This recipe changed my life, and I have Lucy Vanel to thank for it.

A few years ago, I bookmarked her fast feuilletage, an easy puff pastry recipe that did not involve rolling out the butter and enclosing it into a détrempe, nor did it confine you to the kitchen with incessant refrigeration steps.

A fuss-free puff pastry that does not confine you to the kitchen with incessant refrigeration steps.

Instead, her recipe merely has you cut the butter into the flour to form a rough dough, then do four rounds of rolling out, folding, and turning, like you would for a classic puff pastry, but without refrigerating the dough every time.
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During the winter months, the grower I get my weekly basket of vegetables from often includes bunches of small new carrots, not much larger than my middle finger, with the bright green tops still on.

Pretty, but a bit of a puzzle to me: the skin on those young carrots is so thin it doesn’t seem necessary to peel them, but they do have tiny fibrils shooting from all around their sides, and those I did not know how to handle. While I could scrape those off with the side of my blade, it felt finicky, and a disproportionate effort when compared to the amount of edible carrot I ended up with.

A lot of the carrot’s taste resides in its skin, so finding a way to keep it guarantees bold flavors.

Then, one day, I finally thought to ask Didier — that’s the name of the farmer — how he cleaned them. His response was quite liberating: “I just wash them, leaving a short section of the stem.” No scrubbing, no scraping, no peeling — it was simply a matter of removing any dirt or grit, without worrying about the fibrils that so disconcerted me.

It was all the permission I needed, and the dish I made the first time I prepped the carrots this way was so good it has practically become a weekly staple. A lot of the carrot’s taste resides in its skin, so finding a way to keep it guarantees a bold flavor.

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A few of my favorite finds and reads for January:

~ Green tea granola with chestnuts? Yes, please!

~ What do London Underground stops taste like?

~ A gorgeous photo-report on how the Japanese make dried persimmons.

~ My friend Shauna over at Gluten-Free Girl names her favorite cookbooks for 2013.

~ Pay by the hour at L’Anticafé, a co-working space in Paris. Would you go?

~ Scientists create a map of human emotions.

~ The best and worst errors and corrections for 2013.

~ Adorable teabag cookies for the tea lovers around you.

~ The Paris by Mouth team selects their favorite new restaurants for 2013.

~ A new food coop opens in Paris’ Goutte d’Or neighborhood.

~ 100 verbs to liven up your recipe writing.

~ The nerdiest food articles of 2013.

~ The twenty-one habits supremely happy people cultivate. How many have you adopted?

Something looks different around here, no?

I am very excited to unveil the new version of Chocolate & Zucchini! I have been working on it for a good while with the extraordinary team over at cre8d, and it’s been wonderful to see it take shape over the months as we dreamed up my ideal C&Z.

So take a look around, see what you think. There is still a bit of fine-tuning to do, so I hope you will forgive any glitch you run into. And if you have a moment to report back and share thoughts, suggestions, and general feedback on the new site, I will be very interested to hear from you.

Here are a few quick notes on some of the new C&Z features :
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