Lunch in Paris

Midnight Pear Quickbread

2012-01-20T12:00:00.000-08:00

Sometimes a favorite new recipe is created by the collision of desire and constraint. Desire: Zucchini bread at 10pm on a Thursday night. Constraint(s): No zucchini, only a half cup canola oil, and a village with narry a store open past 7:30pm.

What I did have: Some ripening pears in the fridge, plenty of olive oil, and an itch to open my new jar of pain d'epices (otherwise known as pumpkin pie spice) purchased at Goumanyat & Son Royaume, my favorite spice store in Paris. I'm using as little white flour as possible these days, and decided to go all in with whole wheat.

After several expectant peeks through the oven door (alas, a watched cake does not bake faster), I was ready to eat a slice right out of the pan. It was absolutely what I wanted. The cake was moist but not cloying (thanks to those juicy pears). The heft of the whole wheat flour and the warmth of the spices made it not unlike the French pain d'epices - honey cakes traditionally made with rye flour. This may not be as sweet as some of the quickbreads Americans are used to (I only used 1 cup sugar for 2 loaves). A decade in France has tempered my palette, and my love of super sweets has gone way of the Twinkie (not extinct, but not likely to pass my lips again).

Perfect the next morning with a spoonful of fromage frais (try greek yogurt or whipped cream cheese in the US) and some apple kiwi jam...

Midnight Pear Quickbread

3 cups whole wheat flour
2.5 tsp pumpkin pie spice (ginger, clove, cinnamon, nutmeg)
1/8 tsp fresh ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 teaspoon table salt
1 large handful golden raisins

3 eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar (Cassonade, raw sugar)
2 cups grated pear (very ripe)
2 tsp vanilla extract (or 1 tsp of ground vanilla powder)

Preheat oven to 350F.

Combine dry ingredients in a medium mixing bowl. Beat eggs. Add oil, sugar, stir to combine. Add pear and vanilla, combine.

Add flour mixture in two additions, stir just enough to combine.

Grease two loaf pans. Divide the batter between the two. Bake for 45 minutes or until skewer comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes. Turn out on a wire rake to cool completely. Serve warm or at room temp. Also great toasted with a plain yogurt and jam.

Makes 2 loaves, each serves 6

Soup's On

2012-01-18T05:10:00.000-08:00

As you can see by the tardy appearance of this post, 2012 is off to rather a slow start. What began as a mild winter - G. was sitting outside in his shirtsleeves on New Year's Day - has finally given way to frosty fields and frozen fingertips.

I've chosen my corner, I may not move till spring. Have you met my chaise longue? (Dreams do come true). I've pushed it as close to the wood burning stove as I can without singeing my eyebrows, and there a warm glow coming from the wall G. recently spent 3 weeks painting with local ochre pigment (more complicated than it looks)...

I'm not a subtle fire maker. No girl-scout rubbing twigs together, I.

I'm more of a "Load em up" lady. Five logs, a thicket of kindling, two cushy balls of newspaper and a handful of fire-starters. It may not be worthy of outward bound, but I grew up with a single Duraflame log that you lit without even taking off the paper wrapper. I think progress is being made. Plus, I'm lugging my own wood from the cellar, which has to count for something.

In my cozy corner, I've been re-reading David Copperfield - which is wonderful, because I've forgotten absolutely everything except the dead mother (there's always a dead mother in Dickens) and the ever-creepy Uriah Heep. I've also been falling asleep over the "Code de la Route" - which I need to memorize (or at least finish) before my French driving exam in early Feb. The test is very French, as there can be three right answers to any question.

My other post (the second warmest spot in the house) is at the stove. I've been making soup. All kinds of soup. Barley soup, spilt pea soup, and my classic carrot and parsnip soup - made with the leftover champagne from New Year's Eve. Augustin often joins me, demanding to be lifted up and saying "me tourne!" which is Franglish for "Let me stir, Mommy". I alternate between the pots and the computer. Cooking is my best remedy for writer's block. With G. away on business, I even dug deep into the pantry and found a box of instant Jell-o brand pistachio pudding that my mom snuck over on her last trip.
The French eat a lot of soup. It's warm, filling, convenient, cheap. It freezes well and expands to feed extra guests. We have friends - and they're not alone - who eat some kind of vegetable soup, bread and yogurt almost every night for a light dinner, as they (and the kids at school) eat their main meal at lunch. You'll also find a striking number of French women on veggie soup de-tox diets after the foie-gras laden excesses of the holidays.

It's not precisely de-tox, but spilt pea soup is a winter favorite of mine. Ideal for a one bowl meal - if you play your cards right, your spoon will stand up by itself. I add a good slab of pork belly (a ham hock or a hunk of pancetta will also do nicely) for a meaty flavor. A cinnamon stick and 2 or 3 cloves add depth and a slight sweetness. My mom remembers making this with sherry or vermouth (sounds like Julia Child to me), but I added a swig of cognac we had laying around. Very nice indeed.

Spilt Pea Soup

1 kilo (2.2 lbs) spilt green peas

1 ham hock or 1inch thick slice of pork belly, slab bacon or pancetta

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 carrot

1 large onion

1/2 bulb fennel

1 cinnamon stick

1 bay leaf

3 cloves

2 chicken boullion cubes (or 2 small cans low sodium chicken broth)

2 tablespoons cognac or brandy

In a large stockpot, saute veggies, spices and ham/bacon in olive oil until meat is browned and onions are translucent. Add cognac. Add spilt peas and stir. Disolve boullion cubes in 1 cup boiling water. Add to the pot. Cover split peas with boiling water, about 1 inch above their level in the pot. Simmer for 1 hour. Continue to add boiling water as needed, until your soup reaches the desired thickness. Remove meat and bay leaf. Blend soup with a hand blender. Serve with the shredded meat of the ham hock on top, or a dollop of plain yogurt.

If reheating - dilute with water and/or a dribble of white wine.

Note: You won't want to add any salt to the soup, as the ham/bacon takes care of the salt content...

Serves 8

A Cherry For Your Thoughts

2011-12-09T02:10:00.000-08:00

Being back in the States is always an opportunity to catch up with old friends. Last Saturday, I went to meet B.'s new daughter – a six-month old cutie, soon to be the recipient of frou-frou French baby clothes. B. is a great cook - she’s the one who supervised my first béchamel. There was also an unforgettable Thanksgiving in London, which found us, the night before, wondering if we should sleep with the frozen turkey between us (dinner was served, nobody died).

B. made a lunch of all my favorite things – simple oven-roasted salmon, a lightly dressed arugula salad with roasted butternut squash, red onions, walnuts and lumps of goat cheese. And for dessert, a beautiful Hungarian cherry cake.

For whatever reason, many of my closest friends, even in the States, have ended up in inter-cultural relationships. B. is married to a man from Hungary. The first time she had his parents for dinner, she made her world famous (utterly divine, not to be argued with) carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. It elicited a strangely muted response; no doubt it was too sweet for their European palette. Since then, B. has given herself a crash course in Hungarian pastry. Hence, the cherry cake.

Food is a great way – sometimes the only way, to snuggle up to a new culture. Language takes time (and French is A LOT easier than Hungarian), but food translates instantly, making people feel viscerally comfortable, warm and welcome.

When I think about the first days of my marriage – the beginning of my life in France, I know I used food in this way. With the most important parts of my personality amputated by my halting French, I was desperate to find another way to communicate. My husband’s friends didn’t know if I was intelligent, charming, or witty. What they did know is that I made a mean sweet potato puree and - after watching Gwendal a few times – a festive chicken, apricot and coriander tagine.

I tasted all of this in the tender crumb of B.'s cherry cake – a loving (and very tasty) way to bring herself closer to her new family – a culinary dent in the cultural divide.

She was kind enough to send along the recipe:

"This cherry cake is from George Lang's Cuisine of Hungary. George Lang owned the Cafe Des Artistes in NY, but was originally from Hungary. He died recently, and his obituary was in the New York Times. He led a very dramatic life, full of both glamor and tragedy (his parents died in Auschwitz and his daughter in a CA wildfire; he himself escaped post-war Hungary hidden in a coffin). His cookbook is one of the better Hungarian cookbooks because it is very precise in the way of American recipes - most are grandma-style books, with directions like (as my grandma once said) "cook it until it looks like fudge", which is useless if you've never seen it (never mind eaten it!).

