What do you do when your deepest desire is a little homemade pesto in your sandwich, but you discover with a sinking heart that you have but a handful of basil? Sure, you could go out and buy more, certainly, yes, that would be the sensible thing to do. But what if you can’t go out for some reason, say, because you’ve just painted your toenails, or because you’re expecting a delivery, or perhaps both?

Well, you open the fridge, and try to think out of the box: no fresh herb to speak of, no salad green either, but there, on the lower shelf, a small basket of ruby strawberries, batting their eyelashes up at you. Strawberries from Sologne, to be exact, with an oblong shape and a tingly flavor of fraises des bois.

As a few restaurant desserts have already proven, strawberries and basil are a felicitous pairing (think chilled strawberry soup infused with basil, or sliced strawberries atop a basil sorbet) so that will do.

And while you’re at it, why not replace the pine nuts with almonds? Strawberries enjoy their company so much.

And so the strawberries join their new pals for a little ride in the mixer — the mortar and pestle method would be a bit messy, you fear. You kind of hoped the resulting pesto would be at least a little pink, but it turns out the basil won’t have it that way.

Still, the pesto is baby green with teeny flecks of pink when you look really closely, and this is pleasing enough. You taste it, and rejoice at the balance of flavors: the basil continues to dominate — it is a strong-headed herb — but the strawberries add a flowery, acidulated undertone that brightens things up nicely.

The batch doesn’t make much, but since you feel this pesto won’t keep quite as long as the traditional one — more fresh ingredients, less olive oil — it’s just as well.

Two slices of levain bread receive a light toasting and a healthy spread of pesto, upon which strips of crimson jambon de montagne (dry-cured ham) and sliced tomatoes are layered.

The sandwich is assembled, sliced in two diagonally, and heartily enjoyed, just in time for the delivery guy to ring your neighbors’ door bell — however precisely you describe which door is yours, your explanations are unfailingly misinterpreted. Perhaps it would help if you actually had your name on your door, like normal people do?

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A little while ago I told you about the cookbooks my grandmother gave me, old, tattered, and much-loved volumes that used to belong to my great-grandmother before her. One of them is called Mes Recettes pour votre dessert, and it contains 710 recipes for sweet things, arranged in alphabetical order from Amandés de Liège to Visitandines. And on page 222, this precious book offers a recipe for petits beurres.

Le petit beurre is a crisp little thing, not too sweet and not too rich, that melts on your tongue and takes kindly to a brief dunking in a cup of hot chocolate.

Le Petit Beurre (literally “little butter”) is a small rectangular cookie that was invented in 1886 by Louis Lefèvre-Utile, founder of the LU company in Nantes: he was the first to create a cookie manufacture in France, and was very much ahead of his time in terms of marketing and advertisement too.

This cookie, also called Petit LU, quickly became a classic, and although it is now 120 years old it is as sprightly as ever, with millions of packages sold every year throughout the world. The fascinating story of the petit beurre would really warrant a whole book — I wouldn’t be surprised if one had already been written — but you can read a little more about it here (in French). [Note: the LU brand now belongs to the Danone group.]

Le petit beurre is a crisp little thing, not too sweet and not too rich, that melts on your tongue and takes very kindly to a brief dunking in a cup of hot chocolate. Its signature silhouette has scalloped edges, tiny holes on the surface as if pricked by a needle, and a small browned ear at each corner.

Some advocate that the corners are the best, and a close member of my family was once admonished for having gone through a whole package, eating exclusively les petites oreilles, and returning the rest neatly into the paper wrapper. This same family member also had an interesting experience with a tiny chestnut that fit exactly inside her left nostril, but I will keep that story for another time. [Update: The close family member tells me that she calls the corners “thumbs”, not “ears”, because they look like a baby’s toes.]

Because petits beurres are so readily available from French stores — even the tiniest ones — they don’t seem to be the type of cookie that one makes at home, and I had never seen a recipe anywhere before. To my knowledge, the special mold that gives the petit beurre its shape is not for sale, so I chose to make mine with the puzzle cookie cutter that I bought from Muji recently. Whichever shape you pick for yours, make sure it is one that has dents and corners (a star would work well too) so that you get the maximum amount of crisp angles.

The recipe was charming (I’ve copied it below for your enjoyment), very easy to follow, and the resulting cookies were wonderful: although no one would mistake them for the original petits beurres in a blind test, there was a clear similarity of flavor.

