One of the traditions in France is often to have an appetizer before having lunch or dinner. Sometimes, we just have a drink but usually, we often have a drink and some little things to nibble on. Since we try to pay attention to the food we are eating, my Mom and I began to bake our own crackers. We try to buy organic grains to eat and hand-made deli. Of course, we still happen to buy good, rich and fat industrial crackers, but we found out that they were a thousand times better homemade.

Excuse the double C in crackers :-)

Moreover, we often happen to eat them with some soup or we use them to top a salad. Homemade crackers can be flavoured with whatever you have in your fridge or growing in your garden. They have become one of our family's favorite snack as well.



I baked crackers with the chives and some radish tops of my garden and some blue cheese. You can pick any ingredients and adapt the proportions to your taste. As long as you respect the basic pie crust recipe and watch them while they're baking, you will never fail them.



Makes 40 little crackers

- 55 g butter
- 30 g corn starch
- 30 g corn flour
- 50 g gluten free oat flour
- 40 g blue cheese, diced
- Chives to your taste, finely chopped
- 40 g parmesan cheese
- A large handle of radish tops, finely chopped
- 2 Tbs chia seeds
- 6 Tbs water
- 3 g salt

1. Preheat your oven at 400°. Combine flours, salt, chives, parmesan cheese, blue cheese and chia seeds in a bowl.

2. In a separate bowl, melt the butter. Add it to the flour mixture and mix until you have crumbs.

3. Add water and stir until the dough is homogeneous. You can add more water if the dough is too crumbly.

4. Set the dough in the fridge for one hour. At this step, you can as well roll the dough and freeze it. You can keep it in the freezer for up to three months.

5. Roll the dough on a lightly floured surface until it is about 1/8 inch thick. Use a cookie cutter or a knife to cut crackers from the dough.

6. Lay some parchment paper on a baking tray and transfer the crackers to the baking tray. You can glaze them with some egg yolk or some milk.

7. Bake your crackers until lightly golden (12-15 minutes). Let them cool before eating them. You can store them in an airtight container for 3-5 days.

It was Bastille day in France on July 14th. I felt a bit patriotic :-)

Since tonight is the end of the football world cup (which I haven't been watching…) I thought about posting this dessert idea. For our gluten intolerant friends, this is the perfect recipe, and for everyone else, well, it is just a sweet and savoury recipe.

I used homemade ice cream for this recipe, so that the sugar levels would not be too high. However, some store-bought yogurt ice cream will be perfect for this dessert.



Simply, count 2 apricots and 2 scoops of ice cream per serving. I made this recipe for 4 people but feel free to adapt the proportions to your taste. You can add more sugar or put more apricots in your servings.

Begin heating 2 Tbs olive oil in a grill pan. Cut into half the apricots and grill them on both sides for about 2 minutes per side. Add some sliced almonds, half of a vanilla bean and 50 g brown sugar. Let it cook for 2 more minutes and add about 10 cL water and some rosemary. Let it cook until the sugar and water turn into a blond caramel.

Serve the apricots while they are still very hot, so that their temperature contrasts with the ice cream's one.

Now that I'm back in Southern France, I enjoy some hot sunny days. But it's not summer time yet. We still have a couple cold days in between those hot days. So when it's pouring rain, I love to cook some summer dish. I love to enjoy a dish and look up to the upcoming days.



Crumble is an all season essential. You can adapt it to any fruit with any flavour in the crumble dough. For this summer crumble, I used lemon zest in the dough and the early summer fruits which grow in Southern France such as apricot ans strawberries. Apples are an all season fruit so of course, I used some, as well as bananas which give a sweet taste.

And my best friend of the moment, the muscovado sugar, was of course part of this sweet desert that everyone in the family enjoyed.