His recipe calls for fresh cherries, and I have made it that way when they are in season. Last weekend, I made it with jarred Morello Cherries from Trader Joe's. The recipe is very typically Hungarian in that it calls for the eggs to be separated and then the whites whipped until stiff to lighten the cake, rather than using a chemical leavener like baking soda or powder, as in American sweets. It is also much less sweet than American desserts, which my husband prefers.

"Anyám csereszneyés lepénye" -- My mother's cherry cake, adapted from George Lang's Cuisine of Hungary

1 jar Trader Joe's Morello Cherries, well drained
1.5 sticks unsalted butter
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3 eggs, separated
1 cup flour
pinch of salt
bread crumbs
Vanilla sugar (I buy my vanilla sugar in packets either in Hungary or from a Hungarian store here. You might find it in another Eastern European store (Polish stores, for example, of which there seem to be many!) or you can make it by burying a vanilla pod in sugar. You could also just dust with confectioner's sugar

Preheat oven to 375 F.

Mix butter well with half of the sugar. After a few minutes of vigorous whipping, add egg yolks and continue whipping. Finally, add flour and salt.

Beat egg whites with remaining granulated sugar til the mixture is stiff and forms peaks. With a rubber spatula, gently fold it into the butter mixture.

Butter a baking pan 10x6 inches (I used my 9" round cake pan) and sprinkle it with bread crumbs. Put dough in pan and sprinkle the cherries evenly over the dough (should basically cover it).

Bake in the preheated oven for 30 min (takes longer in my oven). Cool 5-10 minutes on a wire rack, run a knife around the pan edge and then turn out to cool completely. Sprinkle with vanilla sugar.

Serves 6-8

Before&After: Quickie Salmon Tagine

2011-11-02T07:22:00.000-07:00

I've been looking through my photos from the last year - and I've found so many recipes that I simply haven't had time to share. So I'm inaugurating a new kind of post: before&after. We're all so busy; I wanted to share some of the quick transformations - recipes that give you that magazine make-over satisfaction with limited ingredients, cabinet staples, even leftovers.

Here's one a I made with salmon steaks, leftover cubes of roasted butternut squash and some green olives from the cocktail hour at a past weekend's dinner party. A cinammon stick and the brine of the olives gives this the sweet/sour wiff of a North African tagine. By cooking the whole lot en papillote - in tin foil, you save on clean up time, and the ingredients make their own sauce. Bon appétit!

Quickie Salmon Tagine

2 salmon steaks
1 tomato, cut into eighths
8 large whole green olives
1 cup of roasted butternut squash cubes, fresh or frozen
1 cinammon stick
Sea salt and mixed peppercorns
Splash of white wine

Preheat the oven to 375F. Place a large piece of aluminium foil (several inches larger than your fish) on a cookie sheet. Place the salmon steaks, scatter with squash, olives, and tomato. Tuck in the cinammon stick (or a small pinch of cinammon if you don't have sticks), sprinkle with sea salt, grind over a bit of mixed peppercorn. Add a bit of white wine. Cover with another piece of aluminium foil and fold to seal the edges into a neat air-tight packet. Cook until the package is puffed and fish is cooked through, between 15-20 minutes.

Serves two. If you want to double the recipe, make two tinfoil packages.

Saffron 101

2011-10-22T08:15:00.000-07:00

Every Sunday, I buy my jam, tomatoes, carrots (and the occasional rum flavored chouquette), from Martine and Didier Caron at the small stand on the side of the church. They also produce their own saffron. Saffron grows plentifully in Provence, and like the chickpeas and spelt - it was a local ingredient I quickly incorporated into my everyday cuisine. Of course, saffron is not an everyday ingredient - I'd be bankrupt if it was...)

France has made me a bit shy about asking people for things, so it took me a year to work up to the courage to casually inquire if I could come and see the harvest. Saffron is one of the few ingredients in my French kitchen whose origins remain mysterious to me. I have no problem identifying the stuff in the jar, but no real idea what it looks like when it pops out of the ground. I gave Didier my cellphone number and hoped they would call. He did.

The saffron harvest is quick - two or three weeks in Sept/Oct, before the first frost. We drove to La Ferme de la Charite, in the back country of Forcalquier. We passed knotted pines, knotched with short spikes like the rungs on a ladder. We got lost a few times on the back roads around Les Tourettes. The signs (when there were signs) began to indicate hamlets, rather than villages or towns.

When we arrived at the farm, yesterday's harvest was already on the table outside the kitchen door, hundreds of delicate purple flowers, recently denuded of their valuable threads.

Saffron is one of the world's most expensive spices. When I asked Didier why, he pointed to the black plastic crates of flowers. "La main-d'oeuvre" - the labor, he said. Saffron is a crop that simply cannot be mechanized. To give you an idea, they produced 90 grams of saffron last year, from 17,000 flowers. To make a kilogram (2.2 lbs), it takes roughly 225,000 flowers - all picked and plucked by hand. A kilogram sells for approximately 30,000 Euros.

We headed out to a field dotted with lavendar blooms, with a spectacular view of the surrounding hills. In these situations, it's best to tell people I'm a New Yorker upfront; it gives me an excuse to ask one or two really dumb city-girl questions. I walked gingerly around some pellet sized droppings, "Do you spread the rabbit dung, or do they just come by themselves? "Sheep." said Martine. "Those are sheep droppings." Ah. This is a country where a girl had best know her dung. "Where are the sheep?" I asked, looking around. "In the freezer." answered Didier, "They make less noise. "

The saffron we use comes from the Crocus sativus or saffron crocus.

There are three deep orange stigmas per flower. Occaisionally you come arcross a flower with six - like a cat with 6 fingers on each front paw.

"Ca va les reins?" Martine was inquiring after my kidneys, which tend to get a bit squished by spending hours bent over in a field. "Ca va." I said. We swapped recipes as we moved along the rows. She was fond of saffron risotto. I told her about the saffron peach/nectarine compote I had made a few weeks before. I was dying to try some carrot saffron muffins, which I'd tasted at a local market.

When we finished the day's picking - buds just poking out of the ground would be ready tomorrow - we sat down at the table and began gently removing the orange threads with the press of a fingernail.

The lot would be spread out on a cookie sheet and dried at a low heat (60C), for about half an hour. Then Martine leaves it overnight in the oven (open just a crack) to dry out - then into bottles of .5 or 1 gram each.

As the afternoon sun began to slant low, they walked us around the farm. Augustin would have happily spent the night in the seat of the tractor; we introduced ourselves to the geese, the goats, a beautiful bull and a 900lb pig I wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley.

I left one step closer to understanding the origins of my spice cabinet, with thoughts of a saffron risotto - and a silent vow to study my types of animal dung.

Louder than Words

2011-09-23T07:03:00.000-07:00

As a writer, it's not every day that I admit a picture's worth 1000 words. This past Wednesday, I spent the morning with Augustin, collecting storm-fallen walnuts and plums, and digging "NY" potatoes (those planted in May by yours truly!) in Mr. C's garden. No other narration seems necessary. Only one word of explanation - about the plum pits. Mr. C informed me they were picked clean and left there by the crows, who, gourmets one and all, don't like to eat things off the ground.

If this post has you feeling plum-ish - there's still time to try my roasted plums with red wine, cinnamon and vanilla.

Plum Pudding

2011-09-15T12:32:00.000-07:00

My parents left at 5am this morning for the airport in Nice. It was a really great visit, and in the last ten days, Augustin has acquired a jumble of new English words: book, boat, red, turtle, moo, plum.

Plums irk me. Something about the raw texture, the slightly acidic density, makes me feel like I’m biting into a juicy baseball. But the abundance of the Provencal seasons doesn’t leave a lot of room for free will. This month, it’s all plums, all the time.

Back from ten days on the beach, Mr. C found his plum tree groaning with fruit, he only had to shake the branches to fill his cardboard cagettes and a rectangular green plastic basket, which very generously ended up in my kitchen.

We have a new chest freezer in the cellar. I briefly considered tossing the whole lot in a Ziploc bag, thus shoving the issue downstream a few months. But another idea presented itself, inspired, of all things, by trips I used to take with my mother to a wholesale market in Paterson, NJ. We would buy crates of slightly overripe peaches and plums and come home and make compote. The details are fuzzy, for both of us. My mother was always an unreliable narrator, and with my grandmother gone, I’m starting to realize how much is being lost, everyday. As a writer, this terrifies me. I feel I should have started recording long ago. Why didn’t I know that my great grandmother Rose was a milliner? Or that my great grandfather Eddie entered the Jewish mafia by way of a milk truck?

