Lunch in Paris

Uncanny: A Fig Chutney Lesson

2012-10-17T19:05:00.000-07:00

Autumn is here, suddenly, vibrantly. The wind has pushed aside the summer haze. The sloping angles of the roofs against the sky are sharp, clear. Falling chestnuts are deadly (in a Bugs Bunny cartoon kind of way). My son has made a collection of the smooth dark globes, the perfect size for his small fist.

As the temperature drops, I slip into a mild culinary panic. The last of September's abundant figs, plums are disappearing - the quince, herald of a long winter's simmer, have arrived. All this makes me mourn. It also makes me realize that I've gone yet another busy summer in Provence without quite learning how to can.

I thought a book might be helpful, but the books make the same assumption – that your mother, your grandmother and your grandmother’s grandmother have been making jam since time immemorial. A book is simply an aide-memoire for something already in your blood. Sure, my grandmother’s grandmother probably knew how to make jam, but somewhere on the journey from the shtetl to suburban New Jersey, we picked up Smuckers. The French recipes are patently unhelpful: Put one kilo of fruit and one kilo of sugar in a pot. Boil. Jar. They never say much about timing, temperature – or botulism.

What I really needed was a masterclass. When in doubt, call a Brit. Mollie and David make their own jam and chutney in neatly labeled jars. I’d been politely bugging them about it since June. Like a singing lesson with Maria Callas, I thought I should sign up early. (See that neat little wooden gizmo to the left, that's a tool to spread crepe batter that David has handily converted into a measure to show him when the vinegar syrup has properly reduced - Clearly, I have a few tricks of the trade to learn.)

As I walked in the door, I was enveloped in the steam coming from the stove – the sharp edge of vinegar and fresh ginger softened by cinnamon and the sticky slow dissolving of the figs. Mollie and David’s kitchen is the stuff of dreams. There’s a rustic front kitchen with heavy beams, well scrubbed wooden counters and a groaning red range with room for six bubbling pots. Glass front cabinets with crystal tumblers, a shelf of neatly labeled spices in squat glass jars.

Hidden discreetly behind the stove is the doorway to their secret weapon - a smaller room, a full pantry, lined floor to ceiling with white cabinets, an extra freezer and a deep slop sink. It’s like Upstairs, Downstairs, but without the servants.

By the time I arrived they had the whole thing set up like a cooking show. (David is also a very skilled photographer - some of the photos are his). There was an almost finished pot bubbling on the stove. The glass jars (sterilized in the dishwasher) were sitting snugly in a large roasting pan, covered lightly with a paper towl to keep stray insects or dust from flying in. Just beside were all the ingredients for the next batch – ready to start all over again. Just like when Nigella Lawson shows you how to make a chocolate cake and then, in the name of instant gratification and a half hour time slot, whisks a finished one from the oven just as the other goes into bake.

Mollie and David clearly had this down to a science. When the fig mixture was almost done, Molly placed the roasting pan full of jars in a 100C oven for 10 minutes. Using a silicone oven mitt, she transferred the hot jars onto a foil lined tray and got ready to pour. The chutney was thick, like the affectionate blob in a B horror movie. Big chunks of fig slid through her flowered ceramic funnel in satisfying gloops. Every once and a while a drip would escape. "Oh Bul" -, Mollie began, stopping herself. I saw one of David’s Dickensian eyebrows shoot up. "Normally," said Mollie, 'there is a fair bit of swearing during this bit, but having you here will keep us in line."

She quickly screwed the top on with a silicone oven mit."It makes the seal as it cools down, you see. I just tried to open one of last year’s in the pantry. Couldn’t loosen it."

While Mollie was photocopying the recipe. I stared out the window of the office. The smell of a nearby pine drifted through the open window. I left the house, a warm pot of chutney in my hands, already dreaming of thick slices of sourdough bread and the butcher’s jambon aux herbes. "If you can bear the suspense." said David, "Leave it in the back of the cupboard for a few months. It’ll be that much better for Christmas.

Not sure I can wait that long...

Mollie and David's Fig Chutney

Though figs are a passion of mine, I suspect this would be equally good made with pears, quince, or even apples. With infinite thanks to Mollie and David for sharing their recipe!

