- Hi guys, welcome back to my channel.
So today I thought it would be fun
to go to this new store that just opened up here
in Saint Gilles Croix de vie.
It's called the Design de la Table
and it sells all kinds of fabulous dishware.
I'm on the hunt for a few remaining pieces for the house.
And then I wanted to take you back to my kitchen
to show you how to make a wonderful summer side dish
called a tian with one of the pieces I bought.
All right, so let's head inside.
Wow, this looks amazing.
Look at all this great dishware.
(playful music)
Wow, these are, look at this.
Oh, I love these mugs.
Isn't that great?
Love how this is all set up
with all these beautiful dishes and bins.
Whenever I come to a store like this
where there are so many beautiful options
that it's easy to get overwhelmed,
I usually just take it all in by doing a full spin
of the place, just to see what is there,
and then I go back to the things that have caught my eye.
That way I find it's a lot more digestible.
So look at these serving platters.
I love these, these are awesome.
I could see putting a big, beautiful platter
of some kind of grilled meats on this.
These are beautiful, and these are all handmade.
Aren't those fabulous?
These are so great, I think I need to get two of these.
I think I'm gonna need a cart. (laughs)
These are great, few of these cereal bowls,
which a lot of my French relatives
use as tea and coffee bowls.
These are beautiful.
Let's see, those are great.
The same style in a mixing bowl.
Ooh, I wish I had room for this.
Wow, and I was amazed to see that these bowls
came in just about every color under the rainbow.
These are really great,
great for your tarts and your quiches.
See, this is the beautiful red one over here.
I love the size of these.
This is like a fantastic size for entertaining.
Beautiful salad bowl.
I kind of need a salad bowl
since I just keep using that big la mode one,
which is a little fragile for everyday salad.
So maybe something like this would be good.
Wow, look at this, this beautiful rolling pen.
It's actually very lightweight.
I would think it would be a lot heavier, but wow.
Isn't that beautiful?
Beautiful.
Look at this, beautiful little batter pitcher.
It's so lightweight too.
This is beautiful.
I'm wondering what else I could use this for?
I don't make many pancakes in France.
Love these.
These are beautiful dishes.
I wish I hadn't bought all of my Ikea pieces
when we moved in
because this would've been the place to come
but it wasn't open last year.
Look at that, isn't that gorgeous?
That would be a really pretty set.
This is beautiful for fruit or berries.
If you were serving a big bowl of cherries
and you wanted to kind of rinse them out, that's pretty.
These would make great salad bowls too.
Look at this.
This is awesome.
This would be great to have two of these.
These are great.
For 14 euros, that's a good deal, right?
This is a beauty for a quiche, that's lovely.
Or if I'm really homesick
and I feel like I need to make an American style pie.
(laughs) I could do that too.
Now another thing that you could use this for
is for what they call in France, a summer vegetable tian
which is those little sliced vegetables
that you see beautifully displayed,
it's usually made with zucchini, tomatoes,
all these summer vegetables
that you then put herbs on and shape.
So I kind of feel like I'd love to get two of these.
I always have to buy serving pieces in groups of two
because we could typically be anywhere
from eight to 16 people at the table.
So if we're 16, this isn't gonna do the trick.
So I think I need two.
Oh, I love this.
Look at how pretty this is.
What a gorgeous bowl.
I wonder if these could be good just
for some like, appetizer bowls.
I think these are pretty.
Oh, and look at this, look at the coloration on that.
That is really sunny.
This is the type of situation
where you can get so overwhelmed
'cause there's so many great choices.
And I just have to really be mindful
that I don't have a lot of space left in the house
for dishware, just for a few key pieces. (laughs)
So this might be part of that.
I love these.
These are in all my colors, see?
Gray and the earth tones.
I wonder if I have enough room for it all.
On the other side of the store,
I found these really beautiful covered casserole.
Wow, look at this.
This is really cute.
