Have you read anything by Laurie Colwin?

She was an American author based in New York City, who wrote novels and also penned a column in Gourmet magazine for a few years, writing about her kitchen life in such a warm, witty, and approachable way that it was impossible then, and remains impossible now, for the reader not to develop a strong connection to her. These essays were published as two collections, Home Cooking: A Writer In The Kitchen and later More Home Cooking: A Writer Returns To The Kitchen, which have become cult reads for admirers of quality food writing, sharing shelf space with the work of M.F.K. Fisher, Edna Lewis or Alice B. Toklas.

Ms. Colwin died unexpectedly in 1992, at the unfair age of 48, and left a child, RF, who was only eight at the time. RF Jurjevics is now thirty and works as a writer, animator, and multimedia producer — founding Big Creature Media a couple of years ago — and I had the opportunity to get in touch last fall, when Open Road released Colwin’s books as ebooks for the very first time, and offered the contact to promote this release.

I immediately jumped at the chance to feature Laurie Colwin, whose writing — both fiction and nonfiction — I greatly admire, as part of my Parents Who Cook series, in which I explore how children shape and inform a cook’s kitchen life. This is the first installment in which it is the child who speaks, and I am grateful to RF for sharing such touching and uplifting childhood memories. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Please consider downloading one of Laurie Colwin’s wonderful books from Open Media, and do share any of your own memories or tips about cooking with and for children!

Can you tell us a few words about the kind of child you were, and the kind of mother your mother was — both in general and with regards to food?

I was a headstrong kid and spoke my mind – asked or not. A teacher once wrote on a school report that I was the tallest in my class and that my mother had referred to me as her “Viking child.” I’m not sure if this was a nod to my Baltic heritage (though Latvians were not Vikings, to my knowledge) or simply to suggest that I was a bit brutish in manner and stature. I admit to being both of these things as a child!

My mother was a similarly opinionated person, and she seemed to like having an opinionated kid – even when we clashed over, say, what was and was not appropriate for my school lunch. Open dialogue was encouraged, but I was a handful (to say the least), and there were definitely many times that I wore my poor mother out with pestering, arguing, or throwing fits.

I adored my mother’s cooking. It would have been hard not to. She put so much care into it, so much thought, and really loved to do it. People flocked to her table, and were so happy to hang out in the kitchen as she cooked. She would constantly ask her dinner guests to taste things and give their honest opinions of them. She wasn’t a showy cook, or one who kept her methods to herself, but instead really delighted in sharing food, recipes, and conversation.

Still, there were times when it was hard to be the kid who ate the “weird food.” My mother had very strong opinions about things that were good and bad for kids and for people in general. Keeping perishables in plastic was bad. Making jam from scratch was good. She didn’t like to budge much on the subject of good and bad. Though a lot of my classmates and neighborhood chums learned that they loved gingerbread and salmon and asparagus at my house, I envied them their Oreos and American cheese slices and radioactively colored “juices” nonetheless.

There were times I wished that I could just be “normal” and get chocolate-laden granola bars in my lunchbox (a pink, formerly Barbie-themed plastic trunk with the doll decal scraped off and cat stickers in its place) instead of a kiwi fruit, or have Wonderbread on my sandwich instead of slices from a Bread Alone boule. Some battles I won (fruit roll-ups, the kind that involved peeling Little Mermaid characters from their centers) and others I lost (no store-bought cookies!), and so I continued to be the first-grader with the goat’s milk yogurt and smoked Gouda. Years later, an old friend told me how jealous she’d been of my lunch. “All I got was tuna fish,” she told me. “And maybe a yogurt. Your food was exciting!” And she was right.

Laurie Colwin and then 2-year-old RF in 1986.

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Happy New Year! I hope your 2015 is a year full of joy, exciting ventures, great conversations, rich relationships, enlightening experiences, and plenty of delicious meals. It certainly promises to be a full year for me, and I look forward to keeping you updated on my various projects.

As we bid 2014 adieu, I have great pleasure in recalling this excellent year through these few highlights:

Biggest changes on C&Z: A brand new design, in which I’m happy to say I continue to feel wonderfully at home, the return of the monthly desktop calendars, and the recent addition of a shop section.

Most enlightening read: The Third Plate, by my culinary hero Dan Barber (if you care about food, you have got to read this).

Favorite new appliance: My griddler and waffle plates, with which I’ve made weekly batches of croque-monsieur and all kinds of waffles, including these irresistible Belgian waffles.

Most popular food gift I’ve made: These chocolate bars studded with cinnamon granola [sc:cinnamon_link].

Favorite new breakfast items: Paleo granola with homemade yogurt and seasonal fruit, and healthy breakfast cookies.

Favorite resolution I’ve actually kept: Making the most of my cookbook collection.

Loveliest book publishing moment: Hosting a signing for my latest book, Edible French, in the company of my talented watercolorist friend Melina Josserand. (We wrote about our collaboration in The Cook’s Cook December Issue, page 39).

Most wonderful vacation: Renting a house in the Pyrénées ariégeoises with a few friends, and discovering the friendliest little neo-hippie enclave and the most gorgeous, unadulterated lanscapes.

