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 ver est dans le fruit.”

Literally translated as, “the worm is in the fruit,” it means that the damage is done, that a situation is inherently faulty, and that it’s impossible or too late to do anything about it. It can also be used humorously, to comment with mock fatalism on the way a situation is turning, or is bound to turn.

Example: “Ils ont beau essayer de lutter contre la corruption, le ver est dans le fruit.” “Try as they might to fight corruption, the worm is in the fruit.”

Listen to the idiom and example read aloud:

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A few weeks ago, my friend Estérelle and I attended a mochi cooking class held at La Cocotte, a lovely little cookbook shop in Paris.

Before we go any further, I think a semantics note is in order: strictly speaking, mochi is the name of a Japanese preparation of steamed glutinous rice that is pounded to form a sticky paste*. Mochi can be boiled, steamed, grilled, baked, or fried, and because it doesn’t have much inherent flavor, it is usually eaten with sweet or savory accompaniments. Although mochi is traditionally pounded from freshly cooked rice, modern home cooks are more likely to buy it ready-made at the store, or make it from rice flour.

I’m here to tell you that the glow and bounce of a freshly-made daifuku is plenty worth your trouble.

So that’s what mochi is, but it seems that many people outside of Japan use this term when they really mean daifuku mochi (or daifuku for short), which are soft mochi dumplings stuffed with a sweet filling, such as red bean paste (anko) or white bean paste (shiroan), served at room temperature and enjoyed as an afternoon treat (rather than a dessert).

I myself only recently learned the difference. When I first tasted (and took a shine to) daifuku in California years ago — we got them from our local Nijiya market — I thought of them as mochi, and kept calling them that until the afore-mentioned cooking class taught me otherwise.

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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, “Ne pas mélanger les torchons et les serviettes.”

Literally translated as, “not mixing dishtowels with napkins,” it means treating things or people differently according to their perceived value or class, but also, more generally, not mixing things of different kinds, with the implication that some of those things are superior to the others.

It is a colloquial expression that usually appears as “Il ne faut pas mélanger les torchons et les serviettes” or “On ne mélange pas les torchons et les serviettes” (one mustn’t/doesn’t mix dishtowels with napkins). It can be delivered either earnestly or ironically, to deride a person’s or an institution’s narrowmindedness.

Example: “Pierre Bergé a refusé que les portraits d’Yves Saint Laurent figurent aux côtés d’autres portraits de couturiers dans l’exposition d’Andy Warhol au Grand Palais. « Il ne faut pas mélanger les torchons et les serviettes » a-t-il déclaré avant de demander que les tableaux soient déplacés dans la section des artistes.”

(Pierre Bergé refused to have Yves Saint Laurent’s portraits appear side by side with other fashion designers in the Warhol exhibition at the Grand Palais. “One mustn’t mix dishtowels with napkins,” he said, before asking to have the paintings moved to the artists section.) [This example is slightly rephrased from a recent article in L’Express Styles.]

Listen to the idiom and example read aloud:

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As much as I love a good short crust pastry and as simple as it is to make (really, it is, try it sometime), I have recently become enamored with another way to make savory tart crusts: an olive oil crust that relies on whole wheat flour and olive oil.

This dough is even easier to live with: it comes together by hand in minutes, calls for pantry ingredients I always have available, and lets itself be rolled out amenably, thanks to its flexible yet cohesive consistency. It then bakes into a lightly crunchy, flavorsome olive oil crust that is much less susceptible to soaking if your filling is on the wet side, and keeps very well — improves, even — from one day to the next.
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