Summer fruit crumble

Serves 4

- 4 apples
- 6 apricots
- Some red berries
- 2 bananas
- 3 large tablespoons of muscovado sugar
- 60 g butter, cold and cut into small pieces
- 2 tablespoon potato starch
- 30 g Lupin flour
- 50 g Millet flour
- 50 g Oat flour
- 60 g cane sugar
- The zest and juice of a lemon
- 1/4 teaspoon salt

Preheat your oven at 350°F (180°C)

Peel the apples and cut them in dices. Peel the bananas and cut them im slices. Wash and cut the apricots in quarter. Add the berries, lemon juice and the muscovado sugar. Toss the ingredients together in a bowl and let the fruits macerate.

In another bowl, mix the flours, starch and salt.

Grate the zest of the lemon and combine it to the cane sugar. Press this mixture between your fingers, so that the fragrance of the zest becomes stronger. Add the flours and mix the dried ingredients together.

Add the cold diced butter and work it into the flour until a crumb forms.

Transfer the fruits in a 10' pie plate or divide it in ramekins. Top with the crumble and bake until the fruits are bubbling and the crumble is golden brown.

Time has come for us to say good by to Spring. Now that I'm back in Southern France, I can celebrate the arrival of summer. Already, the sun is shining all day long and the first summer storm are coming. We celebrated my parents' wedding anniversary last week-end. I surprised them with a diner that I had cooked and a table that I had decorated for the occasion.



My sister and I stayed appart in my room, enjoying a few snacks that we had made together so that my parents could be with one another. They were both pleased to enjoy the meal and wished they had room to eat more of each dishes.

There were five dishes from the apetizer to the desert. I want to give you today the recipe of my apetizer, a carrot gazpacho with coppa chips and gluten free breadsticks. I chose a gazpacho because it's a fresh and light dish. I think a small cup of Gazpacho is perfect to begin a diner. The garlic flavour wakes your tastes buds and gets them ready for the other dishes.



Here is my recipe.

Serves 4:

- 4 carrots
- 4 tomatoes
- 1 small cucumber
- 1 large garlic clove
- 1large shallot
- 1large slice of gluten free stale bread
- Mixed herbs (I used rosemary, parsley, oregano, basil and sage)
- Salt and pepper to taste

Peel and cut the carrots in tiny pieces. Do as well with the shallot.

In a large saucepan, bring some water to a boil. Add in the carrots, shallots and mixed herbs, except the basil. When the carrots are tender, remove the saucepan from heat and drain the carrots and shallots.

Peel the tomatoes, the cucumber and the garlic clove. Cut them and put them in a blender. Add in the carrots, basil and shallots. Blend it all together. Add the stale bread, some salt and some pepper to your taste. Blend again and add some water if you want your gazpacho to be more liquid.

For the coppa chips, simply preheat your oven to 140°C (280°F). Lay a piece of parchment paper on a baking trail. Lay some coppa slices on the baking trail. Cover them with parchment paper and another baking trail. Put them in the oven for approximately 45 minutes. Then, let them cool on some kitchen roll.

I don't have celiac disease. I'm not gluten intolerant. But I like to cook gluten free as much as I can. Why? Because I love the new flavours gluten free cooking has brought to the world.

One of the food bloggers I follow and who inspires me a lot is aran Goyoaga from Cannelle vanille. She is celiac and has learned to cook gluten free. Thanks to her work and to the work of other celiac food stylist and photographers, the gluten free world has expanded and become more and more popular.

However, there is no magasine promoting the gluten free way of life and it feels like a shame. That is why Photographer Tara Donne and Food stylist Liza Jerno have created Wild Apple. They wanted gluten intolerant people to have a magasine which recipes they would all be able to cook.

The magazine looks very interesting with gorgeous pictures inside.

Nevertheless, some funds are missing for the magasine to be released. They started a kickstarter campaign which rules from May 7th to June 7th. Feel free to donate, even a dollar, so that the magazine can be printed and published. You can check out their video if you want to know more about the project.

One of the rewards of this campaign will be a food styling and photography workshop with Tara Donne and Liza Jernow.

I hope you can make a donation and help support the birth of this magazine. Not only will it be of great help for celiac people but it will also be a new way of promoting new flavours and discovering a new way of cooking and baking.