This is just a really cute little covered casserole.
This might be fun for a little stew of some kind
or maybe even rice.
If you're serving rice and you needed something covered,
this could be a great one.
That's beautiful for my tomate basilic
when I make that in the summertime.
I was curious what the ones with the little holes were for.
(women speaking French)
I learned that these casseroles had the ability
to go in the oven and that the holes in them
were to allow the steam to escape.
This would be great for something like a braised chicken
or something that you wanted to simmer for a long time
and needed the steam to escape.
This piece here is very interesting.
And I was wondering what are these lines
that are on the dishes?
And Karina is gonna explain exactly what they are.
(Karina speaking French)
She says that basically you can put some brochettes here.
So you could have like a Coquilles St. Jacques
or you could do some meat
and that would then allow you to have
a place for vegetables or maybe some potatoes.
But there's another usage for this that's very.
The other usage is for the very trendy Cafe Gourmand,
which is when you serve a little cup of coffee
with an assortment of sweets, usually just a bite size.
And if you wanna learn how to make a Cafe Gourmand at home,
I actually have a video on my channel that will show you how
and I will link to it below.
Merci, Karina. (laughs)
Okay, so this is a very local piece of pottery here.
This would be used for your oysters.
So you could put your oysters here
and then put your sauce in the center.
Or you could also use this for Langoustines
where you would serve all the Langoustines here
and then put the mayonnaise in the center.
This, I feel like I need to get for my husband
because he loves Langoustines
and we don't have anything really great like this
to serve them in.
So this might be a fun one.
In the cart they're gonna go.
(playful music)
Now, this is really cute.
I was thinking this could be good
just on our little entry hall table.
I just love the detail of it.
I thought it could be cute just to throw some keys in
just in our front entry.
I'm very happy with my purchases
but I think this is literally all I have room for right now.
So we are going to stop while we are ahead.
When I got up to the register
I was in for a very pleasant surprise.
So apparently everything in the store is 50% off.
So the prices that you see and the prices that I gave you
in the video, it's 50% off of that.
So that made everything even more of a bargain.
Apparently there's a sign right when you walk in
that tells you so, but I was so consumed
by looking at all of the wonderful selection,
I didn't stop to see the sign.
So everything was just that much more of a bargain.
Now let's head back to the kitchen
and I'm gonna show you how to make that really
delicious summer side dish known as a tian.
When I was at the store, I picked up
one of these beautiful, shallow circular dishes
that have the beautiful fluted edges.
Now you can make a quiche in one of these,
but something I like to make with this this time of year
is a tian.
Now a tian is very similar
to a ratatouille in that they both use eggplant,
zucchini and tomatoes, thyme, garlic, olive oil.
But a ratatouille is typically made on the stovetop
where a tian is typically roasted
with decorative vegetables that we are going to cut
with the help of a mandoline.
Now, if you're in the market for a mandoline,
I probably wouldn't recommend a plastic one.
In fact, the one that I have in LA is great.
I love it.
It's made by OXO.
I'll link to it below, it's in my Amazon shop.
That is the best mandoline.
This one will get the job done, but it's a little shaky
which makes me a little bit nervous, but that's okay.
I don't use it that often here.
But I am gonna use it for this.
For this recipe we are gonna be using zucchini
about this size.
Now, the thing that you wanna know is you wanna make sure
that all your vegetables are roughly the same width.
So we have zucchini.
We also have these beautiful eggplant
that I've seen here in France.
I haven't seen these two much in the states.
They're called graffiti eggplant.
I guess, 'cause they look like they have kind of like
little graffiti on it.
But see how they're roughly the same size?
And the tomato there.
So you want these long slender tomatoes.
This is actually called the Torino tomato,
but you could also use a Roma tomato too.
All right, these are our vegetables.
We also have some garlic here that we're gonna use
and some fresh thyme.
So I was getting really frustrated because I was going
to the market and buying fresh herbs every day
only for them to die in my refrigerator three days later.