A note to time starved cooks: Chutney requires patience, though not constant supervision. Make sure you have a good 3-4 hours ahead of you when you start. An excellent rainy day activity.

Red wine vinegar 3.25 litres
Light brown sugar 1.125 kg
Onions (finely chopped) 5
Fresh root ginger (finely chopped) 150 – 200 gm (to taste)
Colman's mustard powder 5 tsp
Lemon zest 1.5 lemons
Cinnamon 2.5 sticks
Coarse Sea Salt 9 tsp
Allspice 1.25 tsp
Cloves (crushed) ½ tsp
Figs 3 kg, (quartered)

In a large saucepan (stainless or enamel) combine the vinegar, sugar, onion, ginger, mustard seeds, lemon zest, cinnamon stick, salt, allspice, and cloves and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook until mixture is thickened and reduced by 2/3, forming a thick syrup. (This will take a good 90 minutes - up to 2 hours.) Add the figs and cook gently until the figs are very soft and beginning to fall apart and most of the liquid they've given off has evaporated, about 30 minutes more.

Chutney can be kept in a non reactive container in the fridge for up to three weeks. Alternately, hot chutney may be ladled into hot sterilized canning jars and processed in a hot-water bath according to manufacturer's directions.)

Makes around a dozen 340ml pots

A Perfect Storm

2012-09-13T02:26:00.000-07:00

September is a perfect storm at my local market.

The tomatoes are out of this world. But then again, so are the carrots. And the beets. Summer and autumn smack into each other like student lovers who haven't seen each other since finals. The pairings are bountiful, a little wild, and above all - very short lived.

I don't need to do much to transform these fabulous ingredients. A little feta and olive oil.

Garlic, and olive oil...

Herbes de Provence...and olive oil.

In France - anywhere, really - the first rule of being a great cook is being a great shopper. When you start with wonderful things, dinner mostly takes care of itself.

Sauteed Beet Greens with Garlic and Olive Oil

A great alternative to spinach or Swiss chard, I recently had my first experience with beet greens. I can't help but think of Italy when I make this - the Italians so favor humble greens that the French often overlook...

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 large clove of garlic, thinly sliced
beet greens from 3 or 4 large beets

Wash the greens in a colander, but do not dry them - you want a little water clinging to the leaves.

Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan (or wok), add garlic and saute for 30 seconds to 1 min, until the garlic is fragrant. Add the damp greens, stir to coat with olive oil. Cook 2 minutes uncovered, then cover partially and continue cooking until greens are tender (I actually like them slightly charred), 3-4 minutes more.

Serves 2 as a side dish

September Briam

Every year when G. and I come back from our solo week in Crete, I buy a cookbook in the airport. The recipes are approximate at best, but I'm desperate to recreate some of the pure tastes (not to mention the pure relaxation) of our time there.

Briam is basically a Greek ratatouille. It's a low stress version that bakes in the oven and makes it's own sauce. Like all dishes of this kind, the quality of the finished dish depends entirely on the veggies you start with. So hit the local farmers market and go crazy.

1 medium (or 2 baby) eggplant, cut into large chunks
2 red onions, cut into 8ths
4 carrots, halved lengthwise
3 zucchini (summer squash), 2 yellow, 1 green, cut into large chunks
1 small green pepper, cut into large chunks
2 large tomatoes, cut into 6ths
1 large tomato, for grating into the sauce
1/3 cup (79 ml) olive oil
1/3 cup (79 ml) water
1 tsp herbes de provence
1 tsp sugar
Generous sprinkle of coarse sea salt
Generous grinding of black pepper

Preheat the oven to 350F (180C). In a large casserole dish, combine the vegetables. Keep your pieces big, they will have plenty of time to cook through.

Cut your remaining tomato in half, and coarsely grate it on top of the other veggies. (When you grate your tomato, press the cut half towards the grater, and grate all the way down - then throw away the skin.)

Add the olive oil, water, herbes de provence, salt, sugar and black pepper. Mix everything together with your hands, until all the vegetables are coated with the liquid.

Cover tightly, bake for 90 minutes. Uncover - baste the veggies, but don't move them around, or you'll get mush. Bake uncovered for a further 30 minutes.

