Though I am not spontaneously drawn to this kind of light-textured, mousse-like chocolate cakes — given a choice I will opt for the dense and fudgy cake every time — sometimes the occasion calls for a cake just like this.

A couple of months ago, I was contacted by a girl named Camille, a senior student at the Camondo school of design and architecture in Paris. She was working on her graduation project, for which she had designed a new kind of lunch box for three, to be bought and shared, picnic-style, with your friends or coworkers. She had the box all designed, with nifty ideas and a clever stacking of containers, but the point was, after all, to serve food. And this is where she requested my help : could I create six chromatic menus to fill the containers — green, yellow, pink, orange, white and black, in pure Pink Buffet style?

The cake is fluffy and moist, and the ganache glaze — well, what can you expect from a ganache glaze but sheer sublimity?

I was charmed by the idea, and felt an instant connection to the delightfully sweet and friendly Camille (also, Camille happens to be my middle name). I eagerly agreed to help, and got to work. The challenge was to create a set of menus that made culinary sense, while following the color rule (I added a “no artificial coloring” rule) and also factoring in the box’s structure : it contained a fixed number of containers of different shapes, all linked together, that were to be unfolded and unstacked, from top to bottom, as the meal progressed.

Over the course of the last two months, in preparation for the grand jury, Camille and I worked on making these menus real, so she could take pictures for her project presentation : some dishes she made on her own from recipes I provided, some items were store-bought to save time, some dishes we made together. And among the latter (are you getting the where-in-the-world-is-she-going-with-this syndrome yet? come on, be honest) was this chocolate cake you see here, to be included as the dessert in the black menu.

I wanted a chocolate cake that would rise high enough to fill the cubic dessert containers prettily, and I wanted to glaze the servings with a dark chocolate ganache, to make them black and shiny. This recipe fit the bill perfectly, and was absolutely scrumptious : the cake part is fluffy and moist, and the ganache glaze — well, what can you expect from a ganache glaze but sheer sublimity?

Incidently, this is what Camille chose to serve the jury members, to illustrate her point. Point well illustrated apparently, as the results just came out, and I am most proud and happy to annouce that she graduated, and with honors, no less. Toutes mes félicitations Camille!

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[Sesame Zucchini Soup]

When the idea of lacing zucchini soup with tahini (the sesame paste used in hummus) came to me out of the blue a few days ago, I thought it very appealing and stashed it in the “to try” file of my mind – which I’d need a personal assistant to sort through, it’s such a mess.

Then Tuesday night, I came home ever-so-slightly tipsy from the excellent bottle of white wine my coworkers and I shared to celebrate a birthday (yup, tough working environment), and Maxence was out playing poker with his friends (and I am not making this up). I had everything on hand for my sesame zucchini soup, so I went right ahead and made it, humming along to Air‘s last album.

I served myself a few ladles of soup in the fresh and beautiful mug I bought in London, and sipped on it, sitting on one of our bar stools, leafing through my cool British cooking magazine, Delicious. I enjoyed this softly green and nicely fragrant soup very much : the hint of sesame gives it the kick that vegetable soups sometimes lack. I can’t wait to have the leftovers.

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[Clotilde’s Corsican Sandwich, as seen at Cojean’s]

I cannot begin to tell you how gratifying Chocolate & Zucchini has been, since the very early days. But this, having a sandwich named after me at one of my absolute favorite lunch places, is a benefit I clearly hadn’t foreseen. You must forgive my candor, but : how unbelievably cool is that, I ask you?

Okay, a little explanation is in order. Cojean is a sandwich and salad restaurant, founded by someone named Alain Cojean. Being a great fan of that place, I wrote a review for Bonjour Paris, and mentioned on C&Z that one of their sandwiches had been the inspiration for my Salade Figue et Poire à la Bresaola. This caught the attention of Fred Maquair, Alain Cojean’s associate, who liked C&Z and got in touch with me, to express his thanks.

I was delighted of course, but not half as much as a few days ago, when he sent me an email to let me know that a new menu was coming out, featuring a sandwich inspired in turn by my Tartine Corse, which was thus to be named, quite simply, “le sandwich corse de clotilde”.

“Aflutter with joy” is an understated description of yours truly, upon hearing the news.

Of course, I took a trip to Cojean’s as soon as I could, digital camera in hand, to immortalize the moment. I stepped in, right in the middle of the lunch rush, and quickly located my spiritual baby. “Nouveau“, said a little yellow label. “Le sandwich corse de clotilde”, said another, baby blue label. “Oh my”, thought I. I asked a waitress for permission to take a picture : “I’d love to take a picture of the sandwich corse de clotilde”, I said, “because um… you see, I am Clotilde.”

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Do you know what inspired this recipe, of all things? The TGV.

TGV, or Train à Grande Vitesse, is the pride and joy of France, a technology of high-speed trains that peaks at 300 km/h (186 mph). Last week, for my job, I rode this train to Lille (a city in the North of France) in the wee hours of the morning.

It being quite early, I had closed my eyes in the wild hope that this would somehow re-energize me and help with the feeling of having just been grabbed and thrown out of bed. I had fallen into that state of half-sleep where your thoughts wander around idly, taking rational paths then sharp turns into weirdness or fantasy, morphing little things into giant, convoluted versions of themselves, twisting reality into confusing shapes, and leading you along unexpected routes.

It is in this state of mind that, after considering project management questions for a little while, my thoughts turned to the idea for a dish, which constructed itself out of nowhere behind my closed eyelids.

A few days later, I followed the dream’s instructions, and brought these fish and nectarine skewers to life, served with herbed couscous and a nectarine chutney. They turned out to be everything I had hoped for: pretty, summery, and delicious.

Nectarines — yellow nectarines — are very high on my list of favorite fruits, and strongly associated with childhood summer vacations in the mountains, where we would buy crates of them, plump and sun-kissed, at the local market.

This was the first time I’d ever paired them with fish (or anything savory for that matter), and they turn out to be a great match. I also whipped up a chutney to serve alongside.

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