I don’t really do milk. I don’t drink it, I don’t cook with it, I don’t add it to my cereals, and I like my coffee black, thanks. As a result, I rarely have any in the fridge, and when I do buy a bottle for a recipe, the leftovers usually sit in the fridge and spoil with boredom.

But I hate to toss food as much as the next girl (or perhaps even more than her), and it recently occurred to me that I could salvage leftover milk and make Maxence happy in one easy step by baking œufs au lait (literally, “eggs with milk”, more or less pronounced as “uh-oh-lay”), a sort of flourless vanilla pudding that was one of his favorite childhood treats.

I rang up Maxence’s maternal grandmother for the recipe (the same grandmother who provided the gâteau au yaourt recipe and whose madeleine recipe I’ve been meaning to request) and barely forty minutes later there it stood, my very first batch of œufs au lait cooling on the counter, unphotogenic as can be and proportionally delicious. Silky and innocently sweet beneath a lightly chewy skin, it is the sort of dessert for which you will want to change into your pajamas.

Oeufs au lait did not exist as such in my family when I was growing up, but my mother did make a mean crème renversée, which is essentially the same thing as this, except the bottom of the dish is first coated with a light caramel, and the custard is flipped before serving. And if you can’t be bothered to flip it, you still have a crème caramel.

Endless œufs au lait variations can be obtained by flavoring the milk with cocoa, coffee, syrup, etc., as you heat it. Next time, I may follow this suggestion and steep toasted oats in the hot milk for an hour before straining them out; the poster reports it is a traditional dessert from Loire-Atlantique called pain d’avoine.

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Gratin de chou-fleur

Ever since my casual mention of my mother’s cauliflower gratin a few weeks ago, requests for the recipe have been steadily pouring into my inbox. A silent protest was even organized at the foot of my apartment building the other day, with eager, apron-clad cooks walking in circles and brandishing signs that read, “Cauliflower To The People” and “Let Us Eat Gratin.”

Fortunately, there is a back door to my building.

With expectations cranked up as high as the volume knob will go, I feel a little bit intimidated about actually sharing a recipe that is nothing more — but nothing less — than a classic French gratin.

Gratin de chou-fleur makes weeknight appearances at my parents’ table: the gratin plays the leading role, with a slice of brine-cured ham (jambon blanc) and a green salad as the supporting characters.

But it is a very forgiving recipe that can be prepared ahead in part, and it is a good occasion to try your hand at béchamel if you’ve never made one before. And in an effort to make your life as easy as can be, this utterly non-diva dish can stay in the turned-off oven for an hour or so before you’re ready to serve it (the béchamel prevents it from drying out) and will keep warm for a very long time as diners pass it around the table, eat, and go for seconds.

Gratin de chou-fleur typically makes weeknight appearances on my parents’ table: the gratin plays the leading role, while a slice of brine-cured ham (jambon blanc) and a green salad act as the supporting characters.

I have never seen my mother serve her gratin to company, but it seems to me that it would be well received for a casual dinner party and could even be cast for a special meal if you spruce it up a bit, say, by flavoring the béchamel with turmeric and adding a handful of chopped hazelnuts to the cauliflower (making your gratin a cousin of this soup) or, for a v. special meal, by adding truffle juice to the béchamel and a few slivers of black truffle sprinkled amidst the cauliflower. (Omit the nutmeg then.)

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Looking for the best banh mi in Paris? Look no further!

True dining bargains are so few and so far between in Paris that by the time you discover a new one, the previous find has usually turned into an old legend that The Elders like to recount around the fire while the young sit there and wonder if it would be okay to take out their phones.

But when it comes to lunch and fuss-free food, Paris has no shortage of hole-in-the-wall gems; you just need to know where to look. And today, we shall look in the general direction of Belleville and, more precisely, a little street off the general hullabaloo of the boulevard.

There hides a Vietnamese sandwich joint called Saigon Sandwich. Barely larger than my kitchen, it is the workshop of one sandwich-making artist, a middle-aged man who takes immense pride in the quality and freshness of his subs, assembled to order throughout the day.

To those unfamiliar with the Vietnamese sandwich, let me introduce the bánh mì, a deceptively simple combination of meat, crudités (cucumbers, carrots, daikon, onions, cilantro, chili), and some sort of dressing (most often mayonnaise, garlic chili sauce, Maggi sauce, or a combination thereof) on a piece of light-textured baguette — a little souvenir of the friendly presence (ahem) of the French in Vietnam in the 19th and 20th century.

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Looking for a recipe for galette des rois? See this post.

And this year’s galette des rois (read more about the galette des rois tradition) was brought to us by Arnaud Larher, a thirty-something pastry chef and chocolatier who opened his own shop in Montmartre ten years ago, after honing his skills at Fauchon under Pierre Hermé’s direction.

I called the day before to order une galette pour six — ordering is not mandatory for such a standard size, but I sleep better if I do — and went to collect it in mid-afternoon. As I walked home and dropped by a handful of other shops for my dinner-making needs, the paper bag bearing the pastry chef’s coat of arms elicited much commentary from these neighboring vendors, whose facial expression (corners of the mouth pulled down, chin jutted forward, eyes semi-closed, head nodding slowly) indicated their respect for the artisan, and their approval of my choice of purveyor. I hurried home for the wind was picking up, and the threat of rain was a dark omen for my fragile disk in its not-even-remotely-waterproof paper house.

Although Arnaud Larher makes a chocolate galette that can’t possibly be anything but very good, my dinner companions and I all prefer the classic version. In Larher’s case, classic means a moist mattress of frangipane* lightly flavored with orange zest — a subtle and tasteful twist — between two sheets of extra-fresh flaked pastry. The ensemble was neither overly buttery nor overly sweet, and was much enjoyed by all.

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