If you plan to be in Paris on Saturday, September 28, please join me at WHSmith for a booksigning from 3 to 6pm! (Here’s a link to the Facebook event.)

This event marks the release of my latest book, The French Market Cookbook, and will also be an opportunity to celebrate C&Z’s 10th anniversary. Complimentary wine and nibbles — cooked from the book by yours truly — will be served. I look forward to meeting you then!

{WHSmith, 248 rue de Rivoli, 75001 Paris, M° Concorde, map it!, +33 (0)1 44 77 88 99.}

On an unrelated note, for those of you who have nutritional restrictions, I have drawn up a comprehensive list of the recipes in the book with the allergens and possibly problematic food groups they contain (gluten, rice, soy, corn, other grains and pseudo-grains, dairy, eggs, nuts, legumes, nightshades).

I make it available to you (at no cost, naturally) so you can see if enough recipes will meet your dietary needs to make it worth your while. Feel free to request the list through my contact form and I’ll email it to you. I hope you find it useful!

We had our neighbors Stéphan and Patricia over for dinner last week to celebrate their respective birthdays, and it was as much a treat for me as it was for them.

Though it is a bit more of a challenge to cook multi-course meals now that I have a child — as all Parents Who Cook will no doubt agree — it is spectacular how refreshed and energized and just plain giddy I feel when I do get to spend quality time in the kitchen.

Favoring slow-cooking recipes for dinner parties

For dinner parties I’ve always favored make-ahead, slow-cooking recipes that require little active work, so that hasn’t changed, and as I discussed in this 5-question interview on Food52 last month, I have become a master of mise en place in both my daily, and my special occasion cooking.

Because each part of the meat is alternatively exposed to dry and wet heat, the whole cut remains very moist, while also developing an irresistibly caramelized outer crust.

This means I select recipes based on their ability to be sliced up into small steps that can be executed earlier in the day, the day before, or even two days ahead. And this recipe is a fine example.

Braised pork is exceptionally flavorsome: you place it in the oven in a shallow pool of liquids (here, white wine and tomato juice, or tomato water saved from roasted tomatoes), turning the meat regularly over the span of a few hours. Because each part of the meat is alternatively exposed to dry and wet heat, this method allows the whole cut to remain very moist, while also developing an irresistibly caramelized outer crust.

Amazing braised pork, broken down into make-ahead steps

And it is an ideal recipe if you want to spread out the different steps over two or three days; in fact, it is recommended that you do.

It is spectacular how refreshed and energized I feel when I do get to spend quality time in the kitchen.

On the first day, you’ll make a simple rosemary salt to rub onto the pork, and you’ll dice the flavoring vegetables (carrots, fennel, onion, garlic). The next day, you’ll cook the meat in the oven and let it cool, so you can skim the excess fat. Later that day, or the next day, you’ll reheat the whole thing and serve it to your very appreciative guests with the gremolata you’ll have had plenty of time to prepare because you were so un-tied up in the preparation of the meat.

As for sides, you can serve braised pork with mashed potatoes or a purée of celery root, but this time I served it with my current favorite blend of roasted vegetables: zucchini, cabbage, and sweet potatoes (with garlic, ground cumin, and olive oil), a mix I once serendipitously prepared based on what was left in the vegetable drawer, but which I’ve now purposely recreated a few times, so tasty it was.

Join the conversation!

Is braising a technique you like to practice with meat? And what’s your favorite “sliceable” recipe to prepare in installments for dinner parties?

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Gremolata is an Italian condiment I adore — a simple, and quickly assembled mix of flat-leaf parsley, lemon zest, and garlic, chopped finely.

It is most traditionally associated with osso buco, and indeed it works wonders (wonders, I tell you!) on any slow-roasted or braised meat dish, sprinkled on just before serving. It tastes fresh and clean, and cuts right through the richness of a stew, brightening the overall flavors by several notches.

