Food, Glorious Food

Thank goodness Christelle got back into town and had internet service again so she could read my blog and catch my error. It's not less salt that makes French chocolate so much better but less percentage of soy...makes a big difference when cooking with chocolate, too.

So I was confusing our discussion about frozen foods with the chocolate conversation. She encouraged me to try food from the "Picard," shop which only sells frozen food. It has less salt and sugar than American frozen foods. I can taste the difference!

First...here's my favorite section in the Picard shop...freeze dried, chopped herbs. These are so cool! I need these in Alaska so badly!!! And I just noticed the pesto sauce in the photo...must try that!

I ran out of fresh garlic the other night and remembered I had bought the frozen stuff to try...it was so good...had it on garlic bread.

For Christmas I bought a frozen rack of New Zealand lamb and prepared it using a recipe from the Picard website. Delicious! You roast the lamb chops at an extremely high temperature for about 20 minutes and then pull it out and coat it with an herb and almond mixture with some mustard and then pop it back in the oven to finish off the cooking. We licked our plates clean. Just blogging about it makes me anxious to eat it again.

For New Year's we tried a stuffed duck. ***Update...thank you to the anonymous comment. It is a chicken stuffed with duck liver. My husband an I had this long discussion about this meat because I didn't think it was duck for the main part but he thought it might be. Nothing like having a blog to figure out what one is eating!

It said to defrost for 36 hours...check. Notice the strip down the center. I think that was extra fat...it was a little strange. Maybe Christelle knows what it is.

It looked lovely...and there was plenty of pan drippings to make a nice sauce.

Baked a couple of frozen asparagus tarts, too.

A little salad, a little garlic bread from our stale bread...and dinner was served. Lots of rich, dark sauce on the meat! Totally delicious. And we still have leftover duck chicken which will be my dinner tonight.

Now the duck chicken was expensive...$31 Euros/$42 U.S. but we had leftovers! 

Check out the frozen vegetables at the Picard. Clear bags so you can see exactly what you are buying. Don't they look perfect. You would never get frozen broccoli that was only the "trees" in the U.S. The down side is my apartment refrigerator freezer is tiny and I can only buy what I plan to use immediately. Of course there is my stockpile of frozen herbs that will probably be added to every time I visit the Picard.

There a was a dinner with some kind of fish from Alaska. My husband is pretty skeptical about that meal. I'm not a fish eater so I won't be the guinea pig on that one.

There was a frozen salmon mousse...hope they didn't use the pink or "dog," salmon from Alaska...seems like that gets sent out of state very often and that is not the good salmon!

It is nice to have some easy prep alternatives for meals. And Christelle mentioned the selections change seasonally so of course I must check the Picard often!