While in New York last month, Maxence and I had lunch at Ippudo, a ramen place that’s the first American outpost of a popular Japanese chain. The decor was super sleek and the ramen excellent, but what really got me excited was the sesame mill that was propped on our table, keeping the shôyu company.

It was a simple thing, really: a plastic see-through container filled with toasted sesame seeds, mounted with a red cranking wheel and an open mouth at the top. To work it, you flipped the mill upside down, you turned the wheel by its tiny handle and, with the most delicate scrunching sound, out came a sprinkle of golden flecks.

It was the first time I’d seen anything like this. It was red, it was adorable, it was Japanese; I had to have one.

We enquired whether the restaurant might sell one to us* but, however amused they seemed to be by this strange case of love at first grind, they said no. My heart lying in shards on the floor, I let Maxence pry the mill from my clenched fingers.

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I did not grow up eating peas. My mother didn’t like them so they never appeared on the family table, and the revolting stuff we were served at school didn’t do much to dispell the notion that peas were, well, beurk (that’s French for yuck).

Fast-forward a decade or two and what do you know, I find out that petits pois, freshly shelled and cooked with grace, are in fact a delicacy, to be savored in proportion to the manual labor they require.

The first time I bought fresh peas at the greenmarket and sat down to shell them, it took me a while to find my groove. You see, I had years of green-bean-trimming experience, but none with these animals.

My initial technique was to pry them open through sheer force, but I was dissatisfied with the results. It was awkward and messy and left green gunk under my thumbnails; it could not have been the Mary Frances way*.

I fiddled with each pod, experimenting with different approaches as if trying to unlock one of those mechanical puzzles my friend Derrick loves so. Eventually I discovered that if I tore the stem end and pulled the string down along the pod, it acted like a pull tab to open envelope. The pod surrendered, and I was able to open it easily and free the peas with a run of the thumb.

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Long-time readers of this blog (and those who sift through the archives while pretending to work) may remember me mentioning that my source of choice for vanilla was a small family-run company based in Mayotte.

Alas, when my sizeable stash dwindled and I decided to place a new order late last year, I found that the online shop had been dormant for months. My email enquiry was left unanswered and, a few weeks later, the website had evaporated. La Vanille de Mayotte had, for all intents and purposes, gone under.

I felt sorry for the owners, as I knew them to be real people (with a young child, too) and I liked their producer-to-consumer approach, but once I’d gotten past this stage, the real, angst-ridden question was: where would my next bean come from?

And then I remembered reading about Alain Abel, who runs a vanilla plantation in Tahiti and has won multiple awards for the exceptional quality of his beans, also acknowledged by the star-spangled list of his professional clients.

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My freezer is not exactly in its prime, and it suffers from ice buildup syndrome.

I put stuff in there, all wrapped up and all, and a few weeks later everything’s covered in frost like the beard of a North Pole explorer. And after a while, there’s so much ice covering the shelves that I half expect to see penguins skating around.

Part of my job, as this freezer’s caregiver, is to defrost it regularly — i.e. use up everything that’s inside, turn it off, let the temperature rise, detach entire ice caps (that’s the fun part, not unlike loosening one’s milk teeth), clean the whole thing, and start afresh.

The use up everything that’s inside step is, of course, the one that takes the longest. It can take weeks, especially since I’m a bit of a squirrel (I’ve always thought squirrels must have freezers in their tree trunk caches, but I may be wrong).

My latest empty-the-freezer campaign turned up a small tub containing two egg whites, leftover from recent batches of squeeze cookies, for which only the yolks are needed.

Leftover egg whites usually mean rochers à la noix de coco, langues de chat, or tuiles in my kitchen, but this time, a violent desire to make meringues took hold of me. This was to be my first time*. I was excited.

At the risk of sounding completely irrational, I must note that I’ve never been much of a meringue fan. When my sister and I were young girls and we dropped by the bakery to buy ourselves a goûter (an afternoon snack), she sometimes chose one of those big, pale pink, swirly meringues; I could never understand what was so appealing about a large, dry lump of sugar styrofoam that left dandruff down the front of your shirt. (Me, I was partial to the CD-sized, chocolate-coated sablés.)

So, what caused my change of heart on that particular day? Well, I had just read an excellent how-to article in the copy of Delicious. I’d brought back from Australia, and it had convinced me that, contrary to my prior belief, French meringue** was totally within my reach.

Two things remain from my old thoughts on meringue, however: 1-, I am only interested it if it has a mallowy heart — that little lump of chewy, sticky, your-dentist-is-going-to-love-this cooked sugar. And 2-, I want flavor. The first concern is adressed by well-timed baking and proper cooling; the second, by the use of a quality flavoring agent or, in my case, a good unrefined cane sugar***, whose toffee flavors have been enhanced by the empty vanilla pod I placed in it weeks ago.

So, with that in mind, if you’re a meringue virgin — or a long-time abstinent –, I encourage you to give this recipe a try: summer is just around the corner, and you’re going to need meringues to garnish your cups of berries and ice cream, no? I myself am plotting all manner of flavor variations (using cocoa powder, flower syrups, or ground nuts) and sandwiching opportunities (think ganache or fruit preserves).

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* I have a long history of shying away from any recipe that requires the whipping of egg whites. My beloved stand mixer is helping me on the path to recovery.

** Technically speaking, this style of baked meringue is refered to as French meringue, as opposed to Italian meringue (used in marshmallows in particular; it is made with cooked sugar and isn’t baked) or Swiss meringue (the egg whites and sugar are whisked over a pan of warm water then whisked until cool).

*** The sugar was light brown; this colored the batter and made the meringues lightly tan, too.

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As a side note, if you have access to French magazines, perhaps you’ll be interested in purchasing the May/June issue of ELLE à table, which came out yesterday. The layout and structure of the magazine have been spruced up, and I have a new column in there now!

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