Today’s recipe is a beloved French classic I’ve always adored, and that uses just three easy ingredients!

French Coconut Macaroons, or “Rochers coco”

You may be familiar with these marvellously simple coconut cookies, but one thing you perhaps don’t know about them is this: shape matters!

Last time I made a batch of French coconut macaroons, I shaped them into small pyramids — halfway between the Pyramide du Louvre and the Tour Eiffel — instead of balls, and all tasters agreed that this seemingly inconsequential change elevated them to a much higher plane, creating the most pleasant contrast between golden crunchy ridges, softer white sides, and moist hearts.

Incidentally, this recipe is a twinkling godsend if you still haven’t gotten around to baking those elaborate food gifts you ambitioned to give out (congratulations! you’re human!). It’s quick, it’s painless, and it’s effective: who doesn’t love a good French coconut macaroon, except party-poopers who don’t deserve them anyway?

And if you have a few minutes to spare during this fun-filled time of year, you can half-dip your French coconut macaroons in bittersweet chocolate then place them on a sheet of parchment paper to set.

Continue reading »

Perhaps you remember the fig ice cream I wrote about earlier in the fall. Wanting to bolster the spirit of my fresh figs — the last of the season — I set out to buy dried figs, only to be told that my organic shop was all out, and still waiting for the new crop to be delivered. Aha! This made complete sense — fresh figs need a little time to dry, yes? — but the seasonality of dried fruits wasn’t a matter I’d ever given much thought to.

Not a fortnight later, waiting in line at the little stand at the Batignolles market where I buy my walnuts and such, I caught sight of a cardboard sign that read, “Figues séchées, nouvelle récolte!” Next to it was a box of baglama figs* from Turkey, wreathed together by a crude string that looped and looped around their tips.

Dried, yes, undoubtedly, but still soft, plump, and holding their pouch-like shape: a far cry from the shrivelled pucks one ordinarily comes across. These were the most glowing dried figs I’d ever seen, and I didn’t need the tasting sample that was kindly offered to know I would not go home without a fig garland.

Continue reading »

[Homemade Tisane]

Sometimes it worries me how much herbal tea I drink.

You see, I love coffee, I adore tea, and nothing warms my heart and my quill like having a hot mug within mitten’s reach. But as I get older*, it seems I can’t drink caffeine like I used to could**.

Maxence and I share a pot of light-brewed American-style coffee — also known to the French as jus de chaussette — over the course of the morning, and I’ll have the occasional espresso after lunch, or I might steep myself a cup of tea at some point in mid-afternoon. But the rest of the time, if I want the “off” button in my brain to function when I go to bed, I must turn my affections to other beverages — namely, herbal teas.

I know, I know, herbal tea can be frightfully boring, and just uttering the words — whether you say “herbal tea,” or “tisane,” or “infusion” — can make you feel about a hundred years old.

However, I have found that, just like vitamins can be added back to nutrient-stripped processed foods, the fun can be added back to the tisane by the simple process of mixing your own blend — think of it as designing your own fragrance, yes?

I buy my ingredients in bulk from specialty stores (see Paris sources below), combine them to suit my taste, and keep my custom-made tisane in a tea canister, in which it barely has time to settle before it’s time to mix some more.

These days, my basic formula is as follows:

Continue reading »

Squeamish eaters, avert your eyes, and let me direct you here, here, or perhaps here.

For the others, those who don’t blanch at the mere mention of the words “tripe” or “beef tongue,” those who own a dog-eared copy of the nose-to-tail bible* or have it on their wishlist, here is the dish I made last weekend with the beef kidneys I’d bought from my organic butcher — an entirely uneventful visit this time, 100% free of any impulse to punch anyone.

I am an offal enthusiast myself, sweetbreads being my favorite, but this was my first time cooking anything more involved than liver, so a bit of online research was in order.

The offal fairies must have been watching over me from their flying udders, because things turned out very well in the end — an out-and-out success according to Maxence, the sauce dark and silky, the kidney slices springy but yielding.

This revealed that the kidneys of lamb and veal were milder, easier to deal with, and thus preferable to those of beef (fat lot of good that did me), but that the latter could be effectively tamed by a good dousing of vinegared boiling water (who wouldn’t). I also read that beef kidneys fared best in plats en sauce, i.e., dishes with a sauce component, but the handful of recipes I found couldn’t seem to reach a consensus on whether the kidneys should be boiled to death, or briefly seared.

I didn’t have all day, so I decided a brief searing would do.

I was a little nervous, for I rated my fiasco potential as a solid 8 on a scale of 1 to 10: I had never seen anyone cook a kidney before in my life, I was just about to launch into a relative improv, and, without getting too graphic, the smell of the raw kidneys, pre-blanching, was frankly off-putting (just think of what kidneys do for a living).

But the offal fairies must have been watching over me from their flying udders, because things turned out very well in the end — an out-and-out success according to Maxence, the sauce dark and silky, the kidney slices springy but yielding, their boldness supported by that of the mushrooms, but mitigated by the onions and the parsley — except for that one detail: rarely has my stove seen a less photogenic preparation, so you’ll have to make do with the work-in-progress pictures above.

* A masterpiece of cookbook writing, whether or not you ambition to roll your own pig’s spleen some day. I hear Henderson’s second book ain’t bad either.

Continue reading »