It was Valentine's Day yesterday, and the lovers among you may well be reading this post with a half-eaten box of chocolate truffles by your side.

I was taken aback yesterday when my daughter rang to ask whether the box of truffles she'd sent me had arrived. Having spent years in the Dordogne, I'd half-forgotten the existence of the chocolate variety and thought she'd bought a box of the Perigord's black diamonds.

Cue a few hours of fatherly concern as I tortured myself trying to work out where on earth she'd got the money to buy not one truffle, but an entire box! When the postman did arrive with a box of chocolate truffles, I was relieved, but also mildly disappointed.

At least,  was disappointed before I realised that the chocolates were all handmade.

280g of your favourite chocolate (minimum 70% cocoa solids)
284ml double cream (this is the standard 'large pot' size)
50g unsalted butter

1. Chop or break the chocolate into small pieces and put aside in a medium-sized mixing bowl.
2. Combine the butter and double cream in a heatproof bowl. Put the bowl over a small saucepan with a small amount of water in it - making sure the water does not touch the bottom of the bowl - and melt the butter into the cream over a gentle heat, stirring regularly.
3. When the butter-cream mix is simmering gently, remove it from the heat and pour the mixture over the chopped chocolate, stirring until the chocolate has been melted by the heat of the mix.
4. Chill the mixture for at least 4 hours.
5. Using a standard teaspoon, scoop out the chocolate mix and roll it between your hands to create a ball. This gets quite messy - you can coat your hands with a flavourless oil to stop the chocolate from sticking to you. Pop each ball onto a plate or baking tray covered with a sheet of greaseproof paper and repeat until the mixture is finished.
6. Once shaped, you can cover the truffles in anything you like - desiccated coconut, chopped nuts, edible glitter, sprinkles, etc. - by rolling them in your choice of coating and returning to the sheet of greaseproof paper.
7. Keep the truffles refrigerated; they should keep for up to four days in a sealed container.


[Note]: If you want to flavour your truffles with liqueurs, fruit juices, or the like, add 2tbsps of the liquid of your choice (I recommend Chambord raspberry liqueur and Frangelico hazlenut liqueur, either together or separately) at the end of step 3.

Last month, a neighbour lent me her school cookery book from the 1950s.  It is a wonderful guide to the basics of French cooking, and contains dozens of recipes that should be preserved for posterity.

The book builds on previous recipes, assuming that students will work their way through from start to finish. Flipping through, the recipe for friands caught my eye - it requires a portion of puff pastry (covered earlier in the book), some ham, and a half portion of mornay sauce (also covered in a previous chapter). Later in the book, basic preparations for preserves, tarts, pâtés, and stews all build on the skills learned earlier.

To cook your way through the book, from start to finish, is to get an education in traditional French home cooking. Unfortunately, I won't have access to the book for long enough to copy it out - and translate it - in full. I do, however, have time to present some of the greatest hits in the form of forgotten classics.

The title of this recipe loses something in the translation, I'm afraid. In French it sounds poetic, but in English merely strange.

1 litre of milk
1 tsp bitter almond essence
3 eggs
6 tbsps icing sugar
3 tbsps flour
2 drops of aniseed or liquorice essence
1 tsp orange-flower water

1. In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, bring the milk and almond essence to the boil over a gentle heat.
2. Meanwhile, in a separate bowl, beat together the eggs, sugar, and flour. Once the mixture is free from lumps, add it to the saucepan (provided the milk mixture has come to the boil while you've been mixing, that is), stirring constantly with a wooden spoon.
3. Continue to cook the milk mixture over a gentle heat for 20 minutes, stirring regularly.
4. Add the two remaining flavours and pass the mixture through a fine sieve.
5. Next - and this is where it gets a bit odd - use a flame to sterilise a pair of tweezers. Once they are both sterilised and very hot, dip the points in some icing sugar. The sugar should melt from the heat of the tweezers. Carefully drop the caramelising sugar onto the surface of the cream. Repeat until the surface of the cream is covered with dots of caramelised sugar.