I hardly ever eat meat or fish when I’m alone. I may have a bit of ham or chicken on occasion if there is some left over from another meal, but other than that, my solo appetite favors a plant-based diet, with a few dairy products (yogurt, cheese) and eggs thrown in.

And because I eat most of my weekday lunches at home, in my own company (I admit I’ve become frightfully attached to the quiet and solitude of my workdays) and as an accidental vegetarian, I started to worry about protein: was I getting enough?

It’s hard to say, since I’m not so worried as to weigh my food and tally up the grams of protein, but I thought it couldn’t hurt to be a little more diligent about my grain-and-legume combos, as in this rice and bean salad.

Getting enough protein from a vegetarian lunch bowl

A quick reminder to those of you who don’t spend their lives reading nutrition articles: most animal products provide what’s called complete proteins, meaning they contain optimal proportions of all the essential amino acids (= the smaller units that constitute proteins) the human body can’t manufacture, and therefore needs to obtain from its diet. Plant products, on the other hand, don’t provide that same balance in essential amino acids, offering good amounts of some and low amounts of others. But as Mother Nature would have it, the amino acids found in grains and those found in legumes are complementary*, so that combining the two essentially results in a complete protein. Ha!

You don’t have to eat the two at the same time — you could eat a grain at one meal and a legume at the next, as the amino acids are said to remain available for a possible hookup for twelve hours — but they happen to go really well together, as illustrated in many culinary cultures**: think couscous and chickpeas, pita and hummus, baked beans on toast, rice and lentils, corn and beans, rice and beans, pasta and beans…

Batch-cooking for easy lunches

And so I resolved to cook a batch of some type of grain and some sort of legume at the beginning of every other week or so, and incorporate it into my lunches on subsequent days. It’s also a big time saver, naturally, because a minimal effort on Monday promises near-instant lunches after that: all I need to do then is add a form of fresh vegetable to the mix, raw or cooked, and we’re in business.

Today’s rice and bean salad is an example of one such preparation: it uses a mix of beans and other legumes I bought on sale at the organic store — it was marketed as a soup helper — and an organic, fair-trade brown rice from Thailand I really like (it is fragrant and not too chewy, and it cooks quickly). The legumes and rice are soaked and cooked separately, then tossed with fresh herbs (chervil, in this case) and a mustardy vinaigrette.

I eat it slightly warm the first day, then cold or at room temperature. It works well over a bed of mixed greens, as a wrap in lettuce leaves or rice paper, plopped in a bowl of soup, or “refried” in a skillet and eaten in a tortilla. In all cases, it is wonderfully filling, improves as it sits, and can be easily transported for lunch at the office, where I hope you’re able to find a little quiet and solitude from time to time.

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* You can get similar results by combining seeds, nuts, and protein-rich vegetables (such as leafy greens or broccoli) with grains and/or legumes.

** I thought about this for a while, but couldn’t find a good grain-and-legume example in the French culinary repertoire, apart from a lentil soup one might eat with bread. Can you think of examples yourself? Update: A reader pointed out that the provençal soupe au pistou is an example, involving beans and pasta. Thanks Anaïk!

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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 idiom is, “Le gratin.”

As cooks may already know, gratin* is the generic French term for preparations (often involving vegetables and some sort of binding sauce) cooked in a baking dish in the oven until the surface browns and becomes crusty.

But it is also a colloquial expression that refers to a social elite, an exclusive crowd who distinguish themselves by their social background, their wealth, their elegance, and/or the select field they work in. It is generally used with a subtle mix of contempt and envy by people who are not a part of that circle.

A close equivalent would be the English idiom the upper crust (before it became a popular name for pizzerias and bakeries).

Though it was originally a matter of social class only, usage of this expression now extends beyond that to consider one’s connections, talent (perceived or real), and popularity: an up-and-coming artist, for instance, can belong to the gratin without being particularly wealthy (yet) or of noble origin. Because of this, the term is often qualified further to specify the traits of the group in question: le gratin du cinéma for the movie crowd, le gratin parisien for the Parisian high society, le gratin mondain for socialites, etc.

It is frequently used with tout (tout le gratin = all the gratin, the whole gratin), which serves to point out that these groups tend to adopt a herd behavior.

Example: “Je suis allée à son vernissage, tout le gratin de la presse était là.” “I went to her vernissage, the whole gratin of the press was there.”

Listen to the idiom and example read aloud:

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Planning the menu for a dinner party is all about being realistic, balancing the different dishes not only in terms of flavor and style, but also in terms of workload. If I opt for a main course that’s a bit elaborate, then I know I won’t have much time or energy to devote to dessert, and the fruit crisp or crumble* is my wildcard choice. (The trifle, too, but we’ll talk about that another day.)

A fruit crisp requires very little work (throw the topping together, cut up some fruit, sprinkle, bake), it is seasonally flexible (you can use whatever fruit is available locally), it is the least time-sensitive item on your list (you can make the topping a couple of days beforehand, bake the crisp on the day of, and reheat just before serving) and, more important, everybody loves a good crisp: it speaks of warmth, comfort and simplicity, and even those who never go for seconds may be caught red-handed, spooning out just a little more from the dish they’re taking back to the kitchen.

This particular recipe is adapted from Claudia Fleming’s dessert book The Last Course, which I mentioned in my Best of 2009 list and is, unfortunately, out of print**.

In the book, the recipe appears as a Spiced Italian Prune Plum Crisp, and I was intrigued by the spiced topping flavored with cinnamon and cardamom, the proportions for which are quite different from my usual crumble formula.

