“Courge St Jean” Squash Torta
We finally harvested some of the beautiful heirloom squash we planted in our vegetable garden from les olivades. The “courge de la St. Jean” is a local variety that Daniel Vuillon helped us discover, and was traditionally used to make the provencal soup “au pistou.” Joshua worked with it to create a rustic quiche “torta”...
Fear not the artichoke!
A lot of our readers tell us they LOVE artichokes, but so many are afraid to prepare them. This spiky and prickly vegetable is eaten in my family in a dip, and comes from a can. Rather than risk another cookoff (as we did with pumpkin pie) Joshua and I concentrated on fresh artichokes. We...
Cucumber Apricot Radish Salad
About the only thing we have been finding in our vegetable garden has been some cucumbers. Due to a rainy and cloudy spring, all produce is about a month late here in the Var. So while we await our tomato extravaganza, we thought we would kick things off with a cucumber based salad. We...
Roasted Romanesco with Capers and Pancetta
Serving Size: 6 Ingredients: 1 pound romanesco, trimmed and cleaned 1/2 cup capers, chopped 1 cup pancetta, diced and cooked 1-2 tablespoon fresh rosemary, minced Olive oil Sea salt Black pepper Directions: Pre-heat oven to 400F degrees. Cut the romanesco into uniform, bite size pieces so they cook at the same rate. In a large...
Eggplant Tomato Gratin
As summer ends and fall is on the horizon, this a great recipe that bridges the gap between the two. We put this one together with all the last harvests from our vegetable garden. Even friends who in principle hate casserole/gratin dishes were surprised at how tasty this one was. We used up the last...
Ratatouille Revisited
Ratatouille is perhaps my least favorite French dish. Overcooked vegetables are really not my thing. I know they are supposedly “carmelized”, but I still don’t like it. Ironic as it is, our garden produces all of the ingredients for Ratatouille, and Joshua was determined to convert me into a Ratatouille lover. He promised to make the Ratatouille...
Herbed Eggplant Stuffed Tomatoes
Since our arrival in the south and with the (overly) productive tomato garden, every French person near and far has requested that I make tomate-farcis. It seems that anything farci (stuffed) is treasured as much here as grandma’s apple pie is in the states. So, I made up my own concoction for this filling recipe using as many...
Zucchini Slaw
Who doesn’t love a good coleslaw? We were making pulled pork tacos the other night and decided that such a unique taco needed a unique slaw. Since we have zucchini coming out of our ears from the Riviera Kitchen garden, we thought it would be fun to make a zucchini slaw. The flavors from the zucchini...