Illustration by MelinArt.

This is part of a series on French idiomatic expressions that relate to food. Browse the list of idioms featured so far.

This week’s expression is, “Haut comme trois pommes.”

Literally translated as, “high as three apples,” it is used to point out that someone — often a child — is small or very short. I’ve seen it translated to “knee-high to a grasshopper,” although I’ve never heard that cute English expression myself.

Example: “Il était haut comme trois pommes et devait courir pour rattraper ses soeurs.” (He was high as three apples and had to run to catch up with his sisters.)

Listen to the idiom and example read aloud:

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Unless you are one of those blessed people with an outdoor space and a vegetable garden and the opportunity to grow your own sprightly things, chances are you only ever see heads of garlic in dried form, their ivory cloves enclosed in a papery husk.

But I’m here to tell you that, as dried things usually go, those heads of garlic were once full of life and moisture, only freshly dug out from the ground in which they sprouted and grew.

In France, where we have a knack for naming things in a clever way, we call this ail frais (fresh garlic) or ail nouveau (new garlic), and it is a prized feature of springtime stalls, going for around 2€ a head (a little more if organic) in my neighborhood*.

This is not a particularly cheap price to pay for a single head of garlic (dried and therefore shelf-stable garlic is less costly for distributors to handle) but the flavor of fresh garlic cloves is subtle and vibrant, and a perfect match to the new crop of vegetables that typify the season — think asparagus, green peas, and thumb-sized potatoes.

Although the girth of these fresh heads of garlic is comparable to that of dried, they are in fact immature — if left to dry, they would shrink to a much smaller size — and the cloves themselves are pretty small, so the trick to getting your garlic money’s worth is to use the whole thing, à la nose-to-tail.

Here’s what I do.

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Longtime readers may remember the post I wrote about sustainable seafood a few years ago. The issue is still very much at the forefront of my mind, I carry around the pocket seafood guide issued in French by the WWF (check this list for your local equivalent), and I generally eat little fish — meaning both “not a lot of it” and “not very big ones”.

I’m not perfect, and although my conscience tells me I should give it up, we still go out for sushi (we like Enishi in the 18th) once in a blue moon — versus every week or two, as we used to in our oblivious days.

But when I buy fresh fish at the greenmarket, maybe once a month on average, it is usually one of two green-checkmark choices in the WWF guide*: either sardines, provided the poissonnier has filleted them, opening them up flat like tiny prayer books with tails, or mackerel.

My go-to cooking method for mackerel is to roast it in the oven, which is the simplest and most foolproof way to cook whole fish.

The mackerel I buy whole, and take up the fish guy’s offer to gut it for me. (“Gratté vidé ?” is the standard question you’ll be asked in a similar situation; “Oui, s’il vous plaît !” you’ll respond.). He also gives the option of keeping the heads on or having them cut off, Louis XVI-style, but to me a whole fish is a whole fish, and I’ve never been squeamish about my dinner looking me in the eye.

My go-to cooking method for mackerel is to roast it in the oven, which is the simplest and most foolproof way to cook whole fish.

Sometimes I’ll merely place the fish in a dish with a drizzle of olive oil and a glug of white wine, but my preference for mackerel goes to rubbing it with strong mustard, which heightens its flavor, and roasting it on a bed of vegetables.

The trick is to pick vegetables that will be ready in about the same time as the mackerel, and an excellent choice for that is fennel, sliced into shavings with a mandoline: as it cooks in the fish juices, it becomes tender and moist but still retains a little bit of snap. Fennel is a winning pairing for any fish, but its subtle aniseed notes work particularly well to round out the mackerel’s assertive flavor.

What’s your favorite way to prepare and cook mackerel?

* Provided they come from the northeast Atlantic; sardines from the Mediterranean are in the “not recommended” category. There is, however, new concern about the stocks of mackerel due to a dispute over fishing quotas between the EU and Iceland. Conservationists are now leaning toward an “eat occasionally” recommendation.

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Photography by Sarah Mather of Noisette Bakehouse

A few of my favorite finds and reads for April:

~ How to cook perfect Japanese rice.

~ About family-owned food businesses: Mark Russ Federman on his Russ & Daughters book.

~ Female chefs weigh in on what it’s like to always get asked about being a woman.

~ Avert your eyes if foul language bothers you. Otherwise, enjoy.

~ MRIs of fruits and vegetables.

~ Taking hot cross buns to new heights.

~ How to create a style guide for your blog.

~ Haiku detection in the New York Times.

~ 100 rules of dinner.

~ Julie Lee’s gorgeous food collages.

~ Making flatbread in Lebanon.

~ Foolproof poached eggs.

~ Scrollable baklava.

~ Thirteen things you can do in 2013.

~ Five years of hand-drawn sandwich bags.

~ Park Slope-style food coop comes to Paris.