Adventures in cooking

Happy New Year (almost)!

Yesterday I received cooking lessons from Vivi, who is aghast at my skills in the kitchen. We made a souffle, but I think the more accurate discription of the activity was that she told me what to do and I attempted to do it. Unfortunatley, I still managed to mess it up. Vivi had commenced stirring clockwise and I had continued stirring counter-clockwise. She was very stern when she said that I must stir in the same direction throughout the recipe because it's all the little things that count.

Ironically, while I was looking over the recipe (one of the few times Vivi has used one) it said noisette de beurre (peanut of butter). When I asked her what that meant, she said that it called for a peanut-sized pat of butter and that if it said noix de beurre, one would add a "walnut" of butter. More measurements that are a little sketchy are a soup spoon, coffee spoon, half a yogurt jar, a fist full, etc. For being so persnicketty about stirring direction, the French are a little lax on the quantity of ingredients. I'm catching on though.

Bisous a tous!