After my little trip to Portland, I came back very inspired, with lots of recipe ideas. I think I fell in love with the city, its beautiful trails and restaurant scene, not to mention the gorgeous neighborhoods with magnificent trees and greenery. Portland truly has great quality produce and what a wonderful city if you care for great organic and fresh food and the outdoors. It’s heaven. At least, I hope heaven will be like that.

After a delightful lunch at Tasty n Alder, downtown Portland, where I ordered a salade niçoise and smoked trout board, it gave me the idea to play around with the salad, its content and texture.

The traditional salade niçoise (from the city of Nice in France) has similar ingredients, except for the bitter greens which I added here. I grilled some radicchio and endive, and made my egg “à la coque” as we say (in the shell) instead of hard boiled egg. I did not add red peppers because I used a vinegar with infused red peppers. The potatoes are broiled in the oven and the salad is a mix of shredded endives and radicchio with anchovies and capers. This salad can be served lukewarm, or cold. I like it lukewarm when I am not in the mood for a salad.

You need top ingredients to truly appreciate this salad. Get the best tomatoes, green beans and olive oil.

There are different steps in this recipe, but well worth it. If you are in hurry, I would not recommend this, but if you have some time ahead and in the mood for a wholesome and delicious meal, try it out.

Ingredients for 2

• 100 g (or two handful) thin green beans
• 4 small red potatoes, cut in halves
• 3 small endives, cut lengthwise
• 1 head of radicchio, cut in small quarters
• 8 small farm tomatoes
• 1/2 red tuna steak
• 1 tsp red and black sesame seeds
• 4 anchovies, chopped
• 1 tsp capers, chopped
• 1 tbs olive oil

For the vinaigrette

•  1 tbs kalamata olives, chopped
• 3 tbs olive oil (raw and unrefined)
• 1 tbs red pepper vinegar (or any other mild vinegar)
• 1 garlic clove, crushed
• 1 tsp chives, chopped
• salt and pepper

Preparation

Cook green beans in a pot of salted boiling water.

Season potatoes with olive oil, salt and pepper and broil in the oven until golden brown on both sides.

Heat up a skillet and grill radicchio and endive on both sides. Keep warm.

In small pan, place eggs and count three minutes after the water started boiling. Remove from stove and cut the top of the egg.

Coat tuna with white and black sesame seeds. Heat up a grill pan or skillet and grill on both sides, making sure not to over cook it. The middle needs to remain a little pink (or up to your tastes). Adjust with salt and pepper. Cut in 5mm slices.

In a mixing container, combine shredded endive and radicchio and add anchovies, capers, olive oil, salt and pepper. Toss well.

In a large plate, place one egg in the center of the plate. Arrange some shredded salad around. Place nicely all other ingredients around the plate. Drizzle with vinaigrette.

For the vinaigrette

Combine all ingredients together.

I made these oeufs cocotte while I was back in France last June, the days were long, day light lasted until 10:30 pm. I love the month of June, it’s the longest and the most exciting of all the months where people have not left on vacation yet, unlike July or August when most large Northern cities are empty, everyone goes dans le midi! and we celebrate summer with Music Festival, music bands play all over the country on June 21, the streets are filled with happiness and excitement. June is always so vibrant and colorful with such a special ambiance.

June is over now, and August is around the corner…so it’s about time for another oeuf cocotte!

When I feel like eating eggs, most of the time they come in this cocotte form. You break the yolk and you dig further down the little cocotte to find more exciting bites. In France we call those containers cocotte, in this case, it’s a mini cocotte.

I used morbier cheese, made with raw milk and has a line of black ashes in the center of the cheese, it has a sweet taste and somehow a creamy texture. Its fabrication has been traced back to 1795 where documents found describe a round cheese from 8 kilos to 10 kilos and called “Petit Morbier“. The great news is that you can find Morbier in the US!

The combination of the bitterness of endives and sweetness of Morbier complement each other to perfection. I also used crème allégée, which is a “light” heavy cream with 5% fat. I haven’t found anything similar in the US, so just use heavy cream or regular crème fraîche.

Not only oeufs cocotte are delicious but they’re fun to eat, so just play with ingredients and have fun! But do not overcook the yolks or they’ll be ruined.

Ingredients for 4 cocottes

• 2 shallots, chopped
• 3 small endives, finely sliced crosswise
• 4 tbs crème fraîche, or heavy cream
• 1 tbs olive oil or butter
• 150 g morbier cheese sliced
• 4 eggs
• salt and pepper

Preparation

Heat olive oil in a pan and brown shallots. Add endives, salt and pepper and cover with a lid. Cook at medium heat until the endives are soft.  Divide the endives in mini cocottes or ramequins. Add 1 tbs crème fraîche on each ramequin and top with a few pieces of morbier cheese. Break the egg, adjust with salt and pepper and add the rest of the cheese.

Cook in a pre-heated oven at 370F for about 7 minutes. The egg whites need the be slightly runny when you remove the eggs from the oven, they will keep cooking when outside of the oven. Serve immediately.

