Menu Françias

For a long time already we've had in our minds to accomplish a French dinner. Since we already started our nationality themes with Lithuanian cuisine, this fit perfectly in the series. We wanted to make it as authentic as possible, and so we sought after fresh and natural ingredients. Our menu for the evening was special in another way also; it was fully vegetarian. I personally have huge respect for people who are able to give up meat completely, and so the feeling of loading the cashier's desk at the store with fresh and organic plants and vegetables was quite extraordinary.

So now to get to the point, we started with a cliché, but something that still works every time, namely, baguette served with white cheese and dark grapes. That's just something impossible to get bored of! And this time we had chosen organic brie as the cheese to go, as we got started with the green spirit anyways.

The main course for our French evening was nothing less traditional than quiche, served with tomatoes and crunchy salad leaves. Nothing more complicated.

The recipe for the pie crust can be found from this link. At least for the pie mold we used the amount of dough was not quite enough, so we recommend you to increase the amounts a little bit.

So we made a so-called Rainbow quiche. The filling was composed of the following:
- an onion
- a red paprika
- a small broccoli (some of it was saved for the breakfast to be put between an omelet, because it seemed there would be so much of the filling and we feared it wouldn't fit in the crust)
- mushrooms (We had some of our self-picked mushrooms from last autumn in the freezer. Even if champignons would've been more traditional, we decided to use our own. I am not quite sure about the name in English, but at least Wikipedia called it Yellowfoot. Fits very well)
- 3-4 eggs
- 200g cream cheese
- around a cup of milk
- fresh herbs, such as basilica, sage, or parsley
- salt
- pepper

What you do, is basically just mix the vegetables and the spices together and put in the raw pie crust, after which you mix eggs, cheese and milk together in a bowl and pour over the vegetables. Bake in 200 C for 45-55 minutes. Now, don't do the same mistake as we did, but let the pie rest when it comes from the oven. The juices will absorb and it won't be that watery if you wait for a while before eating it.


As the dessert we made a French pastry called Mille-feuille (which means the thousand leaves), also known as the Napoleon. It takes some effort to make it, though it's quite worth it if it succeeds. Our's didn't turn out as pretty as it could've; the topping was too watery and the fillings didn't want to stay inside it. The recipe for the dessert can be found here. This time we didn't do any modifications in it really, apart from making it in a smaller scale, and added some raspberry jam inside it with the filling.

 Posted by K.