Need ideas for New Years Eve?

An idea for an appetizer, with scallops and passion fruits. The combination is great.

Serving 4 people, you need : 8 scallops, fresh ones, 8 passion fruits, butter and green salad as a side dish.

Open the passion fruits and take the pulp and the grains, mix them with a fork, with 2 tbsp of butter.

Heat your frying pan, spread a tbsp of olive oil and bake the scallops 1min on each side, until nicely brown, then add the butter with passion fruits and use a spoon to put it on the scallops for 2 min.

Serve these scallops with green salad with arugula and a balsamic vinaigrette.

This is a great recipe inspired by a great cooking class I attended recently at Guy Martin's cooking school in Paris.

The chouquettes of my son Paul

I love it when I'm the help of my 11 years old son Paul. He likes to cook, to bake ... and to eat. The recipe of tonight is "chouquettes", in other words small "choux" covered with small sugar pieces.

Kids love it as a snack. He prepares them for breakfast at school tomorrow morning.

To make them, you need :

- 1 cup of water - 250ml

- 8 tbsp of butter - 110g

- 1 tbsp of sugar - 10g

- 1 cup of flour - 120g

- 5 eggs

- a pinch of salt

In a sauce pan, bring to a small boil the water and butter. When the butter is melted, add the flour and quickly stir with a spoon until it has the shape of a ball. Put the dough in a mixing bowl and add the eggs one by one. You should get the texture of a smooth dough.

Add sugar and salt.

Preheat the oven at 400F (180 degrees C).

Shape the chouquettes with 2 teaspoons on a plate that goes to the oven covered with parchment paper.

Bake for 20min until nicely brown (wait until brown otherwise they would deflate).

Put little pieces of sugar on each of them. Bravo Paul!!

Another soup recipe to warm up...

I left Boston last summer but brought back Boston's weather in Paris. Incredible!

Temperatures have been below 30 degrees for a week and we left the whole Boston's weather equipment in our house in the Loire Valley!

Not so many solutions to warm up : soups, soups and soups... or pot-au-feu, this will be for the next post.

Today's soup is a vegetable soup with a hint of curry. You'll have your "5 fruits and vegetable per day" portion.

You need for soup for 4:

- 1 leek

- 2 zucchinis

- 2 carrots

- 1 celery stalk

- 2 potatoes (baking ones, Idaho, Russet or all purpose ones like Yukon gold; if you're in France use "pommes de terre à purée", like monalisa or bintje)

- 2 or 3 tomatoes (you can use whole peeled tomatoes)

- 2 teaspoons of curry powder or curry paste

- salt, pepper

- Vache Qui Rit (processed cheese)

Peel and cut all the vegetables, put them in a pot full of water with salt, pepper and curry and bring to a boil until everything is cooked (about 30 min).

Blend all the vegetables with part of the boiling water (according to the texture you want) with 2 portions of Vache Qui Rit

Ready. Enjoy and stay warm...