I had long wanted to visit Marseille, so I was very happy for the occasion to spend a week-end there recently with Maxence.

Marseille is a port city in Provence, and it is in fact the second biggest city in France. My grandmother lived there for a couple of years during World War II, and we have a few family pictures from that period. I remember one in particular, black and white with frilled edges, which shows my grandmother at my age, walking with her first two little boys on the Canebière, with her blond hair elegantly pinned up, and her signature bright white smile.

Marseille is also where one of my favorite novels of all times takes place, Alexandre Dumas’ Count of Monte-Cristo, and I was delighted in a peculiar way to see signs to the infamous Château d’If and even a rue Edmond Dantès, as if I had bumped into a movie star.

Maxence and I spent a lovely week-end there, driving in and around the city, enjoying the sun, the Mediterranean lifestyle, and treating ourselves to the local specialties.

On Saturday afternoon, we strolled around the Vieux Marseille (the historic city center), a maze of narrow cobbled streets built on a hill. When it was time for a little afternoon snack, a boulangerie miraculously happened upon our path, an intriguing phenomenon often observed in any city or village of our beautiful country. The antithesis of the bright and cheery, spick-and-span boulangeries I’m used to, this one was shadowy and eerily quiet, giving off the distinct impression that everyone inside was having a nap, like any sensible Marseillais would do at this time of day and in this heat.

Continue reading »

Confiture d’abricots aux amandes

When I spend time at my parents’ house in the Vosges, my mother and I start out by making a mental list (we haven’t reached the point of actually writing down that list – yet) of what we’re going to cook, bake and eat. One of the items I mentioned this time was jam : over the years, I’ve often seen my mother make jam, I’ve made jam on my own, we’ve talked about jam together, but we had never made jam together.

At the Gérardmer market, one of the produce stalls had abricots pour confiture : it was not altogether clear why they were labelled so, but they were a bit smaller than the regular ones, maybe not as pretty, and in any case cheaper. There was just one crate left, and we bought it with that special thrill you get from snatching the last of anything.

A couple of days later, we set out to make some apricot jam, taking our apricots out onto the garden table to stone and slice them. And you know the ad that says “great cheese comes from happy cows”? Well, I’m certain that great apricot jam comes from apricots prepped with your mom in a sunny garden, while your boyfriend and your father are having a chat, and your sister is taking a nap inside.

The cool thing about making jam with my mother, besides the simple words “making jam with my mother”, is the industrial proportions it can take. When I’ve made jam on my own, I’ve usually shot for about two jars per batch : I don’t consume that much jam (Maxence hardly any), I want variety, I have limited storage space, and most of all I’ve had to rely on the pricy Parisian produce stalls for supplies. But with my mother, it’s more about making twelve jars at a time, using fruit that we’ve picked ourselves, or bought, for a reasonable price, at the market.

And there’s a definite, indisputable fun factor in putting two kilos of fresh apricots together with two kilos of sugar in a big pot, cracking the stones open to get the almonds inside, bringing all of it to a rolling boil, and stirring it with a long wooden spoon like some kind of witchy decoction, until my mom officially declares it done, at which point you get to pour the piping hot mixture into the jars you’ve prepared and lined up, using the extra-convenient-especially-made-and-mighty-smart funnel tool (my mom’s got gear) and a big ladle. Just be extra-careful to distribute the apricot almonds evenly among the jars, because they really are the best part, aren’t they?

Of course, now comes the hard part, the one in which you have to wait and let the jars rest, allowing them to age on a shelf in the cool cellar. But in a few months, when these glowingly orange jars are nice and ripe, you can be sure one of them has my name on it.

Important note : this apricot jam recipe uses the almonds inside the stones. This gives the jam a particularly good flavor, and makes for a few lovely crunchy bites per jar. However, the almonds inside apricot stones, like bitter almonds, contain hydrocyanic acid. The human body has no problem dealing with it if ingested in small doses, but 30 to 50 almonds eaten in a short amount of time can kill an adult! It’s perfectly safe to include a few in a jar of jam, but just keep the warning in mind.

Continue reading »

The house my parents own in the Vosges (a mountain range in the East of France, if you haven’t been following this blog as closely as you should) is located outside a small town called La Bresse. When we’re there on vacation, part of the food shopping is conducted in La Bresse itself — at the grocery store for basics, and at a charcuterie and two different bakeries (one makes really excellent bread, the other has delicious cakes and brioches) — but the rest is bought at the food market held on Thursdays and Saturdays in Gérardmer, a slightly larger town in the next valley.

As is usually the case in French food markets, most of the stands sell fruits and vegetables. Last week, they all boasted beautiful crops of various berries — blueberries, raspberries and redcurrants (red or white, the white being, surprisingly, sweeter and milder in taste). The sheer volume of berries on display always amazes and delights me : in Paris, berries are treated like nuggets of gold, sold in teeny tiny little baskets and priced like they’re some sort of luxury item. In Gérardmer, those same berries are so plentiful that they are offered in whole crates or even in buckets. You can buy less of course, but the profusion of those delicate and delicious darlings, plucked fresh from the mother-bush just the day before, does make for an incredibly appetizing sight.

One of the local specialties is the Bonbon des Vosges, a small hard candy which can be made in many different flavors : fruit flavors (berries mostly), but also more woodsy, get-your-sinuses-cleared-up flavors like fir tree, eucalyptus, pine tree, bergamot… the most famous Bonbon des Vosges probably being the “Suc des Vosges” by “La Vosgienne”. Driving around the Vosges, you see many confiseries, small artisanal candy-making factories which you can sometimes visit, a unique opportunity to gaze in awe at huge vats of brightly colored molten sugar. The market in Gérardmer has several stands selling those bonbons, in piles of little bags (one flavor or mixed flavors) stacked along the stand. Each flavor stack has a little cup of broken candy for you to taste, and one of the stand owners — the kindest — always insists you do. “Can’t buy it if you haven’t tasted it, that’s the rule!”

Continue reading »

My cooking resume, if I had one, would have to say “Grilling experience : little to none”.

Growing up in the city, in a non-grilling family at that, BBQ has never been part of my gastronomical landscape. In fact, I attended my first barbecue in the US, at the ripe old age of 21. I do love it though — the smell and taste of grilled food, but also the atmosphere, the joy of cooking outdoors and the fascination of working so close with fire, king of all elements.

I have no grilling gear, indoor or outdoors, and my recent schedule didn’t allow me to properly prepare anything for the 6th edition of Is My Blog Burning?, the collaborative food blogging event, hosted this time around by Too Many Chefs on a grilling theme. But of course, not participating at all wasn’t an option, so I chose instead to go out for a grilled dinner with Maxence, and share it with you.

In Paris, one of your best bets if you feel like a little grilled meat (grillades in French), is a couscous at a Moroccan restaurant. As it happens, there is a very good one called Le Dattier (“the date tree”) just around the corner from my parents’ apartment, where they’ve lived for the past seventeen years. It’s been owned by the same family for as long as we can remember, and it was a regular destination for us when we felt like eating out, and a very convenient and stress-free way to entertain guests : pre-dinner drinks would be had at home, and then everyone would head out animatedly, walk twenty meters up the street, and take a seat at the pleasant terrace.

Continue reading »