ArtsAutosBooksBusinessEducationEntertainmentFamilyFashionFoodGamesGenderHealthHolidaysHomeHubPagesPersonal FinancePetsPoliticsReligionSportsTechnologyTravel

The Les Trois Chenes Recipe Book

Updated on January 1, 2014

How to Cook Seasonal Dishes - Recipes from the Les Trois Chenes Guest House

I'm an enthusastic cook and gardener and when we moved out into rural Limousin, I was delighted to embrace the rural lifestyle and local recipes. I have quite a collection of recipes now and the next step is to bring them together into one book.

Part of the fun of living in the country is being able to grow your own organic fruit and vegetables, to buy locally produced food and to cook seasonally, so having thought long and hard about how to arrange my new 'book', I've decided on seasons first and foremost. Of course we have freezers and supermarkets here like anywhere else and many dishes lend themselves to all year cooking with seasonal options, so I've created a section for them too on the first page.

Sometimes I write about growing food, food in general, or the history of food, so these articles are also included. The beauty of an on line book is that it is easy to add to it as the fancy takes you. This online cookery book will, hopefully, grow and grow.

Read more about our lives and painting holidays, our Bed and Breakfast, and our self-catering holiday cottage Les Trois Chenes on our web site www.lestroischenes.com

And for still more Cookbooks Read more about our lives and painting holidays, our Bed and Breakfast, and our self-catering holiday cottage 1001 Cookbooks to Find the Best Recipes My Recipe book is the 101th!

Any Time Recipes

In the following pages you'll find our seasonal recipes for the spring, summer, autumn and winter along with a section on food and gardening topics, but many recipes are all-the-year-round treats.

Easy One Pot Fish Dish

This is an all the year round dish but is great with spring vegetables

Easy, Chicken Tajine Recipe

Quick and Easy Sweet or Savoury French Toast

Fat Rat Birthday or Halloween Cake Recipe A quick and easy no-bake cake. of course you could adapt the shape - how about a Fat Cat Cake?

Stale Bread Recipes A Collection of delicious recipes to use up your old bread.

Seasonal Food Recipe Ideas - How to cook with the seasons

Make the most of fresh, locally grown, seasonal food. This is the way to go in the future. Support local producers, cut down travel time, minimize the carbon footprint of your food by cooking with fruit and vegetables that are in season.

True Food: Seasonal, Sustainable, Simple, Pure
True Food: Seasonal, Sustainable, Simple, Pure
Seasonal cooking is the way of the future as food costs soar and many people have to cut back on expensive imported food.
 

Irmik Helvasi

An easy and exotic Turkish dessert

This is my husband's version of the dessert Irmik Helvasi that he remembers so fondly from his childhood in Turkey andone that he often makes for our family - we love it! A great favourite with our friends and our Bed and Breakfast guests, we're often asked to bring it along to other people's dinners and parties. Based on semolina, (incredibly!), it's not expensive and is one of those store cupboard puddings that you can make at the drop of a hat. Like all my recipes, it's quick and easy to make (I guess about ten minutes), foolproof, uses only a few simple ingredients and tastes delicious.

Find the full recipe here: Quick and Easy Exotic Turkish Dessert Recipe Irmik Helvasi

Queen of Puddings

Having lived in our Bed and Breakfast in Limousin, France for seven years now, I'm only too aware of the pride the French have in their their cuisine - sometimes to the exclusion of all other culinary traditions, but even they concede that the British are great when it comes to making puddings. I think that the old-fashioned puds are often amongst the best and this is definately one of The Great British Puddings!

This is a year round pudding, but I've put it in winter because it is one of those great comfort foods, lovely served hot or cold. Queen of Puddings is not only easy, but delicous, economical and a weapon in the fight against waste. What more could you want?

Find the full recipe here: Queen of Puddings

Moist Almond and Orange Cake: A Gluten Free Recipe

This is no melt-in-the-mouth, fluffy, temperamental cake! This is a moist, satisfying cake with a deliciously fresh orange tang. It's light, fat free and gluten free - perfect for people with special dietary requirements. I make this cake because I love it, but also we do occasionally have guests at Les Trois Chenes who can't tolerate gluten or who would like a low fat meal and so this cake makes a perfect dessert for those occasions.

Find the full recipe here: Moist Almond and Orange Cake: A Gluten Free Recipe

An easy, no-fuss gooey, gooey chocolate cake

Ditch the diet! The real secret of good health is that a little of what you fancy does you good, and are you going to fancy this gorgeous, gooey French chocolate cake! Although it's ridiculously easy and totally reliable, it is a treat cake and ideal for special occasions or surprise guests.

Find the full recipe here: Best Chocolate Cake Recipe Ever for a Wickedly Moist French Dessert

Wild Herb (or Weed) Soup

Don't you think it's a waste to pull out all those weeds and to put them at best onto the compost heap and at worst into the bin to add to all that trash and landfill that is so damaging? The waste is even worse when you know that these greens are free, nutritious, slimming and delicious. Who wouldn't want to make them into a great, tasty soup to add to your weight-loss diet menu?

Weed Soup Recipe

Nettle Soup Recipe

Nettles are weeds and grow plentifully, so you'll have no trouble gathering your free greens for this nettle soup. Poor people have long used nettles in cooking, and it's a traditional soup in the Limousin region of France. Highly nutritious, especially high in folic acid, they make a tasty, dark green soup or green vegetable. You need a pair of washing up gloves to gather them without being stung.

Find the full recipe here Nettle Soup Recipe

More spring recipes

I'm going to concentrate on some egg and Easter recipes this year, so watch this space!

