Renee and Tarragon

I am so blessed with the most amazing friends. Despite the fact that I can be terrible at keeping in touch, I still manage to keep so many great people in my life.

One of the friends I count myself so lucky to have in my life is Renee. She is a little bit crazy and one of the kindest people I know. Soon after the birth of the twins, she just showed up at my house one day with lunch and then left.... that's the kind of things she does for people. She is so busy herself, being a single Mum and having a million things on her plate but yet she is always available.

For my birthday she bought me this cookbook:

I have been craving the subtle aniseed flavour of tarragon for a few weeks and so used the Tarragon Cream recipe in this new book. Tarragon is one of the four main herbs used in French cooking. It is hard to grow so sometimes it can be difficult to find in the shops compared to other herbs. It is hard to grow so sometimes it can be difficult to find in the shops compared to other herbs. To store tarragon, the best thing to do is wrap its delicate leaves in a damp paper towel and store in a sealed plastic bag or container for about a week.

Tarragon is really good with chicken and fish. I love tarragon cream sauce with chicken so I roasted a beautiful free range chicken and served it with the sauce. Carrying on with the French themed dinner I accompanied the chicken with beautiful vegetables.

I love dutch carrots. They are small and so much sweeter than "regular" carrots. They also look so dainty on a plate. The trick to cooking these, is to blanch them in water, then use a chux to rub off the outer layer. You can then simply fry them in nutty butter. One of my favourite recipes for dutch carrots can be found in Maggie Beer's "Maggie's Kitchen." She uses verjuice (of course) currants, pine nuts and goat's cheese. It is soooo yummy!! You can find the recipe here: http://www.maggiebeer.com.au/recipes/carrots-in-verjuice

I think I hated brussel sprouts till I was almost 30 year old! As a child we ate them boiled till almost all flavour was gone then smothered in white sauce... gross! (sorry Mum). I think it was Neil Perry who suggested the way I cook them and I actually love them now! I parboil them for about 3 minutes then fry them in onion, butter and pancetta (or bacon if that's what I have in the house.) Yumm!