G.’s grandmother passed away this week. There weren’t many good memories – they were hard people, not particularly open to the wider aspirations of their children or grandchildren. It’s hard to know how to mark such occasions, people disappear, and all we have left are the stories. He remembers the way she used to spend the whole morning painstakingly shelling crabs to make him a tartine of bread and butter with the crab on top. A whole morning’s work devoured in a single minute. He remembers picking blackberries for her jam. Two for him, one for the pot. The smell of burnt coffee, sitting all morning over a low flame on the stove. He remembers the meticulous rows of their vegetable garden (like Mr. C, G’s grandparents demanded a certain precision in their beans), and the tiny, rock-hard yellow apples from their tree.

Unlike me, mother loves plums. That fact, and some leftover red wine lead to a fruitful development. I roasted the plums in a medium oven with the wine, a spilt vanilla bean, a cinnamon stick and the tiniest bit of sugar. The plums gave way, exchanging their springiness for a comforting sag. The wine turned into a spiced burgundy syrup, rich and glossy as a stained glass window. I served it with faisselle, a mild fresh cheese, though I sense that sour cream, Greek yogurt or mascarpone wouldn’t go amiss.
We are living in a golden time: when our son is so little I can protect him simply by closing the front gate, and our parents are well enough to sit at lunch on a sunny terrace and watch Augustin get whipped cream all over his face and into his blond hair. I don’t know what kind food should mark that very simple gift. Something warm and sweet is a good start.
Plums roasted with red wine, cinnamon and vanilla

3 pounds of plums
½ cup full bodied red wine
1 tbsp turbinado (raw cane) sugar
1 cinnamon stick
1 small vanilla bean, or ½ of a large vanilla bean, split down the middle
Preheat the oven to 350F.

Halve the plums, remove the pits. In a 9x13 casserole, combine plums and all the other ingredients. Roast for 35 to 45 minutes, until tender.

Serve warm or at room temperature with sour cream, yogurt or lightly sweetened mascarpone.

Serves 8.

Quick Fixes

2011-07-31T09:52:00.000-07:00

I'd been warned. Owning a house in Provence is akin to running the shabby chiciest, most disorganized bed and breakfast on the planet. On the 4th of February, friends and relations began calling, with an eye toward booking their train tickets for the end of June. I silently thanked my mother for the 3 extra sets of matching sheets I told her not to bring from NJ. I posted a calendar on the kitchen wall. There was a brief, guilty rush of relief when someone cancelled at the last minute (48 hours to hang my underwear on the line without anyone seeing!).

I genuinely love entertaining, but now I know why the locals savor the long, lonely winters. With Parisians in their white linen trousers and expensive sunglasses parking every which where, it is easy to get curmudgeon-y (and easy to forget that a mere 12 months a go, we were those Parisians). We MUST get rid of our Paris license plates. We are still getting honked at.

I love cooking for guests, and there are a few culinary tricks I've learned a few tricks to make sure I still love them at end of their stay. With Labor Day weekend suddenly upon us (and if you're not expecting a hurriance, earthquake or other apocalyptic weather), I thought I'd share:

Let the ingredients do the work: Find an ingredient that shows off the best the season has to offer. I've had a plain tomato salad drizzled with olive oil and sea salt on the table at every meal for a month. Slice and serve. Melon with jambon cru is another trick. If you start with good things, dinner often makes itself.

Whole grains out of the bag: Even the French don't make everything from scratch. For light summer meals I'll often serve a relatively plain piece of protien: chicken breast, salmon, or lamb on the grill, with a whole grain salad. My new favorite is a quinoa, barley and kamut combo that I dress up with chickpeas, fresh parsley, olive oil and a squeeze of lemon. Here in France, I've found a brilliant brand (Bio Express) of organic pre-cooked whole grains. The packages are the perfect size for making salad for 4, and the extra 10 or 15 mintues it saves me makes a huge difference in my home-cooking motivation levels. Even Minute Rice and Uncle Ben's offer a product like this now.

Go-to veggie: Everyone should have one dish that is good hot or cold, day or night, grill or picnic. The ingredients should be easy to find. Easier to prepare. And of course, it should be utterly, knock-out delicious. The stuff the makes you believe in vegetables again. To meet those K2-like criteria, I always go back to haricots verts (thin green beans) in walnut oil. You can always find green beans, but the walnut oil makes it special enough for company. Take a 1.5 pounds of thin green beans, add 1 tbsp olive oil, 2 tbsp walnut oil, saute the beans uncovered for 3 minutes, moving them around, add a good sprinkle of sea salt, stir and cover for 5 more minutes, stirring every two minutes. If you are using large American style green beans instead of smaller, slimmer haricot vert, you might want to blanche the beans in boiling water for 30 seconds before you begin.

Tip: Don't be afraid to let your beans wilt and get a bit brown and burnt looking. We Americans have this chronic fear of overcooking our grean beans. You can add some toasted walnuts on top of the finished dish to dress things up a bit...

Chickpea and Whole Grain Salad with Parsley and Preserved Lemon Zest

1 can of chickpeas, well rinsed
2 cups of pre-cooked mixed whole grains
olive oil to taste
juice of one lemon
large handful of flatleaf parsley, chopped
sea salt
black pepper
1 tablespoon of diced preserved lemon rind. Look for preserved (pickled) lemons at a Middle Eastern grocery.

Rinse the chickpeas under hot water. Rub off the waxy skins outer skins and discard. Combine chickpeas, parsley, olive oil, lemon juice and a generous pinch of salt and pepper. If you can find preserved lemons, slice off the rind from roughly half the lemon. Unlike cutting off normal lemon zest, you can go a bit deeper into the lemon -about 1/4 inch - because the pickling process takes away the bitterness in the white pith just underneath the yellow skin. Dice the lemon rind and add to the warm mix at the same time as the grains.

Prpare the whole grains according to package directions. While still warm, combine the whole grains with other ingredients.

Serves 4-6 as a side dish.

Tomato Porn

2011-07-29T05:27:00.000-07:00

It's a slippery slope. In the pulpy afterglow of fresh tomato everything, comes (what's a girl to do) roasted tomato everything. I'm helpless. Give an inch, my grandmother would say, and you'll find yourself with a face full of seeds and olive oil dripping down your elbow.

Roasted tomatoes are inherently greedy. Slick with olive oil and mellowed with garlic, they are my attempt at pleasure hoarding, not unlike R's father's Playboy collection stashed in the attic (my mother never liked that girl). I want to be able to peek into the freezer in December and know I can use this spark of sunshine to light up a winter pasta sauce, or guarantee a sensational base for braised veal shank or white beans. Of course, the nature of greed means that I couldn't wait until December to explore my pasta fantasies. As it's bikini season, I've been doing my best to limit carbs, measuring out proper, back-of-the-box portions of whole wheat spaghetti (85 grams). I'm not one to deprive myself, so a moderate dose of pasta means lots of sexy topping to fill up my favorite shallow white bowls from Habitat.

The right dish is the oldest diet trick in the book. I recently bought a whole service of Limoge dishes at a local flea market. Guess what, my French dinner plates (like French baby clothes) are a good inch smaller in circumference than the set of American plates my mother brought over.

There's only so many times a week a girl can make ratatouille, so I used part of this week's eggplant allotment to make my pasta sauce. I used a tablespoon or two of the roasted tomato oil to sauté the eggplant until tender, then added shrimp, the roasted tomatoes, a splash of white wine and a pinch of cayenne pepper at the end.

I've never been sure if the realization of a fantasy is meant to satiate passion, or to fuel it. I suspect it's the later. Which, if my freezer holds out, is fine with me.

Roasted Tomatoes

4 lbs of perfect heirloom tomatoes, sliced approx. 1 inch thick
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 head of garlic - wet (i.e. fresh) garlic is ideal
Sea salt to taste

Heat the oven to 325F.

Line your largest baking sheet with aluminum foil. Arrange the sliced tomatoes in a single layer, tuck the cloves of garlic (unpeeled) between them, pour over the olive oil. Sprinkle with a pinch or two sea salt. Leave for 1 1/2 to 2 hours in the oven, until the garlic is tender and the tomatoes are soft and a bit wrinkly. Make sure you save all the liquid along with the garlic and tomatoes.

