Rezdos Crémerie

Pays d'Auge, the orchard heart of Normandy

Norman Cooking Without Vegetable Oil

Cider in the pot, cream in the pan, butter under everything. We cook the way Norman farm kitchens always have, and not one recipe in this journal calls for vegetable oil.

Browse the Recipes

Beurre, crème, jamais autre chose

Orchard fruit ripening on the branch in soft light

Beurre

Three Rules of the Crémerie

Butter First

Every recipe here begins the same way, a knob of good butter melting in a heavy pan. It browns the chicken, softens the leeks, and laminates the pastry. Nothing else earns that first spot.

Norman Cream

Normandy is dairy country, and its table proves it. Crème fraîche finishes our sauces, enriches our soups, and settles into our tarts. When a dish needs body, we reach for cream, not a thickener.

Never Vegetable Oil

No sunflower, no canola, no anonymous blends. If a step needs fat, it gets butter or a spoon of cream. That is the whole rule, and it is not negotiable in this kitchen.

From our journal

Six Dishes From the Norman Table

Braises, cream sauces, and butter pastry, written out step by step the way they are cooked at home.

Chicken simmering in a creamy herb sauce in a wide pan

Poulet Vallée d'Auge

1 hr 15 minServes 4Intermediate

Chicken browned in butter, then braised in dry cider until the sauce turns silky with crème fraîche. The signature dish of the Auge valley.

Ingredients

  • 8 bone in chicken thighs and drumsticks
  • 4 tablespoons butter
  • 3 shallots, finely sliced
  • 2 firm apples, peeled and cut in wedges
  • 250 g button mushrooms, halved
  • 2 cups dry hard cider
  • 3/4 cup crème fraîche
  • 2 sprigs fresh thyme
  • 1 bay leaf
  • Sea salt and black pepper

Method

  1. Season the chicken well. Melt the butter in a wide, heavy pot over medium heat and brown the pieces skin side down until deeply golden, about 8 minutes, then turn and brown the other side.
  2. Lift the chicken out. In the same butter, soften the shallots for 3 minutes, then add the mushrooms and cook until their moisture has cooked off.
  3. Return the chicken to the pot with the thyme and bay leaf. Pour in the cider, letting it bubble up around the pieces.
  4. Cover, lower the heat, and braise gently for 35 minutes, turning the chicken once.
  5. Add the apple wedges and simmer uncovered for 10 minutes so the sauce reduces and the apples turn tender but keep their shape.
  6. Stir in the crème fraîche, warm through without boiling hard, taste for salt, and serve straight from the pot.
White fish in a golden butter sauce with sliced onions in a bowl

Sole Normande

40 minServes 4Intermediate

Delicate sole fillets poached and napped in a butter and cream sauce, the old harbor dish of Dieppe done the home way.

Ingredients

  • 8 sole fillets, skinned
  • 5 tablespoons butter, divided
  • 2 shallots, minced
  • 150 g small mushrooms, thinly sliced
  • 1 cup fish stock
  • 1/2 cup dry cider
  • 3/4 cup heavy cream
  • 1 egg yolk
  • Juice of half a lemon
  • Chopped parsley, salt, white pepper

Method

  1. Butter a wide sauté pan with 1 tablespoon of the butter and scatter in the shallots. Fold the fillets loosely and lay them on top.
  2. Pour over the stock and cider, season lightly, and bring to the barest simmer. Poach the sole 6 to 8 minutes until just opaque, then lift the fillets to a warm platter and cover.
  3. Boil the poaching liquid hard until reduced by two thirds.
  4. Meanwhile cook the mushrooms in 2 tablespoons of butter in a small pan until golden at the edges.
  5. Whisk the cream with the egg yolk, then whisk it into the reduced liquid off the heat. Return to very low heat and stir until the sauce coats a spoon. Never let it boil.
  6. Finish the sauce with the last 2 tablespoons of butter and the lemon juice, fold in the mushrooms, and spoon generously over the sole. Scatter with parsley and serve.
Fresh leeks and carrots on a farmers market stall

Norman Butter Braised Leeks

35 minServes 4Easy

Whole leeks cooked slowly in a covered pan with nothing but butter, thyme, and patience, then finished with a spoon of crème fraîche.

Ingredients

  • 6 medium leeks
  • 5 tablespoons butter
  • 1/3 cup water or light chicken stock
  • 2 sprigs fresh thyme
  • 2 tablespoons crème fraîche
  • 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
  • 1 tablespoon chopped chives
  • Flaky sea salt
  • Black pepper
  • A squeeze of lemon

Method

  1. Trim the leeks, keeping the pale and light green parts, and halve them lengthwise. Rinse well between the layers and pat dry.
  2. Melt the butter in a wide pan with a lid. Lay the leeks in cut side down in a single layer and let them take color for 4 to 5 minutes without moving them.
  3. Add the water or stock and the thyme, season, cover, and braise on low heat for 20 minutes until a knife slides in with no resistance.
  4. Uncover, raise the heat briefly, and let the juices reduce to a buttery glaze that clings to the leeks.
  5. Stir the crème fraîche with the mustard, spoon it over the warm leeks, and finish with chives, lemon, flaky salt, and pepper.
Onion soup with a browned cheese crust served in a white tureen

Soupe à l'Oignon Normande

1 hr 20 minServes 6Easy

Onions melted in butter for the better part of an hour, deglazed with dry cider instead of wine, and crowned with toasted bread and cheese.

