[Asparagus and Strawberry Tart]

About a year ago, a little group of us Parisian (by birth or by heart) food enthusiasts started a tradition of organizing potluck dinners at one another’s place. On Saturday night, my dear friend Alisa hosted her second such event, setting Aphrodisiac Foods as the theme for the night. The event had been scheduled for a while and I had done some basic research about those ingredients that were notable aphrodisiacs, but somehow I could not get the culinary half of my brain to think further than “ginger”. Thankfully, a couple of days before the event, inspiration struck.

I was reading the handy list at GourmetSleuth and two ingredients jumped at me, begging to be finally paired off after years of secret yearning — Mr. Asparagus and Ms. Strawberry. One green one red, one slender one squat, both bringing into the relationship their own subtly sweet taste and personable texture. I decided to lay them on a bed of almond pâte brisée (almonds symbolize fertility) and call it an Asparagus and Strawberry Tart.

For the crust I started with the perfect pâte brisée recipe I got from Pascale, substituting almond powder for a quarter of the flour. This and the butter formed a nicely supple — if a little soft — ball of dough, to which the addition of an egg (as the original recipe calls for) was unnecessary. The asparagus were steamed, the strawberries cleaned and quartered, and a simple batter of crème fraîche and eggs formed the sheeting on which I arranged the couple, in as aesthetic a pattern as I could, before I gave them a little oven privacy.

To my glee, the tart was very well received: its crust was light and flaky, the asparagus/strawberry pairing worked superbly and the whole thing vanished in no time. There were about twenty of us, and the contributions were as varied and delicious as oysters with ginger sauce, grilled asparagus, sesame tuna tartare, lapin à la moutarde (rabbit in mustard and white wine), frogs’ legs in parsley butter, pistachio tabouli or arugula salad.

The dessert spread did not disappoint either, boasting a chocolate fondue and a mountain of strawberries, brownies topped with candied almonds, a cream cake flavored with tonka beans and artfully decorated with homemade and cute breast-shaped mini-meringues, figs served with a crystallized ginger cream, and chocolate mini-financiers flavored with long pepper and ginger.

And before you ask, my story does not (and will not) discuss the relative merit and efficiency of the aforementioned aphrodisiac dishes — some things are just better left unsaid.

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[Spreadable Gianduja]

It’s all in the packaging, is it not? Because really, if you look at it from an objective stance, this is quite simply, well, Nutella. For about six times the price of regular industrial Nutella, as purchased by yours truly, in a moment of sheer giving-in-to-temptation, at the beauty/home store Résonances.

Ah, yes. But. It is in a tube you see, a nice, toothpaste-like, glittery golden tube with red lettering. And this makes it portable, easily spreadable, perfect for decorating and topping and minute preparations (say, to fill the cavity of a raspberry or to sandwich together small butter cookies) — not to mention the obvious, which involves direct contact between your pursed lips and the end of the tube, and some very rapidly vanishing chocolate hazelnut cream.

It is made by Pastiglie Leone, the 150-year-old Italian company from Turin that makes the renowned Leone pastilles. Just like Nutella (invented by Pietro Ferrero who was from that same city), Gianduioso is the spreadable adaptation of the Piedmontese specialty called Gianduiotto, a melt-in-your-mouth chocolate and hazelnut confection shaped like a tiny bar in a golden wrapper. This also explains the name Gianduioso, as a portmanteau of “Gianduiotto cremoso”.

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We all need easy and healthy meals that can be whipped up in very little time (and even less planning) for a week-end lunch or a weeknight dinner, without sacrificing taste or feeling like you’re slapping ready-made stuff together. So I thought I’d share the very very simple lunch we had last Saturday.

I’m sure you’ve noticed how the way you cut your vegetables affects their taste, giving them different textures and causing them to cook in different ways depending on the surface that’s exposed to the heatsource. Zucchini is a good example because it lends itself to myriads of possible shapes that I like to play with: half-moons, dice, thick slices, super-thin slices, teeny matchsticks, tagliatelle or papardelle-like ribbons, or today’s little sticks.

As for chicken breasts (blancs de poulet in French, literally chicken whites), I hardly ever buy them because they are so ubiquitous and boring and it feels so easy to overcook and ruin them — thus reproducing one of the most famous dishes in the history of cinema, “Shoe Sole à la Chaplin”. But I made an exception the other day at the (gasp!) grocery store, buying two organic chicken breasts that actually managed to look engaging through the plastic shrink wrap.

What I did with them was exceedingly simple: I just rubbed them with the Bed of Roses spice mix I mentioned before, headily full-flavored and slightly spicy, throwing in a few extra red pepper flakes because I like spicy. Of course, this would work beautifully with other spice rubs and mixes too, including tandoori and curry. The meat was left in the fridge for the chicken to absorb the flavors while I worked on my zucchini sticks.

Exceedingly simple, yet something I had never really realized was that easy, or that good: these little chicken un-nuggets were delightfully moist — I kept as close an eye on them as I could without burning my retina — and the spice coating formed a thin aromatic crust, making the whole thing look mouth-watering and taste delicious.

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GO:: Granted, reaching today’s featured restaurant requires a little more effort than the usual metro ride. This ferme-auberge*, owned and operated by Gianni from Sardinia, is located atop the Luberon mountain range and can be reached after a breathtaking — both literally and metaphorically — two-hour walk up curvy dust paths. Nothing superhuman though, and this guarantees rosy cheeks when you reach the top, not to mention a lion’s appetite and a euphoric feeling of entitlement and pride. (Cheaters and those who don’t feel up to the exploit can get there by car — much less picturesque of course.)

In one of the farm’s stone buildings is the restaurant room, an impressively large affair with low ceilings and two huge communal tables going all the way across. Other guests are already crowding it, little children running around among the staff (some local, some Sardinian) while they work to set things up for the feast to come.

DRINK:: Pitchers of homemade sangria (a red wine and fruit cocktail) are set out before the meal. You can take your glass to the wooden tables outside and enjoy the view, or take the kids out to look at the brown goats grazing on the little hill in the back. During the meal, a seemingly endless procession of jugs will follow, plenty of red wine and moutain spring water to quench your thirst.

EAT:: The fixed menu is different every day, and the food is passed around in platters among the guests, family-style. For starters we enjoyed a lentil salad, a delicious game terrine and slices of homemade boudin noir (blood sausage), served with fresh country bread.

The main dish followed: racks of lamb à la broche (fire-roasted) brought into the room in clouds of steam and smoke, to be expertly cut and sliced by Gianni and his team. This was served with a dish of stewed potatoes and turnips — a great complement to the flavorful meat, which was rosy and tender in places, wonderfully crispy and smoky in others.

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