[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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La sorbetière (ice cream maker) is up there with la yaourtière (yogurt maker) in the list of appliances that were hot Mother’s Day gifts in the seventies but ended up in said mother’s attic pronto.

And yet, when Maxence came home with my birthday present and it was a bulky box hiding a spaceship of a sorbetière, I could not have been happier: first of all, he got the idea from a conversation we had weeks ago during which I wasn’t even dropping hints — no, really — and this is the best sort of gift in my book.

David’s recipe involves mangoes, lime juice, and dark rum; I took the liberty of adding the zest of the lime, and may replace that with a bit of grated ginger next time.

Secondly, I always feel sheepish about filling the apartment with bakeware and utensils and all sorts of bowls and plates — although he matches me cubic inch for cubic inch with vintage computers and robots and video game consoles — yet there he was, not just condoning my acquiring a new appliance, but actually buying it for me. Lastly, and more to the point: an ice cream maker! for me! an ice cream maker for me to make my own ice cream!

To demonstrate the extent of my gratitude, I asked the gift-bearer to choose what we should prepare first and he said, as I knew he would, “Un sorbet mangue.”

Delighted to finally be able to use it, I opened my friend David Lebovitz‘s beauteous ice cream book, The Perfect Scoop, looked up his recipe for mango sorbet, and got to work.

The only difficult part to sorbet-making, I’m finding out, is to have the patience to wait until the bowl is cold enough*. After that, it’s just a bit of whizzing and churning, and voilà! In under thirty minutes, we got our creamy-cool, rich and smooth mango sorbet — precisely what was needed on this sweltering Sunday afternoon.

David’s recipe involves mangoes (that’s a surprise), lime juice (the ideal flavor booster for mango), and dark rum (alcohol improves the texture of sorbets); I took the liberty of adding the zest of the lime, since I was using an organic one, and next time I may replace that with a bit of grated ginger. This sorbet would make a fine ice cream sandwich, too, squooshed between two very ginger cookies.

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* Most home-use ice cream makers require that you place the bowl in the freezer 24 hours in advance, so that the walls of the bowl, which are filled with a sort of liquid ice, accumulate enough cold to lower the temperature of your preparation as the blade churns it. My freezer is no spring chicken (and no birthday chicken, either) so I worried it might not run cold enough, but it worked fine.

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Sometimes, when I have a minute, I sit back and think about the world of food, how vast it is, and how many rivers, hills, and valleys still remain uncharted to me. I don’t find the idea overwhelming, far from it. I find it encouraging, I find it promising, I find it comforting: as long as I can read books and move around a kitchen, my life will see no shortage of inspiring ideas, happy discoveries, and exciting projects.

Just this week, I received two emails from readers offering their recipes and knowledge, should I want to explore the cuisines of their home countries (Argentinian and Turkish, no less), and a review copy of the most inspiring book I’ve seen in a while, Moro East, in which practically every page now wears a sticky tag on its lapel.

Muhammara is best made with pomegranate molasses: the sweet and acidic syrup bridges the sweetness of the peppers and the bitter edge of the walnuts.

Another example is this muhammara. I don’t remember how the concept fell into my lap — did I read about it on a website? in a book? — but this Middle-Eastern spread, made from roasted bell peppers and walnuts, appealed to me instantly. It was novel to me, I had never tasted it anywhere, but my mind’s taste buds could barely contain their enthusiasm.

Part of the attraction was the fact that muhammara is best made with pomegranate molasses, a popular ingredient in Lebanese and other Mediterranean cuisines that has become rather trendy of late*. Here, this sweet and acidic syrup is called for to bridge the sweetness of the peppers and the bitter edge of the walnuts.

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I normally host a big birthday bash every year, or at least that’s what I’ve done the past four summers, inviting friends, old and new, to celebrate the fact that it is late July and the weather is nice and Paris is empty and I’m a year wiser.

But this time, no.

I was a little bummed to break from this young tradition, for I really do enjoy these parties, but the past few months have been a whirlwind, I feel I haven’t had a moment to stop and smell the strawberries, and I am in dire need of a vacation, so the last thing I wanted to do was pile another big project onto my plate. Just the thought of it made me want to go and hide under heaps of shoes in the back of our walk-in closet, which, you may be interested to learn, the French call le dressing.

But it wouldn’t be quite right to bid the previous year adieu without some sort of gathering, so I decided I would still cook dinner for the small circle of my closest friends, sticking mostly to tried-and-true, make-ahead recipes.

You marinate chicken thighs with green olives and prunes, and simply bake the whole thing until it is nicely glazed and browned with crusty bits on the outside, but still moist and tender at heart.

The evening opened on glasses of fine sangria, made with a mix I’d recently been given as a present — it consists in flavored sugar and dried fruits that you marinate in red wine overnight, and I merely added frozen melon balls in lieu of ice cubes. With that we nibbled on slices of saucisson from Savoie, and little toasts spread with either my sardine and harissa mousse or my neighbor Stephan’s eggplant caviar, which I expressly request from him each year.

We then moved on to a buffet-like spread that included my red quinoa salad, made this time with mixed roasted vegetables (tomatoes, red bell peppers, zucchini, and onions) and toasted pistachios; Stephan’s green salad with shrimp and honey vinaigrette; my attempt at a savory cheesecake, which needs more work before I can decently share a recipe; and caramelized chicken thighs.

The latter is a dish that Pascale made for me eons ago (okay, two years). I’d kept the recipe in my files under the name Le Poulet d’Alisa, as Pascale had rechristened it in honor of the mutual friend who had given it to her in the first place. It originated in fact as the Silver Palate‘s Chicken Marbella, but you can trust three successive cooks to make it shift a bit from the original.

The recipe has you marinate chicken thighs with green olives and prunes until the next day, when you simply bake the whole thing, basting the meat often, until it is nicely glazed and browned with crusty bits on the outside, but still moist and tender at heart.

Easier than pie and highly flavorful with its sweet and briny Mediterranean accents, the dish went down very well with our guests. I just wish I hadn’t completely forgotten the final sprinkling of cilantro and toasted almonds. Oh well, that just went into the leftovers salad for lunch the next day.

And for dessert, I had baked one of my favorite cakes in the whole cake world, the blueberry coffee cake, to which I’d added a layer of pecans — toasted, roughly chopped, and tossed with a little maple syrup. We had it with my friend Marie-Laure’s fruit salad, another item without which my birthday wouldn’t quite be my birthday.

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