Serve hot or warm, use the slick olive oil tomato sauce left at the bottom for pasta the next day. Use leftover veggies and sauce to cook fish (the photo below is monkfish filet), or as filling for an omelet.

Serves 4-6 as a side dish.

French Casual

2012-08-28T14:08:00.000-07:00

My first experiences with French Cuisine (with a capital C, merci very much) were at Babette, a now defunct brownstone in Manhattan's theater district. The silverware was heavy, the ladies old and the calves brains sauteed in clarified butter. A certain formality still hovers over French dining. It's hard to shake the image of starched chefs, maniacal shallot chopping technique and maybe a baroque birdcage of spun sugar to enclose your single scoop of grapefruit-champagne sorbet. Oui, the French know how to lay out a 5-course dinner like no one else, but in Provence I've discovered a less formal repertoire -the dishes people bring to picnics, and serve with lingering evening aperitifs - savouring the last of the long summer sun.

Our neighbor, Mr. C. (he of the cherry trees), brought these biscuits to a neighborhood picnic and outdoor film screening that we did on the terraced stone steps of the street just behind our house. The kids were up late, school's out after all. Young and old, old timers and city transplants mingled, drank wine and ate quinoa tabbouleh salad.

Mr. C's recipe is a savory cousin of the crumbly butter cookies that the French call sablés. Rich, perfectly balanced, they are what my British friends would call "moreish" - a succinct way of saying you could eat the whole batch in one sitting. The French, of course, would never do such a thing. Served with plump dates and a glass of roundish white wine, your Labor Day picnic might never be the same...

Mr. C's Rosemary Olive Sablé "Cookies"

These are extremely easy to make, provided your butter really is at room temperature when you start.

2 scant teaspoons fresh rosemary (approx an 8 inch branch), finely chopped
12 cured black olives, pitted and finely chopped
150 grams (10.5 tablespoons) unsalted butter
200 grams (1 1/4 cup) flour
150 grams (1 cup) grated Parmesan cheese
Black pepper

A hour or two before you want to bake, take the butter out of the fridge. It needs to be really soft.

Preheat the oven to 350F (180C). Line a large cookie sheet with parchment paper.

Chop the rosemary, pit and chop the olives, set aside.

In a medium mixing bowl, combine flour, parmesan, rosemary, and a grinding of black pepper. Add the olives and the softened butter cut into three or four chunks. Knead the butter into the flour mixture with your hands until the ingredients are evenly distributed and a ball of dough has formed. Do not overwork the dough.

Put the dough in the fridge for 10 minutes. Roll out the dough on a piece of parchment paper, to a thickness of about 1/4 inch (5mm). Using a 2.5 inch (6 cm) biscuit cutter (the top of a glass will do just fine), cut 16 rounds. Bake on a sheet of parchment paper until fragrant and highly colored, 15-17 minutes. Cool on a wire rack. Store in an air tight container; they keep nicely for 2-3 days.

Makes 16 cookies.

A Big Bite of Summer

2012-07-29T07:27:00.000-07:00

Summer cooking in Provence does not leave a lot of room for free will. Exceptional ingredients come in tidal waves; no sooner have you finished gorging yourself on cherries in June than it's all melon, all the time.

My favorite of the recent culinary tsunamis are the zucchini flowers. Beautiful, delicate, with a surprisingly intense flavor, they are often simply fried and served as "beignets". I prefer to stuff them - goat cheese and fresh mint from our garden, beef with wild rice, tomato and feta, "brousse de brebis" (our local ricotta) and green olive tapenade.

I like to serve them before the meal. A teaser, really. There is something about biting into a flower that surprises, then delights, my guests. They are so good right out of the oven that this food blogger actually forgot to take a picture of the finished product. My husband, who hasn't eaten hot food in three years, can tell you how rare that is...

Wishing you a big bite of summer!

Zucchini Flowers Stuffed with Goat Cheese and Fresh Mint

Like so many of the best French dishes, this recipe highlights one or two exceptional seasonal ingredients with a minimum of fuss.

3 oz. fresh goat cheese
1 egg
2 tablespoons fresh mint, finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon fennel seed
Salt, pepper to taste
Extra virgin olive oil

Heat your oven to 350F (180C).

