Epaule d’Agneau Confite et Flageolets

Spring lamb is the traditional centerpiece of Easter Sunday menus in France: the agneau pascal symbolizes the sacrifice of the innocent, and the breeding cycles mean it is at its best this time of year, conveniently enough.

My family isn’t religious at all and the only thing we’ve ever commemorated at Easter is the invention of chocolate, but because Catholic traditions are so deeply rooted in France, they’re an integral part of the country’s culture, regardless of one’s beliefs.

Easter inspirations were thus on my mind when friends from San Francisco came to dinner late last week, so I decided to serve them a slow-roasted shoulder of lamb with a side of beans, lamb’s favorite playmates.

The lamb shoulder was ordered from Jacky the butcher (I requested that he leave the central bone in for flavor), rubbed with olive oil and dried herbs, and plopped in the cocotte and in the oven to reflect on the meaning of life (or, more amusingly, The Meaning of Liff) for four hours, a glass of wine in hand.

As for the beans, I had initially planned to serve the Rolls Royce of beans, but because I hadn’t planned far enough in advance to buy them at G.Detou, I had to look in my neighborhood, and found them at such an exorbitant price that I was tempted to lecture the shop owner about Greed, and had he not seen Seven?

Instead, I turned to the closest organic shop, where the young and friendly attendant seems to be munching on something every time I walk in (I have no grudge against gluttony), and picked up a bag of good-looking and more reasonably priced flageolets verts from Beauce.

The beans were cooked in the most straightforward way, simply simmered with onions in my second cocotte (I don’t know what I’d do without these two) and by the time they were done, the lamb was copper brown and spoon-tender, the juices and wine reduced to a syrup, and the cloves of garlic turned to butter in their papery sheaths.

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As subscribers to the Chocolate & Zucchini newsletter already know, a French publisher has purchased the rights to my very-soon-to-be-published cookbook. And because the tone of writing is very personal, I’ve asked to translate my own words: the recipes themselves are taken care of by a pro, while I translate — and often rewrite — the stories that accompany them and structure the book.

I’m fortunate that my father is now a seasoned translator with plenty of tips to share, but this still represents roughly a month of full-time work, and since my publisher is shooting for a release in the fall, I have not an hour to squander.

I’ve come to depend on quick, tasty, and nutritious salads for my lunches, and I’ve developed an addiction to this carrot and avocado salad, which appears on my menu more frequently than I’d be willing to admit in a court of law.

So my workdays have been unusually intense for the past few weeks — did I mention that the delivery date of my second book is also looming closer by the minute? — and I’ve been sitting at my desk from breakfast till dinner with nary a break. I am not at all complaining, mind you: my desk is comfortable and I am enjoying the stimulating translation work, even if it is causing the seat of language in my brain to wobble a bit.

No. The reason why I’m telling you this is to explain how I’ve come to depend on quick, tasty, and nutritious salads for my lunches. And in particular, I’m afraid I’ve developed an addiction to this carrot and avocado salad, which appears on my menu more frequently than I’d be willing to admit in a court of law.

What can I say? The preparation is effortless (especially if you have a food processor with a grater attachment), you can make a couple of servings at a time and let the second one sit in the fridge until lunch the next day when it will taste even better, and it is so brightly flavored and satisfying that I have to reason with myself not to eat this at every. single. meal, lest I turn into a carrot. Or an avocado, I’m not sure which is worse.

In my defense, I never make this salad in exactly the same way: I use either lemon or orange juice, I throw in fresh herbs — especially cilantro — and shallots if I have them on hand, I use tofu or chicken or a soft-boiled egg depending on what the fridge has to offer, and on a couple of rejoicing occasions I’ve folded sprouted mustard seeds into the salad. But the basic structure, give or take the occasional riff, is outlined below.

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[Kumquat from Corsica]

I wrote a little ode to the Corsican clementine last winter, but it turns out one shouldn’t flatter a citrus too much, lest it rest on its laurels and the following year’s crop be a disappointment.

All was not lost, however, on the citrus front: the maltaise orange from Tunisia was honey sweet and remarkably juicy, and a recent visit to the organic market turned up this novelty, at least to me: kumquats from Corsica, bright orange marbles that glowed like miniature lightbulbs.

I’d bought fine specimens earlier in the season, but these belong to a different variety, rounder in shape and even tastier.

If you can get past the multiple seeds — there can be five or six packed in there, probably driving one another batty — the reward is a chewy, juicy and all-natural sourball, so sweet and acidulated you may indeed pop them like candy.

The citrus season is drawing to a close and I don’t know how much longer these will be available, but on the off chance that you visit the Batignolles market tomorrow morning, you will find them at the produce stall that’s the second to last on your right when you’re coming from the Rome metro station.

[Petit Salé aux Lentilles]

If you had told twelve-year-old me that a Sunday morning, fifteen years later, would find me cooking this dish, I would have laughed so hard I might have choked on my petit suisse.

Petit salé aux lentilles is a splendid specialty from Auvergne in which cured pork is slowly cooked and served with lentils. The “splendid” part was hard for us kids to grasp when presented with the school cafeteria‘s take on it: sickly purple straps of oversalted leather sitting on a muddy brown mush. The sight and smell were disheartening enough that, on petit salé days, we largely subsisted on bread.

But now that I am older and wiser, now that I have a kitchen to call my own, now that I’ve been introduced to green lentils from the Puy and the Berry (the upper crust of the lentil society, delicately flavored and not a bit mealy), and now that I have access to a good organic butcher, my heart and stomach feel differently.

This epiphany wasn’t planned: I was simply waiting in line at the butcher’s market stand when I noticed an unfamiliar cut of meat in a dish at the far end of the counter (always be on the lookout for what the butcher keeps on the side). I couldn’t read what was scribbled on the label, so when my turn came, I pointed and asked hesitantly, “What does this say… magret de porc?” This, apparently, is very funny*; try it on your butcher sometime. No, what the label said was jarret de porc (pork shank) and he was out of it anyway, but what he did have was palette demi-sel**. “Great for choucroute or petit salé,” he said.

I had just bought carrots and shallots and I knew there was a package of lentils in my pantry somewhere, so petit salé was a done deal, and after getting a tip or two from my grandmother and assorted websites, up it went on the menu for Sunday lunch.

Fork-tender meat, softened vegetables, and pop-in-your-mouth lentils: this is a rustic and invigorating dish, of which you don’t need extraordinary quantities to feel the warm glow of satisfaction, and which constitutes the ideal dietary intake if you plan on going for a run and locking yourself out later in the afternoon.

* Magret is the breast of a fatted duck or goose. Since porks don’t fly (except for these piglets from Les Aldudes), there is no such cut on a pork.

** Palette is the cut of meat that’s wrapped around the shoulder blade of the pork. Demi-sel means it’s cured in salt: it should be soaked before use to remove most of the saltiness, and there is no need to add salt to the dish you use it in.

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