This topping calls for melted butter, rather than cold butter that you’d rub into the dry ingredients. And ever since we decided we didn’t really need a microwave oven, I’ve used one of two methods in such situations: I’ll either piggyback on the preheating oven, as described here, or just, you know, heat it in a saucepan on the stovetop. And when I use the latter method, a miniature knee jerks in my head: butter? melted? in a pan? why not go the extra mile and brown it?

Really, it takes just a few minutes to go from melted butter to beurre noisette, but the benefit is considerable in the depth of flavor it lends to baked goods. (I think of it as using just the right foundation for your skin: few people will be able to pinpoint the source, but everyone will notice the glow.)

I haven’t owned the book long enough for us to have been through plum season together, but the brown-butterized crisp — which I also altered by using hazelnut flour in place of ground walnuts, a bit less sugar, and adding salt and pepper — was a delight on apples, and I think it would be a perfect fit for rhubarb, peaches, apricots and mangoes, in addition to the original plum idea.

A note on cardamom: the recipe as published calls for 1/8 teaspoon ground cardamom, but I prefer to keep whole pods (in a submarine-airtight container, their smell is so pervasive) and grind the seeds as needed in a teeny mortar and pestle I got at a garage sale in my California days.

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* Some say a crisp becomes a crumble when the topping includes rolled oats; some use the two terms interchangeably. To me, “crisp” has a slightly more elegant ring to it, so I use it when the dessert feels a bit more sophisticated that a good old crumble.

** However much I like the book, I am in no way encouraging you to pay absurd amounts of money for it. You can always look for it at the library, ask around to see if a friend or coworker has a copy, keep an eye out for it when you visit used book shops, and — it’s worth a try — contact the publisher to express your interest in a reprinting.

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[Baguettes au levain]

When I started to bake bread on a weekly basis, I thought following a baguette recipe was out-of-reach territory: I would bake the kind of loaves I love — a hearty crust (but not too dark at the bottom), an open crumb (but one that’s still tight enough to withstand a good spread of dairy or almond butter), great flavor from a slow fermentation, and a nutritious blend of organic flours — but I would always go and get my Piccola baguette from the Coquelicot bakery on place des Abbesses.

After a while though, having baked enough boules (round loaves) in a closed vessel (a pyrex cocotte in my case) to become really good friends with my starter, I decided to graduate to baking bread on a stone.

From the very first attempt, the result was squeal-worthy: a good oven spring, crunchy tips and crust, a crumb that feels springy and alive and, more important, a fragrant and flavorful bread.

A baking stone is fantastic for bread-baking: it absorbs heat as the oven preheats and retains it even as you open and close the oven door, which prevents the temperature in the oven from dropping dramatically when you put in the loaves. Additionally, bread dough that is plopped on a very hot surface rises beautifully: instead of spreading out first, then rising up, it seems a lot more motivated to rise upward from the moment it hits the blazing hot stone (I would too).

My first loaves on the baking stone were free-form bâtards — elongated oval loaves — because it was easier to fit two of those on my square baking stone, and I noticed that the crumb was more open than what I got when baking boules. I made a few more of those, and then I thought, what are baguettes if not thin bâtards? And why didn’t I just make baguettes?

Perfecting the baguette recipe

The baguettes one buys in French bakeries are rarely leavened with a natural starter, and when they are (baguette au levain), the starter is generally coupled with commercial yeast (it is worth asking). The flour that is used is a white wheat flour that often contains additives, and both of these characteristics account for their particularly light, aerated crumb.

What I wanted, on the other hand, was a baguette leavened with a natural sourdough starter only, made with a blend of organic flours that included some partially whole wheat, so I knew I wouldn’t get quite the same texture, but it would be a baguette in its own right.

After reading the reports of fellow starter enthusiasts for tips, and watching a few shaping videos, I felt about ready.

And indeed, from the very first attempt, the result was squeal-worthy: a good oven spring had pulled the slashed slits wide open, the tips and crust were crunchy enough that, when squeezed, the baguettes let out that delightful crackling sound, the crumb felt springy and alive, it was full of holes of various sizes and, more important, fragrant and flavorful.

I wish I could bottle the feeling I get when I watch my baguettes rise through the oven door, then super-peel them out and listen to them chirp as they cool.

I have baked a number of batches since that day, and if I could bottle the feeling I get when I watch my baguettes rise through the oven door, then super-peel them out and listen to them chirp as they cool, I would pose a major threat to antidepressant manufacturers.

We do, however, continue to go out and buy baguettes from Coquelicot on a regular basis, especially when we have friends over: as tickling as it would be to serve a meal that’s homemade right down to the baguettes, it’s just not realistic for me to cook dinner and bake bread on the same day — not if I want to stay awake throughout the evening anyway. But home-baked bread makes quite an impression as a host(ess) gift, I’ve noticed, so that’s my favored way of sharing.

Tips for making this baguette recipe

I should note that my baguettes are, in fact, demi-baguettes (half-baguettes), due to the limited width of my home oven. You can make them slimmer and call them ficelles or flûtes (literally, strings or flutes), if you prefer, dividing the dough into six rather than four pieces, but then you’ll have to bake them in batches, otherwise they won’t have enough elbow room for optimal air circulation. Conversely, you can divide the dough into just two pieces to make bâtards. In all cases, remember to adjust the baking time to the size of the loaves.

Because the dough needs to rest in the fridge for 12 to 24 hours, it means you can really make it work within your own schedule: I generally feed my starter in the morning on day 1, make the dough in the afternoon when the starter is ripe, then bake the baguettes in the morning or in the afternoon on day 2.

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