Favorite Paris eats: simple, wowing plates at Cuisine, vibrant sandwiches at Le Look, kushiage at Peco Peco, big salads at Lockwood, fine dining at Porte 12, barbecued ribs at Flesh, and arepas at Bululu.

Blow-torched mackerel at Porte 12

Most successful store-bought-to-homemade experiment: Vegan “cheesy” kale chips.

Most rewarding baking endeavor: Achieving madeleine perfection.

Favorite new quickie snacks: Easy nori rolls with cucumber and avocado and soy-roasted cashews.

Favorite travel tips: Fasting against jetlag and putting together a minimalist cooking kit.

Favorite new kitchen habit I’ve been trying to embrace: meal planning.

Favorite new way to eat my greens: This greens and walnut quiche.

Favorite do-ahead, weeknight treat: Oven-baked falafel.

Favorite new twist on a classic: Cherry clafoutis with chestnut flour.

Favorite new soup recipe: An ayurveda-approved lentil and butternut squash soup.

Favorite new baking trick: A simplified puff pastry, to make a caramelized apple tarte fine for instance.

Favorite new way to cook eggs: This kid-friendly one-egg omelet.

Favorite way to cook broccoli: charring it.

What about you?

What are some of the most memorable things you’ve seen, experienced, discovered, and tasted in 2014?

Vertical garden on rue d’Aboukir in Paris

Holiday meals are just around the corner, and if you’re still unsure what to make for dessert, I’m just one step ahead of you: we will be having Christmas lunch at Maxence’s mother’s, I’ve offered to bring dessert, and I’ve only made up my mind yesterday, when I did a trial run to make sure the recipe would work as I imagined it would.

The classic French dessert to serve at Christmas is the bûche de Noël (yule log), which people typically buy ready-made. Depending on the fanciness of the pastry shop, it is either A- loaded with buttercream, pretty kitschy, and entirely too sweet*, or B- a refined and elaborate affair that costs about twice the price of the rest of the meal, and requires you to wait in line among other stressed-out customers openly freaking out over the unchecked items on their to-do list.

I’m all for simple and peaceful during the holidays, so my plan instead is to bring this easy homemade bûche, rolled up with vanilla cream (a quick mix of yogurt and mascarpone cheese) and studded with raspberries. It is a moist and super refreshing dessert, light on the tongue and bright on the palate, moderately sweet and interspersed with the tangy, perfect notes of the berries. Just the kind of dessert I wish for at the end of a rich meal.

Two of the guests at our lunch don’t eat chocolate (I know!), but if that wasn’t the case I would likely have added dark chocolate shavings to the filling and some cacao powder dusted on top. I also considered adding chopped hazelnuts or toasted coconut to the cream, but decided to keep the flavors simple (sensing a pattern here?) and stick to the vanilla and raspberry pairing.

Raspberries aren’t exactly in season this time of year (unless of course you live in the Southern hemisphere) but I buy them frozen and can live with this exception to my season-abiding cooking habits. For a more winter-friendly filling, you could replace the raspberries with poached and diced pears, and add some toasted walnuts or crumbled bits of candied chestnut for flavor and color.

As far as decorations go, again I’m going for simplicity, but you can place small paper stars on top the cake to act as stencils when you dust on the confectioner’s sugar, you can drizzle the top in a zig-zag pattern with melted chocolate or caramel sauce, or you can place little marzipan trees across the top.

Join the conversation!

Will you be doing any cooking or baking for holiday meals this year? What are your plans? And have you ever made, or wanted to make, a Bûche de Noël?

PS: An equally holiday-friendly raspberry dacquoise, some holiday gift suggestions, and my ginger and almond chocolate clusters.

* And not necessarily made in-house: more and more pastry shops just buy frozen, factory-made bûches and pass them off as their own. If a neighborhood pastry shop seems to be selling lots of different sizes and designs, it is worth asking whether they are homemade. You can view a France 5 documentary on that subject (in French) for another few days: Noël, une bûche à tout prix !

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The days are getting shorter, the air is getting chillier, and our collective noses are getting snifflier. It’s time for a warming bowl of wholesome, immune-boosting ingredients, and this pink lentil soup is precisely that.

It is drawn from an early review copy of Sarah Britton’s upcoming book My New Roots, which won’t come out until spring, but this particular recipe is one that’s actually available on her beautiful blog of the same name.

The entire book is a treasure trove of inspiration and I’ve tagged many recipes to try, but this one was first in line: it is incredibly quick to put together, with hardly any prep work at all, and mostly pantry ingredients you likely have on hand as we speak.

The result is a remarkably satisfying, lightly chunky soup that hits all the right spots — the sweetness of the lentils, the earthiness of the cumin, the acidity of the lemon, the umami of the tomatoes, the fiery kick of the ginger and chili pepper — and I can already see it becoming a staple of my wintry repertoire.

Join the conversation!

What’s your favorite warming, soothing dish to prepare when you need to keep the cold, and the sniffles, out?

PS: A winter vegetable curry, my favorite gift ideas for the holiday, and chocolate walnut cookies.

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