For a muffin sheet of 12

4 ripe bananas

200 g (about 1/2 lbs) blueberries, frozen or fresh.

1 stick butter

1 1/2 cup flour

1- 1 1/2 cup milk (start with the smaller amount)

3/4 cup sugar (I always use raw cane)

2 tsp baking powder

a pinch of salt

Vanilla (how much all depends on which kind you use, I have vanilla sugar and I use about 2 tsp, for vanilla bean you need less and for bourbon vanilla extract you’ll probably need more).

Mix all the dry stuff, crumble in the butter (without over working the flour), add in the roughly chopped up bananas and blueberries, mix quickly, add milk. The mixture is supposed to be gooey, a little thicker than American pancake batter.

Divide the mixture evenly in the 12 individual holes or use paper muffin baking-tins, bake in the middle of the oven at 200°C until golden (about 15-20 minutes)

For 2 portions

1 zucchini, sliced up

a topped up tbsp butter

2 tbsp dried onion/onion powder (or 1 yellow onion, finely chopped)

1 tbsp garlic powder (or 2 cloves of garlic)

1 veggie bouillon cube (or about a pint of ready-made stock)

1 cup (more or less depending on your fat threshold) heavy cream

Melt the butter while adding the onion and the garlic, don’t let it brown, add the zucchini and sauté without browning it, add stock or water and cube. Let boil until water has reduced and the zucchini is all mushy (onion too if you use fresh), add the heavy cream, let it come to  a boil, then take off stove, either purée it in a blender or eat chunky.

Serve with bread if you like, if you want meat some smoked meat would be lovely, or add chopped chicken while sautéeing in the beginning and let it be a chunky chicken zucchini soup.

Roux is the classic where you let some flour sizzle in butter, for a light sauce such as  sauce Bechamel (white milk sauce), you have to make sure the flour won’t brown, while if you’re making a sauce Espagnole, carefully browning the flour in the butter is needed to give a certain flavor to the sauce.

A less fatty (why you’d ever wanna do that is beyond me ) way is using wheat flour, arrowroot, corn or potato starch, mixing it with a cold fluid and adding it in the end. The different flours have different properties and it depends on what you want it to do. Remember that adding wheat flour afterwards means that the sauce needs to be able to cook for 3 more minutes to remove any taste of the flour. Using corn starch is pretty common, it’s easy, gluten free, cheap and binds together wonderfully. However, corn starch should not be frozen (unless it’s a modified version made for freezing), it will get flaky and makes for a weird texture. Potato flour is usually for fruity desserts as it gives a little glue:y feel. Arrowroot is my personal favorite, but it’s less common and a little more expensive, it is however more stable.

The quickie would be beurre manié, which is a paste made of equal parts butter and flour, mix them together and slowly crumble the mixture into the boiling sauce while stirring. It makes for much less risks of flour lumps in the sauce as the flour is already mixed in with fat, it also makes for a little less boiling.

The shaky one is an egg yolk mixed in a little bit of heavy cream. This is the liaison you’ll only use if the sauce is done boiling, if your sauce accidentally comes up past 80°C after the liaison has been added, you risk having a very egg yolky scrambled sauce.

The luxurious one is the crème double, where you simply take double the amount of heavy cream to what you need and let it boil down to half while whatever you want to flavor it with is boiling along (or added in the end, depending on what it is). It makes for an incredibly creamy and rich sauce, top it off with a little bit of butter, or just pour heavy cream around your patties (Like the biff à la Lindström) and let it boil down, maybe add some concentrated stock and it’s done.

600 g ground meat

200 g pickled red beets (pickled in white vinegar, sugar and a tiny bit of salt), can be substituted for fresh, boiled red beets.

100 g capers

1 egg

1 onion, chopped up finely and sautéed in butter.

50 g heavy cream

s&p

Butter for frying.

Potatoes and vegetables for serving.