Lightly beat the egg, crumble in the goat cheese, and mash together with a fork. And mint, fennel seeds and salt and pepper to taste. Stuff the flowers (don't rinse them first, but be sure to check for ants hiding inside!). Twist to close.

In a large casserole dish, pour in a small amount of olive oil. Roll each flower in the oil until lightly coated. Bake for 15-20 minutes until lightly browned and fragrant.

Serves 2 as an appetizer, 4 as an amuse bouche.

Tip: You'll probably find zucchini flowers at your local farmer's market - unfortunately, they are too delicate for the supermarket.

30 Minute Meal

2012-06-26T08:43:00.000-07:00

Thursday is fish day at our house - that's when my fishmonger (that's him) comes to our local market. Home cooks tend to see fish as a major production - something best ordered in a restaurant - but if I were to write one of those "30-Minute Meal" cookbooks, there would probably be more fish recipes than anything else.

Here's a quickie one-pan dinner using the the emerging summer flavors of Provence. The tomatoes are just arriving, and peas, well - I can't get enough of Provencal peas. My herb garden is in grand form at the moment - so I added the flowering portion of my lemon verbena plant, a bit of lemon basil and some lemon thyme. I recently bought some dried Spanish Nora Peppers, very mild, a little smoky, like good paprika. I've been adding a pinch or two to my tomato bases. Gives it a subtle bass note.

Monkfish Fillets with Tomatoes and Fresh Peas

4 monkfish fillets
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 small red onion, diced
3 medium vine-ripened tomatoes, chopped
1/2 tsp sugar
1/3 cup white or rose wine
2 large pinches of dried Spanish Nora peppers or good paprika
1 tsp fresh lemon thyme (or the flowering portion of lemon verbana or lemon basil) -regular thyme + a bit of lemon zest would do
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup fresh peas

Heat olive oil in a good size frying pan. Saute onion until translucent, 4-5 minutes. Add chopped tomatoes and sugar, simmer 5 minutes. Add wine, simmer 3 minutes more. Add Nora pepper or paprika, stir to combine. Add fish fillets and thyme. Cover and simmer on medium-low for 10-15 mintues, turning the fillets once midway through. Cooking time will depend on the size of your fillets - start checking early. Be gentle - monkish, when properly cooked, has a nice firm texture like lobster, you don't want to boil it to mush.

When the monkfish looks nearly done, stir in the fresh peas and heat through - about 2 minutes. Serve with quinoa or crusty bread to soak up the sauce.

Serves 4

A Salad of Many Virtues

2012-05-15T05:40:00.000-07:00

I remember it like it was yesterday: the day I learned that French salad is not diet food. A salad in France is a happy meal - not some thrilless plate of virtue that leaves you wishing you'd ordered the blooming onion. G. took me to a Chez Gladine, a student hole in the wall in Paris, in the villagey quartier of the Buttes-aux-Cailles. There were shared tables with red checkered clothes, hundreds of bumper stickers on the mirrored back wall. But what made the biggest impression was the salad - it was served in a huge crockery bowl -instead of iceberg with When-Harry-Met-Sally sauce on the side, I dove into a world of bumpy, ruffled, mustard and olive oil slicked feuille de chêne lettuce, chucks of roasted potatoes, qartered tomatoes, comté cheese, seared chicken livers, dried duck gizzards, and of course, waiting at the bottom, just to see if I'd get there, crispy lardons - the bacon bits that changed my life forever.

We are in mi-saison in Provence at the moment, which means that one day you need your sunscreen, the next day you want to light your wood burning stove. We've begun eating outside in our newly gussied up courtyard; the bees are louder than helicopters. A salad that mixes hot and cold, sweet and savory, is my perference for this time of year.

Wash and pat dry a few generous handfuls of fresh spinach, stems and all. (I know what you're thinking, but the perfectly calibrated baby leaves, pre-washed and sold in the plastic bag in Shoprite probably won't stand up to what I have in mind...)

In a large frying pan, fry up 8 oz. of lardons, or diced slab bacon. When the bacon has rendered it's fat and begun to crisp up, add a generous handful of whole walnuts. Stir until coated and crisp - about 1 minute more. Shut the heat. With a slotted spoon, remove the bacon and walnuts to a seperate dish. Put your washed spinach leaves into the warm pan and stir to coat with the bacon fat. Add a teaspoon of olive oil, a generous pinch of sea salt, a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar and a good grinding of pepper. Toss the whole lot, right there in the pan.