Less dry than the packaged version, my petits beurres were crisp and crumbly like good sablés should be, with just the right dose of sweetness, a clean, lingering taste of fresh butter and crème fraîche, and a delightful hint of salt. Perfect for an afternoon snack, they were also much enjoyed with sliced strawberries (especially Mara des Bois from the market) or a rhubarb compote.

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I am very pleased to announce that as of yesterday, 9:07 pm, the manuscript of my book has officially left my hands, landing just a few seconds later on my editor’s desk, 3,635 miles away. The moment I hit “send”, my heart thumping audibly, I drew a deep breath, climbed down from the bar stool on which I was sitting, and walked to the fridge to retrieve the bottle of pink champagne that had been chilled for the occasion. A pop, a toast, a sip, a kiss — I believe there may have been a few giggles on my part, too, and perhaps a little happy dance.

Once enough champagne had been consumed to duly mark the event and the hunger pangs became more and more difficult to ignore, we walked out into the pouring rain to have dinner at Casa Olympe, which, in passing, I warmly recommend. What better way to celebrate than with a scampi broth followed by crispy veal sweetbreads, especially when Jean-Paul Gaultier happens to be sitting across the tiny room from you?

Of course, I am now anxiously awaiting the comments and edits on the manuscript, but today is a beautiful day, I feel like I’m on vacation, and I intend to spend the afternoon — the next week even — basking in the sunlight of the terrace across the street.

And for those of you who may be wondering, the book is scheduled for US publication on May 1, 2007.

(Casa Olympe – 48 rue Saint-Georges – 75009 Paris – 01 42 85 26 01)

Chose promise, chose due*, here is my take on absorption pasta, or risotto-style pasta. The idea of this technique is to coat the pasta with a little olive oil, add just enough liquids to cover, and cook until desired tenderness. According to Virka — who read it in the Italian paper La Reppublica so it simply must be true — this cooking technique dates back from the early 13th century, and was in fact the only one that was used before it was displaced by the now-classic boiling method.

For this first trial, I used the ricciole pasta that came in my package of Italian goodies, and followed Pascale’s instructions as a guide. I didn’t have stock on hand — I am a bad, bad person — so I just used filtered water: the flavor was fine, but will of course be richer if you use homemade stock, you Martha Stewart you. The pasta was cooked with thin sticks of zucchini (cut with my mighty mandoline — no fingers were sliced in the process, I’m getting better at this), and received a sprinkle of crushed cacao nibs and crispy flecks of aged Parmesan just before serving.

The crispy flecks of Parmesan are a fortuitous by-product of my recent attempt to make Parmesan wafers with the previously featured hunk of 3-year-old Parmigiano Reggiano. It turns out that this Parmesan is marvellous, yes, but much too dry and much too proud to let itself be turned into a vulgar wafer: the grated cheese didn’t so much melt as grill, and my golden circles just crumbled into bits when I tried to lift them from the baking sheet. Said bits were delicious however, so they were promptly recycled into sandwich garnishes and canapé toppings.

Anyway, where were we? Ah yes, the absorption pasta. So, how was it? It was lovely, that’s how it was — so lovely in fact, that I might stick to that technique from here on in. First of all, and however odd this may sound, I hate bringing pots of water to a boil — it is the most boring thing in the world. Since I am an impatient cook, I cannot help but lift the lid every ten seconds and, as we all know, watched water never boils, which is kind of a problem, especially when you’re hungry and thus cranky.

Secondly, the absorption method makes it easier to test the pasta for doneness: when you pluck one from the pan, you can taste it (almost) straight away, since it isn’t as scorching hot as when you lift it from a pot of boiling water. And once you have reached the consistency that you like, the pasta can go straight from the pan into your plate, without continuing to cook as it does when you have to drain it and toss it with the sauce. Finally, and more to the point, this technique allows a delectable coating of starch to develop around the pasta, giving it a toothsome, silky texture.

As the pasta softly simmered, I was quite surprised to notice that a scent of almonds wafted up from the sauté pan: I am not entirely sure whether that came from my olive oil, from the pasta itself, or a happy alchemy between the two, but I had never had that happen before. This scent had somewhat subsided by the time the pasta was cooked, but it was still a lingering presence in the finished dish, and went delightfully well with the softened zucchini, the toasty flecks of Parmesan, and the earthy crunchy cacao nibs**.

* Chose promise, chose due means “a promise is a debt.”
** Cacao nibs (éclats de fève de cacao in French) are tiny bits of rosted cacao beans, not sweetened or processed any further. They have an intense chocolate scent, and they are crunchy and nutty.

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