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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Although bread is without a doubt the carb I’d have the most trouble giving up, the potato is a close second. You can fry it mash it boil it roast it broil it stuff it, and be quite certain you’ll get my vote.

The preparations I most enjoy are sautéed potatoes, especially my mother’s (which, before you ask, don’t have any special ingredient other than her love and dexterity), and potato salads. I like a creamy potato salad as much as the next girl — I certainly ate more than my share at assorted barbecue parties in the US — but I have to say my preference goes to those that simply combine roasted wedges of potato with a well-balanced, olive-oil-based dressing that enhances the flavor of the potato, instead of just using it for texture and as a carrier of mayonnaise.

A good example of the kind I like can be found in the daily selection of that beloved lunch haunt of mine that has recently published a superb cookbook I can’t seem to shut up about. And as luck and Rose Carrarini would have it, the book includes a recipe for one of the potato salads in their rotation, a recipe called Potato Gribiche.

The classic sauce gribiche is a mayonnaise that is augmented by finely chopped hard-boiled eggs, cornichons (pickled gherkins), capers, and fresh herbs such as tarragon and parsley; it is a good accompaniment to fish, shellfish, and, most notably, tête de veau (veal head). I might note in passing that my efforts to locate some sort of explanation as to the origins of the name have only turned up the hypothesis that it comes from the old Normand word gribiche, defined as “a mean woman who scares children.” I love it.

Etymological notes aside, the dressing in Rose Bakery’s Potato Gribiche is in fact closer to a vinaigrette than to a mayonnaise, and this conveniently makes it lighter, more subtle, and easier on the forearms. New variations on that salad appear on their counter all the time and my favorite is the one that involves diced chorizo. But my kitchen was completely bereft of chorizo on the particular day I was inspired to try that recipe, so I reached for the closest substitute, smoked paprika, which I think can accurately be described as the phantom of chorizo.

And this is a fine potato salad, full of flavors and textural contrasts. It can be served either still a little warm or at room temperature, and is hence a very good picnic candidate for when the picnic days return. I advise you to eat it on the day you make it however, as what little I had left had turned impossibly mealy overnight.

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