The guests enjoyed canapés such as: mini northern wrap with reindeer, apple and horseradish, mini asparagus tartar with truffle hollandaise and bourrache flower, cured salmon with citrus and dill cream cheese, chèvre boulettes, Arancini’s and the the most popular one: foie gras with our homemade apple, chili and cloudberry chutney with fresh strawberry. I absolutely love fresh strawberries with foie gras. It’s the perfect match!

Just finished our busiest MIPIM ever; -6 lunches, 3 cocktail parties, 2 dinner parties and 1 breakfast during 4 days. We’ve been to different Yachts and Villas in Cannes and it has been non stop! But everything went really well, and all hard work and hours makes it all a little bit easier when you get e-mails like this from the yacht broker:

A big well done for all your hard work and superb food!”

And here are a few photos from both yachts we catered for:

For me Valentine’s Day is all about good food, so today I went to buy some fresh scallops and some truffle that I’m preparing for my dinner tonight. (Along with a nice bottle of Pomerol wine)
I had this beautiful truffle hollandaise a while ago when I was out on a restaurant so I decided to make that with my scallops along with some green asparagus and merguez to give the dish a little bit of body. I’m serving my scallops with some wild rice, but you could also serve it without as a starter.

This is what you need:

Fresh scallops
A bunch of asparagus
Merguez sausage

-Boil the asparagus quickly and leave aside. Once they’ve cooled down, take a potato peeler and peel them lengthways. Wrap the scallops with the asparagus. Add some olive oil, salt and pepper and leave aside.

For the truffle hollandaise sauce:

4 egg yolks

1 table-spoon white truffle oil

1 table-spoon white-wine vinegar

1 small onion, cut in 4

1 laurel leaf

150g butter, melted

Salt and pepper

A squeeze of lemon

Here’s how you do it:

1. Put the onion, vinegar and laurel leaf in a pan and leave it to boil. Take it off the heat and remove the onion and laurel.
2. In a pan, add some water and leave it to boil. As soon as it starts boiling, turn off the heat.
3. In a metal bowl, put the egg yolks, truffle oil and white-wine vinegar.
4. Place the metal bowl on top of the pan with water and whisk the eggs.
5. Slowly add the melted butter while whisking. When the sauce is done, add a little squeeze of lemon, salt and pepper and a little bit more truffle oil.

As soon as the hollandaise is done, grill the scallops quickly along with thin sliced merguez and serve with some extra shaved truffle!

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!

To enjoy yesterdays 15 degrees and sunshine to the fullest, we decided to go for lunch in Cannes. We went to the fairly new opened  restaurant “New York” which is situated right on the Croisette, and I have to say I was very impressed.

I wasn’t really expecting that much from our salads that we ordered, but I have to say after nearly 8 years on the Côte D’Azur I have FINALLY find a place that can make a real Ceasar salad with Romain lettuce (and not the crappy cheap lettuce every one esle uses), good quality parmesan, home-made croutons and most importantly REAL Ceasar dressing!

The french have a real problem with this, every time I order a Ceasar salad I end up with a tasteless salad with a vinaigrette, almost like an Anchoïade, but I have to say at this place it was spot on and creamy with just that right amount of anchovy taste, served on the side in a little bowl.

I ordered a Roquefort salad, but changed it a little bit  (as I always tend to do when I’m at a restaurant) by swapping the endives for lettuce, and adding some avocado, bacon and red onion. The best Roquefort salad I’ve ever had is still at The Ivy in Los Angeles, but this wasn’t actually far from it.. I’m definitely coming back for a salad lunch here!

The annual music congress MIDEM took place in Cannes this weekend, and for the second year in a row we had the honour of delivering the canapés for the Nordic Pavillion’s 250 invited guests inside the Palais Festival.

Each Nordic country had their own canapé; Sweden had a mini tarte “Janssons Frestelse” Style (photo above), Norway with a fresh dill and lemon scented crabsalad with bleak roe, Denmark with its classic “Smörrebröd” with liver paté, baby pickles, crunchy bacon and roasted onion and Finland with Souki smoked reindeer wrap with horseradish, apple and lingonberry.

More than 2000 canapés, and it was all gone in a flash!

This is what you need; (one lasagna for 4 persons)

400 g of minced beef
200 g of sliced pancetta
5 aubergines
2 yellow onions
1 celery branch
1 carrot
2 big garlic cloves
2 jars of good quality crushed cherry tomatoes
A touch of curry
2 table spoons of honey
1 laurel leaf
A handful of rocket lettuce
Baby bufala mozzarella
Sea salt and a very generous amount of crushed white pepper

Here’s how you do it;

1. Start with slicing the aubergine with a mandolin. (Or by hand if you don’t have one) On a tray, put some baking paper, then the sliced aubergines and salt them and let them rest. Salting, also known as “purging” takes out juices that carry bitter flavors and at the same time extract any excess liquid letting the aubergine keep it’s nice texture. After a few minutes you can see the produced liquid on the aubergines. Wipe the liquid off and then drizzle some olive oil, add salt and pepper and then roast them in the oven at 170 degrees for about 5 min. Take the tray out and leave aside.