But it would be a pity to restrict gremolata to this classic use. You can also:
– stuff it underneath the skin of chicken before roasting (I detail this technique in my post on salt-crusted chicken),
– sprinkle it over roasted eggplant, mushrooms, carrots, or cauliflower,
– use it to garnish soups, especially winter squash soups,
– add it to salads (especially lentil salads) and sandwiches,
– toss it with pasta, white beans, or small waxy potatoes,
– add breadcrumbs and a little bit of oil to form a paste, and spread on fish fillets before baking,
– use it to season steamed mussels or grilled sardines,
– fold it into ricotta or fresh goat cheese to top crostini…

The list goes on and on, so you would do well to mix a big batch whenever you have the ingredients on hand, and keep it in the fridge for a couple of days to add to your cooking and spark new ideas.

And just as the uses are multiple, so too are the possible variations on this glorious trinity: you can use parsley in combination with another fresh herb (I do recommend keeping at least a portion of parsley to retain that flavor thumbprint), you can mix and match citrus zests (orange is also a classic, but grapefruit or bergamot would be inspired twists), and you can add a fillet of anchovy or a few black olives to replace the salt.

I myself like to add roasted hazelnuts to my gremolata for a nutty note, an idea that comes from genius cook Sonia Ezgulian by way of the gremolata bowls she placed on every table when she was a guest chef at Café Pleyel.

And part of my pleasure in making gremolata is that it gives me a chance to use the very nifty hand-cranked mini-chopper I got from Tupperware years ago*. It works a bit like an old-school salad spinner, with a handle and a cord that sets in motion a rotating set of blades (see below). I like the retro-ness of it, and find it is just the thing to produce a gremolata that’s chopped tiny, but not completely ground. Also, handy in the event of a blackout!

Join the conversation!

Do you make gremolata? What’s your version like, and what do you use it on?

*Disclosure: I received this mini chopper for free from the press services of Tupperware France a few years ago, with no obligation to write about it, and no compensation if I ever decided to. All opinions expressed are my own.

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Have you ever cooked with purslane, or Portulaca oleracea as it is known to botanists? It is a succulent plant whose edible, delicious leaves are crunchy and slightly mucilaginous, with a tangy lemony and peppery flavor.

It is generally harvested from early June till the end of summer, and can either be foraged or purchased, usually from a farmers market or through a CSA share. The wild variety, which is actually considered a weed by many gardeners, is rampant and has pinkish stems (see picture above), while cultivated varieties tend to grow vertically and display greenish stems.

Purslane has been consumed since ancient times, and because it grows easily in hot and not too dry climates, it is represented in many cuisines of the world, from Greece to Mexico, and from Turkey to India by way of South Africa. (Here’s a handy list of its aliases in different languages.)

It is a bit of a nutritional powerhouse, offering remarkable amounts of minerals (most notably calcium, iron, magnesium, and potassium), omega-3 fatty acids, vitamins (A, B, C), and antioxydants. It is thought to be an important component of the Cretan high-life-expectancy diet, and Michael Pollan has called it one of the two most nutritious plants on the planet in his In Defense of Food manifesto (the other is lamb’s quarters if you want to hunt for that too).

Although the stems are edible when still young (and can be pickled), cooks usually keep only the leaves and thin, spindly stems at the top, which are simply plucked from the central stem. The process is slow-going, but rewarding in the end. Because purslane grows so close to the earth, and especially if it is foraged*, it should be rinsed very well, in several baths of fresh water (I usually do three), with a bit of vinegar.

And once you have your bowlful of squeaky clean and vibrant little leaves, what do you do with them? Purslane is mostly eaten raw, but can also be cooked for a change of pace. I’ve gathered 45 purslane recipes for you — and hope you’ll add your own favorites in the comments section!

* Some people report that they find it growing from sidewalk cracks or in city parks, but I wouldn’t recommend foraging it from there.

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