Store in the fridge (cover with additional olive oil to keep longer) or freeze for a snowy day.

Roasted Tomato Pasta with Shrimp and Eggplant

This is an approximation - who takes notes during a fantasy? Oh. Well, I don't.

2-3 tbsp of your tomato olive oil liquid
2 smallish eggplant, slim and dark
1 pound raw frozen shrimp (I don't ever recommend using frozen cooked shrimp - in my experience they are limp and watery)
2 cups roasted tomatoes (give or take), with a bit of the liquid
A pinch or two of cayenne pepper
A splash of white wine
1/2 tsp sugar (optional)
Small handful of basil leaves, ripped by hand

Slice the eggplant in thinnish strips (about 1/4 inch thick by 2 inches long), you want it to cook through in a reasonable amount of time. In a large sauté pan, heat 2-3 tablespoons of your tomato olive oil liquid. over medium heat, sauté your eggplant until really tender (nothing worse than eggplant that bites back. Add frozen shrimp, tomatoes, cayenne, wine and sugar. Cook until shrimp turn pink, about 5 minutes. Turn off the heat, stir in the basil, leaving aside a few leaves for garnish.

Serve over whole wheat spaghetti.

Serves 4

Golden Days

2011-07-25T01:37:00.000-07:00

I love my summer refrigerator. That said, I love my refrigerator most times of year, but I get a particular kick out inspecting the contents of my summer fridge, especially after a hefty trip to the market. Summer guests and my husband (aka the fruit monster) make sure that we go through at least 2 cagettes of peaches and nectarines a week. Tomatoes are neatly stacked next to the rare sight of French corn on the cob (the French feed corn to animals, not people) and a pot of almond pesto made by a German woman in Reillanne. The jar in the back right is Mr. C's homemade pieds pacquets, stuffed tripe, which has been there for several months, and will probably be there for several months more, until the first frost brings out the offal eater in me.

The overflow makes its way down to the wine cellar. This cellar is the reason we found the house - the French poet and Resistance leader Rene Char buried the manuscript of his most famous work underneath the dirt floor (for the full date with destiny click here).

It is also a very fine wine cellar (14C all year round), where the previous owners left us a dusty (but perfectly serviceable) garde-manger – a screen front cabinet for storing food.

The golden days of summer find me obsessed with the local saffron. Provence is turning out to be the source of some surprising staples in my kitchen. I knew the tomatoes would be great – but who knew that I would living smack in the middle of spelt (Épeautre), saffron (safran) and chickpea (pois chiche) country. There is a couple at our Sunday market who grow their own saffron (I’ve been invited to see the harvest Sept/Oct – stay tuned). And I recently tasted a little saffron hazelnut carrot muffin at the market. It was a tiny bit dry (by and large, Europe sucks at muffins - I find it comforting to know that there are some things where European cuisine simply fails), but it got me thinking about the possibilities. Perhaps a version of my carrot cake with ground hazelnuts instead of walnuts, the egg and sugar mixture infused with saffron. This is what happens, my cooking brain gets ahead of my cooking hands. There’s a limited number of recipes I can make in one day, unless I want to serve nothing but carrot muffins for dinner. No one would mind, I’m sure, but hey, it’s bikini season…

My saffron success story for the moment is the simplest of dishes: a peach, nectarine and apricot compote, which I’ve been eating every morning with yogurt and muesli. The trick to getting slightly overripe fruit is to go at the end of the market, when vendors are trying to get rid of product that won’t last another day. I’m such a good customer with my local peach man, he usually throws in a kilo or two of fast ripening fruit for free – piling them on top of the 2 or 3 cartons of perfect table peaches I’ve chosen by hand.

Saffron is more of a smell than a taste – my local variety gives off dried peaches and sandalwood. Unfortunately, cheap (or old) saffron will often do nothing but turn your meal a charming (actually quite Provencal) shade of yellow. Good saffron will give your dish a undertone, not exactly spice, but some distant glimpse of the spice caravan, almost out of sight over the next sand dune. I think works perfectly with the sweet/tart flavor of peaches.

When I get my canning act together, this is what I’m going to make, jars and jars of golden days to last me through the chill of winter.

2 pounds of slightly overripe fruit (a mix of peaches, nectarines and apricots)
1 tablepsoon of turbinado sugar
2 good pinches of saffron

Cut the fruit into 1 inch cubes. I don’t especially feel the need to peel. In a heavy bottomed saucepan, combine the fruit and sugar. Bring to a boil, stir in the saffron, let simmer over low heat until thickened and slightly reduced, mine took about 40 minutes. Serve hot or cold, over yogurt or pound cake – I was even thinking it might make a superb substitute filling for my grandmother’s apple cake. Bon appétit!

With a Cherry on Top

2011-06-01T11:46:00.001-07:00

I'm an old soul. "3 going on 30", as my mother used to say. In this, as in so many things, she's not wrong. There's something about my 30's that fits. When I hit 31, I somehow felt right in my skin. My mental age and my real age finally merged, like overlapping film negatives, suddenly synchronized for a perfect Technicolor image.

So how did such an old biddy find herself, this past week, giggling, 6 feet off the ground in the limbs of a cherry tree? I've been helping Mr. C in his garden - planting potatoes (ye of little faith) and learning the ropes. Spring sprung rather early in Provence this year. The lilacs were wilting by the first of May, and now the cherry trees are groaning with fruit, several weeks in advance.

G., Augustin and I went down with a cardboard fruit crate. We barely had to touch the fruit, it almost fell into our hands. Augustin giggled, and ran around our feet, picking up strays. Somewhere in the stretching, tugging, and plucking of the cherries was a childlike sensation that I can't ever remember feeling. (Not to mention the forbidden pleasure of staining a perfectly good white tee-shirt with cherry juice.)

I don't have many early childhood memories. My parents divorced when I was seven, and much of what came before is a blank. It felt strange, and strangely logical, to be collecting cherries, making new childhood memories. Maybe it's cheating, to be creating my own childhood memories at the same time as my son, but I guess Augustin won't mind me piggybacking onto his pleasure. He might even show me a thing or two.

Of course, how I have to figure out what to do with several kilos of ruby red cherries. Once again, Mr. C came to the rescue with two recipes neatly printed on an index card. The first, a clafoutis, uses the brust of fresh cherries for a hearty breakfast flan, the second was a recipe for "cherry marmalade" - cherries are too watery for jam, but this was perfect - slightly wrinkled, toothsome cherries in a velvety syrup. Mr. C does all his own canning, and he has his own method of "insta-sterilization", which involves flipping the jars and storing them upside down. As with many family recipes, the instructions were lacking a few salient details, like the fact that the cherry syrup needs to be burning hot when you're doing all this. Long story short, we will be eating cherry marmalade for breakfast lunch and dinner this month. Come to think of it. That sounds like another thing my childhood self might have dreamed of.

Mr. C's Cherry Clafoutis

This is more of a dense flan (in Brittany it's called a 'far'). Next time I might reduce the flour a bit and see what happens, but G., Breton that he is, thought it was perfect this way. The French leave the pits in their cherries when making clafoutis -they say it adds a nutty taste. Warn your guests, or be prepared to pay for the dental work.

750 grams cherries
100 grams flour (I might add a bit less)
90 grams of sugar (white or turbinado)- I might add a tablespoon of brown sugar on top next time, just before putting it in the oven
6 eggs
250 ml of whole milk
a pinch of salt
1 tbsp kirsch (cherry liquer) or rum

Preheat the oven to 375F. 190C.

Butter and sugar a ceramic tart pan , or 9x13 casserole dish.

Beat the eggs and salt together. Sift in the flour, stirring just enough to combine. Little by little, add the milk. The batter will be thin, like crepe batter.

Distribute your cherries on the bottom of your casserole dish. Carefully pour over the batter. Bake on the center rack for 30-35 minutes until custard is set in the middle. Serve warm or at room temperature, sprinkled with powdered sugar.

Personally, I love it cold for breakfast.

Mr. C's Cherry Marmalade

The canning process in this recipe is a guess, I can't speak to its success rate, as I haven't done it properly yet. What I can promise is that if you make 3 jars worth and stick it in the fridge, it will disappear pretty darn quick! Plain yogurt is your friend.

1 kilo of cherries
750 grams of sugar (I used a mix of white and turbinado)
1/2 cup of kirsch (cherry liquer), I suspect cognac might work as well...

Wash and dry 3 jam jars.

Pit the cherries and pour over the sugar and the alcohol. Stir to combine, let the mixture sit for 12 hours. In a heavy bottomed saucepan, bring the mixture to a boil, simmer for 20 minutes. Fish out the cherries, set aside. Continue to simmer the syrup for 1 hour, a bit longer won't hurt, until reduced by half.

Mr. C's canning method (once again, I can't vouch for its safety or effectiveness just yet - if you have your own reliable canning method, by all means, use that): Distribute the cherries between your clean jars. Pour over the hot cherry syrup leaving a 1/4 inch space at the top. Tighly close the jars and immediately turn them over. I imagine you'll need a good grip oven mit for this part. Let cool, wash off any stray drips, and store upside down in a cool cellar until needed.

Mother/Daughter Test Kitchen

2011-05-05T08:52:00.001-07:00

Last September, I got a lovely email from Lynne, a mother of two (and classically trained harpist - how cool is that) living in Sydney, Australia. She and her daughters had decided to cook their way through Lunch in Paris. (Mother-daughter cooking is always special. I have vivid memories of my mother, wrist deep in seasoned chop meat, urging me to try some right out of the bowl - my first steak tartare!). Never having had a professional test kitchen for Lunch in Paris, I was truly excited to see their results - to make sure the recipes worked as well in readers' kitchens as they had in my own. In honor of Mother's Day, I asked if I could share some of their marvelous pictures and cooking experiences with you.

Dessert was a big theme - I'm especially fond of this series of photos, taken while making the mini raspberry financiers. (Total 2 for 1 extra credit for the picture with the anchovy goat cheese tarts baking in the background!)

"The girls have loved doing all the recipes but the desserts have been their favourite, especially the INSTANT YOGURT AND SUMMER BERRY PARTAITS one as they can do that themselves, and now they improvise and change the ingredients as there is no cooking so they are free to do what they like. The ones they liked to prepare, watch, smell and eat are the two chocolate ones that were perfect..."

Even Aunt Joyce's Coconut macaroons made an appearance in a spiffy glass jar.

Lynne's pictures of the pork ribs and fennel salad got me thinking about creative ways to get kids to try new foods (zucchini flowers, anyone?).
Lynne and her husband hit the nail on the head. (As someone who grew up arranging cookies into precise pyramids on my mother's best china, I particularly love their idea of a "presentation contest" for the prettiest plate.)

"Cooking together has made the kids appreciate the time spent in the kitchen,made them more patient but more than anything it has made them more adventurous in trying the food - somehow new food doesn't look so bad when they have cooked it themselves. My husband is in hospitality so we are surrounded by good food and food art, so with each recipe we used to have 'presentation' competitions which was probably the best part for them."

French cooking often scares the pants off of home cooks, but Lynne & Co. took it in stride.

"My sister lives in France and is married to a French Chef - so the french way of cooking has been part of my life now for over 20 years, but I think what I loved about these recipes is that they were not coming from a real cookbook so somehow there was less pressure to get the recipes right - and so with NO PRESSURE they all came out perfectly."

I daresay, my "Student Charlotte" never looked quite that good...

The most recent image that Lynne sent along was this picture-perfect postcard of the lambshanks with orange and star anise. I'm thinking seriously about having them printed up as next year's Christmas cards!

My mom and Paul are in Provence at the moment. After last year's rocky start, I think they are really enjoying the pace of village life. We chatted with the fishmonger at the local market this morning, and taught Augustin how to use a straw in his apricot nectar at the cafe. While I'm writing this, they are up at the new playground, inspecting the slide.

In my mother's suitcase, underneath the Elmo underpants and Dr. Suess books for Augustin, was a package of blue marshmellow bunnies, just for me. Heirloom tomatoes may be my future, but a taste of the past is always welcome.

If you have pics of Lunch in Paris recipes you've made at home, SVP (that's French shorthand for "pretty please") share them on the Lunch in Paris facebook page.

Thank you so much to Lynne and her family for sharing your creations. Happy Mother's Day to all!

P.S. - I also asked Lynne for tips and any mistakes she might catch. Definitely use regular, not self raising flour for the choquettes. And some early editions of Lunch in Paris have a conversion error in the baking temp for the strawberry rhubarbe crumble (wihch I might well make this weekend!) - it should be 375F.

A Long Life

2011-04-05T04:00:00.000-07:00

A sad note: Marcelle Pons Sidoine passed away yesterday, at the age of 95. Marcelle was an active member of the French Resistance during WWII, and the wartime companion of French poet and Resistance leader René Char. The couple operated the local Resistance network from Marcelle’s family's home - the house where we now live.

We had the good fortune to meet Marcelle several times when we first came to Cereste; here's the story of how we found the house.

Even at 94, Marcelle was a decisive woman - short of sentence and sure of opinion. When asked about Char, she said: "He was always hanging around, this tall guy, being nice to my mother. Il m'agaçait, celui la. He annoyed me.” I guess love is always the same; when he starts being nice to your mother, you're in real trouble.

The first thing that struck us when we visited the house was the danger, and at the same time, the warmth, of the memories associated with the war. The following story took place in our living room:

The Gestapo were looking for Char, they ordered the entire village out of their homes, with instructions to leave the doors ajar. Marcelle and her mother wrapped Char's head in a bandage, like an old woman with a toothache, and left him in bed, up the short flight of stairs just off the living room.

When the German's arrived, Marcelle was standing in front of the door, key in hand. “Leave it,” said the soldiers, “Go to the square.” “I don't trust these people,” she said, “There are thieves in this village. If you want to search the house, go ahead, but I will stay here and lock the door behind you.”

The Germans came in looked around the living room, out into the garden. They got halfway up the steps to Char's room and turned around. “There's no one here. Let's go.” It was only after the soldiers left that Marcelle noticed the grenade lying carelessly on the table in front of the fireplace. The Germans didn't see it. The grenade (to say nothing of hiding Char) would have been enough to get the whole family shot.

“I was sick for 8 days after that.” said Marcelle, as if risking your life was like coming down with the flu.

I hope the picture gives you an idea of how small the room is. On the left is the door where the German's came in, on the right, the six steps up to Char's bedroom. Barely 12 feet between them.

We are busy spring cleaning, making the house and the garden our own. But we will never forgot why we first came to this place; drawn by the good-luck lilies of the valley and an extraordinary history.

This year's lilies will be popping up any day now.

It will always be her garden.

Maple Scones

2011-02-28T07:35:00.000-08:00

Sometimes there's nothing to do but bake. The baby is sick; I spent the morning making a list of adminstrative calls - accountants, and even more terrifying, a driving school. Roadsters of Provence, beware.

By three o'clock Augustin was back in bed, the essay I've been working on, for an anthology about the first year of marriage, remains a scattering of notes and unconnected thoughts, and I found myself browsing my cookbook shelves, hunting a recipe for scones.

Many people find baking soothing - not only the promise of a sweet reward, but the silent act of measuring, massaging, stirring, kneading, spooning. The repetitive glances into the mouth of a hot oven. It's the perfect something, when nothing else will do.

This recipe is adapted from the slim, thoroughly unpretentious Maple Syrup Cookbook by Ken Haedich, that I come back to again and again.

Maple Cream Scones

These don't have a particularly strong maple flavor, they simply use the syrup instead of sugar.

2 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons cold butter, diced
3/4 cup heavy cream (I use mostly creme fraiche topped up with a bit of milk)
1/4 cup maple syrup (I might add an extra tsp for sweetness)
Additional syrup and cream to finish
Crushed walnuts or sliced almonds to garnish (optional)

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Line a cookie sheet with parchement paper.

Combine flour, baking soda, and salt. Add diced butter and rub together until the texture of coarse crumbs (I never quite get the crumb texture - I end up with some clumps and powder).

In a small bowl, combine cream and maple syrup. Make a well in the flour mixture, add the cream mixture, and stir with a fork until just combined. Like all biscuit dough - do not overmix! Turn the dough out onto the parchment paper, flatten to about 3/4 inch. Using a biscuit cutter or small glass, cut rounds 2-3 inches across - the little Chinese teacup I used was my father's.

Stir together a bit of maple syrup and cream, brush or spoon this mixture onto the top of the scones.

Bake for 12 minutes, until golden brown.

Serve warm from the oven with strawberry jam.

Makes 10 scones.

Poultry Zen

2011-02-22T00:27:00.001-08:00

Home. Awake. That doesn't sound like much of an accomplishment, but these days, it is. I love going back to States, but I find I spend more and more time running in circles like a headless chicken. That's a lie - I had 4 uber relaxing days in San Francisco, if you put aside the issue of my dead laptop, which kept me from taking advantage of the very pleasant cafe-office culture. (San Francisco is a bit like Paris that way. No one looks like they actually work for a living...)

I'm back in Provnce, I slept through the night for the first time in a week, and as of right now, I aspire to be a chicken WITH a head. A chicken with its head screwed on straight, to be exact. I need to stay put for a while. Experience life here. It's almost gardening time, and I'll need to learn to plant my peas right side up, and which corner of the courtyard will be best for purple basil.

With this aura of poultry-zen in mind, I've found a woman at Apt market who raises and prepares her own birds. She leaves the heart and liver in, so they conserve better.

Yesterday was my second experience with a head-on chicken. (For those vegetarians who I continue to alienate with my beady-eyed dinners, I'm making a lovely veggie cous cous stew tonight, the recipe to be posted forthwith.) Gutting the remaining bits was quite visceral - queue that squishy sound that accompanies field medics in WWI films. More troubling still, it appears I've spent much of my life looking at a chicken upside down. We are so used to cooking and serving chickens breast-up, I just got it in my head that they walk around that way. (Yes, this is one of the many, many reasons no one has ever asked me to fly an airplane.) Similar to the first time I saw a whole leek, it's taken me more time than I'd like to admit to figure out which end is up.

The first chicken I purchased was a poule au pot - a older stewing chicken, meant to sit in a covered casserole with vegetables, water, salt and rice for several hours - producing a falling apart bird and a thick, well-greased peasant risotto. The vendeuse doling out her instructions at top speed, I failed to catch the rice bit, so I ended up with a passable, (if painting worthy) stewed chicken, and a lot of fatty broth. Doesn't she look peaceful, though?

This week, I bought a pintade - guinea fowl - a trickier, but more flavorful bird. It requires a slow roast in a moderate heat, to keep everything moist and supple. I decided to add some red potatoes, a few rehydrated shitake mushrooms and a splash of white wine to the bottom of the pan.

2 1/2 hours later, the result was less than thrilling. Something about his grumpy visage took me back to the day my father almost vomited during "The Dark Crystal". Not ideal for jetlag recovery. Apparently, cooking - as well as being- a chicken with a head requires some practice...

And the winner is...

2011-02-14T06:44:00.000-08:00

And the Le Creuset/LinP winner is: DeAnn Okamura! Not only do I dig her daughter's shades, but DeAnn brought her own cherished mini Eiffel tower, bought in Paris many years ago. Her caption: "Ooh la la! The next best thing to having lunch in Paris... is reading it!" - I guess it's exactly what I hoped the book and the blog would be, a virtual vacation to France for everyone.

All the pictures were fabulous (Hello, Paris-themed dinner party!). I'm very new to this sort of thing, so I think I underestimated the huge effort I was asking people to make in the middle of a snowy and exhausting winter. That's me, ambitious and oblivious, all at the same time...

I want to thank everyone who took the time to participate (take a quick scroll down the LinP Facebook page for the photos!), and everyone who spread the word. And of course, Le Creuset, for their generosity. If you are looking for inspiration, here's a special Valentine's Day recipe - guaranteed (in my one-woman statistical sample) to get someone groping you over a hot stove.

Wishing you an extra cup of love and laughter today!

Love is in the air, and it smells like...bacon

2011-02-13T20:39:00.000-08:00

I can't help it. I'm a sucker for Valentine's Day. I love the guys on the subway gripping single roses in cellophane - talking to themselves (are they rehearsing?). I love chewy cinnamon hearts and the chalky message ones (SWEET TART). I love paper cutout cupids and the idea of a daring, unlikely paring over sushi. This is one Hallmark holiday I've always swallowed hook, line and sinker.

Since I can remember, I've loved sweet and savory tastes together - the dried apricots in my mother's stuffed cabbage, the cooked-to-oblivion prunes in my grandmother's Tzimmes. A sour patch kid. My French kitchen is full of these sweet/tart pairings - goat cheese and fig jam, lamb and pears tagine.

I recently found a new sweet/tart combo – and it’s a winner. Getting over jetlag from my last trip to the US, I needed to use up a red cabbage that had been wilting since before my trip. Wide awake at 4am, I consulted my Joy of Cooking. Their version of braised red cabbage is more like sauerkraut, with lots of salt. What I wanted was a quick sauté with a sweet finish. So I tweaked and dabbled, and this is the result.

This recipe is what I call almost-elegant food. I would make this for an informal dinner party; it's so homey, yet something about the royal purple cabbage gives it a bit of gravitas – and dare I say it, flair. Sausage and cabbage may not have the ring of a romantic Valentine's Day meal, but the first time I made this, G. kept coming into the kitchen and sticking his nose straight in the pot. To get to the pot, he had to put his arms around me. See where I'm going with this?

If you were trying to stuff your Valentine like a Thanksgiving turkey, I suppose you could add mashed potatoes, but I prefer my dining companion devote less energy to digestion, more energy to other things.

For dessert, why not try these spicy chocolate pots, served in espresso cups – again, less is more. Enjoy!

Pork Sausage with Honeyed Red Cabbage

2 best quality lean pork sausages - try to find a butcher who makes his own - after all it's is Valentine's Day, so why not go a little out of your way...
1 small head of red cabbage (approximately 1 pound), thinly sliced
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
4 whole cloves
10 whole Sichuan or black peppercorns
3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
3 tablespoons honey

Slice the cabbage thinly, and soak in a bowl of cold water for 15 minutes. You’ll get this gorgeous royal purple water (which will stain your hands and your clothes – so please, wear an apron!

Meanwhile, in a large non-reactive heavy skillet (stainless steel) or a Dutch oven (I use my enameled Le Crueset), brown the sausages with the olive oil. Add onion and spices, sauté until just starting to color. Deglaze with honey and vinegar. Then quickly throw in the cabbage, drained of purple water.

Lower the heat a bit and sauté for 15-20 minutes. I like my cabbage al dente – but if you like yours fondant, keep cooking, adding a little water along the way.

Serve the sausages on a bed of cabbage with Dijon mustard, and a sturdy Cote de Rhone.

Serves 2.

BE MY VALENTINE (aka Take the Lunch in Paris/Le Creuset Valentine's Day Challenge)

2011-02-07T07:34:00.000-08:00

In honor of the paperback launch of Lunch in Paris (that's today!!) and my favorite Hallmark holiday (oh, those chalky candy message hearts), I'm issuing a special Lunch in Paris Valentine's Day Challenge.

The prize: One cherry red Le Creuset 5.5 quart French Oven (courtesy of Le Creuset - Merci!), just dying to snuggle up on your stove.

Your mission (should you chose to accept it): Walk into your favorite bookstore, pick up a brand new paperback copy of Lunch in Paris and press it into the hands of first friendly browser (or cutest guy, or most stylin gal, or most hapless tourist) you see. You might even point out your favorite recipe. Then snap a photo together with this person and the book, and voila, upload it with a witty caption to the Lunch in Paris Facebook Page. Complete your entry by filling out this short entry form. Any coffee dates come out of this, I want to know. Any weddings come out of this, the cheese is on me!

Shy of strangers? Why not go with your best friends, dog, sister, husband or sock puppet and take a silly cancan photo with a copy of Lunch in Paris (costumes and/or berets get extra credit). You have until midnight on February 13th (anywhere in the world) to post. I'll chose the best photo and caption to win the Le Creuset 5.5 qt. Round French Oven in cherry (which, by the by, retails for $235). I"ll announce the winner on Valentine's Day. Now even cynical people who wear black on Feb. 14th (you know who you are), have something to look forward to...

If you need a bit of help uploading your photo to Facebook, click here!

Bonne chance!

When the cat's away...

