a baking dish. Repeat with the other sheets of lasagne.
- Pour the tomatoes over the lasagne rolls. Stir some pepper into the crème fraîche until smooth and dollop randomly over the top. Cook for about 30 minutes, until golden and bubbly. I found that this needed longer – closer to 40 to even start getting anything remotely golden.
- Chop the flat-leaf parsley finely with the lemon zest. Scatter over the cooked pasta and squeeze over the lemon juice just before serving.
- Serve with a green salad.