Decorated eggs. Photo by Permission of Luba Petrusha

Spring Recipes from Amazon - Don't miss all those spring tastes

Flower Fritters

It was early June when my friend Sue came bursting into my kitchen with her arms full of what we call acacia flowers, (they are really from the Robinia family though) and I soon found out that they were not for decoration, but for eating! She'd been for lunch with a lady who had fried the flower racemes of the Black Locust tree in batter and produced them as an unusual nibble or starter dish. So we set to work on the flowers and made them into lovely, perfumed snacks. It also works well with Elderflower blossoms as well.

Find the full recipe here: Flower Fritters

Want to know which other flowers you can eat? Have a look at Flowers are vegetables too

Sugared flowers

Many flowers are edible, although few are eaten now. You might use nasturiums in a salad, or have heard of sugared violets, but there are many other flowers that can be eaten and they make pretty, edible additions to your table.

Sugared flowers are easy to make, if a little fiddly, and can be kept for some time before use. They are super for wedding cake decorations and decorations for desserts, puddings and salads.

How to make Sugared Flowers

Wild Mushroom Soup

It's the end of October, Halloween, All Saints Day, (or Toussaint) and the weather here in France is warm and wet - perfect for mushrooms! We collect kilos of them in a good year and make them into soup.

Find the full recipe here Wild Mushroom Soup

Wild Mushroom Tart

This is an easy, filling main course tart suitable for vegans and vegetarians. I was in a bit of a rush, (my recipes are real life and not 'staged' for the camera!) so the decoration could perhaps do with a little more care and attention but the tart itself is a real winner and one of my all time favourites. (I need to improve presentation though next time. I'm always in a hurry, and hate giving the off-cut pastry to the dog so I just popped it on top!)

Find the full recipe here Wild Mushroom Tart

Bread and Butter Pudding with a Christmas Limousin Twist

Whether you're saving the world or saving your money you will just adore this frugal but delicious bread pudding, (or, as we used to call it bread and butter pudding). This is one of the best know and most traditional of stale bread recipes. Transform your old bread into a delicious dessert with this budget-friendly frugal recipe. All you need in addition to your stale bread is a couple of eggs, milk, butter, dried fruit, a pinch of spice and a bit of sugar. Save money and stop waste with this budget-friendly frugal recipe.

Bread and Butter Pudding Recipe

Medlar Cheese or Jelly

Medlars are ripe in November and make a wonderful spread.

Find the full recipe here: Medlar Cheese or Jelly

What are Medlars?

Medlars are trees bearing round, golden fruits are very decorative with their five large, star-shaped caylyx at the end. In recent years, unfortunately, they seem to have gone our of fashion, in Britain at least, however I'm pleased that now they're enjoying a well deserved revival. The trees are small, attractively shaped and bear beautiful creamy white flowers. They are tough,hardy, healthy and produce a heavy crop of small, golden fruits that are harvested when most other fruits have finished. What could be more deserving of a place in your garden and kitchen?

Find the full article here: What is a Medlar

The Autumn Fruit and Vegetable Garden

Autumn is famously 'the season of mist and mellow fruitfulness', and here are a few observations on the Les Trois Chenes garden in this season. Lots of nice pictures.

Find the full article here: The Autumn Fruit and Vegetable Garden

Grow Your Own Food - The best gardening book of all time

An excellent, concise, cheap, easy to use book with first class information and apparently, at one time at least, it was the world's best selling booK. This is a manual and not a coffee table book. If you buy one vegetable gardening book, this is it!

The Vegetable & Herb Expert
The Vegetable & Herb Expert
Cheap, easy, informative, quick to use. A real garden pal.
 

How to Grow Medlars

Medlars are an unusual fruit and a small, pretty tree that fruits in November. Why wouldn't you want to grow one in your garden?

Find the full article here: How to Grow Medlars

I Hope This Lens Will Blossom Over Time!

Thank you for dropping by and I do hope you've enjoyed this lens. If you try any of the recipes I'ld love to know what you think, or let me know your favourite recipes. Please leave any comments in the guest book below.

The Cheese Course at Les Trois Chenes

All lens masters. Join our fabulous, supportive group on this facebook page: Post Your Squidoo Lenses Here Post links, network and make friends.

working

This website uses cookies

As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.

For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy

Show Details
Necessary
HubPages Device IDThis is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons.
LoginThis is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service.
Google RecaptchaThis is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy)
AkismetThis is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy)
HubPages Google AnalyticsThis is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy)
HubPages Traffic PixelThis is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized.
Amazon Web ServicesThis is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy)
CloudflareThis is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy)
Google Hosted LibrariesJavascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy)
Features
Google Custom SearchThis is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy)
Google MapsSome articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
Google ChartsThis is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy)
Google AdSense Host APIThis service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
Google YouTubeSome articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
VimeoSome articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
PaypalThis is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
Facebook LoginYou can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
MavenThis supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy)
Marketing
Google AdSenseThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Google DoubleClickGoogle provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Index ExchangeThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
SovrnThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Facebook AdsThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Amazon Unified Ad MarketplaceThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
AppNexusThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
OpenxThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Rubicon ProjectThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
TripleLiftThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Say MediaWe partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy)
Remarketing PixelsWe may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites.
Conversion Tracking PixelsWe may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service.
Statistics
Author Google AnalyticsThis is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy)
ComscoreComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy)
Amazon Tracking PixelSome articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy)
ClickscoThis is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy)