[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.

Continue reading »

Cha Soba, Concombre et Tofu

So verdant is this dish that it could have been my contribution to Saint Patrick’s Day. But because the French don’t really celebrate it (unless they happen to find themselves at one of the Irish pubs on boulevard de Clichy) and because my father’s name is Patrick, March 17th is simply that: my father’s fête. He usually receives a gift of pâtes de fruits, we get to help him gobble them up before they have time to hit the ground, and that’s that. No color theme.

So this is not what this dish is about. This dish is about going to dinner on rue Sainte-Anne — Paris’ pocket-sized Japantown — and noticing as you exit the noodle joint that the Juji Ya convenience store is still open. It is about stepping in, walking past the take-out counter and up the steps towards the back of the shop to buy mugicha (barley tea), azuki beans, cha soba (buckwheat noodles flavored with green tea powder), and a block of firm tofu — and throwing in a couple of the mochi rice cakes that blink up at you at the register, to share on the walk home.

It is about thanking your lucky stars when you realize, the next day, that a cucumber has recently taken up quarters in the fridge (yes, you bought it yourself, but sometimes you forget about those things), and that if it joins forces with the tofu, the soba noodles, and a few pantry ingredients, you have the makings of a fine dish of cold soba, possibly the most refreshing, replenishing lunch imaginable.

And finally, it is about setting your chopsticks in twitching motion, slurping up the slippery strands (making sure you do not cut them with your teeth, ever), munching on the crunchy cukes, and exclaiming, because you’ve started learning a little Japanese and would never miss an opportunity to practice, “Oishii desu yo!”*

Juji Ya / map it!
46 rue Sainte-Anne, 75002 Paris
01 42 86 02 22

* “Delicious!”

Continue reading »

When I was in New York City a few weeks ago, my flight landed in early afternoon on a Saturday. By the time the cab dropped me off on the sidewalk of my hotel it was mid-afternoon, and clean sheets and a plump pillow were a tempting proposition, but I resisted. The only anti-jetlag strategy that has ever worked for me is to fight sleepiness and stay active until the local clocks give me permission to pass out.

When I tasted a small spoonful of the wax structure, it shattered on my tongue in a most pleasing way.

In this case I had quite a few hours to fill, as I had a late dinner date with a friend. So I kept myself busy, ate a bagel sandwich (is there a way to eat those things without having all of their innards spill out onto your lap?), tried to survive hypothermia long enough to decide which apples looked best at the Union Square greenmarket, met a friend for coffee (make that a double!), bought a pair of jeans, and spent the rest of the time browsing the aisles of Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods.

I found the chocolate I’d been meaning to sample, and from the depths of the sweetener section, a box of honeycomb from Georgia.

Continue reading »