I am ordinarily not a huge winter squash fan. I used to dislike sweet and savory together when I was little, and that seems to vaguely remain when it comes to pumpkin and its brothers and sisters. But I do love the look of them and how they come in all shapes, sizes and colors and look like a little munchkin tribe.

And the other day at the farmers’ market, I could not resist buying a big plump slice of bright orange courge musquée – also called courge muscade (literally nutmeg squash), which is your typical Jack-O-Lantern shaped pumpkin. I looked at it, and suddenly I knew : soup. That’s it. I will. Make. Soup.

After researching a little for inspiration – and this included washing my hands thoroughly to leaf with care through Stéphan’s precious Larousse Gastronomique, which he let me borrow under the absolute promise that I would take care of it as if it was my firstborn child – I came up with the following recipe.

We enjoyed this soup very much. The taste is made nicely complex by the different spices, and the sweetness of the onions complements that of the courge very well, without making the soup overly sweet in a this-should-be-served-for-dessert way. Will repeat!

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Tartines have been a fairly trendy lunch fare in Parisian restaurants for a while. Originally, “tartine” means a slice of bread, toasted or not, with something spread on it, usually eaten for breakfast : butter (tartine beurrée), jam (tartine de confiture), cheese (tartine de fromage)…

For a few years now, the concept of tartine has been recycled into an easy but delicious main dish : one or two slices of bread on which ingredients are laid, creating a sort of open-faced sandwich. It’s interesting to note that this is a flashback to the Middle Ages, when slices of bread were used in lieu of plates!

This simple idea can lead to an infinite number of variations. But it is a very open concept that should be used with care, and one has to make sure the combination of ingredients is sound. Whipping up a tartine using all the miscellaneous leftovers in the fridge can work wonders. Or not.

It is also very tempting to throw in a lot of goodies, but as is often the case with cooking, more is not necessarily better, and too many flavors can cancel each other out. The idea is to pick a central theme or focus for your tartine and try to find the minimum set of ingredients that expresses it fully. The tartine can star a nationality or ethnicity (Mediterranean, English, Italian, Greek, Jewish, Swedish…), an ingredient (vegetarian, chicken, duck, salmon, cheese…), or even a color (tartine verte, tartine rouge, tartine jaune, tartine violette…).

Then, the simple process is this.

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Two weeks ago, my parents came over to my apartment. The plan was for the three of us to have lunch together, and then go out on a mini-tour of the 9th and 18th arrondissements, using a guidebook called “Paris Buissonier“, which my sister and I gave our mother for Mother’s day : it describes itineraries to walk through parts of Paris that are seldom visited, providing interesting and unusual facts and comments about what you see along the way. An excellent little book to get to know our beloved – and huge – city better, avoiding the crowds. The name “Paris Buissonier” alludes to the expression “faire l’école buissonière” (literally “to attend shrub school”), which means to cut class. When I was younger, I thought there really was a school called “Ecole Buissonière” – it sounded like one I’d want to go to!

For dessert, I decided to try my hand again at crème brûlée, to make sure last time wasn’t just a fluke. I had read recipes that flavored the cream with rosemary, and I had ripe pears on hand that needed to be used, so this time I whipped up Pear Rosemary Crèmes Brûlées. As I did not have milk on hand, I used light whipping cream in addition to regular. (I know what you’re thinking, who’s that girl with two types of whipping cream in the house, but no milk…)

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On the last Saturday of our Seychelles vacation, we were on the island of Mahé, the largest and most populated of the archipelago (ooh, a good 150 km2 and 70,000 inhabitants!), which holds the small capital city, Victoria. Only a handful of streets, but still, it’s the biggest in the country. It has a daily food market, and Saturday mornings are the busiest, so that’s the moment we chose to visit.

This is a covered market mostly, held in an airy building painted with bright colors and full of palm trees, but some of the food stands sprawl out onto the neighboring streets.

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