So I saw in France that they were selling
a lot of these little pots of herbs
and I thought I would just create my own portable potager.
So I basically put this in an old oyster bin.
And that way I can move it around my yard
wherever the sun is, water them every day,
and bring it into the kitchen when it was time to cook.
So I'm gonna be using this beautiful fresh thyme
that is in my little traveling potager.
The first thing you wanna do is cut all the vegetables.
That way when we go to assemble it,
we'll have all the parts we need.
So this is probably the most tedious part
but it also can be the most fun part.
So I think when working with a mandoline it's best
if you can cut your vegetables down a little bit.
They're a little bit easier to work with.
And this style of mandoline,
I typically start like this first.
But do not go too far handholding it
because lo and behold you will cut yourself so quickly
because it cuts so quickly.
See you don't actually realize it
but this little piece gets shorter and shorter.
So once it gets to be about like this
then I put the guard on.
I just find it's a little unruly
if it's too tall with the guard.
So see now I've got my guard on
and now I'm just gonna finish cutting them.
You can totally cut all of these by hand.
I just find that they'll cook a bit more evenly
if they're really exactly the same size.
And there's no other way to get that type of precision
than with a mandoline.
So that's why I do it.
It's also kind of a good idea
to start to arrange the slices by size
because once we start to escargot around
you'll see the center actually
requires a little bit smaller size vegetable
and that way we'll already have it all separated.
Just a little tip.
Now this would be a beautiful dish to serve
with roast chicken.
Sometimes we serve it with some merguez.
It's just a really great vegetable side dish
that goes oven to table and it looks so beautiful too.
Then for the eggplant, we're gonna do the same thing.
Just cut in in half, away you go.
And remember to use the guard for the last bit.
If you have ever cut yourself with a mandoline
you will never forget to use the guard again.
Now for the tomatoes,
I find they're better to actually cut by hand.
They get a little mushy in the mandoline.
So we are just going to cut them
about 1/8 of an inch thick.
We don't have too many to do so this shouldn't be too bad.
Now another thing you wanna have prepped ahead of time
is the garlic.
So I'm gonna use three cloves of garlic.
We're gonna use this garlic in our vegetable assembly,
just little slices of it in between the vegetables.
I find that when garlic is sliced like this,
it just has more of a sweeter flavor.
It won't be too overpowering and too garlicy.
I love garlic so I'm gonna use three,
but if you're not a fan you can pull that back to two.
Then what you wanna do is just slice thin slices
of the garlic like that.
And as it roasts
it is going to create even more flavor to our veggies.
Then another thing we're gonna do
is add some sliced shallots.
So I actually like to add a bed of tomato puree to my tian
which would not be very traditional probably
but I do it only because I think
that sometimes the eggplant can be a little bit dry
and then the zucchini and tomatoes get a little bit watery.
So I find that it needs
like a base of just this tomato puree
just to make the whole thing a little bit more interesting.
And then I'm gonna add the shallots
to that tomato puree just to sweeten it up a bit
and give it a little bit of a texture.
Okay, we have all of our components.
We are ready to assemble our gorgeous tian.
Here we go.
So I'm gonna be using two containers of tomato puree
so it's about 400 grams.
And I'll put this recipe in my description
so you also can have it there.
There we go.
And you can just level it out with a spoon.
We are then gonna add our shallots as a layer.
And those shallots are just going to simmer
in that sauce because this dish needs to cook
for at least an hour, hour 15 minutes.
So it will sweeten up that tomato sauce.
It will sweeten up the shallot.
And then I also like to add a little bit of herbs provence
just to pay tribute to its region.
There we go.
Just, if you don't have herbs provence
you could just use some dried basil, some dried thyme,
little bit of dried parsley
and you'll basically get close enough.
A little bit of salt and pepper.
Here comes the assembly.
