Tag Archives: light recipe

Fillo Cups with Mascarpone Mousse and Mango Fruit Salad

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Filed under dessert, Fleximolds, fruit, Mousses, Recipe with Demarle Cookware, What's Up in Cecile's Kitchen

Ahhh Spring… Finally. I am so ready for all the wonderful fruits that it brings such as strawberries and berries and melon…As far as desserts, I am more of a chocolate fan, but I love fruits too! My favorite desserts with fruits are those where the fruits are served as they are, uncooked and au naturel. I love fruit tarts, vacherin ( icecream and meringue cake on top of which fruits are added), pavlovas. The problem with some of those desserts is the time that it takes to make them. When I have time, I love to make them but since I am often limited with times, I have to find desserts that are fast, look great and that taste yummy.

There is so much you can do with mousse and fresh fruits but I was thinking of something for my cooking class that would be very easy and that would not involve too much time. Fillo dough is that magical medium that allows you to do all that. It is so light that it takes no time to cook. It is so easy to mold into what you want your desserts to look like that using something else. Finally it is so light and airy that it almost becomes transparent and let the fruits shine since it is not empowering the dessert.

Ingredients for 12 people or 12 cups:

  • 1 cup of heavy cream,
  • 1/2 container of mascarpone cheese at room temperature,
  • 2 tbsp of maple syrup for the mousse, and more for drizzling
  • 1 cup of fresh strawberry,
  • 2 mangos peeled and diced thinly.

Use only one package of the fillo dough and place the rest back into your freezer. 

1. Take the fillo dough out to thaw it out.

2. With some scissors, cut squares of about 2 1/2 inches.

3. Take 3-4 sheets and layer them inside each cupcake hole.

4. With a pastry brush, brush some melted butter or olive oil on the sides of each of those cups, or use a oil spray and spray the cups.

5. And bake those cups at 375 for 5-8 minutes or until they become golden brown.

6. Meanwhile place the heavy cream in a large bowl and with a whisk, beat the cream until it starts forming soft peaks.

7. Add the mascarpone and beat well.

8. Add 2-3 tbsp of maple syrup and beat well again.

9. Spoon the cream mixture into each cup.

10. In a large bowl, mix the diced strawberries and the diced mangos. Spoon the fruit salad over the cream and drizzle more maple syrup over the cups and fruit. Devour!!!!

Bon Appetit and Happy Cooking!!!

Gorgonzola and Pecan Crusted Salmon

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Filed under deep flexipan, entree, Recipe with Demarle Cookware, seafood, silpat, What's Up in Cecile's Kitchen

It was a bit late when I got home last night after one of my cooking class, but since I had not eaten I was starving. I did not really have time to think about what I really wanted to eat.. I just used what I had on hand: salmon, gorgonzola and pecan.

For the cooking class we had made gorgonzola, pecan and apricot tartlets and this made me think that that mixture would probably good as the topping of my salmon.

Ingredients for 3 people: 1 small filet of salmon, 1/3 cup of gorgonzola, 1/3 cup of pecan, 1 tbsp of maple, salt and pepper.

In small chopper, chop the nuts very tiny and set aside. Grind the gorgonzola cheese on a cheese grater. Mix the two ingredients and add 1 tbsp of maple ( it takes some of the bitterness and the bite out of the cheese), and mix well.

Place the salmon on a silpat and coat the salmon with that gorgonzola mixture. Cook in the oven at 375 for 8-10 minutes. Et voila! Serve with fresh grillled vegetables.

Bon Appetit and Happy Cooking!!!

Pasta with a Roasted Red Pepper and Garlic Sauce

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Filed under entree, pasta, pork, Recipe with Demarle Cookware, silpat, What's Up in Cecile's Kitchen

Once in a a blue moon, I can cook other things than potatoes for my husband;-). On those days, my choices are still limited : croque-monsieurs, crepes or pastas. Today too lazy to fix crepes, and wanting to fix a more balanced meal, I chose to cook pasta. Cooking pasta is so much fun, because you can dress the pasta in a million different way, yet when your family do not care to have seafood or vegetables in their pasta, it somewhat restricts you with what you can prepare. Since my husband loved red pepper, i chose to prepare the pasta with a red pepper sauce. I usually make a creamy sauce where I puree the red pepper and add cream, but tonite I decided to go a lighter way.

