The recipes

Base preparation, to freeze

The heart of my cooking. I make it ahead for two reasons: it's quicker day to day, and it keeps the vegetable's vitality, which goes off very fast once it's peeled. It serves as a base for almost everything.

Ingredients

• 1 bunch of chives, 1 bunch of basil, 1 bunch of parsley
• 4 carrots
• 3 to 4 medium onions, 4 shallots, 4 cloves of garlic
• (optional) peppers — rather added at the point of using it

Method

1. Blend the lot in the food processor, in several batches.
2. Mix well.
3. Pour into a big container and put it in the freezer — without packing it down too much, or the mixture sets into a single block.
4. When the day comes, take out the container and grab a good handful. If it has frozen solid: break it up with a pestle, or put it back in the processor with the rest of the dish.

Raw soup

Ingredients

• 1 handful of base preparation
• raw vegetables of your choice: cucumber, tomato, mushrooms, peppers
• (optional) a few hot fresh chillies
• 1 tablespoon of almond cream — or the farmer's crème fraîche, for anyone who hasn't given up dairy
• a little olive oil, in reason
• fleur de sel or coarse grey sea salt (never white salt), pepper
• spices used carefully: turmeric, paprika, cumin, ras el-hanout
• ½ avocado (Irène Grosjean always put one in)
• hot water, never above 45–50 °C

Method

1. Into the blender: a handful of raw vegetables, a handful of base preparation, the chillies if you like them.
2. Add the cream, the olive oil, the salt, the pepper, the chosen spices and the half-avocado.
3. Pour in the hot water — never above 45–50 °C: beyond that, the heat denatures the enzymes and damages fragile vitamins.
4. Blend for 2 to 3 minutes, until it's really thoroughly blended: that's the secret of the recipe, otherwise the purée sits separate from the water.
5. Drink it as soon as possible, without timing it.

Variations

Pressed for time? You can start from pre-cut frozen vegetables: frozen in the hours after harvest, they often keep more vitamins than a vegetable left three days in the fridge. Made in the morning in a one-litre flask, the soup makes the midday meal — two litres if one isn't enough, it's low in calories.

Raw salad and dairy

Ingredients

• 1 handful of base preparation
• raw vegetables of your choice: tomatoes, mushrooms, carrots, radishes, beetroot, cucumbers, peppers
• salad version: lamb's lettuce, baby spinach, mesclun or green salad
• dairy version: mozzarella, feta, or fresh farm/producer goat's cheese (never from the supermarket)
• (sweet-and-savoury, if you like) a little melon or apple, ½ avocado, a squeeze of lemon juice

Method

1. Blend the base preparation with the raw vegetables — quickly, just enough that it stays blended without turning to purée.
2. Salad version: pour the mixture over the green salad.
3. Dairy version: blend the lot with the cheese, or lay the cheese on top in big chunks.
4. Play the sweet-and-savoury, the avocado or the lemon as you fancy.

Mixed seasonal-vegetable salad

Probably the easiest of all, the one I make when I have people over.

Ingredients

• fresh seasonal vegetables
• a cheese of your choice: mozzarella, feta, fresh goat's cheese, gouda, emmental, or the Bleu de Gex I'm especially fond of
• olive oil, fleur de sel, pepper

Method

1. Prepare the vegetables ahead (some of it can be frozen).
2. Assemble in two minutes with the olive oil, the fleur de sel and the pepper.

Raw semolina tabbouleh

It solves a little problem everyone knows: when you blend vegetables that give off juice, the salad turns out too runny. Here, the juice that was in the way becomes exactly what hydrates the semolina — no cooking, no added water.

Ingredients

• vegetables that give off juice: tomato, cucumber
• 1 glass of semolina, preferably wholemeal or semi-wholemeal, not too fine

Method

1. Blend the juicy vegetables, as for a soup or a raw salad.
2. Pour the mixture into a container over the semolina — the vegetable does all the work.
3. Let it rest 10 to 15 minutes, the time for the semolina to drink up the juice.

Indian pilaf rice (and its raw variant)

Ingredients

• rice
• a little butter with vegetable oil — no olive oil here, it doesn't suit it
• onion, shallots
• carrots and other vegetables cut into tiny cubes
• spices: curry, ras el-hanout, and whatever else you like
• herbs: fresh or powdered coriander, parsley
• salt, boiling water

Method

1. Sweat the onion and the shallots.
2. Toast the rice a little.
3. Add the carrots and the other vegetables in tiny cubes, with the spices.
4. On low heat, pour the boiling water a little above the level of the rice.
5. Let it cook until the water has completely evaporated: it's done.
6. Salt, and add the herbs at the end of cooking.

Raw variant (vegetables)

To keep the vegetables raw, add them not at the start but at the very end of cooking: the rice stays cooked, the vegetables stay raw. The herbs go in the same way, at the end of cooking.

