Hold the fruit lightly in your left hand. With the edge of your right thumb nail, cut a slit through the thin skin, close to the stem. Pull the skin up and away carefully, trying to pluck most of the white strands from the little nostril. Keep tearing at the thin peel, working your way down and around, until the clementine is completely naked. If it is still clutching a few scraps of pith out of modesty, remove those too. Pull the fruit gently apart in two halves, separate each segment and pop them into your mouth, one by one.

Thin-skinned pulpy bites bursting open on your tongue, the juices sweet and fresh and acidulated like candy. And afterwards, all afternoon, that lingering smell on the tip of your fingers. Orange-blossom essence with a hint of bitterness, a fragrance of crisp, bright winter days, for the sake of which you would happily volunteer to peel your friends’ clementines at the school cafeteria — and still do now with your boyfriend.

What distinguishes the Corsican clementine from other varieties of clementines? It is the only clementine produced in France — Spain and Morocco being our top two suppliers — and it can be found on markets and fruit stalls between November and January. Small, delicate and juicy, its segments are snugly enclosed in a thin smooth skin. Its peel displays a slight green tinge early in the season — nothing to do with jealousy or being picked too soon, this happens when fall nights aren’t cold enough to turn the chlorophyll into orange pigment.

Good-natured like all clementines (a sub-variety of mandarins), it has no seeds and is easy to peel. Perhaps even more characteristically, the Corsican clementine is hand-picked and sold with its thin, deep-green leaves still attached, lending it a definite air of elegance, and giving the wise consumer a unmistakable indication of the fruit’s freshness.

This year is a good year for quality, but not quantity — the annual crop will be about fifteen thousand tons instead of the average twenty — so if you stumble upon a crate of these bright jewels, snatch it while you can. Keep the fruit at room temperature and eat them within five days or so: on their own, or use them to make marmelades, salads, a sauce for game, candied peel, etc.

[Apples and Pears with Caramels]

I love having friends over for an impromptu weeknight dinner. I love going out to restaurants too, I’ve probably made that clear by now, but having them at home is something else entirely — warmer and more intimate. It allows you to choose your own musical ambiance (a nice random mix from the Squeezebox), move to the couch for a good cup of tea after dinner, and have conversations that you wouldn’t dream of letting anyone overhear in a crowded bistro. Although admittedly, that means no eavesdropping for you either.

On such occasions I like to keep things casual and homey, and while I sometimes take the opportunity to cook something a little involved, I often prepare dishes that I would make for myself — usually just a main course and a simple dessert. In a way, I think this can make your friends feel even more welcome: they’re part of the family and you’re comfortable enough with them that you don’t need to put on a show and prepare a feast if you’re a bit tired or pressed for time.

Last week when my friend Laurence came to dinner it was freezing, and warm apples and pears sounded like the perfect dessert option. I was about to bake them with just a little sugar, when I saw a little box of salted butter caramels on the counter, a souvenir from Brittany, and thought I would use a few to sweeten the fruit instead.

This was very quickly put together — just a bit of peeling and coring and chopping while we chatted. And as the pears and apples baked, as they turned golden, the caramel chips melted and blended with the syrupy juices seeping from the fruit, creating a fragrant and buttery sauce. A few spoonfuls of this warm and soft compote, served in a glass and topped with a little dollop of crème fraîche, was unanimously described as a crustless tarte tatin — just what we needed.

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As some of you already know, I am currently working on my first cookbook. This is both an exciting and agonizing endeavor, and while many resources can be found out there — books, blogs and websites — to learn more about writing novels and books in general*, I haven’t found many** that will hold your hand through the specific process of writing a cookbook. Hence my wish to share with you the ins and outs of the path I am taking.

In this second installment (read the first one here) I will tell you a bit about what forms the backbone of a cookbook — the recipes.

A note before I begin: please forgive my occasional vagueness when it comes to the content and structure of the book. I’ve always hated spoilers and I’m not about to spoil this one for you, but more importantly it is still largely a work in progress, nothing is set in stone yet, and like anyone who pours his heart into something, I don’t feel quite confident unveiling too much until it’s all polished and ready to fly out into the world (like that will ever happen).

The book will include 75 recipes, all of them new and previously unpublished — except for three, which I thought of as “classics” from C&Z and felt like featuring again. Some people have asked why I didn’t use more recipes from the website (my contract would allow me to) but it’s really quite simple: I want to give regular readers a good reason to buy the book, and I want to thank them for their support by offering original content. Conversely, I want to give buyers of the book a good reason to log on to C&Z where they’ll find more writing and recipes. And finally, I am just not very interested in collating posts from the past: it’s an infinitely more rewarding challenge to come up with all new dish ideas and the stories to go with them.

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No one needs to be reminded that food is an essential part of the holiday celebrations, and for this second part of our tri-city series, let me recommend a few places to eat some of the delicacies that epitomize Christmas in Paris.

[New York Food] [London Food]

Oysters!

A traditional treat to open a holiday feast is the platter of oysters, freshly delivered from the ocean and freshly opened by whoever is brave enough to risk slashing his left palm open. Oysters are most often served in the shell on a bed of crushed ice — although some purists argue that this dulls their flavor — with thin slices of rye bread, salted butter, and lemon juice. Besides the many classic Parisian brasseries which proudly display their selection on sidewalk stands, a good place to eat oysters is L’Ecaille de la Fontaine in the 2nd. It is owned by the über-famous actor Depardieu, who also operates La Fontaine Gaillon, just a few steps away. L’Ecaille is the marine annex to this pricier venue, and offers a daily selection of ultrafresh shellfish and related dishes. Their oysters can be tasted in the 19€ formula (9 oysters, a dessert and a glass of wine) or in the larger variety platter (62€ for 2). The restaurant is closed on Dec. 24 and Dec. 25, but they will be open for New Year’s Eve with an 80€ menu (make your reservation asap).

L’Ecaille de la Fontaine
15 rue Gaillon, 75002 Paris
01 47 42 02 99
Closed on Sat-Sun.

Game!

The hunting season officially opens in early September and closes in late February. Regardless of how you feel about hunting — a higly controversial topic, I know — the discerning palate will appreciate the unique flavors that game provides, whether it’s deer (daim or biche), boar (sanglier or marcassin), wild ducks (col-vert or sauvageon) or other birds (palombes or cailles). Two excellent restaurants feature those animals prominently on their seasonal menus: Chez Michel in the 10th, which mainly focuses on Brittany-inspired cuisine, and L’Ami Jean in the 7th, a South-West gastro-bistro.

Chez Michel
10 rue de Belzunce, 75010 Paris
01 44 53 06 20
Closed on Sat-Sun and Mon. for lunch.
L’Ami Jean
27 rue Malar, 75007 Paris
01 47 05 86 89
Closed between Dec. 24 to Jan. 3.

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