Ingredients

  • 6 large yellow onions, thinly sliced
  • 6 tablespoons butter
  • 1 cup dry hard cider
  • 6 cups beef or chicken stock
  • 1 tablespoon crème fraîche per bowl
  • 2 sprigs thyme and 1 bay leaf
  • 6 thick slices of day old baguette
  • 150 g Gruyère, grated
  • 1 teaspoon flour
  • Salt and black pepper

Method

  1. Melt the butter in a heavy soup pot over medium low heat. Add the onions with a pinch of salt and cook slowly, stirring now and then, for 40 to 45 minutes until deep amber. Do not rush this stage.
  2. Dust the onions with the flour and stir for a minute.
  3. Pour in the cider and scrape up everything stuck to the bottom of the pot, letting it bubble until nearly gone.
  4. Add the stock, thyme, and bay leaf. Simmer gently, partly covered, for 25 minutes, then season to taste.
  5. Toast the baguette slices until dry and golden.
  6. Ladle the soup into ovenproof bowls, float a toast on each, cover with grated Gruyère, and slide under a hot broiler until browned and bubbling.
  7. Drop a spoonful of crème fraîche into each bowl at the table, the Norman touch.
Golden butter pastries dusted with sugar on a wire cooling rack

Brioche Normande

1 hr + overnight restMakes 1 loafAdvanced

A tall, tender crumb built on eggs and an honest amount of butter. Started the evening before, baked golden the next morning.

Ingredients

  • 500 g strong white flour
  • 5 large eggs, cold
  • 250 g butter, softened but not melted
  • 60 g sugar
  • 10 g fine salt
  • 7 g instant yeast
  • 3 tablespoons whole milk
  • 1 egg yolk for the glaze
  • 1 teaspoon cream for the glaze
  • Pearl sugar to finish, if you like

Method

  1. In a stand mixer with the dough hook, combine flour, sugar, salt, yeast, milk, and the eggs. Knead on low for 10 minutes until the dough pulls cleanly from the bowl.
  2. Add the soft butter a few cubes at a time, waiting for each addition to disappear. Knead 10 minutes more until glossy and elastic.
  3. Cover the bowl and let the dough rise at room temperature for 1 hour, then press it down, cover again, and refrigerate overnight.
  4. Next morning, divide the cold dough into 8 equal balls and nestle them in two rows in a buttered loaf pan.
  5. Let the loaf prove in a warm spot for about 2 hours, until pillowy and risen above the rim.
  6. Whisk the yolk with the cream and brush the loaf gently. Scatter with pearl sugar if using.
  7. Bake at 180 C for 30 to 35 minutes until deep gold and hollow sounding underneath. Cool before slicing, if the household allows it.
Apple tart with a golden lattice crust beside fresh red apples

Tarte aux Pommes Normande

1 hr 30 minServes 8Intermediate

Orchard apples over an all butter pastry, bound with a crème fraîche custard. The dessert every Norman grandmother keeps in her sleeve.

Ingredients

  • 250 g plain flour
  • 140 g cold butter, cubed
  • 1 egg yolk plus 2 whole eggs
  • 3 tablespoons ice water
  • 110 g sugar, divided
  • 1/2 teaspoon fine salt
  • 5 firm eating apples
  • 200 ml crème fraîche
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 30 g sliced almonds

Method

  1. Rub the cold butter into the flour, salt, and 20 g of the sugar until it looks like coarse sand. Bind with the yolk and ice water, press into a disc, and chill 30 minutes.
  2. Roll the pastry out and line a 24 cm tart tin. Prick the base and chill again while the oven heats to 190 C.
  3. Blind bake the shell for 15 minutes with baking weights, then 5 minutes without, until pale gold.
  4. Peel, core, and slice the apples. Arrange them in overlapping circles in the warm shell.
  5. Whisk the whole eggs with the remaining sugar, crème fraîche, and vanilla, and pour the custard around the apples.
  6. Scatter with almonds and bake 35 to 40 minutes until the custard is just set and the apple edges are burnished. Serve barely warm.

Our Kitchen

A Journal of Butter and Cider

Rezdos Crémerie is an independent recipe journal devoted to the cooking of Normandy, the corner of France where the orchard meets the dairy. The dishes we publish are the ones that come out of that landscape, chicken braised in cider, sole under cream, bread rich with eggs and butter, apples baked into pastry.

We test every recipe in an ordinary home kitchen with ordinary equipment, and we write the steps the way we would explain them across the table. You will never find vegetable oil in our ingredient lists, because the Norman pantry never needed it, and neither do we.