If you haven’t already fallen for ‘verrine‘ thing, then here’s a recipe you could make in your sleep. The whole ‘verrine’ (transl. glass) fashion has taken hold of the cuisine world the last couple of years. Everyone does them. We have about 5 cookbooks at La Cocotte covering every possible combination of sweet, savoury or both flavours together.

To be honest I think it’s a bit of a gimick. It just involves plonking several different layers of ingredients in a glass. But heh hoh it looks posh and I’m all for fancy things which can be whipped up within minutes.

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Swing by La Cocotte Thursday 5th July at 7pm and discover Martine Camillieri & Angélique Villeneuve’s new book ‘Petits bouquets de cuisine’.

La Cocotte 5, rue Paul Bert 75011 Paris 01 43 73 04 02

I took a leaf out of Bob’s smoothie book (excellent recipes, very original, think hot surfer meets Palm springs party style, unfortunately only in French at the mo) and came up with my own creation. Still going with the dulce de leche theme I found a tin of chestnuts knocking around in my cupboard. Chestnuts & dulce de leche? Pourquoi not (sorry I couldn’t resist a bit of franglais, homage to a chef at Le Cordon Bleu). And I must say they do go very well together.

Lie back in your deck chair, soak up the sun rays with a chilled glass of this in your hand. Purrrrrrrrfect!

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Last week’s book signing at la Cocotte went down a storm. We had several little chefs assembling the ‘tea-ramisu’. The kids had to imbibe a green tea genoise with a green tea syrup and then build several layers of genoise with a green tea cream. It got a bit messy but everyone had fun and it all tasted good.

For some reason we were left with plenty of the green tea cream filling. Me, not being one to waste things, I decided to try and make ice cream. I don’t have an ice cream maker, so my way of making ice cream involves just freezing (if you have an ice cream maker and you try this recipe, let me know how it goes).

Fluffy (whisked egg whites), melt in your mouth with a wonderful subtle green tea flavour. This ice cream goes perfectly with the tartness of the raspberry wafers.

For more ice cream recipes check out ‘Scream for Ice cream’ food blog event on Whats for Lunch Honey.

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It’s been aonther hectic week of running from one job to another (seems to be becoming the norm). I should have really stayed at home Friday & Saturday night and caught up on sleep. Not the case, this weekend I put on my ‘rock chick’ gear and headed out to see two great gigs. Friday night it was the Sugarbeans and Saturday night it was the excellent Alice Russell (kind of eclectic soul/jazz/funk…just plain brilliant).

Amongst all my running around and late nights out, I thought it would be good to consume something ‘detoxifying’, although combining this with a peanut butter sandwich, kind of defeated the whole point. Simple to make, this is the perfect chilled summer classic.

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