In a large salad bowl combine the spinach, bacon, walnuts and top with a thinly sliced pear. Serve with whole grain bread and Morbier or an aged goat's cheese.

Serves 2 as a main course or 4 as an appetizer. Bon appetit!

Let Them Eat Cake?

2012-04-19T02:55:00.000-07:00

So this is why I pay my taxes. A. (and 20 other kids) had their "gouter" - that's French for afternoon snack - at the new village creche that he will attend as of next week. State subsidized daycare (from the age of 8 weeks) and the right to full day pre-school (every child over the age of 3) are the fundamental secrets of low stress French parenting. Simply put, the kids are out of the house a lot longer, and a lot earlier, than in the US. Funny, I was just starting to get the hang of being a mom (now that A. and I can have a conversation about Dr. Suess), and now he's going to forge his own way in the plastic playhouse - as he should.

My mom remembers my first day of school very clearly. Me walking down the flagstone path, Mary Janes on my feet, plastic lunchbox in hand. Now I know why. A. is out in the world now, and if I do my job right - if he spreads his wings as I hope he will - he's never coming back (except for rice pudding and laundry - and hopefully, the occasional bit of advice).

Thoughts of his future girlfriends and career in extreme sports aside, my immediate concern yesterday was to keep my son from giving his American roots a bad name by eating too much cake. He actually gets his love of cake from his French father, but where cultural stereotypes are concerned, you can never be too careful.

Backseat Driver

2012-04-14T12:02:00.011-07:00

Holy Empire State Building, Batman. I've just been taken for a tourist in the city of my birth.

Going home, back, back, home (whatever) to New York is getting confusing.

After a week at my parent's new place in Delaware, G and I walked out of Penn Station into the concrete soaked sunshine. I sucked in the noise and the car exhaust like the air at the top of Everest. Gwendal started to veer toward the 40 person taxi line. Un-uh, I said, and walked 25 ft up the block and into the middle of traffic to catch one that has better things to do with his time then wait in the taxi line at Penn Station.

We hoisted our suitcase and two large shopping bags of French liqueurs (samples for a friend) into the back. 149 West 10th Street I said. He nodded. G. and I were talking for 5 minutes before I looked out the window and noticed that we were at Amsterdam and 66th Street.

Excuse me. But why are we going uptown.
I thought you said 10th Avenue and Amsterdam. (Never mind that this is physically impossible.)
10th Street. I said, 10th Street. Sir, I'm not a tourist. You heard me perfectly well. Please reset the meter to zero and take us downtown.

And that's exactly what he did - but not before my pride was wounded, an identity crisis ignited, and a 1/2 hour lost that I could have spent in my favorite hat store in Soho.

When we got out of the cab, Gwendal looked at me like I had just peeled off my face. Do you think he was really trying to cheat us, or he just didn't speak English very well?

Doesn't matter, I snapped. And it didn't. The damage was done. Somewhere during my ten years in France, I crossed a line. New York is in my blood, but something else is in my voice, my hair, my clothes, and the fact that I now have to carry a suitcase out of Penn Station. Merde.

The Back of the Cupboard

2012-04-05T18:34:00.013-07:00

My mother's kitchen cupboards are full of good memories. I'm back in the US for Passover, and yesterday we made my grandma Elsie's mandel bread (toasted chocolate chip-walnut biscotti), a family favorite. When it was time to chop the walnuts, I paused. I could have used the mini food-processor on the counter (never get the bleeping cover on straight), but what did I find at the back of the closet but grandma's ancient glass chopper.

It's been 25 years since I saw my grandfather sitting at the kitchen table, with his engineer's concentration, pulverizing nuts with one good hand (the other damaged by a stroke). This year my son took a turn, pushing down the spring activated plunger onto the round wooden base. I love that about the holidays; the repetition of ingredients and recipes makes the years and the generations blur together - everyone makes an appearance, if only in my head.

It would take superhuman powers to wait till dinner to taste them. I'm owning up to the nibbled one in the photo...

