However much I love the Paris métro — it might surprise you to learn that actually like its smell, a special mix of metal, dust, and rubber — walking remains my favorite means of transportation around the city. It gives me the opportunity to stretch my legs, traverse favorite or unfamiliar neighborhoods, indulge in a little people-watching, and get slightly lost from time to time, which often leads to interesting discoveries.

I usually like to be alone with my thoughts, but when I wish to be entertained as I walk, I take full advantage of the technological wonders of our times and listen to podcasts on my mp3 player. And since I figured I probably wasn’t the only one to do so, I thought I would share a few favorites. (If you would like to reciprocate and share yours, the comments section is wide open!)

~ Good Food

This weekly show airs on KCRW, an NPR radio station in the Los Angeles area. It is hosted by the gracious Evan Kleiman, restaurant owner and founder of the LA Slow Food convivium, who interviews authors, food experts, and critics. It is a lively and varied show that includes local tidbits (restaurant reviews and such) but has a broad enough scope otherwise to be of interest to listeners outside Southern California.

~ Eat Feed

This one is a “pure” podcast in the sense that it was created directly for the web, and isn’t aired on any other medium. Each show is organized around one of four formats (the seasonal, the new and noteworthy, the history of food, and the vocabulary of gastronomy) and the overall approach manages to be both scholarly and engaging — a difficult balance to strike. (Note: Amy, Aun, and I were guests on their most recent show, October Rumblings, and this is how the idea for this post came about.)

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[Coconut Chocolate Cake]

I have known Marie-Laure for nineteen years. This represents more than two thirds of our lives, and our friendship has accompanied us through primary school, junior high, high school, university, a year in Brazil for her, two years in California for me, and a variety of jobs, relationships, and haircuts, without us ever growing apart.

She lived a few doors down from me (or perhaps I lived a few doors down from her, the question is up for debate) for more than a decade, before we flew out of our respective nests. And now, after a few years of living in different countries and then all the way across town from one another, Marie-Laure and I are finally reunited: she has just moved into an apartment a short walk up and down the Montmartre hill from mine, and this makes us very happy.

She threw a housewarming party last Saturday — a pendaison de crémaillère as we say in French, see here for an explanation — and I offered to bring a chocolate cake, which I’m sure you’ll agree is the most efficient way to warm up a house. I decided to build upon Christophe Felder‘s Gâteau Belle-Vue, a butterless (though by no means fat-free) chocolate cake recipe that can be found in one of the pastry chef’s many books and on countless French food blogs — I myself first saw it on Sylvie‘s.

For some reason I wanted to make a coconut version of this cake and while I was at it, I made several other adjustments: I upped the amount of chocolate (I have a reputation to maintain), omitted the almond powder and replaced it with a higher amount of grated coconut, omitted the flour (which makes the cake gluten-free if you make sure your chocolate is, too), used light whipping cream only instead of cream and milk, and added a bit of salt because salt makes everything taste better, especially baked goods.

I loved this cake and, judging by its disappearance ratio (number of slices eaten divided by number of minutes on the buffet table), I wasn’t the only one. The top develops a thin crust while the middle remains lusciously moist (but not so dense that it sticks to your front teeth and creates embarrassing situations), and red Bounty bar fans don’t need me to sing the glories of the bittersweet chocolate and toasted coconut combo. Although no one got a chance to verify it this time, I believe the cake would taste even better the next day: what you would lose in fresh-from-the-oven top crust effect would be regained by the overnight deepening of flavors.

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Given my love of good-for-you nut butters and my passion for the unabashedly trashy peanut butter cup, it was only a matter of time before I attempted to merge the two and make a peanut butter cup spread of some sort.

I thought I would simply use unsweetened cocoa powder to flavor an otherwise classic homemade peanut butter, but when I opened the tin, a hollow clonk greeted me.

“Who used up the last of the cocoa powder without replenishing the supply?” I asked, punctuating my question with a colorful expletive. “I did and I’m sorry,” I replied, alone in the kitchen. “But the Salon du Chocolat is coming up soon, and if you make it there, won’t you be pleased to have an excuse to do some shopping?” That shut me up for a while.

I decided to just use bittersweet chocolate instead, and had the idea to add spices to emulate the flavor profile of Mexican chocolate: cinnamon, chili pepper, and vanilla, with the not-so-traditional addition of cardamom, which works beautifully here.

And my Mexican chocolate peanut butter turned out amazingly well. I was blown away by the complexity of its flavor and the richness of its mouthfeel, as showcased on my morning tartine.

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Cookbook writing guidelines tell you that naming a recipe after someone is not a good idea: it doesn’t tell the reader much about the ingredients or the process, the reader doesn’t know this person, and frankly, the reader doesn’t care. This is all true of course, but I have a certain fondness for those recipes that sound like they were found in some old handwritten recipe book — la Carpe farcie façon Hortense, le Boudin du Père Thibault, le Pain d’épices de Célestine* — and although I promise not to make it a habit, I really wanted to name this particular dish after the person who inspired it.

A few weeks ago, Maxence and I spent a glorious day visiting friends of his mother’s in the Perche region, a two-hour drive to the south-west of Paris (less if you’re the speeding type). Le Perche is the essence of the French countryside — I’m pretty sure it is what the language guys had in mind when they invented the word “picturesque” — and as soon as we got off the freeway and started driving through the bocage (hedged farmland), I could feel my shoulders relaxing and my breaths deepening.

Muriel had slow-baked the chicken in one of those clay pots from Alsace and Germany called a Römertopf with whole garlic cloves, a quartered lemon, and fresh herbs from the garden.

Our hosts welcomed us warmly into their beautiful house — I want one just like that when I grow up — and a simple glance around the kitchen made me feel confident that lunchtime would bring very good things. And indeed, after a salad of perfect tomatoes from the vegetable patch (oh, the joy of living a cliché), we dug into the centerpiece of the meal: a farm-raised chicken so big it could have easily been admitted into some select turkey association.

The chicken came from a nearby farm, where one buys the chicks at birth and pays for their food, lodging, and education until they are plump enough to return the favor, at least for the food part. Muriel, the lady of the house, had slow-baked it in one of those clay pots from Alsace and Germany called Römertopf with whole garlic cloves, a quartered lemon, and fresh herbs from the garden.

Maxence took care of the carving (he seems to be the appointed chicken carver wherever we go, it is such a useful skill to possess) and the platter of chicken parts was brought to the garden table with sides of mashed potatoes and green beans, and a saucière (gravy boat) of golden brown cooking juices, in which the softened garlic cloves were paddling about, ready to have their pungent-sweet pulp smooched out and used as a condiment.

That chicken was hands-down the best I’ve ever had. Muriel was happy to share the recipe, and I soon reproduced it with my very own larger-than-life chicken bought from the farmers’ market, an organic lemon, pink garlic, and herbs that Muriel had snipped for us to take home (along with a few ceps, a crate of tomatoes, and a bushel of plums from their overloaded tree). I don’t own a clay pot yet — rest assured this will be fixed on my next trip to Alsace — so I used the largest of my cast-iron cocottes instead.

I have trouble deciding whether my chicken was as stupendous as Muriel’s — a dish that someone else has made for you always feels more magical — but it was pretty close, and I have a feeling that le poulet de Muriel will make frequent appearances on our menu. It is an extremely easy and foolproof recipe (since the chicken cooks in its own steam and at such a low temperature, there is no risk of it overcooking or drying out) and all you really need is good ingredients and time.

* These recipes are quoted from a book called Recettes gourmandes du Poitou-Charentes by Francis Lucquiaud, a collection of the author’s grandmothers’ recipes.

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