Stuffed Cherry Tomatoes à la Bonne Femme. Gluten-free

Stuffed tomatoes are a standard classic French pre-takeaway takeaway and interestingly are slow rather than fast food. Every traiteur and charcuterie has them in season as a ready made dish to take home and heat up. Most butchers' shop in France make one daily ready-made hot dish and stuffed tomatoes à la bonne femme is again a seasonal favourite. I've always thought how interesting it is that many countries, France is just one, maintain this old tradition and link with the past, when people didn't necessarily have ovens or maybe wanted an oven-baked meal without going to a restaurant. I really loved, when I was in Portugal, seeing people, mainly the elderly coming to restaurants with their fish, bought straight off the boats and getting them, cooked on a restaurant's barbecue. What better way to get a good nutritious hot meal and a chat!

Here I'm using cherry tomatoes and these make great hot savouries in a bite sized edition!

Cherry tomatoes are very easy to grow in a small space in a container or hanging basket. If you have a greenhouse or a window sill you can keep them producing right up to the first frosts. Tomatoes are perennials, so with care you can keep the plants from year to year.

TEMPERATURES

Preheat the oven to 200°C or 400°F

INGREDIENTS

(makes 16)

16 cherry tomatoes

1 small red onion finely chopped

1 chipolata sausage or equivalent in sausagemeat

½ teaspoon herbes de Provence

Butter, coconut or your chosen oil

Salt and freshly ground pepper

METHOD

Rinse and dry the tomatoes.

Slice off the top of each to make a lid and set these to one side.

Using a teaspoon, carefully remove the inside of each tomato.

Sauté the red onion until it begins to soften. Add the chopped interior of the tomato and let this simmer briskly until it loses most of its liquid. 

Split the skins of the sausage  and add the meat  to the pan and cook these until the sausagemeat has browned and the sauce has thickened.

Add the herbs and mix well.

Using a teaspoon stuff each tomato with the filling and place on a buttered tray.

Put a 'lid' onto each tomato.

Place in the oven for 10 minutes or until the cherry tomatoes are cooked.

Allow them to cool slightly if you are taking them straight to the table. Tomatoes hold their heat too well!

Enjoy!

All that needs to be said now is Bon Appėtit!

Hope to see you here again for another recipe from my 100 Gluten-Free Organic Party Foods Challenge!

All the best,

Sue

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©  Sue Cross 2017 

Baked Stuffed Apples with Dried Fruit & Nuts à la Chantilly - Gluten Free

Apples are one of the things we are never short of here in Normandie and as there are many interesting, ancient, festive dishes associated with them, I will be presenting a few for this series. We have an old traditional cider apple orchard and although we grafted some of the  trees with old eating apple varieties, others still have the same ancient small sharper flavoured fruits of yore. However, by leaving our cider apples on the trees, sometime around the end of September and through to the beginning of November these respectively become 'eaters'. Because they are often much smaller than dessert and cooking apples, cider varieties lend themselves very easily to individual appetiser dishes. Furthermore because they still retain a slightly acidic tang, they are eminently suitable to be stuffed with sweetmeats. If you are using dessert apples then alter the sugar accordingly. For an extra festive touch I like to add a dusting of mixed spice or similar.

INGREDIENTS

(makes 20)

10 small apples

For the Stuffing:

I2 prunes
2 figs
4 apricots
10 almonds
20 raisins
20 cranberries
1 small lemon (zest and juice)

1 dessert spoon of rum or similar

1 dessert spoon of raw butter

1 dessert spoon of raw coconut oil

2 dessert spoons of raw cane sugar

For the Chantilly:

100ml or ¼ pint of raw cream

1½ - 2  dessert spoons of  raw cane sugar

TEMPERATURES

Preheat the oven to 190°C or 375°F

METHOD 

Chop the fruit and nuts. Add the sugar, lemon zest and juice and the spirit if you are using it. Set aside for a while to allow the flavours to develop and the fruit to absorb the liquid.

Wash and halve the apples horizontally. Remove the core and pips, turn the halves over and remove the stalk and calyx. Place in a heat-proof dish

Seal the gaps left by the removal of the two latter with a raisin.

Mix the coconut and butter into the stuffing and use a teaspoon to stuff the apple halves.

Pour in 3-4 tablespoons of cold water around the base of the apples. This will stop them drying out before they are cooked through, it will also mean they will part-steam and be juicier but still hold their shape.

Cover the dish with baking parchment and place in the middle of the oven for around 25 minutes.

Whisk the cream and sugar together for the Chantilly. Place the cooked apples on a festive plate and allow to cool slightly before topping each apple half with a teaspoonful of Chantilly and dust with icing sugar and (if liked) mixed, apple pie or similar spice.

Enjoy!

All that needs to be said now is Bon Appėtit!

Hope to see you here again for another recipe from my 100 Gluten-Free Organic Party Foods Challenge!

All the best,

Sue

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©  Sue Cross 2017 
 

Goats' cheese and beetroot stack 'water lillies' gluten-free appetisers

Perhaps one of the most intriguing aspects of Charles de Gaulle's famous declaration concerning the politics of France...

"Comment voulez-vous gouverner un pays où il existe variétés 365 de fromages?"

..is that each time you find it quoted, the number of cheeses seems to have changed. However this is not so strange because France has not just hundreds of different kinds of cheeses but dozens of varied shapes, coatings and stages of maturity and each of those create their own specific cheese. For a maker of appetisers, goats' cheese is a gift because apart from the pyramides, crottes, crottins.., it is also lovingly crafted into, bouchon, bûche and bûchette, all three just waiting to be sliced up and made into canapés.

Here I'm using a bûche, a speciality from the Poitou-Charentes and which comes in a very handy size to make stacks. This is a very quick and easy appetiser to put together. The beauty is in growing small, delicious and perfectly lovely Chioggia aka Candy Cane beetroot, of which I am inordinately proud.

INGREDIENTS

(makes 20)

1 bûche de chèvre
20 slices of cucumber
10 black olives
1 small Chioggia beetroot
1 dessert spoon apple cider vinegar
2 dessert spoons olive oil
½ teaspoon of whole grain mustard

Once again I went to town with my new cutters.

METHOD

Cut the cucumber slices into flowers with the medium sized cutter.

Use the smallest of the star cutters to create  shapes from the sliced beetroot.

Slice the goats' cheese into twenty and place a slice of cucumber onto each.

Alternate with toppings of black olive and Chioggia stars. Mix the oil, vinegar and mustard to form a vinaigrette and add a little of each to the beetroot to resemble stamens.

Serve chilled. These are simple easy and refreshingly delicious and if you've never eaten raw beetroot before you are in for a treat. I always use a mustard vinaigrette with raw beetroot because they compliment each other so well.

Enjoy!

All that needs to be said now is Bon Appėtit!

Hope to see you here again for another recipe from my 100 Gluten-Free Organic Party Foods Challenge!

All the best,
Sue

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©  Sue Cross 2017 

Fresh Figs, Smoked Salmon and Fromage de Brebis Wraps. Gluten-free Appetiser

For a Winter party there is nothing more refreshing than a reminder of Summer; sun-kissed figs, crisp salads, creamy cheese and smoked salmon. In a good year, our fig trees will produce three crops, with the last one slowly ripening in the November sunshine and as long as there is no frost this will continue, hopefully for the whole month. The figs ripen at around half the size of the Summer ones but are juicy and sweet.

For this recipe I'm using two types of figs, one being the last green figs from our own trees (left). The second variety is a black fig, simply known as Noir. 

The cheese is from the Basque country a speciality of that region and has a distinct tanginess, which compliments both the smoked salmon and the fig.

INGREDIENTS

(Makes 20)

5 small to medium black or green figs

60g - 2oz  of Organic Smoked Salmon or wild if you are lucky enough to be able to get it!

100g - 3½oz Fromage de brebis/ewes' milk cheese or similar well-flavoured soft cheese

20 small Batavia leaves or similar crunchy lettuce

One small lemon - Black pepper - Sticks

ASSEMBLY

Lay a sheet of unbleached baking paper onto a flat surface, I'm using a bread board and place a slice of chilled smoke salmon upon it.

Break up the cheese with a fork and gently smooth it over the fish. Season with freshly ground black pepper.

Cut the salmon and cheese into thin strips, wide enough and long enough to encircle the fig.

Cut the figs into quarters.

Slice the lemon thinly and cut each slice into quarters too.

Thread a piece of lemon onto a stick.

Wrap the fig in the slice of brebis covered salmon.

Hold together with the stick and place on a lettuce leaf.

Serve immediately. If you are making this for serving later then keep chilled.

Enjoy!

All that needs to be said now is Bon Appėtit!

Hope to see you here again for another recipe from my 100 Gluten-Free Organic Party Foods Challenge!

All the best,

Sue

MORE THINGS ON STICKS!

Marinated Feta on Sticks - Gluten-free Cocktail Party

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Radish Sail Boats Laden with Ricotta. Gluten-free

The fifteenth recipe in my 100 Gluten-free Party Food Challenge. Contrary perhaps to perceived wisdom, that picnics are a warm weather event, there is nothing quite...read more

60's Cocktail Party Classic:  Cheese, Ham & Pineapple Sticks

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Devils on Horseback

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RETURN TO MAIN CONTENTS PAGE 

RETURN TO 100 GLUTEN-FREE PARTY RECIPES CONTENTS 

©  Sue Cross 2017