January 4, 2011
Best of 2010
I hope you've enjoyed a warm and cheerful holiday season, that you've shared laughter and good meals with the people you care about, and that you're feeling full of energy and dreams for 2011.
May this fresh new year bring you joy, serenity, fulfillment, and really good skin. I look forward to another year of meeting you here on Chocolate & Zucchini.
Before we kiss 2010 goodbye altogether, I don't want to miss my chance to reminisce on what it has brought me, thereby establishing my traditional "best of" list*.
Most memorable trip
The most salient memory I will keep from 2010 is, without a doubt, the trip I took to Japan with Maxence. I can even say it was the best trip of my life, and I wish I could bottle up the euphoria I felt for two weeks straight -- and also wrap up in a magic doggie bag every single bite we ate, so I could savor them over and over again.
Most rewarding baking project
For the first time ever, I baked a galette des rois to celebrate the Epiphany, the traditional January holiday I wrote about here and again here. It was a success that far outweighed the (moderate) work involved, and I encourage you to try your hand at it too: the official date is this Thursday, but l'Epiphanie is customarily celebrated anytime in January.
Favorite breads
Ever since I found James MacGuire's instructions for pain au levain in an issue of Art of Eating, it has become our weekly loaf of bread, and I now make it (almost) with my eyes closed.
I also baked a number of batches of these tomato burger buns. They accompanied us through a fabulous summer of near-weekly cheeseburgers -- many of them vegetarian, since I discovered with glee that they sell portobello mushrooms at the greenmarket.
Favorite new cooking utensils
My new/old pressure cooker is definitely getting some mileage on my stove: I use it several times a week to cook legumes, grains, soups, and stock.
I have also acquired a used electric coffee grinder (a model very much like this one) that I have repurposed as a spice/seed grinder, to whizz things like flax seeds, cardamom and lemon zest.
And although it isn't a cooking utensil exactly, we are delighted with the sparkling water fountain that my sister and brother-in-law gave us for Christmas, which allows us to turn still water to sparkling at the push of a button ("abracadabra!" optional).
January 1, 2011
January 2011 Desktop Calendar
Happy New Year!
At the beginning of every month, I am offering C&Z; readers a new wallpaper to apply on the desktop of your computer, with a food-related picture and a calendar of the current month.
Our calendar for January is a picture of lemon slices I dried in a dehydrator (see these posts on raw buckwheat granola and raw multiseed crackers to know more about my dehydrator episode). I made a big batch of these, and I am keeping them on hand in a jar, to add to stews, riz au lait, and herbal teas.
Instructions to get your calendar are below!
"January 2011 Desktop Calendar" continues »
December 21, 2010
Christmas Sablés
[Biscuits de Noël]
Laurence is one of my best and oldest friends. I met her when I was fourteen, on our first day of high school, and soon we were inseparable, so alike in so many ways that people sometimes mistook us for sisters.
I loved going to her house after school. For one thing, there was a television there, which wasn't the case at my parents' -- much to my and my sister's grief -- so there was always the electrifying prospect of maybe catching one of those shows everyone else was watching at the time.
But aside from that, the house felt like a big happy place: Laurence had two (actual) sisters, and her mother, Christine, took care of small children at home, so there were a lot of comings and goings, conversations, people at the door, and girls shouting things down the stairwell.
Laurence and I would first drop by the bright kitchen and raid the cabinets to make ourselves a snack -- the essential goûter -- then we would dash up the two flights of stairs and shut the door of her room behind us so we could talk and talk and talk, the way fourteen-year-olds do.
There was often bread and nutella in that kitchen, or sometimes a yogurt cake, and also very good homemade vanilla yogurts made with whole milk in the fridge. And I remember that every year, around Christmastime, there was a tin of biscuits de Noël that Christine had baked.
Thin, crisp, and delicately buttery with just a whisper of cinnamon, these were simple cookies, deceptively plain in appearance, but they made you close your eyes and listen to the tiny choir bursting into an aria inside your mouth.
A decade later, it finally dawned on me that I should just ask Christine for her recipe, which she kindly agreed to share. She noted that she made them just once a year, in the days leading up to Christmas, and I follow her lead, even though they're such fantastic little sablés I would gladly inhale them year-round.
It is an easy recipe, which I've altered only marginally, lowering the sugar a little, adding salt, and replacing the tablespoon of rum with a tablespoon of my vanilla extract. The dough needs to rest overnight for the flavors to develop, and then it's a simple matter of rolling it out thinly, cutting shapes, and baking batch after batch, while pretending to be in a movie about a small-scale cookie factory.
This year's production is undoubtedly the tastiest I've ever baked: I made it with the flour they sell at the Poilâne bakery, the very same stone-ground flour they use for their bread, yes, but also their legendary punition cookies. As a result, my biscuits de Noël bear a strong flavor resemblance to them, which is exactly as I'd hoped.
Naturally, you could choose to ice the cookies if that's your thing, but I am not a decorated cookie kind of girl, in case you hadn't noticed, and I love the quiet look of these. And I think they make a lovely giftable treat as is, stacked in even little piles in a box lined with tissue paper.
And for more edible gift ideas, check these recipes:
~ Chestnut pecan biscotti,
~ Homemade granola,
~ Very ginger cookies,
~ Chocolate clusters,
~ Homemade vanilla extract,
~ Matcha shortbread cookies,
~ Chocolate-dipped hazelnut marbles,
~ Homemade tisane mix,
~ Rose or chocolate marshmallows.