Grandma Elsie's Passover Mandel Bread

A non-Passover version of this recipe (which uses oil instead of butter and regular flour instead of matzo-meal) is given at the end of Chapter 10 of Lunch in Paris. Though I could eat the Passover version all year round.

2 cups sugar
1/2 lb. butter (two sticks)
6 eggs

2 and 3/4 cups matzo cake meal
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup potato starch

8 oz. mini chocolate chips
1 cup chopped walnuts

1 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp sugar

Preheat oven to 350F. Cream sugar and butter together in a large mixing bowl. Add eggs, one by one, beating after each addition. In another bowl, sift together matzo cake meal, salt and potato starch. Fold dry mixture into wet ingredients.
Add chocolate chips and nuts, mix to combine.

Line a large cookie sheet with tin foil, form dough into two flattish loaves, approximately 2 inches wide. Sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. Bake for 45 minutes on center rack. Let cool for 10 minutes, then slice. Lay the slices out on baking racks, put back in the oven and toast until golden brown - 10 minutes on each side.

Serves 8-10. Freezes beautifully.

Roman Holiday

2012-02-16T09:00:00.000-08:00

Maybe we should have stayed in Rome.

We came back from a sunny, food-filled mini-break (Bridget Jones style + toddler) to find the pipes half frozen. No kitchen, no laundry. Washing dishes in a bucket. Valentine's Day dinner off paper plates. (Fortunately, the toilets are in tact.)

Ice-cream was clearly in order. I went to retrieve some from my much-loved chest freezer in the cellar, only to find that instead of the light switch, I'd switched off the power. A year's worth of Mr. C's plums, my garden tomatoes, soups, stocks, not to mention a hefty supply of individual pots of dulce de leche and turron ice-cream, down the drain. (Well, not down the drain, which is frozen...)

At least the mail arrived. Dozen roses, you ask? Box of chocolates? 'fraid not: 2 kiddie loos and a check that is 9 years overdue. You see, we finally received the completed act of sale for our first apartment - purchased in 2003. (For lack of a high roof to throw myself off of, I have not asked if that means we didn't really own the apartment all this time.) They sent along a lovely letter (dated Jan. 18, 2012) saying now that our business was concluded, they were happy to enclose a check for our slightly overestimated lawyer's fees.

But it's 2012, I said to G.

Yes.

But it's 2012.

It's just one of those weeks. FWA. France (or is it February?) wins again.

I'm just going to keep flipping through my pictures of Rome. A. is a constant reminder that traveling really is all about the journey. He went window shopping for De Cecco pasta (only the best), and took us for a ride on the tram. We ended up, thanks to G.'s fabulous eyesight, at a random local market outside the city center.

I walked among the grannies in fur coats (it seems every woman over 60 in Rome has one, waiting in the closet for that day - once every 27 years - when it's cold enough to wear it). I watched men in knit caps peel artichokes. Bought ribbons of bitter radicchio.

Next time I want to rent an apartment, so I can cook for us. Veal sweetbreads and humble greens (like chicory) that you hardly ever see for sale in France.

We decided to buy supplies for a picnic. I stopped at the prosciutto and cheese seller with the longest line. A. and G. joined me just as I got to the counter, 10 ruby ovals of meat, trimmed of their fat by hand, fresh ricotta in slices. It's an odd transition, but I guess I've reached the age when a cute kid takes the place of flirting in European commericial transactions. A. got a free mouthful of parma ham, and I somehow looked like less of an idiot pointing mutely at the gorgonzola dolce.

Taking the tram back into the center, we perched on the steps of a church (one every 33 ft. in Rome) and made the best sandwich of my life.

The Perfect Italian Sandwich:

Focaccia bread
Gorgonzola dolce (or other soft creamy blue cheese)
Radicchio lettuce (or other bitter greens, like arugula)
Parma Ham

Spilt a piece of focaccia down the middle. Spread a good layer of gorgonzola. Top with two slices of parma ham and a few leaves of raddichio. You can eat the sandwich open faced, as I did, or add the other half of the focaccia on top. Pretend you are in the Piazza Navona. (If you have a grill pan handy - I'm sure this would make an excellent panini.)

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 palate, 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.

In a large mixing bowl: beat eggs, add oil, sugar, whisk to combine. Add pear and vanilla, combine.

Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients 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...