Biscuits de Noël

Laurence is one of my best and oldest friends. I met her when I was fourteen, on our first day of high school, and soon we were inseparable, so alike in so many ways that people sometimes mistook us for sisters.

I loved going to her house after school. For one thing, there was a television there, which wasn’t the case at my parents’, so there was always the electrifying prospect of maybe catching one of those shows everyone else was watching at the time.

But aside from that, the house felt like a big happy place: Laurence had two (actual) sisters, and her mother, Christine, took care of small children at home, so there were a lot of comings and goings, conversations, people at the door, and girls shouting things down the stairwell.

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I will own up to it right then and there: I am an inveterate collector of pasta. Guilty as charged.

In fine food shops and Italian markets, I love to study the different shapes and imagine which will lend themselves to smooth sauces or chunky ones. I love their names (rooster’s crests, radiators, little ears, thimbles), the traditional packaging, and the fact that, for just a few euros, I can treat myself to a package of something novel — not to mention the promise of an easy meal.

Before I had children, I had to rein in my purchases, as my kitchen cabinets overflowed faster that Maxence and I actually ate pasta. But with two young boys who would eat it at every meal if I let them — their dream breakfast is cold leftover pasta, a recessive trait for sure — I am free to buy whatever I please, knowing I will easily find a use for it.

And I recently fell hard for a package of lumaconi, those large snail-shaped pasta sold in big bulging packages that scream “Buy me, I’m special!”

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In addition to planning my menus, I have been doing more and more batch cooking these past few months.

The idea of batch cooking is to block out time one day of the week to prep or cook a bunch of ingredients in advance, which you can draw from and combine for low-effort homemade meals the rest of the week.

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I am dedicating this particular post to the beautiful souls who follow me on Instagram, several of whom clamored for this recipe when I shared a casual shot of it in my Instagram story a few weeks ago.

“What is it?” they asked collectively. “It looks really good! Where’s the recipe?”

In truth, it is a recipe so simple, and one I make so often and with such ease, that I hadn’t thought to share it until then.

And I am glad indeed for the nudge, because it is the kind of dish that I would happily eat, in one variation or another, every day of the week, every week of my life. I can only assume, if it is true for me, that it will be true for some of you.

So there you have it: my recipe for red lentil curry (or dhal) with roasted cauliflower and crunchy coconut chips.

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