2011-01-18T12:16:00.000-08:00

It's true - when G. is away on business. I eat differently. I want spicy, sticky, messy food. Something I can eat with my hands. Yes, when the cat's away, the mice tend to lick their fingers.

It's not that I wouldn't eat this way in front of my husband (I've never taken a survey, but I'm pretty sure there's nothing sexier than watching a woman suck sauteed ginger off her fingers...), but there's something slumber partyish about sitting down at our new kitchen table - a marble topped cafe table found at the local brocante - and slipping in a DVD (costume drama, please) as I try my best to avoid dripping sauce on the laptop. A glass of wine might be in order.

Since becoming a parent, these solo evenings feel like a special treat. Of course, Augustin would like nothing better than to eat dinner entirely with his hands, but it's not quite the same when I'm worried about handprints on the walls...

So the next time you find yourself on your own for dinner - resist the temptation to eat microwave popcorn out the bag, and try this instead:

Ginger Garlic and Coriander Shrimp with Lettuce Wraps

Because of their former colony in Indochina, living in France means an excellent introduction to Vietnamese food. This recipe is inspired by my love of nem, Vietnamese spring rolls, served with fresh mint and lettuce leaves for a leafy crunchy sandwich.

Olive oil
3/4 lb frozen shrimp (Buy raw shrimp, please! That means they will be gray in the bag, and pink up in the pan. I never buy already cooked frozen shrimp, they just taste like mushy water)
1/4 cup fresh ginger, coarsely grated
6 large cloves of garlic, coarsely grated
A splash of white wine
A few pinches of hot pepper (optional, but highly recommended)
A big handful of fresh coriander (cilantro), plus a few sprigs for garnish
8-10 large lettuce leaves
1 fresh lime

In a large frying pan, heat enough olive oil to generously cover the bottom of the pan. Add the garlic, ginger and hot pepper, and saute for 30 seconds until fragrant. Add the shrimp, stir to coat, and then shake the pan so the shrimp sit in a single layer. Wait 2-3 minutes (until the shrimp are pink on one side), and turn. Add a good splash of white wine and continue until the shrimp are cooked through. Cooking time will depend on the size of your shrimp, they should be uniformly pink. Test one to see, they don't take long.

Turn off the heat, add your handful of cilantro, stir to combine.

Put your shrimp (and all the sticky garlic ginger sauce) in a bowl, surrounded by lettuce leaves, half a lime and the cilantro.

Squeeze the lime over the shrimp, wrap each shrimp (be sure to include up some garlic ginger goop) and a sprig of cilantro in a piece of lettuce - and enjoy!

Lick your fingers.

Serves 1

Currently Indisposed

2011-01-04T01:40:00.000-08:00

I've decided I need a chaise longue - a red velvet number with one arm, quilted upholstery and dangly fringe. Such a purchase would surprise no one who knows me. In Victorian times such a object was called a fainting couch. One was indisposed. Nowadays, we're just plain exhausted. I believe the technical term is "dragging ass".

It's only 4 days into the New Year, and already I'm a month behind. We spent December without childcare - and Augustin (tall boy that he is) just learned how to flip himself out of his crib. So now I spend half the night up worrying that my son is going to escape his room and fall down the stairs, and the other half worrying about the work I haven't done. By the time 8am rolls around, I am thoroughly indisposed.

We are also one month late in the Provencal tradition of le Blé de l'Espérance - the Wheat of Hope. Each year on the 4th of Dec. (the Feast of Sainte Barbe), Provencal households plant a small sachet of wheat in a cup full of wet cotton. If the wheat grows green and straight, the New Year will be prosperous. (If you don't hear from me, it died.) Having missed the Dec. 4th deadline, we decided to wait until Jan. 4th to plant ours, so the verdict on 2011 is still out. The last thing I grew was in kindergarten - one of those potatoes suspended over a glass of water with toothpicks, so we'll see.

Though I neglected to plant my barley, we've been eating plenty of it. Provence is the home of épeautre, and I've recently rediscovered the wonder of mushroom, beef and barley soup. My paternal grandmother used to make something similar, thick and strachy and homey. My father and I watched steaming bowls drift by at The Kiev, the (sadly defunct) all-night Russian diner on 2nd Avenue (we always had the cheese blintzes). Last time I was back in the States, I wanted to make a big pot of something I could freeze - to stop me eating crap all the time. This was perfect: all standard supermarket ingredients, easily transformed into healthy and delicious comfort food.

I used quick cooking barley, which takes 20 minutes instead of an hour or two to soften. Barley has such a satisfying chew, with the sweet earth tones of the mushrooms and the bite of fresh veggies - it's utterly more-ish, to use the English term. Most people like this dish thinned out with broth, but I perfer it chuncky, like stew.

If you were forced to retire to your bed with cold compress (another Victorian fantasy of mine that has become very vivid lately), you could easily take a bowl with you.

After a month of foie gras, champagne and late nights, this qualifies as sound detox food - a big bowl of something warm and healthy that won't make you feel as if you are starting your mother's annual New Year's grapefruit diet.

I hope your 2011 is off to a good start. I'll let you know how the barley grows...

Mushroom, Beef and Barley Soup

2-3 tablespoons olive oil

1 "soup pack" (1 large onion, 1 leek, 3 carrots, 2 stalks of celery or fennel, 1 bay leaf, 1 handful fresh parsley, 1 small parsnip)

1 lb fresh white or cremini mushrooms (or 1lb bag of frozen mixed wild mushrooms)

1 lb beef stew meat, cut into 1/2 inch cubes (optional)

1 11oz. box of Mother's quick cooking barley
1 32 oz. container of College Inn Low Sodium Chicken Broth

Fresh dill and black pepper to garnish
Another container of chicken broth, for reheating and thinning

In a large stockpot, heat olive oil. Coarsely chop onion, leek, carrot, celery (or fennel), parsnip and parsley. Saute with bay leaf over medium heat until softened and beginning to color. Transfer to a bowl and set aside.

In the same stockpot, brown beef cubes, add mushrooms and saute until mushrooms release their juices and most of the water has evaporated. If you are making a veggie version of this recipe (I often do), just saute the mushrooms seperately with a bit of olive oil.

Add the carrot mix back to the pot. Add barley, stir to combine with the beef/vegetable mixture. Add broth and simmer for 20 minutes until most of the broth is absorbed. I usually undercook it a bit, so I can freeze and reheat without making the barley bloated and soggy.

Serve topped with fresh dill and a good grinding of pepper.

Serves 6

Holy Chocolate: A Holiday Project for Young and Old

2010-12-22T09:07:00.000-08:00

Anyone who thinks dessert can't be real work has never read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The Provencal Christmas tradition is very serious about sweets; rules and regulations must be respected. There are 13 desserts (Les Treize Desserts) served on Christmas Eve, one for Jesus and each of his apostles. Everyone must taste a piece of each (for luck), and best of all, you must must must leave the dishes and food on the table all night, so hungry travelers can come and dine if they like. (I say, anything that gets me out of doing the dinner dishes is a tradition worth adopting.)

Les Treize Desserts:

almonds, hazelnuts, raisins, figs

dates (often stuffed with marzipan)

white and dark nougat (forces of good and evil)

candied fruit

calisson d'aix (almond paste candies)

pompe a l'huile (olive oil-based brioche - here flavored with orange flower water)

Along with grapes, celementines and winter melon.

Gathering the ingredients was a bit like a scavenger hunt designed by mischievous Keebler elves, requiring at least two visits to the La Bonbonniere in Apt, aka: the most beautiful candy store on earth.

Not strictly required, I couldn't resist a little marzipan car for Augustin. He was confused: eat the toys? don't eat the toys? Oh well, I guess parental consistency can go out the window once a year.

Though I have a real textural thing for nougat (I love chewy candy - hence my obsession with DOTS), my favorite of the Provencal Christmas treats is the mendiant - small discs of dark or milk chocolate topped with dried fruit and nuts representing 4religious orders: raisins for the Dominicans, hazelnuts for the Augustinians, dried figs for Franciscans and almonds for the Carmelites.

I love the idea of wandering monks, combing the country side, looking for a cozy table to pass the winter storm. Of course this legend has a lot more atmospheric possibilities in our new village home. How would said monks have discovered the door code to our Paris apartment building? I once kissed a monk. Costume party. Everyboby relax. Anyway, I'm a storyteller by nature, so I love a side of legend with my meal.