2. Chop the onion, garlic, celery and carrot finely.
3. In a large pan, fry the ingredients above in a good amount of olive oil. After a few minutes add the curry and some salt and white pepper. Leave aside.
4. Fry the minced beef and pancetta on high heat so it gets a nice colour.

5. When the beef and pancetta is browned, add the fried vegetables and pour the two jars of crushed cherry tomatoes, the laurel leaf, the honey and let it simmer on low heat for about an hour. Taste it and add salt and white crushed pepper. I love a prominent white pepper flavour in italian tomato dishes as it gives it a nice heat, so I use loads!

6. In a dish, add one layer of sauce, then one layer of aubergine. Sprinkle some baby mozzarella, and then layer with the sauce and aubergine and mozarella again. You should at least get 3 layers.

7. Bake in the oven for about 30 min on 170 degrees. Add some extra baby mozarellas and rocket lettuce on the top. Buon appetito!

Just came back from two weeks in Sweden where I spent a very nice and white Christmas.

On Christmas day I made my stuffed turkey that I also made here in France for my pre-Christmas dinner with my French family . The secret is the succulent stuffing and the fact that you let the turkey rest afterwards. That way you don’t get that dry boring white meat, but an extremely tender and  juicy one.

Here’s the recipe: (for 6 persons)

1 Turkey (3kg)

Stuffing:

400g bacon (diced)

2 apples

2 red onions

A touch of curry

1 table-spoon of brown sugar

1 table-spoon of chili paste

3 celery sticks

10 garlic cloves

4 thick slices of Brioche

A handful of dates

1 bouquet of resh rosemary

Sea salt and crushed black pepper

6 yellow onions for the roasting

Here’s how you do it:

1.Take the turkey out of the fridge approximately an hour before you’re suppose to put it in the oven so it gets to room temperature.

2.In the meantime chop all the ingredients for the stuffing in quite chunky bits.

3.Pour a generous amount of good quality olive oil in a frying pan and fry the chopped onions along with the garlic cloves (with the skin) and bacon. When browned, add a touch of curry, a table spoon of chili paste and then the brown sugar and let it caramelize. After caramelization, add the chopped celery and apple. You really just want to give the celery and apple a quick coating as it’s so nice when they’re still a little bit crunchy when the turkey is done.

4.Add the mixture in a bowl and add the brioche crumbles, dates and the fresh rosemary. Add sea salt and crushed pepper and mix.

Stuff the turkey with the mixture and then close the turkey with a ribbon, or as I did with the rosemary branches.

5.On a baking tray, spread a layer of sliced yellow onion and put the turkey on top of it. Make sure the bottom of the turkey doesn’t touch the baking tray. Roast in the oven at 170 degrees until the thickest part of the turkey gets to 75 degrees.

6.Take the turkey out, and this is the absolute most important thing for a tender and juicy turkey: Let it rest for at least an hour covered in tin foil before you serve it! I always cover with 2-3 tea towels on top of the tin foil to make sure it stays warm.

Serve with roasted parsnip, carrots and potatoes, steamed brussel sprouts and a lovely rosemary cream sauce with meat juice from the turkey.

Happy Holidays everyone!

This weekend I went for dinner at Maya Bay in Monaco which is situated just by the Meridien Beach Plaza Hôtel.

The restaurant have two different sections -one Japanese and one Thai. We decided to go to the Thai “Red room” which was a nice change since we so often have sushi when we go out for dinner.

We started with a fabulous Champagne Cocktail with lychee and lemon grass while browsing through their menu. Normally I prefer my Champagne just as it is, but these cocktails were so good! -to the point that we reordered them after dinner aswell.

As to their menu..They had so much nice food that you couldn’t make up your mind what to have. I was also highly impressed by their wide wine list where you could find bottles like Petrus, Château Latour, Château Margeaux and some other crazy expensive Pomerols. We went for a bottle of Marlborough, which is one of my absolute favorite white wines that went perfect along with the spicy food.

I started with steamed dumplings with prawns and Thai basil with a little soya dip sauce. LOVED IT! Then I continued with grilled gambas in a spicy yellow curry sauce that I had with fried noodles. All cooked to perfection and just as spicy as I like it!

I have to say, the food really was sensational! Haven’t had this good Thai food since I got it cooked by my Thai chef friend when I was on the yachts.

Last but not least, the service was great! Everyone was extremely friendly and professional! This is a place not to miss while you’re in Monaco!