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, “Long comme un jour sans pain.”

A literal translation would be, “as long as a day without bread,” and it is used to express that something is very long — in reference to physical length (a long road, a long list) or, more frequently, to the duration of an event (a long speech, a long wait) — and dreary.

I have found a couple of sources suggesting that an English equivalent was, “like a month of Sundays,” but I’ve never heard or seen it used myself — perhaps one of you can confirm?

Example: “Tu as bien fait de ne pas venir à la conférence, c’était long comme un jour sans pain.” “You did well not to attend the conference, it was as long as a day without bread.”

Listen to the idiom and example read aloud:

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The funny thing about a food blog, especially one that has been around for a long time, is that it doesn’t really reflect the frequency with which each featured dish is cooked: if you look at an archived post from years ago, how do you know whether it was just a one-time experiment, or if it has made weekly appearances at the author’s table since then?

After a recipe has been given the spotlight once, most bloggers are reluctant to write about it again, lest their readers think — assuming they keep track, which is fairly unlikely in these overstimulated times — they are rehashing old ideas. But then, aren’t you most interested in those ideas special enough to sustain the cook’s appetite time and time again? I certainly am.

Every once in a while, I make a personal classic that gets me as excited as it did the first time, and I think, “This is just too good not to remind the world about it.”

I find that a microblogging tool such as twitter helps with that conundrum, allowing me to note, for those who care, that I am making very ginger cookies again, or gratin dauphinois or poppy seed cake.

But then, every once in a while, I make a personal classic that gets me as excited as it did the first time, and I think, “This is just too good not to remind the world about it.”

This explains today’s post, which is another take on this one, first published five years and eight days ago. In the intervening time, I have gone through innumerable packages of fregola sarda, that toasted Sardinian pasta that is considerably tastier than its humble looks might suggest, is impossible to find in Paris (it would be too easy), and therefore requires trips abroad and favors from friends for me to replenish my stash.

I have tried eating fregola sarda in other ways than this, and though I must say it works splendidly with fresh peas, nothing quite compares to the chemistry between the teeny, lightly chewy pasta, soft wedges of zucchini, and coarsely grated parmesan.

I make it a bit differently now, blanching the zucchini quickly in the pasta water instead of sautéing it separately, and I frequently omit the pine nuts, to skip the toasting step. But if there are cherry tomatoes in the red star-shaped bowl on the counter I’ll add them in, and if I have little bits of meat scraped from a roast chicken carcass, as I did the day I took the above picture, they round out the dish nicely, too.

All in all, it is a one-pot dish that takes no longer to prepare than the time needed to boil the pasta — though fregola sarda is a little longer to cook than most, I’ll grant you that — and it is still, after all these years, my go-to meal when I’m having dinner on my own. It is just as good hot, barely warm, or cold, which means I can prepare a double serving, eat half on the spot, and have the leftovers for lunch the next day.

On the subject of pasta, I have just struck a good deal on a pasta-making apparatus, and I am anxious to it try soon, probably using the ratio laid out by Michael Ruhlman in his book (three parts flour to two parts egg). Any handmade pasta advice to share, or favorite recipes of your own?

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These matcha shorbread cookies are inspired by a popular type of French cookie called sablés diamant.

These “diamond cookies” are classic butter cookies that you form using my favorite technique, referred to in English as slice-and-bake, in which you shape the dough into a log and slice it into simple rounds. I’ve always thought of it as a home-style shortcut (as opposed to spreading the dough and cutting it into shapes with a cookie cutter), but it is in fact part of the traditional French culinary repertoire.

You will roll the log of dough in sugar before slicing, so that the edges of the finished cookies are prettily dotted with sugar crystals that sparkle like a hundred diamonds if you are blessed with a fervent imagination.

In any case, the true reason why it’s used for these sablés diamant is not so much to save time as to make the diamond thing happen: the recipe has you roll the log in sugar before slicing, so that the edges of the finished cookies are prettily dotted with sugar crystals that sparkle like a hundred diamonds if you are blessed with a fervent imagination.

In addition to the visual appeal, this produces an ideal texture, the cookie tender and crumbly, its flanks offering a distinctly crunchy note. I decided to use the same idea to make matcha shortbread, using the fine powder that is made by grinding green tea leaves (it can be purchased from Japanse grocery stores, and from good tea shops).

I used confectioner’s sugar and ground almonds in the dough itself to make it extra smooth on the tongue, the better to highlight the contrast between center and rim. And I blended in a moderate dose of green tea powder: just enough to give the sablés a delicate grassy flavor without overpowering the round notes of butter and almond.

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Due to my ever-widening enthusiasm for breadmaking, I have become a close follower of the Bread Baker’s Apprentice challenge, wherein a group of bakers bakes its way through Peter Reinhart’s revered opus and blogs about the results, with numerous details and step-by-step photos. This makes for fascinating posts if you’re into that sort of thing, and reading about others’ well-documented hurdles and triumphs is most helpful if you want to bake from the book.

And this is how I was inspired to try Reinhart’s recipe for English muffins, with a view to adjusting it later and make use of my sourdough starter to get sourdough English muffins.

If you’ve never really stopped to consider how English muffins are made — and I wouldn’t hold it against you — you may be interested to learn that they simply grow on English muffin trees. No, really, however easily I could picture that to be true*, English muffins are in fact little loaves of bread dough that are cooked on the stove like pancakes, rather than baked in the oven, which explains (aha!) the two flattened, browned faces.

English muffins are in fact little loaves of bread dough that are cooked on the stove like pancakes, rather than baked in the oven, which explains (aha!) the two flattened, browned faces.

The difficulty of this method is that you need to time the cooking precisely: long enough that the muffins are cooked all the way through to the center (to preclude any gumminess of crumb), but not so long that the surface of the muffins get too dark. Peter Reinhart offers a simple solution: he has you brown the muffins on a griddle or skillet first, and then finish them in the oven, where they will continue to bake through without coloring any further.

My first attempt was a qualified success: the dough came together nicely, but I got a little carried away when preheating my dear cast-iron skillet** — c’mon, let’s fire up that baby! — and I burned a good half of the muffins. We still ate them, slicing off the offending charcoal layer, and they were pretty good, but I felt the taste of the yeast came through a bit too strongly.

For my second attempt, I modified the recipe to incorporate some of my natural starter (have you met Philémon?) for sourdough English muffins with a more complex flavor. Although my preference would be to use my starter as the only leavener, I used both starter and commercial yeast here (albeit in a smaller amount than in the original recipe), a necessary compromise when working with an enriched dough: the starter would not be quite strong enough to lift it on its own in a reasonable amount of time.

Take two of the sourdough English muffin project turned out fantastically well: the flavor was better developed, thanks to the longer fermentation and the use of the starter, and I cooked them more gently this time, making the cornmeal-dotted surfaces golden brown and crusty just so.

You can certainly eat the muffins when freshly baked, but I personally prefer them toasted, and I have found that the texture and flavor improves over time, so that you can absolutely bake them the day before you want to eat them (for breakfast or tea), and continue to enjoy them over the next few days. I’m sure they’d freeze perfectly, too.

The final thing you need to know about homemade muffins is that they should be fork-split to achieve optimal texture. Just prick the muffin all around its girth with the tines of a fork, then pull the two halves apart gently; you’ll get a nicely craggy surface that will take splendidly to toasting and liberal buttering. (Of course, there’s also a gadget for that.)

* If there is such a thing as a breadfruit, why not an English muffin tree?

** I have now acquired a spiffy laser thermometer that should preclude that sort of problem in the future.

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