Bread Pudding

At my in laws, there was always a stack of stale bread in the kitchen cabinet.  I know that my Father in law was a "gatherer", but old stale bread?  so I asked them and they said they will make pudding with it.  That made me wonder even more.  Coming from Canada, pudding is a milk based dessert, with a texture of custard, but with bread?  They insisted it was a British recipe.  This left me perplexed.  There are similitudes with the recipes but the French version is not steamed.

From where I'm from, we never used old bread, they would turn moldy.  Our bread is full of preservatives and it won't dry.  In France, they keep their stale bread, especially the ones from the bakery, an institution here.  Their bread from the bakery is a little bit more expensive than the ones from the store.  So maybe they have more scruples to throw it away.

I have seen bread puddings recipes in Canada, but they never looked very tempting.  The chunks of breads aren't really appealing.

So here's the French bread pudding, made with left over baguettes or stale bread.
I have soaked the bread in milk for an hour or two. With a spatula, mash the bread until it has no more chunks. Don't put too much milk, or else the pudding will take forever to cook.  I added 3 mashed bananas (optional). I used 3 large eggs, sugar, chocolate, dry prunes and dry apricots.  2 table spoons of rhum or any other liquor you like.
Cook in an oven for 45 min at 200°C.  This goes well with "crème anglaise" (egg custard) or ice cream.

Another nice way to recycle.

Asian Feast

Since I live in France, I do less and less asian cooking.  I get frustated for not finding all the ingredients I want.  I live more than 45 min away from Lille, and that is pretty much the only place I can purchase asian products.  Also, asian cooking takes a lot of time.  Chop chop chop, mix mix grind grind grind...My mom usually cooks meals 1 hour ahead.  My French MIL, would take less than 15 minutes to make a savory meal.  I would even get stressed out for her, for not starting making dinner at 6:45pm.  So from then on, I've decided not to spend so much time cooking.

Yesterday I was in Lille, so I got my ingredients to make an Asian feast! lol

I just made fried dumplings.

For my filling, I just put whatever vegetables I have on hands: shitake mushrooms, cabbage, leeks, shallots and onions.  

Then I chopped all the vegetables in the mixer.  I have cooked the vegetables and let it cool first before adding 500g of ground beef.  I made the dumplings with some store bought sheets.

When you are done with all the wrapping, you fry them.

I like some vegetables to go with the dumplings.  I boiled some bokchoys.

There you go, the finished result.  We had sake to wash them down.

I also made dessert: this is tapioca pudding with bananas.  Ingredients: tapioca pearls, one can of coconut milk, sugar to taste and 3 bananas.

Have a nice Sunday.

If you want a more authentic dumpling recipe, here's a link to one of my favorite food goddess:

http://userealbutter.com/2007/10/04/chinese-dumplings-and-potstickers-recipe/