We're gonna take a piece of eggplant, a piece of zucchini
a slice of tomato, and then one little slice of garlic.
And you can hold that together.
And it's just a little bit wobbly in the beginning here
but once you get going, it will begin to hold itself.
So just kind of pinch it in between your two fingers
like I'm doing here
until it's steady and it can start to stand on its own.
I like to put the garlic against the tomato,
that way the juices from the tomato
start to simmer with the garlic.
And then just keep going.
And I think it's easier to turn the platter
as you need more room, as opposed
to just kind of reaching.
This does take some time
but none of it's hard and it's actually pretty meditative.
But the oohs and the ahs that you get when you bring this
to the table make it all worth it.
The biggest tip as you go through is just to make sure
that those vegetables are really nice and snug and packed in
because they do have a tendency of shrinking a bit
once you bake them.
Then when you get to the very end here
you just wanna squeeze in as much as you can.
So I've got two eggplants back to back.
So I'm gonna squeeze in another zucchini,
another little piece of tomato.
Let's see, I might even be able to get one more eggplant,
one more zucchini, and maybe a very thin tomato.
You just wanna push it as much as you can.
You always have room for one more.
Now, all we have left to do is the center.
You may not be able to really snake all the way around.
I find that escargot pattern is harder to do
the smaller the area you have.
So you can try it.
And depending
on how small your vegetables are, you may succeed.
But I find the better thing to do is take it as far
as you can go and then pivot.
See that little pivot?
So I did a line here and then now I'm going straight here
and then I'll do another straight and straight
and just keep filling it in.
So I'm doing all kinds of funky patterns in the center here
but as long as you keep the same pattern
and you just keep wedging it in.
And when in doubt, just add more tomatoes
because the tomatoes are the smallest
and they really can just sort of slide in anywhere.
Yeah, thank you.
Little assistant.
That looks pretty snug.
We're going to add just a little drizzle
of olive oil on top.
I would say maybe two tablespoons, there we go.
Then we wanna season our vegetables with a little salt
and some freshly cracked pepper.
Then I have my beautiful thyme here.
Now because it's pretty early in the season
these stems are pretty young and they're pretty pliable.
So I would probably just cut this whole thing, stems and all
just 'cause it's easier
than having to take off each little leaf.
But if your time is getting kind of woodsy
if you're making this in the fall
you probably don't wanna do that.
So the choice is yours.
But because we spent so much time (laughs)
on our arranging of our vegetables, I am just
gonna cut this stems and all because they're so pliable
that no one's gonna be picking them outta their teeth.
There, we are just going to put that all over the top.
Okay, and there we go.
This gorgeous little specimen is ready for the oven.
We are gonna put this in the oven at 200 degrees Celsius,
400 degrees Fahrenheit, for about one hour, an hour 15,
just until the vegetables
are nice and tender and caramelized.
Okay, so it's been about an hour and 15 minutes.
Let's check to see if it's ready.
This looks pretty good.
You see, all of these vegetables
are beautifully cooked down and caramelized
and that tomato sauce has also simmered down.
Now this would be delicious serve just as is,
but if you wanted to add one more summer flavor
I highly recommend adding a little bit of pesto sauce.
You could make your own
or you could use your favorite jarred sauce,
but most jarred sauces are a little bit too thick
and we want more of like a pesto drizzle.
So in that case, I would just add a little bit of olive oil.
Usually I do this when I'm towards the end of my pesto jar
or you could just put it in a bowl.
And then take a fork and whisk it up.
And then just drizzle the pesto on your tian like so
and that will give you another delicious summer flavor.
And what's great about it, it also has the cheese in it.
So if you don't have pesto sauce
I have also seen recipes
just with a little bit of grated Parmesan cheese.
You can do that too.
Now, if you see this dish
at your local dish store, you'll have one recipe
you know how to make it in.
All right, you guys, I'll see you back here next time
for another French adventure.
Until then, bye.