Ingredients: 2 red pepper, 1 whole head of garlic, salt and pepper to taste, linguini or spaghetti, 2 tbsp of fresh basil chopped, 1 package of four cheese italian sausages from Johnsville, olive oil, fresh parmesan.

Slice the red pepper in half, remove the seeds and place the red pepper open face down on  a silpat as well as the garlic head.  Cook in a warm oven at 450 for 30 minutes or until the skin of the red pepper is scorching. Remove the red pepper from the oven and place them in a ziploc bag. Place them in the fridge to cool.

Meanwhile add 1 tsp of olive oil in a frying pan. When the oil is getting hot, add the sausages and cook them on medium-high for about 5 minutes. Turn the heat down to medium low, cover the pan and cook them for another 7-10 minutes or until they are cooked through. Make sure to turn them during cooking so that they are cooked evenly on all sides. When the sausages are cooked, set the pan aside and keep warm until the rest of the meal is ready.

Cook the pasta according to the directions of the package. While the pasta are cooking, prepare the sauce. When the pepper have cooled ( 10-15 minutes), remove the peppers one by one from the ziploc bag and peel them. Place the red pepper and the garlic in a chopper and puree them. Add the chopped basil, 1 tbsp of olive oil, 1/4 tsp of salt, 1/8 tsp of pepper and mix well. When the pastas are cooked, drain them and add 1/4 cup of the sauce in the pasta. Mix well. Slice the sausages in 1 inch cut and add them to the pasta. Serve tha pasta on each plate, drizzle more sauce and sprinkle some fresh parmesan. Et voila!!!

Bon Appetit and Happy Cooking!!!

Beet Salad with Meyer Lemon Vinaigrette

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Filed under appetizers, Crudite/ salad, Large round mold, octogonal silpat, Recipe with Demarle Cookware, What's Up in Cecile's Kitchen

Only few weeks ago I had to wear hats on cold days and bundle up. It is strange how weather can change so drastically. Today it is already 82. Where has spring gone to????

With this weather change luckily comes craving of fruits and vegetables. I believe that I had mentioned in one of my previous posts that in the summer in France, for appetizers we have “crudites”, which is an array of various salads. Generally it would be cucumber, or carrot, or even celery root salad. I know, some of you may think… Yuk..But well-seasoned, those salads are really good and bring a bit of a change to the boring green salad. I have always liked beets. Growing up my mom always bought beets in a can. To prepare her salad, she always sliced the beets in 1/2 centimeter thick and season them with a red wine vinaigrette.

All winter long I had seen those fresh beets in the fresh produce section, but never dared to buy them until yesterday. WHY? because again I would have been the only one eating them here at my house. Well, I could not resist seeing them again and really wanted to eat a beet salad so here they are today;-)

Ingredients for a salad for 4: 3 fresh beets rinsed and peeled, 1 tbp of Meyer lemon zest, the juice of half of a Meyer lemon, 1 tbsp of olive oil, 2 tbsp of sherry vinegar, 1/8 tsp of salt, 1/16 tsp of pepper.

Place the beets in the round mold and place the octogonal silpat on top to cover it. Cook in the microwave for 8 minutes. They should be soft. Meanwhile grate one half of a Myer lemon to have about 1 tbsp of zest, and squeeze the lemon juice. In a medium-sized bowl, mix the zest, the lemon juice, 2 tbsp of sherry vinegar, 1/8 tsp of salt, 1/16 tsp of pepper and mix well. Add the beets that you would have cut in a small cubes. Mix well and enjoy…

Bon Appetit and Happy Cooking!!!

