Le Gigot d'Agneau

Yesterday I got a scary text from Copain:

Copain: I'll be your top chef tonight. I'll send you the menu later.

I responded: Haha ok (not to doubt his cooking skills, buuuuut, remember the calamari and spinach hot pocket?)

10 minutes later...

Copain: I'm going to get filets de Dorade and gigot d'agneau for tonight.

Worried that I was going to end up with a surf and turf disaster, I answered: Or maybe just one or the other?

Sure enough, Copain came home from Picard with Dorado filets, a bag of frozen broccoli and a gigantic gigot d'agneau.

Then, in true form, he cooked the fish and the broccoli for dinner (because cooking fish and broccoli isn't rocket science!) and declared me the cooker of the gigot d'agneau. 

Like I've ever cooked a gigot d'agneau.

ps - what the hell is a gigot d'agneau?

At lunch I told my colleagues that I would be cooking a gigantic gigot tonight - Copain's idea. One of them jokingly asked me if it would fit in my oven.  I laughed and told him of course it would, but what I didn't think about was the Pyrex dish:

This is one enormous gigot. I had to put the dish on a cookie sheet to catch any fat that may drip off the end. I obviously have no idea what I'm doing.

I decided to bust out the cookbook from Belle Mère to help me in my gigot feat. I had most of the ingredients, so I went with this option:

The gigantic gigot is now in the oven and Copain and I are noshing on olives while the darn thing cooks - for over an HOUR.  

This is so not a weekday dinner. 

Stay tuned - in an hour I'll put this thing out of the oven and cross my fingers that it's edible.

Stella the Steamer

Copain is generally on a tirade.  First is was the "saving electricity by never heating the house" tirade, then it was the "don't put your cell phone near your head or you could get cancer" tirade, now it's the "let's steam our food because it's better for our health" tirade.

Confession: All of his tirade-ing makes me... tired.

It all started so innocently.  He was looking on the C-discount website, searching for a new bag-less vacuum.  Then I started receiving emails like this:

From: Copain
To: FCC

Hey babe, check out this link! Wouldn't this be so cool?!

When I didn't respond, I started getting text messages:

From: Copain
To: FCC

Did you check your email?

Then one day, I came home and there was a box on the floor. Copain opened the box, put our coffee-maker in the cabinet to make room on the kitchen counter, and with a grin on his face, unloaded the contents of the box.

This is Stella the Steamer - we are not friends:

Copain has declared that he will now be cooking for the household (apparently my cooking is too fatty and unhealthy, you know, because of the olive oil). He went straight to Picard and purchased salmon and veggies.  He also went to the marché and bought three heads of broccoli (a first I believe).  Then he asked me to help him cook dinner (did I miss something?).

He took special pains to show me how much water to put in Stella. Then he proudly displayed the fat trap and demonstrated how it works.  Then he asked me to cut the broccoli.

Yesterday we had salmon, broccoli and rice.  Today we had some kind of white fish, peas and carrots and broccoli.  I insisted we make some soup because I couldn't take the repetition of fish and mushy vegetables. I also announced that I would be making dinner and that we would be having pizza.

Stella - I am the woman of the house! Just remember that...

Copain the Cook

This week was my birthday week and in honor of my impending 29 years Copain decided that he would make a special dinner for me each night of the week.  He even created some suspense and anticipation by sending me texts of his fine dining creations while I was still at work...

With this enlarged photo you may be asking yourself what the hell is that? - but truth be told, with my tiny Iphone screen, I didn't know to worry.

Copain rolled up the mysterious stuffing to create a French version of the Hot Pocket.

He was very proud of his knowledge to add an egg yolk to the outside of the Hot Pocket to create a golden brown exterior - unfortunately,  he didn't realize that it needed to cook for over 40 minutes to attain that quality. He may also have missed the memo about brushing on the yolk.

At any rate, when I got home I was very touched by his effort to cook me something unique and somewhat complicated - only when I dug in my fork (after we cooked it for another 20 minutes that is), this is what I found:

Yes mes amis, that is calamari (mini squid) from Picard (French frozen food store) on a bed of spinach from a can wrapped in a pre-made crust.  No spices, no sauce -  just calamari, spinach and crust.

Even Belle-Mère was appalled (she asked him where on earth he got the recipe) which made me feel less guilty when I started taking photos of the "creation" for my blog.  Copain got slightly irate at the thought of me making fun of his calamari Hot Pocket on French Cannes Cannes (some yelling and angry dish washing followed) but eventually realized that perhaps it wasn't the best combination.

It still kind of baffles that the very next day I came home to a bowl of frozen muscles on the counter and some broccoli cooking on the stove...

Bon appetit?