Two weeks ago, I had dinner at a French restaurant called La Table d’Eugène, on the other side of the Montmartre hill from me. As my friends and I were handed the menus, we all stopped to comment on their fetching design: on the front and back were dozens of French idiomatic expressions, all relating to food, each of them printed in a different, retro font.

Once we’d ordered our food and asked to keep one copy of the menu, I, as the only native French speaker in our party, went over each of the locutions, trying to shed light on their meaning. It was so much fun — you’ve perhaps noticed how dearly I love words, etymology, and linguistics — that I thought I would start a series on C&Z.

The French language, like all Latin languages, is particularly rife with culinary-inspired idioms, and I will offer one every week or so.

The opening, seasonal expression is, “Couper la poire en deux.”

It means, literally, “cutting the pear in two,” or reaching a compromise: if two people want the same pear, halving it is the most equitable way to settle the dispute.

For example: “Nos deux familles voulaient nous avoir à Noël, donc on a coupé la poire en deux : on va chez ses parents le 24, et chez les miens le 25.” (“Both our families wanted us to come over for Christmas, so we cut the pear in two: we’ll spend Christmas Eve at his parents’, and Christmas Day at mine.”)

Listen to the idiom and example read aloud:

Why is it that no one ever told me about the pork tenderloin?

Has everyone been cooking pork tenderloin all this time, licking their lips and giggling covertly as I fought to make other cuts palatable, trying my best to prevent them from turning out dry, and grey?

Oh, it’s not that I haven’t been happy with my pork experiments, not at all. Looking through the C&Z archives, I’ve found five recipes involving our pink friend — a cured pork shoulder with lentils, a loin blade roast stewed in cider, a roast with spiced red cabbage, and two terrines — that were all, if I remember correctly, consumed with unequivocal pleasure.

Pork does well with sweet and tangy flavors, so I opted for a simple marinade of orange juice, honey, and rosemary.

It’s just that, now that I’ve had a taste of filet mignon de porc — for such is the French name for it* — I wonder what took me so long: it is truly the most succulent, the most flavorsome cut of pork I’ve ever dealt with.

If you’re at all excited about the butcher’s craft, you may be interested to learn that the pork filet mignon (tenderloin) is a long muscle located on either side of the lower end of the animal’s spine (so each pork yields two), underneath the filet (sirloin) and the pointe de filet (the tail end of the sirloin). (And lest you assume I’ve become an overnight expert in butchery, let me note that my life changed when I acquired a Larousse gastronomique and laid eyes on its crystal-clear meat diagrams.)

The tenderloin is lean, and remarkably tender, so it is a choice cut that comes at a higher price than most: my organic butcher charges 19.50€/kg ($12/pound) for it, but it is net weight with no waste, i.e. no fat, bone, or gristle to remove.

Pork does well with sweet and tangy flavors, so I opted for a simple marinade of orange juice, honey, and rosemary, which, reduced and creamed up while the tenderloin was roasting in the oven, made for the perfect sauce to ladle over the butter-tender slices of meat.

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* In French butchery, the term filet mignon is used not only for beef, but also for veal, venison, and pork. It refers to the same muscle in all cases, insofar as muscular similarities can be found in these different animals.

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Today marks the fifth anniversary of Chocolate & Zucchini — and, I might add, the first anniversary of its French version. My first impulse was to comment on the fact that time flies, it seems like only yesterday, or something to that effect, but the truth is, I find it so extraordinarily difficult to remember what my life was like before I started C&Z, it’s almost embarrassing.

Creating this blog five years ago has undoubtedly been among the most life-altering decisions I’ve ever made — up there with giving up thumb sucking when I was eight, and switching to contacts when I was fourteen. Chocolate & Zucchini has since done so much for me, it has become so familiar and indispensable a part of my life, I think of it practically as a family member.

And I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to you, readers of C&Z. If it weren’t for you, your visits, your comments, your emails, your participation in forum discussions, and, in general, what you bring to this not-so-virtual table, I don’t think I would have come this far, learned this much, or had this much fun. So, thank you, your support means the world to me, it truly does.

As has become the tradition, Maxence and I will host a get-together in Paris in mid-October; I am still ironing out the details — organizational skills? what organizational skills? — but they will be announced v. soon.

Perhaps you’d like to hear about a few things that have happened since we last celebrated C&Z’s anniversary? Here goes: my first cookbook, Chocolate & Zucchini, was published in France under the title Chocolat & Zucchini; my second book, Clotilde’s Edible Adventures in Paris, came out in the US; I was offered a column in ELLE à table, the food edition of the French ELLE (I accepted); and I started working on an idea for a television show — the project is still in its early infancy, but I should have more on this in a few months.

And on a more personal level, I embraced the lifelong, glorious role of being somebody’s aunt: my nephew is now 6 1/2 months old, and I am happy to announce that he has just started eating puréed zucchini with great enthusiasm.

And before we part, please accept this little anniversary gift: I have created online maps of the restaurants and shops featured in Clotilde’s Edible Adventures in Paris — I hope you find them useful in your explorations of the city.

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The celebratory macarons pictured above (pistachio, raspberry, dark chocolate) come from Grégory Renard‘s shop, located at 120 rue Saint-Dominique, Paris 7ème (01 47 05 19 17).

Note: For more Paris recommendations, see this follow-up edition.

My friend Adam has just had what I think is a brilliant idea of a meme, named Twelve Hours in Dot Dot Dot: if you had only twelve hours left to spend in your home city/town/village/oasis, what would you do with them?

Because I lived abroad for a while, I have, on several occasions, spent twelve semi-final hours in Paris, and I admit they usually involved a combination of the following activities: 1) buying several months’ worth of my then-favorite face cream, 2) trying to locate my passport, 3) spending time with people I knew I was going to miss, simply enjoying the normalcy of being in the same time zone.

But I posit cosmetics, traveling documents, and companionable silences weren’t what Adam had in mind for this meme, so I came up with a more suitable — and food-oriented — timetable for my hypothetical last twelve hours in Paris.

It goes without saying that difficult choices were made, and that for every item I included, there were about ten more looking at me with a crestfallen expression. Most of these places are included in my Paris book, Clotilde’s Edible Adventures in Paris, in which you’ll find many more options to fill however many hours you get to spend in Paris (more info here).

I should also note that I chose to assume these weren’t the last twelve hours before I die, first of all because that would be a little depressing, and also because I worked in a few opportunities to buy things I would want to take with me wherever I was supposed to travel next, and who knows what customs policy they have in the afterlife.

Without further ado, I give you my Twelve Hours in Paris, which I’ve decided would take place on a Thursday, from 12:30pm to 12:30am. And of course, if you want to chime in with your own Twelve Hours in Dot Dot Dot, in the comments section or as a post on your blog, I’ll be curious to read your take!

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