This weekend begins a new adventure. The Three French Hens and The Chickadee have put together a new cooking adventure called Weekend in a French Kitchen. French food. Cooking from not one but two books each week. It reminded me of my old Whisk Wednesdays group when we tackled Le Cordon Bleu French recipes each week for a couple of years...I miss those days and cooking with my Whisk Chicks pals.
I didn't have a lot of time to think about this new group since I just discovered it all on Thursday (thanks to my blogging friend Gaye who has cooked/baked with me in about a half dozen groups) and since the first post for the group was due on Sunday I had to act fast, signing up, finding the two books, making it all, and posting. I managed to get all that done in time. You can read all about the group here and meet the other participants. (You can also join up there if you are so inclined.) The books we are cooking from are: Cafe Boulud Cookbook by Daniel Boulud and Dorie Greenspan (these posts will be on Saturdays) and A Kitchen in France: A Year of Cooking in My Farmhouse by Mimi Thorisson (these posts will be on Sundays).
The first recipe from the A Kitchen in France book is Tomato Salad with Parsley and Shallots and is found on page 89.
The ingredient list: shallots, Dijon, extra-virgin olive oil, salt, pepper, heirloom tomatoes, and fresh parsley leaves.
This recipe came at a great time as here in Indiana we are getting the first of the ripe tomatoes and this nice yellow heirloom showed up in my CSA basket this week perfectly ripe and juicy so I knew this would be the perfect place to park it. I loved the look of it all with the white/purple shallots and the green parsley, it makes for a stunning presentation. The recipe was simple, easy, delicious, you can't go wrong with that, definitely will use this a great deal this summer during tomato season.
If you would like to see how the others fared, click here and follow the links. Next week's recipe is Langoustines with Armagnac, page 110.