Augustin is a bit young yet, but I think these would be great fun to make at home with your kids. They are essentially puddles of melted chocolate with a scattered fruit and nut topping, so there's no need for aesthetic precision, and lots of opportunities for licking fingers, etc.

Chocolate Mendiants

8 ounces best-quality dark chocolate

If you are being traditional: a generous handful each of dried figs (cut into small chunks), dark raisins, blanched almonds, and whole or halved hazelnuts.

If you are feeling fancy (and don't care much for monk symbolism) - swap in candied orange, lemon or grapefruit peel, candied ginger, pistachio or macadamia nuts.

Place a sheet of waxed paper on a cold cookie sheet or other smooth, cold surface.

Melt chocolate in a microwave oven or in a double boiler.

Place a teaspoonful of melted chocolate onto the sheet, shape into a disk using the back of a spoon. Make several at a time so that the chocolate does not have time to harden on the sheet.

Place a piece of fig, a raisin, an almond and a hazelnut on each disk, and leave to cool completely. The mendiants are ready when the chocolate has hardened and they peel of the waxed paper with ease.

Makes about 50 chocolates.

Wishing you and yours a sweet and merry holiday weekend - however many desserts you're eating.

Before and After

2010-12-18T06:42:00.000-08:00

Forget nose jobs and cellulite creams, or whatever miracle fix the magazines are selling this year. These are my kind of Before and After photos. I'm making sea bass with Chinese black rice for Christmas Eve dinner, and to make it extra special, I’ve decided to add a bit of black truffle to the mix. I bought my specimen (whole truffles do have a lovely fossilized quality) at a store selling Provencal specialties on the road from Cereste to Mane.

Never having purchased a whole truffle before, I was in need of detailed instructions. Still encased in a hard layer of local soil, my precious ingredient looked more like a chocolate truffle dusted with Dutch cocoa powder than the roi des champignons.

The venduese told me to take a moist toothbrush and massage gently until the layer of brown gave way to a cratered geological black. Then wrap in aluminum foil and freeze. When the big day arrives, I am to grate my frozen truffle directly into the risotto, and inhale deeply.

I'm naturally suspicious of instant transformation. But this seems like a kind of alchemy worth trying. How are your holiday preparations going?

A Palette Cleanser

2010-12-05T12:26:00.000-08:00

I just had a desperate plea from a reader: "PLEASE do a new post minus a naked beast...please?"

For those of you traumatized by one too many naked beasts over Thanksgiving, here's a soothing vegatarian dish to give your palette a rest - until the Christmas flesh fest begins...

Stuffed Pumpkins for Two:

Two baby pumpkins - wash, cut off the tops, remove the seeds and roast in a 350F oven until tender, 1 hour (possibly more). You can eat the skin and all. If you can't find baby pumpkins, buy a good size butternut squash, split in half (the long way) and roast with a bit of olive oil.

Fill your hot pumpkin (or squash) with cooked wild rice, brown rice, quinoa, or bulgur.

Sprinkle with cubes of feta cheese.

Top with lots of fresh dill, black pepper, and maybe a drizzle of honey.

This reheats nicely, so if you are cooking for one, make two - and take one to the office the next day for lunch.

Enjoy!

A Turkey Named Marie-Hortense

2010-11-24T14:32:00.000-08:00

This is, or rather was, Marie-Hortense, last year's Thanksgiving turkey in Paris. Why, you may ask, such a dignified name for our she-bird? I'd tell you. But then I'd have to kill you. Suffice it to say, there were some at the table who thought a certain Marie-Hortense would benefit from a sprig of rosemary up the bum.

This year, Thanksgiving seems to have snuck up on me. I'm just back from a 3 week trip to the US. Still up at 4am every morning from the jetlag. I doubt anyone in our tiny Provencal village even knows it's a holiday; so I will go on with business as usual: buy some salmon and dorade from the fishmonger at our Thursday market, work for a few hours in my local cafe. I'm organizing my winter pantry, cocao powder and lots of whole wheat pasta - as they are predicting snow this weekend.

One thing that happens when no one around you is frantically cooking, polishing silver or planning their 5am Black Friday shopping marathon, is that you have a little time to think about what Thanksgiving really means. I'm a perfectionist, which means I am often ungrateful. I expect too much - of myself, and of everything and everyone around me. I often forget to give thanks for the many gifts life has given me: a son who smiles all the time, a man who can tile a floor and recite poetry, a family who loves me even when I bite back, friends who can finish my sentences, a job that engages my head and my heart, and a new, glorious landscape to explore.

So this year, I've decided to take the day off. From myself. Today, I will not feel behind. I will not worry about being a better wife, mother, daughter, housekeeper or writer. I'll be having quite an ordinary day, but I'll be thinking and thanking - instead of fretting and fixing. We all need one day a year when we meet our own expectations, and allow the world to be as it is, instead of exactly how we would like it to be.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!

Now, if only there was a way to make turkey soup without actually making the turkey...

There Will Be Blood

2010-10-20T12:44:00.000-07:00

There is something about the first frost that brings out the caveman - one might even say the vampire - in me. I want to wear fur and suck the meat off lamb bones, and on comes my annual craving for boudin noir, otherwise known as blood sausage. You know you've been in France for nearly a decade when the idea of eating congealed blood sounds not only normal, but positively delightful.

As a woman recently pregnant, my body craved iron in silly amounts. I could have eaten a skyscraper. It's a shame this sort of thing is not on the French pregnancy diet - forbidden along with charcuterie and liver... It's true that boudin noir is not the sort of thing I'd buy at any old supermarket - ideally, you want a butcher who prepares his own. I bought mine from a mustached man with a little truck in the Apt market. I serve my boudin with sliced apples - this time, some golden delicious we picked up from a farmstand by the side of the road. I tossed the apples with olive oil, sprinkled whole lot with sea salt and added a cinnamon stick and a star anise to ground the dish with cozy autumn spices. Boudin is already cooked through when you buy it, but 20 minutes or so in a hot oven gives it time to blister, even burst. I'm an adventurous eater, but the idea of boiled (or cold) boudin makes me think about moving back to New Jersey. (No, not really.) By this point in the post, I know there is at least one reader (perhaps many) thinking...but, that looks like large labrador shit on a plate. True enough. But once you get past the aesthetics, you have one of richest savory tastes I can imagine. Good boudin has a velveteen consistency that marries perfectly with the slight tartness of the roasted apples.

A good boudin is not the only thing in danger of bursting in France this week. Strikes and protests against the raising of the retirement age have left students injured and 1/3 of gas stations empty. The French do love their manifs. It is admirable to have such a politically engaged public, but I suspect that the unions find the power surge of parades more useful than the search for actual solutions.

As usual, the French government has backed itself into a PR corner. I heard a govt. rep on the radio describe the issue in exasperated tones as a “problème technique” – sure, it’s technical if your job is to sit in Paris and juggle a bunch of number that no longer add up. But this is also a “problème social” – there are real people ensuring the stability of the system, and they deserve to be consulted. Pensions are a social contract – yes, there needs to be change, but the government must also find a way to communicate that that doesn’t leave people feeling screwed with their pants on. (The banner in the photo says "Reimburse the Vaseline". Which means exactly what you think it does.) Add to that the fact (strangely absent from the press) that under the new law everyone has to work longer – except parliamentarians. And they wonder why the man on the street is out for blood…

Boudin Noir with Apples and Autumn Spices

Boudin noir for 4 (you’ll need about 5-6 inches of sausage per person)
4 golden delicious apples
2 cinnamon sticks
1 star anise
Sea salt
1 tbsp olive oil
A glass of white wine

Heat the oven to 400F.

Core and slice the apples, skin on. (½ inch slices).Toss apples with the olive oil. In a large ovenproof platter with low sides, arrange the boudin (cut into individual portions) and the apples. Sprinkle with sea salt and nestle in the cinnamon sticks and star anise. Cook for 20 minutes or until the boudin starts to sizzle and the apples have begun to brown.

Add a glass of white wine to the bottom of the pan. Cook five minutes longer. Serve immediately.

Serves 4 as a main course. If you want to double the comfort food factor, serve with mashed potatoes. Although the dish is prepared with white wine, I serve it with a medium bodied red. If you’d like to do this as an appetizer: carefully slice the boudin into coins (1 inch thick) and prepare with apples as above. I might serve this with port – ideally, in front of a roaring fire.