Coquillettes au Comté et Pousses d’Epinard

A lot can be learned about your cooking self by considering what you eat when you’re on your own. I have friends who are simply not hungry when they’re alone, who forget to eat (say what?), who don’t consider it a real meal if there’s no dining companion, or — and I am not making this up — who just eat a Kinder Surprise, build the little toy and call it dinner.

What’s most surprising to me is that some of them are great cooks, but somehow they don’t find it worth the effort to use their talents if it’s just for their own benefit. I say, you should treat yourself as if you were your own guest.

Eating dinner alone is a unique opportunity to eat exactly what I please and how I please, and relish my sweet solitude.

I understand the desire to keep things simple when no one’s looking, and I’m not saying you should prepare multiple courses or unleash a parade of votive candles, but to me, dinner alone shouldn’t be expedited as if it were a chore. Instead, I see it as a unique opportunity to eat exactly what I please and how I please, and relish my sweet solitude. In my world, this usually means eating from a bowl, on the couch, while watching an episode of whatever television series I’m currently devouring.

This effortless pasta dish is one of my standbys. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is a variation on a dish I ate as a child: for a slightly more grown-up flavor, I now add shredded baby spinach leaves, which soften in the arms of the pasta, and a dash of freshly grated nutmeg to complement the greens and cheese.

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Langues de chat are classic French cookies that fall into the category of petits fours secs (“dry” petits fours, as opposed to miniature versions of pastries with buttercream, pastry cream, etc). They used to be a frequent accompaniment to ice-cream in restaurants, in rotation with cigarettes russes, but I haven’t seen that done for a while — gavottes seem to have taken their place.

“Cat’s tongues” are oval butter cookies, with a blonde center and lightly browned edges. The packaged versions one can find at French grocery stores are crunchy all over and quite decent, but the homemade langue de chat offers a nice change of texture, with thin crispy rims and a tender, slightly chewy heart.

Langues de chat are very simple to make, and they’re a great use for leftover egg whites. I usually flavor them with vanilla — delicious with a warm apricot compote — but the other day, when my mother asked if I could bring something to nibble on with tea after dinner at their house, I decided it was high time I used the small package of matcha that had been waiting around in my baking treasure box for months, and was beginning to feel a little dejected.

I was unsure how much matcha I should use, so I just added a teaspoon and a half and hoped for the best. As it turns out, this was just the right amount for the earthy green tea notes to come through, without giving the impression that you had just swallowed a spoonful of tea leaves — don’t try this at home. The flavor was lovely in an adult kind of way, the cookies an interesting shade of olive green, and we liked them so much that I baked a second batch for us the next day.

[As for the picture, it was sheer luck: we happened to be cat-sitting Maxence’s cat, who lives with his mother (Maxence’s, that is). I am normally not much of a cat person but I’ve known this one for over nine years, and she and I cohabit courteously enough, although I hate it when she sleeps on my feet. Anyway. Just as I was shooting pictures of the cookies, she got curious (“Green tea cat’s tongues? What a peculiar idea!”), came closer for a second, and I was able to tilt the camera and catch her with the cookies just before she turned her attention to some fly-chasing activity or other; I couldn’t have staged it if I’d tried. Update: Sadly, Maxence’s cat died last summer, not long after this picture was taken. Wherever she is now, I hope she has plenty of tuna to eat and cables to chew.]

[This post originally appeared in June of 2006.]

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So. Batch #1 in my brand new ice cream machine was dedicated to Maxence, in gratitude for such an exciting, perfectly tailored, and all-around thoughtful gift.

But when the time came to make batch #2 — that is, the next day, as soon as the bowl had had time to refreeze — I decided I had paid my dues, and I could now make my favorite, which, you may be un-surprised to learn, is the dark chocolate sorbet.

Chocolate ice cream is all right, I guess*, but I find that the dairy gets in the way of the chocolate. A good sorbet, on the other hand, made with just chocolate, water, and sugar, delivers the sort of undiluted chocolate punch I hunger for, of which one only needs a small amount — the frozen equivalent of the square of extra-dark, extra-smooth chocolate the doctors prescribe you place on your tongue to melt, each day after lunch.

David’s Perfect Scoop rose to the challenge once again, providing me with an easy six-ingredient recipe (and one of them is water), which I easified even further by not running the mixture through the blender. It seemed blended enough to me. And because I am the only one, in my household of two, to be bound by the spell of ebony chocolate — my other half only eats milk or (gasp!) white chocolate — I divided the recipe by two.

The ice cream churning process seems nothing short of magical, I know, but when it comes to the flavor of your sorbet, it’s just you and the ingredients, pal: this sort of preparation can only be as good as the chocolate you put into it. I, however, would be hard pressed to tell you what went into mine, for I took the opportunity to scrape together and use a variety of odds and ends** from almost-but-not-quite-entirely eaten tablets in my chocolate stash.

Martine Lambert’s chocolate sorbet is the gold standard by which I judge all chocolate sorbets, and although I wouldn’t be so presumptuous as to say mine rivalled hers, I don’t think Martine would have scoffed at it, either. (Not to my face anyway.)

My sorbet was splendid as it was, but my next batch will involve, I think, a handful of cacao nibs thrown in as the mixture thickens. An interesting thing to note is that the flavors kept blooming over the next few days — just like those of a dark chocolate cake will — and that the texture remained perfectly smooth. This can be explained, I imagine, by the cocoa butter in the chocolate***.

Needless to say, my dark chocolate sorbet went terrifically well with Maxence’s mango sorbet.

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* Oh my god, did she just say, “Chocolate ice cream is all right I guess”? Nurse!

** In my family we call those rataillons, as in: “Il reste du fromage?” “Bof, juste des rataillons.” It is a regional expression, from Provence I am told, so sometimes I use it and people look at me funny.

*** On the subject of texture, I will add that placing a piece of plastic wrap directly on the surface of the ice cream or sorbet efficiently prevents the formation of ice crystals.

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[Alain Passard’s Garden]

The photo set that illustrates this post may be viewed as a slideshow.

I have never dined at Alain Passard’s restaurant. The closest I ever got to it was my lunch at La Végétable, but that doesn’t really count — the proximity of the escalators and the neon lighting cancel out the stars.

It’s not that I don’t want to go, I do, but L’Arpège is one of those restaurants I’ve read so much about — Passard’s love of vegetables, his running a biodynamic garden to provide for the restaurant’s produce needs — that I fear I may be disappointed when I actually go*. So up until now, I have contented myself with the hope and possibility that, some day, I shall make it there.

But when a friend of mine hinted that she might be able to arrange a visit to said vegetable garden, it was all I could do not to pester her with daily emails and twice daily text messages, reminding her that I was absolutely, positively, and superlatively interested, and when when when could we go?

The visit was scheduled for a weekday in mid-June — yes, I’ve been sitting on that story for a little while. Passard’s property is located in the Sarthe area, some 200 kilometers to the south-west of Paris, so my friend, her son, and I met with Julie Coppé — Alain Passard’s right-hand woman — at the Montparnasse train station, from which my dear TGV propelled us to Le Mans in under an hour; a taxi ride took care of the remaining kilometers.

Few things provide as concentrated a dose of happiness as a daytrip to the countryside. This is when the contrast between clamor and quiet, between exhaust fumes and morning mist, is the clearest. When every detail feels like a gift (a swing set! a donkey! fresh mud!), and when you know you had better fill your lungs and eyes and ears now, while you can, because it will all have vanished come nightfall (and don’t lose that slipper again please).

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