I have always been suspicious of restaurant recipes in magazines because experience has taught me that they often miss a key ingredient or an essential step in the preparation. It makes sense, I guess, that chefs would not make their recipes public so as not to feed ammunition to the competition.
Last Christmas, I was given a cookbook titled: “À la table des grands chefs Européens” (loosely translated: “At the table of the great European chefs”) and true to form is it very short on explanations. This is definitely not a beginner’s cook book, yet, I was intrigued by the names and the photos and soon took it as a challenge to succeed in making these dishes.
I have successfully tackled a couple of them so far and even if they are not simple by a long shot, the basic ideas can definitely be used, albeit in a simpler form. For example, yesterday I made chocolate crepes, (easy enough, just add some cocoa to my basic crepe recipe) and stuffed them with chocolate mousse (their recipe was very rich but my basic Toblerone mousse would do fine). The dish called for a green coffee bean flavored sauce (you can infuse the cream in a standard crème anglaise recipe with either green or black coffee beans and it will work fine). Sprinkle some white and dark chocolate shavings over the rolled up (canelloni style) crepes and voilà!