Happy Holidays!
"Christmas Sablés" continues »
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December 16, 2010
[Edible Idioms] La course à l'échalote
Gorgeous braided shallots photographed by Denna Jones.
This is part of a series on French idiomatic expressions that relate to food. Browse the list of idioms featured so far.
This week's expression is, "La course à l'échalote."
Literally translated as, "the shallot race," it is used in situations of futile competition, when people strive to outdo one another for vain reasons, in a political context or otherwise. It is somewhat comparable to (though less openly vulgar than) the English expression a pissing contest (pardon my French).
Example: "C'est un peu ridicule, cette course à l'échalote pour savoir qui sera le plus rapide à chroniquer le dernier resto branché." "It's a bit ridiculous, this shallot race to see who'll be the quickest to review the latest hip restaurant."
Listen to the idiom and example read aloud:
"[Edible Idioms] La course à l'échalote" continues »
December 14, 2010
Black Radish and Potato Salad
The black radish is the Parisian locavore's nemesis: during the winter, the aphanus sativus var. niger pops up regularly in AMAP* subscribers' vegetable baskets, and it can be a challenge to put it to good use.
An ancient variety that dates back to antiquity, this mega-radish has a black, coarse skin and a white, almost translucent flesh that's quite pungent in flavor. It is this characteristic sharpness that earned it the nickname of raifort des Parisiens -- Parisians' horseradish -- and makes it generally too assertive to eat on its own.
It is, however, a winter vegetable that rewards the eater with lots of nutritional perks -- it is a good source of vitamin C, sulfur, fibers and B vitamins, and it is thought to promote digestive health, detoxify the liver, boost the immune system, and fight aging -- so much so that its juice is sold in boxes of drinkable phials that you're supposed to down before breakfast (isn't that tempting).
Fortunately, there are ways to tame the sharpness of this superfood and reap its benefits at normal meal hours, and my favorite so far is to grate the flesh and add it raw to all kinds of salads.
Today's salad is a particularly good final destination for the black radishes that make their way into my vegetable drawer: the sweetness of the potatoes tones down the pungency of the black radish, allowing it to simply illuminate the salad like a zesty condiment. A touch of smoked paprika for depth, a scatter of fresh herbs for clarity, and a good sprinkle of walnuts for crunch, and you've got yourself a very satisfying, sunny-winter-day salad.
Next up, I want to try pickling black radishes, tsukemono-style, using directions from Elizabeth Andoh's beautiful book of vegetarian Japanese cuisine, Kansha -- I'll let you know how that works out.
And naturally, if you want to share your own favorites uses for the black radish, I'd be very interested to hear them!
* AMAP is the French equivalent to CSA.
"Black Radish and Potato Salad" continues »
December 8, 2010
Homemade Pasta
When I was little, when my sister and I felt desultory and bored, my mother would sometimes make us a batch of salt dough for modelling. We would sit at the small folding table in the kitchen and squeeze and roll and pinch to our hearts' content. And although my sister's creations were invariably more delicate and life-like than my own, I remember I once proudly produced a full range of miniature fruits and vegetables that tasted shockingly salty when you applied your tongue on them (it was irresistible).
In retrospect, I am quite impressed by my mother's ability to whip up a perfectly pliable pâte à sel in what felt like minutes, then bake our figurines in the oven without them burning or cracking, at a time when there was, naturally, no Internet to turn to for guidance*. I don't remember there being a book of "fun stuff to keep the kids out of your hair" lying around either, so I chalk it up to motherly magic.
In any case, the memory of these childhood episodes was awakened when I first tried my hand at homemade pasta sometime last year, using a newly acquired pasta roller accessory for my stand mixer.
Pasta dough is the most pleasant dough the cook is ever given to handle, silky smooth and wonderfully cooperative, and letting it glide through the cylinders of the pasta roller and onto the palm of your flattened hand, to be folded and fondled and cut into any number of pasta shapes truly feels like child's play.
The pasta dough recipe I use is based on the formula Michael Ruhlman shares in his Ratio book, a title you should definitely add to your wish list if it's not already standing on your kitchen bookshelf. He gives a ratio of 2 parts egg to 3 parts flour for his pasta dough, and I've used it with good success. I like to substitute fine semolina flour for part of the flour, to give the pasta a little more substance and chew, and I add some salt as well, for a more even seasoning in the finished dish.
Although you can play around with this recipe and add flavoring or colorings to the dough -- squid ink makes for a fetching presentation -- I concur with Michael Ruhlman when he writes that "unlike flavored breads, which we eat with little adornment, pasta is usually dressed somehow, so you should have a good reason for flavoring your pasta dough, rather than adding the flavor after you've cooked it."
I mentioned above that I invested in a (second-hand) stand mixer accessory to support my pasta-making ambitions, but a hand-cranked one works well too, though most people find it necessary to have someone land a third hand, at least when they're starting out. Either one of these tools would make a generous gift idea for the culinary-oriented on your list.
What you can do without, however, is a drying rack: I've learned from my friends at Hidden Kitchen that wooden clothes hangers do the trick just as nicely -- just remember to wipe off the flour before you put your black suit pants back on them.
* I imagine in the near future such a statement will elicit disbelief in young children, who will ask, "Really? There was no Internet when you were growing up?" and I will feel a million years old.
