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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Last time I was in London, my primary objective may have been to snuggle up with my nephew, but I still brought a list of food places I wanted to check out, for, you know, research purposes. One of them was Ottolenghi, a deli that offers a daily selection of colorful dishes — with an emphasis on fresh produce — and dazzling pastries.

I had received a review copy of their seductive cookbook a couple of months before, and had quickly stopped tagging the recipes that appealed to me when I realized I was placing a sticker on every page. This was my kind of food, and I was eager to taste it at the source.

After baking, the cake is further stickified by a generous brushing of brandy syrup, and left to cool. This produces a voluptuous cake that is moist-crumbed and deeply aromatic (but not at all boozy).

I visited the Kensington location (now closed), which happens to be around the block from the large Whole Foods store that was also on my list. I ogled the spectacular lineup of cakes, but decided instead on an assortment of salads to eat on the Eurostar that evening.

They were delicious, though it dawned on me halfway through that the reason why these salads seemed so pleasing was that most of them were pretty sweet, incorporating dried fruits or candied nuts or a sweetish dressing. Is it always so, or was it just an oddity on that particular day? A repeat visit is in order to find out, but I thought I’d keep that penchant in mind for when I tried savory recipes from the book.

As it turns out, the recipe I tried first was for a cake — and now that I think about it, I reduced the amount of sugar in that one, too. The recipe in question is the sticky chocolate loaf on page 219: it tugged at the strings of my heart because of the happy qualifier “sticky” — always a good omen when attached to a cake name — and because it was a chocolate cake that involved prunes, which I am fond of, and always keen to rehabilitate.

I made a few further modifications to the recipe, baking it in a cake pan rather than two mini loaf pans, substituting yogurt for the oil (the original called for yogurt and oil; I used yogurt only), and using maple syrup rather than treacle.

I hope the apparent length of the recipe below won’t scare you off; this is not a complicated cake to assemble at all. Half of the prunes are blended into the batter, in which they act as a sweetener and moisture booster, while the other half is soaked in brandy and pressed into the batter. After baking, the cake is further stickified by a generous brushing of brandy syrup, and left to cool. This produces a voluptuous cake that is moist-crumbed and deeply aromatic (but not at all boozy), and one I plan to make again soon, possibly in cupcake form.

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If you’d like to read more about Ottolenghi, check their blog, which features some recipes, and read Yotam Ottolenghi’s weekly column in the Guardian, The New Vegetarian.

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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, “La fin des haricots.”

Literally translated as, “the end of the beans,” it means that the situation is disastrous, that it’s all over, and that all hope is gone.

Sounds depressing? Wait! It is in fact a colloquial expression that is most often used humorously, with a measure of irony. It may refer to 1) a situation that really is serious, but of which the speaker is trying to make light, 2) a situation that seems terrible in the heat of the moment, but isn’t that significant in the grand scheme of things, or 3) a trivial situation, the importance of which the speaker wants to exaggerate for comic effect.

Example: “Si on perd ce client, c’est la fin des haricots !” “If we lose this client, it’s the end of the beans!” (This exemplifies usage 1 or 2, depending on how much you depend on the client.)

Listen to the idiom and example read aloud:

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