Poached Sea Bass in Oregano Infused Olive Oil and Fresh Tomatoes

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Filed under entree, Large round mold, Recipe with Demarle Cookware, seafood, silpat, What's Up in Cecile's Kitchen

Spring is here! At least that’s what the calendar says. But here in South Carolina,  it seems that we skipped right into summer. The temperatures are already in the high 80’s. I really worry of what it is going to be like in the heat of the summer. I love spring for the trees in bloom, the rabbits hoping in all directions, birds chirping in the morning. I love the warmth of the sun….but what we have now is no spring at all. In fact, it is already so hot in the afternoon, I wait till 7 pm to do my evening run because I feel it is too hot otherwise.

The good part about those temperature, I will say, are the fact that it makes you want to take some layers off ( of clothes, and other;-)) which also means that I may need to stop having those yummy Sunday treats in order to be bikini ready;-).

Tonite, the temperature were already so overwhelming, that I was not very hungry and wanted some quick and light so when I went to the grocery store, I was hoping to find some white fish.. either Mahi or sea bass. What a nice surprise to see that they had small pieces of sea bass that had just shipped that very morning! Yeah!!!

Ingredients for 1-2: 1 tbsp of oregano infused olive oil, 1 spring of oregano, 1 piece of sea bass, salt, pepper, 1 cup of fresh baby tomatoes sliced in half.

To infuse the oil, you will simply need to place the herbs in the olive oil and keep the mixture in the fridge for a few days (2-3). The oil should be used shortly, and always kept in the fridge.

Place the sea bass in the large round mold. With a pastry brush, brush the olive oil all over the fish. Sprinkle salt and pepper. And place the tomatoes all around the fish. Chop 1 sprig of oregano and sprinkle it over the fish. Cover the round mold with the octogonal silpat and cook in a warm oven of 375 for 8-10 minutes depending on your preferences and on the size of the fish.

For added color and added taste,  cooked an oregano sprig into the infused oil so that it would become crispy and I could use that spring for decoration Et Voila!!!

I accompany the fish with a salad of watercress, and roasted purple onions in a balsamic and oregano infused vinaigrette. Yummy!!!

Bon Appetit and Happy Cooking!!!

Scallops over Fresh Vegetables in a Mirin and Tamari Sauce

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Filed under entree, Large round mold, octogonal silpat, Recipe with Demarle Cookware, seafood, What's Up in Cecile's Kitchen

Do you feel at loss at times when looking at the array of products in the grocery store???? I was in the grocery store the other day picking up some light soy sauce and as I was searching for it, I could help noticing all the other stuff in that area: Mirin, tamari, oyster sauce, fish sauce. What do you do with all those things???? I need to educate myself, is what came to me. So next time I go to a bookstore, i will have a to buy a cookbook on Asian Cuisine. I guess I could have left those items on the shelf until I knew how to use them, but woman of curiosity that I am, I had to take them home and tried them.

So even though I had no idea how I was going to use those things, I decided to take them home. Once home, I tried them one by one. That’s when I thought that a few of them together would probably taste great. And they did. YUM!!!!

Ingredients for 4-6 people: 2 tbsp of toasted sesame seed oil, 2 scallions cleaned and diced thinly, 1 red bell pepper cleaned and sliced in small short strips, 1 bock choy chopped small as well, 1 cup of tiny carrots, 1 cup of broccoli florets, 1 box of shitake mushrroms cleaned and sliced thinly, 12 scallops (3 scallops per person), salt and pepper, 4 tbsp of tamari, 4 tbsp of mirim, 4 tbsp of water, 1/2 tsp of grated fresh ginger.

Place the carrots in the round mold, cover the mold with the octogonal silpat and cook for 3 minutes. Set them aside for later use. Wash off the scallops and dry them up with a paper towel. Set them aside. In a large saute pan, warm up 1 tbsp of sesame oil. When the oil is sizzling and hot, drop the scallops and saute them for a short minute on each side just enough so that they will become a light golden color. Remove them from the saute pan, and place them onto a warm plate and cover them with aluminium foil to keep them warm. Add the other tablespoon of sesame oil in the pan and heat it up. When it is warm and sizzling again, add all the vegetables including the carrots. Saute the vegetables for a few minutes. Add the mirin, the tamari, the ginger,  and the 4 tbsp of water and bring to boil. When it has come to boil, cook for about 5 minutes or until the vegetables are cooked to your liking. Add the scallops and cook them for a few extra minutes. Et voila!!!

