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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My favorite kind of cookbook is the kind that provides you with exciting little jolts of “Why didn’t I think of this sooner?” As long as a book generates at least one of those light bulb moments, however tiny, I consider my money well spent.

The one-egg omelet I want to tell you about today is one such brilliant idea, coming from Nikky Duffy’s River Cottage Baby and Toddler Cookbook, a book I really really like.

Geared toward parents of a young child — you’d gathered that much, I’m sure — it begins with a thorough section on how to feed one, which happens to be in line with my own views on this thorny topic*. But the bulk of the book is devoted to recipes designed so you can cook the same thing for the children and the grown-ups in your household, explaining how to adapt the dish to the former and the latter so everyone’s happy.

Photography by Georgia Glynn Smith.

It is full of simple, nutritious, yet tempting dishes — courgette polpette, pork and apple hash, spinach and onion puff tart — organized by season, but the one I’ve soonest adopted is a year-round basic she calls the Mini Omelette, which is simply an egg, beaten and cooked undisturbed in a skillet, with or without a touch of cheese and herbs.

This results in a thin little egg crêpe, golden-brown and pliable, that you can use in all manner of ways:

– Cut into strips, or rolled up and sliced, to give to a young child,

– Coated with the spread of your choice (say, beet hummus or peacamole or muhammara), rolled up, and eaten as a lovely snack, or sliced and served as a pretty apéritif nibble, or added to top a green salad,

– Garnished with the ingredients of your choice (especially a crunchy salad such as the Ginger and Dill Cabbage Slaw or the Grated Carrot Salad with Avocado) and use like a tortilla, folded up like a taco,

– Cut into half-moons, to be stuffed and rolled and wolfed down like a temaki.

All of these are very transportable ideas, and since the one-egg omelet can be eaten hot or cold with equal delight, it is your lunch box’s new best friend.

I will note that I don’t use a nonstick skillet for this; in fact, I no longer own a nonstick skillet. What I use for eggs nowadays is this very sturdy, nicely hefty, French-made iron skillet from De Buyer that I bought last year, and is more nonstick the more I use it.

Join the conversation!

What other uses would you dream up for this one-egg omelette? And what’s the latest light bulb moment you got from a cookbook?

* If you want to get a better idea whether this book is for you, you can read this Q&A with the author.

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