FFWD: Leeks Vinaigrette with Mimosa (and a few others)

I wasn't particularly excited about this week's French Fridays with Dorie recipe: Leeks Vinaigrette with Mimosa. Absolutely nothing about boiling leeks, tossing them with a mustard vinaigrette, and then shredding a boiled egg on top appeals to me.

No surprise here, but I hated this. In general, I'm not a huge mustard fan, and I've found that I strongly dislike all of Dorie's mustard-centric recipes that I've tried, with the exception of the batons and the chicken a la diable.

I took one bite, then scraped the remainder off my plate and back into the serving bowl, for fear that it touch the rest of my dinner.

Matt said it wasn't as terrible as I'd set him up for, but neither he nor my mom had anything good to say about it.

I have, however, been stepping up my make-up game.

With the leeks, I served Muenster Cheese Souffle. Okay, so I substituted muenster with emmenthaler, and doubled the amounts, because I only have a big souffle pan. When it comes down to it, I'm pretty sure that these substitutions mean that I actually made the basic cheese souffle again, but since I added cumin (per the MCS) instead of nutmeg (per the BCS), I'm calling it as a new recipe.

I've been disappointed by souffles in the past, but this time, it came out totally delicious. Score!

Mussels are locally farmed in the lake I see from my house. The lake is man-made, but the men who made it were ancient Romans, and they're the ones who started farming mussels there.

 Matt and I stopped and picked up 2 kilos of mussels the other day, came home, and made Dorie's recipe for Moules Mariniere. Technically, Matt made it, because by the time I finished helping him debeard and clean all those mussels, I was cranky and didn't want to do kitchen stuff anymore. Debearding mussels is awful. As such, I have no input regarding the preparation of this dish, but the outcome was excellent.

My friends had a get together last week. I brought Sable Breton Galette with Berries. I missed it last year, and have been waiting for strawberries to be in season so I could make it properly. Instead of lemon curd, I subbed a tangerine curd that I'd made during the winter. This was SO good, but the crust did get soft pretty quickly. Not sure if it was from the toppings or from the humid air.

Okay, I think that's all I've got for now.