Mustard Batons - FFWD

This week's FFWD is a very simple recipe, Mustard Batons. A nice change from cheesy hors d'eouvres and they are very tasty. Made with just puff pastry, mustard, and an egg, the ingredients are always on hand. The batons would look more interesting with a sprinkling of poppy seeds but my husband doesn't like them so I didn't use them. Another winner from Around My French Table!

Chocolate Eclairs - FFWD

Eclairs are one of my favorite desserts and these for FFWD are very good! We didn't fuss over the way they looked...we just made 'em and ate 'em. I opted for chocolate ganache icing instead of the white glaze. The recipe says to use 3/4 pound of chocolate which is way too much so I decided to go with 3/4 cup of cream per the recipe and add chocolate until it seemed right. I used about 1/4 pound of chocolate and that made a lot of ganache...more than I needed for the eclairs, however, my husband went heavy on the ganache...about three times more than I like :)

In the Cream Puff dough, I substituted 1/8 cup of sprouted whole spelt flour for 1/8 cup of all-purpose flour; not a lot but it added some nutrition and it worked fine. I also changed the baking time & temperature...I baked the puffs for 10 minutes at 425º, then 10 minutes (maybe 15?) at 375º, then turned oven off and left the puffs in for 10 minutes after making a small venting stab in each puff with a paring knife.

Garlicky Crumb-coated Broccoli - FFWD

FFWD for this week - and it was the best broccoli I’ve ever eaten! Broccoli is our default vegetable so we eat a lot of it...mostly plain but sometimes with a sprinkle of lemon juice - it gets boring. I am very glad to now have a new way of serving it! Even though I love mint and parsley, I didn’t use either of them. I just thought they may not be needed and the rest of the ingredients were simply great together: garlic, lemon, butter, salt, and bread crumbs (from a fresh loaf of French bread - made with 1/3 sprouted whole wheat flour :)).

In a burst of uncreativity, we had this with even more garlic and lemon on the chicken (Chicken Thighs Baked with Sage, Rosemary, & Thyme from Bill Devin, Fine Cooking Magazine #46).