If you wish NOT to saute the vegetables. You may place all the vegetables in the round mold and cook them for 3 minutes. Then you can place the vegetables in the saute pan, add the tamari, the ginger, water and the mirim and bring it to boil.

To serve, spoon the vegetables on each plate and top the vegetables with the scallops.

You may also add some rice to that meal.

You may cook the rice according to directions, or cook in much faster in the round mold.

Ingredients for the rice for 4 people: 1 cup of texmati ( or American Basmati Rice), 2 cups of water, 1/8 tsp of salt.

Place the 1 cup of rice with the water and the salt in the round mold. Cover the round mold with the octogonal silpat and cook for 12-13 minutes. C’est tout!

Bon Appetit and Happy Cooking!!!

Cranberry and Almond Bars

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Filed under deep flexipan, Recipe with Demarle Cookware, snacks, stainless steel cookware, What's Up in Cecile's Kitchen

Last week was my first time making nutty bars, and I will say that I liked them so much that I was looking for them for my snack time with much eagerness 😉 So much in fact that they were gone by this afternoon. So of course I was ready to make some new one this evening. You may have noticed that I liked to play with my food so of course I was not going to remake those bars from last week. Instead I used a little bit of what I had in my pantry: dried cranberries, almonds, Marcona Almonds.

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups of marcona almonds,
  • 2 cups of almonds,
  • 1 cup of cranberries,
  • 1/2 cup of agave syrup,
  • 1/4 cup of almond butter,
  • 1/8 turbinado brown sugar.
  1. Place all the nuts on the flexipan and roast them in the oven for 10 minutes at 375.
  2. Meanwhile in a small saucepan, mix the agave syrup, the turbinado brown sugar, the almond butter and mix well. Warm up this mixture over medium-high temperature and bring it to boil.

3. Remove the nuts from the oven and empty them into a chopper and chop them.

4. Pour in the agave mixture and mix well to coat the nuts mixture. 5. Empty this mixture onto the flexipan and cook at 375 for 12 minutes. Cool before cutting it. C’est tout!!!

Bon Appetit and Happy Cooking!!!

Trout Poached over a Bed of Succotash


I love the place where I live. It is a very quiet place not too far away from everything. It is only 3 hours from the beach and the same from the mountains. The weather is perfect, with 300+ days of sunshine. I probably could do without the humidity but after 18 years I have accustomed to it. I would be however happier with more restaurants choices. Don’t get me wrong, there are good restaurants here but they have been here as long  or longer than I have and their specials are not novelty to me anymore. This is probably the reason why we dine out so rarely. I already know what is on the menu, and can cook most of them . Sometimes however, we do go out-of-town and take the opportunity to dine out. This Saturday was so beautiful and the temperature was so mild that we decided to go to Greenville,  hang out, and have dinner there. High Cotton became our place of destination for dinner. The food is good, the ambiance pleasant and the surrounding area just beautiful. While my husband ordered ….steaks ( did you guess?!?!), I ordered trout. It was very good and this was so simple that I thought I could duplicate this recipe for you so you could make it at home. This recipe is not at all that of High Cotton, but my adaptation of what I tasted. I hope you will enjoy it;-)

Ingredients for 2: 2 strips of hickory bacon uncooked, 1/4 purple onion sliced and diced thinly, 1 bag of frozen succotash mix (16 oz)( or if you can find it: 1/2 bag of baby lima beans ( 8oz), and 1/2 bag of young corn), 2 cups of chicken broth, 3 small lemon thyme twigs, lemon pepper,  2 trout filets.

In a small saucepan, place the bacon and cook until it is almost crispy and has released most of its fat. Drain the fat from the pan and set aside for later usage. Add 1 tsp of the bacon dripping to the pan and when it is sizzling, add the diced onions and saute until it is golden and crispy. Then add the frozen succotash, the broth, the thyme, a dash of salt and pepper and  mix well. Bring the mixture to boil, and when it has reached boiling temperature, turn the heat down and cook for another 8-10 minutes.