Mix the meat together with the egg, onion, capers, red beets, heavy cream salt and pepper. Wash your hands with warm water and form the batter into patties, not too thin. Fry the patties in a skillet until done through, either pour cream over and let boil down for a creamed sauce, or deglace pan with some stock and a little bit of flour for a simple gravy. Serve with some kind of potatoes and vegetables.

olive oil

sea salt

fresh ground pepper

soft butter

fresh, chopped parsley

grated Parmiggiano Reggiano

garlic

chili (fresh or dried flakes)

Mix butter, parsley, garlic, cheese and chili to taste, let cool.

Sprinkle the aubergine slices with salt and pepper, put on a baking tray, drizzle olive oil over. Roast in the middle of the oven at 200°C until golden in color.

Either let the butter melt on the aubergine when it gets out of the oven, or spread it on top of the roasted aubergine and let it bake quickly in the oven.

Serve as snacks or as a side dish with meat, poultry or fish.

(serves 4 or more, depending on usage)

• 1-3 courgettes/zucchinis (all depending on size, there should be about 4 cups of chopped courgette) in quite big, half moon shaped pieces.
• 1 big yellow onion, in thin boats
• 3-4 cloves of garlic (rather a bit too much than too little, it will cook and be sweet and delightful)
• 1 bell pepper of each color (if you have to skip one, skip the green one)
• 1 aubergine (slice it in rather thin slices, mix with plenty of salt, put to press under something heavy to get rid of the excess water)
• 2 small cans tomatoes (these can be either fresh or canned, if you use canned, you use a bit less, if you use fresh you have to remove the peel and calculate the excess water into the equation, my advice for the lazy, use canned)

Free use of following:

• Bay leaf
• Thyme
• Rosemary
• Oregano
• Sage
• Pepper
• Sugar or honey (I rarely use this)
• Olive oil (be generous)
• Vegetable bouillon (cubes, home made, whichever you like)

Do the aubergine at first. It’s a good idea to do them an hour or so in advance, since the more time they have, the less excess water they contain.

Start with chopping everything, then pour about a 1/4 cup of olive oil in a quite big pan (rather have too much space than too little). Add the garlic and the onions and let them sauté without getting brown, just golden. Add the aubergines (which have had most of the excess water squeezed out of them) and let them get golden. Add the bell peppers and finally the courgettes. Let it all sauté, still try to avoid getting them more than golden.

Add the herbs.

Pour tomatoes over it all, stir.

Cook until the veggies are soft, but not too squishy. Taste often. Try not to add water – the taste is better if it’s a bit more concentrated. Add bouillon cubes if it needs more salt rather than actually using salt (as it gives you more flavor and a rounder taste). Remember that the aubergines will give off a lot of salt so be careful.

A pinch of sugar or honey (or other sweetener that you might prefer) might be needed as the tomatoes can be quite sour, add it little by little and try, but it may not be needed.

Make sure to stir often as tomatoes easily stick to the pan.

Serve as it is with some bread (preferably French sourdough) and maybe some cheese (may I suggest goat cheese?). It’s also good to eat with grilled meat as a side dish.

4 portions

100 g dark chocolate

2 eggs

100 g butter, plus a little extra for the ramequins

4-5 tbsp sugar

50 g cocoa powder (if you want it a little less sweet, I prefer it that way)

1 tbsp vanilla sugar (only if you use cocoa)

Melt butter and add chocolate, mix eggs and sugar (and vanilla and cocoa if you add those) until a little foamy. Pour chocolate mix into eggs and just whisk up quickly, pour into 4 buttered ramequins, bake off for 10-15 minutes in 175° C.

The middle is supposed to be gooey and possibly a little creamy, if you want them extra chocolatey, add some crushed dark chocolate to it which will melt and create a divine, lava-like goo.

Eat with berries, whipped cream or just plain, but they taste best when just baked.

PS: everything is for 4 portions unless stated otherwise!