[Flambé Banana Bread with Caramelized Pecans]

One of the things I love the most about kitchen activities is that they come in all shapes and sizes to fit your mood, and how much time you have on your hands. Whether you’re looking for instant gratification or a way to spend some quality moments with your pans and spatulas, there is a project out there that’s perfect for you. And even for one given dish, there are always plenty of options, high-road or low-road, super quick or more involved.

Take banana pecan bread for instance, a.k.a. the most rewarding way to salvage bananas for those of us who always buy far too many at a time. If you’re expecting friends for brunch and you woke up a little late, you can whip one up in under 20 minutes, and it will bake as you shower and set the table. But say you have a lazy Sunday afternoon ahead of you, no obligation of any kind, and a simple desire for something homemade and sweet by tea-time. Perhaps then you will choose to kick things up a notch, caramelize the pecans, and flambé the bananas in a little rum.

A little more time happily spent at the stove, a tad more cleanup — but really, what’s a saucepan and a skillet in the grand scheme of things –, and the reward is this: a warm, moist-crumbed loaf with a top that has developed the shadow of a crisp, crunchy morsels of pecans to encounter in every bite, and a concerto of rich, aromatic flavors brought to you by the bananas, the muscovado sugar, and the rum.

Continue reading »

Rôti de Porc au Chou Rouge Epicé, Pommes et Pruneaux

I don’t normally buy meat at the farmers’ market: I have a good neighborhood butcher that I like — his name is Mario, what’s not to like? — and my usual crop of fruits, vegetables, cheese, and flowers is usually so bulky in my rainbow-colored basket (a birthday gift from my neighbors) that it leaves room for little else, especially if I want to make it home with my shoulder still in its socket, which I sort of do.

But Meg, who shops at the Batignolles too, had recommended the farm-raised chicken from a stall that’s at the far end of the market (close to the Rome metro station) and I was so pleased with its quality that I decided to explore the rest of the selection.

This stall is operated by a couple not much older than I am, who runs a farm in the Ardennes and sells their products at very reasonable prices. I am all for supporting young farmers (they, at least, don’t set buses ablaze) so I stopped by on my Saturday market run and, in addition to four slices of ham (bien fines, s’il vous plaît) and one breaded pork foot (a 1-euro delicacy for which Maxence was quite grateful), I purchased a pork roast.

And on Sunday morning, since I had bought a head of red cabbage and some very fragrant apples from another vendor, this is the dish that naturally came together on my stovetop: the meat was quickly seared so it would remain nice and juicy inside, the cabbage and apples were chopped, combined with prunes and gently seasoned with a few automnal spices, and the whole thing was left to braise in a little red wine until we were ready for lunch.

It is a very satisfying and very easy one-pot dish that should be served with strong mustard to tease the vegetables’ slight sweetness, and my one suggestion of improvement is to brine the meat beforehand in a simple water-salt-sugar solution, so the meat will be salted right down to its heart.

Continue reading »

Walking through the Oberkampf neighborhood this past Friday on my way from one appointment to the next, I glanced at my watch and gleefully realized I had just enough time to drop by La Bague de Kenza, a luxurious Algerian pastry shop on rue Saint-Maur.

There was a line snaking outside onto the sidewalk — it was still Ramadan then and many of the customers were buying sweets for the nightly fast-breaking feast — but this gave me time to be entertained by the verbal fight that broke out when one lady accused another of trying to cut in front of her (if you hadn’t eaten or drunk anything all day, you would be nippy too), and to admire the colorful multitude of picture-perfect delights filled with almonds, pistachios, walnuts, figs, or dates, and flavored with honey, rose water, orange blossom water, mint, citrus, or vanilla.

It’s okay not to know the names of all (or any) of the little guys: the staff often caters to novices, so you can just smile and point, or ask for an assortment. I myself ordered eight different ones: a pistachio skandriate and a lemon and vanilla cornet aux amandes (pictured above, top and right), a sugar-coated corne de gazelle and a walnut baqlava (pictured here, left and top right), a doigt de Kenza, a rfisse (a mix of semolina, walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts, date, and honey, ground into a marzipan-like, pleasantly grainy paste), and two more that I unfortunately can’t name: a piped round of almond and walnut paste flavored with orange blossom water and topped with an unpeeled almond (pictured above, bottom left) and a meringue round filled with pistachio paste (pictured here, bottom right).

Continue reading »

I recently read that online shopping — or just online window-shopping — was a widespread form of procrastination. I cannot remember where I read this, but that’s probably because reading random stuff on the Internet is another way in which I squander vast amounts of my time.

In any case, the online shopping observation certainly struck a chord, and an indisputable proof of my guilt arrived in the mail on Saturday morning: the telltale package sported pretty stamps from Mayotte and contained twenty plump pods of Bourbon vanilla grown on the archipelago*.

I blame it all on Pascale the Temptress, who recently wrote about a small company that does the world** a great service by selling pods of vanilla at the most competitive prices I’ve ever seen: if you buy twenty pods, each of them will cost you just one euro, and that’s shipping included, ladies and gentlemen***. Admittedly, twenty pods is a lot of vanilla — more than I’ve ever owned in my entire life — but I have countless plans for them, including bartering them for favors from friends and family.

[Update: Sadly, la Vanille de Mayotte is no longer in operation; I now buy Tahiti vanilla.]

This compote is the first thing I made with my Mayotte vanilla. I had originally bought the apples to bake a cake and the Hokkaido squash to make a soup, but somewhere along the line I decided to pair the two in a chunky-smooth, autumnal compote: as its French name indicates, potimarron has a flavor that hints on chestnut, and I figured this would make it a good friend to the apples.

The resulting compote is subtly sweet and richly flavored, with accents of citrus I hadn’t foreseen and warm, aromatic notes brought on by the vanilla. It can either be served for breakfast or dessert with butter or spice cookies to dip in, or as a side to boudin blanc, roasted poultry, or game — don’t you have holiday meals to plan?

* I will note in passing that I am very glad to have gotten the chance, for the second time in three years of C&Z, to use the word “archipelago”.

** La Vanille de Mayotte ships to more than thirty countries in the world. The website is in French, but they will reply to email enquiries in English.

*** As a matter of comparison, two exceptionally scrawny pods will cost you 4.37€ here.

Continue reading »