While the succotash is cooking, prepare the fish. Remove the fish from its packaging and rinse it under cold water. With a paper towel, dry the fish and sprinkle some lemon pepper on all sides.

Then in a large frying pan, add 1 tbsp of the bacon drippings and bring it to sizzle. When it is sizzling, saute the fish for 1 minute on each side. Start with the open side of the fish, flip it and saute and the skin part for another minute. Remove the fish from the frying pan so it won’t continue cooking. Scoop the succotash and place it in  large round mold,  and place the fish on top.

Cover the large round mold, with the octogonal silpat and cook in a warm oven at 375 for 5 minutes for 1 filet, 8 for 2 filets. To plate the fish, spoon some succotash on the plate and place the filet on top. Decorate with a few thyme twigs.

Et voila!!!

Bon Appetit and Happy Cooking!!!

Coriander Coated Scallops over a Bed a Rutabaga Puree

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Filed under appetizers, entree, Recipe with Demarle Cookware, stainless steel cookware, What's Up in Cecile's Kitchen

The grocery store is my hunting ground. I am always on a prowl for new items, new food to prepare. As I was picking up some fresh ginger root, I could not help but noticing those circular roots next to to the ginger. One of them was named Rutabaga. I had never tried it, nor did I know how to cook it. I really thought it would be a mild vegetable that i could use for a side for my scallops. Well be warned, this vegetable is very strong in taste. This time I serve it pureed under my scallops, but next time I may add a few carrots or potatoes to make this root not so strong in taste.

Ingredients for 2: 1 rutabaga root, coriander ground, 3-4 scallops per person, salt, pepper, 1 cup of light chicken broth, 1/2 tsp of butter.

Peel and dice the rutabaga, place the rutabaga in the round mold. Place the octogonal silpat on top of the round mold and microwave it for 8 minutes. With a potato masher, puree the rutabag. Add 1 cup of chicken broth, 1/2 tsp of ground coriander and stir well. Add salt and pepper if you deem necessary. Set aside.

Meanwhile dry the scallops with a paper towel, sprinkle some coriander powder in a plate and coat all the scallops with the ground coriander on both sides. In a small saute pan, melt the 1/2 tsp of butter and let it sizzle. When the butter is turning golden, add the scallops and saute them for a minute on each side. Sprinkle salt and pepper. Remove the scallops from the pan, and deglaze the pan with the rest of the broth. Add a few drops of maggi (2-3) ( it is a very condensed bouillon that is similar to soy sauce) Bring the broth to boil.

To serve spoon the rutabaga on each plate, and place the scallops on top of the puree and drizzle the “sauce” over the scallops. Serve warm.

Bon Appetit and Happy Cooking!!!

An Asian Twist on Vegetables….

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Filed under Large round mold, octogonal silpat, vegetables, What's Up in Cecile's Kitchen

Some people crave sweets, salty snacks. Me… good vegetables… I am not satisfied if my dinner does not include vegetables. The problem is variety. I get tired of eating the same vegetables. Luckily with each season comes new vegetables, yet it is difficult to find fun ways to eat them. In the book ” 75 Nouvelles Recettes Proteinees” from the Marabout Editions, there is a large selection of vegetables recipes. Some better than others. The recipe of today’s post was based on the recipe called “legumes vapeurs a l’asiatique”. Though I really like the originality of the vegetable mix, I made a few changes including the sauce.

Ingredients for 4: 1 red pepper cut in thin strips, 1 bag of miniature carrots ( can be found in the packaged vegetables in your grocery store), 2-3 summer squash sliced thinly, 2 cups of snow peas, salt, light soy sauce, hoisin sauce.

Trim the snow peas. Place all the vegetables in the round mold to steam them. Mix 1/16 tsp of salt with 1 tsp of water, and pour it into the round mold. Place the octogonal silpat on top of the round mold and microwave for 5 minutes. While the vegetables are cooking, mix 2 tsp of light soy sauce with 2 tsp of hoisin sauce and 1 tsp of grated fresh ginger. Pour this mixture into the cooked vegetable and mix well to coat. Et voila!!!

 Bon Appetit and Happy Cooking!!!