I have wanted one of those rings where you make salad towers for so long and could not find any…after digging Sur La Table, I finally found one completely random since it was hiding in the spatula and spoon section. I was as excited as if I found some gold nugget! I love that store, I can spend hours just looking at every little item. They do have a lot of gadgets but in that respect I am a kitchen utensil geek. Not that I have a lot, because I don’t have any more room in my kitchen and when you have no more space available, the rule should be “you buy something new, you throw away something old” but I cannot throw anything away, I always feel I would need it at some point, I get so attached to my kitchen tools that the kitchen is filled with everything new, old, useless, and useful, and even broken.

A friend of mine came for dinner and she brought me a couple of beautiful pomegranates, she calls them jewels…and they do look like jewels, like little rubys. So I had to use them. Besides, we went out for dinner a couple of weeks ago in a nice Italian restaurant, and we got so disappointed by their crab salad (the crab was canned, and I hate canned crab), it was sitting on top of some sad romaines leaves and sprinkled with cheese! Cheese and crab don’t go with my tastes. Some Italian restaurants should stop trying to please Americans and offer them authentic cuisine instead. I am sure Americans would love it. I think they’re the most adaptable people when food is concerned because they’re so exposed to different cuisines. Honestly that so-called “crab salad” was basically a Cesar salad with canned crab (and believe me Cesar did not eat that salad).

Actually I noticed that many restaurants do use canned crab! what a shame! (and not cheep joints, nice restaurants that I will not bad mouth but it bugs me). I would charge a little more for the salad, but would use fresh crab! Some restaurants are cutting corners where they should absolutely not do it. So anyway, I promised my friend I would make her a nice crab salad with lots of fresh ingredients that would make her forget about the precarious one we had.

I love grapefruit so much with crab, smoked salmon and shrimps in salad, that this tower has somehow become my signature crab salad. It’s fruity, flavorful and so refreshing. You can also use shrimps and smoke salmon as I mentioned if you cannot find crab. It has a different twist but it’s as good. Also pomegranate vinegar is a must, it really enhances the salad beautifully.

Ingredients for 4

• 1.5 lb king crab legs
• 1 red grapefruit, quarters peeled
• 1 pomegranate
• 1 avocado, sliced
• 1 bunch watercress
• 1 endive, chopped crosswise

For the vinaigrette

• 3 tbs olive oil
• 1 tsp pomegranate vinegar
• 1 tsp grapefruit juice
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 1 tbs chives, chopped
• cayenne pepper
• salt and pepper

Preparation

For the vinaigrette, combine all ingredients together and mix well.

First remove crab meat from its shells. Remove excess water and set aside.

Wash endive and watercress. Cut endives and remove stems from watercress, keeping the leaves.

Cut pomegranate lengthwise and remove seeds.

Using ring, place some crab at the bottom of the plate, add a layer of avocado, drizzle with vinaigrette. Add 2 quarters of grapefruit, some pomegranate seeds, endives and watercress and add a little vinaigrette. Press firmly so that tower will stand still. Start again with a second layer of the same ingredients.

Remove ring and decorate with some pomegranate seeds and vinaigrette around the tower.

Endive also called chicon in Belgium and Northern France is often used in French cooking and is such a creative vegetable. You can use it as a salad, soup, gratin, tarte, braised, and so many other ways. It is also high in magnesium, phosphorus, calcium so quite a nutritious little plant. Endive was found in the 19th century in Belgium by Mr. Bresiers who was responsible for the botanical gardens in Brussels, that’s why they’re called Belgium endives in the US. Supposedly to pay less taxes, Mr. Bresiers hid chicorée roots underground in his cellar and a few weeks later when he came to pick them up, he noticed beautiful white leaves coming out of the ground, those leaves are since then called endives.

The particularity of endive is its bitterness, and that’s what I love about it.

We have a traditional endive dish called endives au jambon, that every household in France knows how to prepare. It’s quite a simple dish but so delicious. It’s basically cooked endives and rolled inside a slice of ham, in a béchamel sauce and topped with gruyère, then cooked in the oven until the cheese melts and turns golden brown. I don’t know if Julia Childs brought that back to the US, but it’s definitely a traditional French dish, that is worth testing.

The bitterness of endives goes perfectly well with the sweetness of the shrimps, overall endives are a great combination for fish or white meat and I use them quite often in my dishes. Also a many dishes combine orange and endive, because  of the flavor match.

Ingredients for 4

For the soup

• 5 endives, cut crosswise
• 4 endives, shredded or cut lengthwise
• 1 yellow onion sliced
• 1 medium size potato, cubed
• 2 tbs crème fraîche or heavy cream
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1 tbs olive oil
• vegetable bouillon

For the shrimps

• 1 lbs of medium size shrimps or about 20
• 1 cup orange juice
• 1 garlic clove, crushed
• 1 tsp soy sauce

Preparation

Marinate shrimps in garlic and soy sauce for about 1 hour.

In a large pot, heat olive oil, add onions and potatoes and cook for about 5-10 minutes. Add cut endives and cook for another 5 minutes, stirring. Add broth (enough quantity to cover the vegetables), salt and pepper and cook until the vegetables are cooked, about 30 minutes. Blend in a mixer and add cream. Mix well and place at low heat to keep it warm.

In a small pan, add 1 tsp olive oil, saute shredded endives until soft and browned then add sugar and caramelize them. Remove from heat and set aside. In the same pan, saute shrimps, then add orange juice and let it reduce.

Serve soup in bowls, place shredded endives in the middle and 5 shrimps on top. Sprinkle with parsley.