lamb, chicken and cake

Sounds like a well balanced meal, eh?

They're actually three different meals and those three meals pretty much describe our lives: cook, then eat. With some occasional games/knitting/road trips thrown in.

 Here we have lamb steak (we split one, hence the unnatural shape of the meat) with some more experimental fries. These fries were first blanched in the salt water (I have a recipe written up if anyone is daring enough to try), then we sprayed them with cider vinegar, dried them with a hair dryer then fried them...twice. I know it sounds like a long task but what we're finding is that since the potatoes are already cooked early on, the final fries go extremely fast (think 1-2 minutes per fry) and it actually seems to be much less messy.

I don't know what this looks like but I know what it is: the ever delicious Coq au Vin (or in our case, Coq au Riesling). You really can't see the coq (literal translation = rooster, but we just used chicken), and you really really can't see the rice underneath but it was delicious. And, I have no clue how we made it. It just sort of happened.

And here is my first ever cake (cake) salé (savory, or salted). We had heard of the mythical cake salé in passing from friends who have lived here longer, but what really spurred this concoction was a New York Times article. While you can put any savory flavorings in a cake salé, ours is filled with black and green olives, compté cheese and lardons (bacon bits). It smelled heavenly and I had the hardest time keeping my hands off of it before dinner. Thankfully, it is now safely wrapped in plastic wrap while I have a lump of yummy curry sitting in my stomach taking away the urge to cut a slice. We will only know tomorrow if it is any good (and if so, I will certainly share the recipe) when we embark on another road trip, this time to Lyon and with companions.