Cepes and Citron dishes from My French kitchen

Rarely does French husband venture into my kitchen when I am at work, but this morning we are standing side by side by the hotplates making French dishes.

At the big element he is sauté-ing cepe mushrooms we gathered yesterday in the Kuitpo Forest and I am stirring the lemon mixture for Tarte au Citron on the back element.

Harmony in my French Kitchen? Yes! And we are having fun together as the two flavours waft up the exhaust fan – the unique cepe aroma, so loved by the French and the sweet lemon scent, so familiar to me from my mother’s kitchen.

His project is breakfast and he will be using some of the 2kgs of mushrooms we gathered yesterday afternoon in the May sunshine on Fleurieu Peninsula, SA.

In France they are known as Cèpes and he is making Omelette aux Cèpes using a recipe he found on the internet early this morning.

Last night, he cleaned the cèpes and chopped them up this morning, while I squeezed four lemons for 100mls of lemon juice to make Tartes au Citron for my nephew Jason’s engagement party tonight.

They will be petite tartes using pastries made by a French chef in Hong Kong and imported to South Australia by Ferguson Australia. The product is La Rose Noire, small vanilla rounds. We had a big box of them stored from the house slab party we intended to hold, but which was shelved when we discovered Olivier had cancer.

The lemon custard is now cooling and I will spoon it into the pastry rounds tonight at my sister’s place and put a dollop of Dairy Whip on the top of each one. The best part of our culinary exercise is that both dishes cost exactly $4. The mushrooms were free and we stopped at a roadside stall on Bull Creek Road, Ashbourne and bought the 10 lemons at 20 cents each and a dozen small eggs for $2. C’est tout!

Tarte Au Citron

Ingredients:

200 g sugar; 4 eggs; 100mls lemon juice; 140g butter (real butter).

Method:

Beat 100g of the sugar with the eggs until really light and fluffy. In a saucepan melt together the remaining sugar, the lemon juice and the butter and stir to blend. Remove from the heat when melted.

Add fluffy beaten sugar and egg mix. Mix together and cook gently over a very low heat, stirring all the time until the mixture thickens and coats the spoon. Don’t boil.

Omelette aux Cepes .

Ingredients- serves two:

3 large or 4 small eggs; ¼ cup of chicken stock; 150 gr cepes or Swiss brown mushrooms; 1 clove garlic; Salt and pepper to taste and some parsley to garnish.

Method:

Crush garlic in a little oil and simmer. Add dollop of butter. Saute mushrooms until soft. Season to taste. Beat eggs and chicken stock until light and creamy. Pour egg mix into well oiled frypan and cook gently until bubbles appear and sprinkle mushrooms over and cover with lid of alfoil until almost set and then flip one side of the omelette over the other. Cook 1 more minute or to your liking.

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