Finally! It’s here! My birthday present and new best friend, my stupendous cast-iron cocotte by Staub!

My parents came by my apartment yesterday and were kind enough to lug it on the metro with them, after driving it all the way back from Les Vosges, snuggly bundled up in multiple layers of bubble-wrap.

31 centimeters in length (12”), weighing in at 6.3 kilograms (14 lbl) when it’s empty — I’ve been buffing up my arms with dumbbells in preparation for its arrival — it can hold 6 liters (6 qts) of something yummy and stewy and even-better-the-next-day to feed six happy friends.

And how could anyone resist a kitchen implement that so proudly brandishes its name? Ever thought how convenient that is, when you see it lying around somewhere in the kitchen and think, “hey what is this thing?”, and you get closer, read what’s on the lid, smack your forehead and exclaim, “but of course! it is la cocotte!”

The secret of the Staub cocotte, I am told, lies beneath the surface (am I scaring you yet?), on the underside of the lid, where all around the cocotte’s belly-button are tiny little pikes — the technical word I believe is picot — that gently invite the evaporated liquids to drip back down onto the food, thus preserving all the flavors and juices.

I feel a little like Calvin when he collects the points from his boxes of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs* to receive a propeller hat, with which he thinks he will be able to fly all over the world. I really believe my cocotte is a magic wand that will make whatever I cook so good my guests will go into tastebud shock and faint.

*Calvin describes these cereals as “tasty, lip-smacking, crunchy-on-the-outside, chewy-on-the-inside, and they don’t have a single natural ingredient or essential vitamin to get in the way of that rich, fudgy taste”. Quite the little food writer.

On this rainy August day (this is not the weather I signed up for! I want a refund!) I just had to share with you the perfectness of these here tomatoes, bought at our produce store on rue des Abbesses. They are everything you could possibly hope for in a tomato — stark red, heavy in your hand, thin-skinned and fleshy, fragrant, sweet and juicy.

This particular variety, with its plump ribs just begging to be sliced, is called Coeur de Boeuf — literally “beef heart”. And seeing that we also have tiny olive-shaped tomatoes that go by the name of Coeur de Pigeon (“pigeon heart”, but you figured that out), it sort of makes you wonder why produce marketers have to resort to carnivorous metaphores to sell their tomatoes, no?

A popular item at French picnics is the cake salé, our version of the American quick bread. While I like to bake and slice a loaf for a party buffet, I find the muffin shape better suited to picnic enjoyment.

These delicious fresh herb muffins are a fabulous picnic item, but will also work well in place of bread with a salad of young greens and fresh goat cheese, or with a summer soup!

Have you tried this? Share your pics on Instagram!

Please tag your pictures with #cnzrecipes. I'll share my favorites!

Yup, yet another food-related meme, for which I was tagged by both Pascale and Jacqueline. This one has you indulge in the reminiscence of five childhood food memories. Here are mine!

Les Nounours à la Guimauve
When we had a little pocket money my sister and I would drop by the boulangerie around the corner from school to buy candy. The display case was visible through the window so we would stand there for a little while trying to decide what to get, for once inside, the boulangère, paper bag in hand and an eye on the growing line of more worthy customers, had little patience for hesitant children. Malabars bi-goût (huge pink chewing-gums that made the coolest bubbles, the bi-goût variety having two flavors), chewy ribbons coated with acidulated sugar (red was my color of choice), edible necklaces, and my all-time favorite: the chocolate-covered marshmallow teddy bear, from which I would bite the head off first — quick painless death for the teddy bear. Maxence and I still buy them occasionally, whipping them out in the late hours of a party and watching everyone’s eyes open wide with childish gourmandise.

Le Poulet Rôti du Dimanche
For lunch on Sundays, my mother would often make her perfect roasted chicken, with sauteed potatoes and green beans. The chicken made plenty of juice, and the much-anticipated treat at the end of the meal was to soak it all up with pieces of fresh baguette. At some point though, my parents decided this wasn’t the healthiest thing you could feed your kids or yourself and we stopped doing it, but I still remember how we all gathered around the baking dish in the sun-drenched dining-room (it’s always sunny in my memory), expertly maneuvering our forks to get the wonderful caramelized bits and salty juices on the thin crunchy baguette.

Les Sandwiches au Nutella
My favorite breakfast for years on end was a Nutella sandwich. Two square slices of white bread would be toasted, one would be spread with the world’s most popular chocolate-hazelnut paste, the crusts would be sliced off and the whole thing cut in two rectangular halves. I loved it and can still feel the thick sensation of velvety chocolate sticking to the roof of your mouth while you chewed on the warm crunchy bread. It wasn’t very big really, but I had a small appetite and often couldn’t finish it. And instead of throwing it out, I had a habit of taking it back to my (very messy) room “for later”. The leftovers were promptly forgotten in the back of a shelf or inside my little desk, quietly getting stale until my mother discovered them days later.

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