Red-lentil dhal

One of my favourite everyday dishes.

Ingredients

• coral lentils (the orange lentils, which cook very fast)
• clarified butter — or ordinary butter, it doesn't matter — with a little cooking oil
• onions, shallots, garlic (as much as you like: it adds a lot of flavour)
• carrots and peppers in tiny pieces, and other vegetables of your choice
• spices: ras el-hanout, curry, cumin, and others to vary
• salt, pepper
• 1 small cube of coconut milk
• boiling water

Method

1. Brown the onions, the shallots and the garlic in the fat.
2. Add the small vegetables (I sweat them with the onions, for more flavour — or later if you don't want them fried).
3. Mix the spices into this sweated base.
4. Add the coral lentils right away.
5. Cover with boiling water just to the level — above all not too much: coral lentils absorb a lot of water, very fast, and end up as purée otherwise.
6. Let them cook until tender, it's very quick.
7. Salt, pepper, and add the cube of coconut milk: it's magnificent.

The goat's-cheese toast ("my little marvel")

It's made in five minutes. For about three euros, it's what I call the gates of paradise.

Ingredients

• slices of bread from an artisan baker
• garlic
• fresh farm goat's cheese
• olive oil, fleur de sel, pepper

Method

1. Toast the slices of bread.
2. Rub garlic over both sides.
3. Spread the fresh goat's cheese and put the lot under the grill.
4. Coming out: a good drizzle of olive oil, some fleur de sel, a pinch of pepper.

Almond milk

It serves as a base for several other drinks.

Ingredients

• 100 to 200 g of sweet almonds per 1 litre of water (my marker: 150 to 200 g)
• water for soaking (to be thrown away afterwards)
• 1 litre of fresh water for the blender

Method

1. Soak the almonds 8 to 12 hours — not 24 hours.
2. Throw away the soaking water (it holds the almonds' unwanted compounds) and rinse the almonds.
3. Blend the rinsed almonds with the litre of fresh water.
4. Filtering through a nut-milk bag is optional.

Smoothie

Ingredients

• raw milk — or plant milk (see the almond milk) for people sensitive to lactose
• fruit of your choice
• unrefined cane sugar, to taste
• Bourbon vanilla
• (for a proper milkshake) a scoop of ice cream

Method

1. Blend it all in the blender, well blended.
2. It's ready.

Iced chocolate

Ingredients (for 1 litre of raw or plant milk)

• 2 good tablespoons of 80% cocoa (more for chocolate fiends)
• cane sugar — a farmhouse mascobado for instance
• a little vanilla
• (optional) 1 or 2 cardamom pods

Method

1. First slake the cocoa in a bowl with a little milk, until you get a runny paste: that's the secret against lumps.
2. Pour this paste into the bottle with the rest of the milk.
3. Add the sugar, the vanilla and the cardamom as you fancy.

Iced coffee

I make it Turkish-style, but to drink it iced.

Ingredients (for 1 litre)

• a light coffee, ground very fine ("ground to a one"), 3 good tablespoons
• a quality sugar — what makes it a frappé is the sugar
• boiling water
• optional: a pinch of cinnamon, 3 cardamom pods, a little vanilla, a dash of milk

Method

1. Pour the boiling water over the coffee, shake, stir.
2. Let it brew and settle until all the grounds have sunk to the bottom.
3. Filter, let it cool, then put it in the freezer.
4. Sweeten, then dress to taste.

Iced tea

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons of a good tea (not a bottom-shelf tea)
• 2 good tablespoons of mascobado or untreated cane sugar
• the juice of half a lemon
• a drop of Bourbon vanilla concentrate
• boiling water

Method

1. In a sturdy glass bottle (a screw-cap carafe): the tea, the sugar, the lemon juice, the vanilla.
2. Add the boiling water, stir, let it brew about 5 minutes, giving it the odd shake.
3. Filter into another glass bottle to remove the residue.
4. Chill in the fridge, or in the freezer — leaving a little empty space in the bottle and not screwing the cap too tight.

Fruit-scented water

The simplest of all.

Ingredients

• 1 carafe of mineral water
• 2 or 3 pieces of peeled fruit: melon, peach, or whatever the season gives

Method

1. Let the fruit rest in the carafe, in the fridge.
2. The water takes on the scent of the fruit, gently, with nothing else. You change the fruit as the months go by.

The dressing

My everyday dressing comes down to very little.

Ingredients

• extra-virgin olive oil, organic, from a producer — never at the supermarket
• (optional) walnut oil, when I find it
• a good pinch of fleur de sel
• (optional) a splash of unpasteurised, unfiltered cider vinegar

Method

1. A good drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil (or walnut oil).
2. A good pinch of fleur de sel.
3. If you feel like it, a splash of cider vinegar over the top.