My Brittany

Kirsten’s life “en Bretagne”

  • coffe walnut cake

    Walnut Cake with Coffee Flavor

    As fall approaches heavily in Brittany, here is a new recipe for a cake ideal to eat on chilly Sunday afternoons.

  • Plum Cake with Cinnamon

    Plum Cake with Cinnamon Flavor

    As an interested reader of this blog you may already have found out that I prefer cooking delicious yet relatively quick and easy recipes. Therefore, I would like to share my recipe for plum cake today. It does not for for plums only but for many other fruit. So, you could easily turn it into a cherry cake for example.

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    Stewed Lamb Leg

    Here for once is a meat dish: stewed lamb with vegetables. Best is to take meat from the leg or joint. These are not the most expensive parts and by the relatively long stewing they become nice and tender yet stay juicy! Also, this dish is budget friendly and if you have a kitchen garden with herbs and some vegetables it becomes even more affordable. Let’s get down to the preparation though. For the taste I wanted to focus on[...]

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    Green Pesto (Genovese)

    Pasta with green pesto (Genovese) is both a speedy but healthy dish To make the pesto you best you a food processor. You could also do it by hand but that takes longer  and the result is less even. Put your basil into the food processor, you can use everything not only the leaves. Add your Parmesan cheese as well as the nuts. The amount can vary depending on how strong you want the cheese and nut taste. I’d say[...]

  • prawn curry coriander tomato salad

    Creamy Prawn Curry & Tomato Coriander Salad

    Another very easy to cook dish. This creamy prawn curry and tomato coriander salad is a perfect dish for the summer time as it is light, fresh and very tasty.

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    Tandoori Chicken

    Tandoori chicken is really one of THE classics when people think of Indian cuisine and it’s also one of my favourite chicken dishes. The beauty of this recipe is of course the marinade  but it’s relatively easy to prepare not so so time consuming either.

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    Pasta con Ragù (Bolognese)

    Another one on my all time classic list: Pasta Bolognese or in this case a meat sauce as it is not 100% after the original recipe. Great dish for busy people as it is quick to prepare and can slowly cook for hours on a low flame. This way you can still work in the evenings and will have a great dish ready when you finish your work.

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    Sardines Mediterranean Style

    Simple recipe I cook from time to time when I don’t have much time. It is really easy to cook and tastes just great, a classic Italian / Mediterranean Style dish, perfect for a summer evening. You can serve it as main dish but also as part of a bigger menu. Goes great with rice, couscous or a salad.

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    My new baby

    If you are into cooking, like I am, you know that you need a darn good knife. Today I bought me a new one. A big one If you take a closer look at the blade, you see a nice pattern. This is Damascene Steel. Love it! The knob is made of wood. Feels really nice and heavy in hand. Really looking forward to use it this evening. Have a bison and a kangaroo steak in the fridge

  • Out of the Kitchen August to December 09

    A new slideshow of dishes I cooked lately. Enjoy

Château de Montmuran

Posted by Kirsten On May - 1 - 2009 0 Comment

This is “my” château , well, kind of. I see it every day on my way home.

Baker(wo)man is baking bread

Posted by Kirsten On April - 20 - 2009 3 Comments

When I have enough time I like to bake my own bread. I takes about 3 1/2 hours but don’t worry, the real work in it is only about 15 minutes . For my basic bread I use: 400 g flour type 405 100 g fine semolina 1 package dry yeast 15 g sugar 15 g salt 330 ml tepid water You can simply double the ingredients if you would like to have more dough or use half of it[...]

Gorgeous sunset

Posted by Kirsten On April - 16 - 2009 0 Comment

This was such a beautiful sunset. I filmed it last year and found it again on my harddisk today. So I quickly opened a new YouTube account and will upload more videos, soon. I hope, you like it .

Incence Sticks from Japan

Posted by Kirsten On April - 15 - 2009 1 Comment

Today my clients had a little present for me. I loooove presents but who doesn’t? Last week they went to Japan to see the famous cherry blossom. One day, I have to do this, too. What a great gift. I really love natural room perfums. By the way, I have to write a post about Papier d’Armenie, too. Anyway, these incence sticks are sooo great. They have “the clean, cool scent of a mountain stream”.

Muffin Galore

Posted by Kirsten On April - 13 - 2009 1 Comment

Last week we decided to make some Muffins. Never made them before. I think we opened Pandora’s Biscuit Box now. They are sooo yummy! First we started with some Vanilla Muffins with Chocolate Chips. As you can see they decided to stay in their forms. No Muffin Heads! Well, next time: more backing powder . Ah, better. But they are not so soft and juicy as they should be. Not bad, but could be better. So: Google me an all[...]

Asian Weekend

Posted by Kirsten On April - 7 - 2009 0 Comment

Ok, family is back to Germany. Although it is always nice to have family around one thing is fact: you get nothing done. Therefore let me start with a review of this weekend. First we headed down to Rennes to visit IKEA. Of course we bought something. Will post about it because I think it is really handy. After that we went to our favourite Asia Shop and bought some fresh noodles, coriander, mini pak choi, soy bean sprouts and[...]

Scallops with Lentils and Prosciutto

Posted by Kirsten On March - 27 - 2009 0 Comment

This is one of my favourite recipes especially since I have been living in Brittany which is famous for its seafood like oysters – huitres, lobsters – homards and scallops – coquilles Saint-Jacques. During the scallop season in winter to early spring I try to cook this dish at least once a month because nothing beats fresh scallops. The recipe itself comes from Jamie Oliver but I adapted it a bit over the years  . I use red lentils because[...]

La Livresse in Saint Servan

Posted by Kirsten On March - 22 - 2009 0 Comment

La Livresse is a little Café or Salon de Thé located in the Rue Georges Clemenceau, the main street of Saint Servan. It is an old Boucherie and when you enter it the first time you feel like leaving this century behind you with the doorstep, arriving in an early 1900 french Café. I can not say something about the quality of the dishes the owner and chef is serving for lunch but if they are only half as good[...]

Song of the Week: Bénabar – À la Campagne

Posted by Kirsten On March - 21 - 2009 0 Comment

This is a new category on this blog. I will post some french music here because there are still some really good songwriters in France. And he is one of them. His name is Bénabar and the song À la Campagne is from his new album Infréquentable. Lyrics:

Ouch! The first day in the garden after the winter is really the hardest. Did not now that the human body has so many muscles. The weather here in Brittany is now stable for almost a week and everybody around me already started working in their gardens weeks ago. So we decided to get our lazy bones out in the sunshine and started with our kitchengarden v2.0 or little Holland, as we call it now . This means compared to[...]

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